Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Grizzlor wrote:

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.

THE MARVELS was one hour and 45 minutes, so it was 1.75 hours. Exaggeration is one thing, but it is quite unreasonable to claim a movie is 42.86 percent longer than its actual running length.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

That might have just been an estimate.  The thing about the Marvels though is that its short runtime is notable because the movie actually feels a bit hacked.  I think, like many of the Phase Four movies, they struggled with reshoots, and I think they struggled to put a coherent movie together.

I think it was fine, but you can see the ghosts of a few storylines that were abandoned that would've probably been included in a longer movie.  And the decision was made to make it be shorter.  I also think covid delays also led to confusion regarding the connections to Secret Invasion, and I think it ended up massively hurting both projects (but I don't know if it would've been enough to save either).

I think the movie was fine, but I think the problem with Phase Four is a lack of overall direction.  I don't think every movie needs to tie into the overall Multiverse Arc (and ironically, this one sorta does), but fair or not, the standalone stories just sorta feel pointless.  Which wasn't necessarily the case in earlier phases.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

It's fine to not like THE MARVELS, I was disappointed by the ongoing blankness of Carol's character and how the movie relied upon Brie Larson's charisma over an actual character arc, and there are numerous awkward dialogue patches such as the part where a planet losing all water is 'resolved' with a line about a science team working to resolve the matter. But a 105 minute movie is not a 150 minute movie. I don't take any issue with someone not enjoying a superhero girls' night, but THE MARVELS, whatever its faults, is a pretty short movie.

On the subject of a superhero girls' night, MADAME WEB is clearly at its strongest when it embraces that it's about a quartet of girlfriends (which is about 40 percent of the movie), and it's at its weakest when it fails to capitalize on the energy of its combined cast (which is about 60 percent). I thankfully did not pay to see MADAME WEB and putting the ticket on a gift card that my work supervisor gave me made me forgive most of its sins. If I'd paid a full $18.65 US dollars to watch this, I might have been angry.

MADAME WEB is, like VENOM and MOBIUS, Sony trying to mine its Spider-Man adjacent intellectual property, creating live-action Spider-Man spin-offs without having an actual live-action Spider-Man from which to spin-off. They keep hiring amazing talent for these films: Tom Hardy, Jared Leto are master thespians, and Dakota Johnson is an amazing performer. But the attempt to work around the absence of Spider-Man while tying into Spider-Man's mythology makes all of these Sony films very shaky and awkward.

Throughout MADAME WEB, there is an eerie forcefulness in director SJ Clarkson's flowing edits and camera movements that pull you into Cassie Webb's head as a psychic with a truly peculiar perspective of the present and the future, and a joyful camaraderie between the Spider-Girls, the teenaged Jessica Cornwall, Mattie Franklin and Anya Corazon, and the way they relate to Dakota Johnson's Cassie as their protector and overbearing sister. Johnson's performance as Cassie captures a hilarious frustated incredulity at her unlocked psychic abilities. There's a wonderful chemistry that the actresses achieve. It's a pleasure to enjoy their superhero girls' night with them.

But then there's the whole movie around them which is baffling. MADAME WEBB takes a quarter of the film to get Cassie and the kids together; the movie then has Cassie leave the kids somewhere else on two separate occasions, starving the film of the screentime needed to create meaningful relationships. The friendships are entirely dependent on the charisma of actresses Sydney Sweeney (Jessica), Isabela Merced (Anya) and Celeste O'Connor (Mattie); the script barely does anything to establish their bond.

There's the way in which the Spider-Man mythology is undermined. MADAME WEB is half-heartedly set in 2003, featuring payphones, Blockbuster, lack of easy access to the internet, limited use of satellite, barely any internet-connected cameras. The only reason for this seems to be to justify why the villain has so much trouble locating the protagonists, and MADAME WEB declares that it's set at least a decade before Spider-Man debuts.

However, the villain of MADAME WEB is Ezekiel Simms (Tahar Rahim), who murdered his way to stealing a mystical spider from Peru that grants him enhanced strength and agility, the ability to transfer toxic venom from his body into victims, and the ability to stick to walls and ceilings. Simms wears a Spider-Man-esque costume... so what we have here is the iconography of Spider-Man being pre-dated by a villain. Peter Parker is no longer the creator of Spider-Man's costume, but a mimic and an imitator. I don't understand why Sony would undermine Peter Parker this way.

The Ezekiel Simms character is extremely murky. We never get a good look at his evil-Spider-Man costume. His powers are apparently stolen (by stealing the spider) from a remote tribe in Peru that lives in the wild and has Spider-Man's powers (although we only really meet one member of this tribe and he exists only for exposition). The movie never explains Ezekiel's wealth and influence or how stealing a spider led to his superpowers. The movie has Ezekiel having prophetic dreams of being killed in the heat of combat by older versions of Jessica, Anya and Mattie who have spider-powers; we never find out how the spider-girls get their powers (the movie ends before it happens) or why they will be fighting Ezekiel in the future.

I'm not sure about some of the changes to the source material. Ezekiel in the comics was a sometimes-friend/sometimes-enemy of Peter Parker; he's been made totally malevolent here. Jessica Carpenter (the second Spider-Woman in the comics) has become Jessica Cornwall. I do think it's good that Mattie Franklin, white in the comics, was cast by the Black and spectacularly fun Celeste O'Connor. Cassandra Web in the comics is much older than Dakota Johnson.

At the halfway mark, the movie loses its grip on its story of an adult woman and three girls bonding in a crazy situation, but regains it for the finale setpieces. However, the film really does not capitalize well enough on Cassie Webb's precognitive powers. The TV show THE DEAD ZONE excelled in its first two seasons at having psychic Johnny Smith see deadly futures and then attempt to rearrange items, people, positions, and situations to avert horrific outcomes.

MADAME WEB has two instances where Cassie uses her powers in with some DEAD ZONE-esque cleverness, but aside from that, Cassie just uses her powers to know where to run away with the girls. The final action sequence gives up entirely on Cassie's precognitive powers and just has Cassie suddenly manifest remote projection and telekinesis rather than attempting something more creative.

SJ Clarkson strikes me as a terrific director; Dakota Johnson strikes me as brilliant actress and both have wrung something superficially enjoyable out of what seems to me like a very poorly developed screenplay. MADAME WEB seems like a weird car crash of six different screenplays written by its six different screenwriters.

There's the story of Dakota Johnson's Cassie Webb discovering she can see the future, there is the story of three teenaged girls being hunted by a spider-themed supervillain, there is the story of a prequel lead-in to Peter Parker, there is the story of a Peruvian tribe of spider-powered humans, there is the story of three superheroines developing spider-powers; there is the story of three teen superheroines led by an adult psychic. Then there's whatever revisions SJ Clarkson made as this was filmed.

All seem to collide into a movie that is deeply confused about what story it is telling, except when it features Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Mercad, and Celeste O'Connor in the same scene on their superhero girls' night. Those are the only scenes where MADAME WEB feels like a movie instead of test footage for a peculiar brand development exercise from Sony as they try to make something profitable out of ancillary, Spider-Man adjacent properties (Madame Web, Spider-Woman, Spider-Girl, Arana, Ezekiel, etc.).

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

So if Sony wanted to just make Spider-Man 4 with Tobey Maguire, are they able to do that?  Or is there something in their deal with Marvel Studios that says they can't use Spider-Man in their own movies?

Since we're going to have multiple Batman projects going on at the same time, I don't see why the public wouldn't be okay with multiple Spider-Man projects.  But I assume they are legally barred from doing that.  Because if Sony wants to do this stuff, that's what they should do.  If not a continuation of Maguire Spider-Man, then a continuation of Garfield Spider-Man.  Or a team-up of them both.

I assume they can't use Holland, or they would have put him in all of these movies.  I just can't imagine that making all these movies makes any sense for Sony.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I do not think there is anything to stop Sony from making another Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield movie, but it might make Marvel disinclined to contribute their services for the Marvel Cinematic Universe SPIDER-MAN films and it might split Sony's resources in opposing directions.

My understanding is that the contract between Marvel and Sony puts Marvel in the lead position for handling the Tom Holland Spider-Man creatively; Sony gets 75 percent of the gross from the movies in exchange for Marvel having 90 to 100 percent control of the Tom Holland version of the character... and Marvel doesn't want the Tom Holland version of Spider-Man in a non-Marvel Cinematic Universe film because they have no say or control over those.

Sony had Holland film one day on the first VENOM movie and Marvel asked Sony to take out the scene and not do that again, and I have to think the legal arrangement meant Sony had to comply.

However, Sony was free to make INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE and ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE without Marvel and feature Donald Glover in a cameo. I don't think there's any contractual restriction on Sony making non-Marvel Studios Spider-Man films, which would mean that Sony could absolutely rehire Maguire or Garfield for SPIDER-MAN IV or THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN III. But they probably don't see the point of competing with a Marvel Studios-directed Spider-Man film for which Sony gets 75 percent of the money.

From what I can tell, Sony doesn't want to lose the film rights to Spider-Man, and to keep it, they are required to periodically make a movie that uses the Spider-Man rights. Every three years and nine months, they have to start production on a Spider-related film; every five years and nine months, they have to release a Spider-related film to theatres. This Spider-related film does not have to be titled Spider-Man or feature Spider-Man in order to meet this legal requirement. The film just has to use some portion of the Spider-Man intellectual property.

If they do not do this, the Spider-Man film rights revert back to Marvel. FOX failed to get a Daredevil movie off the ground and the rights reverted back to Marvel.

Sony won't allow that. And the Tom Holland film series with Marvel was viewed as a temporary arrangement that could end or see its films delayed as Marvel has other superheroes besides Spider-Man. Sony has made VENOM, MORBIUS, VENOM II, MADAME WEB and KRAVEN and PETER PARKER'S NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR'S DENTIST in order to ensure they can hang onto the Spider-Man film rights even if Marvel ends the arrangement or fails to get the next Tom Holland film off the ground by the three years and nine months deadline.

The animated SPIDER-VERSE films, while critically acclaimed and successful without Marvel, take many years to make and could have missed the 69 month release deadline. In contrast, MADAME WEB was shot in five months. The live action Sony films are not creative endeavours as much as contractual requirements to extend the corporation's grip on an intellectual property.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

No one should watch MADAME WEB, but I love this YouTube summary of it from Amanda the Jedi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8OsGrR1tc8

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Yes Amanda is a gas.  The actors confusing Sony with the Disney MCU is quite funny.  Madame Web I think falls victim to exactly what  Marvel is suffering, which is that these obscure characters and off shoots, created by comic scribes because they were writing dozens of books a year and needed content, is not ideal.  Especially when you are missing what they had back then, the principle characters!

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Because you like Amanda the Jedi, my opinion of you just went up by several notches.

The idea that Dakota Johnson didn't realize a Sony superhero movie wasn't a Marvel Studios movie seems too ridiculous to be true... except Johnson, after completing filming on MADAME WEB, fired her agent. There's a rumour that she held her agent responsible for not knowing the difference between Sony and Marvel.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

ireactions wrote:

Because you like Amanda the Jedi, my opinion of you just went up by several notches.

The idea that Dakota Johnson didn't realize a Sony superhero movie wasn't a Marvel Studios movie seems too ridiculous to be true... except Johnson, after completing filming on MADAME WEB, fired her agent. There's a rumour that she held her agent responsible for not knowing the difference between Sony and Marvel.

Her editing skills are impressive, and coming up with jokes is not easy.

She also pointed out how several actors who worked Sony "Marvel" movies had no idea they weren't working for Disney/Marvel, including Matt Smith.  Not unique to Dakota, who has been whining during the entire press tour.  Dakota Johnson is a lousy actress, and is not capable of carrying a film.  The rising star was Sydney Sweeney, who was not the lead and probably should have been.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

What's weird is that Sony is making movies about Madame Web and Morbius and Kraven, but they aren't making stories about Miles Morales or Silk or any of the Spider-Women?  I mean they might even be able to get away with making a Ben Reilly movie, right?

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

It's like Sony has two alternate personalities. The first personality wants to make high quality, culture-redefining work like INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE and ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE, two epic animated films. The second personality wants to make glorified direct to streaming filler for release schedules and doesn't really care about the content as long as it maintains some hold on the film rights.

I think Sony has made two Spider-Verse films featuring Miles Morales and has no reason to undermine or dilute his brand with a live action film when the animated features are so successful.

I think Ben Reilly is too convoluted for a general audience, but VENOM, VENOM II, MORBIUS and MADAME WEB have pretty baffling plots. My sense is that while Sony had some care and concern for the Venom films, MORBIUS and MADAME WEB were just hacked out for Sony to maintain the film rights to Spider-Man in case the next Marvel film runs late (which it is) and the next Spider-Verse movie is delayed (which it is).

I don't think Sony really cares if their live action Spider-Man-adjacent films are successful. They're just making them to keep the Spider-Man film rights.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I don't know what it says about me, but I finally got around to watching MORBIUS and I was grudgingly entertained. Once I accepted that Spider-Man wasn't in this movie, I found the entire film sufficiently compelling. I was drawn in by Jared Leto's performance in a man whose weakness of body is shored up by an unwanted monstrosity. I liked Adria Arjona's vivid screen presence. I enjoyed Daniel Espinosa's fluid, dynamic visual direction.

Matt Smith and Jared Leto had a really sweet and tragic friendship. The movie is a convincing indictment of ableism and voices tremendous outrage at how the sadistic prey upon people with disabilities. I thought it was entertaining and at times a little moving.

Like VENOM and VENOM II, this is a situation where Sony hired some excellent actors, an interesting director, an awkward intellectual property... and to me, the results are kind of okay. I'm in the minority on that. As with Joss Whedon's JUSTICE LEAGUE, the world and superhero fan community completely rejected a film that I thought was adequately enjoyable and at times rather good. I thought it was, like VENOM and VENOM II, a fairly well-made B-movie monster adventure. I'm surprised the majority of the people who saw it loathed it so.

The only thing I really did not like: I thought Matt Smith's performance was too similar to his performance as the Eleventh Doctor on DOCTOR WHO. Given how iconic and recognizable Smith's Doctor is, I would have advised that Matt Smith's Milo character never be clad in a business suit or a collared shirt; that he grow stubble; that his hair be shaved off rather than keeping the lengthy style of the Doctor; that he adopt an American or Scottish or Irish or German accent; that his superpowered character adopt the body language of a boxer rather than a gangly dancer, and that he drop all of the Doctorish-characteristics and disappear into a very different role.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Grizzlor wrote:

The rising star was Sydney Sweeney, who was not the lead and probably should have been.

I've only ever seen Sydney Sweeney in the cancelled-on-a-soft-cliffhanger EVERYTHING SUCKS where she was very much playing the blonde bombshell: flirty, ostentatious, glamourous, hypersexual, but with a lot of hidden depths. Basically a female Jerry O'Connell. I was fascinated to see Sweeney cast as a very restrained, geeky, nerdy, internally-oriented character in MADAME WEB. It's interesting to compare Sweeney and Jerry's approaches to playing a geeky character when they themselves are not geeky.

Jerry's approach was to play Quinn as highly excitable regarding engineering and science, and highly aloof and uncertain when dealing with human vulnerability. Jerry gives Quinn a hyperanalytical presence in the face of danger and problem solving and a certain world weariness in his body language.

Sydney Sweeney has an interesting and equally valid approach: she lets the costuming do all the acting for her. Sweeney in MADAME WEB is wearing a reddish-brown wig that is so heavy on her head that it's clearly weighing her down and adding an unbalanced awkwardness to her body language. Sweeney is wearing non-prescription glasses in the role and they dim Sweeney's eyes and she seems to peer through them uncertainly. Sweeney is wearing a buttoned up to the neck shirt, a hoodie and knee-high stockings and they seem to restrict her arms and legs and force her into very enclosed and guarded postures.

I guess that's one way.

854 (edited by Slider_Quinn21 2024-02-27 10:53:24)

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

ireactions wrote:

I think Ben Reilly is too convoluted for a general audience, but VENOM, VENOM II, MORBIUS and MADAME WEB have pretty baffling plots.

I think Ben Reilly is super convoluted, but I think a Ben Reilly movie could work.  Here's my thinking:

- Do you need to explain the clone saga?  Maybe.  But I think there are creative ways they could do this (kinda like they do in the Spider-Verse movies) to explain it away pretty fast.  You could even use animation so it could hypothetically be Tom Holland's Spider-Man.  Of course, I'd cast a different actor and say the cloning didn't exactly work.  It's a redo of the origin, but I'd just say "I was a clone of Spider-Man....we fought for a little bit...and I realized I was the clone"
- You could move Spider-Man to a different place.  Ben Reilly ended up in Chicago, right?  Kinda like Far From Home was fun to have Spider-Man in a different locale, you could have Ben in a different place with different supporting characters.
- Marvel probably wouldn't object because they're never doing the clone saga, and it's technically a different character
- It's an objectively cool costume that looks different enough from the actual Spider-Man costume
- You could still do a Spider-Man villain.  Chameleon?  Smythe and Spider-Slayers?

Like you said, it can't be any more convoluted than what they've already done.  I would just gloss over the origin, recast, and keep him in a different place, and you essentially have a Spider-Man movie.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

My thinking: Ben's superhero identity is as the Scarlet Spider, and the Scarlet Spider costume is a torn and ripped up hoodie on a makeshift bodysuit. It looks like Ben stole clothes to throw the outfit together. If Sony made a SCARLET SPIDER movie, maybe Ben Reilly wouldn't be a clone of Peter Parker or have any connection to Peter at all. Instead, he's a homeless man who encounters a Spider-Verse style 'glitch' and a box of damaged Spider-equipment falls into his hands along with a damaged Spider-costume.

The equipment and costume let Ben use spider-powers through the technology of the suit. The homeless Ben uses the equipment and costume (with stolen clothes to make up some of what's missing) to try to steal food from a closed bakery only to accidentally uncover and expose a money laundering operation from a criminal gang called the Sindicate, with his spider-agility and stingers and spider-strength. Ben finds a list of Sindicate safehouses and tries to steal enough money to get a motel room while he figures out his next move, but ends up destroying them and becoming infamous to the underworld as the Scarlet Spider scourge of the Sindicate and its operations, while also being hunted by police for vigilantism.

The entire city thinks Ben is some sort otherworldly force of violence and superhuman power... but the Scarlet Spider is a fragile, troubled, traumatized homeless man who does not have a family home for sanctuary or an Aunt May to take care of him or an Uncle Ben to model morality for him or a science background to guide him. He isn't Peter Parker. He is not Spider-Man. He may not even have what it takes to be the Scarlet Spider. Can he rise to the occasion?

My thinking is to look at the aesthetic of the Scarlet Spider costume and make Ben Reilly the homeless superhero.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

That could work.  The only reason I made it a clone is that Sony seems to want to tie their movies to Tom Holland's Spider-Man (even if Tom can't show up), and if they made him a clone (even one that doesn't look like Tom Holland), it leaves the door open that Tom could eventually show up.

"I think it has something to do with Spider-Man"

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I watched Madame Web.  It wasn't great, but I do think something good was hidden.  Spoilers if anyone cares:

S
P
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Okay so Madame Web is convoluted and stupid and no one in the movie (the actors or the characters) seems to want to be there.  But I think some of the ideas in the movie really work. 

Ezekiel Sims is a dumb character, but the *idea* of Ezekiel Sims works.  He's an evil Spider-Man.  We are used to a Spider-Man who is good and willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, but he's also a guy who pulls his punches can hide in the shadows and drop on you from hundreds of feet in the air. 

What if that guy was a bad guy, and there was no Spider-Man so save you?  And what if vague future powers were the only thing that could save you?  In fact, no one gets super powers to save the day.  I think there's something there.  I think the movie just doesn't lean into this concept enough.  If it had focused on being a horror movie, I think it could've been good.  I also think maybe you just focus on one Spider-Woman.  Maybe kick up the gore in the scenes where Cassie doesn't save someone.

And since all the actors have talked about the bait and switch they all seemed to have experienced, I wonder if that was originally the plan.  You can see the bones of something different when you watch it.

Nando v Movies did a video about all the ADR in the movie that I haven't watched yet.  I'm hoping he has some answers on what it could've been.

858 (edited by ireactions 2024-07-29 11:06:21)

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

The timeline of the FOX X-Men universe is one of the most muddled in existence: in certain movies, characters are too young or shouldn't have been born yet; some characters are duplicated; and backstories don't seem to line up. I think I can offer an explanation: time travel and altering history in X-Men doesn't result in linear branching, but instead, intersecting timelines.

But let's go through the biggest timeline problems first.

The Originals

The first four X-Men films (X-MEN, X2, X-MEN: THE LAST STAND and the prequel X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE) offer a reasonably cohesive sequence of events for the X-Men from 1979 to 2006 (with flashbacks for Wolverine going back to 1832).

However, beginning with FIRST CLASS (2011), set in the 1960s, some mild gaffes emerge: Xavier and Mystique didn't acknowledge each other in first three films but are now adoptive siblings in this prequel. FIRST CLASS also features Moira MacTaggert and Emma Frost as adult women in the 1960s... but an adult Moira was seen in the 2006 THE LAST STAND and a teen Emma was in the 1979-set X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE film.

The first meeting of Magneto and Xavier as adults does not match Xavier saying he met Magneto as a teenager and saying Magneto helped Xavier build Cerebro. And when Xavier uses Cerebro to find mutants, he sees children who look like Cyclops, Storm and Jean Grey -- who, being in their 20s and 30s in the first three X-MEN films set in the 2000s, should not even have been born yet in the 1960s (although the presence of an 18 year old Cyclops in the 1979 ORIGINS movie confuses this).

THE WOLVERINE (2013) doesn't seem to have any continuity issues with previous films, being focused on Wolverine, although Professor Xavier is shown to be alive and in his own body when THE LAST STAND implied that he had been put into someone else's body.

First Class: Reboot or Prequel?

The intention was for FIRST CLASS to be a reboot with Easter eggs cameos from the previous film series, but the sequel DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2014) rescinds this. DAYS OF FUTURE PAST features the original cast of the first three films and the FIRST CLASS cast, making FIRST CLASS a prequel, timeline be damned. DAYS OF FUTURE PAST also shows Professor Xavier alive as he was in THE WOLVERINE with no explanation, THE LAST STAND be damned.

The end of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST shows a bright future for mutantkind in the year 2024. The original film actors are used to play the 2024 selves of the prequel actors: James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as Xavier and Magneto in 1973 will indeed become Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen by the 2000s, and the presence of James Marsden and Famke Janssen as Scott and Jean establishes that the child versions glimpsed in FIRST CLASS will become the adult versions of the original films.

Too Young or Not Yet Born

However, with the next X-Men film, APOCALYPSE (2016), we hit a strange situation: it's set in 1983 and features Cyclops, Storm, Jean and Nightcrawler as teenagers, but 1983 is about a decade too early; they would have been a decade older in the original films if they were teens in the 1980s. This might be dismissed as the original cast not playing their actual ages.

But even more peculiar: the winged mutant Angel is a teenager in 1983 -- but the character was already in the 2003-set THE LAST STAND, and he was a teenager there too. At this point, APOCALYPSE is showing characters in 1983 who should either be much younger or shouldn't even exist yet, and there's no reason why the time travel adventure of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST would make people exist earlier and still synchronize with the 2024 happy ending of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST.

That said, X-MEN (2000) claims to be set in "the near future", not 2000, but claiming it takes place after 2000 would mean that the APOCALYPSE characters should be even younger.

Then we come to the 2016 DEADPOOL movie which features a version of Deadpool that is separate from the version seen in X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE. In addition, Colossus, who previously appeared as a teenager in X-2 (2003), is shown as an adult in this 2016 film, but Colossus now has a heavy Russian accent. Presumably, DAYS OF FUTURE PAST meant that Deadpool and Colossus had different lives, and these contradictions are justified.

The Logan Outlier

The next continuity peculiarity is LOGAN, a 2017 film set in 2029 which tells the story of Wolverine's death. The movie confusingly claims that no new mutants have been born since 2004 thanks to X-gene suppressants in the food supply, and that all the X-Men aside from Xavier and Logan are dead due to Xavier losing control of his powers. This simply does not track with the DAYS OF FUTURE PAST 2024 ending showing mutant children as young as 10 at the X-Mansion, and Wolverine and Xavier are made up to look much older than five years.

There doesn't seem to be any explanation for how Wolverine's mutant powers and healing factor, as strong as ever in even in the dark future of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST's 2023, is suddenly failing in 2029 when Logan has been alive since 1845 and healed from all injuries. (We'll come back to this later.)

Director James Mangold insisted that LOGAN was set after DAYS OF FUTURE PAST while actor Hugh Jackman said that LOGAN was set in a parallel timeline.

Then we come to DARK PHOENIX (2019), set in 1992... where Xavier and Magneto still look like the youthful James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender even though we're only eight years away from the 2000-set X-MEN movie where they looked like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Xavier and Magneto are far too young and Scott and Jean are a little too young. McAvoy and Fassbender were playing the 60s versions of Xavier and Magneto in FIRST CLASS (2011), and have only aged eight years by DARK PHOENIX (2019) while the 2019 film is set three decades after FIRST CLASS.

Too Early or Too Soon?

DEADPOOL II further confuses things: set in 2018, we see Deadpool exploring the X-Mansion wondering where the X-Men are. One shot of the X-Men team shows that they're avoiding him -- and the shot shows the young X-Men of APOCALYPSE and DARK PHOENIX when the 2018 film should in fact show the adult cast of the original three movies. Also strangely, despite DEADPOOL II being set in 2018, Deadpool refers to the death of Wolverine in LOGAN which was established as 2029.

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (2024) further confuses things: set in 2024, it declares that the events of LOGAN and Wolverine's death have already happened, even though this third Deadpool film is set five years too early for Logan to be dead.

Furthermore, referring to the events of LOGAN as being in the past, the second and third Deadpool movies both feature Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Colossus, Yukio, all X-Men at Professor Xavier's school. This is despite LOGAN declaring that all of Xavier's students were dead, that no X-Men aside from Wolverine and the Professor were still alive, and the X-Mansion was no longer in operation. This simply doesn't track with all three Deadpool films presenting the X-Men as being at their 1970s - 1990s ages (somehow) and with the X-Men being very much an active superhero team and school.

What the hell is going on here?

Why do the prequels fail to line up with the originals? Why are characters born too early in the prequels? Why are characters duplicated? How can mutant births have been suppressed since 2004 when the X-Mansion is filled with young teen mutants in 2024? How can the X-Men be dead and their team shut down in LOGAN only for the second and third Deadpool films to refer to Logan's death as a past event while featuring an active X-Mansion and three young X-students?

Time Travel

The answer seems to be in two parts. First: there's time travel in DAYS OF FUTURE PAST to change the future. And in DEADPOOL II (2018), Deadpool gets his hands on a time machine which sends him to alternate timelines as well as back and forth on his timeline. He saves his girlfriend Vanessa and his friend Peter from death. He then crosses into a parallel universe and shoots actor Ryan Reynolds dead before Reynolds can perform in the GREEN LANTERN movie. He crosses into the X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE film and kills his alternate counterpart.

In the extended cut, Deadpool then goes back to 1889 and attempts to kill an infant Adolf Hitler in a maternity ward. Deadpool has clearly been engaged in extensive changes to the timeline (whatever the hell that timeline even is).

There's a lot of time travel here, and non linear thinking offers a theory.

Batman Displays His Knowledge

And in a separate universe, those of us who watched THE FLASH (2023) were treated to an interesting scene where Batman (Michael Keaton) explains time travel to Barry Allen.

BATMAN: "You're from an alternate timeline?"

BARRY: "Yes."

BATMAN: "In which you and I are friends?"

BARRY: "Yeah, you're -- you're, like, probably my best friend."

BATMAN: "Yeah?"

BARRY: "Well, but you're a bit -- You're, uh... Chronologically different. Older. And that-- that's what I can't understand; I traveled back in time from here to here, and yet somehow, everything's all changed... back here. Like, when you were born, so --"

BATMAN: "Well, time isn't linear, right?"

BARRY: "Right."

BATMAN: "At some point, you probably saw a movie that told you that if you went back and changed the past, you'd create a kind of a branched timeline."

(Batman holds up two strands of uncooked spaghetti. He places them on the table, side by side in parallel.)

BATMAN: "New present. (lightly bending the second strand to curve away from the first, creating a Y shape) And new future."

BARRY: "Yeah."

BATMAN: "Well, time doesn't work like that. That's not how time works. When you go back and change the past, you create a fulcrum."

(Batman re-positions the spaghetti so that instead of forming a Y-shape, they now intersect on the table and form an X-shape.)

BATMAN: "You put yourself on a whole 'nother strand of spaghetti. New future. New past. It's retrocausal. Echo goes both ways. Actually, echoes many ways. What you did was: you changed the future. And you changed the past. If a person is stupid enough to mess with time, what you eventually end up with is the multiverse. Some strands runs almost parallel. There will be inevitable intersections. And others that are just wildly divergent. What it is --"

(Batman pours a pot of cooked spaghetti into a bowl, the strands now curved and intertwined with each other in layers throughout the bowl.)

BATMAN: "Is a hot mess."

(Batman pours spaghetti sauce on the pasta.)

I suspect Batman's explanation of why changing the past changes time in both directions applies to the FOX X-Men 'universe' which, as Batman would point out, has become a multiverse. Batman offers a theory of time travel where branches do not form a Y shape, but instead form an X and then see multiple Xes -- intersections -- resulting from time travel.

Batman's implication is that when Barry changed the past by saving his mother, he 'rotated' his original timeline, causing it to intersect with the universe of the 1989 BATMAN movie, leading to Ben Affleck being replaced by Michael Keaton. When Barry changes the past again at the end of THE FLASH, he rotated the timeline once more and it now intersected with the timeline of BATMAN AND ROBIN (1997) and Keaton was replaced with George Clooney.

Parallel Lines

My guess is that the X-Men 'timeline' is actually five different timelines, and every odd shift in the film is due to Wolverine and Deadpool's changes causing temporal rotation.

The first X-MEN timeline is the first three films (X-MEN, X2, THE LAST STAND and the first two Wolverine films (X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE and THE WOLVERINE). This first timeline also includes the dark future scenes of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST in which the X-Men are on the losing side of the human-mutant war as the Sentinels are exterminating all mutants.

The second timeline is FIRST CLASS, and this timeline is a parallel reality from the first timeline. This second timeline has a different version of Xavier's childhood (Mystique) and Xavier and Magneto's friendship. This second timeline has Cyclops, Storm and Jean already young children in the 1960s.

Temporal Rotation and Temporal Intersection

When Wolverine travels from the dark future of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST to 1973 to prevent the Sentinel program, Wolverine finds himself in a past that is now a combination of the first and second timelines, the result of temporal rotation. Merely occupying his past self's body has led to a temporal intersection between the first and second timeline. Xavier and Magneto's lives, pre-1973, have had the first timeline's version replaced with the version in the second timeline.

When Wolverine changes the past so that the Sentinel program is prevented, there is a second instance of temporal rotation. In addition to creating the happy 2024 ending where mutantkind thrives, the timeline has now intersected with a different X-Men timeline in which Scott, Storm, Jean, Angel, and Nightcrawler were now born in the 70s and teenagers in the 80s, creating a third timeline.

Children of the Atom

Then we have the time travel events of DEADPOOL II. Each instance of time travel and each instance of Deadpool changing history has rotated the timeline and created a new intersection each time. As a result, DARK PHOENIX sees the third timeline intersect with an alternate timeline. An alternate timeline in which, I theorize, the radiation that empowers mutants was released at greater magnitudes in the 1960s.

In FIRST CLASS, the mutant Sebastian Shaw declares: "We are the children of the atom. Radiation gave birth to mutants. What will kill the humans will only make us stronger." I would suggest that increased radiation exposure in this timeline means that mutants in this version of reality age at a slower rate than in previous timelines.

I would further suggest that LOGAN is set in a timeline where the radiation that created mutants was significantly lower than in other timelines, meaning Logan's healing factor in this timeline never reached the higher peaks of alternate Logans.

Final Timeline

Because DEADPOOL II has Deadpool travel and alter history so many times, the events of LOGAN, which are set in a parallel universe, begin to intersect with the current version of the X-Men universe.

As a result, we now have a fifth timeline which includes a slightly different version of the events of LOGAN, one where Wolverine gave his life to save Laura Kinney -- but in a universe where X-Men team are very much an active superhero team and school with Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Yukio and Colossus, and mutants are still being born.

Presumably, the Logan of this timeline was exposed to some X-gene suppressant that prevented him from healing after saving Laura.

As a result, DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE is set after Logan died to save Laura, but the X-Men and Professor Xavier are still around, and they're aging very slowly (as indicated by James McAvoy playing Xavier in DEADPOOL II).

Anyway. Batman's theory of temporal rotation and intersection is what I'm going with.

If you read all of this, I owe you a Coke.

859 (edited by Slider_Quinn21 2024-07-30 08:27:52)

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

I'll take my coke when I move to Canada. smile

Didn't you originally write a long post about Deadpool and Wolverine?  Maybe you just started with "I saw Deadpool and Wolverine" and I jumped out.  Let me talk briefly about the X-Men and then get into Deadpool and Wolverine, which I saw last night.

Timeline Stuff

I think Days of Future Past is a really cool movie.  I think I love the concept of the movie more than the movie itself, but I think it's cool that they had these prequel characters that everyone loved and they tied it together with these later versions people already loved.  And they tied it together with this mostly-immortal character that everyone universally loved.  I know it isn't fully comic accurate, but I think it makes a lot of sense.  Wolverine was alive in both periods and could be the bridge.

And because it's a cool idea, I'm willing to suspend my belief that McAvoy and Stewart are the same guy.  I think the problem with Days of Future Past is that they didn't stop there.  Like Logan is a great ending for Wolverine, I think Days of Future Past could've been a great ending to X-Men.  I understand striking while the iron is hot with the First Class cast and grabbing characters like McKellen and Stewart while they're still young-ish, but I wonder if they should've done a trilogy of "young X-Men" films set in the 60s and 70s and finished with Days of Future Past.

You know me, loving glut in movies, but it actually might've been cool to have parallel movies setting up Days of Future Past.  A trilogy of "First Class" movies setting up Sentinels in the background, and a post-apocalyptic movie with Sentinels taking out mutants.  Give the older cast one more solo movie to set this movie up, now that interest was re-ignited in the X-Men and give fans an Empire Strikes Back moment where the heroes lose.  Show the young cast setting up a world where mutants can thrive and show the older cast showing a world where it all falls apart.  Then, Days of Future Past can hit the ground running without any exposition.  But that might've been too much.

Because I think you can suspend your belief that the characters will age to look like their "original trilogy" selves, and maybe there are some suspensions of belief that can happen.  Maybe there are two characters named Emma that have diamond powers.  Maybe there were Cyclops-looking mutants in the 60s that weren't Scott Summers.  Maybe there are two guys named Bolivar Trask that look completely different.

I'm willing to throw all the hate on Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix for taking it to the extreme and bringing the timelines too close together.  It's fun to do period pieces in the 80s and 90s but if they wanted to move to a younger version of the cast, they should've just stayed in the 60s.

The X-Men Films

In anticipation of Deadpool and Wolverine, I watched three movies: Deadpool 2 (I've seen the first Deadpool multiple times but I'd only seen 2 once), Logan, and First Class.  For the rest of the movies, I watched summaries on YouTube.  And while I've seen every entry in the series, I don't know how many times I've sat down and watched most of these films a second time.  There were swaths of the movies that I didn't remember.  The original trilogy has been on cable TV for most of my life, and I've seen bits and pieces here and there.  But that's about it.

The original trilogy feels of its time, dated in a way.  The Wolverine Origins movie is fun in places but pretty bad.  The Wolverine is really good but also very forgettable.  The last two McAvoy movies are bad and forgettable.  New Mutants was just nothing.  So to me, this is a series with some real high points but a lot of low points.  I think the three movies I watched were all really good.  The ones I skipped could probably be skipped for a reason.

At the same time, you can't really skip stuff.  The podcast The Weekly Planet noted how funny it would be if you'd watched the Wolverine solo trilogy (Origins, The Wolverine, and Logan) and that's it.  It's one character who literally progresses from youth to death in three movies, but it would be nonsense.  It's a solo trilogy that depends on you knowing characters that don't appear in any of the movies of the trilogy.  You have to have seen The Last Stand for The Wolverine to make sense.  And Professor X makes cameos in the first two movies without any real clarity on who he is, and then he's one of the most important characters in Logan.  There's an end-credits scene in The Wolverine that gets followed up in a different movie.  If you don't see that movie, two characters you don't know show up and warn Logan about an apocalypse that happens off screen, I guess.

Even just tonally, it would be bizarre.  One is a full-on action movie.  The Wolverine is about a man trying to understand his place in the world.  Logan is an R-rated movie about a man who has lost everything.

So even the forgetful entries are important if you want the whole picture.  And while not as successful, there are more X-Men films than Star Wars films.  It's a huge series of films that technically all tie together.  It's impressive.

Deadpool lives in his own space

Deadpool is hard to categorize.  I think it wants to fit in, but I think Deadpool has to live in his own space.  Not only because Wade breaks the fourth wall but because its a comedy.  The scene from Deadpool 2 breaks continuity but it's a sight gag solely for the audience.  I think it's a little bizarre that they went with Colossus in the first place, but I guess you could still argue that those are two characters with similar powers and the exact same name?

Then there's the weird stuff.  I'm not sure how Deadpool's powers work.  He knows he's in a movie (or a comic book) and can talk to the audience.  He's aware that other characters are played by actors, and he's even aware that he's played by an actor named Ryan Reynolds.  Knowing that is one thing.  But has he "seen" X-Men First Class or is he just supernaturally aware that it exists?  Did he see Logan, or does he just somehow know what happened?  Does he gets some sort of pop culture data dump of movies that the audience has seen?  Or can he pop into the Fourth Wall Cinema and actually see these movies?  And when he has the music box of dead Logan from Logan, is that real?  Or just inside Wade's head.

I'll get into a little more in Deadpool and Wolverine spoilers

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Continuing on with Wade's powers...I think (but I don't know if this is consistent) that no one can hear Wade's fourth wall comments.  Either Wade doesn't say them out loud, or whatever he does say out loud makes sense in context.  Because no characters ever react to them.  When Wade is asking which version of the Professor he's going to see or asks Cable about the DC universe, no one ever stops to question what the heck Wade is talking about.  So I have to assume he's either saying nothing or saying something the characters wouldn't think anything less of.  Maybe he's whining something else to Colossus or accusing Cable of having bad breath or something.

But Cassandra Nova gets inside Wade's head.  Couldn't she see whatever is going on?  I think an interesting subplot for Deadpool and Wolverine could've been Cassandra trying to harness whatever fourth wall power that Deadpool has.  I'm assuming, in universe, that she might've just assumed they were the rumblings of a maniac.  But it's hard to say.

Deadpool MCU Chaos

One interesting scene at the beginning of the movie happens when Wade interviews with Happy Hogan to join the Avengers.  It's a funny scene that's played for both laughs and seriousness.  Wade is silly but Happy takes the process seriously.  But how did Wade get there?  Deadpool 2 implies that Wade can somehow travel in time back to our world so did he use the Cable time travel device to travel to the MCU?

The movie doesn't explain and doesn't seem to care.  It also doesn't quite explain why Wade has a change of heart later in the movie.  If he had been accepted into the MCU, would he have taken his friends with him?  Or would he have left them all behind?  Or does he truly only care about Vanessa, who he would've brought with him?  Would he have been okay leaving his other friends in their universe if it meant that they got to live?  The movie doesn't really say.

General movie thoughts

- Overall I really liked it.  Very fun.  Very funny.  Good payoffs.  I think Chris Evans is an underrated actor because he has a completely different posture as Johnny and Steve.  Even when it was implied that Evans was Cap, it didn't feel like Cap.  I thought that was a little underrated.  I also appreciated that I got some payoff from watching 50+ movies in these combined series, whether it be from cameos or easter eggs or whatever.

- I've never seen Elektra.  I think that was the only film that I hadn't seen.  I obviously haven't seen the Channing Tatum Gambit film, but duh.  I was surprised that Deadpool didn't comment on the fact that Tatum's movie never came out.  I also assume that Tatum's accent was awkward on purpose, but it got me thinking what Tatum's Remy accent would've actually been.

- I'm actually a little surprised that there weren't more cameos.  Like with Multiverse of Madness, I was led to believe there would be more cameos so I left a little disappointed.  Unless I missed something, Azazel was the only character from the First Class series to show up.  I think Pyro and Sabretooth were the only original trilogy characters to show up.  Neither version of Scott or Storm or Jean or Mystique or Charles or Magneto or Beast.  Only Johnny from either version of the Fantastic Four.  Neither version of Daredevil.  Some of these characters were referenced but didn't show up.  I get that the movie budget was $200 million, but I'm still surprised.  Some of these actors were certainly available and could've done a quick appearance.  I wasn't upset - just a little surprised.

- I did like the love letter to all the movies in the credits, including some of the smaller or forgotten movies.

- I was a little surprised they allowed the "there will only be one Blade" joke.  Not because Feige would censor Reynolds but because that one had to sting.

- I was a little surprised that Lady Deadpool didn't take off her mask, and I'm a little surprised that Deadpool didn't reference that it was Blake Lively.

- One of the few references I didn't get was all the alternate Deadpools since I'm not super familiar with the comic version of the character.

- I'm very surprised that Deadpool stayed in his own space.  I thought, for sure, that they'd end up in the MCU universe, and I'm a bit shocked that they left him where he was.  It does sort of feel like the end of the character (although you gotta think he shows up in Secret Wars).  At the same time, I guess it makes sense.  I think Reynolds wants to come back and could play this movie a bunch more, but even in Secret Wars, I don't know how the character works.  Would we really want him to break the Fourth Wall in an Avengers movie?  And would a PG-13 version of the character even make sense in an Avengers movie except as a sight gag?  So does it make sense for the next movie (if there is one) to just be a Wade solo movie?  Or maybe it's another buddy film where someone else stumbles into Wade's universe and goes on an adventure?  Spider-Man would be fun, but I assume that would be a rights nightmare.  Wade and another version of Johnny would be fun.  Maybe Wade and another fourth wall breaker in She-Hulk?  Or just bring back Cable and do the X-Force movie.  I just think this would be hard to top.

- After all the Hawkeye jokes, I wish he would've been giving the interview.  Although more Favreau is good.

- So is X-23 the one from Logan?  It was implied, but I really don't know.

- I guess it's also official that Logan is in the Deadpool universe?  Is it possible that Logan and Deadpool is in the same universe but that the rest of the X-Men series is in a separate one?  Deadpool obviously references mutants and the X-Men.  Russell could've been born before the last mutant had been born and there are no mutant kids in the rest of the Deadpool movies (I don't think?).  No one talks about it so maybe it happened that way?  I prefer for Logan to be its own thing, but I don't think it breaks too much if it was just Logan and Deadpool and everything else was separate?

- I was pretty proud of myself.  I went into this movie fairly blind.  I saw parts of the first trailer (the Super Bowl one) but I didn't see any of the subsequent trailers.  I didn't watch any of the TV spots (except when they popped on before I could change it).  I accidentally saw some of the more widely-spread set pictures (Logan and Deadpool fighting in front of the Fox marquee, obviously Logan in his yellow costume, etc).  But I avoided hearing about a bunch of the cameos, even though I could've guessed.  And that might've played into my expectations to see more.

- All in all, I really liked it.  I thought it was fun, had some good action, some good jokes, and was worth the wait.  I don't know if it means that the MCU is back because it feels like such a one-off thing.  I'm also a little surprised they didn't set anything up with the movie (new actor playing Wolverine, any mutant thing in the MCU, new Fantastic Four, etc) but I could see how it might be weird to have this movie fairly separated from the MCU and then tease anything legitimately connected.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Sorry: I originally started my timeline essay with (I'm paraphrasing): "I saw DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE and I think anyone who liked the first two DP movies will adore the third one. It's not really my thing, but I think people will like it. The movie was too violent for my taste, but that comedic violence is what people enjoy about these films. But it made me think about how the X-Men's movie timeline can fit together." I accidentally erased this when going back later and adding in the subheadings.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

One interesting scene at the beginning of the movie happens when Wade interviews with Happy Hogan to join the Avengers.  It's a funny scene that's played for both laughs and seriousness.  Wade is silly but Happy takes the process seriously.  But how did Wade get there?  Deadpool 2 implies that Wade can somehow travel in time back to our world so did he use the Cable time travel device to travel to the MCU?

The movie doesn't explain and doesn't seem to care.  It also doesn't quite explain why Wade has a change of heart later in the movie.  If he had been accepted into the MCU, would he have taken his friends with him?  Or would he have left them all behind?  Or does he truly only care about Vanessa, who he would've brought with him?  Would he have been okay leaving his other friends in their universe if it meant that they got to live?  The movie doesn't really say.

In DEADPOOL II, Deadpool uses Cable's time machine to visit parallel realities. He visits the parallel timeline of X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE (which presented a totally different origin for Deadpool and cannot be the current timeline). He visits our reality at a past moment in time when Ryan Reynolds was just about to play Green Lantern in a feature film and shoots Reynolds dead. And then he visits the Marvel Cinematic Universe to see if he can join the Avengers (and presumably get paid in cash that he would take back to his own universe).

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

I'm not sure how Deadpool's powers work.  He knows he's in a movie (or a comic book) and can talk to the audience.  He's aware that other characters are played by actors, and he's even aware that he's played by an actor named Ryan Reynolds.  Knowing that is one thing.  But has he "seen" X-Men First Class or is he just supernaturally aware that it exists?  Did he see Logan, or does he just somehow know what happened?  Does he gets some sort of pop culture data dump of movies that the audience has seen?  Or can he pop into the Fourth Wall Cinema and actually see these movies?  And when he has the music box of dead Logan from Logan, is that real?  Or just inside Wade's head.

I think (but I don't know if this is consistent) that no one can hear Wade's fourth wall comments.  Either Wade doesn't say them out loud, or whatever he does say out loud makes sense in context.  Because no characters ever react to them.  When Wade is asking which version of the Professor he's going to see or asks Cable about the DC universe, no one ever stops to question what the heck Wade is talking about.

In terms of Deadpool breaking the fourth wall -- I have not read every DEADPOOL comic, but I read have read the entire 1997 - 2003 run (DEADPOOL #1 - 69, AGENT X #1 - 15) and the 2004 - 2008 CABLE & DEADPOOL series (#1 - 50).

My take: Deadpool is insane. He is functional but delusional, and most people around him know it. When Deadpool tells someone he last saw them in a previous issue and gives the issue number or mentions the writer or the scripts, nobody around him knows what he's talking about and they ignore it and dismiss it. In DEADPOOL #34, Deadpool reveals a 'secret' that he claims he's never told anyone (but has probably told everyone):

"None of this is actually happening. There is a man at a typewriter. This is all his twisted imagination."

But within the fictional reality of the Marvel comic books, this is not literally true. It is a coping mechanism, the means by which Deadpool can endure all of his trauma-induced mental illness and all the genetic alterations to his body and brain in the supersolder program.

But to step into my own personal interpretation of Deadpool which is not necessarily shared by anyone who has ever written for the character: my sense is that Deadpool's mental and physical injuries and traumas have made him tap into a form of cosmic awareness. Cosmic awareness, in the Marvel Universe, is a superpower that enables an awareness and understanding of the innate functions and events of the universe.

The Silver Surfer's superpower is the power cosmic, which is the ability to harness the lifeforce and energy of all things in the universe, which occasionally taps into cosmic awareness.

I think Deadpool's mental illness and Deadpool's perception reduces his limited cosmic awareness to a simpler understanding: the sense of the past and present being a superhero comic book. Within the fictional reality, the sense of being a character in a comic book is not a literal truth, but an allegory for the complexities of underlying complexities of existence and the nature of reality itself.

Transplanted to a feature film, Deadpool's simplified cosmic awareness becomes an awareness of the tropes of the superhero movie genre and the ability to view and address the fourth wall. However, Deadpool's cosmic awareness has to have limitations. The character couldn't function without them.

Deadpool can't foresee future events (or he would have saved Vanessa before he got a time machine). Deadpool never has sufficient cosmic awareness to change the narrative or use any abilities against enemies that he wouldn't already have without cosmic awareness. His actions and abilities without cosmic awareness would be largely the same; his cosmic awareness merely enables him to retain the ability to function after all the horror and madness he's experienced.

DEADPOOL II is set in 2018; if Deadpool is aware of Logan's death in the LOGAN movie set in 2029, I'd suggest that Deadpool's cosmic awareness is making him aware of a parallel timeline. Deadpool's cosmic awareness has also made him notice that in the present day, Professor Xavier sometimes looks like Patrick Stewart and sometimes looks like James McAvoy (as Xavier did in DEADPOOL II).

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

So is X-23 the one from Logan?  It was implied, but I really don't know. I guess it's also official that Logan is in the Deadpool universe?  Is it possible that Logan and Deadpool is in the same universe but that the rest of the X-Men series is in a separate one?  Deadpool obviously references mutants and the X-Men.  Russell could've been born before the last mutant had been born and there are no mutant kids in the rest of the Deadpool movies (I don't think?).  No one talks about it so maybe it happened that way?  I prefer for Logan to be its own thing, but I don't think it breaks too much if it was just Logan and Deadpool and everything else was separate?

My take, going by Batman's Theory of Temporal Rotation and Temporal Intersection:

LOGAN (2017) and its 2029 setting where no new mutants have been born since 2004 is a parallel timeline to all the other X-Men movies, including DEADPOOL.

The main point of discrepancy for me: Logan's healing factor is failing, but given that Logan went from 1832 to 2024 in DAYS OF FUTURE PAST with no issues, it doesn't make sense for his mutant power to suddenly diminish with age in 2029. This has to be a separate universe where mutant physiology functions differently.

In FIRST CLASS (2011), Sebastian Shaw declares: "We are the children of the atom. Radiation gave birth to mutants. What will kill the humans will only make us stronger." James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender play Xavier and Magneto in FIRST CLASS (set in 1961), DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (set in 1973), APOCALYPSE (set in 1983) and DARK PHOENIX (set in 1992). In the 31 years that have passed, Xavier and Magneto only look eight years older (because only eight years had passed in real life). Xavier looks to be in his late 30s, Magneto looks to be in his early 40s; they are clearly nowhere near becoming the men in their 60s that Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen played in the 2000 X-MEN.

It would seem to me that the McAvoy/Fassbender versions of Xavier and Magneto exist in a parallel timeline where the radiation that created mutants was at a much higher level than other timelines, possibly due to variations in Earth's atmosphere leading to higher cosmic radiation exposure. "Radiation... will only make us stronger."

As a result, mutants in this FIRST CLASS timeline age more slowly than in the X-MEN (2000) timeline.

In contrast: the LOGAN film, I suggest, takes place in a timeline where the radiation that created mutants was much weaker than the other timelines we've seen, possibly because in this timeline, the Earth's atmosphere more heavily filtered the specific spectrums that led to mutants. As a result, mutant powers in this timeline are not as strong, mutant births could be prevented by putting X-gene suppressants into the food supply, and Wolverine's healing factor, while keeping him alive from 1832 to 2029, gradually diminished due to age.

I would posit that Laura Kinney (X-23) existed in the LOGAN timeline. After Wolverine died, the TVA moved her into the void which exists outside of time, having no direct correlation to linear time.

Elsewhere, Wolverine, Cable, Logan and Deadpool were having time travel adventures. Each instance of travelling to the past or future created a temporal intersection. Each time they changed history, their timeline intersected with a parallel timeline and merged to form a new one.

DAYS OF FUTURE PAST creates a version of 2024 where the X-Men are alive and well and the Xavier school is thriving and Xavier looks like Patrick Stewart.

In DEADPOOL II, however, it's 2018 and Deadpool is aware that Wolverine is dead -- and I'm going to suggest that's his cosmic awareness making him aware of the LOGAN parallel timeline. Xavier also shows up, and he looks like James McAvoy, when in 2018, he should look like Patrick Stewart. I'm going to suggest that Cable's time travel has altered the timeline again, delaying Xavier's shift from McAvoy to Patrick Stewart even further.

And then Deadpool engages in a lot of time travel at the end of DEADPOOL II. I suggest that this causes the LOGAN timeline to merge with the current timeline, but the events of LOGAN are altered. It's now a past event before 2018 as opposed to a future event in 2029. Logan's healing factor would have failed for other reasons (maybe he was poisoned by a gene suppresant that his healing factor couldn't fight), and he died in a world where mutantkind is still growing.

Also, Laura is still in the void, and Laura remains in the void until rescued in WOLVERINE & DEADPOOL.

BATMAN: "When you go back and change the past, you create a fulcrum."

(Batman re-positions the spaghetti so that instead of forming a Y-shape, they now intersect on the table and form an X-shape.)

BATMAN: "You put yourself on a whole 'nother strand of spaghetti. New future. New past. It's retrocausal. Echo goes both ways. Actually, echoes many ways. What you did was: you changed the future. And you changed the past. If a person is stupid enough to mess with time, what you eventually end up with is the multiverse. Some strands runs almost parallel. There will be inevitable intersections. And others that are just wildly divergent. What it is --"

(Batman pours a pot of cooked spaghetti into a bowl, the strands now curved and intertwined with each other in layers throughout the bowl.)

BATMAN: "Is a hot mess."

(Batman pours spaghetti sauce on the pasta.)

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

So MCU is steaming forward with what I still say is a completely unsellable franchise, The Fantastic Four.  Their powers are so outdated and dumb, including the villain, and THIS is the mini-franchise you're pinning the next two years on?  RDJ's turn as Dr. Doom will be lame, as it will be very difficult for the audience NOT to view him as Tony Stark.  Not to mention the insane money he's being paid.  Can the Russo brothers truly save this mess?  Thunderbolts looks buffoonish.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

Grizzlor wrote:

So MCU is steaming forward with what I still say is a completely unsellable franchise, The Fantastic Four.  Their powers are so outdated and dumb, including the villain, and THIS is the mini-franchise you're pinning the next two years on?  RDJ's turn as Dr. Doom will be lame, as it will be very difficult for the audience NOT to view him as Tony Stark.  Not to mention the insane money he's being paid.  Can the Russo brothers truly save this mess?  Thunderbolts looks buffoonish.

I don't know about that.  I think Fantastic Four can be a big hit, and the 60s retro-future could be fun.  The MCU desperately needs fresh blood and new ideas, and this is one of their best bets.  I mean they made Thor work.  They made Guardians of the Galaxy into one of the best parts of the MCU.  Captain America is pretty lame, and they made two of his movies into some of the best in the franchise. 

Remember that the MCU started with the junk that was lying around that no one else wanted.  No one knew who Iron Man was in 2007, and 12 years later, there were grown men crying at his death.

The Fantastic Four might not have succeeded in the past (although the early 2000s movies aren't awful), but they have a huge following for a reason.  They still have to make a good movie, but I think Feige is turning the ship around.  There's almost no new TV coming down the pike, and they're streamlining the movies.

******

On RDJ.  A lot of people are mad about this, but I think we need to figure out what this is before we get upset.  Remember that Dr Doom rarely shows his face.  Could this be a situation where Downey Jr becomes unrecognizable (think his recent job on The Sympathizer) and then it's just voice work?  And while it seems desperate, people forget that RDJ is a legitimately great actor.  He did a bunch of popcorn movies, but he's one of the best actors on the planet.  And they need a very strong actor to play Doom, or it isn't going to work.

So he might be played by RDJ but you might not even know.  He could disappear into the role and truly become Doom.

Alternatively, there's also two things at play:

- RDJ could be playing a variant of Tony that goes by the name Victor Von Doom.  Maybe Tony's parents fled to Latveria, took over there, and had a son named Victor instead of Tony.  So you have this familiar face that the Avengers are going to have this emotional connection that Victor can take advantage of.  How would Peter, for example, punch a guy with Tony's face?  If Victor somehow knows about Tony, he could literally take over the world by assuming Tony's identity and just taking over.  The world would hand itself to him.  So it adds a second layer to a typical bad guy if they know he's technically Tony.

- It could be a trick.  Maybe it's a Tony variant that takes over the Doom persona and then the real-life Doom kills him.  Basically the same thing they did with the Mandarin.  That way they could have their cake and eat it too.  I know it would be slightly redundant, but imagine a super-smart evil Tony Stark Doom who brings the Avengers to their knees and then the real Doom shows up and wipes out Tony without any effort. 

There are ways to make this work, and I think we need to give them a chance.  Same with Thunderbolts.  All the actors on that project are good, and the team up could be fun.  The MCU is definitely in a downturn, but the movies have still been pretty good.  If they pivot away from some of the bad TV stuff and focus their attention back on movies, I don't see any reason to think they can't recapture the magic.

Re: Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21

So MCU is steaming forward with what I still say is a completely unsellable franchise, The Fantastic Four.  Their powers are so outdated and dumb, including the villain, and THIS is the mini-franchise you're pinning the next two years on?

That's an opinion. The actual reality: any concept is sellable.

It's all a matter of how a creator uses the concept, how the creator infuses it with relevance, topicality, imagination, emotion, characterization, and meaning. There is no such thing as a bad idea or an outdated idea or a dumb idea, just an idea that is misused, misapplied or unfulfilled.

For a practical example: the average person may think the steam engine is "outdated" and "dumb" in the twenty-first century. While that use case is dated, the ideas within steam energy remain essential: steam transfers heat to spin turbine blades in any modern power plant; it's essential for food processing; it creates vacuum conditions to test orbital components for satellites. Steam maintains uniform temperature in pipelines, dries concrete and stores thermal energy.

If we enjoyed any canned food recently, it was batch-sanitized in a pressure cooker using steam. If we are using electricity, we are depending on a modern power plant which, whether nuclear or oil or coal, turns water into steam for turbine rotation and electrical generation.

I concede: this discussion isn't about steam. It's about the Fantastic Four and responding to the remark: "... a completely unsellable franchise, The Fantastic Four. Their powers are so outdated and dumb."

Well, the Fantastic Four's concept is that they are a family of superheroes. This concept of the superhero family has in fact proven to be current, clever and extremely profitable: THE INCREDIBLES (2004) is a movie about a superhero family: it is one of the greatest movies ever made both in terms of writing, performance and visual realization. THE INCREDIBLES (2018) grossed $1.2 billion worldwide. The family of superheroes concept is extremely sellable.

The Fantastic Four's powers are only outdated if they are used in an outdated way, and they don't have to be. Reed Richards' power of stretching any part of his physiology means that he can stretch his brain, rework his organs and adapt to any physical threat or intellectual challenge.

Sue Storm's power is to bend energy: she casts energy fields that can manipulate seemingly any form of energy whether to deflect or refract or convert: that energy includes light, gravity, force, and potentially more. The invisibility is merely the most immediate application of her ability.

Johnny Storm's power is to manipulate combustion: the capacity to control thermodynamics means control of any chemical reaction. It means the ability to control cell biology, equilibrium and momentum, and any aspect of internal or external chemistry.

Ben Grimm's superstrength is less scientifically complex, but his appearance has made him an icon of body dysmorphia, an extremely present and relevant concern as society becomes more aware of transgender identity and rights.

The Fantastic Four's powers are not outdated or dumb. However, a person's creative application of their powers might be narrow, unimaginative, limited, myopic, small and closed-minded.

An unimaginative person might reduce Reed to stretching instead of contemplating his tensile biology and intellect and the applications of tractable physiology (like adjusting his lungs to breathe oxygen in water or to convert himself to a fluid form). They might see Sue only as an invisible girl instead of exploring her ability to bend and refract light and other forms of energy (such as turning light into force and blades or sound into momentum and gravitational lift).

They might see Johnny as a fire-defined superhero instead of considering the power of remote control of chemical reactions (where someone with this power could make someone suffocate by reversing cellular respiration or electrocute them by converting the body's chemical energy into electrical power).

They might see Ben as an aggressive rock monster instead of a symbol of feeling at odds with your own body.

Tim Story's FANTASTIC FOUR movies were adequate but lacking in imagination. Josh Trank's FANTASTIC FOUR movie failed critically and financially, but it was not an example of the concept being "outdated", "dumb" or "unsellable"; it was an example of how it was foolish for a studio to film a movie with a script that was not only unfinished but written for a budget that the studio reduced mere days before production began.

RDJ's turn as Dr. Doom will be lame, as it will be very difficult for the audience NOT to view him as Tony Stark.

That's an opinion based on speculation; until there is an actual movie to watch, it is a presumptive assumption.

Here's an objective truth: Robert Downey Jr. is widely regarded as the greatest living actor of his generation. He is beloved. Now he wants to take on the challenge of being hated in the role of Dr. Doom. A doubtful person may feel the audience won't see him as anyone Stark. I say that the master thespian is eager for the challenge.

Could he fail? Of course. But Robert Downey Jr. has failed at many things and most things in his life, and his success in recent decades has been an interesting fourth act after many disasters. If he fails... I'd still be interested to see him do that.

Here's another objective truth: the Marvel FANTASTIC FOUR could certainly turn out "outdated" or "dumb" or "unsellable". Projects can fall short. But if the film turns out to be "outdated", "dumb" or "unsellable", it won't be due to the underlying concept of a superhero family.

No character or concept is 'unsellable'; it's merely that creators may sometimes fail to sell it because their approach did not fully explore the inherent possibilities in a compelling way, or because their approach was out of step with the viewing climate of the era, or because their storytelling craft was impaired, or because the marketing department sold it to an unreceptive audience.

I encourage people to never think of ideas as too old or stupid or useless, especially your own. What's "outdated", "dumb" or "unsellable" is more likely the attitude of the person rather than the idea itself.

Ideas are not good or bad in themselves; it is how they are applied and executed that should be evaluated. Even the idea of fascism is valuable; if we read MEIN KAMPF with the right mindset, we can learn to identify and battle authoritarianism and hatred.

I will end by noting that anyone on this board is quite keen on a certain quantum quartet, a makeshift family of science heroes, and the Fantastic Four are genre-defining science heroes. Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo look on in respectful envy at Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben.