Rolling Marvel Cinematic Universe thread (+ a poll: Classic or Dud?)

Going to see Captain America 2 tonight - I caught the first one on Netflix and it was way better than I expected.

Avengers was a lot of fun in the theater, but I haven't watched it again. Not sure it would hold up at home.

Not a big fan of the Iron Man movies - RDJ's charisma is outweighed by every other element being dull.

Classic just for doing better than the non-MCU properties and waaaaaaaay better than DC.

It's quite a thing, spending hundreds of millions to make billions, and basing it all on superhero comics and boomer nostalgia. But they've managed to produce some reasonably good action films so far. My bias is based on Marvel Zombie status dating to 1972, but I try to be clear-eyed with dissenting views.

Dud, both for the passable-at-best movies and for the concept itself.

I guess the nostalgia is not limited to boomers, though. xp

The current crop are pretty classic (though classic seems too strong, tbh). I like the way the serialized, cross-property roll-out parallels the comics. Lots of titles, different takes on familiar characters, largely fun and competent, not totally stupid, thus far really well cast.

I also like the first two Singer X-Men movies a lot, or at least did at the time. Wish those and the FF were part of the official family. But Spider-man, I've got no problem letting him dangle.

just inoffensive and mediocre enough to be broadly popular

Rebooting Spider-man so soon after the other trilogy is easily the worst thing about this.

Spider-Man isn't part of the MCU.

I thought that was a Marvel comic.

Ah, rtfa, gotcha.

It is, but the MCU refers specifically to the properties controlled by Marvel Studios. Sony has movie rights to Spider-Man and Fox has the rights to X-Men stuff. It's kinda convoluted. xp

This sums things up quite nicely
http://jonnegroni.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/dnxshsd.png?w=700&h=560p

But also worth noting that the previous Punisher, Blade, and Daredevil movies and Ang Lee's Hulk don't count. A situation so convoluted it could've only been whipped up by people in the mainstream comics industry.

Milo summation otm

Good luck making a megafranchise out of Namor and Man-Thing, Universal and Lionsgate!

I was a huge comic-book fan as a kid. I dip in and out now as a 33-year-old and still enjoy them, but I've kind of lost interest in following the ins and outs of the Marvel comic-book universe. What I admire most about the Marvel movies is that they've taken the core things I loved about the characters I read as a kid and put them more or less wholesale on the screen.

Certainly, not all of them are great or even particularly good in some cases - I don't need to see Hulk, Iron Man 2 or Thor 2 again - but to me they all seem to have a level of affection for and understanding of the characters which in itself is actually pretty unusual for comic-book movies. Man of Steel is probably the worst example of this - everyone involved seemed actively embarrassed to be making movie about Superman - but there are plenty of others, like Bruce Wayne just straight-up giving up on being Batman for years in TDKR or Sandman turning out to be Uncle Ben's killer in Spider-Man 3.

If I was 12 years old now, I'd be thrilled that every six months I could go to the movies and see an excitingly-realised, generally faithful representation of the comics I loved on the screen. At 33, I enjoy them as fun action movies with an unusually ambitious shared-world underpinning which are for the most part way more coherent than other giant summer pictures.

In a interview with Total Film, Iron Man 3 co-writer and All Hail the King writer-director Drew Pearce mentioned seeing Damage Control as a possible Marvel One-Shot film.

If this actually happened it would make the whole enterprise worthwhile regardless of any other concerns imo

I've enjoyed most of the MCU movies, and I agree that the heroes have mostly been perfectly cast... But like I said in the Winter Soldier thread, I think probably the biggest flaw in these movies is that the villains have mostly been rather bland. It seems that the MCU has followed the lead of the Nolan Batman movies in that they try to make the villains "realistic" and gritty, i.e. that their origins are explained by "science", there's no magic or cosmic powers etc involved, they don't wear funky villains costumes, they don't have over-the-top despotic personalities, and so on... But this means the villains have mostly been corrupt businessmen or politicians, tough dudes in armor and/or with cybernetic parts, or (like Batroc in the new Cap movie) just your regular action movie thugs with some special martial arts moves, all of which are pretty boring. So while they've managed to turn memorable comic book heroes into memorable movie characters, the same hasn't really happened with the villains.

The biggest exception to the above is Loki, who benefits from the fact that Thor's setting is not "realistic" in any way, so they couldreally make him larger than life, No wonder they had Loki as the main antagonist in the Avengers movie (yeah, I know, he was the first Avengers villain in the comics too, but no one forced them to follow that pattern), since he's pretty much the only true & memorable supervillain they've done so far. But hopefully this'll change with upcoming Guardians and Dr. Strange movies, and when Ultron and Thanos turn up in Avengers... There's no way you could make those villains "realistic", so I hope they won't even try.

So far generally more towards the classic side, though I fear diminishing returns may set in soon unless they find some way of upping the already pretty massive stakes*. I like the ambition of having a network of narratively connected mega-budget films, it's something that has never been done before at all (unless you buy into the Unified Theory of Pixar, ha).

And I echo the point made above that pre-teen me would have loved the shit out of this, which is a fair indication they've been doing their job.

*I think a major character's death would help with this, but would they dare?

An interesting poll might be the MCU vs the Dark Knight trilogy. Had a long and repetitive debate in the pub on Friday about just that.

xp I'm pretty certain they'll kill Chris Evans and replace him as Captain America with Sebastian Stan. It's already laid out clearly in the comics and Evans is only signed up for six movies, which will be up after the next Cap / Avengers movies.

I guess that's possible... It was interesting that they didn't really resolve Bucky's plot arc in any way in the new Cap movie, so it seems they definitely have some future plans for him.

Well, Sebastian Stan's signed up for nine movies and he's only been in two, so...

Bucky's a way more interesting character than Cap, so I think it would do the MCU good to replace him in a few years - how much more mileage could they really wring out of Evans's essential goodness after two more movies?

Though if they kill anyone, I think it'll be Tony Stark. Downey it already starting to feel a bit old for the role, and I don't think he has too many movies left in his contract either? Plus there's comic book precedent too for another dude replacing him inside the armor, and that other dude is already a major supporting character in the movies. (The only problem with this is that they cast Don Cheadle as Rhodey, and he's as old as Downey is.)

(xxpost)

and he's as old as Downey is

So, er, not very old.

I think the Downey Problem is going to be make-or-break for the whole enterprise. The MCU is basically built on his charisma - if the first Iron Man had failed they would have been fucked for real. Downey's said he knows he can't (and doesn't want to) play Tony forever, and I think they'll have to recast Stark rather than replace him as Iron Man, at least in the long term. I don't think they'll kill him, but I'll be interested to see how they get around the inevitable problem of actors moving on for one reason or another. They're really in uncharted waters here - there's never been an interrelated movie universe where beloved actors will have to be replaced eventually.

and he's as old as Downey is

So, er, not very old.

I dunno, he's still 10 to 20 years older than the other actors, except for Ruffalo... And with Hulk the guy playing isn't as important, they've already changed him twice.

"with Hulk the guy playing Banner"

First Iron Man movie was good. Strong story and clever lines. Everything else I've seen has been middling. I do like that they got Kenneth Branagh to do the first Thor movie -- that was a clever choice.

Tuomas mostly OTM upthread about the MCU villains so far. I don't think the issue is so much that they've tried to 'grittify' them, though, so much as the rogue's galleries of the heroes who've starred in movies so far just aren't very deep or exciting or Marvel don't own the rights to best of them. Like, an Iron Man vs Doctor Doom movie could be aces but will never happen if Fox have any say in the matter. Whiplash just isn't on the same level.

I think Avengers is the best so far, as it should've been.

True, but they haven't really done a good job with the rogues galleries' they do have available either... Like, the Mandarin thing in Iron Man 3 was a clever plot twist, but that just meant the real bad guy was yet another corrupt business type. (Obviously they couldn't use the comic book Mandarin as he was originally conceiced, since he's a Fu Manchu style racist stereotype, but they could've made him into a R'as al Ghul style righteous terrorist or something, and make him have actual superpowers.) And one of the reasons Thor 2 was worse than Thor 1 is because they Malekith into a totally generic baddie, even though the comic book Malekith is a cool villain (a gende-bending shapeshifter elf), and they even had a good actor playing him. That was a total waste of what could've been a potentially great villain.

(xpost)

There was a lot of talk around the release of Thor 2 that Malekith had suffered at the expense of reshoots which expanded Loki's role in response to universal admiration for Hiddleston. They definitely did a terrible job with Malekith and Kurse; I wonder if they were less dull in the original plan for the movie.

I was a huge comic-book fan as a kid. I dip in and out now as a 33-year-old and still enjoy them, but I've kind of lost interest in following the ins and outs of the Marvel comic-book universe. What I admire most about the Marvel movies is that they've taken the core things I loved about the characters I read as a kid and put them more or less wholesale on the screen.

I was a huge comic-book fan as a kid. I still passionately read massive amounts of comics as a 33+-year-old [I spent $770 just on posting comics home to myself in two months in the US last year] and the Marvel comic-book universe can eat my balls. What I admire least about the Marvel movies is the way they make literal billions of dollars and return none of this to the people that created these IP or wrote the specific stories the films are based on.

Plus, if they don't want to limit themselves to "canonical Iron Man villains" or "canonical Cap villains", there's a whole bunch of cool Avengers they could use: Kang the Conqueror! Count Nefaria! Masters of Evil! Korvac! The Absorbing Man And Titania! It definitely seems to be like they've decidedly used the more "realistic" villains, and left out the ones with more fantastic powers and larger-than-life personalities.

(xxpost)

Def. pisses me off that Stan Lee gets a cameo in the new Cap America movie, a character he had nothing to do w/ creating

I don't think Kirby or Simon were available

sic, are you objecting to the MCU on the grounds of lack of monetary compensation for creators or because you don't enjoy them as movies? I'm not disagreeing with the former - I think it's utterly shameful - but I wasn't clear on the latter from what you wrote.

Ah, this debate again.

Anyway, Loki def. the only villain with presence thus far in these films. Which is odd, because I think they did a good job with the Spider-man villains so far (at least with the Raimi ones), and X-Men villains. Maybe it's just a matter of casting the right actor? Like, Red Skull is a great villain, but maybe Hugo Weaving was not the best choice? But then, Iron Man has faced nothing but generic baddies so far, actors be damned. Didn't Thor fight a giant robot in the first movie?

What I admire least about the Marvel movies is the way they make literal billions of dollars and return none of this to the people that created these IP or wrote the specific stories the films are based on.

While I agree that this is shitty, it's pretty much the standard practice with all entertainment franchises, no? Like, does the guy who wrote the original Wrath of Khan screenplay get any royalties from the Star Trek: Into Darkness? I doubt he does.

There's a rumour that Gerry Conway is banned from the premiere of the new Spider-man film, despite it apparently being based on one of his most famous issues.

(Google suggests this might now be resolved after the director took the issue to Sony.)

I've enjoyed at least a third of these movies.

So, dud.

A third of each movie, or a third of the movies total?

sic, are you objecting to the MCU on the grounds of lack of monetary compensation for creators or because you don't enjoy them as movies? I'm not disagreeing with the former - I think it's utterly shameful - but I wasn't clear on the latter from what you wrote.

I won't see them for this reason, so I don't have any view at all on their quality.

(Liked the first Iron Man on a cheap matinee, second one was far less good, wasn't interested in Thor or Hulk 2, wasn't interested in Cap 1 and Marvel getting a summary judgment against the Kirby heirs in the week of release made me go "eeesh, I can't pay for any of these that I might be interested in in the future." Mantlo's brother specifically asking people with financial qualms to go see Guardians Of The Galaxy means I might, but my reason for interest is Pratt and Gunn. Maaaaybe I'd watch Avengers on TV, but I doubt I'd enjoy it as much as Cabin In The Woods or Much Ado.) [I'd have been curious about watching maybe half an hour of Winter Soldier to see how the Russos' style might translate to an action film.]

― bizarro gazzara, Monday, April 7, 2014 10:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

While I agree that this is shitty, it's pretty much the standard practice with all entertainment franchises, no? Like, does the guy who wrote the original Wrath of Khan screenplay get any royalties from the Star Trek: Into Darkness? I doubt he does.

I'm not interested in Star Trek Into Darkness either!

Anyway, no: the creators of most of the Marvel characters were specifically promised financial participation that they were never given; if Meyer doesn't get residuals from home video sales and TV broadcasts of Wrath Of Khan, it's because he specifically agreed to forgo them in whatever arbitration took place over his credit; under Levitz, creators who'd had story elements inspire aspects of DC movie plots quietly got appreciation cheques [this has ended under Nelson, obviously]; George Lucas got lots of the money from at least five out of six Star Wars movies; J.K. Rowling earns about $400 million a year from Harry Potter.

People being fucked over wrt media properties doesn't have to be a rule: every time someone is, it's because other people have made an active decision to do so.

I read an interview with Brubaker where he was like "it's great that this is the first time Marvel have made a movie where there's a book with the same name as it out there so hopefully I'll get some more royalties". It seems crazy that he won't see any money directly

I mean, I was mainly saying comic books /= Marvel.

xpost - Brubaker only gets domestic royalties at all because he's currently signed exclusively to Marvel. They don't pay them as a matter of course, and IIRC haven't paid foreign royalties since the 1980s.

Meyer didn't create Khan, of course (character pre-exists the Wrath of Khan)

yeah it's mind-blowing even Coogler didn't know

just losing my whole shit over this information pic.twitter.com/Q8d0liIeiq

— LB™️ “𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘧𝘧” 🛢 (@LydiaBurrell) September 15, 2020

I genuinely don’t know who any of those people/institutions are

Chris Pratt used to be on the "the Democratic Party is the best hope for a loving America" sitcom Parks & Recreation and is now Star-Lord in Marvel movies. Turning Point USA is a far-right student radicalisation psy-op that attempts to stamp out education in unversities by #cancelling professors. Dan Crenshaw is a Republican senator and ex-Navy SEAL who is virulently against women's healthcare, affordable healthcare, voters' rights, taking action against climate change (we should establish comittees to research whether there's any validity to it, from scratch) and probably a piece of shit in various other ways. Lorne Michaels forced Pete Davidson to apologise to Crenshaw, face to face, on SNL's Weekend Update, for making a joke about him on Weekend Update in a previous episode.

Dunno who the other two are.

Pratt is also married to a Schwarzenegger, and an adherent of an Australian evangelical mega-church that obstructed police investigation into their founder's multinational child molestation, and runs (or ran) conversion programs for lesbian teens, and pregnancy consultation centres that recruit teens to work camps.

Oh i know pratt, its the rest i didnt know. He married Schwarzenegger’s daughter, right? Why would anyone think he is not conservative?

Wow, didn't realize that Lorne's spine had dissolved completely.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/06/17/brandon-tatum-white-privilege/

Why would anyone think he is not conservative?

People's parasocial concept of him was probably set when he played a loveable goof on an anti-GOP sitcom about the value of caring and helping one another, and was married to someone who made stoner comedy movies

Davidson & Crenshaw btw

he was also married to Anna Faris for a while, think a lotta people jumped off his boat when they split

I don't know how this slipped by me, but it looks like Jonathan Majors (star of Lovecraft Country) has been cast as Kang in the third Ant-Man movie, of all things.

And I assume everyone who cares has already heard that Tatiana Maslany was cast as She-Hulk.

I only care in that I'm 1. glad she's getting paid and 2. wish it was for anything else

Your opinion has been noted on this topic you disdain, but thank you once again for your contribution.

didn't know, happy to hear! that's about as good of a casting as i could hope for.

She's fine, though I would've been happy with the earlier rumors of Alison Brie for She-Hulk

i mean it could've been janelle monae
i imagine she'll do an x-man

happy for the person who is funny on an improv comedy podcast to have a job, but would have been a good opportunity to cast a tall & bulky actress who doesn't normally get the chance to play leads / romantic leads / celebratedly slutty leads

“funny on an improv comedy podcast” as a descriptor for Maslany is on some Herzog is “good at eating shoes” career summary shit

I only know the Slott and Byrne versions of Shulk, which are both comedy, and I only know Maslay from her annual CBB appearances

(though I guess I saw her on Parks & Rec and Being Erica, she didn't make an impact that I would think of her ten years later as a horny lawyer or seven-foot-tall muscle pile)

Opinions are likely divided on the quality of Orphan Black but one indisputable fact is that Maslany was AMAZING on that show. I was regularly flabbergasted by how easily I forgot that one actress was portraying a multitude of different characters.

At any rate, this is just another Ruffalo sitch. It's probably easier to CGI a Hulked-out Maslany than to scrawnify some massive beefcake MMA fighter.

the Marvel films I saw had Hulk changing back and forth from Hulk to Banner, though

sic, you're overthinking this: maslany has made the best work in her career playing split personalities and is spectacularly good at it.

She-Hulk is not a split personality, though... That's the major character point separating her from Bruce Banner: she doesn't lose her personality when hulking out, and actually enjoys being the Hulk. Though of course they might not use that interpretation of her in the MCU, but it'd be pretty boring if they go for the "like Hulk but female" option.

Maslany is a more impressive actor than Alison Brie, by a long shot. and I like both.

Or at least she's gotten far more impressive showcases (esp Orphan Black, obviously)

And I agree with Sic, that this would've been a great opportunity to cast some bulky actor who doesn't normally get this kind of roles... But it wasn't done with Wonder Woman, so I guess it's no surprise it wasn't done with Shulkie either.

xxpost

yeah Tuomas has it, it would considerably pointlessize She-Hulk to make her a split personality

You should the last 3 or so years of She-Hulk in comics... not that I'm advocating 'em. Wish Tamaki's run had done more with it.

Yeah, I rather doubt they are going with the Byrne take for the movie

I've read Tamaki's run, and as much as like her indie comics, IMO it was a pretty pointless deviation from how She-Hulk had been previously depicted since at least the '80s. Taking a female character who has power, who likes having that power and who's self-assured and confident, and making her into a more Bruce Banner -like figure who's full of self-doubt and who sees her power as a curse, was a weird step backwards, and I'm hoping they won't be basing the MCU depiction on that... But didn't even Tamaki's run end with the return of the previous version of She-Hulk, once she got her issues sorted?

Yeah I'm with you on that. Love her indie stuff, her X-23 series was fine, and I'm still interested in her future mainstream work. Hopefully the Wonder Woman run she's doing now pans out.

The whole thing was a weird filler after Bruce Banner was killed in Civil War II, before coming back as the Immortal Hulk (which is consistently still excellent). The concept wasn't bad - Jen dealing with the trauma of his murder and the courts/world acquitting Hawkeye of it, since most people hated the Hulk - but the book didn't really missed a lot of opportunities on that front. Also having a rageful female Hulk - could've been interesting. And yes, they reverted her to normal at the end.

BUT - after that, Jason Aaron put her into his Avengers run, and she was green again but also classic Hulk stupid, and possibly trapped in that form? And she's hooking up with Thor. They ignored Tamaki's run altogether, it seems. I don't know if they ever got around to explaining how she got to this state. They also seemed to ignore the whole Immortal situation which would seem relevant, but maybe I missed it.

if you did, then i did too.
Marvel Movies proper hasn't really properly done a full-film look at the jekyll/hyde thing and she-hulk seems a fair way to do it, plus female rage is selling right now.

It's probably only because Universal still owns the Hulk movie rights. (Was also kinda wondering a She-Hulk series is OK, but I just checked and she debuted in her own book rather than Incredible Hulk)

I think She-Hulk is going to be a D+ tv series, no?

If you're lucky.

lol

Well well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj9J2ecsSpo

Well that looks cool as shit

Yeah I almost think the totally unplanned shift for the MCU to be TV-focused for a while may be a hell of a good thing, based on this.

Fred Melamed klaxon!

i assumed this was the tom king storyline but i guess they're going House of M instead? I would've thought that was a bad idea but this looks pretty intelligent. Outrageously good cast!

https://news.avclub.com/tatiana-maslany-says-shes-not-disney-s-she-hulk-actual-1845402493

obviously it's not in any way important but it's always nice when someone I respect doesn't get hoovered up into the MCU

We should probably start a new thread for the Marvel shows on Disney+

Looks like Shang-Chi is filming here in SF

https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/Marvel-Studios-movie-filming-downtown-SF-Shang-Chi-15659724.php

Should we make a “Phase 4 and beyond” thread?

Probably a good idea!

I’m on Zing and idawanna

I did it. Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase 4 & Beyond (and a chance to chance your vote)