Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

The “current golden age” is hardly camp-free.

 

Gugu Mbatha-Raw is rumored to join the cast of Loki.

 

If she played Amora the Enchantress, I wouldn't mind.

 

Long overdue, but The Eternals will indeed feature the MCU's first LGBTQ couple, specifically Phastos and his husband (unnamed in the article) as played by Brian Tyree Henry and Haaz Sleiman, respectively.

In a new interview with Logo, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan star Haaz Sleiman revealed that he’s actually slated to play the man married to Brian Tyree Henry’s Phastos—one of the titular Eternals—and in the film, the pair will parent a child together.

Sleiman explained that in addition to depicting what married life is like for the couple, Eternals also features a moment where Phastos and his husband kiss. The kiss, Sleiman said, takes place during a moving scene that left everyone on set crying, which he saw as a testament to how important the film’s approach to queer representation will be.

“For me it’s very important to show how loving and beautiful a queer family can be,” he said. “Brian Tyree Henry is such a tremendous actor and brought so much beauty into this part, and at one point I saw a child in his eyes, and I think it’s important for the world to be reminded that we in the queer community were all children at one point. We forget that because we’re always depicted as sexual or rebellious. We forget to connect on that human part.”​

 

Nice to know it will be more than just a blink and you miss it moment like in Rise of Skywalker, or left vague like in Star Trek Beyond.

 

How is it vague in Star Trek Beyond? Two men have a kid, it's right there in front of you.

 

Except the movie never explicitly says that. If you didn't hear any bts stuff about Sulu being gay you could just as easily assume that man is Sulu's brother and the girl his niece. As a great many people in Europe in particular did (because the intimate embrace the American filmmakers thought was 'enough' to communicate that they were married is actually completely normal for male friends/family members in many other parts of the world).

 

Historical tidbit-- George Takei himself was not happy with how they handled Sulu In the Kelvin-verse. He believed that they should have created a new gay character instead of making Sulu gay as that was not how he played the character, nor was it how Gene Roddenberry envisioned the character.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/07/09/gaysulu/?outputType=amp

 

Yeah, there was ton of discussion about that when the movie came out.

I still don't agree with his reasoning at all. Characters evolve and change and the other Kelvin characters were almost all much farther removed from their TOS versions than Sulu. Takei and Roddenberry certainly deserve plenty of credit for Sulu's origins but they don't get lifelong veto rights over where the character goes after they've retired.

Plus the idea that introducing a new gay character in the Kelvin movies would've achieved anything is naive in the extreme. Most likely that character would've died before the end of the movie, possibly without even having first made it clear they were gay at all. And even in the best case scenario, they'd've been trapped in the background (because Kirk and company are the stars and the Kelvin films were never really ensemble pieces) and never appeared again afterward (just like the majority of new characters introduced in the movies).

 

For what it's worth, the first comic book storyline that IDW did following up on Beyond had a subplot in which Sulu brought his husband and daughter with him on his new ship (while the new Enterprise was being built) and was afraid for them when they were abducted in an alien attack. So they made it more overt than the movie was allowed to, at least in dialogue, although his family members never actually appeared on the page. (Although it was an anachronistic plot device, because Starfleet letting families on ships was a 24th-century thing.)

Whereas most other LGBTQ Trek people who commented on it, like David Gerrold, were happy with the choice. So I chalked Takei's reaction up to the usual response of any actor when a character they've played for a long time is interpreted differently from what's in their heads (see also Mark Hamill's reaction to The Last Jedi).

And how Roddenberry envisioned characters is a problematical standard. He also envisioned Sulu as generically "pan-Asian" because he didn't know enough about Asian cultures to pick one. And he envisioned Spock as having an irresistible hypnotic sexual power over women, an innate ability of Vulcan males that Spock struggled to refrain from taking advantage of.

Exactly. Adding new token side characters to a long-established cast is unlikely to work. It's like when Super Friends added Black Vulcan, Samurai, El Dorado, and Apache Chief to the Justice League. Rather than becoming equally prominent members of the team, they were also-rans, tokens who are remembered mainly as jokes and historical footnotes. And the token black guy in Superman's cast, Ron Troupe, has never really become more than just the token black guy in the background. It would've been a waste to cast Laurence Fishburne as Ron Troupe instead of Perry White.

Besides, Sulu is the one TOS cast member who never actually had a romance plot, aside from things like mooning over Mudd's women with the rest of the crew. (Mirror Sulu sexually harassing Uhura doesn't count, since sexual harassment and assault are more about power than attraction. For all we know, he treated Chekov the same way offscreen.) So there's no compelling reason he couldn't be gay, or at least bi.

 

I felt exactly the same way--if I had not read about the intention of that scene I probably would have assumed that it was his brother. Married into a Latino family I regularly hug my brothers-in-law and their adult male children kiss their dads on the cheek. In Western Africa it is very common for male friends to hold hands walking down the street.

And this is true as well.

 

Is there a term for this - where you present a character as LGBT+ in tie-in media or interviews but it's blink or you miss it onscreen?

 

I mean, it's not quite queerbaiting, but still pretty close?

 

I rewatched Captain Marvel on Disney+ today, and I loved it just as much as when I saw it in theaters.

 

I rewatched it last week and I've gotta say, although I liked it from the start I did consider it a bit disappointing in theaters, but it's growing on me with every rewatch. The parts I didn't care for don't seem as bad anymore and the good parts are even better. Guess that makes it the MCU version of Man of Steel for me (which I also was ambivalent about at first but now just generally love).

 

John Krasinski wants to play Mr. Fantastic.

Sounds like a good idea to me! Especially if Emily Blunt gets to be Invisible Woman, too!

 

He has long been a fan favorite choice. Wasn't he Marvel's second choice for Captain America after Chris Evans?

 

Yup, which was mentioned in the A.V. Club article. Hopefully they remember him from that audition.

 

Yes. Jump to 1:56



He got to point where he wore the suit. It just didn't work out

 

News is starting to trickle out of ToyFair in NY, and I thought this slide from Hasbro was of a tiny bit of interest:



Specifically what caught my attention was the Disney+ lineup for 2021. Keep in mind, this isn't from Disney or Marvel, it's from Hasbro, and they were just listing some upcoming product tie-ins that they'll have. First, it is indeed pretty damn cool to know that we can expect toys from Falcon & Winter Soldier and WandaVision later this year. But like I said, that D+ 2021 lineup caught my eye. Ms Marvel is there, but She-Hulk and Moon Knight aren't.


Also, if you're at all into toys, they're finally bringing back GI Joe!

Snake Eyes looks incredible, and they're releasing a special exclusive version loaded with tons of extra weapons if you can't wait for the regular retail version:
https://hasbropulse.com/products/g-...s-deluxe-action-figure-hasbro-pulse-exclusive