Variety has been around for 119 years. It is the preeminent Entertainment magazine in the industry. They're not some random guy typing on a keyboard and posting hoping to get clicks with sensational headlines.
Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread
- Thread starter bbjeg
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Variety has been around for 119 years. It is the preeminent Entertainment magazine in the industry. They're not some random guy typing on a keyboard and posting hoping to get clicks with sensational headlines.
I know that too. But recently I've read a lot of comments on social media, including articles about so-called news they've seen on Reddit. Also, just yesterday I saw that they shared a preliminary box office estimate for the upcoming Ballerine movie, as if it had just been released, and they used a clickbait title on the article.
Read those two sentences again.
I read it and didn't write anything wrong.
These two comments are at odds with each other in a troubling way.
Leakers are almost overwhelmingly full of nonsense. Can we just wait for official sources that are actually reliable (still wrong sometimes, sure, but a lot less frequently) before we start spreading this stuff around?
Okay, I won't share things like this anymore, at least not until it's officially announced. Also, there's nothing contradictory in the two posts.
How about the 1990's X-Men: The Animated Series Cartoon Line-Up that recently had the recent X-Men 97 Adaptation?
That one was fairly popular for it's time and fondly remembered by many fans.
No answer then?
They say the same thing.
Again rational audience embers are not living and dying on the memory of Evans in a role he discarded years ago. For Marvel Studios, all of the pieces for Wilson to become the next Cap were set in place, so there would be no doubt he was going to claim (after Wilson's personal doubts were explored in the D+ series), then make the identity his own for a future in the Marvel movies. That journey was clear to anyone actually watching the films, leaving only those with their ill agenda still arguing that anyone (in-universe) other than Wilson should be Captain America.
Thinking about some of the conversation about Brave New World and Wilson as Captain America, got me wanting to throw in my own two cents...
I liked BNW a lot more than most and I feel it was a bit unfairly maligned. The media is still holding out hope for Thunderbolts while they were much more willing to leave BNW to the social media/internet wolves. Granted, the second weekend drop for BNW was catastrophic compared to TB, but still, TB isn't lighting up the box office like a pre-Endgame Marvel release would either. The middling performance also punctures the argument that a Bucky Captain America movie would've been a surefire blockbuster hit. Though the internet knives maybe wouldn't have already been drawn before a Bucky movie came out.
Some of the problems with BNW stem from Falcon and Winter Soldier. The series didn't set Wilson up enough to be a standalone character that many felt merited his own movie. Even putting Bucky as the co-lead was a sign, to me, that Disney was shaky on building a series around Wilson. That shakiness was quadrupled in BNW which became a way for them to tie up loose MCU ends more than establish Wilson as a hero in his own right and one that can and should be the heart and soul of the MCU going forward.
Disney has been averse to giving Wilson a love interest. Sharon could've fit the bill in the Falcon series, or they could've used an ex instead of his sister or aged up the Flag Smasher leader. A love interest allows for the to explore other sides to a character's personality and can draw in viewers who connect to the romance. Giving a character a family is also good for this, but not quite the same, as a romance.
In BNW, I also think they messed up by not developing a romantic relationship with the Secret Service agent, or not even bringing his sister and nephews back. Outside of recurrent impostor syndrome, we don't get much of an idea of who Wilson is and why he cares. The Disney Plus series delved into the impostor syndrome better than the movie did, which felt like a rushed retread. To me, MCU Falcon was intended to be a Black best friend who sprinkled a pinch of pepper on the MCU, but not a lot of thought was given to him getting his own movie or series. Falcon and Winter Soldier was a promising start, but BNW didn't do much to expand on it. In a way, BNW wanted to both sell us on the idea that Wilson is widely embraced as Captain America while at the same time, not, and they were skittish about Wilson spending much time in the movie pondering what him being Captain America really means. There are bits of it in the film, but the focus was on action, jokes, and keeping it light but tight, in the hopes that that wouldn't arouse too much internet anger over Wilson as Captain America and that it would let audiences know that they wouldn't be "preached" to. But audiences still didn't come.
A personal enemy, relatively lower stakes to fit the "political thriller" vibe, and more guest spots (where was War Machine, Banner, or She-Hulk?), I think could've helped the movie out.
The biggest mistake stemming from Falcon and Winter Soldier was Wilson accepting the shield. I felt he should've said thanks but no thanks. What Rogers wanted wasn't as important as what he wanted, and it would've been nice if Wilson had had an "I am enough" epiphany. It also felt crowbarred that Isaiah getting a statue in the back of a museum would have him in tears. The end of the series felt inorganic.
A Falcon: Brave New World movie would not have had to live up to the Chris Evans's films, and I'm guessing would've had a lower budget, and then it clearing $400 million worldwide could've been a success or spun that way. Right now, it's fourth on the list of highest earning Black-starring live action superhero films behind Black Panther, Wakanda Forever, and Hancock. Black Adam is fifth. Now, if you throw in the Spider-Verse movies, that still keeps it in the top five:
Here are the Black-led comic book/comic strip/superhero/superpower movies (live and animated that I can think of):
I liked BNW a lot more than most and I feel it was a bit unfairly maligned. The media is still holding out hope for Thunderbolts while they were much more willing to leave BNW to the social media/internet wolves. Granted, the second weekend drop for BNW was catastrophic compared to TB, but still, TB isn't lighting up the box office like a pre-Endgame Marvel release would either. The middling performance also punctures the argument that a Bucky Captain America movie would've been a surefire blockbuster hit. Though the internet knives maybe wouldn't have already been drawn before a Bucky movie came out.
Some of the problems with BNW stem from Falcon and Winter Soldier. The series didn't set Wilson up enough to be a standalone character that many felt merited his own movie. Even putting Bucky as the co-lead was a sign, to me, that Disney was shaky on building a series around Wilson. That shakiness was quadrupled in BNW which became a way for them to tie up loose MCU ends more than establish Wilson as a hero in his own right and one that can and should be the heart and soul of the MCU going forward.
Disney has been averse to giving Wilson a love interest. Sharon could've fit the bill in the Falcon series, or they could've used an ex instead of his sister or aged up the Flag Smasher leader. A love interest allows for the to explore other sides to a character's personality and can draw in viewers who connect to the romance. Giving a character a family is also good for this, but not quite the same, as a romance.
In BNW, I also think they messed up by not developing a romantic relationship with the Secret Service agent, or not even bringing his sister and nephews back. Outside of recurrent impostor syndrome, we don't get much of an idea of who Wilson is and why he cares. The Disney Plus series delved into the impostor syndrome better than the movie did, which felt like a rushed retread. To me, MCU Falcon was intended to be a Black best friend who sprinkled a pinch of pepper on the MCU, but not a lot of thought was given to him getting his own movie or series. Falcon and Winter Soldier was a promising start, but BNW didn't do much to expand on it. In a way, BNW wanted to both sell us on the idea that Wilson is widely embraced as Captain America while at the same time, not, and they were skittish about Wilson spending much time in the movie pondering what him being Captain America really means. There are bits of it in the film, but the focus was on action, jokes, and keeping it light but tight, in the hopes that that wouldn't arouse too much internet anger over Wilson as Captain America and that it would let audiences know that they wouldn't be "preached" to. But audiences still didn't come.
A personal enemy, relatively lower stakes to fit the "political thriller" vibe, and more guest spots (where was War Machine, Banner, or She-Hulk?), I think could've helped the movie out.
The biggest mistake stemming from Falcon and Winter Soldier was Wilson accepting the shield. I felt he should've said thanks but no thanks. What Rogers wanted wasn't as important as what he wanted, and it would've been nice if Wilson had had an "I am enough" epiphany. It also felt crowbarred that Isaiah getting a statue in the back of a museum would have him in tears. The end of the series felt inorganic.
A Falcon: Brave New World movie would not have had to live up to the Chris Evans's films, and I'm guessing would've had a lower budget, and then it clearing $400 million worldwide could've been a success or spun that way. Right now, it's fourth on the list of highest earning Black-starring live action superhero films behind Black Panther, Wakanda Forever, and Hancock. Black Adam is fifth. Now, if you throw in the Spider-Verse movies, that still keeps it in the top five:
Here are the Black-led comic book/comic strip/superhero/superpower movies (live and animated that I can think of):
- Black Panther ($1.35 billion)
- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ($859 million)
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ($690 million)
- Hancock ($629 million)
- Captain America: Brave New World ($415 million)
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse ($394 million)
- Black Adam ($393 million)
- Glass ($247 million)-this movie being Black-led is debatable, but SLJ is on the front of the poster.
- Blade II ($155 million)
- Blade Trinity ($132 million)
- Blade ($131 million)
- Spawn ($87 million)
- Catwoman ($82 million)
- The Meteor Man ($8 million)
- Blankman ($7.9 million)
- Sleight ($4 million)
- Steel ($1.7 million)
- Friday Foster ($1.5 million)
- Green Lantern: Beware My Power ($740, 607)
- Vixen: The Movie ($330, 246)
- Fast Color ($76,916)
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I don't think there's anything wrong with discussing casting rumors. There's entire reputable channels (like Nando v. Movies) which spend a lot of time on them.
Sink as Mayday Parker is a bit interesting, as it raises the question of which Peter Parker is her dad. Is it Tobey Maguire? Someone we never saw before?
Regardless, I do not like the idea of having Mayday alongside MCU Spidey because people are going to read incest into it, even if she's not literally his daughter, and they have no onscreen romantic interaction.
Sink as Mayday Parker is a bit interesting, as it raises the question of which Peter Parker is her dad. Is it Tobey Maguire? Someone we never saw before?
Regardless, I do not like the idea of having Mayday alongside MCU Spidey because people are going to read incest into it, even if she's not literally his daughter, and they have no onscreen romantic interaction.
As I said upthread, I think the problem is the inverse here. There's no reason for this to be Sam's movie, whether you call him Captain America or The Falcon. Take out Isaiah Bradley, and this could just as easily had been a Phase 3 movie staring Chris Evans. It would have worked much, much better as a Hulk movie (though because of rights, we were never going to have that). This could have worked for War Machine, Bucky, Hawkeye - basically any of the surviving serious superheroes who are American. But with the story having nothing to do with Sam, and his barely having a character arc, he just feels like an accidental protagonist here.
Now, this isn't the first MCU movie with this flaw. Part of the reason Quantumania worked so poorly is because Scott Lang/Ant-Man just didn't work with the wider context of the story. He had no character arc, and lots of elements of what made the Ant-Man series work were jettisoned for the needs of the greater plot arc of Phases 4/5 (and ended up being discarded anyway). But I think it's important to note all the great MCU movies have a focus on character, as do some of the best recent ones, like GOTG 3 and Thunderbolts.
I think there could have been a successful Sam Wilson Cap movie, but this would never, ever be it. Doing stuff like including his family would have helped, but ultimately he's interacting with a bunch of characters who he has essentially no emotional connection to, other than Bradley and the new Falcon. The best Cap movie would be if they had never made TF&TWS, and just did a stripped-down version as a movie, where he starts fighting the Flag Smashers, but John Walker goes full villain in the third arc, as it would contrast Sam (who represents all the good parts of America) with Walker (who represents the bad parts). But they already told that story, even if they muddled it a bit, so they just shoehorned him in as a lead where he didn't belong.
Discussing rumors is a waste of time and energy. There's no way to distinguish the majority of false ones from the minority of true ones until something's officially announced, so it makes more sense just to ignore the rumor mill and wait for actual data.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaa??? If there's no onscreen romance, why in the world would anyone's mind go to the idea of incest? That seems like a complete non sequitur.
I thought he had a couple of character arcs, about finding common ground with his daughter and about dealing with his reputation as a hero. The primary story arcs in the movie were about Janet, Hank, and Cassie, but that's fine with me, since it makes sense for different installments in an ensemble series to focus on different characters, and the title Ant-Man and the Wasp surely includes Hank and Janet as much as Scott and Hope.
No. No! You started the 'follow the comic'. There are so many different versions out there, now own up and 1701 up. You can't just say 'my version is correct' and that's it. Either follow up with written words instead of emoji's, or just stay out of this. We require actual conversation, not mindless blablabla.
If I had my druthers, we'd start the X-Men with the Professor and the original five and then add more characters over the course of three or four movies. My preferences are the Originals and the All-Different, because that's what I grew up with. But I know that's not the X-Men to a lot of people. Those who watched the FoX-Men and the cartoons. So I'm pretty sure we will get a mix of characters from across all eras. I also prefer Mutant-Supremist-Fascist Magento to "freedom fighter" Magento, but I know we aren't getting that. 
This.
Actually, they do not contradict each other, what I mean is that I am not the one spreading false information. Whatever the people who spread that information, I decided not to post everything I see on social media here.
Sorry, but if you repeat someone else's false information so that more people hear it, that is literally spreading it, by definition.
People ship absolutely any two characters, and will 100% due it if there are two attractive opposite-sex characters of roughly the same age.
Obviously we go years between installments, but the development of Scott and Cassie's relationship felt random at the beginning of the story - creating a conflict as an excuse to "resolve" it later. Obviously, Cassie was a barely sketched-out cipher when we last saw her in Endgame, but still. I feel like Hawkeye did a much better role exploring the dynamics of fatherhood, even with his kids safely offscreen for most of the runtime.
Regardless, there was fundamentally no reason for this to be Scott's movie, when you consider the point was to find a way to introduce a Kang variant into the story to build up the menace for later. First, Scott's one of the least powerful of the Avengers. It would have been more intimidating to see Thor lose to Kang, or Captain Marvel. Second, he won. First encounters matter, which is why the initial scene of Infinity War had Thanos choke out Loki while Thor stood on, helpless to save him.
So, Scott seemed underpowered to defeat Kang, but did it anyway. But even worse, there's not really anything about Kang that feels like a dark mirror to Scott. It's just smashing random action figures together.