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

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.

I'm not a big comics head, does Kang have a motivation?

Gotta admit, that was a great cliffhanger.

agreed!

I don’t mind this season of Loki at all but Loki has been very un-Loki-ish. He just seems so noble and trustworthy, like he’s just all in on saving all the timelines but doesn’t seem so concerned with how he is gaming this for himself. The God of Mischief has not been remotely mischievous this season.

yeah i was wondering why i wasn't really feeling this season even though it hasn't been bad at all, and that's part of it I think. so much of loki's appeal is that tension btw wanting to rule everything and wanting to do the right thing

also this show was better when it focused more on the characters' personal arcs and relationships - loki/morbius, loki/sylvie, morbius/renslayer, b-15 etc. just feels like a standard "we need to stop this bad thing from happening, repeat 10x" MCU plotline now

It feels (even more than before, for obvious reasons) that this show may indeed be aiming for some sort of reset. Fingers crossed! I recall reading that this is the first Marvel show that did not require reshoots, though, and if Marvel was even close to panic mode you'd think the shoot might have had a few of those.

Per Loki, there's always the chance this isn't the real Loki, either. Lotta cards left to play, should they desire.

Is it just me, or is this season literally really dark?

I think the confrontation with Sylvie in the cafeteria shows that Loki wants to rule the timelines and that what he’s getting out of this is being the backstop against HWR/Kang as puppet master of reality.

I stopped watching the shows. I’m not even sure I’ve seen all of the movies. A multi-movie Doctor Doom epic would immediately make me excited about the MCU again. My love of Marvel is a byproduct of Marvel’s ability to weave common speculative settings. Nobody does this better Doctor Doom!

Doom’s rule over Latveria, where he is the absolute monarch, adds a fantasy element to his character. His megalomaniacal belief in his own god-like status and his obsession with acquiring god-like powers taps into Marvel’s mythological themes. He’s a formidable sorcerer, making him a believable antagonist to Doctor Strange. He’s a brilliant scientist rivaling Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man. I could go on and on. He’s the best.

I got VERY hype a few years ago when noises were made about a Noah Hawley Doom movie

Or, more simply, etaeoe OTM

Dr. Doom's at his best when he's doing whatever it takes to achieve a goal, regardless of the fallout. OR DOES HE?

The Roger Stern/Mike Mignola story with Dr. Doom and Dr. Strange, TRIUMPH AND TORMENT, is completely over the top with Strange wonder whether Doom's screwed up different parts of his own plan, or if he's just messing with everyone in order to achieve his own goals. One of the turning points in making Doom more of a sorcerer while giving him a little more backstory.

Then there’s the whole aspect of “wait, was that Doom? Or a Doombot?”

Oh, yeah. That's one narrative out. The other is that half of the Doom lore stories using a third-party narrator as a framing device so every time you learn more about his childhood, there's a strong chance that half of it was exaggerated nonsense. Can you really trust some random Latverian relaying information about their ruler?

Noah Hawley Doom movie

Hawley apparently even turned in a script, but Marvel passed. Iirc, this was right around when Disney bought Fox, so they probably had all sorts of grand designs before covid and other delays screwed up the sacred Marvel timeline.

That and the other studios tried to make FF work how many times? Kind of crazy. I don't think I've ever seen more than bits and pieces of any of them

That's why I think the key is to make a standalone Doom movie. Set up the character, set up his world, set up his whole deal.

frenemies movie with Dr. Strange

at the end, Doom can turn to the camera and say "and now to get back to my real enemy... Reed Richards!"

Mr. Fantastic’s power is just inherently goofy. Hard to strike the right tone.

I say they just background him and make Sue the main FF character. He can always be off working on something technical, or captured, or missing.

I think the trick with the FF is *not* to give them an origin story or whatever. Just port them over from another timeline or, regardless, quickly establish their deal. Kind of like what they did with the latest Spider-men (animated and Tom Holland). And yeah, Reed, they barely need to give him powers, he's a super-genius, leave him to the lab with Hulk or whomever, working on widgets or figuring out what is going on while the rest get assigned to various adventures.

So yeah, Doom, give *him* an origin story, set up his complexity and ambiguity, and make the *the FF* the post-credits tease.

I've always thought Sue could be the most powerful/dangerous member of the group anyway. Slide a 2-micron force needle into the bad guy, expand it, et voila --

https://d3dkwn7op408kc.cloudfront.net/ckeditor_assets/2022/12/05/copied-from-winston-effect.jpg

skip the origin story and go full interdimensional Council of Reeds who get over their heads and you need Doom to help sort it out

actual comics plotline, there

I always thought stretching would be a cool power.

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

dud

https://variety.com/2023/film/features/marvel-jonathan-majors-problem-the-marvels-reshoots-kang-1235774940/

Then again they could be reading this thread:

At the gathering in Palm Springs, executives discussed backup plans, including pivoting to another comic book adversary, like Dr. Doom.

*frowns quizzically*

As public criticism mounts, Feige is pulling the plug on scripts and projects that aren’t working. Case in point: the “Blade” reboot. With Mahershala Ali signed on for the eponymous role of a vampire, things looked promising for a 2023 release date. But the project has gone through at least five writers, two directors and one shutdown six weeks before production. One person familiar with the script permutations says the story at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons. Blade was relegated to the fourth lead, a bizarre idea considering that the studio had two-time Oscar winner Ali on board.