I send you a pm to answer this question because otherwise I’m posting spoilers.
Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread
- Thread starter bbjeg
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Ryan Reynolds has confirmed on Twitter that DP3 is coming next Summer. Given they were only halfway through shooting it, I hope this doesn't mean typical rushed unfinished Marvel CGI.
So, some broader speculation about the Young Avengers, since The Marvels has the first real hints of something with...
There's a pretty big stable of Young Avengers who have been well established now: America Chavez, Kate Bishop, Kamala Khan, Cassie Lang, and Riri Williams all form a decent core.
However, do you see an issue here? Every single one of them is a woman. I don't think it's bad to have a female-dominant team, but I do feel like some male Young Avengers also need to be established to balance out the team.
The question is, who?
Kamala meeting up with Kate Bishop for recruitment, and mentioning "Ant-Man's daughter."
There's a pretty big stable of Young Avengers who have been well established now: America Chavez, Kate Bishop, Kamala Khan, Cassie Lang, and Riri Williams all form a decent core.
However, do you see an issue here? Every single one of them is a woman. I don't think it's bad to have a female-dominant team, but I do feel like some male Young Avengers also need to be established to balance out the team.
The question is, who?
- Eli Bradley seems a sure bet. He was introduced in TF&TWS, and in the comics, becomes Patriot. We know Isaiah Bradley will be in the next Cap movie, so it's a good bet his grandson will play some minor role allowing him to be introduced as a superhero proper.
- Skaar was an extra at the end of She-Hulk, and also a logical possibility, although he's hardly a character yet. Where could they shunt him in for a more formal introduction? The Cap movie seems like it's kind of Hulk-focused, so maybe he'll be given some sort of speaking role here.
- After that, I'm having a hard time. There's characters like Kid Loki and Wanda's alt-universe sons who could - theoretically - be part of the lineup, but they're still quite young. Maybe introduce Miles Morales into the MCU? I'm really at a loss here.
I understand your point, but I do feel like there's getting to be too many new characters to just have them all be "plain Avengers"
I mean, looking at Phases 1-3, you had:
Core Avengers: Iron Man, Cap, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye
Expanded Avengers: Wanda, Vision, Sam Wilson, Black Panther, Rhodey, Ant-Man, Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, Dr. Strange, and all the Guardians.
That's already a big lineup already, but the Multiverse saga pales in comparison to that. Most of the above characters are still potentially in the mix, but then you add. Shang-Chi, America Chavez, Wong (seems to have ascended to being a core character), Riri, Kate Bishop, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Cassie, Monica Rambeau, Deadpool eventually, Blade, plus everyone shunted into the Thunderbolts, and the Eternals (if they do anything with them again). I'm probably missing out on some as well.
I feel like it's pretty inevitable with a roster this big they will have to have sub team-ups within, even if everyone appears in Kang Dynasty/Secret Wars.
I'm completely fine with that. And I really liked all the actresses and would be happy to see more of them.
The original MCU Avengers had only one woman. Ditto the original MCU Guardians of the Galaxy, the DCEU Justice League, the Fantastic Four, etc. There have been so many male-dominated hero teams in pop culture that having an all-female one would be balance, it seems to me.
To be clear, this is not something I have a personal issue with. I just think from an audience perspective an all-female team up will likely be viewed askance by Disney - particularly if the Marvels does as badly as it seems it may at the box office. Also, Ms. Marvel was apparently kind of a bomb for Disney+ (unfortunately - I liked it) getting less than half the viewership of the average show (more people watched Secret Invasion even, which was a dreadful series).
Of course, if they don't plan to have this team-up actually star in its own movie/TV show, and just have it be a recurring element in the background, then all bets are off.
I'm not saying I realistically expect it to happen, okay? I'm just saying I'd be perfectly happy in the hypothetical world where it did happen. I want to see more of those characters and performers, one way or the other. I'm just saying I hope they don't get given up on because a few productions underperformed.
I think the problem the MCU has found itself in is the problems with Phase 4/5 product mostly come down to process. However, Hollywood execs don't understand process-related issues, and are likely going to boil it down to content. They'll just look at the surface things that made Phases 1-3 more successful, and conclude that the problem is they don't have the core characters any longer, or big bankable stars.
Champions ?
The sad thing is, I actually liked a lot of the productions people keep trashing about Phase 4 & 5. I liked Eternals. I liked Ms. Marvel. I thought Quantumania was cluttered but reasonably entertaining. I felt Multiverse of Madness had major story flaws but was superbly directed. The only thing they've done in recent years that I thought was actually bad was Secret Invasion. Honestly, I don't understand the negativity I keep hearing. I think they're still mostly doing a pretty good job. I think people just got used to the huge interconnected Avengers narrative and are thrown off by the return to something more like the MCU was originally, a set of standalones with only loose connections.
I think you're broadly correct. The individual MCU entries in Phases 4/5 have been mostly...fine. B-level generally, often flawed, but not so flawed as to not be enjoyable.
The problem is everything seems...less than the sum of its parts now, and building extremely slowly. It's four years since Endgame, and we still don't know the new Avengers lineup really. We only got an inkling as to the antagonist relatively recently. And since there's so much more content now, we have no real idea which characters/teams will actually prove relevant, versus just being pure experimentation.
It's ironic that somebody who has only recently started giving the MCU another chance (me) would be downplaying the likelihood that a few financial stumbling blocks are going to lead to seismic changes, but that's where we are.
Why is that a problem? Why does it have to "build" to anything? I'm so sick of the mentality that the parts are unimportant unless they combine into a whole. The whole is meaningless without the parts. There's no chain without the links, no train without the cars. The whole is just supposed to be a supplement to the individual parts, something that adds to their merit as self-contained works, not that supplants it altogether. The value of any given story should be about that specific story, period. Anything outside of it should be a secondary consideration.
We've seen how bad movies get when their makers ignore their individual merit because they're preoccupied with setting up cinematic universes, like The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Batman v Superman, and the Tom Cruise The Mummy. It's getting the priorities wrong to think the sum is more important than the parts.
Look -- most superhero comics have lasted for decades as separate, individual titles, only sometimes crossing over. They shared a common universe and often referenced each other, but their priority was their own individual storylines. They existed to serve themselves, not just to serve the crossovers. And when the crossovers became so dominant that the storylines of the individual comics kept having to be warped and wrenched around to set up and react to the annual mega-events, it was bad for the storytelling, because it didn't give the individual series room to follow their own paths. The right approach is to let each series be its own series. Let its meaning be in its own existence. Any connections or crossovers should be a secondary, occasional thing. It's a mistake to see them as the exclusive goal of the exercise.
I do not give a damn if there's ever another Infinity War-like climax. I don't care if they're building to that or not. We've already had that. We don't need it again. Just tell stories. That's all I want. Let the characters have their own adventures. Let them share a universe, let them interact, but let it happen organically instead of railroading everyone toward some huge team-up event. Forcing repeated mega-crossovers just for the sake of formula is a bad idea when the comics do it, and it wouldn't be any better for the movies.
The relevance of a story is in whether it's a good story. Whether you have fun watching or reading it, whether it makes you think, what it makes you feel. That's the relevance. Whether it connects to other stories in the future is a secondary consideration. What matters is whether it connects to you, to your mind and your emotions and your experiences in life.
https://twitter.com/Luiz_Fernando_J/status/1722652927477563696
In #Korea’s #BoxOffice, negative WOM affects even more #TheMarvels, grossing 373k on THU, the worst in MCU’s history, dropping -46.3% from WED Opening Day (vs #CaptainMarvel ’s 2.1M, -31.6% back in 2019).
The new Marvel film hits 1.1M 2-day cume.
Apart from the dismal debut in #Korea, #TheMarvels had a really rough time in #France’s #BoxOffice, coming in #2 on WED Opening Day below #FiveNightsAtFreddys, grossing just est $435k with 49k admissions, similar to #BlueBeetle’s 415k with 47k admissions, an all time low for the MCU. WOM is shockingly bad with critics giving it a 2.5 and audiences giving it a 2.4, equivalent to a C #CinemaScore.
And that’s not all. Rough time in Europe as a whole. In #Italy’s #BoxOffice for instance, another all time low for the MCU as #TheMarvels grossed just 300k on WED Opening Day (vs #TheFlash’s 422k, #BlackAdam’s 260k), debuting also in #2 place ( below local drama #CeAncoraDomani’s 621k 2nd WED) and taking just 38k moviegoers to theatres.
In #Korea’s #BoxOffice, negative WOM affects even more #TheMarvels, grossing 373k on THU, the worst in MCU’s history, dropping -46.3% from WED Opening Day (vs #CaptainMarvel ’s 2.1M, -31.6% back in 2019).
The new Marvel film hits 1.1M 2-day cume.
Apart from the dismal debut in #Korea, #TheMarvels had a really rough time in #France’s #BoxOffice, coming in #2 on WED Opening Day below #FiveNightsAtFreddys, grossing just est $435k with 49k admissions, similar to #BlueBeetle’s 415k with 47k admissions, an all time low for the MCU. WOM is shockingly bad with critics giving it a 2.5 and audiences giving it a 2.4, equivalent to a C #CinemaScore.
And that’s not all. Rough time in Europe as a whole. In #Italy’s #BoxOffice for instance, another all time low for the MCU as #TheMarvels grossed just 300k on WED Opening Day (vs #TheFlash’s 422k, #BlackAdam’s 260k), debuting also in #2 place ( below local drama #CeAncoraDomani’s 621k 2nd WED) and taking just 38k moviegoers to theatres.
https://twitter.com/Luiz_Fernando_J/status/1722652927477563696
In #Korea’s #BoxOffice, negative WOM affects even more #TheMarvels, grossing 373k on THU, the worst in MCU’s history, dropping -46.3% from WED Opening Day (vs #CaptainMarvel ’s 2.1M, -31.6% back in 2019).
The new Marvel film hits 1.1M 2-day cume.
Apart from the dismal debut in #Korea, #TheMarvels had a really rough time in #France’s #BoxOffice, coming in #2 on WED Opening Day below #FiveNightsAtFreddys, grossing just est $435k with 49k admissions, similar to #BlueBeetle’s 415k with 47k admissions, an all time low for the MCU. WOM is shockingly bad with critics giving it a 2.5 and audiences giving it a 2.4, equivalent to a C #CinemaScore.
And that’s not all. Rough time in Europe as a whole. In #Italy’s #BoxOffice for instance, another all time low for the MCU as #TheMarvels grossed just 300k on WED Opening Day (vs #TheFlash’s 422k, #BlackAdam’s 260k), debuting also in #2 place ( below local drama #CeAncoraDomani’s 621k 2nd WED) and taking just 38k moviegoers to theatres.
Korea is probably having an even bigger huge drop-off because there's a Korean actor (Park Seo Joon) in it who it then came out is playing a VERY TINY ROLE and it's caused a lot of backlash and complaints as just using him as a "token Asian cameo".
Disney results today and Iger had this to say:
https://www.ft.com/content/dc65a735-75d5-47ca-8a8b-73e448caa684
https://www.ft.com/content/dc65a735-75d5-47ca-8a8b-73e448caa684
In general, yes, I agree with you. But within the MCU, I think there are reasons this doesn't work.
I know you're a writer, so I'm sure you're aware of the whole promise/payoff issue in fiction. To broadly summarize for others though, your readers/viewers will start the story with certain expectations based upon what is established at the beginning of a story. So if you write a grounded crime fiction novel, for example, and then bring in demonic possession in the third act, you will alienate a lot of readers. In order to get promise payoff, you need to foreshadow where the story is going, and then pay off that foreshadowing.
The MCU has two issues here. One is fans have expectations, both based upon the Infinity Saga, and based upon the comic books, that will color their expectations. You may argue that that isn't fair, and I'd agree! But it's there.
The bigger issue is that the MCU continues to use foreshadowing, repeatedly. This is most commonly done through the use of mid and post-credits scenes. In Phases 1-3, these almost always (unless they were harmless, comedic fluff) foreshadowed future movies. I think the only one of these guns which didn't fire was the scene at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming involving Mac Gargan (who was intended to be Scorpion). In contrast, almost every post-credits scene in Phase 4/5 has yet to mean much of anything. The only one from the movies which actually foreshadowed anything was the Black Widow scene (which led into Hawkeye). Also, I guess, the Loki Season 2 trailer tacked onto the end of Quantumania. There were a handful from the Disney+ shows too - WandaVision teased elements of both The Marvels and Multiverse of Madness, notably. But most of the non-comedic trailer scenes have seen no payoff - even if they came out 2+ years ago - with payoffs not likely on the immediate horizon. Thus these post-credit scenes feel like pointless teases now that Marvel has no intention of going through with in the next five years, if ever.
I want to make a note, I agree with you that we should just enjoy these stories for their own sake! One reason I enjoyed Moon Knight is that it was confident enough in its storytelling that it didn't rely upon continuity porn with the rest of the MCU (other than a blink and you miss it mentioning of Madripoor, there was basically nothing linking it with the rest of the MCU. I liked that Werewolf by Night was also self-contained. I think both characters could work great in a later team-up Midnight Suns with Blade, but it doesn't have to happen. And I really like that Marvel is setting expectations around Echo by telling people it's a street-level, standalone exploration of her character which will have little to do with the wider MCU (other than having Kingpin in it).
But they're not doing this in most projects. Indeed, many Phase 4/5 projects have been laden by "mythos" elements actively making them worse. Wakanda Forever, for example, was good, but it was transparent that the whole Riri element was played up in an effort to promote Ironheart, and whatever the fuck they were doing with Allegra de Fontaine was to help set up Thunderbolts. Hawkeye larded up what could have been a tightly-focused story on Clint/Kate with the needless Yelena stuff. Quantumania was so focused on the introduction of Kang it forgot to give Scott Lang a character arc (and didn't give Hope anything to do at all).
So people have this expectation that it's all going to fit together because...Marvel built up the expectation. And continues to build it up, across most contemporary projects.