Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

Endgame might be the last film to feature a Stan Lee cameo.

This comes from Joe Russo, who isn't sure if The Man was well enough for filming one for Far From Home.

“I believe that his final cameo is in Endgame,” he said. Many have assumed that Lee would also have a cameo in Spider-Man: Far From Home, but Russo doesn’t seem optimistic about it. “I don’t remember if he was well enough to do the cameo in [Spider-Man: Far From Home] or not,” he added.​

 

Variety reports that Rachel Weisz and David Harbour are both in negotiations to join Black Widow. I love both of them so I hope they join the cast!

 

Yeah, me too.

 

Kumail Nanjiani In Talks To Board Marvel’s ‘The Eternals’

 

Paul Rudd, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr., Brie Larson, Chris Hemsworth, and Jeremy Renner made a surprise appearance at Disney California Adventure on Friday as part of a charity event for the Disney Team of Heroes, which supports children with critical illnesses.
It's always nice to see stars do these kind of events.

 

That's awesome. I love it when actors do those kind of things, especially when they enjoy doing them, as this group clearly does.

 

Kevin Feige has said that Marvel Studios has a five year plan in motion for phase 4 that was in place before the fox deal. In other words, don't expect to see the X-Men anytime soon.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/marvel-studios-has-a-5-year-phase-4-plan-that-probably-1833888644/amp

 

On the other hand, as the article points out, Marvel was able to adjust its Civil War plans pretty quickly once they got permission to use Spider-Man. So we might see some seeding of the X-Men in other characters' films over the next few years. I could see them having Wolverine show up as a guest character in a few movies, maybe, and use him as an entry point into the larger world of mutants.

Hey, here's a thought for how to mesh the X-Men into the existing continuity. Mutants usually only manifest their powers in adolescence, right? And the MCU is 11 years old. So if something happened maybe a bit before Iron Man that activated dormant X-genes around the world, then the resultant wave of mutants would only begin to manifest their powers over the next few years, which could explain why we never heard about them before. There could've been older mutants like Wolverine, Xavier, and Magneto who managed to keep their abilities secret, but the new wave of mutants would reveal their existence to the world. It's an imperfect idea -- naturally, since I only thought of it a couple of minutes ago -- but maybe it could work.

 

Spiderman wasn't important to the Civi War story, it was just a very welcome (and well made) introduction to the MCU so the rewrite shouldn't have been too difficult (he's basically just an additional fighter during the airport battle and has his own scene with RDJ and Marisa Tomei introducing the character).

I don't see Marvel making too many big changes in their Phase IV lineup and plans but i certainly expect them to build up the X-Men (and possibly Fantastic Four) over the course of the following movies post Infinity War. Use all the Phase IV movies to build up the mystery of the X-Men, show short glimpses of people discovering their powers and such but keep it down for the most part until they're ready to ramp up the mystery and make them central to whatever comes after the MCU defeats its next major villain. If Marvel is bold enough they'll make a huge X-Men intro movie so they can help take down the big villain.

Anyway.. i'm exited to see their take on all the known characters, especially fan favorites like Wolverine and Prof. X.

 

Honestly, after the highs and lows of the X-Men Cinematic Universe for the last 20 years (holy shit...I feel old), I don't mind taking a long break from X-Men before slowly reintroducing them to viewers within the MCU.

However, I would like to see the Fantastic Four show up sooner than later if only because I want to finally see a good Fantastic Four film. Plus, it feels like bringing them into the fold will be easier than trying to work out the hows and whys mutants are now a thing in the MCU.

 

Not really, since Homecoming was part of Sony's lineup from a production and scheduling standpoint, so it was more of a bonus addition to the MCU lineup than a radical restructuring. My point was that they were able to fairly quickly revise their existing plans for Civil War and Infinity War to include Spider-Man as a supporting character without needing to make wholesale disruptions to their lineup. The point, which the io9 article made first and I'm just recapping, is that it would be similarly easy for them to incorporate a few X-Men characters as supporting players in the films they're already planning to make, and that they could therefore start phasing in the X-Men in Phase 4 even without adding an actual X-Men film per se to the lineup. Even if the first MCU X-Men movie is 5-6 years away, they'll probably start laying the worldbuilding foundations for it sooner than that.

 

I've said for years not to expect any X-men films soon after the merger for exactly this reason. I do think it is possible you'll see some x-men characters or story concepts that help set up mutants, but anything more than that needs to be done carefully and deliberately with a strong foundation. The X-men end of the marvel universe is too big and world changing to just throw it out there. I was really hoping they'd go for some other characters as the lead-in than Wolverine - I still think the MCU x-men could get a ton of mileage and perfectly differentiate itself from fox by making Storm the most central character. But it sounds like their casting people all already making decisions about what kind of Wolverine they're looking for, so he'll probably be just as front and center as always.

But I do believe there's a real possibility of a F4 movie in the coming line-up. Yes, it would have to have been added in after their grand plan was conceived, but it's only one movie, one family which doesn't have to be too intertwined with everything else, and Feige has been saying for a while that phase 4 was going 'cosmic', so I suspect the F4 would probably be fairly easy to fit in.

 

Yup. My mention of Wolverine was not an expression of my own preference, merely the likely inevitability, and an acknowledgment of his role in comics these days as the guy who guest stars in everything and joins seemingly every team at the same time.

Starting with Storm is an interesting idea. She could be introduced in a Black Panther sequel, maybe, as a way to expand the exploration of Africa beyond Wakanda. Although it'd be tricky to handle the whole "worshipped as a goddess" thing in a way that wouldn't seem condescending to African cultures.

 

Introducing the X-Men characters one at a time in other movies would be an interesting way of doing the build-up to the first X-Men movie. Not quite the same as how the MCU gave almost all the Avengers their own solos in the build up to Avengers, but similar.

 

Do you think there is any way that Dark Phoenix could lead to SOME of the previous actors to crossover to the MCU

 

The one possible good thing of Disney getting the X-Men was not having Wolverine be the center of all things X-Men..... ugh.

 

Fat chance. Fox didn't invent that tendency. Wolverine was already a breakout character well before 2000, which is why the first movie centered so much on him in the first place.

 

Yeah, he's pretty much the Batman of Marvel comics, or at least the X-Men side of it.

I notice there's no mention of the Fantastic Four, which makes me wonder if something is planned in that regard. I hope so, I'm actually more interesting in F4 movie than another X-Men movie. We've gotten way more X-Men than F4 movies, so I'd rather see the group that has had less attention, and less quality to that attention, get a chance. They'd also be a lot easier to throw into the MCU without a lot of complications that need to be addressed. Their whole origin would be pretty easy to fit into all of the stuff that's been going on in the MCU since the first Avengers.

 

Except the last thing I want to see is another Fantastic Four origin movie. Their origin is the least interesting part of their story. What's interesting about the FF is their status as the established first family of the superhero community, the respected celebrity adventurers, the people who represent humanity to the nonhuman races, and so on. What's interesting is Reed and Sue as a long-established couple with two extraordinary kids. I want to see them at that stage, not just starting out again for the fourth time onscreen (counting the unreleased Corman version). The only movie that came close to that is Rise of the Silver Surfer, and it's easily the most satisfying FF movie to date (though that's faint praise).

The problem is that it's hard to do the FF that way if you're just now adding them to the universe. Although if they've managed to retroactively fold in Captain Marvel, maybe they can do the same for the FF.