And the Empire "should have won" in Star Wars. Hans Gruber's heavily armed gang should have won in Die Hard. It's called an underdog story. The villains are supposed to outmatch the heroes, so the heroes' come-from-behind victory is more impressive.
Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread
- Thread starter bbjeg
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And the Empire "should have won" in Star Wars. Hans Gruber's heavily armed gang should have won in Die Hard. It's called an underdog story. The villains are supposed to outmatch the heroes, so the heroes' come-from-behind victory is more impressive.
His introduction was in the Loki show, and he was very effective there.
Yeah, if you're talking about a self-contained story. But Quantamania was not meant to be self-contained. It was meant to be the introduction of the big bad for the multiverse arc.
I mean, look at The Empire Strikes Back, which is generally considered the best of the Star Wars movies. Luke does not defeat Darth Vader at the end. Vader wins. He cuts off Luke's hand, Luke barely escapes with his life/freedom. The movie ends on a dark note, which builds up the threat of Darth Vader for ROTJ.
Or hell, look at Infinity War. People love it because Thanos won. Thanos was threatening because...he won!
You can't make a villain who's already lost once into a threatening antagonist easily, because it's been shown they can be defeated. It's like Gargamel always trying to get the Smurfs or Dr. Claw and Inspector Gadget. It just comes across as stupid, if not outright comedic.
The vast majority of people watching Antman never saw it so it has a limited impact on how he is perceived by the public.
I’m not sure that is the case - apologies that the source isn’t ideal but per Google the season 2 finale had 11.2m viewers and was down 39% on S1 so let’s call that 11m and 40% which ch gives us 15.4m viewers who would know Kang already
I think that would translate to a significant amount of the audience being at least somewhat aware of who he is
Going off the ticket prices and box-office - I would think at best it's 1 in 10.
There also needs to be build-up. The Thanos build up was going on for a while now, before he actually won in Infinity War. Low-key, behind the scenes without knowing it, our heroes defeated or delayed him a few times.
For Kang to have a huge victory so soon, would underlie the point of building him up as a huge threat.
"He was so powerful, we barely took him down then! And he's back? Stronger? Now what!?!"
Cinema in on itself is having issues. Yes, superhero movies are doing less well then before, but box offices on the whole are in decline. It has become expensive, and thanks to covid and war the world in still in recession. Some countries have it worse than others. People are already paying for streaming services, and are patient enough to wait for movies to be released on Netflix/Prime/MAX/Disney/and so on.
I am one of those people and I know many more.
So yes, there is a partial truth to it, but it's also more nuanced than that.
However you get there the outcome looks to be the same - that the underlying economic model of the MCU might not work anymore.
Captain America 4 would need to take a put 700 million just to break even if budget estimates are right.
That is indeed fact. Well, to a degree since, as you said, we don't know the budget. But yes, if guesses and estimates are correct, than the MCU is not making a profit right now.
The MCU needs to learn (again) how to make cheaper movies and wean itself off the big budgets.
There's no reason a Cap movie has to be a huge sfx extravaganza. Damage his wings early on and you're looking at a ground level street fighter like Black Widow or Daredevil with the action sequences relying on choreography and physical stunts.
Of course, the writing has to stand up and supply a gripping narrative without some convoluted world ending threat.
There's no reason a Cap movie has to be a huge sfx extravaganza. Damage his wings early on and you're looking at a ground level street fighter like Black Widow or Daredevil with the action sequences relying on choreography and physical stunts.
Of course, the writing has to stand up and supply a gripping narrative without some convoluted world ending threat.
Darth Vader lost in Star Wars -- he failed to stop some random farm kid from blowing up his gigantic space station, and he got sent spinning off into space because a two-bit smuggler in a run-down space truck caught him by surprise. That's not only a defeat, it's a humiliating defeat. But he came back from it.
By your argument, we'd never have recurring villains at all. The Joker lost in his first appearance, and his second, and his third, and every one thereafter. So did Luthor. So did Doctor Octopus. So did Red Skull. Heroes usually win. That's how heroic fiction works. What makes a villain an effective threat is how hard it is for the hero to win. You show how badly the odds are stacked against the hero, how much damage the villain does before their defeat (say, blowing up the princess's home planet, or successfully murdering several rich Gothamites in a row despite police protection), and that not only makes it more potent when the hero manages to prevail against impossible odds, but it confirms the villain as a serious threat that the hero might not be able to defeat a second time. Of course the hero usually will win the next time, but you've successfully established that it won't come easily.
It's tricky to do with ongoing series - once you establish a budget and a standard that is what people expect. Also if you take The Marvels at a budget it makes money, it's a TV movie.
Except that a huge amount of that budget never shows up onscreen, instead going into actor and executive salaries and the massive bloat and inefficiency of the Hollywood system. It's like defense contractors with the government -- charging thousands of dollars for components that could be made just as well for pennies. That's part of the reason so many productions relocate to Vancouver or New Zealand or the like -- the Hollywood system is too artificially expensive.
What's needed is a reform of the system on a fundamental level, something that purges the excess and inefficiency and institutional bloat so that you can achieve equally good results onscreen without so much wasteful spending.
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Ant-Man 3 wasn't the introduction to Kang and the Multiverse Saga, the Loki show was. And going by the Loki show, Kang there won and got what he wanted and we saw his power. Ant-Man 3 happened BECAUSE of what happened in the Loki show.
I don't think necessarily Scott Lang had to die. But it would have been nice if Hank Pym had. Or Hope. Or maybe that Scott made the sacrifice of getting trapped down in the quantum realm as a consequence of defeating Kang. Because the stakes ultimately were pretty hollow here.
Yes, ANH ended that way. But Lucas hadn't really thought through the trilogy at that point, and ANH is in every way an inferior movie to TESB (it's just a simple well-crafted adventure story). Vader only became a compelling villain once he was given the nuance in the second movie.
I realize if you're looking at comics you can make that argument. But within movie series, we seldom see the same villain come back twice without a total reboot (the Joker has been played in four different ways in live-action movies over the course of my life, for example).
Regardless, part of the issue is not only that Kang lost, but that he lost to Ant-Man, who is a second-string MCU superhero, along with a rag-tag group of his hangers on. If one lesser Avenger can take on Kang essentially solo, than the sum total of all the superheroes within the MCU shouldn't break a sweat.
I'd also note that what generally makes an old villain returning interesting is the past history with the hero. But it's moot here, because the post-credit scene of Quantumania strongly implied it would be a Kang variant who would be the issue, not the Kang we met. Which is the same reason why the Thanos in Act 3 of Endgame didn't work well - there's no personal history there. Add to that that I don't think they'd play up Scott's past experience with Kang regardless, and any interesting character complexities related to the past history are just thrown out the window.