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

I hear Marvel provides a Watcher

I've been rewatching the earliest movies and it's become clear that one of the bigger problems with the current MCU is not having something akin to an Avengers flick every few films to help reestablish the shared universe and refocus the overarching plot. Like I just watched Age of Ultron yesterday and, while it's no great shakes, it does a pretty decent job of synthesizing the disparate threads from the previous solo films and setting the stage for the films that followed. Just having characters pop up in one another's movies and TV shows really isn't enough, and I (and Marvel/Disney, seemingly) don't have a clear idea of where they're heading with any of the stuff they've dropped since Endgame. It'd be one thing if they were just giving up on the interconnectedness altogether but that clearly isn't their intention.

I think they went for quantity of content over cohesiveness. Signing Oscar Isaac for only one season of Moon Knight means you can't set up any continuing Moon Knight stories, but you do get something to put on Disney plus.

Mainly I don't think they've found any movie leads as good as RDJ and Chris Evans

When you got movies like Tom Cruise in them, you can't lose.

Tom Cruise too busy getting the Mission Earth franchise off the ground

Hiddleston is good. And Hemsworth is pretty good. One problem is that they are running out of recognizable/A-list characters, and haven't yet risked recasting the old favorites. Then again, as the way-off-base thread I started back-when shows, for at least regular people (like me) something like Guardians of the Galaxy seemed like a terrible idea/gamble, but even with obscure characters and b-list actors it turned out to be among the most successful (in every sense) series of these films, which goes to show, again, that the writer/direction makes a big difference.

I've always thought the comics model was pretty sound. That is, every few years there's a different run of writers/inkers/artists, etc., and the comics look and read differently, but fans just go with the flow. The thing is, it's a lot cheaper to produce a run of comics than it is just to make the credits to one of these movies, probably, so there's not a lot of room for risk. The TV shows seems a bit like missed opportunities, because for all their high and low points they still largely seem to be following the look and feel of the movies, bar a couple of outliers.

I bet Disney could juice things up if they threw in a couple of things that caught people's attention. Like, what about releasing short teases on Disney+ that eventually link together for a big reveal? You can't have two hours of people talking in a room, but it'd be relatively cheap and easy to scatter a few of those out there to build up hype. Call it something like "Marvel Mystery Box" or whatever, where you don't know what you're going to get until it goes live.

So there's an Echo show about to air. Is this the one that had reportedly lots of reshoots? Is anybody excited about this? Should anybody be excited about this?

It's getting good reviews. Only 5 episodes.

also Devery Jacobs from Reservation Dogs is in it.

It does feel a little off-brand that the only MCU series they've announced for this year are this and the Agatha Harkness spinoff. And that the only movie on the 2024 slate is Deadpool 3. Feels kinda like 2020 all over again, but it also feels like they could use a year to firm up their future plans.

Probably a good thing since, y'know, the whole thing where they (rightly and justifiably) fired the main actor that they planned to build the entire next phase around.

Excited might be overselling it, but I'm looking forward to Echo. I liked Alaqua Cox in the Hawkeye series and thought D'Onofrio made a really good Fisk/Kingpin in the Daredevil series, glad he's back.

I guess someone died during the filming of "Wonder Man"? I guess they are filming a "Wonder Man" show? I guess "Wonder Man" is a Marvel character? (Sorry, Wonder Man fans.)

wonder MAN? will this woke nonsense never end???

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Simon_Williams_(Earth-616)

iirc a graft of Wonder Man's brain is what gave Vision his personality. Then when Vision was reset he refused to let the Avengers use his brain again because he'd fallen in love with Wanda.

Sounds like a movie to me!

I really really like Wonder Man. As strong as Thor, but super super insecure…his friendship with the Beast in the late 70s/early 80s was really fun…

Yeah, I remember all that nonsense - you forgot the part where Wonder Man died, then they used his brain, THEN of course he came back to life and was like "THAT'S MY BRAIN!"

It's really bad daytime soap opera shit for kids which to be fair I enjoyed in grade school, but once I got older and discovered other things in life (or rather everything else in life), that shit got really boring really fast.

I thumbed through a trade paperback that collected the old wanda/vision stories from back in the day, hoping to see some of what was in Wandavision. Eeyuck, put it right back. Later I found the recent Vision in the suburbs miniseries which was great.

I was way into wonder man as a kid. Green suit with goggles heavily preferred over leisure suit with shades

Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn are the Fantastic Four. Out 7/25/25.

Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm, respectively, it appears.

We’re doing this!

Can't wait to see who they cast as the Moleman

Dr. Doom NEEDS to be in this movie, if only for like a minute.

that mole man casting in full

https://assets.mycast.io/actor_images/actor-hans-moleman-172526_large.jpg?1612448416

aghast all over again, if course, that john c reilly remains uncast as the thing

Can only hope for a Yancy Street Gang series on Disney+=

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GGTy458bAAAf6ol?format=jpg&name=large

can assume from the vibe of this that they’re going for a throwback alternate universe from which the ff will be rudely yanked by kang the beyonder and/or doctor doom into the mcu?

Who's going to play Aunt Petunia

Not seen the casting but assume that's Pedro Pascal?

Happy Valentine’s Day from Marvel’s First Family! Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn are The Fantastic Four.

Marvel Studios' #TheFantasticFour, in theaters July 25, 2025. pic.twitter.com/skPZLqu21h

— Fantastic Four (@FantasticFour) February 14, 2024

fans ‘baffled’ by vanessa kirby’s casting as willie lumpkin

No Wyatt Wingfoot, no credibility.

fucking nerds are weeping because the Office guy isn't playing RR

lol Pascal is a MAJOR upgrade

Richie Bear as The Thing rules IMO, terrific casting

I know it's not MCU, but Madame Web predictably flopped, making it the latest in a string of underperforming superhero movies. However, all those movies were also, by many accounts, pretty bad. So the question is, have they been flopping or underperforming because people are sick of superheroes, or mostly just because they are bad? Has there been a particularly good superhero movie that flopped yet?

I guess we can test this out in a few years when someone makes a good superhero movie again

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/madame-web-bomb-killed-sony-franchise-1235829471/

“We’re not going to see another Madame Web movie for another decade-plus,” quipped one industry veteran. “It failed. Sony tried to make a movie that was a different type of superhero movie.”

https://tenor.com/view/dumb-and-dumber-lloyd-theres-a-chance-jim-carrey-gif-11098164

All the Sony Spider-man spin-offs have been stinkers (if not flops), while all the Marvel Spider-man movies have been solid, so at a certain point it starts to seem like maybe Sony is the problem.

I had never heard of Madame Web before this movie. I'm not sure people are going to go see any old thing tangentially related to something they like.

<i>have they been flopping or underperforming because people are sick of superheroes, or mostly just because they are bad?</i>

The recent films, would say they're just bad (or charitably, hit or miss). There's a mix of "let me be the first to condemn it unseen" fanboy pile-on and actual viewing word of mouth contributing to performance. Ideally, everyone buys a ticket before critiquing it.

Just watched "The Marvels", and would give it a C+. While lots to criticize (songs, casting, scene transitions...), the chemistry among the three women is fun and mostly steady. The Kamala Khan actress was the best part for me, radiating the "it's a blast to be a superhero" vibe of early TV Flash.

Venom(s), Morbius, Madame Web (and Shazam 2 & Blue Beetle on the DC side) suffer from all sorts of issues like inauthentic humor, poor casting (ymmv), intrusive music, bad plots, etc.

Seems like every superhero movie now has to justify the genre's existence, so there's no latitude for a substandard film.

The Captain Marvel sequel was a flop too but three other MCU movies were in the domestic top 10 - I'd say it has less to do with cape burnout or a decline in quality than unfamiliar Marvel characters not selling.

I didn't read comic books as a kid but I knew of the X-Men and Spidey and various Avengers. Not a clue about Captain Marvel/Ant Man/Madame Web or individual X-Men names outside of Wolverine. Guardians of the Galaxy is an outlier there but that came at the perfect MCU hype moment and had an adorable raccoon star.

Sony's whole MO here is just so cynical. They're making movies of whatever Spider-Man related IP they can scrounge up regardless of whether anyone in the world gives a single fuck about it. Madame Web is like a quaternary character at best that AFAIK hasn't even really been used in forever. Literally just pissing money away. And yes, I did mean literally. I don't know how they got the money in there or how it's making its way out of there but it's what they're doing.

And yet they're also responsible for the Spider-Verse flicks. What the what.

milo don’t you (or didn’t you) have some stake in some comics/games store at some point or am I thinking of someone else?

I still work/99% run two stores.

Parallels to comic books - Marvel had a good thing going when they got the Star Wars rights and were selling one or two Star Wars titles. Then they started pumping out miniseries and titles focused on characters non-die hards didn't know/care about and it wound up hurting the numbers on the core titles because people get fed up with having to buy 10 $4.99 comics to keep up with the Star Wars comic universe vs. 1-2.

Madame Web sounds awful, but my preteen nieces really wanted to see it for some reason, and loved it… lol