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

Anyone else see the news story that Letitia Wright, whose current injury has delayed Black Panther 2, may have some trouble getting back to the States under current guidelines if she continues to refuse the vaccine?

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/hollywood-studio-projects-get-stricter-about-covid-19-vaccine-mandates-1235045153/

Logistical challenges await for studios that are working with stars who haven’t gotten the shot. Disney’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever star Letitia Wright — who portrays the lead Shuri, the sister of Black Panther T’Challa (the late Chadwick Boseman) — is not vaccinated, sources say. After sustaining an on-set injury in August, the Guyanese-born British actress went home to London.

Now, a return to the U.S. for a possible shoot in Atlanta, where Wakanda Forever is based, could be an issue. On Nov. 8, the CDC implemented rules that require all non-immigrant, non-citizen air travelers to the U.S. be fully vaccinated and provide proof of vaccination status before boarding a plane. Wright is not a U.S. citizen. Disney declined to comment.

They should honestly just consider replacing her (and likely are considering it, should it come to that). If they can film a sequel to Black Panther after the death of the titular character's iconic portrayer, if Disney can fire Gina Carano for being an asshat, if filming has been delayed several months already, they can probably pretty easily go forward with someone else. As someone else pointed out, people love the character.

Will add to the chorus of voices saying Eternals was... fine. I thought it has some great visuals and production (esp the costumes!) and the cast was good. Watchable, but it really felt kinda like unnecessary filler in the end, like Captain Marvel. (I found Shang-Chi and Black Widow to be much better standalone stories.) Even if the Celestials become a Big Thing in Marvel Phase 5, this is one you can safely wait until it's on streaming in three months.

(Iron Man 2 still safely the worst film in the MCU.)

so now Kit Harrington has been on a tv show with a Cersei, and in a movie with a Sersi

really feel like Bryan Tyree Henry is the only person who had a fleshed out character. Sersi should have, being the focus of the movie, but they didn't give her much to do

if anybody reads the following and wishes to suggest that I'm an inflexible prick, fair enough…

Jack Kirby's conception of this what-we-now-call IP is of two species, differentiated from the conventional human race, both hidden races but both just as much earthling as the human race, both initiated via experimentation upon cro mags or neanderthals by vastly powerful, inscrutable extraterrestrial beings called the Celestials. One is genetically unstable and ostensibly grotesque, the other functionally immortal, ostensibly gloriously beautiful and can shoot lasers out their eyes…and furthermore, since Kirby had no intention to have this 1976 series lock in with Marvel continuity, the idea is that encounters with Eternals and Deviants were what accounted for human myths, legends, folklore (as opposed to mainstream marvel continuity, in which Greek and Norse myths, King arthur and the Round table and Dracula and Frankenstein existed, walking the earth as surely as the Invaders or Rama Tut or the Rawhide Kid)…

There is no question in my mind that you could make a movie, much less an MCU movie, about hidden races on Earth as such. But that is not what Chloe Zhao and Kevin Feige have done in the film I saw yesterday… I don't think it's spoiling to say that this movie changes the nature of this IP, but I'll leave it at that. So if Marvel wanted to make the film as it is, I don't particularly understand why they can't make an entirely new cosmology, new characters to tell the story they desire… the Eternals is not like Spider Man or the X-men, in that Marvel couldn't root and branch change what those characters are at their core as they have done in this film, so they can get away with it… but by the same token, the global audience that are obsessed with the MCU but have no investment in what Jack Kirby or Peter Sanderson did in 1976 and 1985 would absolutely accept a completely new set of characters… why do they feel as if they can't create something that has no connection to 40/50/60 year old comic books? and is there a particular reason the eternals and deviants as they had been done for 45 years wasn't going to work as an MCU film?

similarly: in the comics, Deviants have a civilization and all that entails…in this film, they are snarling, massive CGI beasts with the cognition of wolves…and more crucially, Sersi in the comics is a terrific character, a woman who has lived for many thousands of years and has ended up as a hedonist/ 5th avenue/UES party hostess nonpareil who while seeming to be louche and easily bored has hidden depths (kinda like Janet Van Dyne). again, this is a firm-as-fuck foundation for a character in a film, and how Kirby and every single Marvel writer has played her for 44 years! But that is not how Gemma Chan plays it…

2 more things: first time I was in a theatre since 2/20: since the last movie I saw, I have a 1 year old and a father dead from COVID…so when Floyd's "Time" kicked in, while a movie concerned with Kirby koncepts I care about was about to begin in earnest, I cried for a couple of minutes…is this the first time Floyd's music has been used in a massive four quadrant film? and is this the first time onscreen fucking as occurred in the MCU?

yes on the fucking i think
apparently a Floyd song was used in Dr. Strange so at least that one but i'd be surprised if it hasn't happened before in a wide distro film

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (performer: "Dark Side of the Moon") / (writer: "Dark Side of the Moon")

This movie should’ve been a Disney+ series

The use of the Floyd song was indeed powerful, a good call

Seriously, imagine this story told over two 6-episode seasons of television, really defining and exploring who all these characters are?

It’s a weird movie in that it’s schizophrenic, swinging back and forth continuously from “this is bullshit” to “this is surprisingly effective” and back

And agreed that for all that it still isn’t the worst MCU movie

If there’s a bonus it makes Black Widow and Shang-Chi look amazing by comparison

It'd be an interesting demand of the audience, to take that logical leap from the multiverse currently being pushed, and embrace an MCU framework in a different universe, say, keeping the MCU Earth 616 universe distinct from an Eternals Earth xxx universe. I'd be for it, but I'd guess Joe Moviegoer *wants* that connection, given that the average person doesn't entirely know DC and Marvel distinctions, which properties were/are owned by which studios, etc. The simpler, the better.

I do get the impression that a lot of casual Marvel fans (which is to say, I assume most of them, like me) like the narrative arcs, the what-happens-next aspect of them, so I think the cosmic comic-book deep cuts and the like are less relevant than the promise of them eventually/gradually tying into something bigger. I've seen a few of these where the mid-credits teases get bigger or more excited reactions than the movies themselves do.

also - i gotta say it's really weird that there was a Superman joke in Eternals. so DC Comics exist in the MCU!

or Superman comics at least

it was very odd! and furthermore, the next Spider man movie (i have never seen any Spidey MCU shit) is apparently gonna have Alfred Molina and Jamie Foxx play the same Doc Ock and Electro from 2004 and 2010s incarnations… and so it is also odd that MCU is getting into the parallel world business, as that was DC's shit forever, and in the 70s-90s Marvel only did that thing sparingly… and so I would think they would still leave that alone, as the DC/CW TV franchise goes batshit nuts with the parallel universes! I tried to watch a bunch of those crossovers, and even me, a guy who could throw down Earth 1/Earth 2/Earth 69 with the best of 'em, threw in the towel very very quickly…

throw down Earth 1/Earth 2/Earth 69

did you buy these from Chuck Rozanski’s subscription service

so every universe is gonna have 10 movies a year?

will there be Marvel Multiplexes?

that's honestly kind of what we already have, given their ruthless theatrical deals.

knew someone was gonna say that.

admittedly it does suck because my closest theater is famous for picking up one or two art films per month and when a Marvel flick is out, they can't.

so every universe is gonna have 10 movies a year?

Ten releases, sure.

https://www.avclub.com/heres-every-upcoming-marvel-studios-series-heading-to-d-1848048261

booming posts vm. also i didn't know about your dad and i'm very sorry to hear it

A terribly directed movie

Shang Chi was great — some of the cgi was a little much but the story, the world, all of it was dope as hell and those DRAGONS

also: Tony Leung/Michelle Yeoh 4 eva

As an HK Cinema dude, I was in heaven

the fight scenes were fkn beautiful. so much variation & emotion, really telling the stories through the choreography.

and Simu KILLED it. Loved him in Kims Convenience and now he’s a goddamn superhero, such a great thing to see

My buddy who really didn't like The Eternals said he rewatched Shang Chi on TV with his fam and liked it much more the second time.

Meanwhile, six weeks of reshoots for Dr. Strange 2, which sounds significant. I wonder if, per my hunch, they're trying to better incorporate and accelerate a bunch of plot lines and characters and whatnot after all these delays, to speed this multi-project behemoth of a presumed arc into motion.

they did that for IWAR too iirc

Is "IWAR" Infinity War? I think these 6 weeks top those reshoots. Right now it's impossible to know the truth here. The Hollywood Reporter sources state that these reshoots are significant but still sound largely practical. That is, making up for time (and actor availability) lost during the pandemic, stuff like that. But of course worth recalling that the movie has already had a change in writer/director, so who knows what retooling is needed. I do imagine that epic narratives built around time travel and parallel dimensions can be tricky to pull off.

The Marvel reshoot seems to happen with almost every movie now - they have the money, a lot of producer tinkering and refining I imagine. It usually works out so why not

It's bit more than tinkering and refining, I think. Or at least more than usual. The whole messy timeline from wiki:

*Doctor Strange director and co-writer Scott Derrickson had plans for a sequel by October 2016. He signed to return as director in December 2018, when Cumberbatch was confirmed to return. The film's title was announced in July 2019 along with Olsen's involvement, while Bartlett was hired to write the film that October.

*Derrickson stepped down as director in January 2020, citing creative differences. The next month, (writer) Waldron joined the project, and Raimi took over as director by April 2020.

*Filming began in November 2020 in London but was put on hold in January 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Production resumed by March 2021 and concluded in mid-April in Somerset.

*And now six more weeks of reshoots for the remainder of this year, with a (third) release date in May.

I'm sure it will work out, and I bet, given the timing, that actor availability probably explains a lot of it. Heck, some people had problems with conspicuous reshoots in "Black Widow," but I didn't notice anything wrong there.

Probably annoying him to sign on and have a new co-star attached before a script was even done! But who knows if that's how it played out...
Funny thing is I saw a trailer for Derrickson's next movie, The Black Phone, before Venom tonight

My son wanted to watch Shang-Chi, so we watched it today. The first half hour or so was great! The rest was good, but long! The final joke was great.

They seemed to want to have it both ways with the dad. He’s 1000 years old, but he’s duped by some dragon? He’s seriously blames his son for not intervening as a little kid? I feel like they should’ve even made him truly evil, or “redeemed” him a little more clearly.

This thread is great (with spoilers if you've not seen Shang-Chi)

Finally watching Shang-Chi, here as a bus operator to rate the SFT transit factors of The Bus Scene:

— Mack, yes, That Mack (@that_mc) November 13, 2021

hah loved it

I had zero idea about shang-chi prior to watching it.

I loved the snakey chinese style dragon which I don't think I've ever seen represented on screen before watching Raya and the Last Dragon which was weirdly voiced by Awkwafina.

Speaking of which I love that they were able to shoehorn her saying the word 'vagina' and later 'gina' into a Marvel movie.

Also love when I see some ridiculously named character like RAZOR FIST and realize that it has to be some old villain from the actual comics.

I also thought of Raya... and the final post-credits scene reminded me of the teaser at the very end of The Mandalorian. (It really is like a factory repurposing parts across its current product line, huh? Lol)

http://www.geekchicelite.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/nightfist.jpg

Iirc, none of the trailers more than hinted at the dragon stuff in Shang-Chi, so I was pleasantly surprised.

(I just rewatched the trailer to confirm and was, unrelated, quickly reminded that the first time I watched it for a second I thought they had sneakily cast Jackie Chan, who Leung in his long-hair wig fleetingly resembles.)

Am half an hour in, so far my reaction is "oh not the old runaway bus thing again, just steer it uphill or even not downhill and it will roll to a stop." Yours, a joyless pedant.

Easier said than done!! :D

xpost clearly you have never steered a runaway bus, what do you have against working class people?

They keep on steering it down the hill!

Well, it can't go up the hill! It's San Francisco!

Forget the brakes, it's Chinatown.

Yeah - it's going pretty fast, man...

The way the bus finally comes to a stop (grinding against a garbage truck) was funny to me... when I lived in SF, I watched a Muni bus turn a corner, latch onto the side of a parked car, drag it forward, and slam it into the car parked in front of it. The driver got out, inspected the damage, and gave a look like – "FML!"

(xp the brakes were cut! and the driver was knocked out. Awkwafina does her best!)

I was trying to make an awful pun.