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

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.

“The Marvel machine was pumping out a lot of content. Did it get to the point where there was just too much, and they were burning people out on superheroes? It’s possible."

lol This quote could have appeared at any time in the last 13 years.

Blade: The View

But the ensuing tsunami of spandex proved to be too much of a good thing, and the demands of churning out so much programming taxed the Marvel apparatus. Moreover, the need to tease out an interwoven storyline over so many disparate shows, movies and platforms created a muddled narrative that baffled viewers.

otm imo, there's only so much time in one's life. my kid was steering the ship on watching Marvel stuff and it's kinda crazy how rapidly he lost interest, he loved Loki S1 and hasn't even mentioned S2. I think he mostly kinda liked the more recent movies and also the shows he'd seen but he just has no interest in attempting to keep up with another new storyline, and after Ant Man 3 he was done.

having interwoven stories that made you had to buy a half dozen titles that you didn't care about in order to understand what was going on in the one comic you enjoyed reading was one of the most widely-derided things they did in that medium! and they decided that was what they needed to replicate in movies and tv

there are multiple reasonably successful movie and tv franchises now that do this without making the intersection points the main plotline of the individual elements

Oooof

A Blade movie that isn’t at all about Blade would be very, very funny

it makes it sound more like what would happen if Blade showed up on Sesame Street chasing the Count and was waylaid into a life lesson by Elmo.

I feel bad for the writers because some clueless producers are just "Can you make this like Blade but woke?!"

ironically Blade as a concept is already woke so idk wtf they were thinking

It is pretty woaw that a She Hulk episode cost more to make than a final season Game of thrones episode

Yeah, my older kids either have aged out or had no interest to begin with, and my 13 year old is extremely Disney skeptical at this point. His position is "It sucks unless you can convince me otherwise."

I still remember how good the first Iron Man and the first Avengers were.

the difference is that you can clearly see what is going on onscreen in any given episode of she-hulk and that shit does not come cheap xp

ironically Blade as a concept is already woke so idk wtf they were thinking

“having interwoven stories that made you had to buy a half dozen titles that you didn't care about in order to understand what was going on in the one comic you enjoyed reading was one of the most widely-derided things they did in that medium!”

Marvel in the 1990s, and one of various reasons I quit collecting

His position is "It sucks unless you can convince me otherwise."

He's ready to be a prestige filmmaker!

A Blade movie that isn’t at all about Blade would be very, very funny
― the new drip king (DJP), Wednesday, November 1, 2023 5:11 PM (forty-one minutes ago)

"Blink" being a spectacular Dr. Who episode, I could see the concept possibly working, but that it'd be better applied to Damage Control.

Blade as the continuation (after Werewolf by Night, Dr. Strange...) of wrapping in the supernatural, he needs to be central. They could bring in Ghost Rider, tease or start all the Midnight Sons, etc.

does loki s02 actually make any sense, like, within its own framework? the timelines are disappearing! the timelines are expanding so fast that shit's gonna break unless we invent some chronobabble gadgets! everyone's sprinting through dark corridors shrieking we're running out of time and everyone's gonna die! i mean i guess i don't actually need it to make sense, but this is less fun to me than moons crashing into planets and dozens of lokis fighting each other and the loki-sophie thing/not-thing

the exposition-tastic s02e01 was a major turnoff and my family has not returned

I get the sense the Loki show has had things going on off-screen that were hinted at and the end of the show is going to live within the framework of the beginning of the season
mostly prompted by that Loki seeing Sophie pry herself out of the elevator scene that made no sense at the beginning of the season being resolved by Loki paradoxing himself. So we've got the question of whether he just sheared off some timelines

i will say that between owen wilson and rafael casal/x-5/brad wolfe, this show has some Interesting Noses

Loki has basically been balls-out hilarious across 4 episodes with the cliffhanger on the most recent one being the absolute best thing I’ve seen in a Marvel property in a long time

I like the clock hologram lady

Voiced by Tara Strong who is a voice actor powerhouse!

lol have IG open on my phone and reading the comments on Amy Schumer's latest evil woe-is-me post, I see a comment from Tara Strong just as I read the above post, she's "definitely fallen in love with you"

voice actor powerhouse!

Miss Minutes is absolutely terrifying. The glee she was showing while Renslayer crushed the captive TVA agents was such a great touch.

tara strong made some pretty anti-palestinian and islamophobic tweets fwiw but obviously not the only problematic actor associated with this show heh

but yeah, great performance

There was also some internet chatter about her being racist towards an Uber driver but I don’t really know what happened there

I am going to defer my judgment and just enjoy a ridiculous computer animated character for the time being being

the easy out of “wow I knew they were bad because their acting sucked” is a coward’s refuge I try not to do. I can just offload the moral outrage on to the corporation for giving me that shit

Rob Gordon needs to critique the newest Loki episode

I'm really enjoying Ke Huy Quan in this, he's so endearing.

yeah he’s great!

"Well it did take me 18 months. And my wife left me".

I thought this most recent episode was great and the first of any of these shows or movies in a while to have any real oomph.

Maybe oomph was not the right onomatopoeia. But it had *something* that's been missing.

Genuinely curious how the new "Marvels" movie fares. I mean, it comes out in two days, and I've detected literally nothing in terms of excitement or interest, especially for a sequel to a movie that made over a billion. Maybe it'll be huge!

I bought tickets to the Marvels movie for Friday evening... there were five tickets sold, seven after I paid. It's going to tank, hard.

I’ll probably see Deadpool next, then FF. (I don’t know when the next Spider-Man will happen.)

It might be a problem how this film necessitates at least some familiarity with the events of two TV series, as well as two of the three main characters coming from those series.

And also that Brie Larson is charisma free in the role

Very mixed reviews so far