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

Season 2 of Loki premieres in two and a half months and I'm sure Kang is supposed to show up there.

Disney can always delay it - it was already delayed at least once - but what they can't do right now, for any of their projects, is reshoots or rewrites. Or shoots and writing, period. So I dunno what they're going to do.

probably ignore the entire thing and shoot the movie with him

^^^

that's my guess. I'm guessing the results would be awful, but they could always recast and CGI the new actor in over what was shot.

I’d bet anything it’ll be canceled. I’d also bet anything that the announced film slate is completely overhauled.

Nah, I don't think wiping the slate will happen. If, and it's a big if given the wheels in motion, they'll ride out Loki s2 with Majors, then delay the films that he might be in and recast. Easy enough to write off with all those alternate Kangs. He just looks different.

I don’t think Iger is thrilled about Jake Schreier’s Thunderbolts in Christmas, 2024 or any of the announced “Phase Six” films. But, as a longtime DIS stockholder, I’m no closer to understanding Iger’s motivations (beyond the usual billionaire stuff of harvesting teenager blood).

You could also reasonably interpret Iger’s view from his recent comments as “costs are the problem.” Maybe we’ll still see everything but with much smaller budgets.

Yeah I have no doubt changes are coming, I think they'll scale back the TV shows first and maybe cut back on films per year for a bit. But hard not to imagine they are still going to go big with Fantastic Four and X-Men, just maybe in a few more years.

Man, I’d hate to be responsible for writing Fantastic Four. The timing sucks.

Fantastic Four is challenging because you’ve been robbed of the three elements that made me (and I assume many others) love the Fantastic Four: space, Americana, and Jack Kirby. “Superheroes in space” feels meaningless after Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor, and Captain Marvel have zipped around the universe. Hell, even Spider-Man went to space! The Americana aesthetic doesn’t feel appropriate in the current era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (i.e., after The Winter Soldier, Civil War, Infinity War, and Endgame). Finally, Disney has evenly dabbled with a stronger visual identity (e.g., Eternals, Loki, Wandavision, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) but they’d need to go way further and I expect much further than they’d want. I’d want uniquely stylish like The Wachowski Sisters, Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, etc.

X-Men is equally challenging. I’m skeptical Disney has any interest in tackling American prejudice and bigotry. But that has the benefit of being unannounced!

I think way too much about this crap! 🤣

It’s embarrassing but I had chills when watching these movies. When I was a kid I never thought I’d see my two favorite superheroes, Black Panther and Doctor Strange, in a movie. I just want them to be good!

I’m skeptical Disney has any interest in tackling American prejudice and bigotry

They tackled the plight of refugees in Captain Marvel; granted they were from space, but X-Men are similarly one step removed from actual reality.

Nah, I don't think wiping the slate will happen.

Eh, the slate is barely a slate. "Loki" is apparently in the can but has already been delayed/rescheduled once. "The Marvels" is in the can and has been delayed/rescheduled once. But "Captain America 4" (which has also been delayed/rescheduled once) is still in "post-production," which could very well mean nothing, considering there's currently no writing or reshoots on the table. "Thunderbolts" is in "pre-production," which doesn't mean much; filming hasn't even started. "Blade" is already on its second director and who knows what iteration of script/screenwriters, and has been bumped a few times, iirc; it's also in "pre-production." "Fantastic Four" is on its second director and second screenwriter(s). "Shang-Chi 2" is up in the air, the two upcoming "Avengers" films are practically no more than placeholders. I'd be shocked if most of the announced TV slate arrives any time soon; Filming reportedly wrapped on "Echo" a year ago, but Feige allegedly called it unreleasable and had it mostly reshot, so who knows what its status even is.

In a lot of ways I imagine Disney/Feige is breathing a sigh of relief at even the chance to pump the brakes a little. For sure the relative disappointments or failures of "Dial of Destiny" and "Elemental" and "Little Mermaid" probably gave them pause.

I think when they coming out with these multi-year schedules it can feel exhausting. Like we need fifteen movies and TV series to build up to....a fight between Kang and the Avengers?

be funny if as a result ofa ll of this, they adopt a monolithic development process that results in one new movie a decade

generational divides will be named for whether you were alive when Marvel was a multi-film/year enterprise or when it was a once/10 years thing

One 10-hour movie.

Wakanda Alexanderplatz

Would have to be more like a 40 hour movie to cram in a full decade.

Marvel Times Forever

you get one ticket and there is one 4 hour film shown every day for 10 days and if you misso ne day it's too bad

There are films for different characters running simultaneously on screens in the theater and every now and then you have to leave the X-Men screen and finish watching the story on the Alpha Flight screen

Marvel's Dekalog.

Deathlokalog

Lol

alright well it's decided, see you all in 2033

Or...in October:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dug56u8NN7g

some lovely production design in there

Deathlok would seem to be an easy choice.

Kang is very boring but that time slipping animation is very good.

oh hey, loki started up again

first episode was not great tho imo. i mean everyone loves ke huy quan, and owen wilson's nose, so that's cool. not to mention diminutive field marshals with scottish accents. but the situation hasn't really changed at all

also jonathan majors's visage is very much in evidence even if the actor himself is not (yet)

I enjoyed it as an opener but mostly thanks to the new faces and the relentless design feast.

Tho it's odd to me that Loki was not familiar with the concept of 'spaghettification'.

i enjoyed this - also I found out that a guy i used to work with (back in my dvd distribution days) wrote this episode! so that was exciting

This ep was bonkers. Its been 2 years so my brain was scrabbling furiously to recall what the hell was going on prior.

Fav bit - where OB is talking about the handbook and tosses a copy behind him without looking and Loki catches it, would love to know how many takes that took!

So uh... Majors is really heavily tied up in linked storylines in this and other moviles, hows that gonna work?

Badly, I suspect. Let's see what happens. But I liked the episode myself! That whole design vibe of the TVA really is a main character in the best of senses.

Meantime, a lot of this tracks:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/daredevil-marvel-disney-1235614518/

Episode was a fine/fun reintroduction.

Normally I'd be OK with slimming these things down, but the fact that the upcoming "Marvels" movie is only 105 minutes long is kinda a red-flag, even more so when you factor iirc Dan's news that a person he knows that worked on it hated it.

With Daredevil’s new direction, Marvel hopes to right the ship on a project with sky-high expectations. The show is Marvel’s first to feature a hero who already had a successful series on Netflix, running three seasons. But sources say that Corman and Ord crafted a legal procedural that did not resemble the Netflix version, known for its action and violence. Cox didn’t even show up in costume until the fourth episode.

Really? Lol

The irony is that this person is an editor and thus largely responsible for the trimmed run time

(Also I don’t know her, I know her dad)

I watched GotG 3 recently and it was one of the more enjoyable and visually interesting Marvel films. But it did leave me irritated because of what seems to be a trope in a lot of these superhero productions - the good guys indiscriminately kill the foot soldiers but spare the life of the genocidal antagonist. It doesn’t seem very class conscious

superheroes' weaknesses are manifestos.

I was just thinking of the number of shows that dangled new characters that may never come into play (not including easter eggs and deep cut in-jokes). The Eternals promised Black Knight and hinted at the perpetually delayed Blade, not to mention the titular characters that no one gave a fuck about. I can't even remember which one had Eros and Pip the Troll, maybe that one. Hercules popped up at the end of Thor 4. Werewolf By Night introduced a bunch of stuff and implied Man-Thing would be important. Miles Morales was teased a couple of times. And of course the oft-promised/threatened Kang himself is up in the air. And they haven't even gotten to Fantastic Four or X-Men. Who knows if they can even keep it together until then.

Well, I did not expect to see that as an episode. The whole "I'm not who you think I am" speech just felt like a massive error of judgement.

OK, we've now seen the first three episodes of Loki 2. It's fine, but I still think they need to nip this shit in the bud ASAP. Even setting aside the problem with Majors (the person), Marvel *just did* this time travel/time line shenanigans stuff. It was literally the climax of its previous cycle. So Marvel, if you're listening, he's what you gotta do:

1) Use the alternate time-line BS as a means to bring in the Fantastic Four
2) Have the Fantastic Four figure out a way to fix the timeline and trap Kang in some sort of Phantom Zone again
3) Introduce Dr. Doom as the Big Bad. Seems simple enough to me. It can be a post-credits sequence (after Kang is conquered/put on mothballs), or maybe in the Agatha show. Menacing drone. Camera creeping through hallways of a castle. Close up of eyes behind a mask. Longer shot of Doom sitting on a throne. Cut to black. Kind of like they did with Thanos, get everyone excited again.

Doom has to save everyone imo

Definitely agree about bringing in Doom to be the Big Bad, I really thought that would be the direction and was kind of surprised they went all in on Kang.

Kang is boring in the comics (except maybe Young Avengers)

I haven't seen Majors in anything outside of Ant-Man and Loki, but IMO he is also boring

Boring is wrong, actually. Just a bit... panto?

He was absolutely fantastic in Lovecraft Country, which is why I was initially excited about his casting (obviously before the troubling news broke).

What it boils down to is: fuck being hard, Doom is complicated.