Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase 4 & Beyond (and a chance to change your vote)

having no closure with KC sucks

Shang Chi looks rad. What is Shang-Chi? Any relation to Iron Fist?

The reboot of Speed we've been waiting for

Character dates back to the actual Bruce Lee era, originally credited to Steve Englehart and Jim Starlin. He is literally the son of Fu Manchu. They play that down a bit these days.

Played down in the MCU to the extent that he is now the son of the Mandarin (like the apparently real one, not Ben Kingsley).

(Hence the ten rings, natch.)

Looking forward to this!

What's Kumail getting canceled for? I have been on a Twitter break for a bit, so all I knew was the 'roids accusation stuff. The cast of Silicon Valley is not doing well.

Actual goosebumps several times during that trailer. Stoked.

What's Kumail getting canceled for? I have been on a Twitter break for a bit, so all I knew was the 'roids accusation stuff. The cast of Silicon Valley is not doing well.

nothing specific yet but it seems inevitable

He’s pretty much the worst person I have ever worked with lmao

— Alice Wetterlund (@alicewetterlund) January 3, 2021

Okay, was curious. Sounds about like par for the course for the cast of that show, Jimmy O. Yang seems to be the notable exception (and hopefully Zach Woods too, though maybe I've missed something about him).

Also got this happening

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/olivia-colman-in-talks-to-join-samuel-l-jackson-in-marvels-secret-invasion-exclusive

The Big Sick left a very bad taste in my mouth though I would say I came away with more of a "dude who's too proud of himself" vibe than "abusive asshole" vibe. But obviously those can overlap and who knows anymore.

xp: I know she is a current nominee but don't they normally call you an Oscar winner if you've ever won one?

I don't know Shang-Chi at all. Does he have powers? Kind of looks like a pretty standard fantasy (?) martial arts movie, which I suppose in the end a lot of MCU action stuff resembles, too.

No powers, just one of the best martial artists in the MCU. Last I read was his extended Marvel Comics Presents serialization, but in his original run, it was a mix of capitalizing on Bruce Lee / kung fu appreciation and adapting Sax Roemer's Fu Manchu mythology with standalone stories and those that fit the Fu Manchu narrative. Some Marvel interaction, with Shang-Chi meeting the Man-Thing, and either Spider-Man and The Thing in their Team-Up / Two-in-One series. The Doug Moench / Paul Gulacy years are justifiably beloved as very very cool meditations on a gentle soul required to use his violent skill. Iirc, the MCP run had Shang tricked out of his retirement to fight again. Loved the character enough to buy the four thick book collections, and all but one of the Deadly Hands of Kung Fu collections.

Yeah, all I ever really knew of him was some older comics a friend had when I was a kid and what I remember reading was very much in thrall to the Bruce Lee / general kung fu zeitgeisty thing going on at the time.

Yeah, to answer DJI's question above, Shang-Chi isn't really connected to Iron Fist beyond the fact that they were both among a slew of characters whipped up in response to the '70s kung fu craze.

Thanks. I'm guessing Shang-Chi must have some sort of pseudo-invulnerability/fast healing, since it seems like even the normies (Hawkeye, Black Widow, for example) survive getting tossed around and slammed in ways that would kill actual people.

Feel like JiC right now. I can go google this stuff ;)

The MOKF issues drawn by the late great Gene Day are classics.

xpost Ha. One way Google isn't that helpful is that it doesn't really convey whether Shang-Chi (for example) is a major comic book character, a minor one, someone that just had a few years in the spotlight but has since faded away, a recent hit character, a cult favorite, etc. Everyone's got the same kind of extensive wikipedia page, but the context is lost on someone like me, who knows more about comics than 95% of the population but less about comics than 95% of the people that know about comics. Clearly Shang-Chi was big enough to justify a multi-million dollar feature film and yet, I'd never heard of him. I'd never heard of the Guardians of the Galaxy, either, or the Eternals, or a few others of these feature films or TV shows. Like, Moon Knight? No idea. Loki? Sure. The What If? comics? Yes. Ms. Marvel? No.

Sounds like we have a similar level of knowledge. I read X-Men back in the 90s, so the only thing I knew about Captain Marvel was that Rogue took her powers.

Sorry I guess it was more like the late 80s? So old...

Yeah, that sounds about right (I'm 46). I probably stopped reading any comics regularly by the late '80s, though did sort of keep up a little the way some people watch others play games online.

among comic nerds, Shang Chi gets love. He had over a hundred issues of his own comic in the 70s/80s!

I think it's less "Shang-Chi was big enough to get his own movie" and more "Ron Perelman is no longer able to stop us making movies about not-white characters"

it's gonna do ridiculous numbers and turn liu into a megastar.

lol I went too many Marvel-owning billionaires back: Ike Perlmutter.

I was, like, what's Hellboy got to do with this?

I'm a fan of Shang Chi since the MOKF days but you know, he's probably about the same popularity level as Guardians of the Galaxy was as far as "oh, they're really gonna make a movie out of THIS?" so... hopes are high, anyway.

Abnett & Lanning's Guardians comic had been running mostly regularly for almost a decade when GotG got a movie, Shang Chi last headlined an ongoing 39 years ago, and that was under a different title. Neither have real-world name recognition but Guardians was definitely vastly more popular.

Disney has come to a complicated agreement with Sony to host Spider-Man and many other films on its streaming services (in the US)https://t.co/aDpeyGHw0p

— Den Of Geek UK (@denofgeek) April 22, 2021

Looks like Sony did well here. They get to sell the first window to Netflix, which after some time the movie gets booted off Netflix and sold onto D+/Hulu.

So what's the relationship between this Hulu MODOK show and the MCU?

No relationship, thank god.

Or at least I pray to god.

When you look at the MCU, if you look up and see a gigantic pile of steamy, loose shit descending upon it like a viscous rain, that rain of shit is MODOK

and yet somehow it still seems less embarrassing than The Inhumans

Yeah, I don't think there will be any intended MCU crossover here but, uh, you never know with these guys:

Oversight of the series was moved to Marvel Studios in December 2019 when Marvel Television was folded into that company.

Man, tough crowd, I thought the MODOK thing looked charming and suited my desire that Marvel just expand out to do every genre of show but in Marvel Universe

MODOK trying to be a dad with wacky hijinx ensuing is not my jam

Oswalt is a better actor than anyone in the main cast of Falcon and Winter Soldier not named Daniel Bruhl

(OK maybe not Wyatt Russell, he's clearly a good actor, just not given a lot to work with in F&WS)

Yeah, sorry, it looks completely terrible to me. In theory, I would be completely over the moon about a whole show devoted to MODOK. Not this one, though.

Yeah, I was excited about a MODOK cartoon, dug the animation style and thought Oswalt was good casting (lots of other good people in the cast too) but the concept of "MODOK, wacky dad" is definitely not what I wanted.

all will be forgiven if they use my "MODOK sex involves a lot of head" joke

Mobile Organism Designed Only for Kink

So... Sam rules

I haven't seen today's episode, but I'll say this: I never cared much about Sam/Falcon in the movies, not really, but for all its relative unevenness this show has really made me look forward to more of the character in any context. That's got to be a testament to, what, Mackie? The writing? I'm not sure, but definitely some kind of alchemy.

mackie's pretty good in playing the character down in a keanu way: he's charismatic and striking but real restrained. Doesn't exactly get me engaged but it works fine as a blank mask to project the viewer into.