Sliders.tv → Sliders Bboard → Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21
I had the first season of DAREDEVIL on while doing some data entry and document organization work on Saturday, and I have to say, I highly recommend watching it.
I had the second season of DAREDEVIL on while doing the same work on Sunday, and I have to say, it's not terrible and not great, but it's worth getting through it (and THE DEFENDERS) to get to the superb Season 3.
Spoilers for Episode 5 of Daredevil
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So they did their first MCU crossover. I remember hearing about this, but I'd completely forgotten. And I'm unsure how I feel about it. On one hand, it's exactly what I'm looking for, and it might be the perfect link for this particular show. On the other...Kamala's dad??
I'll start with the positives. They aren't bringing in a big movie star (editorial - I know the actor playing Mr. Khan is allegedly some sort of criminal, I don't know anything about it), nor are they bringing in someone who requires big time CGI. In fact, it was someone who couldn't help Matt at all. If it had been Sam Wilson in civilian clothes or Rhodey or Nick Fury, Matt would've had help. In this case, it's an established MCU character (he's probably appeared in more MCU material than some people you wouldn't expect) that couldn't help Matt in any way. And there was an on-screen reference to Ms. Marvel.
So in that minute, Matt felt connected to the universe.
But at the end of the day, its a little bizarre that they picked Mr. Khan. This feels like the type of cameo where they'd go to Jon Favreau and get Happy Hogan to show up. If you'd told me there would be an MCU crossover in episode 5 and gave me 1000 guesses, I might never have gotten to Kamala's dad. I might've gone off the board and picked Iron Fist and assumed that was technically an MCU character.
But I asked for it, and I got it. I don't need Spider-Man to show up (I know he can't) and have the two of them fight aliens, but it's nice to know that the show isn't ashamed of being in the MCU.
Spoilers
As far as I can tell, Mohan Kapoor was accused of sexual harassment by someone over Twitter. There have been no charges filed. No proof was posted, not even the supposed photos he sent. Anyone can pretend to be anyone on Twitter. Anyone can say anything on Twitter. Just because someone tweets it doesn't mean it's true or that they're who they claim to be. I'm not saying that the accusation is true or that it's false; I'm just saying that 'posted on Twitter' is not 'verified and credible' in itself.
As for Yusuf Khan showing up, I think it made sense! They had a bank robbery story, they needed a civilian ally, and this character was effective.
So, the Punisher. I rewatched Seasons 1 - 2 of DAREDEVIL and Season 1 of THE PUNISHER and the entire conspiracy surrounding Frank Castle's family is near-unfathomable, and I say that as someone who can explain to you the Clone Saga, that thing where Frank got angelic powers, how DOCTOR WHO novels and audioplays and comics fit into the TV show and how AGENTS OF SHIELD fits with AVENGERS: ENDGAME.
The explanation appears to be:
Back in Afghanistan, Frank, Billy Russo, Colonel Schoonover, and William Rawlins were part of an off-the-books wetworks/assassination squad called Cerberus. Unknown to Frank, Cerberus was smuggling heroin back to the US inside the bodies of dead soldiers.
Rawlins saw Frank as a potential loose end or whistleblower and organized a complex Central Park gang war between the Kitchen Irish, Mexican Cartel, and the Dogs of Hell bikers with Colonel Schoonover using it as cover to assassinate Frank and his family.
Billy Russo was aware of it and wasn't personally involved in murdering Frank's family, but assisted in the coverup. The coverup also involved District Attorney Reyes from Season 2 of DAREDEVIL who pursued Frank's arrest and prosecution after he survived to contain the true reasons behind the conspiracy.
The sheer number of people involved in assassinating one target, Frank Castle, is just... ludicrous. If someone were trying to cover up a crime, this amount of contractors and labour and distraction is in fact extremely attention-grabbing. A covert plan that requires multiple military assets and three separate street gangs and the Distinct Attorney is not covert at all, especially when the DA turns Frank's court case in Season 2 of DAREDEVIL into what everyone describes as "the trial of the century".
There's also the fact that Frank Castle doesn't seem to even be aware that Cerberus was smuggling drugs. In Season 1, Frank considers Billy Russo a trusted friend and never even contemplates Russo being a traitor or a murderer or having anything to hide from Frank until Billy tries to shoot Frank in a stairwell. So what rationale did the Cerberus team have to think Frank was a threat to their secrets?
I do not understand this at all. I think the entire storyline defies understanding.
In Season 1 of THE PUNISHER, a traumatized soldier turned bomber publicly threatens Karen Page. Frank Castle goes ballistic. "This piece of shit's going after Karen. Nobody goes after her! Not on my watch! Karen!" He proceeds to intervene, exposing himself after having faked his death, getting shot, nearly getting blown up, also being severely beaten just to rescue Karen and contain the bomber in a walk-in freezer.
His absence in Season 3 of DAREDEVIL where Fisk was gunning for Karen and she was hunted by both assassins and the FBI is bizarre... unless you assume he was slightly off camera, killing ten assassins for each one Karen evaded on camera.
I finished Season 1 of THE PUNISHER, watched one episode of THE DEFENDERS and just stopped. DEFENDERS is so dull and I remember it being so tedious and boring that I can't get through it again.
I'm sort of half-watching THE DEFENDERS while doing some design work.
The main problem: THE DEFENDERS is all about the machinations and grand plans of the Hand organization, and the creators clearly have no idea what this organization wants or why it does anything. It seems to me, just from an outside perspective: DAREDEVIL's Season 2 showrunners, Marco Ramirez and Doug Petrie, featured the Hand in their season and made them a mysterious and vague clan of evil ninjas with lots of ominous foreshadowing (references to the "Black Sky," a giant hole in Hell's Kitchen, disturbing resurrections) -- with the belief that someone else down the line would have to be the one to offer some explanations.
The imagery of ninjas and a vaguely Japanese aesthetic were viewed as sufficient definition, except the Hand even as originally created in the 1980s is based in exoticizing Japanese culture and history as ceremonially barbaric.
Then IRON FIST took hold of the Hand storyline, and didn't seem to know what to do with them either, at least not effectively. The Hand were presented as the enemy of Danny's people, of the mystical city of K'un Lun, except Danny seems as much an enemy to K'un Lun as the Hand in stealing the Iron Fist, and we can never see K'un Lun onscreen, so we have no idea why the Hand is opposed to them. The Hand is one mysterious organization defined by their opposition to another mysterious group, the city of K'un Lun. So again, due to the vagueness of K'un Lun, the Hand remained vague in Iron Fist. A distant ninja cult of different factions of unclear goals again.
Then the Hand returned to Ramirez and Petrie for their stewardship of THE DEFENDERS, and Ramirez and Petrie now had to come up with some answers for who the Hand were and what their goals were. Since IRON FIST's Harold Meachum had been ageless and immortal as the result of a deal with the Hand, they decided that the Hand's grand prize was immortality. And since IRON FIST had mentioned dragons a lot, they decided that the prize was acquired through a dragon corpse. They decided that the dragon corpse was holding up New York City and that the city would collapse if it were removed... but these 'answers' only created more issues.
The AVENGERS movie succeeded in convincing audiences that New York City was under threat from aliens thanks to New York City background plates and stock footage showing the metropolis under attack. But THE DEFENDERS never convinces us that Alexandra Weaver and Elektra and Madame Gao and others, wandering around corporate hallways and boardrooms, can actually destroy New York City. There is no visual connection between their conversations and digging and the idea that the NYC skyline will fall. There's no sense of urgency: it's never explained at what point in the ongoing extraction that the city will start sinking. THE DEFENDERS never makes it clear how close or far the city is from the end.
It also seems to me that extracting one dragon body is probably one of the smaller scale enterprises for a centuries old organization like the Hand where their immortal members have not been urgently waiting on fresh dragon corpses.
Looking at another shadowy organization of mysterious goals, the Syndicate on THE X-FILES: despite the common knowledge that its mythology was confused and improvised, I would say that it was coherent on a macro level even if, at the micro level, things got confused. The broad strokes: the aliens are the original inhabitants of Earth who left in the Ice Age, transformed into parasitical viruses that manifest as black oil, infected most sentient life in the universe, are planning to return to Earth to use humans as broodmares and (re)colonize the planet -- all that is pretty clear and an obvious criticism of Americans as colonists who destroyed Indigenous Peoples.
However, broadly, THE X-FILES knew what the Syndicate and the Colonists wanted and what the metaphors were (government corruption, Colonization, a select elite securing their own safety and security while the rest of humanity would be infected by Colonists who would rip apart each human host to birth their offspring). I do not feel Marco Ramirez and Doug Petrie even got the broad strokes worked out for the Hand.
The various rival factions of the Hand are confusing: it's never clear who's with whom. It's not clear why the Hand are so desperate for more immortality when they just spend their days having ponderous conversations. Is Madame Gao's ambition really to just limp around warehouses as hypnotized slaves package heroin? Alexandra's motive is because her immortality is failing, yet there is no panic or desperation in Sigourney Weaver's performance.
Yes, the Hand has no shortage of ninja henchmen and expensive real estate, but what are they doing with any of it? Ripping out dragon bones and incidentally destroying New York City seems like it's on the level of a working brunch for an organization of this scale, not the sum of their ambitions, except to see them onscreen, they seem to have very few ambitions.
What made Colonization on the X-Files compelling: it declared that Americans would soon be on the receiving end, from aliens, what European settlers had inflicted upon Indigenous peoples via the alien colonists.
What metaphor might there have been for the Hand?
To me, Daredevil's defining dialogue is when Fisk beats him into the ground, ranting, "This city doesn't deserve a better tomorrow! It deserves to drown in its own filth!"
Daredevil replies, "This is my city. My family."
So I think -- I would want the Hand to be the opposition of Daredevil's philosophy, where as far as they're concerned, New York City only exists for them as part of their machine. I guess, if we have to stick with the plot: all the industry and pollution (and nuclear waste?) of New York City has been deliberately guided by the Hand over the years to create chemical reactions to make the dragon body more volatile and powerful and, when extracted, it'll create an explosive chain reaction beneath the city.
The Hand leaders find merely walking on the streets of New York City to be intolerable and look forward to how after a few centuries, what was once the city will become a natural landscape. They both look down upon the common people while seeding their self-destruction. The Hand are hastening the reactions and sending their most expendable and devoted to create a pipeline that, upon extraction, will cause an underground collapse.
The Hand also offer the Defenders a deal to comply. Matt is offered the resurrection of his father. Luke is offered evacuation for his social circle in Harlem. Jessica is offered the chance to have her memories of Killgrave erased and to live without grief and pain. Danny is offered the chance to return to K'un Lun, resurrect everyone the Hand killed and rule it on their behalf.
I assume the they're all extremely tempted despite their consciences until Frank Castle shoots down every Hand representative, at which point Matt grudgingly thanks Castle.
MATT: "I was seriously about to cave, Frank."
FRANK: "I know you were, Red. You're only human. You going to have any issue with me taking out half the room?"
MATT: "This is some sort of death and resurrection cult, so... probably fine."
Did anyone see the casting for Avengers Doomsday? Is that a spoiler?
I have no idea how they're going to manage adding the cast of (spoiler?) to this movie. I think the multiverse is a cool concept (obviously), and it's fun to have worlds collide. But I really think this was the wrong decision for phases 4-6, and I'm worried Marvel is doing a panic move.
I'm going to say something controversial.
It doesn't matter if Marvel is panicking. They probably are, but I don't care. The important thing is whether or not Joe and Anthony Russo are panicking or if they are out to make a good movie. That's all that matters.
I completely agree, but the Russos might be panicking a bit as well. Their post-Endgame movies have all either been dull or been bombs, and their most recent is (allegedly, I haven't seen it) a disaster. They probably need Marvel as much as Marvel needs them.
What's frustrating to me is that Phases 4 and 5 have had so much content, but it all feels so aimless. To be fair, Thanos barely did anything prior to the very end of Phase 3, instantly became a great villain, and retroactively made it seem like he was the villain of Phases 1-3. Maybe if there'd simply been an avengers movie in Phase 4 or 5 it would feel more cohesive. The story of the Infinity Saga is basically told in the Avengers movies and Civil War. Despite all the content, we haven't really had anything like that so far.
It can definitely work out. Maybe the Russos do their best work in the Marvel sandbox, and maybe this has all been building to Doomsday and Secret Wars. I'll be seeing it ASAP when it comes out. But when DC rushed things to get to Justice League, it was because they didn't have enough time. That wasn't Marvel's problem, and that's what's frustrating. I know some of this is because of Jonathan Majors, but I feel like it still would've been rushed.
I mean, all movies are made in a rush. Panic is a part of the process. As for the panic -- this is just a personal opinion that is not borne out by box office, but I have highly enjoyed BLACK WIDOW, SHANG CHI, ETERNALS, SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, DR STRANGE II, THOR IV, BLACK PANTHER II, ANT MAN III, GUARDIANS III, THE MARVELS, DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE, and even BRAVE NEW WORLD was okay.
I recognize that financially, Marvel has struggled, but creatively, I've been very happy with WANDAVISION, LOKI, HAWKEYE, MS. MARVEL, MOON KNIGHT, WHAT IF (Seasons 1 - 2), SHE-HULK and AGATHA ALL ALONG. THE FALCON was mediocre, SECRET INVASION was unwatchable, ECHO was slow and boring, and WHAT IF Season 3 was weak, but overall, the material has really hit home with me.
It's unavoidable to have at least a few mediocrities like the FALCON and ECHO shows and the BRAVE NEW WORLD movie, and an occasional disaster like SECRET INVASION. Looking at all of the movies without fixating on the mediocre and terrible, I feel Marvel is doing great creatively.
That's clearly a minority opinion, and Marvel clearly isn't doing great financially. I am sorry that people haven't enjoyed a lot of these films and TV shows. Maybe I'm out of touch, but I'm enjoying Marvel as much as ever. Of course, I was ready to declare war on them over BORN AGAIN, but then they rehired Deborah Ann Woll and you know that I will always defend anyone who hires Deborah Ann Woll.
I don't disagree. I've generally liked everything that Marvel has released, even the stuff that probably won't go anywhere like Moon Knight. I guess my biggest concern is that the process doesn't feel cohesive. I don't know if it's not cohesive, but it doesn't feel that way. And the whole universe sorta feels aimless.
Now if you're talking about a season of an anthology show like Black Mirror or a list of A24 films or whatever, it doesn't have to feel cohesive and you can enjoy something here or there. But in a shared universe, I would like to hope that all the building blocks are setting something up that will reward me for my loyalty.
Phase one is Tony and Steve's story. They became heroes, became Avengers, fought, and came back together to save the world before their journeys ended. But if T'Challa didn't have his journey, the Avengers couldn't have won against Thanos. If Scott Lang didn't have his journey, the time heist wouldn't have been possible. If Stephen Strange hadn't had his journey, maybe Tony dies before he could save the day. Carol Danvers, the Guardians, Thor and Loki, Peter Parker, etc all had their parts to play.
Even small stuff. Ant-Man (2015) may not feel super important, but Scott meeting Sam at the Avengers compound has a direct through-line to the time heist. Thor: The Dark World is much maligned, but it introduces one of the infinity stones. Even smaller stories contributed to the overall story.
Right now, it just feels like independent stories. And some of that is okay. They've done so many stories since Endgame, and not every one of them needs to be a puzzle piece. Moon Knight doesn't need to contribute to defeating Doom for it to be enjoying or worth existing, but I just don't feel like any of it is building to anything. And part of that is that we're not "checking in" on anyone. I don't know what Dr. Strange is doing since he left with Charlize Theron. We don't know what Spider-Man is up to. We don't know what the Avengers are doing about the Ten Rings. Brave New World implies there are no Avengers, but that didn't seem to be the case in Shang-Chi.
I think some of this could've been accomplished with a series of post-credit scenes that make the universe feel whole. Sorta like a mini-movie that is being told via post-credit scenes to just keep our pulse on what's happening in the greater universe. I think Sam would've been a great guy to put in a few of these movies, but it could've also been someone like Wong or Shang-Chi or someone like that.
But even if actor availability is a concern, they could simply catch us up with dialogue. Sam could've told us what other Avengers were up to in Brave New World. Daredevil could tell us what Spider-Man is doing.
And maybe all of this will work in retrospect. It's unlikely the Sam/Scott fight in Ant-Man felt important at the time, and I'm not 100% sure that scene was even written to connect to Civil War. But in retrospect, it works. So maybe we'll look back and see more ties than we think there are now. But I still think it doesn't feel like anyone is behind the wheel right now.
And I worry that they're going to have to devote time in Doomsday to catching us up. And I think some of that could've been done in dialogue, in cameos, in crossovers, or even supplemental materials (One Shots or whatever). It's just crazy to me that we've had so much content but so little continuity.
I'm still all in on Marvel. My enthusiasm hasn't waned a ton. But I just wish some of that cohesiveness was still there, and I worry that Doomsday is going to have to do so much heavy lifting instead of storytelling.
You know, you're onto something. Before ENDGAME, every Marvel movie was urgent viewing because each film was one book in a series of books. I would race to the movie theatre to see each Marvel film. Since ENDGAME, each book is one book on a shelf of books, but they don't feel like a series -- and I have to confess, even though I enjoyed 90 percent of Marvel's output post-ENDGAME, NO WAY HOME, DR. STRANGE II, THE MARVELS, DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE and BRAVE NEW WORLD are the only ones I actually saw in movie theatres. I didn't feel compelled to see the next one in theatres partially because of my overall disenchantment with the price and time investment of the cineplex (parking, no pause button) -- but it may be that the lack of series elements meant it wasn't as urgent to see the movies the week they came out.
If a lot of people also felt a lack of urgency to buy tickets, that could be a problem.
So I am way behind on this, but I recently watched a video that outlined how "The Kang Dynasty" would have played out. I won't get into the plot of the dropped movie (but I'll have minor "spoilers" from plot details that almost certainly don't matter anymore), but what was most interesting to me was the idea that Phases 4-6 were supposed to feel more cohesive. I've been wondering who the "Nick Fury" should've been for the Multiverse Saga - and it was supposed to be Jonathan Majors.
According to the leaks, this is how the Council of Kangs was supposed to be unveiled:
- Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania - Intro to Kang the Conqueror
- Loki (seasons 1 and 2) - Intro of He Who Remains and Victor Timely
- Deadpool and Wolverine - Mid-Credit Council of Kangs scene
- Agatha All Along - Introduction to Immortus
- Moon Knight (Season 2) - Introduction to Rama-Tut
- X-Men 97 (Season 2) - Introduction to the Centurian and formation of the Council of Kangs
- Fantastic Four - Background on the first multiversal war. Some sort of connection between the TVA and the Fantastic Four would've been made because The Kang Dynasty starts with Reed reaching out to the TVA.
So it's not a ton more but it would've given proper intros to the primary figures in the Council of Kangs spread across the movies. I think if we'd gotten all this, it would have felt more cohesive and felt like it was building to something. It would've also revealed that Kang the Conqueror survived Quantumania so the whole "he got defeated by Ant-Man so how scary could he be" idea is a bit of a mess.
I think Marvel's problems were:
1) Covid messing with the release schedule. I still think it would've been better if Spider-Man had come out after Multiverse of Madness and the original plan would've been used for those two movies (it would've been an evil Dr Strange helping Peter and America would've shown up to help).
2) The decision to hire Jonathan Majors. This isn't Disney's fault. I think Majors could've been a great villain, but he ended up just being a bad dude.
I think the original plan sounds interesting, and I think The Kang Dynasty sounds interesting. I would've loved to have seen how it worked out if the original plan had been followed.
Now is any of this actually how it was supposed to happen? I don't know. It's hard to say.
1. We got Ant-Man and Loki as is. None of that would've changed. Sounds like Deadpool and Wolverine would've had a mid-credits scene so that movie would've been mostly unchanged (but it introduced anchor beings, which was a big player in Kang Dynasty).
2. Immortus in Agatha? I don't see how? Any guesses?
3. Kang stuff in Moon Knight and X-Men 97 season 2s? Could explain why we haven't had season 2s of either of them yet. Seems a bit weird to make it season 2 of Moon Knight and not season one, but maybe they had a ton of confidence in season one. The video implied that there was references to Rama-Tut in Moon Knight season one, but I wouldn't have gotten them.
4. Kang in Fantastic Four. Makes sense and could explain why that movie had so many changes.
All in all, this makes me feel a little better that there was a plan, if this is true. And Marvel didn't just suddenly get bad at cohesion - they're the victims of having to massively change course because their lynchpin became unusable
I do wonder why they didn't just recast. Especially with something like Kang. With a multiversal person, you could come up with any number of reasons why they look different, or you could do what was done with Rhodey or the Hulk and just ignore it. It feels like a better idea to stick to the plan with a recast than anything else, but maybe they didn't think they could get it done quickly enough with someone who could carry the weight. I don't know.
I normally refuse to watch video essays except for Amanda the Jedi, but I must see this video to which you refer!
Oh dang, I meant to link to it. Now all of this could be complete and utter BS because I tried to find the twitter chain and it's gone. I haven't read the leaked script (if there is one) and I have no idea if this guy or his main source is reliable. But if it's fanfic, I think its fun fanfic
I rewatched Black Widow in advance of Thunderbolts* coming out. I thought it was a lot of fun, and I think it was a good set up for Yelena and Red Guardian. I think, obviously, it would've been a bit more fun if it had come out before Endgame, but it is what it is. I'm still surprised when Jeremy Renner never shows up, but he has a voice cameo and is pictured in the post credits. I also get why they didn't shoehorn a male star in Scarlet's movie, but I think it's weird that Cap didn't make an appearance. I think a more complete story would've shown what Cap was up to and how he reunited with Natasha, but I can see why that wasn't what was done.
Taskmaster seemed completely wasted and might be completely wasted in Thunderbolts*. I think she needed an action sequence where she used all her Avengers skills to win a fight. She basically did some cool posing but mostly failed. I think we needed to understand how formidable she was.
All in all, I liked it. I'm going to try and watch Ant-Man and the Wasp to get some setup for Ghost. I barely remember that movie. I feel like I still have a pretty good feel for John Walker, since we spent so much time with him in FATWS.
I had a chance to see an advanced screening tonight but wasn't able to make it. I'll try and see it the week after it comes out.
I am excited for THUNDERBOLTS. I love Yelena! Sorry you couldn't make an advance screening! The movie is not available for me to see it until next week Friday. I've already bought my ticket.
I will post about DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN by the weekend. I've just been so busy with work. But I thought the season was good if awkward, and I was delighted with the return of Marvel's greatest hero in the finale.
*sigh* Haven't had much time lately. Maybe tomorrow.
I watched Ant-Man and the Wasp. I really didn't remember anything about that movie, apparently, outside of the post-credits scene. Which I maintain is one of the best ones that the MCU has done. Great cliffhanger and great tie-in to Endgame. I thought it was a pretty fun movie. I think Ant-Man really works, and I'm sad that Quantumania ended up being such a disaster for the MCU (critically, financially, and even creatively).
******
I think Daredevil was pretty solid. And when you understand the behind the scenes hodgepodge that it was, I think it's amazing that it's anywhere near as good as it was. I'm still unsure of what the show as going to be, though. If we basically got episodes 1-6 of the original concept as episodes 2-7, what was the real difference? Would the original season, minus missing out on Foggy and Karen (which I know is important to ireactions) really have been so bad that they needed to overhaul it? Unless they made changes, those shows were pretty good. I didn't think there was an obvious jump in quality.
I understand they didn't have the Punisher right, and they needed Foggy and Karen to make the whole show feel more cohesive. But I guess it didn't feel like a dumpster fire that had to be rewritten.
I have to do my taxes. I hope to have time to post tomorrow.
I think Daredevil was pretty solid. And when you understand the behind the scenes hodgepodge that it was, I think it's amazing that it's anywhere near as good as it was. I'm still unsure of what the show as going to be, though. If we basically got episodes 1-6 of the original concept as episodes 2-7, what was the real difference? Would the original season, minus missing out on Foggy and Karen (which I know is important to ireactions) really have been so bad that they needed to overhaul it? Unless they made changes, those shows were pretty good. I didn't think there was an obvious jump in quality.
I understand they didn't have the Punisher right, and they needed Foggy and Karen to make the whole show feel more cohesive. But I guess it didn't feel like a dumpster fire that had to be rewritten.
I was going to write a full review, but Slider_Quinn21's interesting question seemed more pressing.
I've learned a bit more about the pre-overhauled version of DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN and they hit a serious production issue after filming the first six episodes: Jon Bernthal quit after what seems to have been one day of filming, rendering the season impossible to complete and therefore unreleasable under the original circumstances.
What I've heard through my grapevine (and since my grapevine is not nearly as impressive as Temporal Flux's network for SLIDERS, take all of this with a grain of salt): the original plan for BORN AGAIN was that it had a very vague and distant relationship with the Netflix continuity, avoiding explicit tie-in but also avoiding outright contradictions.
Feige and Marvel weren't sure if the hypothetical Disney+ audience for BORN AGAIN would have even seen the Netflix shows. Feige's approach of "We'll decide in post" was highly present: they filmed scenes where Kingpin is clearly thinking about Ben Urich and mention of Foggy having died off-camera, murdered by a rogue police officer; they made no mention of Karen Page; they filmed Matt uneasy with Mayor Wilson Fisk but didn't show Matt declaring war on the mayor (and Matt's inaction towards a Fisk mayorship is, without explanation, truly bizarre in the context of Season 3 of the Netflix show). They were undecided.
One area where they were decisive: the Punisher as played by Jon Bernthal was a big part of the storyline. BORN AGAIN was to feature police officers with Punisher tattoos who were using lethal force like the Punisher but far less discriminately, shooting civilians and superheroes and calling it self-defense, and one of them had shot Foggy (off camera) when Foggy had tried to protect a client. These corrupt police officers would seem like a background element that would eventually step to the forefront of the show.
The plan was -- and this is the part where I suggest many grains of salt -- for Frank to show up in the middle of BORN AGAIN's first run of episodes and call Matt out for having retired from his Daredevil role, for not exacting vengeance on Foggy's murderer and every corrupt cop wearing the Punisher's tattoo. Matt would decide to become Daredevil again; Frank Castle would then return a few episodes later and, appalled by the murderous police officers killing in his name, adopt a less lethal approach alongside Daredevil.
Apparently, Bernthal signed on as a guest-star without having seen the scripts. He filmed his first scene in his bunker (which we saw, albeit with some revisions to alter the references to Foggy's murder to being Poindexter instead of a corrupt cop). Bernthal then read the subsequent scripts where Frank would step back from his lethal approach -- and he informed Marvel that he would not perform these scripts, that he would not participate in a softened and lightened portrayal of the Punisher, and he quit.
(This seems to have been misunderstood in the press with reporters saying Bernthal only filmed on BORN AGAIN after the strike and overhaul, but this is not the case: Bernthal's return was announced before the strike, and his first scene in BORN AGAIN was filmed before the reshoots. We can tell because all references to Bullseye from Frank are added via ADR and when Bernthal is off-camera. Some fans and reporters were confused because the post-strike directors have spoken of filming this scene; I think this must be referring to how Matt's side of the conversation was partially refilmed to refer to Bullseye and sections of Frank's dialogue have been added in post.)
I am not sure how Bernthal was able to quit in the way that he did: one would think that he would have been contracted to be available for the whole of the BORN AGAIN shoot, given Feige's then-approach to treating TV like an extended film shoot rather than episode to episode.
Marvel TV may have booked him to film as-available without locking him into a first-position/availability-secured contract, thinking his schedule was open, only to learn that available or not, Bernthal was refusing to return after filming one scene and accepting the financial hit.
Alternatively, Bernthal may have spotted the impending writers strike would necesstiate that his contract be extended, and told Marvel that he would not be extending his availability past the strike because he wasn't happy with the scripts.
Regardless, Bernthal was out.
This meant that the six episodes filmed had set up the Punisher's return, hinted at from the corrupt police officers wearing his symbol as a tattoo, and established the Punisher's reputation and character as critical and central to the first season -- but they had only one actual scene with Bernthal, the scene where Frank and Matt argue over Matt's reaction to Foggy's death -- and they had no further footage of Frank and no way to address the Punisher arc now that they'd lost their Punisher.
These six episodes were now unusable and the season was unfinishable.
It wasn't the only reason for the overhaul. BORN AGAIN was also facing a lot of negative publicity where the pre-existing audience, the Netflix fans, were unhappy that the show wouldn't include Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson. I've heard that actors Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio were also unhappy, and while they didn't quit like Bernthal did, they were expressing a marked lack of enthusiasm for resuming post-strike, especially as the delay meant they could renegotiate. The project was in serious trouble: unreleasable because they couldn't complete what they'd filmed; unmarketable with a key actor walking out and two leads looking at the exits.
Feige and Marvel's solution: they hired Dario Scardapane to overhaul the show. Scardapane had been a producer (but not the showrunner) on the Netflix PUNISHER series. He had a good relationship with Bernthal, and was authorized to treat Bernthal as a creative partner in writing Frank Castle, which made Bernthal agree to return. They also hired Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson, which placated Cox and D'Onofrio, and enabled the show to resume filming and make use of the original six episodes filmed, albeit with reshoots and reworkings.
Without the overhaul, the six episodes as originally filmed would been an incomplete story, unreleasable, and a medium-sized writeoff for the company.
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To me, doing DAREDEVIL with Charlie Cox but not Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson is like firing John Rhys-Davies from SLIDERS or doing AIRWOLF without the helicopter or SCREAM without Neve Campbell or COMMUNITY without Dan Harmon or a Venom movie without Spider-Man or serving a hot dog without the bun. I'm not saying it's impossible, it's clearly not, but it's like deliberately breaking your own ankle before a marathon.
Why would you do that? Who would want you to?
Okay that's awesome. I love the inside scoop, and I think it helps a lot with context. And now I can sorta understand where everything was going and how/why it changed.
I guess the last question is: why kill Foggy? There are (unsubstantiated?) rumors that Foggy will come back. Maybe he faked his death or maybe he comes back with MCU nonsense, but if you're going to bring him back why kill him? I understand he was dead in the original vision, but Foggy's death doesn't really play a part in episodes 2-7. Karen moved to San Francisco. Couldn't Foggy have moved away too? I saw an interview with Cox and D'Onofrio where they talked about needing to jolt the series (I think Cox referred to Foggy as "the heartbeat of the MCU" which is pretty crazy for a character who technically was only in the MCU for 10 minutes?). But I think you could've accomplished that with Foggy and Matt having a falling out or something like that.
The other question that I have is about continuity. If Born Again originally had a loose connection to the Netflix seasons but also had a loose connection to the MCU (the strongest tie was Kamala's dad?)....then what is it? Deadpool, I think, did a great job of connecting to both the MCU and the existing continuity. We all thought that Deadpool would live in his own space, but this is literally Daredevil living in his own space. No past and no future.
And, again, I don't think we needed Captain America to beat up Fisk or for the Chitauri to be involved. But I think Born Again could cover some really interesting material. Captain America and Iron Man were seemingly beloved by everyone, but would people differentiate between Daredevil and Captain America? Would street-level superheroes be seen differently than Avengers?
What's crazy is that they had all the pieces to do this. You're in the MCU - so just a couple of years ago, in universe, half the population disappeared and reappeared because of a purple alien fighting a bunch of superheroes. New York City, where this is set, was the location of an alien attack. This is the same universe where a giant hand is sticking out of the earth and Captain America just fought the president. And you have, built into the show, these "man on the street interviews."
"I loved Tony Stark, but these street-level superheroes are nothing but criminals to me."
"If these guys were dangerous, the Avengers would've stopped them. I think they're helping."
"Superheroes saved by Grandma in the blip. I'll never see any of them as criminals."
And Fisk would have to fight this in his smear campaign. I would assume all the Avengers have a 90+% approval rating. He would need to make a clear case that Daredevil and White Tiger are different than Captain America.
And I don't think the show did any of that. And it's just bizarre because it's staring right at their faces. It's a show that doesn't seem to want to be in the MCU because it hurts its own argument. Nolan's Dark Knight series is probably hurt if Superman is out there somewhere, and I think Born Again is a little hurt by the idea that incredibly-popular superheroes exist.
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I think it all sorta ties to the idea that these MCU shows could've been a really cool street-level look into how the Avengers' actions impacted people. It started really promising with Falcon and the Winter Soldier having the government react to the Snap/Blip. But all that seems to have washed over. Despite all the crazy stuff that's happened in the MCU, their world and our world are pretty much the same. Which is bonkers.
I know that they can't have the worlds diverge too much because they still need to film in our world. But you wouldn't need to pay Robert Downey Jr. to be in these movies to make them feel cohesive. Dialogue is basically free, right?
Why kill Foggy?
This question has no definitive answer, and to me, this is why Kevin Feige's "We'll decide it in post" attitude is maybe fine for feature films but a problem with a TV show. It's clear to me that Marvel was undecided on whether or not the Netflix shows were in continuity and declining to make a decision until forced had then hedging their bets. They wrote and filmed the show so that it could be edited both ways: as a rebooted Daredevil who just happened to have the previous actor (in the way J. Jonah Jameson remained JK Simmons in the Sony and MCU Spider-Man films) or as a sequel to the Netflix show (with explicit references to Ben Urich and Foggy that could be cut). They also planned that their reboot could conceivably go from vaguely related to the Netflix show to explicitly connected in later episodes. They simply did not decide.
Feige and Marvel also took the view that the TV shows whether on ABC and Netflix had a much smaller audience than the MCU films, and they treated all the Disney+ shows as films that just happened to stream in shorter installments and across longer spans. Their view may have been that the Disney+ DAREDEVIL audience was conceivably the mass MCU audience that might not be familiar with the Netflix show, and they wanted to market their DAREDEVIL as the first season of a new show, not the fourth season of an old show. Dispensing with Foggy and Karen was a path to that; killing Foggy was to declare a break with the original series.
But why? Why not bring Karen and Foggy back for the soft reboot, given that they were already keeping Cox and D'Onofrio and bringing in Jon Bernthal?
My opinion: it was to save money. Disney is notoriously tightfisted with pay. One common Disney practice is to change the title of a show to avoid paying royalties or salary increases. The show is called DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN to avoid having to pay royalties to the Netflix DAREDEVIL showrunners, Drew Goddard and Steven S. DeKnight, whose development work would have entitled them to payment for each new episode of DAREDEVIL even if they'd moved onto other projects. There is no series-royalty payment for them if the show were called DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN, saving Disney money.
Another way they may have wanted to save money: minimizing the number of returning actors from the Netflix show. Naturally, every actor asked to return would be able to demand an increase on their Season 3 Netflix pay. Marvel negotiated with Cox, with D'Onofrio, with Bernthal -- but seemed to avoid opening that discussion with Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson. Their atittude may have been: Daredevil, Kingpin and the Punisher will have action figures. It's unlikely that there will ever be a merchandising line for Foggy and Karen. Marvel didn't see the value of negotiating with actors who wouldn't serve as the basis for toys, who wouldn't accept a low, starter-scale rate of pay. They decided they wanted a largely new cast who would accept lower starting salaries.
It seems to me that their tightfisted attitudes led to a series that slipped from their grasp: Bernthal walked, Cox and D'Onofrio regretted signing up. With one key actor ripcording out and the other two displeased, Marvel decided to rethink the project. They approached Dario Scardapane, observing that he could get Bernthal back on board.
It looks to me like Scardapane argued to Marvel that trying to soft-reboot Charlie Cox's Daredevil with no connection to his three seasons on Netflix was futile as the established history was impossible to cast away; that any losing some projected profit by rehiring Woll and Henson was preferable to losing everything they'd already invested in the project; that the series being shut down was already bad publicity piled atop the already negative reaction to Woll and Henson not being rehired in the first place and the impending PR body blow of Bernthal ejecting himself out of the show. Scardapane admitted that his firmness that Karen and Foggy had to come back could have made Marvel decide not to hire him.
And then, with Scardapane aboard, why did Foggy stay dead? Foggy's death was built into the narrative of the White Tiger trial (with Matt having quit as Daredevil after failing Foggy and trying to convince Hector Ayala that his life doesn't lose meaning without the White Tiger identity), Matt's grief over Hector and Foggy's deaths leading him to Frank Castle, Matt's increasingly fractured relationship with Heather Glenn -- and it seems to me that they were simply unable to refilm or rewrite Episodes 2 - 7 (originally 1 - 6) to remove Foggy's death from the storyline, nor did Scardapane have the option of scrapping those six episodes entirely. His argument was, after all, that he was making changes to save Marvel's deficit financing of the series, not to write it off.
Will Foggy be back? Elden Henson is booked for Season 2, but it's not clear if he'll return in flashbacks or as a hallucination. And the comics are not necessarily helpful in predicting the future of the TV show: Karen Page has been dead in the Marvel comic book line since 1999. Foggy died in DAREDEVIL #82 (February 2006), stabbed to death when visiting Matt in jail after Matt was arrested after being unmasked by FBI and police. Foggy returned in DAREDEVIL #88 (August 2006), shown to be in witness protection. I'm actually a bit surprised that Karen Page hasn't been resurrected, but her character in the comics wasn't nearly as vivid as Deborah Ann Woll and a lot of writers have preferred to have Karen haunt the book without being in it.
The odds are good that Foggy will return alive in BORN AGAIN because, from a production standpoint, if they've come to a deal with Elden Henson, they want to get as much use out of him as they can. But it's not a guarantee: Ben Urich is alive and well in the comics and dead in the Netflix show.
I'll post tomorrow about the continuity, and yes, I agree it's become a problem.
Spoilers for THUNDERBOLTS
I saw THUNDERBOLTS and it was good. It starts out a bit dark and bleak, almost like a Jason Bourne movie, but of course shifts into a more joking, lighthearted, AVENGERS-style comedy to offset the grimness. Despite that, the film has some surprisingly meaningful explorations of depression, trauma, loss and mental health. It's highly enjoyable with some fantastic action sequences.
I did feel the sense that the budget of the film trapped the movie on certain sets and locations. The Thunderbolts spend a large portion of the first third of the film in a secret government bunker of shadowy hallways that looks like every other secret government bunker of shadowy hallways in Season 5 of AGENTS OF SHIELD. They emerge from the bunker and spend the middle of the film running about back highways of Utah. The action then takes them to the former Avengers Tower and then the street in front of the Tower.
There is the sense of going to the theatre to watch a TV show where every episode/segment is written with the story confined to a specific set or location, and in a feature film, this can make the world outside the bunker or the highways or the general city block of Avengers tower seem vague, undefined, or even non-existent. Obviously, Ross being jailed and the lack of Avengers is why a black ops team like the Thunderbolts finds itself coming to the forefront of superhero missions, but the state of the larger universe is not really this movie's concern.
THUNDERBOLTS has a lot of fun interactions between Yelena and Bob, Yelena and Red Guardian, Red Guardian and Bucky, Yelena and USAgent, and USAgent and Bob (Ghost is kind of a non-entity), but we don't really get a sense of how the Marvel Cinematic Universe is doing without an active Avengers team and with President Ross in prison/isolation. THUNDERBOLTS exists largely in terms of enjoyable character banter and comedic action. The film does a great job of making the cast feel like an ensemble even though Yelena is the main character and the other characters pass in and out of focus as needed.
The dysfunctional nature and second-rate status of each cast member is played for laughs beautifully, whether it's Red Guardian as a Russian knockoff of Captain America, USAgent as the failed Captain America, Bob as a blundering civilian who stumbled into a group of superheroes, and Bucky as a former enemy of the state... although, I confess, at times, I forgot that Ghost was in the movie.
Bob is the standout of the film. Actor Lewis Pullman has a mild, gentle screen presence as the civilian Bob, a man inexplicably in a secret vault of dangerous weapons. The film initially misleads Marvel Comics fans into thinking he must be Bob, Agent of HYDRA, a hapless sidekick of Deadpool, but Bob is revealed as the Sentry, an ordinary man with addiction issues who was accidentally transformed into a godlike superhero.
Bob's grief over his horrific childhood of abuse and helplessness is the crux of the film, and Pullman excels in portraying a sad, lost, lonely man whose agony and drug use to blot out his pain has created an alternate persona, a bleak personification of emptiness and nothingness whom Bob calls the Void. The Thunderbolts' passage through the netherworld of the Void is a journey of torment and regret, and while it's never darker than you'd expect a Marvel film to be, the darkness is used effectively and evocatively and is surprisingly rich and moving.
The ending has the Thunderbolts team declared the new Avengers... which the credits immediately undermine with a series of newspaper headlines where the Thunderbolts are regarded as having no genuine claim to the name, challenged by Captain America (Sam Wilson) for the title, and generally viewed as undeserving pretenders. I'm not sure if this immediate undercutting was necessary as there currently are no Avengers and the MCU could do worse than this team, but I understand if there's a different cast in mind for the upcoming AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY and if Marvel didn't want to mislead.
A very enjoyable TV movie... which is confusing, because on actual TV, in DAREDEVIL, Mayor Fisk is declaring all vigilantes in New York City to be criminals whom police will hunt down. This is a stark mismatch with the head of the CIA assembling a press conference in New York City in front of the Avengers Tower to declare Yelena, Bucky, Red Guardian, Ghost and Bob to be "the New Avengers." One must, for now, assume that the anti-superhero municipal rule of DAREDEVIL is taking place in the Avengerless-vacuum before THUNDERBOLTS and is presumably resolved before this junket.
These narratives have a tendency to take time to cohere, if they ever do at all.
Spoilers for DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN and THUNDERBOLTS
We have a serious continuity problem here. In DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN, Mayor Wilson Fisk declares war on all New York City superheroes (whom he refers to as vigilantes), dispatching a task force of corrupt cops to shoot any superheroes like Daredevil on sight. Fisk won his mayorality with a huge swell of support. Superheroes are not wanted or needed, it seems.
But CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD has Captain America invited to the White House. The president asks Sam to create and lead a new team of Avengers. And then in THUNDERBOLTS, CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine assembles the press to proudly reveal a new team of superheroes, the New Avengers, to joyful relief and applause on the street before Avengers Tower.
The discontinuity between Mayor Fisk declaring all superheroes to be criminals and Director de Fontaine unveiling the New Avengers is glaring: de Fontaine and the Thunderbolts/New Avengers make no reference to superheroes being unwelcome in New York and Fisk having superheroes hunted down with municipal authority makes no sense when the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency is sponsoring superhero teams.
It's pretty obvious that Marvel liked Dario Scardapane's storyline of Fisk hunting superheroes wtih police and simultaneously liked Jake Schreier's delightful and hilarious THUNDERBOLTS ending where the team prepare to take down the corrupt CIA director who tried to kill them only for her to abruptly declare them to the press as the New Avengers, preventing them from attacking her as she's now positioned herself as their benefactor and sponsor and given them a global level of validation and admiration.
Scardapane clearly had no idea what was going on in THUNDERBOLTS and couldn't address it; Schreier clearly had no idea what was happening in BORN AGAIN and couldn't accommodate it.
I have a writing mentor, Joe, who has described situations like this as trivial and irrelevant. He once said to me, "Continuity is a tool, but all too often, it's a trap. It doesn't matter if Laurie Strode died in 2002 movie if a 2018 movie wants to show her alive and kicking. It doesn't matter of the X-Men are hated and feared in the same universe where the Avengers are praised and admired. And no, there is no comic book or novel that explains how Xander Cage came back to life in the third XXX movie and it doesn't matter. Screw continuity. Tell a good story first."
I agree with maybe half of that. My view is: continuity errors can distract someone from appreciating a story, so rather than dismiss continuity issues as irrelevant, it would be better to identify them and smooth them out. To address and defuse the trap rather than avoiding it.
I believe that if Scardapane had been aware of THUNDERBOLTS, he would have rewritten Fisk's dialogue a little. "We don't need a gun-toting vigilante who wears a skull mask on his chest, or a man who dresses in a spider outfit, or a guy who wears devil horns to save us! These are not CIA operatives protecting our shores! Or US Army officers who answer to the chain of command! Or refugees from other realms contributing to their communities. These street vigilantes have no sanction! No oversight! They are thugs! Violent offenders! They attack our homes and places of work and worship! They will not be tolerated! They will be stopped!"
So why didn't Marvel make him aware?
It seems to me that Marvel's attitude is to approve of a TV show's plotline... and then inform the team if there's a tie-in they want to make, such as Kamala Khan's father. TV is flying blind and has no awareness of the movies. And Scardapane doesn't get to suggest crossovers; the system is that Marvel imposes or gifts them.
The issue may also be that BORN AGAIN's first season was finished filming before THUNDERBOLTS' ending was finalized, and it was too late to go back and make adjustments to BORN AGAIN.
It is amusing, however: for so long, AGENTS OF SHIELD and the Netflix and Hulu shows seemed so separated from the feature films, because Marvel Studios was separate from Marvel Entertainment. Now they are all under one banner... and the disconnect remains pretty much the same.
SPOILERS FOR THUNDERBOLTS*
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I really liked Thunderbolts*. I think the movie was a lot of fun, and I think the characters were really good. I agree that Pullman's Bob is really good, and he did a good job of both being very scary and intimidating and being really vulnerable. It's pretty incredible that Marvel was able to get all these huge stars to play, essentially, second-level characters and for a movie about them to be really fun.
We got a movie of:
- Captain America's Friend
- Three characters from the Black Widow movie
- The villain from a forgettable Ant-Man movie
- The secondary villain from the Falcon and the Winter Soldier streaming show
Some of that is a little reductive, but it's all true. And it's a pretty great movie that I think will do well financially.
I would like to focus on a couple of things I didn't really like, though:
- The New Avengers. I know it's played like it's a joke, but it bothered me for two reasons. One, it's not a joke. They are the Avengers, enough for it to really bother Sam Wilson. I understand why Red Guardian would do this, and I think it makes a lot of sense for Yelena, Walker, and maybe Ava. But what is Bucky doing? He was already an Avenger, technically, and it doesn't seem like he ever wanted to be in the spotlight like this. I think it would've been a better character move for him to turn it down.
And it shines a light on the fact that the Avengers are gone...for no reason? I was about to write about how there are a handful of Avengers that are still active, but I guess that's not necessarily true. In fact, I guess Phases 4-6 haven't done a terrible job at explaining where each of the Avengers is:
- Iron Man (Dead)
- Captain America (Retired)
- Hulk (Off world with his son?)
- Thor (Off world with his adopted daughter)
- Hawkeye (Retired?)
- War Machine (Replaced by a Skrull, Retired?)
- Falcon (now Captain America, working solo)
- Spider-Man (forgotten by the Avengers, working solo)
- Captain Marvel (off world)
- Black Panther (T'Challa is dead, Shuri is in Wakanda)
- Ant-Man (Not sure)
- Vison (dead)
- Black Widow (dead)
- Wanda (dead)
- Guardians (not really Avengers, off world)
Every one of those appeared in phases 4-6 or was dead in Endgame. So they've actually done a better job than I thought at referencing why the Avengers aren't around, but they really haven't directly referenced it. It's unclear to me if Hawkeye is actually retired, what the status is of War Machine and Ant-Man, and why none of the new characters have been recruited. It's unclear to me why the Avengers were allowed to be over, even if I understand why individuals aren't active Avengers anymore.
And I think it all links to that scene at the end of Shang-Chi. It seemed like Shang-Chi was in the fold, and it seemed like the Avengers existed in some form at that time. I know Carol has space stuff to do, and Bruce was still around. So when Bruce did his stuff from She-Hulk...did he just leave and the Avengers building was just empty?
I get that we're going to get a lot of this in Avengers: Doomsday, but it just feels super disorganized that it hasn't been referenced. Why all these characters felt comfortable leaving the Earth defenseless, and no one thought that was a problem. I think they've done an okay job of answering the job piecemeal, but like a lot of phases 4-6, it just doesn't feel cohesive. And this random team being introduced as the New Avengers and then that just being okay just feels weird to me.
I also wish they'd gotten Sam to show up in the post-credits. In fact, I wish Brave New World was more about this than what it was actually about.
Just saw Thunderbolts* last night.
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I like the idea of taking secondary characters and making a team out of them, particularly when it's a group that needs redemption like they do. I'm guessing the immediate downgrading of the "New Avengers" is setting up a situation where Earth has no cohesive set of protectors at the start of Avengers Doomsday. Also, given their background, it shouldn't be a surprise that they wouldn't immediately be embraced as worth successors to Iron Man, Captain America, etc. Sam was asked to assemble a new team of Avengers by President Red Hulk, so I'm also not surprised to see him be a bit put off by having a criminal like de Fontaine pull that out from under him.
I'm looking forward to seeing how they handle Bob/Sentry in the future. My guess is they're going to need him. Also interesting to see how the F4 end up in our universe. That's probably going to be revealed in the F4 Frist Steps, but it doesn't bode well for the fate of their universe if they've left it for ours.
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