Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21 (Page 1 of 15)

It's Netflix and Marvel.  They could be assuming that, after the success of Daredevil, people will watch no matter what.  So they're going with a mystery angle with the trailers.  Seems like the campaign is sorta "you don't know her name, but you will"

It does sorta remind me of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which definitely seemed like it was releasing footage pretty late.  But you gotta think they have enough footage for a teaser.  So I'm guessing it's the intended message, and they're assuming people will watch whether they give us more than a teaser or not.

It is a mistake to ever assume that the audience will be there, especially with a character that we have no reason to care about. Agents of SHIELD gets to interact with the Avengers storyline and characters and they assumed that it would be a slam dunk, but it actually isn't doing all that well. Daredevil did much better (judging by critic reactions and fan feedback) and that has to piss off the mother ship, ABC.

Netflix had a flop in Marco Polo, so it isn't like people will watch anything that they put out. They should be taking this more seriously, especially since they have so much invested in these shows.

The impression that I get from these trailers hadn't been about mystery and intrigue. The impression I get is that they don't want to show us their star or any actual footage from the show. It doesn't look good from where I am sitting.

Of course, I watch everything so I will check it out either way. But that doesn't mean that everyone is like me. The first trailer literally made the show look like a cartoon. How does that help them?

The trailers are usually posted on entertainment news sites, and "geek" sites in general. So while I'm sure that there are some who probably would watch the show either way and some who will never see the trailers either way, the trailers are about generating awareness of the product. With Daredevil, the thing was the prove to people that this wasn't going to be like the movie, which the trailers did. People were talking about those trailers and that built excitement for the series when it premiered. With Jessica Jones, I don't know what people would be talking about, even if they did talk about it. On the site where I usually get my TV show news, people barely even comment on the trailers.

They use the trailers online to generate buzz. But people need something to buzz about if that's going to happen.

The JESSICA JONES trailers struck me as trailers aimed specifically at the fans. People who already know who this character is. And you know, that's okay -- if the show is meant for that precise demographic, then the trailers are just about right. As for being successful? If the show is aimed at a small audience, then it's presumably budgeted so that the cost of making it is below the amount of revenue it will draw from that small audience.

I've had some issues with Marvel movies. I loved IRON MAN, INCREDIBLE HULK and THOR, but IRON MAN II and CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER were weak films that led to the also-weak AVENGERS and the very weak first season of AGENTS OF SHIELD. However, one thing that these projects all handled very well was budget and market research. Marvel Studios had a pretty clear idea of who would be interested in seeing these projects and how much money they were likely to make. They then made sure to spend just the right amount so that even a modest success would turn a profit.

I thought IRON MAN III, CAP II, THOR II, DAREDEVIL and the second season of AGENTS were very strong, and I felt a huge part of that was also the creators handling budget constraints more effectively than AVENGERS (where most of the movie was set on the Helicarrier). Marvel Studios has, traditionally, been very good at making sure their costs don't exceed their earnings. I'm sure JESSICA JONES, a low-budget Netflix series, will be handled just as well.

That said, I'm not sure how true that will be for future projects. One of the main forces behind avoiding wasteful spending was Ike Perlmutter, the reclusive CEO of Marvel Entertainment. He had a lot of wise and brilliant business approaches to filmmaking. Filming schedules, locations, scripts, cast availability and budgets were meticulously and obsessively timed and organized. Most Hollywood blockbusters waste millions of dollars due to poor planning that has actors sitting around paid but not working because sets and props aren't ready, location filming that turns out to be unnecessary, special effects sequences that are bought and not used, etc..

Perlmutter's fastidious business sense avoided most of that. Actors were paid sensible figures for their initial films, in the $500,000 to $2 million range, although the success of the earlier films meant increases for the sequels. Inexpensive but talented directors were chosen like Shane Black for IRON MAN III and the Russo brothers from COMMUNITY for CAP II and Alan Taylor from GAME OF THRONES for THOR II. Actors were not given endless luxuries; they were not given vast expense accounts or free airline travel for their entourages. Journalists were only allowed one soda each at press junkets.

Unfortunately, Perlmutter was also a crazy ****ing lunatic who was sexist, racist, homophobic and hateful towards his employees. It's one thing to handle money this way; something else to handle people and talent in precisely the same manner. Perlmutter's downfall came when Downey Jr. expressed his interest in starring in CAPTAIN AMERICA III in a larger role. Perlmutter considered this Downey Jr. trying to grab more money. Arguably true, but surely if it wasn't financially sound, Downey Jr. could have been politely told, "Thanks, but no thanks." Instead, Perlmutter vindictively sought to have Downey Jr. written out of the CAP3 script entirely and this led to Perlmutter being removed from Marvel movies.

I honestly don't know if it's a good thing. The past years have seen increasingly foolish and idiotic studio behaviour where studios vastly overestimate the audience for their films and spend far more money than they can expect to earn back. (The stated budgets of these films are pretty meaningless because there's apparently additional preparatory and marketing costs that don't show up in the IMDB budget pages.) Look at JOHN CARTER or TOMORROWLAND or TERMINATOR GENISYS or anything directed in the last decade by the Wachowskis.

GENISYS is the perfect example of this poor thinking. Would anyone expect a TERMINATOR movie to earn more than $200 million worldwide? It's a 1984 franchise that hasn't been relevant since 1991. The films are aimed at people who saw and loved the 1984 and 1991 films. It's not a huge audience, and the time travel and continuity make it a tough sell to a general audience. So, to spend a huge sum on such a film would be foolish; any TERMINATOR film should be at most a $50 million dollar film. Paramount spent -- well, I don't know how much they spent, but GENISYS earned $440 million worldwide and yet is considered a failure with its sequels cancelled, which means they really shouldn't have made the movie for however much they invested.

MAN OF STEEL earned close to $700 million and is also considered by Warner Bros. to be a non-success -- in that they didn't make as much of a profit as they'd hoped. That's why MAN OF STEEL II became a BATMAN & SUPERMAN film; that's why there are no standalone Superman films planned. And to me, that's just ridiculously poor mathematics; if summer action films are earning hundreds of millions and their planned sequels are being cancelled, then too much is being spent to make them.

As I said, Marvel has been good at avoiding this silliness, but they have stumbled into it with AGE OF ULTRON, which earned $1.4 billion and is considered a disappointment at Disney. Not because they lost money, but because they didn't earn as much as they'd hoped -- which means they probably shouldn't have spent as much as they did.

But I think JESSICA JONES, being a smaller-scale project, is safe from such things.

I have serious doubts about that $200 million figure. It's over three years and it was an estimate to start. How that's actually worked out, I'm not sure, but DAREDEVIL looked like a low-budget and incredibly skillful indie drama. They didn't even spend the money to insert the Avengers tower into the skyline. They don't need to spend it all at once; if it doesn't work out, they can rework the end goal.

I can't definitively say you're wrong about the  budget, but I have trouble believing the notoriously penny-pinching Perlmutter would have permitted the Netflix series if it was nothing but an overoptimistic money pit. Marvel's frugality is a huge part of its (financial) success and both DAREDEVIL and JESSICA JONES are projects from Perlmutter's reign. And I think Perlmutter remains in control of the TV division. Perlmutter is the sort of person who would fire people for buying too many staples or throwing out pencils when there was still a good inch left on them. That is not an exaggeration.

Temporal Flux. Oh, you meant non-SLIDERS info. Uh. Which parts are you referring to?

Just do a search for BLEEDNG COOL and PERLMUTTER and you'll find a ton of info Marvel. There was also this editorial: http://www.chud.com/135091/lets-stop-bi … -shall-we/ -- which was about how Marvel Studios avoids wasting money and why their salary negotiations with the actors are the way they are.

Another area where TF and I are aligned -- I don't think SPIDER-MAN should be a movie series. I, too, think it should be a TV show. The visuals would *have* to be reduced in scale to work on a TV budget with corners cut the way THE FLASH and ARROW do. It might have to be 8 - 13 episode seasons like AGENT CARTER in order for all the web-slinging action to be workable. Or it might have to be an animated series with actor Tom Holland doing all the motion capture and voice work and appearing in live-action only for his appearances in the AVENGERS movies. The death of Gwen Stacy would have worked a lot better at the end of Season 2 rather than Movie Number 2. The Sinister Six would have been better introduced across a season of episodes rather than in one disastrous movie.

Slider_Quinn2 says animation won't work for a mainstream audience used to live-action. That's always struck me as a marketing problem to be solved as opposed to an unsolvable dilemma.

MASK OF THE PHANTASM was good, but it suffered from having been a direct-to-video animated feature that got a small theatrical release. The animation was not designed for the big screen and what looked fine on TV (unmoving background characters, sparse extras) looked glaringly poor in theatres.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/35654 … e#/slide/1

Info, we got our Jessica Jones trailer finally.

Did you watch the trailer?  Trailer seems pretty clear cut what the show is supposed to be - Netflix might just release trailers later than other networks, which is why they resorted to the other marketing campaign.  I don't remember how soon before the show the Daredevil trailer showed up.

I get that, but I'm not sure I understand holding a show accountable for something the marketing department at Netflix did.  Show runners don't make those trailers, right?  I remember Lindelof/Cuse getting mad about LOST promos back in the day for showing things they didn't want shown.  If those guys weren't part of their promos, I can't imagine anyone involved at Jessica Jones was involved with the Netflix stuff.

Jessica Jones... I'm up to episode 10 or 11. It's far better than most of the Marvel products (makes Agents of SHIELD look like Saturday morning material). But not as good as Daredevil. At the moment, I'm thinking that the season is at least 3 episodes too long. They keep having confrontations, followed by someone doing something stupid, followed by another confrontation in the next episode. It makes everyone look stupid, and they keep doing nonsensical things, just to keep the story going for more episodes.

It's frustrating. It started out well and I hoped that it would get stronger as it went, but the closer I get to the end, the more it seem to be falling apart. I'm not thrilled as much as I'm rolling my eyes and yelling "Seriously?!" at the TV.

The frustrating thing is that they don't go near Daredevil at all. The shows are taking place in the same area, yet neither show so much as hinted about the fairly huge events taking place in the other. That is even weirder than the fact that it's supposed to take place in the Avengers universe,  yet feels like a completely different animal.  They reference those events, but they feel so out of place that it's just weird.

Possible Small, Tiny Spoiler
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On top of that, they reference the events of The Avengers in a way that makes it sound more like Man of Steel than The Avengers. Buildings falling. Thousands dying... I got none of that from the movie itself. It's like all of the other Marvel properties keep fixing Whedon's mistakes by retconning what happened.

Remember, I'm not done with Jessica Jones yet. I have some episodes remaining, so maybe I haven't seen it yet.

Okay, I still have a couple of episodes of Jessica Jones left, but the series crumbles more and more with each episode. I just watched episode 11, "AKA I've Got The Blues"...

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First of all, the issue of mishandling Kilgrave continues. They mistakenly introduced him into the show too soon, so now they're stuck spinning wheels and making excuses to not end the story. They kill Hope, which removes the main driving force of Jessica's mission (it removed the only selfless aspect).

Jessica is a broody mess. You'd think that this is because of what Kilgrave did to her, and her emotional goal for the series would be to reclaim what was stolen from her. Except all of the flashbacks show her pretty much the same as she is now. So, what is she trying to win back? What is the goal, aside from "kill the bad guy?" (which they never do when they have the chance)
Hope was that goal. It was Jessica's chance to fight for the person that she can't be herself. Now what?
And in rendering the Hope arc pointless, they rendered the  entire Hogarth character (and everything around it) useless.

Simpson... a random cop that Kilgrave whammies, right? And then he is so torn up by what he's done that he uses his military skills to join the fight.
Except this random cop turns out to be part of some super secret military-ish unit that uses magic pills to get strong, but it turns him into a crazy killer. That makes his being a part of the show too much of a coincidence in the first place, and destroys the interesting character element that he brought to the show, AND plays into the trope of suddenly turning a love interest into a total jerk and/or crazy killer... and in doing so, flies in the face of his early character arc.

In short, his character became complete nonsense.

The powers on the show are handled incredibly poorly. They never keep track of how powerful they want Jessica to be, so she ends up looking like a Heroes character whose abilities grow and shrink according to whatever the writer wants that week. This carried over into Simpson... he can throw Jessica through a wall, but can't break down a bathroom door. Jessica can take the impact of jumping off of a building, but getting hit by a car disables her.

And the end of the episode, at Luke's bar missed so many possibly good moments in favor of a scene that was completely lacking any emotion whatsoever. We know that he can't be hurt. Kilgrave doesn't. Seeing Kilgrave tell him to jam a knife into his face, only to see the knife bent or break would have been a great moment. But we didn't get that.
Seeing Jessica burst open the fire hydrant that was right next to her to put out the fire on Luke would have been an okay moment that showed her power. Instead, she smacked him with a blanket.
Seeing her stand against a street lamp as Luke walks out of the bar on fire, and have her remain perfectly calm as the burning dude walks over to her and says "What the f--- was that?" would have been a really cool moment, since the fire would be nothing to him.

But they wanted to play the fear of him being in the bar as it exploded, hoping that we would forget that it won't hurt him at all. Why would we forget that?!

When I first started watching the show, I thought that I might be wrong about the impression I was getting from the trailers. But unfortunately, I wasn't. It's a poorly constructed, poorly written series. It still has better production value than Agents of SHIELD though, so there's something.

The Daisy thing doesn't work for me. She is Skye and trying to change that is just weird and off putting.

I am actually really mad about the Fitz storyline because of how they handled his traumatic brain injury. They toyed with it for shock value, but it ultimately just went away whenever they didn't want it around and then popped up again when they did. They treated it like an emotional trauma that he could overcome (without super intensive therapy even) rather than what it was. A chunk of his brain is dead. That doesn't just go away.

Maybe it just annoys me because my father had a major stroke and I have seen brain damage up close. I'm just sick of TV shows magically making brain damage or paralysis go away after a while. It doesn't work that way, and it seems shallow and unprofessional to use these things for shock value if they don't intend to follow through.

The hypoxia could have been played as less severe than it was, so the full recovery and lack of intense therapy wouldn't have been as big of a deal. But they wanted more drama, so they stated that Fitz was deprived of oxygen for long enough to result in a nine day coma. That is pretty significant and would probably not be something that he would fully recover from. And again, his therapy was shown as pretty much just his friends telling him "You can do it".

Yeah, Fitz gets more flustered when Ward shows up, but that is an emotional/psychological reaction. It's not brain damage. They should have:

A. Not played his situation as being as dire as they did.
B. Kept him disabled in different ways, even after his recovery
or
C. Come up with a miracle cure, which would have been super easy for them.

I finished Jessica Jones last night. Overall, I thought it was pretty unsuccessful. It should have been six episodes, maybe eight. They spun their wheels too often and introduced plot elements for season 2 or a spin-off which just detracted from this show, which isn't even standing on stable ground yet. They're acting like this is an established, successful series when it's not. They didn't even bother to sell us on this show's story, like Daredevil did.

We were given the sense pretty early on that Luke was pretty unbreakable. He took a power saw to his stomach without a scratch, so I really didn't worry about him at all when he was blown up or shot. They kept playing drama around his peril, but I never felt it. And on top of us seeing him as indestructible already, we knew going into this that he was getting his own show. They treated the audience as though we were completely ignorant of the big plan, and they don't get to do that.

Inconsistent powers annoy me. I remember Jessica taking some big falls without landing on her feet, but maybe I'm just remembering it wrong. Either way, I didn't like how they played her powers.
I didn't feel the same way about the flashback Jessica. I thought that she was pretty even. Brooding over the death of her family. Brooding over her life after that. Brooding about not wanting to be a spandex-wearing superhero. It was all just variations on that theme. Trish came across as much more layered character.

I get what you're saying about Jessica having to live for herself, but it wasn't a well delivered theme if that's what they were going for.

Just want to put TF's post somewhere suited for us to keep talking about it!

I can see Tony being pissed, if they choose to go the route of Bucky killing his parents. Would the Disney-run movies want to do that though, or will they want Bucky's hands clean enough to remain a part of their universe without this hanging over him? I guess we will find out.

As for the registration stuff... It's going to be a hard sell, getting Tony of the movies to a place where he wants the government to take that much control. Regardless of that though, the idea of these two characters being at "war" with each other doesn't sit right with me. They bicker like little kids at each other, but it's mostly been played as light, fun banter. To suddenly have them at each other's throats... I don't know. Are we supposed to believe that either one of them would kill the other? Yet, if they're not willing to do that, how can they really be at "war" with each other? Maybe it will play out differently than I am imagining it in my head, but it just feels weird at this point in the game.

The reason why I said that it felt like a response to Batman v Superman to me was that Civil War wasn't announced until... was it October 2014? I don't think the Spider-Man deal was worked out until a few months later. Either way, it seems like they saw the excitement surrounding the Batman v Superman concept (announced over a year earlier) and they wanted a piece of that action. The plot itself (at least, what I've seen of it in the trailers) doesn't look like the next natural step for these characters or this plot. It looks like they wanted a big event... Even if it's not a direct attempt to copy Batman v Superman, it basically is just that. Two of their biggest heroes facing off against each other, and released within a couple of months of each other.

If it is fair for people to say that Justice League is DC trying to cash in on Marvel's success (an opinion that I disagree with), it is at least as fair to suggest that Civil War was Marvel's way of trying to steal DC's thunder with Batman v Superman. Batman and Superman on screen together is the biggest event in comic book movie history. I would say that it is bigger than the Justice League movie, even with fewer characters. Fans have wanted it for decades. I think that this fact was definitely on Marvel's mind when they looked at the schedule and realized that they couldn't release a run of the mill Captain America movie right after BvS came out.

Probably. But, just like with The Avengers and Man of Steel, we're going to be left with another big game of "who wore it better?" With MoS and The Avengers, it was the alien invasion storyline. Man of Steel played it serious, with heavy character notes and huge repercussions. The Avengers played it lighter, more fun, with less actual destruction but characters in following movies/shows talking as though it was on the same level as Metropolis... Basically taking unearned tragedy points.

If these movies come down to the same comparisons, Marvel will really have to step up their game. This will require rock solid character work, because you will either have a legitimate fight between two equally relatable good guys, or you will have the world's more expensive bickering match. Marvel likes to play lightness and fun, then claim the glory in the recap. They can't do that here.

That's probably why this feels like a response to BvS to me. It doesn't feel natural or earned. It feels like the cheap knockoff cereal at the store, with have the flavor of the brand name stuff. Not only do they have to justify the actions within this movie, they have to justify coming out with *this* movie, at *this* particular moment.

Yeah, Marvel could have had it planned all along. Or not. There's really no way to know. But all I can really speak to is my impression. When I see the trailer, I see the knockoff of the bigger movie that's coming out around the same time. If it was planned all along, that is just unfortunate for them.

The difference between the devastation in the two film universes, as I see it is... The Avengers actually made a joke of it. They were sitting in the ruins, as a family was trying to put their lives back together, and they joked about it. While shows like Daredevil or Jessica Jones try to play up the horror of that event, it wasn't in the original story at all. It was a joke. Anyone who died (if anyone did) didn't matter. Any building that fell didn't matter.

Man of Steel didn't focus on the devastation at the end. Instead, they opted to go for the more hopeful ending. It makes sense from the perspective of the story actually being about Clark's struggle to choose humanity over his kryptonian side. So it fit with the theme of the movie. But they didn't make a joke of what happened. They aren't going to ignore it going forward, and only bring it up when they want drama points. BvS is a direct follow-up to what happened in MoS. They're not just moving on to the next big story, they're telling the same story.
You and I tend to see Man of Steel very differently. I can totally understand you perspective on it and how you could view that final scene as a way to shrug off what happened. I just don't see it that way. I see it as the inevitable end to a story of destruction. Those who survive move forward. I didn't get the sense that this was the next day, or even the next week. I don't think they shrugged it off or joked about it, the way they did in The Avengers. I just don't know that there was any good way to end the movie at that point, if they decided to go back to the destruction rather than the return to (or the progress toward) life.

We will probably never agree on this. But look at the bright side... neither one of us is arguing about the fact that Superman had to kill Zod! That makes our discussion far more interesting than most of the MoS disagreements out there.

I liked Agent Carter.  But I still say Agents of Shield is fun.  In the same way that the MCU movies are fun.  It isn't deep, and their characters are a mess.   But if you just watch for action and movie references, it's still fun to watch.

I'm looking forward to the return of Daredevil, though.

They will. He is a selling point, so there will be something Spider-Man related, I'm sure. They didn't negotiate their butts off just to not use him to draw a crowd.

Well he made an appearance.  And I think his costume looks....bad.  Like 1970s TV show bad.  I do think the rest of the movie looks good.  My only problem is that I don't like that it's a "Captain America" movie - I think that skews the perspective and makes Cap right and Tony wrong.  And maybe that's right, but I think it should be more ambiguous than that. 

If it were me, I would've just made it Civil War unless it's truly a contract thing and Chris Evans has to star in 3 "Captain America" movies.

I also wonder, contractually, what's going to happen with Evans and Downey.  I don't remember if RDJ signed an extra deal for this movie, but they all signed 6-picture deals originally.  This would be Downey's 6th.  Evans would have one more.  And I have no idea how Infinity War being split into two movies affects any of that.  So does Civil War end the same way the comic ends?  Does it get flipped?

Thanks for the contract link.  Interesting.  I know there's been talk of half of Infinity War having Phase One heroes and half of it having Phase Two-Three heroes.  That it's a "passing the torch" movie of sorts.  It should be interesting.

Well, I still don't think so.  Is Suicide Squad is an attempt to capitalize on the market established by Guardians of the Galaxy?   Is the R-rated BvS on Blu-Ray is a response to Deadpool?

Civil War was one of Marvel's most popular stories, and it was finished before Iron Man even came out.  Since the MCU has rights to the main characters from that story, and since they've had a generally antagonistic (if still-friendly) relationship in the movies, I think it was bound to happen.  The two almost come to blows as soon as they meet up in the first Avengers movie, they bicker the entire movie in Age of Ultron, and there's (apparently, I haven't done the research myself) a ton of easter eggs chronicling the idea that Bucky killed Tony's parents (in movies that are already released). 

So I think it's clear the plan was to try and do Civil War at some point.  Now were all the I's dotted and the T's crossed?  I don't think so.  I think the plan was for Downey to do 3 Iron Man movies and 3 Avengers movies, and that was pretty much the common contract for the three key Avengers (not sure if Norton had that contract or not).  Now whether or not they knew Downey would get all three Iron Man movies in before the others got a sequel film is debatable.  Whether or not they knew Avengers 2 would be Ultron and 3 would be Thanos is debatable.  And whether or not they knew they'd do Civil War as a Captain America movie is debatable (I still think it's the wrong move, I would've done it as an actual Avengers movie).  But I absolutely think Civil War was in the plans.

Now did they see BvS and alter their plans?  Possibly.  But if so, I think it speaks to the strength of what the MCU has established.  By having one man in charge who is a step back from the people working on the films, they can react if they have to.  If they did make Civil War in response to BvS, they succeeded in making a movie with *huge* hype that is standing toe-to-toe with what should be the biggest comic book movie of all time.  Imagine 10 years ago thinking that a Captain America vs Iron Man film would be on equal footing with a Batman vs Superman movie.  It's ludicrous.  But that's what the MCU has established.

The problem with the way the DCCU works is who's in charge.  It's Zach Snyder by himself, right?  But what if BvS does bomb?  Or what if the direction is actually a problem?  That's why the Hitfix stuff had legitimacy - if Snyder is a problem, Justice League would *have* to be delayed because Snyder is so important to every part of that film.  When Joss struggled with Age of Ultron, Feige was able to make corrections and get everything transferred to another director/directors, and the ship moves on without a hitch.  If Snyder failed, or god forbid, couldn't direct Justice League due to something unforeseen, what would the DCCU do?  Hire whoever is directing Suicide Squad?  Whoever is directing Wonder Woman?  Would Ben Affleck have to do it, and would he want to?  Would that person be on the same page creatively?   Or would there simply have to be a delay for everyone to get on the same page?

The idea that CIVIL WAR is a response to BATMAN VERSUS SUPERMAN strikes me as an error of assuming correlation and causation. The plan was always to do a CIVIL WAR movie, this has been in the works for years. What shifted was that when Robert Downey Jr. was negotiating a new contract, he expressed an interest in seeing a planned cameo in CIVIL WAR expanded to a full role (with his full salary, of course). Marvel executives Kevin Feige and Isaac Perlmutter started their own civil war over this; Feige thought it'd be a great idea to have Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in a CAPTAIN AMERICA movie, Perlmutter declared that Downey Jr. was simply trying to get more money and demanded that Downey Jr.'s cameo role be removed entirely, never mind giving him a full role.

Feige was furious and said that Perlmutter was sabotaging the franchise and pointed to numerous production problems during AGE OF ULTRON for which he blamed Perlmutter. The result: Disney reorganized so that Perlmutter was demoted to handling only the TV and Netflix side of Marvel while Feige was promoted to leading the film division entirely.

There was always going to be a CIVIL WAR movie; there was, however, not a lot of hope of making it a CAP VS. IRON MAN movie due to Downey Jr.'s contract expiring and the expectation that he'd do at most a cameo.

Internally -- Marvel regards DC as a joke. They don't take them seriously, pointing to Warner Bros. overbudgeted, overblown productions and their inability to market their characters effectively or meaningfully both in their comics and their films. Marvel thinks DC's movies and comics are laughable, although they do respect the DC television and animation division.

The idea that Marvel is copying DC strikes me as putting conclusion before evidence; Marvel, whether they're right or wrong, don't really like DC's stuff. DC is trying to do Serious Cinema; Marvel's doing COMMUNITY with superpowers.

I don't have time to dig up all the articles right now. I will confess that my perspective is that of an outsider reading between the lines, but there is sufficient evidence in favour of my take. CIVIL WAR has been in the works since the first AVENGERS, confirmed by Whedon. http://io9.gizmodo.com/5595293/will-jos … -asked-him

The original plan was for Downey Jr.'s appearance in CIVIL WAR to be filmed in three weeks as a small, supporting role, maybe a cameo -- although, when plans for CIVIL WAR were being made, Downey Jr.'s contract was still unknown. http://variety.com/2014/film/news/rober … 201312229/ Marvel didn't think they could get Downey Jr. to do more than that.

Even after BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN was announced, this was the plan. Then, in negotiating for a new contract, Downey Jr. campaigned for an equal role with Evans in CAP3. Marvel executive Isaac Perlmutter ordered Downey Jr.'s supporting role in CAP3 be scrapped entirely -- even after BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN had been announced the previous year. Downey Jr. was basically fired.

This prompted an internal war inside Marvel between Kevin Feige and Isaac Perlmutter, Feige declaring that Downey Jr. in a main role was worth the extra money and too important to Marvel to alienate -- and he personally asked Downey Jr. for patience while Perlmutter was dealt with. Perlmutter said that hiring Downey Jr. was too expensive for a CAP movie and that it was a waste of money because it wasn't an IRON MAN movie or an AVENGERS movie.

Disney decided to remove Perlmutter from Marvel's film division for this. He had a lengthy record of unpleasant behaviour, but being vindictive towards Marvel's leading man was the last straw. Perlmutter was also blamed, fairly or unfairly, for AGE OF ULTRON going overbudget resulting in less profit, with the claims that his obstruction slowed down production and necessitated reshoots (although Perlmutter's camp claims that had Perlmutter been obeyed, reshoots would have been avoided). Downey Jr. was given the contract he wanted and the role in CAP3 that he wanted. Do a search for Perlmutter & Feige and you'll find all this.

I can't say which side is right or wrong. Perlmutter could be right that CIVIL WAR's earnings will never make it worth the budget $170 million. But I feel comfortable in saying none of these issues have anything to do with BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN.

My theory, based on the original plan of a three-week shoot for Downey Jr.: Cap would have fought Iron Man in any version of CIVIL WAR. Likely, the original use of Downey Jr. would have been much like how Spider-Man scenes were being filmed before the actor had even been cast -- a stuntman and a computer-generated version of the costumed character. Iron Man would probably fight Captain America, but Downey's performance would be via insert shots and voice performance and he'd be a special guest star.

At one point, Downey Jr. was fired, but I doubt any production work was ever made on a Downeyless version of CIVIL WAR. Feige kept talks going with Downey Jr., Perlmutter was removed and Downey Jr. was rehired.

In terms of Marvel's dismissive attitude towards DC: this has been documented overtly in the pre-film years when Joe Quesada and Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar (all who moved into Marvel film consultancy roles, although Millar's now with FOX) spoke derisively of DC's inability to market their characters successfully -- SUPERMAN RETURNS, the failure to do successful SMALLVILLE comics. Quesada made a serious effort to license the SMALLVILLE comic, saying he'd do a better job than DC and compared the poor sales of Superman comics to a well-endowed porn star with erectile dysfunction. Downey Jr. infamously called THE DARK KNIGHT a pretentious waste of time. Quesada remarked that MAN OF STEEL's Superman seemed just as destructive as the villains. Mark Millar called a JUSTICE LEAGUE movie a great way to throw away $200 million.

Millar and Quesada expressed reverence for the DC animated shows, though.

Internally, Perlmutter, during his time at Marvel's film division, took a very different approach to handling Warner Bros. type blockbusters: Marvel has firm shooting schedules, minimal star perks and salaries, no costly press junkets with lavish food -- completely unlike major studios where films go into production with unfinished scripts, unprepared location filming, hiring actors that are cut from the film, costly reshoots.

There's also the fact that MAN OF STEEL was seen as a bit of a failure -- it made money, but not enough to justify its $225 budget, something Marvel undoubtedly noted. As a result, Superman isn't getting a solo-sequel; every planned MAN OF STEEL follow-up has Batman or the Justice League. In contrast, CAP3 has Downey Jr. and Evans because Feige thought it would be great to have a movie devoted to their friendship instead of just a fight scene -- but they would have made the movie whether Downey Jr. wanted to be in it or not. Meanwhile, MAN OF STEEL's direct sequel has been put on indefinite hiatus.

This has nothing to do with quality, of course, and more to do with how a SUPERMAN movie is much more expensive than a CAPTAIN AMERICA movie, but it does indicate that Marvel would not benefit from copying DC's playbook -- and they don't care to. They don't want to do high-priced superhero blockbusters; they want to use TV-level resourcefulness with a bigger budget, hence their finding TV directors like Whedon, the Russo brothers and Alan Taylor and finding directors who will work on that level.

I cannot find a shred of evidence to indicate Iron Man was added to CIVIL WAR (a comic story in which Iron Man fought Captain America to begin with) in order to compete with BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN.