Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Will Marvel's former chairman, the man who nearly drove Kevin Feige to DC, regain control of Marvel and Disney?
https://www.comicsbeat.com/report-ike-p … ney-board/

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Ike Perlmutter has failed in his bid to regain control of Marvel and failed in his second attempt to fire Kevin Feige.
https://deadline.com/2023/02/bob-iger-s … 235254540/

However, Disney plans to lay off 7,000 employees which is pretty terrible.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Well, that's a good thing.  Perlmutter, besides being an ass, also is bad at content.  I think Feige has made some missteps recently, but there's no doubt he's better in every way from a fan perspective.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

What have you disliked from Feige?

I have a lot of respect for Ike Perlmutter up to a point. Perlmutter hired Joe Quesada, a terrific storyteller, to become editor in chief of Marvel Comics, and Quesada turned Marvel Comics from a bankruptcy to being a desperately sought after haven of properties for TV and movies.

Perlmutter established a solid financial foundation for Marvel Studios to produce its own movies rather than selling the rights to FOX, Sony, Universal and whatever direct to video junkyard outfit produced those Captain America TV movies. Perlmutter hired Kevin Feige to run the film division.

Perlmutter is the reason why the MCU exists. Without him, Iron Man would still be a D-list character in some comic books that only Temporal Flux and I would read.

However, Perlmutter's contempt for content and insistence that a highly successful movie studio run itself like a student film operation was ridiculous, and Perlmutter trying to fire Robert Downey Jr. for offering to do more work on CIVIL WAR was absurd. Perlmutter's INHUMANS was a national embarrassment, Perlmutter's sexism and homophobia are shameful, and Perlmutter was rightly removed after AGE OF ULTRON.

It leads to me wondering why someone so disdainful towards artists and creativity hired Quesada to run the comics, hired Feige to run the movies and signed off on Robert Downey Jr. to do IRON MAN.

I think that when hired, Quesada was a middle-of-the-road editor, Feige was a middle management producer, and Downey Jr. was a disgraced actor who would probably work for scale. Perlmutter didn't care that he was hiring comic book fans; he saw that they would work really hard for relatively low pay.

Then Feige and Downey Jr. wanted to expanded on their successes and Perlmutter's controlling nature couldn't stand it. Disney executives, while as soulless as Perlmutter, thought it ridiculous that Perlmutter was trying to fire Feige and Downey Jr. when they, not Perlmutter, were the ones bringing in the box office.

Quesada is curious: he was clearly grateful to Perlmutter and when promoted out of comics to act as a creative consultant on the films, he followed Perlmutter's orders. Quesada once remarked that he was hired by someone with whom he had little in common and that it was an example to him of how people need to build bridges to accomplish anything.

When Disney sidelined Perlmutter, Disney also isolated Quesada from the film division. Quesada continued to offer consultation to the TV division, but in 2019, Feige was appointed the head of the TV branch as well as movies.

It looks like Quesada could have stayed on as a consultant or even taken a demotion to comics, but he elected to leave Marvel last year. I'm a big fan of Quesada, but a lot of Marvel comic book readers aren't, perhaps not recalling how badly Marvel Comics was run before Quesada turned the company from a nearly bankrupt operation into a shining gem of intellectual properties.

Anyway. Perlmutter absolutely had to go and I personally haven't disliked anything Kevin Feige's done since Perlmutter's era ended. Certainly, there are films that haven't been to my taste. CAPTAIN MARVEL should have been better than it was, but not every film can be a masterpiece. THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER's political commentary was so spineless as to be meaningless, but any TV show aiming not to offend can stumble into blandness.

MOON KNIGHT felt really detached from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it was a well-intentioned stab at telling its own story. WANDAVISION was brilliant and hilarious,

DR. STRANGE II was enjoyable, all the Feige SPIDER-MAN films have been a delight. Feige fought hard to get a BLACK WIDOW movie made and that was a great ride. Feige also let Taika Waititi go nuts with THOR RAGNAROK and LOVE AND THUNDER and gave us James Gunn unleashed with the joyfully ridiculous GUARDIANS films.

I think it's likely that any other Marvel creative chief could make just as many mistakes as Feige (or Quesada), but other executives might make them while having no real respect or appreciation for the source material and the characters.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Okay, I have a complaint about Feige.

I don't understand why Disney+ is reviving the Netflix DAREDEVIL series but not hiring Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page) and Elden Hensen (Foggy).

Doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, they've hired Vincent D'Onofrio to play the Kingpin, so why aren't Karen and Foggy in the show?

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

ireactions wrote:

What have you disliked from Feige?

I wrote a long rambling thing about Feige, but I ended up arguing against my own point.  I think my main point was that he's oversaturated the MCU market so it doesn't feel so much like an event.  It doesn't feel special as much anymore.  I was going to say that the D+ shows needed to serve the greater MCU more, but I think that they have.  I think where oversaturation has hurt the MCU, other than a loss of "specialness" is a decrease in CGI quality because Marvel is making a dozen projects a year instead of two.

But I prefaced my whole thing with talking about how much I like Feige and how much I respect what he's done.  So let's just leave it at that.  The argument I was going to make was either going to be forced or cliche - I think Feige is doing a great job.

*******

I watched Black Panther.  I thought it was really well done for what they had to do.  I won't get into spoilers, but while I thought it felt long (because it's very long), I thought it handled T'Challa's death with the weight it deserved.  It made me realize (again) what a big hole was left when Chadwick died.

Happy to speak more to it when more people have seen it.

*******

I'm going to try and see Quantumania before it hits Disney Plus, something I failed to do the last two movies.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Hoping to catch up on the MCU with BLACK PANTHER II this weekend. However, I just read: the Disney+ DAREDEVIL series will feature Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk, Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle -- but Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson have not been hired to return as Karen Page and Foggy Nelson and have not been approached at all.

I'm not one of those people who declares that a project is worthless just because it doesn't meet my criteria. I will say, however, that to me, DAREDEVIL is Matt, Karen and Foggy the way SLIDERS is Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. I'm not sure I understand why Marvel Studios is bringing back Daredevil and the Kingpin and the Punisher but not Karen and Foggy; it seems hurtful and insulting.

I will concede that there have been more Daredevil comics without Karen Page than with her; I also concede that Foggy, while a vital supporting cast character in the comics, could possibly be any civilian friend in a TV adaptation. But it's a huge disappointment to me that Karen and Foggy aren't in a DAREDEVIL TV show featuring Charlie Cox as Daredevil. It feels very counter-intuitive to me, especially when both Woll and Henson have expressed a burning desire to play those roles again.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I know that titles, especially in the MCU, don't necessarily mean that they're borrowing from similarly-named comics....but wasn't Karen crucial to the Born Again storyline?  Or am I thinking of something else?

At the same time, maybe the storyline is that Matt gets exposed as Daredevil and has to go on the run.  Maybe it doesn't take place in New York.  I think there are some reasonable explanations for them not to be involved story-wise.

Of course, there are very easy narrative ways to include those characters.  Maybe Kingpin strikes while the three of them are on an apple-picking excursion in upstate New York, and now they're on the run together.  It is disappointing.  I thought the three of them were very good together.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Everything disney does is designed to move merchandise, so they need to show characters whose merch will sell. Profit leads to movie sequels and 2nd seasons of shows.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

I know that titles, especially in the MCU, don't necessarily mean that they're borrowing from similarly-named comics....but wasn't Karen crucial to the Born Again storyline?  Or am I thinking of something else?

DAREDEVIL's third season was largely an adaptation of "Born Again"'s plot elements, albeit repurposed to being set after DEFENDERS and rewritten to suit the Netflix version of Karen Page. As of the third season, DAREDEVIL had used pretty much every usable aspect of the "Born Again" storyline and the unused aspects of that storyline wouldn't be applicable to the post-Season 3 versions of the characters.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

There is a rumour about why DAREDEVIL on Disney+ will not feature Foggy and Karen: it takes place between INFINITY WAR and ENDGAME when Thanos had disappeared 50 percent of all life in the universe. This rumour was based on a location shoot with a church sign dated 2020, but fans and journalists later noted that this church sign was actually a real sign at a real church that had in real life not been updated.

However, I have to say: DAREDEVIL on Disney+ being set during the Blip would be a story worth telling and it would make sense if Foggy and Karen weren't in the show if this were the timeframe.

If 50 percent of the human race were erased, it's impossible that no one in Matt's social circle was affected. From a dramatic standpoint, the most story possibilities fall with the direction where Matt is the one to survive and now he has to live in a world without Foggy, without Karen, and one where Wilson Fisk could stroll out of jail and begin rebuilding his life as the Kingpin.

I hope this rumour is true because it's the first thing I've heard that would make me accept and embrace a DAREDEVIL without Karen and Foggy.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I watched both Ant-Man and Guardians Vol. 3.  I'll get into some quick spoilers so I'll set up spoiler tags:

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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

I thought this movie was...fine?  I thought the Quantum Realm was a bit confusing.  When we first see it, Janet is living by herself in some kind of cave?  Then Kang comes and they work together for a long time.  Then Kang gets his powers back and she gets rid of his power core...then we flash forward to the present.  I know she worked with Bill Murray in some sort of resistance before she was rescued.

But....were there people before Kang got there?  Did Janet not know there were other people and lived by herself because she didn't know any other way?  If so, did she bring the weapons she had (were they Wasp weapons?)

Or was Janet some kind of exile/recluse?

I know this type of story happens all the time where we get dropped into this fantasy universe and we meet all these societies and learn about their conflicts.  But this felt really confusing because I don't understand either side.  Some of the resistance people are basically humans and some are jelly monsters.  Are they both native to the Quantum Realm?  Are some of the humans other people who developed their own Pym particles?  Are Kang's people different?  Or were they created/cloned?

Also what a waste of William Jackson Harper!

I also am struggling to get Kang.  We have spent way more time with Kang than we did with Thanos, but I'm struggling to understand what makes Kang scary.  He's got powerful tech, but I would think the scariest thing about Kang is how much future information he knows.  But is his future info limited?  Because he was surprised a number of times.

But I thought he was good, and the movie wasn't boring.  I just thought it was fine.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3

I recently found out that James Gunn didn't like some of the character beats in the Avengers movies.  He thought Quill wasn't dumb enough to punch Thanos and risk half the universe (I think that's the weakest moment of Infinity War).  I know that he didn't love Thor being with the Guardians.  I don't know if he was a fan of the alternate Gamora.

So I feel like the story felt hamstrung by some of those ideas.

But I thought it had a lot of heart.  I felt like they probably could've left out Adam Warlock, who I felt wasn't developed much.  I thought the breakup at the end of the movie felt unnatural, but I'm interested to see what (if anything) they do with these characters going forward.  But the Rocket stuff was great, and I found myself to be emotionally invested quite a bit.  Every one of the characters had a nice moment.  I think James Gunn is great, and I'm very excited to see what he does with DC.

I'm shocked none of the Guardians died.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I also finally caught up on BLACK PANTHER II, ANT MAN III and now I just have GUARDIANS III left and then I can talk about them! I've just been busy.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Secret Invasion...

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I'm not one to buy into the idea that Marvel has jumped the shark, but something is wrong.  I don't know if they spread themselves too thin or they lost the ball or what, but their storytelling has gotten so much weaker. 

And I think Secret Invasion is a good microcosm of this.  I think Secret Invasion could've been a huge movie - essentially the spiritual sequel to Civil War.  The Avengers reunite to take on some big bad (not Kang).  With no Cap or Iron Man, the team is powerful but struggles, and one member of the team (Rhodey?) is killed.  They finish the job and rush to Rhodey and...he's a Skrull. 

So now you have Carol Danvers and Dr. Strange and Peter Parker and whoever else trying to figure out who else is a Skrull and what the heck is happening.  You have Sam Wilson trying to argue that he's the leader....is he doing that because he's a Skrull or because he thinks Captain America should have more respect?  You have all these new heroes - Shang-Chi and Shuri and maybe Kamala or Kate Bishop or the Eternals - who are they and where did they come from and are they Skrulls?  No one knows who to trust and everyone starts fighting and maybe by the end there are no more Avengers in any form.

Instead of being a huge $300 million+ budget movie, they made it a show.  Which I think is fine.  With the Super Skrull, there's an argument in-universe for why the Avengers cannot show up.  So you make it mostly unpowered humans Skrulls.  That's fine.  You save a ton of money on cast and effects and make it a modern spy thriller.

Here's the problem: they did nothing.  The show goes nowhere and does nothing.  People accuse Marvel of moving pieces around to get to the next movie, but I don't think this even does that.  It's just nothing.

- The whole premise is that Fury promised the Skrulls that they'd find him a home if they helped him.  The Skrulls held up their end of the bargain and Fury didn't.  And that thread goes....nowhere.  Fury never talks about why he didn't find them a planet or what he tried or where he failed.  And, again, this is something the show worked really hard to set up.  Episode 2 is called "The Promise." So this isn't something that they set up in the background and never followed through on (like how everyone assumed the scientist friend in Wandavision was going to be Reed Richards and the writers never meant for it to be an Easter Egg).  Fury never has to struggle with why he failed or even explain himself (the only time "he" even talks about it, he's being impersonated).  It's bizarre.  It's Chekov's gun except the gun is shown picture-in-picture consistently for the entire movie but is never used.

- Rhodey is a Skrull.  So what?  When?  No one ever asks him or confronts him.  Has he been a Skrull since Civil War (human Rhodey seemed to be paralyzed so that's as far back as it can go).  Did a Skrull fight Thanos?  If not, was he a Skrull during Falcon and the Winter Soldier?  If not, when was he a Skrull?  If he was only a Skrull in this appearance, who cares?  Same with Ross.  Was he a Skrull in Black Panther 2?  If not, who cares?  Rhodey being a Skrull only matters if he was a Skrull when we didn't know he was a Skrull.  If they showed Rhodey during the time period of Infinity War being a Skrull, that's interesting.  If he was only a Skrull now, the reveal is narratively pointless.

- What was Fury doing out in deep space?  It's been referenced a couple different times.  What was he doing?  Was it unrelated to finding the Skrulls a home?  There was plenty of time for him to talk about it, and he never does.  Is that going to be saved for a line in the Marvels?  If so, why wait for that?

- The Super Skrull.  It's a cool idea, but it shatters the whole point of not bringing in the Avengers.  If we were going to end up here, Fury should've called in the Avengers immediately.  And at the very least, Maria Hill was alive.  Now there's a huge threat out there.  That and the human-Skrull war that the president launched.  This feels like the Celestial from the end of Eternals - is this going to be a fairly big deal that no one ever talks about again?  How can Ga'ia exist in her current form.  She's a one-woman Avengers who should be a part of every team going forward.  Or she's a threat.  I dont' know how she can be in the background when she's literally the most powerful character in the universe now.

- Thematically, it's all over the place.  The main theme is supposed to be how immigrants/refugees should respond to a system that doesn't love them.  Do you work as hard as you can to make people love you (Talos' method) or do you fight for a place of your own (Gravik's)?  The answer is....nothing?  Talos died saving the president's life, and the president turned around and declared war on his people.  Ga'ia is forced to face this question and never comes to any sort of real conclusion.  It's another Chekov's gun that never leaves a drawer.

I wanted to like this show.  I loved the idea of telling smaller stories on Disney Plus to fill in gaps or introduce new characters.  But most of these shows are mediocre or don't go anywhere.  And it seemed like, at least at some point, these shows had a point.  Wandavision was great and led right into Multiverse of Madness.  You could get the backstory if you wanted, but the movie fills in enough gaps if you missed the show.  Falcon and the Winter Soldier leads directly into Captain America 4.  Loki into the Kang stuff.  Ms Marvel into the Marvels.  We get some character stuff so that we can get into the good stuff for the movies.

But if we're going to get stuff like this, I'm less interested.  And if stuff like this is also going to make the movies worse (Thor 4, Quantumania, etc) then what are we even doing?

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I cannot believe a) the sheer amount of money they have dumped into MCU Disney+, and b) how outright boring they are.  Secret Invasion was horrible.  Emilia Clarke should be ashamed for taking that role.  Moon Knight, awful.  Hawkeye, Falcon, She-Hulk all so dull.  Loki was pretty cool and funny, and Ms. Marvel was fun.  But I find it hilarious that LucasFilm are panned for the money they spend on bad Star Wars or a fifth Indiana Jones, but these MCU entries are terrible. 

Ant-Man 3 was really pointless, what a shame.  Blackpanther II as well.  They just serve no purpose.  I mean, who cares about the B, C, D teams at this point?

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

What really bakes your noodle is when you realize that the 6 episode Secret Invasion had a 212 million dollar budget.

To compare, Captain America: The Winter Soldier had a budget of 170 million.  I know there are more hours of content and inflation over ten years, but do the two even remotely compare in effects, locations and star power?

These Hollywood studios are making crazy decisions, and I think it’s all part of some grift and con game.  Given how frequently it’s happening now, there has to be some significant profit in failing so obviously and publically.  If it’s tax write offs, Congress needs to close the gaping loop holes.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Well what is a budget?  Seriously, is there some standard to them?  How do we know it's not enormous simply due to accounting practices?  Anyway, I think the issue partly is COVID, and the higher costs of filming, but also, the crews on these series are massive.  These are not the indie-style crews that Netflix used for their Marvel properties, shot entirely in New York City.  They are gargantuan, and there is a huge reliance on expensive stunts and CGI work, just like the movies.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I am only three episodes into SECRET INVASION, a show so boring and uneventful and devoid of interest that I'm vacuuming while it plays (with headphones). But I can tell you exactly what's wrong with SECRET INVASION and it's totally obvious what's wrong with it: the SECRET INVASION storyline is a first season of a TV show that has no business being the first season of a TV show.

SECRET INVASION is about shapeshifters impersonating humans. This means that SECRET INVASION requires that the audience be highly familiar with the characters so that the potential that some or any or all of them are impersonators is compelling and disturbing; we need to know their behaviours and speech patterns and mannerisms and screen presences to look for discrepancies in the actors' performances.

On AGENTS OF SHIELD, we had spent over three seasons with the characters before we entered the LMD arc where we didn't know which team members had been captured and replaced with killer robots, so it was unnerving and frightening. On SECRET INVASION, our characters are people we barely know, so the potential that they are impersonators is hardly concerning.

Who is Nick Fury? Who knows? Fury was a limited presence at his height, more an informant making guest appearances and cameos than a main character. We don't know him well enough to tell if he might be an impostor or not. Who is Talos? Who can say? We've known him for one full appearance in CAPTAIN MARVEL and a cameo in FAR FROM HOME and since he was a shapeshifter from the start, we have no baseline for the character. SECRET INVASION is not the right story to tell without a well-established cast that has made regular, consistent appearances. SECRET INVASION would have been a great eighth season of AGENTS OF SHIELD. Instead, it's Season 1 (and probably the only season) of a Nick Fury show.

If a show about shapeshifting aliens can't use impersonation as a plot device for suspense and terror, then there's no point doing it. There is no point to doing SECRET INVASION. I would say the same about the original comic, too, where nobody that important ever turned out to be a Skrull.

The show has plenty of other problems too. It's very obvious that multiple showrunners have passed through this project because the series is clearly a clumsy mismash of different writers' mismatched drafts. The most obvious problem is the lack of exposition: where has Fury been since AGE OF ULTRON? Why didn't he find the Skrulls a home as promised? I can tell from the fumbled plots that don't explain these raised questions: the showrunner was fired in mid-scripting and didn't complete his work; the incoming writer had to whip up more pages slapdash based on actor availability and location bookings and wasn't able to work out the story.

It's interesting: when AGENTS OF SHIELD first aired, there was a certain air of impostor syndrome to it. It claimed to be a SHIELD show set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it only had a brief cameo from a supporting SHIELD character from AVENGERS (Maria Hill) and none of the superheroes appeared on camera. Later, it claimed to be set after THOR: DARK WORLD, but the TV budget sets and effects, when compared to the lavish production of a feature, made AGENTS feel like a fan film phony. Eventually, the tie-in to WINTER SOLDIER and a guest-appearance from Samuel L. Jackson closed the credibility gap.

In contrast, SECRET INVASION has Samuel L. Jackson in a lead role and SECRET INVASION feels like even more of a fan film phony than AGENTS OF SHIELD ever did, and it's not closing the credibility gap at all. Nick Fury in SECRET INVASION feels like a fake. The Fury we met in AVENGERS and got to know more in WINTER SOLDIER was a master spy. The Nick Fury in this show is an inept, incompetent spy. He runs about aimlessly in a public space and haplessly allows a terrorist to detonate explosives; he's facing shapeshifters but makes no plans for his comrades to easily identify him and gets his friend killed; his intelligence skills consist of demanding information from villains who have no reason to give it; he issues death threats to people who are perfectly willing to die.

Nick Fury should be written like Ethan Hunt in the latter-era MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies: a trickster, simultaneously an improvisor and a master-planner. Ethan Hunt is a well-written spy in the last three M:I movies because the actor and writer/director on those films were able to lavish time and creativity. Nick Fury demands the same level of attention, but SECRET INVASION is rushed hackwork due to some strange personnel changeovers behind the scenes.

SECRET INVASION does not seem to have had a consistent creative hand, so a lot of its choices are not fully mined or developed.

But even if SECRET INVASION had boasted a consistent creative team, SECRET INVASION as a series is just an exercise in self-sabotage. The concept demands a level of familiarity with the characters that would require at least one season to get to know them first. SECRET INVASION is unable to create any vivid sequences of impostorship because these characters are strangers or near-strangers. SECRET INVASION should have been a season of AGENTS OF SHIELD or a second season of FALCON & THE WINTER SOLDIER or a second season of MS. MARVEL or even a second season of WANDAVISION or LOKI. It should not have been the first season of anything.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Yeah, it was a mess.  Nando v Movies (maybe on his Nando Cut channel) has a great analysis of it once you're completely finished.  His biggest complaint is that, while the show is about shapeshifting aliens, the show barely uses that premise.  It's used a few times in the first episode, but outside of one instance where someone isn't who they say they are (and even then, the whole thing is fumbled), there's no intrigue to who anyone is.  Everyone is who they say they are.  It isn't a spy show - everything is basically out in the open the whole time.

As you said, they don't do the character stuff well.  They don't do spy/intrigue stuff well.  And by the time they get to the action, it's CGI nonsense with characters we don't care about.  And the show is dull enough that none of that is spoilers.

It was a big miss.  And the one takeaway from it will probably be brushed under the rug.

*********

Loki is back and it's still fun.  Ke Huy Quan needs to be in everything.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Secret Invasion was so bad, Bob Iger has to be dumbfounded.  The Marvels is going to follow right up along that path of trash.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Grizzlor wrote:

Secret Invasion was so bad, Bob Iger has to be dumbfounded.

Very likely. Iger wasn't involved in SECRET INVASION. It was filmed from September 2021 to September 2022 and Iger only returned to Disney in November 2022. It would have been unfamiliar to him regardless of its quality.

Grizzlor wrote:

The Marvels is going to follow right up along that path of trash.

I don't understand this comment as the SECRET INVASION creative teams (there were three separate teams working on SECRET INVASION) are not involved in THE MARVELS just as the WANDAVISION team was not involved with DR. STRANGE II.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

I'm not one to buy into the idea that Marvel has jumped the shark, but something is wrong.  I don't know if they spread themselves too thin or they lost the ball or what, but their storytelling has gotten so much weaker.

I think that Marvel Films and their TV division has a certain approach that works for a lot of projects but not every project. Their approach is that it's all about the brand name first and creative vision second. IRON MAN, THOR, CAPTAIN AMERICA and AVENGERS were attempts to built brands names out of AVENGERS and its subordinate properties. The vision? That was really up to the individual filmmaker so long as they met Kevin Feige and Ike Perlmutter's stipulations of a shared universe and teases to subsequent films. And this is absolutely fine because Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and Avengers are very versatile characters. Every one of us could come up with our own terrific version of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and the Avengers, and Feige was hyperenthusiastic about seeing the comic book source material interpreted and depicted in film.

This approach to brands coming first and storytelling coming second may seem crudely capitalistic, but Feige has a great sense of how to create cultural myth and to find creators who can interpret that myth into a marketable, general audience product. IRON MAN can be a post-war trauma character study or an action comedy. THOR can be Shakespeare in the Park (haha) or a goofy adventure movie. CAPTAIN AMERICA can be Indiana Jones style period action or a spy thriller. AVENGERS can be a sitcom or a LORD OF THE RINGS style epic. ANT-MAN can be a dramedy about a bad father trying to mend his ways.

The same approach was taken with TV under Feige: WANDAVISION as an homage to sitcoms, LOKI as a Douglas Adams style sci-fi adventure, MOON KNIGHT as a Christopher Nolan-esque identity crisis, SHE-HULK as Ally McBeal girl-power legal drama, or just doing horror with WEREWOLF BY KNIGHT. Kevin Feige loves Wanda, Vision, Loki, Moon Knight, Werewolf by Night, and She-Hulk, all of whom are all characters with a lot of vivid, meaningful elements that any creator can spin into something personal and dynamic.

Kevin Feige also loved SECRET INVASION the comic book (I guess) and saw it as a great title and a great property that he commissioned as a series. As a brand, SECRET INVASION is such an ominous, foreboding title, suggesting peril, thrill, danger and excitement.

Since SECRET INVASION went through three different showrunners for its six episodes, none of whom seemed to be able to wring a coherent adaptation from it, I think it's clear that Feige unfortunately chose a property that lacked vivid elements to interpret and adapt effectively for television.

The resources allotted to SECRET INVASION may have at first seemed lavish: Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn. $212 million in budget. They started development in September 2020 and started filming in September 2021. The fact that they went through three writing teams in 12 months demonstrates that SECRET INVASION proved to be very difficult to write. Due to the delays and creator turnover, SECRET INVASION began losing access to its actors which is why roles that you'd think would be leads seem isolated or limited or abruptly removed from the story. Scripting became less about telling a coherent story and more about getting pages to film with the actors before their contracts concluded for the project.

I think that Feige has a certain approach that, overall, has served him and Marvel well. But not every project is right for that approach, and SECRET INVASION was simply the wrong property to adapt.

Honestly, the original comic is not that great either. CIVIL WAR (written by Mark Millar) had established that any unregistered superhero was now a fugitive to be hunted down by Iron Man and the Mighty Avengers. The splinter led to a fugitive group, the New Avengers led by Luke Cage (with Spider-Man, Wolverine, Spider-Woman, Iron Fist, Dr. Strange and Hawkeye).

Writer Brian Michael Bendis was leading most of the AVENGERS titles. After CIVIL WAR, the New Avengers discover that Skrulls have been infiltrating Earth and impersonating any number of superheroes. They start to wonder if Iron Man's behaviour is because he is a Skrull; they start to wonder if the Registration Act was due to Skrull manipulations; they start to wonder who they can and can't trust. In SECRET INVASION, the Skrulls launch their invasion and reveal that various Skrulls include... well, it's mostly public figures like Stephen Colbert and such. On the superhero side... the Skrulls turn out to be impersonating Hank Pym (Giant Man), Spider-Woman... and a few other second-tier heroes.

Bendis could not have revealed the Skrulls to be anyone too important because, ultimately, Bendis was not writing the individual titles for Iron Man or Wolverine or Ms. Marvel or Spider-Man or Iron Fist or Daredevil -- he was just writing the Avengers' team books where characters from different editorial offices would appear together. Bendis would not have wanted or been allowed to interfere with the Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man, Daredevil, Iron Fist or Wolverine books by revealing anyone from those titles to be Skrulls.

His only options were characters who were exclusive to the Avengers titles -- so, second-tier superheroes who rarely if ever led a title of their own. Even as a comic book, SECRET INVASION promised a lot more than it could ever deliver. SECRET INVASION, at the halfway mark, degenerated into a superhero-vs-Skrull battle in New York City with the individual superhero titles showing their individual part of the battle while the central fights unfolded in the SECRET INVASION title.

SECRET INVASION devolved from a potentially complex story of impostors and impersonators, becoming a multi-issue fight scene, and it ended rather anti-climactically. It was not Brian Michael Bendis' finest hour. In future crossovers, he wisely didn't write plots that depended on having control over characters who were outside his influence.

I'm not sure why Kevin Feige felt so strongly about adapting SECRET INVASION. Maybe he just liked the title.

I don't think Kevin Feige has lost his way. I think he just lost his way on SECRET INVASION. I've enjoyed most of his output including MS. MARVEL and MOON KNIGHT and SHE-HULK was hilarious, especially where Feige allowed himself to be portrayed as a soulless, penny-pinching robot with a baseball cap. I think Feige is a human being, and human beings are not going to get things right every single time. I'm sure his next project will be good.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

So a ton has come out post writers strike about how Marvel does their productions (specifically TV).  It seems that they treated their TV shows like expanded movies.  No show bibles.  No showrunners.  Just (mostly movie) executives that were in charge of making sure the shows were good.  No pilots.  They'd greenlight an entire project, let it shoot, and work on fixing it with reshoots and post.

Now for a 2-hour movie, that works.  Let a creative make a movie and reshoot stuff that doesn't work.  You can cut out scenes that don't work, characters that don't work, plotlines that don't work.

For a 6-hour TV show, it's much harder.  Secret Invasion and Falcon and the Winter Soldier have obvious reshoots to remove/reshuffle plot lines, and it doesn't work.  There's too much to unwind and even with shifting episode lengths, it's way easier for it all to turn into a mess.

Example - the Daredevil show.  They greenlit it and the production shot at least 4-6 episodes.  When executives took a look at it, they were horrified that it wasn't the gritty, action-oriented show that they were expecting.  Matt doesn't even wear the Daredevil suit until episode 4.  It was more of a courtroom procedural than season 4 of Netflix show.  They're apparently throwing it all away and reshooting a ton (all?) of it.

But how does all that get done without the executives knowing?  Did no one read any scripts?  Is there no one monitoring what's being written or shot?  There's allowing creatives to make something they want to make, and there's sheer irresponsibility.

They're fixing this, but I'm worried they're going to overdo it.  They're going to start doing pilots, force writers to write show bibles, and focus on multi-season stories.  Which is fine in some cases.  That's basically TV 101.  But I think some of the allure of the Disney+ is that they can introduce characters like Kamala Khan and catch us up on 2-3 movies worth of character development and then let them show up.  Or to explain how Scarlet Witch is the villain of Dr. Strange 2.  Or to explain why Sam is Captain America without having to spend an entire movie on that.

Loki works as a multi-season show.  Wandavision worked as a one-off.  Werewolf by Night worked as a special movie event.  We don't need four seasons of Secret Invasion or Hawkeye.  We can do both.  I hope they realize that before they go too far the other way.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I think DAREDEVIL is another project like SECRET INVASION. Like the SECRET INVASION storyline, the Daredevil character was an intellectual property and brand that Feige wanted to see produced under his banner. He commissioned a series, accepted a pitch that was very different from the Netflix version... and it didn't turn out the way he was hoping. Because of the actors strike, he had the chance to press pause and rethink it.

It's easy to backseat drive and say that a DAREDEVIL show where Daredevil doesn't show up until Episode 4 is clearly mismanaged. But the truth is, you could say that about a lot of daring creative choices if taken out of context, such as how Daredevil didn't appear in costume on the Netflix show until the Season 1 finale and didn't appear in costume at all for all of Season 3.

Anyone could, without watching the SHE-HULK finale, declare that it's stupid and silly for She-Hulk to protest the climax being a superhero/supervillain fight and demand that the writers change it into something more low-key. Anyone could declare that it's ridiculous to show Daredevil in costume walking out of She-Hulk's home in the morning after having spent the night.

I would think that Feige probably thought the DAREDEVIL D+ series ideas were interesting, but when he saw them onscreen, they didn't live up to how they'd been described or how he'd imagined them, so he put the show on hold.

I would agree: the Disney+ era of Marvel TV shows have been produced like feature films and they've run into issues where it's a lot easier to address narrative issues on a 2.5 hour movie than on a 6 - 10 episode TV show. They're probably filming entire the season throughout their shooting schedule instead of one episode at a time. Two shows stand out to me as suffering for it.

THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER's villain is Karli, whose evil plan is... to provide refugees with food and shelter. Which makes Sam and Bucky the villains if they oppose providing refugees with food and shelter. The series ends up having Karli murder people for no good reason because it cannot otherwise justify Sam and Bucky hunting her down; furthermore, Sam and Bucky do nothing for the refugees.

This was an oversight from writing the whole series all at once and not stepping back to review it episode by episode. And had THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER been filmed like a more 'traditional' series, an episode could have been inserted to show Sam and Bucky doing something for the innocent people Karli was trying to help. This odd lapse, to me, made the show seem oddly tone deaf and witless and blind to its own narrative.

WANDAVISION also made an odd oversight: it never seems to decisively confront how Wanda is a villain for kidnapping an entire town of innocent people and treating them as playthings.

Yes, there are multiple scenes where SWORD faces Wanda and where Vision is furious with Wanda about this. But in the ninth episode finale, nearly all of Wanda's enemies are treated as villains: Agatha Harkness is a power hungry thief, the SWORD director Hayward leading the anti-Wanda taskforce tries to blow up the town and its people, whereas Wanda, still a kidnapper, is regarded as heroic for saving the town and grudgingly releasing everyone from the captivity she was keeping them in with no real regret or remorse or attempt at reparation.

This seems to be an error where there was no chance to address it, which made it both awkward and appropriate when DR. STRANGE II dismissed WANDAVISION trying to present Wanda as heroic and made her a flat-out villain. I think that WANDAVISION oversight happened from shooting all the episodes at the same time and reshoots being too difficult for such a large production; I think WANDAVISION should have made it perfectly clear that Wanda is a villain.

I was pretty happy with SHE-HULK and LOKI and MOON KNIGHT, but I think Marvel TV production can definitely run into problems with its approach. At the same time, lots of shows are shot in a more episodic fashion and are still tone deaf: note how THE X-FILES revival season took on an anti-vaxxer tone and implied that non-biological children are can never be loved by their parents.

I think that Marvel might consider the approach of Blumhouse, the horror production company. They did the HALLOWEEN deboot (not a typo). Their approach to lower budget filmmaking: they commission a script and then storyboard the script and assemble it into a cheap animatic with scale-salary voice actors performing all the dialogue. Then they determine, based on storyboarding, animatics and vocal performances, if this looks and sounds like a movie they want to greenlight. I think Feige might consider adopting something similar for his TV projects, even after greenlighting them, so that scripts can be adjusted in advance of filming them. This would allow him to address mishaps like Sam and Bucky having no concern for starving refugees or presenting a mind controlling kidnapper as the hero.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Loki:
Do you remember that time I was so angry with my father and my brother?

I went down to Earth and I held the whole of New York City hostage with an alien army, tried to use the Mind Stone on Tony Stark, it didn't work, I threw him off the building -- I mean, let me tell you something: that wasn't tactical.

I lost it. Sometimes, our emotions get the better of us.

This is hilarious as Loki takes another big step into sanity and being a viable long-term protagonist as opposed to a villain... but it's also a bit of a retcon (to me). My impression was that, in AVENGERS, Loki was under the influence of the Mind Stone and that it was taking all of his insecurities and frustrations and pushing him into a deranged state. At least that's what I remember. LOKI, not unreasonably, takes the view that Loki has to be responsible for his own actions to be responsible for his own growth.

Or maybe I remember wrong. I wasn't a very big fan of the AVENGERS movie despite everyone else loving it.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Is it just pride?  Would Loki rather say that he lost it emotionally (and it was in his control) than to admit that the mind stone got him?  Would a prideful person rather admit that he was in control than admit something controlled him?

I guess we don't know, right?  Did Thanos find Loki or did Loki seek out Thanos?  Has that gap ever been filled in?

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

My understanding is that in THOR, Loki is lost in space and presumably encounters Thanos who suggests an alliance and gives Loki the scepter with the Mind Stone. In AVENGERS, there seem to be a few scenes where Loki isn't entirely on board with the Mind Stone's influence, particularly where Thor points out the chaos that Loki has unleashed.

But I'm actually not sure LOKI the TV show forgets that. Noticeably, Loki is only a few days removed from AVENGERS in the LOKI series, but his characterization has shifted from 'cackling supervillain madman' to 'amoral scoundrel' very suddenly while flat-out admitting that he hurts people because he feels weak and putting a scare into someone makes him look stronger than he feels.

The second season of LOKI is, what, a week since AVENGERS? And Loki has gone from being a nutjob ranting about how everyone's a peasant to be ruled to consoling a police officer who lost his temper and suggesting some pie to calm down, and Loki is also no longer easily bated into violent tantrums.

That said, thinking about it, maybe Loki has never really been aware of how the Mind Stone affected him.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

The official Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline was published a few days ago. It only includes the movies and Disney+ shows. Not included are: AGENTS OF SHIELD, AGENT CARTER, INHUMANS, RUNAWAYS, CLOAK AND DAGGER, DAREDEVIL, JESSICA JONES, LUKE CAGE, IRON FIST, THE PUNISHER or DEFENDERS.

Noticeably, the AGENT CARTER show, despite being showrun by the CAPTAIN AMERICA: WINTER SOLDIER screenwriters, is dismissed in favour of the AGENT CARTER ONE SHOT short film (which the TV show initially contradicted and seemed to replace). The ONE SHOT covers the events of Peggy's post-WWII life instead of the TV show version.

Kevin Feige had a foreward where he says:

On the Multiverse note, we recognize that there are stories - movies and series - that are canonical to Marvel but were created by different storytellers during different periods of Marvel's history. The timeline presented in this book is specific to the MCU's Sacred Timeline through Phase 4. But, as we move forward and dive deeper into the Multiverse Saga, you never know when timelines may just crash or converge (hint, hint/ spoiler alert).

I think it's a shame, I understand some of why Feige has made this decision, but I'm also baffled by how his DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN choices seem contradictory.

In terms of how Feige personally feels about the Marvel TV shows: it's pretty clear from looking back that when they were first made, Feige was shut out of TV.

Ike Perlmutter ran Marvel Studios (film), Marvel Entertainment (TV and publishing and merchandise). Perlmutter wanted the Marvel brand name earning money in broadcast licensing and ad sales, so he commissioned AGENTS OF SHIELD and blocked Feige from any involvement, instead ceding that and Marvel TV development in general to Joss Whedon (who was also on the films) and Jeph Loeb.

This was offensive. Perlmutter had tasked Kevin Feige to be the architect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, yet given Feige no authority of the MCU TV shows. It's a bit like telling Kevin Feige that he is to design every room of a house except for the kitchen which Joss Whedon will build without any input from Feige.

Joss Whedon was to connect AGENTS OF SHIELD to the AVENGERS movies, but eventually, Whedon left both Marvel film and TV. Perlmutter's intereference on Feige's films made Feige ready to resign from Marvel. Disney removed Perlmutter from overseeing Feige and granted Feige full control of the film division.

But Perlmutter, being a major owner in Disney after it purchased Marvel, still retained control of TV, publishing and merchandise, and was still free to make TV shows that Feige couldn't have any influence over (but which Feige was not beholden to follow). Furthermore, Perlmutter was so incensed by Feige's new independence that collaboration was now impossible.

Feige's response/non-response was simply to block out TV entirely and act like it didn't exist. He had no control, so it was pointless to worry about it, and TV was always going to have to follow the films' lead anyway. At one point, a journalist asked Feige, in a phone interview, what he thought of the INHUMANS disaster and Feige jokingly pretended that the phone wasn't working.

There was a lot of great television that came out of the TV division, but I suspect AGENTS OF SHIELD, JESSICA JONES and LUKE CAGE didn't come from Perlmutter as much as they escaped from Perlmutter.

Some contradictions and peculiarities did arise between film and TV. AGENTS OF SHIELD established that a lot of unaware civilians were latent Inhumans who were starting to manifest powers; no Marvel film has ever acknowledged that a segment of the population is spontaneously developing superpowers.

AGENTS OF SHIELD introduced the Darkhold, a magic book which reappears in WANDAVISION but looks nothing like the version in AOS. However, DR. STRANGE II reveals that any Darkhold is "a copy" of the original spells, allowing multiple versions.

SHIELD returned to the forefront of the US government's counterintelligence branch in Season 4, but the movies never acknowledged this and SHIELD grudgingly went underground again in Season 5 and stayed so for its series finale in Season 7.

The major breaking point: AGENTS OF SHIELD synced up with AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR showing Thanos invading Earth, and Season 5 of AGENTS OF SHIELD ended just before Thanos erased 50 percent of all life in the universe. AVENGERS: ENDGAME showed the erasures reversed five years after INFINITY WAR... but Season 6 of AGENTS OF SHIELD made no reference to the Thanos erasures at all. The AOS writers explained that they had no idea what was happening in ENDGAME, mentioned a one year time gap between Season 5 - 6, but were short by four years. They asked the audience to 'pretend' Season 6 was set before INFINITY WAR even though Season 5 had been set contemporaneously with it.

However, the AOS writers accidentally created a suitable explanation: the Season 5 finale had featured the SHIELD agents landing their plane in Tahiti to bid Coulson farewell. ENDGAME had shown the erased people restored, in some cases without much memory of their erasure. The simplest explanation: the erasures and restorations happened after the team landed in Tahiti at which point they bid farewell to Coulson, took off in their plane, and only realized in mid-flight from news reports that they had ceased to exist for five years. Then they coped, adjusted, and resumed their usual business, and the "one year later" reference is set after this. This ties in perfectly well with how relatively normal the post-restoration world is in SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME.

But even so, AGENTS OF SHIELD's lack of direct tie-in and coordination with ENDGAME made it clear that AGENTS OF SHIELD was basically an unwanted media tie-in novel with all the importance of a forgettable STAR TREK novel.

The seventh season of SHIELD maintained that SHIELD was continuing as an underground organization with a robotic duplicate of Agent Coulson... but no Marvel film or TV show has referred to this version of SHIELD and Nick Fury doesn't call on them for help in SECRET INVASION (although Fury's overall behaviour in that series is baffling).

Perlmutter was eventually ousted from Marvel entirely. Feige was made head of film and TV and publishing and so came the Disney+ shows. Feige has never been publicly caustic or insulting about the TV shows, but he has specified that they were from Marvel Entertainment (Perlmutter) and not Marvel Studios (Feige).

Feige approved Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk (DAREDEVIL) returning to the MCU and then specified that if Daredevil ever appeared in a Marvel Studios production, Charlie Cox would play the role and Cox did indeed appear in SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME. There were no real inconsistencies that couldn't be bridged.

But then something odd happened. Something Slider_Quinn21 foresaw on February 13, 2019:

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Regarding DAREDEVIL: Yeah, you might end up in a Sliders situation where you get back Charlie Cox but most of his supporting characters are missing and story threads (like Bullseye) could get completely dropped.

This is where we seem to be with DAREDEVIL.

Feige approved a Disney+ DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN series, cast Charlie Cox as Daredevil and Vincent D'onofrio as Wilson Fisk -- but didn't rehire Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page or Elden Henson as Foggy Nelson. The character of Vanessa Fisk, played memorably by Ayelet Zurer, was recast with Sandrine Holt.

Fans theorized that Karen and Foggy would be omitted and written out, or that their absences indicated that Feige didn't consider the Netflix DAREDEVIL to be 'canon' but would reuse Cox and D'onofrio. Now Feige has said, in a somewhat diplomatic way, that he does not consider anything outside the MCU movies and Disney+ originating shows to be canon to the core MCU timeline, but those non-Feige shows are part of the Marvel multiverse.

Even so, Feige's attitude towards DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN makes no sense to me.

By rehiring Cox and D'onofrio, Feige was effectively establishing a link to the Netflix show and its stories and continuity, and the Karen Page and Foggy Nelson characters are a vital part of the ensemble around Cox. If the BORN AGAIN isn't meant to be in continuity with the Netflix show, then someone who isn't Charlie Cox should play Daredevil and someone who isn't Vincent D'onofrio should play the Wilson Fisk.

It's alienating for Cox and D'onofrio to be present but Woll and Hensen to be absent and very dismissive of the other actors who made Cox's incarnation of Daredevil so much more special than Cox alone.

The reality, however, is that production on BORN AGAIN has stopped: the showrunners have been fired, production is to start over, and no filming can happen until the actors' strike ends. There is currently no DAREDEVIL being filmed, which means it is completely up in the air whether or not BORN AGAIN will reflect the Netflix show or flat-out ignore it. New showrunners have been hired, the rumour is that the show was originally a comedy legal drama that will now be closer to the dark action of the Netflix show... but there's absolutely zero indication that Woll and Hensen will be included.

Feige has never outright dismissed the non-Feige shows and still hasn't, even in his foreword to the official timeline... but I'm uneasy when it comes to DAREDEVIL.

I don't mind SHIELD not getting mentioned, but it would really disappoint me if a new DAREDEVIL series with Charlie Cox were dismissive to Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Hensen and their characters. Bringing Cox back is drawing on a memory and fondness for that specific trio of actors, not Cox alone. If Cox had been recast, there would be no expectation of Woll and Hensen.

I hope that the new DAREDEVIL showrunners will understand that.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I've been reading MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, an unauthorized history of Kevin Feige's Marvel Cinematic Universe by journalists Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales and Gavin Edwards. It starts with Marvel in bankruptcy and Feige being an assistant on the X-Men movie series. It provides an in-depth journey for Feige and Marvel from Iron Man to The Falcon & The Winter Solder and Wandavision at which point, the journalists have had fewer years to interview the participants and it gets quite vague. But some takeaways for the moment:

The ABC, Hulu and Netflix shows are addressed one chapter of this 30 chapter volume. The dismissiveness is telling. Basically, the Marvel CEO at the time, Isaac Perlmutter, set up a Marvel TV division within Marvel Entertainment that was separate from the Marvel Studios film division. Feige protested the MCU becoming weekly episodic TV instead of massive feature film events.

But Perlmutter wanted TV ad revenue profits and went ahead with the TV division despite Feige's concerns. Perlmutter had Marvel Studios' hire, Joss Whedon, commissioned to produce Agents of SHIELD. Feige protested his Avengers II director being distracted by TV and Perlmutter blocked from Feige from any TV involvement.

Perlmutter situated the Marvel TV offices far from Marvel Studios, and forced Marvel Studios to grant access to Jaimie Alexander (Sif), footage from The Winter Soldier, Samuel L. Jackson, and the Age of Ultron tie-in. But after Perlmutter was removed from authority over Feige, Perlmutter couldn't force anymore crossovers and Marvel Studios refused to tie in with the Netflix shows.

There also seems to be some sort of conflict between Joss Whedon and Kevin Feige that has made Feige unwilling to use Whedon's characters on Agents of SHIELD. It may be that Whedon agreeing to do a TV show was viewed as a betrayal of Marvel Studios or some other conflict tied into Whedon being revealed as an abusive boss, but Feige is noticeably steering clear of any of Whedon's original creations.

Perlmutter was cited as having a strong hand in the Marvel Creative Committee that oversaw and controlled the MCU films from Iron Man to Iron Man III. The Creative Committee was infamous for blocking female-led films and prominent female superheroes or supervillains, and it was peculiar, because that committee included comic book talents like Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quesada who are not, to my knowledge, misogynists.

The book uncovers how Perlmutter was using the Committee to block any characters and films that Perlmutter didn't believe would lead to toy sales, and Perlmutter did not believe that female action figures sold well enough to justify female superhuman characters or female leads, which is why the Committee was thrown out of Marvel Studios along with Perlmutter. This seems to have indirectly led to Joe Quesada and Brian Michael Bendis both leaving Marvel, having been dismissed from any involvement (and pay) in the feature films.

The film notes that Feige as a producer tends to have an attitude: "We'll fix it in post." Iron Man was filmed without a completed script, with special effects designers and directors and actors feeling out the story during filming and writers drafting scenes on the day they were shot, and then Feige would assemble the film in the edit bay and rework things with dialogue recording and digital alterations and limited reshoots.

Feige's improvisational inventiveness and flair for creativity crashed hard on Iron Man II, a film made in less time than Iron Man and therefore with less time to refine and rework. This approach yielded, on the whole, good and often great results from Thor straight through to Endgame. However, a shift in leadership at Disney when Bob Chapek took over, has seen Feige severely overstretched. Chapek wanted more movies more often and more shows more constantly. This saw Feige working not only on movies but also Disney+ shows; Feige was now expected to weigh in on comic books and merchandising and theme parks and whatnot.

The history also points out: at numerous points, Feige had some vital creative partners, but due to circumstances outside Feige's control, many have slipped away. Joss Whedon was to be a key collaborator in the MCU, but he left and seems to have been encouraged to stay away. James Gunn was expected to become a vital part of the MCU films, but then Gunn was fired off of Guardians of the Galaxy III. Despite being re-hired to the film, Gunn was not available to be re-hired in his Marvel producership. Victoria Alonso, a vital producer overseeing effects production, was abruptly terminated for reasons unclear. The excellent comic book writers on the Creative Committee were thrown out with Perlmutter.

Anthony and Joe Russo were alienated from Marvel and Disney due to Disney trying to scam Scarlett Johansson out of her pay. Feige is having to shoulder all these burdens from all these departures, and it's not easy to find successors compatible with Feige's approach. The book notes that the third Ant Man and the fourth Thor features were regarded as middling-to-poor, and it all stems from Feige's improvisational assembly tactics becoming a liability when Feige's team is depleted.

The book says that Kevin Feige is wonderful, but there are only 24 hours in a day, and there are simply too many movies, shows, comics and rides for one person to handle. The book declares that while Kevin can raise the quality of any project he touches, there are now too many movies and shows and that there is only so much Kevin to go around. The book ends on a somewhat pessimistic note, unsure if Feige is coming to the end of his path with Marvel... unless Feige is able to find new collaborators or if Feige willing to reinvent the way he works or if Feige manages to once again achieve the run of success he had from Iron Man to Endgame.

I'm not sure how much of that I agree or disagree with, but it's an interesting and informed perspective.

One thing that jumped out at me: the book reports that Samuel L. Jackson was angry during the filming of Avengers that Whedon had written scenes that called for Jackson to run. He was similarly displeased on Captain Marvel for having to run. He was relieved that his action sequence in The Winter Soldier involved sitting in a car. The book points out: Jackson was 60 in Iron Man, 65 in Avengers, and 74 years old in Secret Invasion.

It occurs to me that this could have been a huge problem in trying to present Nick Fury as an action hero lead in Secret Invasion or in most Marvel movies, which may be why Jackson's roles were always brief and aloof, and why making him an action lead in Secret Invasion was less than successful.

I guess... I never realized that Samuel L. Jackson was anything but ageless, probably due to movie magic.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Disclaimer: I really enjoyed THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER and ANT MAN: QUANTUMANIA, so my sense of quality may not be shared by many.

Grizzlor wrote:

Secret Invasion was so bad, Bob Iger has to be dumbfounded. The Marvels is going to follow right up along that path of trash.

I just got home from THE MARVELS (CAPTAIN MARVEL II) in IMAX. It's very clear that the team making THE MARVELS had no idea what SECRET INVASION was doing and the team making SECRET INVASION had no idea what THE MARVELS was doing (or what SECRET INVASION was doing).

THE MARVELS is taking a critical dismissal and looks like a box office failure. I really enjoyed it. It has all the strengths of Marvel movies and all the weaknesses of Marvel movies, so it ends up being enjoyable, crisply directed, effectively-edited, well-paced, hilariously performed, satisfyingly executed -- but it misses out on a number of opportunities for greater depth and meaning.

THE MARVELS is a stunningly beautiful movie. There are deeply stirring shots of Carol Danvers and Monica Rambeau in space amidst the stars, and the composition and lighting are captivating. There is a distinct visual language and geography to all the character and action scenes in stark contrast to how CAPTAIN MARVEL was oddly indistinct under Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. THE MARVELS director Nia DaCosta is clearly a more skillful visual stylist.

The story is adequate and borderline irrelevant. The Kree are attacking the universe; the Marvels have to stop them. The plot is treated as little more than a framework to get these women in the same spaceship.

There is a tremendous sense of energy in presenting a film about found sisters: Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan are women with the same profession who find themselves thrown together in a cosmic crisis. Carol's cool under fire matches well wtih Monica's hyperanalytical sense of strategy and Kamala's excitable enthusiasm offers terrific comic relief. The film has a really funny recurring gag where Carol and Monica can fly, but Kamala can't.

The sequence of Carol, Monica and Kamala skipping and dancing and balancing is the movie. The action sequences do a spectacular job  of maintaining the chemistry and relationships between these three spectacular women. At 105 minutes, THE MARVELS is a snappy, smooth ride from start to finish (at least for me.)

The script is treated as an irrelevance, and as a result, THE MARVELS unfortunately fails to capitalize on some potential arcs. I'm not sure if Feige's attitude of fixing things in post is at play, but there are a number of lapses.

We establish that Carol still hasn't regained all of her human memories. The film plays up how Carol is a bit of a blank slate: she's known as the Annihilator to the Kree and a beloved princess on the planet Aladna and as a failure to the Skrulls; Carol grudgingly tolerates these identities without ever truly embracing any of them, pointing to her own uncertainty and blankness of self. This never reaches any kind of climax or resolution in the film. Carol is defined by Brie Larson's affable, pleasant take on a military woman.

There's no discussion of how Monica Rambeau was a little girl in CAPTAIN MARVEL and an adult in THE MARVELS while Carol has barely aged; it's not a plothole since Carol ages slower than humans with her powers, but it's a visual element that the film doesn't seize upon.

The lead villainess has a sequence where the plot sets up the need for her to set aside her differences with the Marvels to save her world; there seems to be an odd reshoot that abruptly shuts down this potentially complex direction and aim for something far simpler.

There are a number of very awkwardly patched story gaps. The planet Aladna is left in dire peril when the Marvels are abruptly ripped out of the situation; the film seems to largely neglect following up and there's a hurried insert shot later with two lines to wrap up the plot point. The movie has Carol, Monica and Kamala's powers going haywire (which brings them together); the climax has their powers stabilized with a line of exposition without any real explanation (or I missed it).

And then there's THE MARVELS' wider place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. SECRET INVASION is a serious problem. THE MARVELS seems to act as though SECRET INVASION doesn't exist and gives me the sense that no one working on THE MARVELS knew anything about SECRET INVASION.

SECRET INVASION ended with the President of the United States declaring all aliens to be enemies of the state, with human race now murderously targeting Skrulls suspected or genuine, malevolent or innocent, and Nick Fury... doing nothing to address the situation and heading off into space to negotiate a Kree/Skrull peace treaty. On Earth, the Super Skrull, G'iah, negotiated an agreement with MI6 agent Sonya Falsworth to try to stop the Skrull killings at which point this miniseries ended.

THE MARVELS makes no reference to the human-perpetrated murder spree on suspected Skrulls. There's a reference to a Kree-Skrull peace treaty in place. Nick Fury, in orbit above Earth, seems unconcerned about any Skrull genocide on Earth. Skrulls are said to have multiple refugee colonies throughout the universe and are scattered across the stars. SECRET INVASION noted that Nick Fury promised the Skrull refugees a new homeworld and inexplicably never explained why Fury failed to come through aside from a shapeshifter impersonating Fury claiming that there was no homeworld to be found, and SECRET INVASION didn't confirm or deny if the impersonator should be taken seriously.

But THE MARVELS undermines that as well: Carol Danvers reaches out to the Asgardians to take the displaced Skrull refugees "somewhere safe", indicating that the Rainbow Bridge offered a ready means of evacuation and relocation for the Skrulls. Carol makes no reference to an ongoing Skrull genocide on Earth, nor does she mention Talos (who died in SECRET INVASION and is simply not referred to in THE MARVELS).

The entire plot of SECRET INVASION is made nonsensical by THE MARVELS showing Carol being concerned for the Skrulls and having easy access to securing a new home for them. SECRET INVASION in turn undermines THE MARVELS; Carol Danvers being in a lighthearted space adventure is hideous when Skrulls are being targeted for death on Earth and Carol can easily evacuate them. SECRET INVASION's depiction of Nick Fury as an incompetent blunderer also makes his steady competence in THE MARVELS difficult to accept. We'll simply have to assume that G'iah and Sonya Falsworth succeeded in preventing the genocide since Carol isn't worried about it and never brings it up.

It's bizarre: the whole point of the Disney+ shows was that they would have closer continuity with the movies, but here, we have SECRET INVASION and THE MARVELS both addressing Skrulls and Nick Fury... and they don't match up at all. The confusion here would explain a lot of Samuel L. Jackson's befuddled, adrift performance in SECRET INVASION.

I'll contemplate why THE MARVELS is bombing at box office tomorrow. It probably isn't due to the quality of the film itself since barely anyone is even trying to see it in the first place and the word of mouth isn't that bad.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Why isn't THE MARVELS financially successful? I think there are unfortunately a number of creative and marketing factors at play.

Well, there may have been too long a time gap between the film and its Disney+ tie-ins. The characters of Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan made their full debuts in Disney+ TV shows. Monica was in CAPTAIN MARVEL as a child, but the adult incarnation only appeared in WANDAVISION. Kamala Khan was first onscreen in MS. MARVEL. WANDAVISION was two years ago and didn't lead into THE MARVELS. MS. MARVEL ran from June 6 - July 13 in 2022 and while it ended with a lead-in to THE MARVELS, it was over a year in the past when THE MARVELS premiered.

THE MARVELS may have been poisoned by forced synergy. Disney+ shows have a smaller audience than the mainstream moviegoing public. ENDGAME sold over 35 million individual tickets, LOKI reportedly streamed to 2.5 million households in its first five days, and MS. MARVEL reportedly streamed to 780,000 viewers in its first five days. THE MARVELS, in presenting itself as a movie with Monica, Kamala and Carol, may have given the impression that viewers who hadn't watched WANDAVISION and MS. MARVEL would have no interest in THE MARVELS.

Some have claimed that Disney has diluted the Marvel brand with Disney+ Marvel shows. They point out: ENDGAME was a huge release at a time when Marvel movies were all cinematic events of cultural significance. ENDGAME was one of three Marvel Studios releases in 2019. Marvel Studios 'only' released four movies in 2021, three in 2022 and another three in 2023. But from 2021 - 2023, Marvel released nine TV shows on Disney+. The argument is that WANDAVISION, LOKI, HAWKEYE and SECRET INVASION, by featuring lead Avengers characters from the films, made the films less special; films no longer seem like an event if their characters appear in view-on-demand shows.

I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced of this as these shows were fairly short, ranging from 6 - 9 episodes. But Kevin Feige might feel that the shows dilute the brand. Judging from the MCU: THE REIGN OF MARVEL STUDIOS book, Feige did not want the MCU on TV back in the days of AGENTS OF SHIELD and was very much pressured by Disney CEO Bob Chapek to produce TV for Disney+.

Speaking on a marketing level, THE MARVELS was definitely damaged by actor's strike. Brie Larson, Iman Vellani and Teyonah Parris couldn't make public appearances to promote Carol, Kamala and Monica. They couldn't appear in public showing off their sisterly bond on talk shows and at conventions; they couldn't post social media videos of the three of them hanging out as friends who adore each other; they couldn't show off the 50 megawatt chemistry of their onscreen connection.

But also on a marketing level, I think THE MARVELS was hurt by how Marvel never really gave Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, a distinct and vivid personality that defined her in the cultural consciousness, and this is despite CAPTAIN MARVEL earning 1.131 billion at box office.

Carol Danvers suffers from an undefined personality. Slider_Quinn21 once said of Supergirl on the CW SUPERGIRL TV show: Kara Danvers (no relation) was defined by being 'nice'; there was nothing else to her character. I would argue that Kara was defined by being 'superhumanly nice' to the point where it was a legitimate superpower. Slider_Quinn21 was sort of right in that compared to the tormented warrior Oliver Queen and the neurotically hurried Barry Allen, the Kara character was far less distinct.

However, not every character needs to be written as a hypercomplex contradiction. Kara was a very simple, straightforward character who was defined by actress Melissa Benoist bringing charm, liveliness, humour and appeal to the role, much like Marty McFly having no characterization in BACK TO THE FUTURE but made dynamic through Michael J. Fox's comic timing and hilarious reactions to absurdity.

Marvel attempted something very much like the Supergirl template with Carol Danvers. Carol has amnesia and is defined by actress Brie Larson having an subtly militaristic bearing, an affable and lightweight charm that gives way to severity and forcefulness if pushed. The problem: SUPERGIRL, a weekly TV show, had plenty of screentime to let Melissa Benoist show Kara in everyday life and render her character with physical comedy and emotionality.

CAPTAIN MARVEL was a two hour movie, THE MARVELS is a 105 minute movie, and these feature films are not designed to let the audience spend an extended and regular amount of time with Brie Larson's body language, mannerisms, expressions and reactions. Where SUPERGIRL could let Melissa Benoist spend 30 minutes of the premiere being Kara Danvers and about 12 being Supergirl and still get the audience back next week, CAPTAIN MARVEL was juggling the Kree, the Skrulls, Carol's amnesia, Carol's lost identity -- so that by the time Carol gets something of her identity back, the movie was nearly over. Unlike, say, WONDER WOMAN, the CAPTAIN MARVEL movie did not present Carol Danvers with a strong identity or a distinct sense of what she respresents and what she stands for.

When WONDER WOMAN ended, everyone had a very clear sense of who Diana was: Diana is a warrior peacekeeper who loves the world and everything in it except for war. Diana lives for bringing peace into crisis. But who is Carol? What does she stand for?

CAPTAIN MARVEL fashioned her as a nearly empty vessel for Brie Larson's screen presence, and while Brie Larson is a magnetic, warmly endearing person, the amnesiac character she played meant she was limited in what she could do. WONDER WOMAN ended with Diana having endeared herself to the audience: she was the superhero who would not only save you but see the best in you and hug you. CAPTAIN MARVEL left Carol still rather blank, appreciated not for her vague personality but for how she would play a critical role in ENDGAME.

CAPTAIN MARVEL has been heralded as a smash hit because of its feminism and inspiring roles for women. It was wonderfully feminist and inspiring... but it also had a poor sense of geography in its action sequences, an overstuffed plot that limited Brie Larson's performance, a certain blandness in its overall direction.

I suspect that while the women-forward approach was good marketing for CAPTAIN MARVEL, it was successful at box office because CAPTAIN MARVEL was viewed as a key prequel to how ENDGAME would wrap up, so viewers enthralled by INFINITY WAR stirred viewers to watch CAPTAIN MARVEL, eager to see what seeds it would plant for resolving ENDGAME.

THE MARVELS doesn't have that advantage as critical viewing before an ENDGAME-level release (not that many movies do).

Ultimately, the success of CAPTAIN MARVEL may have been a bit of a mirage when it comes to Carol Danvers. Neither CAPTAIN MARVEL nor ENDGAME made Carol as personable and vivid as, say, Robert Downey Jr. in IRON MAN. Neither CAPTAIN MARVEL nor ENDGAME made Carol as dynamic and fun as Paul Rudd in ANT MAN or Chris Pratt in GUARDIANS.
Brie Larson is perfectly capable of being as endearing as Downey Jr. and Rudd and Pratt -- but the amnesiac character she was saddled with didn't allow her to make full use of her talents. And the marketing department had no ability to market Carol, Kamala and Monica because Larson, Vellani and Parris were on strike, no way to show the moviegoing public the fun, women-friendly, sisterly bond of these three characters with these three performers.

In addition, the film seems to have been edited to be as fast paced as possible. While Carol, Kamala and Monica have excellent chemistry throughout, there is a certain minimalism to the amount of screentime they get to just hang out and be; at one point, their interactions are compressed into a training montage. The movie survives it, but this lack of decompressed time with the characters also deprived the film and its marketing of more personal time with the characters.

As a result, there was not a huge audience hammering on the cineplex doors. There was only a very limited number of people eager to see THE MARVELS, eager to spend more time with Carol. There was only a very small audience who'd watched WANDAVISION and MS. MARVEL, who'd enjoyed Monica and Kamala, who wanted to see them on the big screen. There were only a few who were eager to join Carol Danvers on her cosmic sleepover adventure with Kamala and Monica.

Marvel movies have reached success with broad, mainstream audiences, but Carol's blandness and THE MARVELS being the culmination of two small screen shows meant it was making its audience narrower instead of wider.

As someone who loved Monica in WANDAVISION and adored Kamala in MS. MARVEL, I was so happy to see them with Carol in THE MARVELS. As someone for whom Brie Larson's acting strengths excuses any scripting weaknesses, I was delighted to see Carol back and with Monica and Kamala. But... I'm just one viewer. And right now, I can't imagine what someone who hadn't seen WANDAVISION and MS. MARVEL made of THE MARVELS. I have to think they would have been confused by who Monica and Kamala were, and would have been sufficiently confused that they would have stayed away.

It may have been better to just do CAPTAIN MARVEL II as Carol's story instead of tying it into two TV shows with a smaller audience than a mainstream superhero action film.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

ireactions, I haven't seen The Marvels yet so I'm hesitant to read anything you wrote yet, but I did want to say that Nando from Nando v Movies (and now the Nando Cut) did a video about how people are complaining about how they want to watch the Marvels but shouldn't have to watch Wandavision and Ms Marvel to enjoy it.

He said that it's not a legitimate concern because he's confident that there will be a scene where both Monica and Kamala's backstories and powers are summarized in two sentences.  I'll let Nando explain:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be5LxTsAKuY

And before I see it, I'm genuinely curious for a non-spoiler answer to whether or not he's right.  I feel like a lot of the future of the MCU is going to depend on the answer and how well they did it.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

THE MARVELS ensures that audiences who haven't seen WANDAVISION and MS. MARVEL won't be confused by who Monica and Kamala are. But THE MARVELS is very much dependent on the affection and familiarity that was established with Monica and Kamala in the Disney+ shows. I do not think the movie re-establishes Monica and Kamala to the point where audiences who don't know Monica and Kamala will appreciate how they're finally having a slumber party in space with Carol. I think THE MARVELS is too short and lacks that decompressed time needed to really feel close to Monica and Kamala unless you already felt close to them from watching their multi-episode TV show.

I didn't give anyway any big spoilers in my review, just plot mechanics and SECRET INVASION issues.

813 (edited by Slider_Quinn21 2023-11-16 13:08:00)

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I thought it might've been a couple/few weeks before I could see the Marvels, but the stars lined up and I was able to see it this week.  I read through your stuff, and here's my thoughts:

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So first off, I thought the movie was a lot of fun.  I liked that it was shorter than most MCU movies, although I can certainly see where they could've expanded some things.  We could've spent more money on the singing world.  There was probably some epilogue they could've done with the Skrulls, with the aftermath of the singing world, or on Earth.  But I like that it was tight.

I thought the action was a lot of fun, and I thought the camaraderie between the three leads was a lot of fun.  The power switching, although oddly handled both how it started and how it ended, was a pretty cool mechanic.  I liked that they practiced it, too.  Not only was that scene fun, but I think its the kind of thing that's usually ignored in stuff like this.  Either they continue to use it as a comedy gimmick, or they'd just work hard to avoid it.  I liked that they worked hard to make sure it was a weapon in their arsenal.

You mentioned it earlier, but I wanted to continue talking about Carol and her characterization.  I meant to rewatch the first movie before I saw it, but because I was able to see it in such a surprise fashion, I didn't get to.  But Carol, despite being the lead in two movies, still feels unknowable.  I feel like her powers are kind of confusing, and the power level she shows seems vague to me.  At times, she seems invincible.  At other times, it wasn't even clear if she was more powerful than Monica.  It made it hard to really understand how powerful the villain was.  Carol almost beat Thanos all by herself (and I assume if he didn't have the gauntlet at the time, she would have).  She wrecked a bunch of Thanos' fleet all by herself.  And yet, at times, Carol struggled to even handle one-off Kree.

And I think her being unknowable helped with the Kamala and Monica stuff.  Kamala worshipping Carol and Carol being oddly defined made that relationship work.  Carol being unknowable helped sell the distant relationship between her and Monica.  But I just feel like we should have a better feel for Carol by now.  What does she want?  What are her weaknesses?  What is her endgame?

The Secret Invasion stuff is quite baffling.  You're right - it feels like those two things are wildly unconnected.  The only thing that seemed to tie was the idea of "peace talks" between the Kree and Skrulls.  Everything else seemed off:

- No mention of Gaia and no appearance/mention of Varra (who should've been on the station)
- Valkyrie took the Skrull refugees to Earth.  No mention of the dangers they'd face there or how Valkyrie would protect them
- No mention of the relationship between the Skrulls on Earth or the Skrulls on the refugee planet.  How many Skrulls were on that colony and why couldn't more Skrulls go there?
- No mention of how the weakened Kree were still keeping the Skrulls from colonizing *anywhere* - from the Guardians movies there seem to be tons of habitable planets for the Skrulls to hide on.  Is *every* habitable planet inhabited?  I still don't understand how they can't find anywhere for the Skrulls to go.  What about Mars?  Or the moon?  It seems like between Earth and the Skrulls, the technology exists to send them one of those two places safely.

And that's what I don't understand about this.  I understand the Netflix / ABC shows not being connected to the MCU.  But Feige produces the Disney+ shows.  Kamala (and Kate!) are in this movie, and they originated on Disney+.  Skrulls and Fury are in this movie. 

My only guess is that, due to the actors' and writers' strikes, there was less time to do reshoots on both productions to make the changes work?  Maybe the Skrull genocide plot was added really late and the Marvels wasn't able to adapt because of the strikes?  Maybe the Marvels originally dealt with this stuff and it was cut (either because of the poor reception of Secret Invasion or to make the movie tighter)?  I really don't know, and at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. 

I think Marvel could probably say that Secret Invasion happened *after* the Marvels?  That would maybe explain why there are more Skrulls on Earth than anyone thought?  And if the genocide hadn't happened yet, there would obviously be no reason to mention it?  And no reason to mention Gaia or Varra?

Edit : Apparently, it was supposed to come out before Secret Invasion.  I would assume this is the reason.

Or maybe it is after, but it was fixed off screen.  It really doesn't matter and doesn't impact liking the Marvels.  The movie is fun and fits in (mostly) without it.  It's just weird that the MCU feels so rudderless in these two phases.  Other than "multiverse" where are we going?  What are we building to?  Loki season 2 was a lot of fun, but I don't think it moved us toward Kang Dynasty.

And even this movie, despite a tie to an unannounced Young Avengers project, randomly ties to the multiverse stuff.  Why did the jump point, which hasn't been connected to the multiverse at any other point, suddenly connect to a different universe instead of a different point in the regular MCU universe?  Is it just because this is the multiverse saga?  Or have the jump points always been conduits to the multiverse and its just because there was a tear? 

And, yes, I know that the Thanos stuff wasn't really set up until it was.  Thanos is a cameo in Avengers 1 and 2, and his biggest pre-Infinity War appearance is a relatively unimportant one in Guardians.  Kang has already done more than Thanos did at the same point in his phases.  But the universe, despite being smaller in phases 1 and 2, felt more connected and felt like it was going somewhere.  Now it just feels like there's more stuff but less directed.

I'm hoping that the strikes caused the weird disconnect between Secret Invasion and the Marvels.  Because outside of stuff like Moon Knight, they seem to be doing what they're supposed to be doing.  Kamala and Monica were set up to be in this movie.  Kate seems to have been set up for a future project.  We got Sam to be Captain America so he can hit the ground running in his movie.  Wandavision set up Monica and set up the villain in Multiverse of Madness.  Loki set up the multiverse and Kang.

The shows should handle stories that are important but allow the movies to tell the really important stories.  That way, we don't need a whole movie to make Sam Captain America.  He already is.  We don't need a movie to show how Wanda became a villain - she's one to start Dr Strange 2.

The problem is that if the movies don't feel like they're building to something, then the movies need to be better on their own.  Right now, the shows feel like setup for movies that feel like setup for movies that haven't happened yet.  Which would be okay if it felt like Kang Dynsaty or Secret Wars were going to be worth the wait.  But between the Majors stuff and the disconnect in the multiverse stuff, I'm not even sure if that's true.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

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Marvels wasn’t bad.  The first few minutes made me wince, but stick with it.  What impressed me was how much comic lore they stuffed in.

The body swapping Nega Bands idea of the Rick Jones era.  The adaptation of the comics crossover Operation: Galactic Storm.  The revelation of the Quantum Bands (which was handled in the surprising way the infinity stones were).  I was impressed too that the bands’ “curse” of consuming everyone who wears them was there.  The only people who survive are those who accept them instead of trying to harness them.

Even the quantum bands’ power of creating jump points is straight from the comics.  Quasar would use them to jump to different points in space by entering and exiting the quantum zone; and during one of those “quantum jumps”, a massive surge of power sent him instead to a parallel reality (Quasar#30).

https://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronoc … 0-31.shtml

The Marvels wasn’t perfect, but this was the most MCU flavor movie I’ve seen since Endgame.  No Way Home was great,  but it was really just a nostalgia gimmick and not a deep dive into comics lore.  The Marvels is worth the watch - just suffer through those first few minutes

The only thing that really bothered me about The Marvels was that we may not get Quasar now (one of my favorite characters); but even in the comics, there were two pair of quantum bands in the universe

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

The opening of THE MARVELS with Kamala was pretty endearing to fans of her show. I concede that there aren't that many fans of Kamala's show.

This is an interesting article on how Marvel's fans have gotten older, and the current generation of potential superhero fans don't really want to go to the cineplex:
https://www.salon.com/2023/11/17/the-ma … -audience/

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Actual Spoilers This Time





















Kamala trying to do a Nick Fury impression with Kate Bishop was pretty funny. HAWKEYE was a joyfully hilarious TV show, and I hope THE MARVELS bombing at box office doesn't mean we won't get YOUNG AVENGERS with Kate and Kamala and Cassie Lang from ANT MAN and Harley from IRON MAN III and Billy and Tommy (Wanda's kids from WANDAVISION).

**

Monica ends up in the FOX X-MEN universe with Kelsey Grammer on a break from FRASIER reprising his role as Beast. DEADPOOL will feature Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.

What is Kevin Feige planning?

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

ireactions wrote:

What is Kevin Feige planning?

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From what I've read, Monica isn't in the Fox universe.  Since the design for Beast is more like the X-Men 90s cartoon, the apparently implication is that Monica is in that universe.  Which makes more sense than the Fox universe because Disney is making an X-Men 97 cartoon.  I doubt that Monica (or Binary) is going to appear in that cartoon, but I guess it's possible.

Jackman and Reynolds have implied that the Wolverine in Deadpool 3 is the Fox Wolverine, but they also said it won't interfere with Logan.  I wonder if it'll be a Wolverine variant.

Either way, I assume all these universes are leading to Secret Wars.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I am sick at home and watched the VENOM movie, which I didn't see when it first released in 2018. It made no sense to me: Venom is an evil version of Spider-Man. How are you supposed to do Venom without Spider-Man?

But I liked this movie. I was grudgingly impressed by how actor Tom Hardy's idiosyncratic twitchiness turns Eddie Brock into a struggling, frantic, moral, reckless journalist. I was grudgingly appreciative of how Venom is presented as an alien parasite from a horror movie whose bodily possession and eventual symbiosis with Eddie is played for terror and amusement. I was grudgingly admiring of how the Venom concept was reconfigured from dark mirror image of Spider-Man to a horror monster who falls in love with humanity and becomes a superhero. I was grudgingly entertained by the insane action sequences where Venom engages in chases and battles and drags Eddie along like a puppet.

Tom Hardy is a brilliant actor and director Ruben Fleischer did an impressive job at reimagining Venom as a copyright that had to function without Spider-Man. I still don't understand what Sony is playing, creating a Spider-Man cinematic universe with his villains and supporting cast (VENOM, MORBIUS, KRAVEN, MADAME WEB), but... VENOM is a fun movie. Maybe it doesn't matter how tired or fragmented a copyright is so long as it's given to talents who really embrace the material?

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Some really interesting news/gossip/speculation from the Weekly Planet's "Hot Scoop or Shot of Poop" segment (I'm obligated to say all that).

We haven't really talked about it, but Jonathan Majors is in some hot water (allegedly?), and it's another in a long line of headaches that Marvel has had to deal with recently.  There's been talk of ditching Kang entirely and moving on to another villain (the rumor is Doom).  Which would be quite the jump since Kang has been so widely teased and Doom hasn't appeared.  I mean the announced title of Avengers 5 is "The Kang Dynasty"

Now Avengers 5 isn't supposed to come out until 2026 and Fantastic Four releases in 2025.  There's plenty of time between now and those moments to set up Doom (or anyone, really) before Avengers 5 comes out.

But the question has always been "why are they abandoning Kang when Majors is the problem?"  I know the post-credits scene in Ant-Man showed that all Kangs look like Majors, but it's the Multiverse.  Use Multiversal logic to say "these bad Kangs look like John David Washington now" or something.  We've already established in the MCU that Peter Parker can look like Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield so why not recast?

The Weekly Planet apparently has surfaced the reason.  When Majors signed his contract, due to the multiversal nature of the character, Marvel agreed that Majors would be the only one playing Kang on screen.  Any variant of Kang has to be played by Majors.  That way, they couldn't bring in different versions of Kang and have them compete with Majors for screen time (or see how each one of them played).  If Kang is on screen, he's played by Majors.  He cannot be recast.

Now the Weekly Planet speculated that maybe there's a morals clause and maybe it could get them out of the "can't be recast" clause.  But will the Majors stuff be sorted out enough to do that by the time they need Kang Dynasty to come out?  Maybe not.  And I doubt Marvel wants to risk that.  Maybe they can still salvage Kang with a different actor but not by the time they need to be shooting Avengers 5.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

ireactions wrote:

Tom Hardy is a brilliant actor and director Ruben Fleischer did an impressive job at reimagining Venom as a copyright that had to function without Spider-Man. I still don't understand what Sony is playing, creating a Spider-Man cinematic universe with his villains and supporting cast (VENOM, MORBIUS, KRAVEN, MADAME WEB), but... VENOM is a fun movie. Maybe it doesn't matter how tired or fragmented a copyright is so long as it's given to talents who really embrace the material?

Sony are making Spidey-Verse movies because they have little choice.  Their agreement with Marvel from over two decades ago now is not expansive, but you also have the issue that Tom Holland is not going to do Venom movies.  Why would he?  He's done far better for himself as part of the MCU at Disney.  The first Venom was well-received, but the sequel was not, and I shudder to imagine how bad the third one will be. 

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

But the question has always been "why are they abandoning Kang when Majors is the problem?"  I know the post-credits scene in Ant-Man showed that all Kangs look like Majors, but it's the Multiverse.  Use Multiversal logic to say "these bad Kangs look like John David Washington now" or something.  We've already established in the MCU that Peter Parker can look like Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield so why not recast?

The Weekly Planet apparently has surfaced the reason.  When Majors signed his contract, due to the multiversal nature of the character, Marvel agreed that Majors would be the only one playing Kang on screen.  Any variant of Kang has to be played by Majors.  That way, they couldn't bring in different versions of Kang and have them compete with Majors for screen time (or see how each one of them played).  If Kang is on screen, he's played by Majors.  He cannot be recast.

Majors' issues are part of it, but his character/portrayal is just not very good.  Frankly, he was somewhat charming as the whimsical "He Who Shall..." guy in Loki S1, but stunk up the joint in S2 and his Ant-Man 3 role was poorly received.  Makes sense to cut and run, but MCU seems entirely listless and dead inside.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Grizzlor wrote:

Tom Holland is not going to do Venom movies.  Why would he?  He's done far better for himself as part of the MCU at Disney.  The first Venom was well-received, but the sequel was not, and I shudder to imagine how bad the third one will be.

Tom Holland filmed one day on the first VENOM movie for a cameo scene, but Marvel Studios asked Sony to cut the scene and Sony complied. Holland was featured in a B-roll cameo in the VENOM sequel, showing up in news footage.

https://www.cbr.com/report-tom-holland- … by-marvel/

There was some intention for Tom Hardy to feature more prominently in NO WAY HOME, but it didn't work out.

https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a3971 … nate-role/

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

When Majors signed his contract, due to the multiversal nature of the character, Marvel agreed that Majors would be the only one playing Kang on screen.  Any variant of Kang has to be played by Majors.  That way, they couldn't bring in different versions of Kang and have them compete with Majors for screen time (or see how each one of them played).  If Kang is on screen, he's played by Majors.  He cannot be recast.

There was this situation in CAPTAIN AMERICA (Vol. 3, 1998) where writer Mark Waid wanted to have Captain America fight Kang the Conquerer. However, Kang turned out to be tied up in an AVENGERS plot, so Waid was forced to reveal that Kang in his story was actually a different character, Korvac. It happens!

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Holland will appear in a Venom movie because Sony desperately needs him to.  Sony is making a valiant effort to generate a shared universe with the scraps they have left from their Spider-Man deal, but they almost backed out of the deal with Marvel already.  And I assume if Madame Web, Venom 3, and Kraven the Hunter (ALL REAL MOVIES) all bomb, Sony will just cut an enormous check to Holland to have him essentially do for Venom what Downey Jr. did for Spider-Man Homecoming.  He'll do a couple scenes out of costume and the rest will just be the Spider-Man CGI model.

I can pretty much tell you how I think they'd do it too.  It will be "Sinister Six" or something, and the plot will be Venom, Madame Web, Morbius, Kraven the Hunter and I don't know who else (Spider-Woman? Scorpion from Homecoming?  The Vulture?) teaming up to fight whoever the biggest villain that Sony has the rights to.  Let's say Hobgoblin.  And that will be the movie.  But there will be a couple of scenes where Tom Holland (out of costume) will interact with Tom Hardy and let's say Dakota Johnson.  Not as Spider-Man and he doesn't know who they are (Madame Web knows).  And in the finale of the movie, Spider-Man (in costume with voice over from Holland) shows up (with a big shot of him web-swinging and landing directly in front of the main characters) and has a misunderstanding with the main characters.  He has a quick fight with Venom, he throws a punch or two at Morbius, he says something to Vulture maybe.

Then Spider-Man realizes the Hobgoblin is the problem and leaves to go help civilians or something.

"You go save them," Eddie Brock says before the Venom mask reappears.

"This guy is ours" Venom says.

Spider-Man leaves and doesn't reappear.  But Sony will absolutely market this as "Spider-Man vs the Sinister Six" and call the movie that.  They'll put every second of Spider-Man / Tom Holland footage in the trailer, and people will be really disappointed.  "Sinister Six" will be an in-joke inside the group "What are you trying to do, make a super group?
Like the Sinister Six?" that won't make any sense outside of that one scene.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Well, I can say this: Sony's contract with Tom Holland would unquestionably see Holland required to perform in any Sony films they want him to perform in. Sony owns the film rights to Spider-Man, Holland is their employee as the actor who plays Spider-Man, and they have what's effectively a loan on Holland to Marvel Studios for MCU appearances in Marvel Studios films, and the use of Kevin Feige's services for Sony's Tom Holland films with the name "Spider-Man" in the title.

Sony can put Tom Holland's Spider-Man in any Sony-based film they want -- but at Marvel Studios' request, they have not done so, instead creating a Sony live action movie universe that seems to have a lot of Spider-Man's friends and enemies but not Spider-Man himself, because Spider-Man and the MCU combined have been more successful for Sony than having their own Spider-Man. Sony further loaned out the use of Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire's Spider-Mans to Marvel Studios as well as Tom Hardy's Eddie Brock.

I imagine that in time, Sony will exactly what Slider_Quinn21 theorizes they would do with Tom Holland's Spider-Man, simply to exercise their use of an intellectual property and their access to an actor.

All I can say is, the first VENOM movie was kind of fun. The second movie felt like the same movie as the first one, at least to me, and chaotically less fun, at least to me. And I am currently confined to quarters at present because my doctor just diagnosed me with pneumonia and says I have to avoid human contact for 48 hours after I start on the antibiotics, so I may well watch MORBIUS if only to offer an informed opinion on it.

I am deeply intrigued by MADAME WEB because I love women with superpowers and MADAME WEB seems to offer at least four of them in one movie.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Yeah, I'm assuming that Sony just throws some crazy amount of money at Holland for a few days work, and I assume there will be some sort of indication that Holland isn't the MCU version.

They could also do the same thing with Maguire or Garfield, I suppose.  There's indications that the Sony universe is actually the Amazing Spider-Man universe.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I'm making my way through the What If episodes.  You're telling me that they can get basically everyone (Michael Douglas, Kurt Russell, etc) to come back and do voicework for this, but they can't get Downey or Evans to do anything?  It's a little distracting to get everyone back and not have those guys.  I get that they're done, but a lot of these voices are done.  Wouldn't this be like 20 minutes of work they can do from their own house?

I'm not saying they owe us or anything.  If they want to be done, they're free to be done.  It's just a little weird that they got so many and the big two just aren't coming back.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

It's hard to say. In terms of Robert Downey Jr., all accounts indicate that Downey Jr. has a highly improvisational approach to performance where he will actively ignore/replace the script on set and often want to rework it before he films.

This isn't going to work for animation where the dialogue recording and animation aren't done at the same time. I imagine he would just decline to be involved. And Downey's fee might be any number of times the budget of an episode.

Personally, I like Mick Wingert's voice as Tony. It isn't Downey Jr., but he captures Stark's arrogance and comedy.

I'm surprised that Chris Evans declined to voice Steve Rogers; there may have been scheduling issues or, as with Downey Jr., he or his representation didn't want him to set a low price on his voice acting that subsequent productions would consider his going rate. Josh Keaton did a nice job.

Scarlett Johanasson was at odds with Marvel at the time WHAT IF was in production. I found Lake Bell's performance pleasant but with some uncanny valley effect in her first episode, but then I stopped noticing it, and her emotionality in the closing Season 1 episodes really moved me.

My guess would be that Tom Holland's contract, being with Sony, didn't account for voice work on a Marvel TV production. But I'm very happy with Hudson Thames's performance.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I think Lake Bell does a good job, but now I associate her voice with Poison Ivy.  And I don't think she does enough to separate Ivy and Natasha.

I think the replacement voices are good, but it's just distracting to get legitimate Hollywood stars for minor roles and you can't get the actual voices for major roles.  It doesn't take me out of the story or anything, and I think all the replacements do a good job.  It just feels weird to me, but I can see how it would be impossible for the money to work.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

The comment about Lake Bell not differentiating her voice enough is very funny. Bell was a modestly successful actress from 2004 onward: guest appearances, supporting roles. Then Bell wrote, produced, directed and performed in the 2013 film IN A WORLD where Bell plays a struggling voice actress who is forever living in the shadow of her father, a renowned voice performer while Bell is scrambling to make rent via accent coaching for more successful actresses.

Bell wrote IN A WORLD with a central joke being all the bizarre and random voices that Bell and Bell's character have inside her. It's very funny to read someone (probably not unreasonably) take issue with how Poison Ivy is an angry eco-terrorist and Black Widow is a master spy and Bell's voices for them are too similar.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

ireactions wrote:

It's very funny to read someone (probably not unreasonably) take issue with how Poison Ivy is an angry eco-terrorist and Black Widow is a master spy and Bell's voices for them are too similar.

Ha, that is funny.  To be fair, Bell is a great voice actress.  Her Poison Ivy is great - funny, loving, and terrifying.  The problem is that while I'm very good at remembering voices, I'm not great at recognizing them.  So I will hear a voice actor and think "I know that voice" but I'll have to look it up on IMDB to figure out where I know it from.  But with Bell as Natasha, I immediately knew it was Ivy.

And she does a great job with Natasha too.  Scarlett Johansson has a pretty distinct voice, and she nails it.  I don't actually know what Lake Bell's true voice sounds like so maybe it's that Ivy is too much like Scarlett Johansson.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

My guess is that Bell gave the similarities between Ivy and Natasha no thought whatsoever: she played Poison Ivy in one project as a character and played Natasha as mimicry of Scarlett Johansson's voice but with Bell's own performance choices, and they ended up being pitched rather closely.

I liked Bell's performance in the Season 1 WHAT IF finale where she tells the Watcher that she is hurt by how he doesn't see her as a person, just as a story.

Here's her real voice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkdu-1mDWa8

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I first remember Lake from the series Surface, which I watched a little bit only.  But to show you how your memory fizzles and fades, when I first recalled it, I swore it had to do with devil doppelgangers from a parallel universe.  In reality, it DID have a lot to do with a body of water, but not that.  What I was recalling was the movie The Lake (2018) starring Yasmine Bleeth!  FWIW, both aired on NBC.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

There's a Tony Stark centric episode in WHAT IF's second season and Mick Wingert's Stark gets a very thorough showing. Wingert's performance is very close to Downey Jr. The main dis-similarity to Downey Jr.: Downey Jr. has a very improvisational rhythm to his performance because a lot of his lines are conceived on the spot as he performs. That wouldn't be present even if Downey Jr. were doing the voice in WHAT IF because animation's not a place where actors can improvise as what they say has to match the animation in progress elsewhere.

As of the second season, I honestly don't hear the difference between Lake Bell and Scarlett Johansson. I'm not saying that I wouldn't be able to tell if they were played side by side, but I can't tell from watching the episodes.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Reminds me of the old Batman cartoons from the 70s.  They used to switch a lot of voice actors in and out, nobody knew.  In fact, my friend was Larry Storch's manager and nobody knew whether Larry had actually played the Joker!  It remained a mystery.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I think the voice acting is great.  Downey and Johansson have very distinct voices, and I'm sure a talented voice actor would have no issue doing a seamless impression.  I feel like the actor that replaced Chris Evans didn't nail it as much, but Evans doesn't have as distinct a voice.  I'm not sure you can do an "impression" of Evans, and it might sound silly if someone tried.  I assume the creative team picked the best voice for Steve and just had him use his normal voice.

Again, I don't mean to insult Wingert or Bell.  Nothing about the voice work was distracting or bad.  It's almost more distracting when it's a fake Chris Evans talking to a real Chris Hemsworth.  Then I spend time wondering if that's really Jon Favreau (and it is...he just sounds off even when he's playing normal Happy Hogan).

I think the production did the best possible job.  They got as many of the real actors as possible and filled in the rest the best they could.  I still just think it's a little weird that they get some people and don't get others.  I get Chris Evans not wanting to ruin the legacy of his Captain America with a cheap return or Downey not wanting to get paid minimum wage after he's made a fortune off his Iron Man.  But I have to assume a lot of these guys did recordings at home, and they're all playing alternate versions of their characters.  Maybe it's just the principle of not coming back.

*******

I watched all of What If...? Season 2, and overall it was really good.  I feel like maybe they played way too hard into the Captain Carter thing?  She's a fun character, and I'm glad she's getting some spotlight after she sorta got shortchanged in live action.  But she's the star of 1/3 of the episodes, and almost every line of dialogue from Uatu is about how great she is.  It's just a little odd that it's a show about endless possibilities and we keep returning to the same character over and over again.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I have to agree that Josh Keaton doesn't sound anything like Chris Evans. While I like most of the recasting, the voice for Steve Rogers is... generic.

WHAT IF? favours Captain Carter. When Steve Rogers is in focus, he's Steve rather than Captain America, and when he's Captain America, he's barely present. It would suggest that Captain America is not, to the WHAT IF? creators, a very important character. He's a generic figure of heroism with a generic performance. They weren't particularly concerned with building on Chris Evans' performance because they weren't going to use him in any way that would call for the character to feel like Chris Evans.

Evans is a very interesting actor to me because he adds a lot of layers and conflicts to a potentially bland, unconflicted hero. With Evans' absence and with a marked disinterest in the character, Captain America has become bland and flat.

This isn't something I agree with. I think Captain America is one of the most interesting characters in the Marvel Universe, reflecting the conflict of the American ideal versus the American reality. Captain America has been a powerful symbol in the hands of creators like Mark Waid and Nick Spencer; a dynamic figure of improvisational action with Rick Remender; a noir-espionage hero with Ed Brubaker -- but I think it's clear that the WHAT IF team just isn't that inspired by Captain America. They like Peggy, they actually have Peggy's actress... so they're putting all their energy into Peggy.

While I find that a shame, it hasn't diminished my enjoyment of WHAT IF. I honestly didn't notice how out of focus Steve was or how indistinct Josh Keaton's performance was. But that seems to have been the point.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Regarding DAREDEVIL on Disney+: Disney has remounted the series with two new showrunners with whom I have no familiarity. However, they have already made a drastic change: Deborah Ann Woll and Eldon Henson will be reprising their roles as Karen Page and Foggy Nelson. The two actors, who were not hired for the original and now shuttered Disney+ DAREDEVIL, have now been seen on set filming scenes with Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock).

https://thedirect.com/article/deborah-a … set-photos

There are rumours, however, that Karen and Foggy are only going to be in three of the 18 episodes. While that's disappointing, that's still three more episodes than they were in before.

Also, Marvel previously omitted the Netflix DAREDEVIL and all the other Marvel Netflix shows from their official timeline in their Marvel chronology book and on Disney+. This has changed: the Netflix shows are now part of the official timeline.

https://nerdist.com/article/daredevil-e … sney-plus/

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Yeah, they're also apparently bringing in the actor that played Bullseye, which means it might be a direct continuation of season 3 as opposed to the more vague plan they seemed to have before.

I'm glad the Netflix shows are canon, but I'll be intrigued to see what else they'll bring back.  Of the Netflix shows, I'd like to see more of Colleen Wing, and I think a Heroes for Hire project could be fun.  Even if it's a one shot movie like Werewolf by Night or the Guardians' Holiday event.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I am 90 percent sure that Wilson Bethel (Bullseye) is going to be in the Disney+ show. Deadline reported it, but Marvel has declined to comment. However... given how this series has been in such a state of flux, I'm trying not to get my hopes up just in case.

I am not entirely sure, even now, if the Disney+ DAREDEVIL will spend much time following up on Karen, Foggy or Bullseye. The rumour is that it'll just be 1 - 3 episodes that focus on those characters and that Karen is only in three. That would be disappointing. But again, in the previous incarnation of the Disney+ DAREDEVIL show, these characters were absent.

There were even rumours that Karen and Foggy were killed off camera in the opening of the original first episode, resulting in Matt abandoning his Daredevil identity and focusing on his career as a lawyer. I'd be curious to get some hard facts on whether or not that were true and how something so offensive to Daredevil's fans could have been permitted to be filmed, or if the intention was that Karen and Foggy were in hiding, to return at a later date.

Certainly, in the 2006 comics, Foggy was brutally murdered while Matt Murdock, in prison after his secret identity was exposed as Daredevil, was trapped in his cell, listening to Foggy's helpless screams as Foggy bled out and Matt sobbed in his cell, knowing that he had failed everyone in his life. I think Foggy came back to life like four months later, revealed to have survived the stabbing and gone into witness protection. (A later storyline had a lot of doubt sown regarding Daredevil's true identity via Iron Fist putting on the costume while Daredevil was in jail, enabling Matt to resume civilian life; even later, another writer had a memory machine erase the world's memory of Daredevil's true identity.)

However, Karen Page died in "Guardian Devil" by Kevin Smith in 1999, and to my astonishment, the comic book Karen has never been resurrected. I'm always 4 - 5 years behind on my comic book reading because I wait for writers' eras to conclude. But I still check Karen's Wikipedia page every few months and Karen persists in being dead, still unresurrected by reality-warping gimcrackery or time travel hokum or ninja voodoo or whatnot. It's been 24 years... but I still think Karen will be back any day now.

Anyway. I'm relieved that Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson will reprise their roles, even if it's briefer than I'd like. And I certainly hope and think Wilson Bethel is coming back, but until there is an official announcement or set photos, I would be cautious.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Very late, but Wilson Bethel is definitely returning as Bullseye. It had been reported earlier, but I never fully believe it until there are photos or official announcements.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/dar … 41493.html

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Well you almost had to canonize the Netflix stuff, because I'm watching Echo and constantly thinking about Fisk's history on those shows.  It's the same characters with the same actors.  Echo, though short, I felt was pretty good.  Entwining the story with Native American mythology was a nice touch, similar to how that was done for Ms. Marvel (Pakistani history). 

Speaking of Ms. Marvel, I put myself through a 2.5 hour continue video game cutscene, also known as The Marvels.  A movie lacking any coherent plot, and just one CGI infused scene after the other.  Ending with another brutal take on the Marvel multiverse by Disney.