Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21 (Page 14 of 14)

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.