[Movie/TV/Comic] Marvel Cinematic Universe: A place to talk all things Marvel

[Soulwind]

- Loki will get a second season, meanwhile Kang (and multiple variants of him) will be a focus of phase four atleast. He is either the next Loki or the next Thanos.
- Photon will return in "The Marvels". White Vision may appear in "Armour Wars" and set up the West Coast Avengers or Young Avengers down the line.
- The dead Celestial will prolly be turned into the new Avengers HQ like in the comics. Arishem will be used for a Judgement Day storyline, I could even see them adapt the newest AXE arc depending on how they introduce the mutants.
- The 10 Rings will get a D+ show.
- Black Knight will appear in "Blade".
- US Agent will appear in the upcoming "Thunderbolts" project. Captain Falcon already has a new "Captain America" movie announced.

The next big "Endgame" like event will be Secret Wars, prolly either via Kang or Dr. Doom who is rumoured to be in "Wakanda Forever" alongside Namor.

My mental image of this is phases 1 and 2 being a few branches of mostly very well known characters, with phase 3 pulling all of them into a single thread. Then comes phase 4 and hundreds of branches explode in every direction, with the promise of some of them merging and leading to something, while others are branching even further.

I'm sure people who know all of these characters from the comics are having a blast, but as someone who was only really familiar with Spiderman when this all started, and has only acquired some knowledge of most of these through forums and, well, the movies; this is getting extremely convoluted.

[MrLachyG]

Imo that's more the lack of general direction that is difficult to follow and makes it less interesting. Everything feels totally disconnected, while there were ways to connect everything together to create a more coherent storyline.
I mean, there have been three stories about the multiverse (Loki, Spider-Man NWH, Dr Strange Multiverse), yet none of them were connected. I could understand for Loki, but NWH and Madness being linked only by one sentence and absolutely nothing else was weird af. There was just as many links between NHW and Madness as between Shang-Chi and Madness (i.e. 1, very minor, unless I missed others).

And then you have storylines leading to nothing so far. So far, as we have yet to see the rest, but opening one billion storylines with no clear conclusion doesn't help in keeping people engaged.
- All Loki matters. Kang will probably be continued in Quantumania, Loki potentially in Thor 4 ?
- Photon, White Vision from WandaVision ?
- A freaking Celestial appearing in Earth's orbit and grabbing 3 people while another one nearly hatched from earth didn't seem to sparkle the smallest interest.
- Shang-Chi was probably a one-off, spin-off-like, but the Rings were hinted at being something crazy.
- Black Knight (Eternals' credits scene)
- US Agent (Falcon's ending), even Captain Falcon is nowhere to be seen yet

All that shit just feels like Marvel is throwing as many storylines as possible to see what sticks, and then they'll plan accordingly. At this point, Eternals just feels like non-cannon , and as much as I didn't enjoy it to say the least, I prefer when the story keeps some degree of consistency
It's a lot less engaging to watch an endless serie of spin-offs rather than a consistent storyline spanned over several movies. That's also what made Marvel more successful than DC, movie-wise. DC has several great movies but they're standalone, while Marvel has many shitty movies but at least they're part of a huge story.

I mean they have a plan. one could argue that there were lots of storylines early on in P1/P2 of the MCU. I think that eventually everything will be tied together; we just don't know how it will happen yet.

[Al Gorefiend]

So far doc strange 2 has been the only marvel movie in phase 4 I liked. Feel the rest lacked innovation, like the same sequential order of events with different characters and settings. Shang-chi being the worst example. It wasn't innovative at all, maybe thats what they were going for. It just had this feeling of something we've seen before. Main hero has a macguffin to follow, has a comic relief sidekick, has a mystical hidden land for a setting, big explosive part 3 battle won via secret, as of yet revealed talent or power.



This YouTuber puts the words together much better. It really is all starting to become formulaic, and his point at 4:30 into this video captures what's happening in the thread perfectly.

Should point out he made this video before MoM and has said MoM has been the only exception so far, being very innovative and unpredictable

[rarhyx]

I had this image come across my Facebook feed today, it seemed appropriate to the conversation:

yeah, it's like finishing the main quest with endgame and everything after is just dlc which has almost nothing to do with the main quest except a few mentions but that's it

[Endus]

Y'know, I wish people would take a little personal responsibility. You're not suffering "Marvel fatigue" because Marvel's doing anything "wrong". You just don't like Marvel stuff that much, and you're forcing yourself to watch it out of some sense of duty or other weird shit. Some of us are still really enjoying all this, especially the branching-out they're doing in this current phase post-Endgame. It's okay to just admit you're not really that big a fan and you want to go watch different stuff. Nobody's making you be here, or forcing you to watch every Marvel property that comes out. Just like nobody made anyone read every comic Marvel put out. "But there's gonna be crossovers and continuity", yeah, there was in the comics, too.

If you want to compare it to a video game, we're probably currently in the post-game DLC phase. The Witcher 3's Blood and Wine DLC, say. And there's gonna be a sequel to that video game, whenever the next big bad's cycle proper starts to come online (yeah, they teased Kang in Loki, but he hasn't really shown up yet in the films). Hell, my example of a video game was from The Witcher 3; itself a sequel.

It's totally fine if you've had enough and want something different. Nobody's harshing on you for that. Just go watch stuff you enjoy, rather than forcing yourself to hate-watch stuff you really don't out of some weird sense of obligation.

While it's coming up here for Marvel, the same goes for basically any content people hate-watch, whether it's Star Wars, Star Trek, or whatever. It's okay to not like a thing and move on with your lives, folks. If you're like "I spent 80 hours in the main game and now you want me to buy and play another 30 hours in this post-game DLC? UGH" just, like, don't buy it. Go play another game or something. Nobody's gonna judge you.

Fatigue and such is a personal feeling, not an objective truth.

[Soulwind]

you're forcing yourself to watch it out of some sense of duty or other weird shit.

Not quite a sense of duty, more like putting up with what's necessary to stay in the know.

Eventually we know they'll go back to team movies and big events (Galactus and such). And by then, more than half of the cast will have been replaced by people who were introduced in individual movies and shows.

While it's true one doesn't need to watch everything to have a general understanding of who everyone is and what is going on, going in blind will definitely devaluate the experience, and it's hard to know exactly which of these shows will be relevant by the time the next big thing happens, so people do feel like they have to watch or at least read about all of these things if they want to keep up.

I wonder if Disney would be willing to make official summaries so that people don't feel as overwhelmed, but that might affect their profits from the actual movies and shows...

[everydaygamer]

It's the start of a new storyline, so its only expected that it won't be as interesting to begin with. Let's not pretend the MCU was all that interesting prior to the first Avengers film.

[Ophenia]

I wonder if Disney would be willing to make official summaries so that people don't feel as overwhelmed, but that might affect their profits from the actual movies and shows...

Well they're doing that by limiting the connections to the strict minimum. Multiverse of Madness was expected to be heavily linked to WV and Loki at the very least, but in fact you only needed to know Wanda has kids somewhere and the DarkHold is some powerful book. Everything else was mostly irrelevant

[Svifnymr]

Well they're doing that by limiting the connections to the strict minimum. Multiverse of Madness was expected to be heavily linked to WV and Loki at the very least, but in fact you only needed to know Wanda has kids somewhere and the DarkHold is some powerful book. Everything else was mostly irrelevant

My thing is I liked Scarlet Witch well enough in some of the movies, but didn't really like when she got the spotlight more. The series was so-so, I liked most of the others more than her or the bad guy. So like, if I don't like the Scarlet Witch series much, how much of Doctor Strange 2 is her? I want to watch a Doc Strange movie, but not a Scarlet Witch movie.

We didn't NEED background on why/ when Hulk became Professor Hulk or whatnot, but it sure would have been nice to get the summary there.

Anyway, obviously everything is an opinion on a discussion forum.

[Orby]

So Thunderbolts has a director and writers and work is under way. From what I have heard seems like what they are hinting at seems to be based on more like Norman Osbourne's Thunderbolts/Dark Avengers from the late 2000's.

so here's the thing, Thunderbolts (not including X-Men) are probably one of my favourite teams in Marvel, and I feel bad for their runs because their comics constantly keep getting cancelled and that's sucks. I been collecting them since 1997 from their inception ever since they first popped up in I would like to think it was either Hulk or Spider-Man?

But I am very concerned about the movie, If rumours are true then we are not getting the original team? No Songbird, no Moonstone, no Fixer, no Mach-1, no Atlas.

They must remember two things. They are NOT the Avengers and they are NOT the Suicide Squad, if they are portrayed like either then the people making this movie need to go back to the drawing board.

The concept of thunderbolts is so good. Former villains disguised as heroes and pretending to be good while the Avengers were declared dead (Onslaught saga long story lol). This was a carefully guarded secret in Marvel, they hid the fact that this team, who came out of no where, were just doing hero stuff, then later down the line they were revealed to be the Masters of Evil. Later they would kick Zemo (who was disguised as Citizen V) out of the group because they liked being heroes and wanted to reform, and then came a whole new dynamitic, when people found out these heroes were actually villains (via Zemo) they were vilified and had to prove themselves, it was so good.

Is it too much to ask get this....?



And dont get me started on their new comic run that's coming out this year which is Thunderbolts by name only because it might as well be called Avengers team number 281. Even the comics have totally missed the ball on what Thunderbolts are supposed to be. Marvel wake the hell up ffs.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

So Thunderbolts has a director and writers and work is under way. From what I have heard seems like what they are hinting at seems to be based on more like Norman Osbourne's Thunderbolts/Dark Avengers from the late 2000's.

Oooh I loved the Osbourne thunderbolts it would be great to see Penance likely with a different backstory, loved the character since ultimate Alliance 2 and I’ll never not miss him after they turned him back into speedball.

[Orby]

Oooh I loved the Osbourne thunderbolts it would be great to see Penance likely with a different backstory, loved the character since ultimate Alliance 2 and I’ll never not miss him after they turned him back into speedball.

I really like that era too, that was the whole Dark Reign/Dark Avengers era... one of the few Brian Michael Bendis runs I enjoyed lol

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I really like that era too, that was the whole Dark Reign/Dark Avengers era... one of the few Brian Michael Bendis runs I enjoyed lol

Dark Reign is with out a doubt my favourite era, with characters like Penance Ares Darken Skarr and abunch others all getting great story’s and siege being a great ending to it all.

all it was really missing for me was a good ghost rider story line.

[Shadowferal]

To me, Thunderbolts was the last title I thought was decently written before Marvel filed chapter 11.

[Ayirasi]

I think that's where I am. NWH and MoM both contributed heavily to this feeling, but even though I really enjoyed Ms. Marvel episode 1 the next day I just thought to myself that I'm pretty much done with it, it's just too much. I haven't finished Hawkeye or started Moon Knight and I'm wondering why I should. I think I'm actually preferring the way DC is starting to just do solo films that I can invest in and be done.

Yeah, same boat here. I might just take a break from the MCU and Star Wars, and binge Ms. Marvel later.

[Al Gorefiend]

I think that's where I am. NWH and MoM both contributed heavily to this feeling, but even though I really enjoyed Ms. Marvel episode 1 the next day I just thought to myself that I'm pretty much done with it, it's just too much. I haven't finished Hawkeye or started Moon Knight and I'm wondering why I should. I think I'm actually preferring the way DC is starting to just do solo films that I can invest in and be done.

Same feeling. Maybe it's too much of a good thing, like eating too much chocolate. Thor Ragnarok and Infinity War felt like the peak of Marvel movies, Endgame was good too, not better than IW personally.

I think it was Loki and Eternals that started giving me a sense of fatigue, this inexplicable feeling I started having that this is all starting to feel like fanfic spinoffs. Which isn't Marvel doing anything wrong, it's the same feeling I eventually got surrounding the WoW story. Same setting, same writers, just not the same sense of epicness in my head. I'm sure it's all going to tie together in the end because Disney knows how to follow the working technique, but that doesn't make what we have now more engaging knowing shang-chi and Moon knight might have some meet n greet 3 years from now.

[MrLachyG]

But I am very concerned about the movie, If rumours are true then we are not getting the original team? No Songbird, no Moonstone, no Fixer, no Mach-1, no Atlas.

I think they will add a couple of new characters in but probably stick with some old favourites as well. The Abomination is almost a guarantee after his appearance in Shang-Chi, Zemo is another. Black Widow, US Agent, Ghost and Taskmaster are also likely candidates. given that the bad guys usually die at the end of their movies there aren't that many to choose from.

I wonder if they will recast Thaddeus Ross, that character was a good one

[Orby]

I think they will add a couple of new characters in but probably stick with some old favourites as well. The Abomination is almost a guarantee after his appearance in Shang-Chi, Zemo is another. Black Widow, US Agent, Ghost and Taskmaster are also likely candidates. given that the bad guys usually die at the end of their movies there aren't that many to choose from.

I wonder if they will recast Thaddeus Ross, that character was a good one

totally forgot about that, good point since the team is named after him. Maybe they'll introduce Red Hulk, you dont need William Hurt for that, maybe they can cgi him in as Hurt for half of a show or movie, then have him be a full CGI red Hulk, its a way of recasting him but having him be a different person at the same time.

To me, Thunderbolts was the last title I thought was decently written before Marvel filed chapter 11.

chapter 11?

[OnlineSamantha]

chapter 11?

A type of bankruptcy.

[Orby]

A type of bankruptcy.

ahh thanks

I mean I really liked the Thunderbolts post-late 90's run. But as I said before their run in the late 2000's was really good. when it was Osbourne running them, and they had these more Z list villians like Paladin, Scourge (Nuke), Headsman, Ant-Man (Eric O'Grady), Ghost and Black Widow (Yelena Belova).

this is the version that looks like the movie wants to take inspiration from. The whole working with the government (albeit as a means to an end) and similar characters in the roster. Suppose they'll have Zemo in the Osbourne role, so its very mish-mash. Unless they want to introduce Osbourne into this movie, which would be weird since he is more associated with Spider-Man.

all this talk of Thunderbolts makes me want to go back and read their back catalogue lol