Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

I looked it up. The last cheap-ish movie in the MCU was Shang-Chi, and even that had a $150 million budget. Considering how everyone pretty much agreed the lowlight of that movie was the pointless dragon fight, they probably could have shaved another $10 million off and actually improved it.

Still, it does show that it's still possible to do an MCU movie with a somewhat more restrained budget which is still stuffed to the gills with CGI.

In contrast, if The Marvels is really $270 million, it has a higher budget than any MCU film which wasn't an Avengers film.

Obviously some of that comes down to inflation, but still, the way they're going, Kang Dynasty will have a $500 million budget.

 

Deadline reports that Marvel Studios will soon be listening to writer's pitches for the X-Men.

https://deadline.com/2023/09/x-men-movie-writer-pitches-next-marvel-development-1235558844/amp/

 

The dragon fight was awesome. I wouldn't change anything about that movie except reducing Ben Kingsley's role, which I doubt would make much different in the budget.

I saw some remarks from, I believe, the Russos the other day that the actual budgets for Infinity War and Endgame were already over 500m.

 

According to IGN, the AMC Theaters' listing for The Marvels has it at 105 minutes (1hr 45min), so it's not 90 minutes, but it is still the shortest Marvel movie we've gotten so far.

 

It's only the shortest by like...7 minutes?

 

It's a school, but all the kids have superpowers...

 

Hear me out... What about Xavier's academy is separated into four groups of students who live together as a group. When new students join we put a cybernetic helmet on their head that lets us know what group they best fit in with...

 

Doesn't matter. You heard the sky is falling, right?!?!

 

So you’ve got an X Men movie for me?
Yes, Sir. And three guesses who’s gonna be in it?
Wolverine?
That was only one guess.
Was it wrong?
No, you are correct, it just was not three guesses. Anyway, Hugh Jackman is playing him of course.
Didn’t Hugh say that he is done with Wolverine for the 8th time?
Yeah, but I thought we could give him more money again, that usually works.
But, it’s my money. Can’t we have a younger actor taking on the role?
Who is available with a bulky body type, gruff voice and known for smoking cigars?
I don’t know. Daniel Radcliffe?
That works!

 

I enjoyed Jackman in the part, of course, but it would be nice to see a new actor take on the role.

 

Jackman has retired from the Wolverine role almost as many times as Terry Funk retired from wrestling

 

That doesn't seem too off with some of the various times there have been different teams under the roof (red/blue/gold etc.).

 

I know some people are going to say "Look, if it wasn't for characters like Wolverine the X-Men would have been canceled back in the 60s because the OG characters just aren't interesting".

This is nonsense, because the OG characters are plenty interesting when written right. Cyclops himself has been on a roll since the early 2000s, once the writers were out of that awful 90s era and the 90s fad characters like Cable burnt out.

 

Pretty sure it was effectively canceled in the 60s/early 70s. Became a reprint book.

 

Yep.

The silver age X-men are a hard thing to get into and really would not still exist today if it weren't for the success of the Claremont era reboot.

It is true, of course, that the writing is the biggest problem and most of those individual characters have had much more succesful runs when the writing was better. However, the vast majority of those runs also benefitted heavily from the presence of other characters like Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, Emma Frost, X23, etc. The O5 simply are not a very interesting group by themselves. They work better in a much wider context of other characters.

 

Well, by the end of the original Silver Age run they'd put together a pretty fun Alien Invasion plotline that was selling well...it just came too late.

I'm just saying that the writing and opinions on characters who AREN'T Wolverine has improve to the point that the MCU doesn't need him right off the bat.

 

I think the O5 are great. In the right hands they could easily helm a film. That said,I hope the filmmakers mine the entirety of X-Men history to populate the film. Especially if they go the school route. Though I'm unsure how Wolverine would fit. Yeah I know they tried that in the first few Fox films. Didn't think it was successful. Not fond of Scott, Jean and Storm being faculty either.

 

Yeah, that was basically the only time in the Silver age when the book was actually readable. Also - not entirely coincidentally - a time when they first started focusing on more characters beyond the O5 (with the invention of Polaris, Havok and Sunfire - also Banshee a bit, but he was actually invented a fair bit earlier and not nearly as good a character early on as he later became).

As for Wolverine, I agree he isn't *necessary*. Really very few individuals could possibly ever be considered necessary. Arguably Scott is the most necessary X-man imaginable and we've already had a decent X-Men movie without him.

Whether they're necessary or not really doesn't matter that much, though. Wolverine is certainly a good character with lots of potential, even if certainly heavily overused. I would be happy to see them take a break from him for a while or even make Laura the MCU Wolverine *instead of* Logan for a change. But honestly, Wolverine - at least based on pre-MCU recognition levels - is probably the most well known Marvel character after Spider-man, so I just don't see them benching him. And, ultimately, I'm not too upset about it because the character is well-known and loved for a reason. There's definitely still good stuff to be had with him.

Though one thing I do think may still be possible which could maybe make everyone happy would be to launch him as his own thing (D+ series perhaps or solo films) separately from the X-men. Then he can guest star in the sequel(s) if necessary but keep the majority of his story presence out of the X-films.

 

Just now? Not exactly moving at Quicksilver speed, are they?