Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND

[Ranxerox]

1 hour ago, zslane said:

I thought it's been stated (by Berlanti) that Black Lightning doesn't occupy the Arrowverse. Is that not true?

 

It's been stated, but ...

 

http://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/black-lightning/272679/black-lightning-officially-not-part-of-arrowverse

“We are in our own world,” Black Lightning executive Salim Akil told EW. “We’re not in the Arrowverse. We’re not in the Supergirl universe. We’re in the Black Lightning universe. If there’s ever a crossover, Supergirl will come to Freeland, or Green Arrow will come to Freeland.”

 

If there can be crossovers, even if they are not in the same universe, they are in the same universe, if you get what I'm saying.

 

 

[zslane]

Okay, well, the way I look at it, Black Lightning isn't in the Arrow-multi-verse until we get a crossover. Until then it is just potential, but not actual.

[Pattern Ghost]

It exists in Schrodinger's Multiverse.

[Starlord]

Joss Whedon never had any plans for Thanos beyond end credit cameos.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its always been an error to assume this has long been part of some huge plan.  They only started doing that recently and I think the lack of cleverness, spontaneity, and sheer joy in the material is going to hurt them.  If they take it too seriously, its going to reduce the quality, I fear.

[Lord Liaden]

4 hours ago, Starlord said:

Joss Whedon never had any plans for Thanos beyond end credit cameos.

 

I remember him saying that after Avengers came out. Thanos was just an Easter egg for the fans. But that's something I appreciate about the creators of the MCU -- they pick up on bits dropped in earlier movies, and expand them into much larger elements of later ones.

 

I agree with Christopher above that the road the MCU has gone to this point wasn't planned from the start. Up to Avengers, probably, but unlikely beyond that until Phase One was well advanced. But that doesn't mean there hasn't been a plan. It's just been evolving as time and circumstances pass. There's a big difference between striking out in random directions, and choosing which fork in the road to take when you come to it.

[Matt the Bruins]

On 7/19/2018 at 8:31 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

I meant: how did he get a chasm dug under his lab the size of the Tower of Pisa without anyone noticing?

Who says no one noticed? Barbra Streisand apparently has a mall under her mansion,  maybe Tony just greased the wheels for a lot of unorthodox permits and had the basement lab/surplus armor storage facility constructed when they were building the foundation for that 60s futuristic beach cliff mansion.

 

On 7/21/2018 at 1:04 PM, Cassandra said:

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD returns for a 13 episode Six Season next year.  Apparently Inhumans was so bad not only was it cancelled but it book nine episodes of Agents of SHIELD with it.

Based on the fragments of episodes I tuned into last season, I have no problem believing the show got its order cut down all on its own.

[Cassandra]

8 minutes ago, Matt the Bruins said:

Who says no one noticed? Barbra Streisand apparently has a mall under her mansion,  maybe Tony just greased the wheels for a lot of unorthodox permits and had the basement lab/surplus armor storage facility constructed when they were building the foundation for that 60s futuristic beach cliff mansion.

 

Based on the fragments of episodes I tuned into last season, I have no problem believing the show got its order cut down all on its own.

 

Yeah, they spent a little too much time in the future.

[Old Man]

I'm dying for a TV show about the normal-human staff that works at Avengers headquarters.  I want to see the lawyer who cleans up all the legal issues caused by the heroes' constant trespassing and property damage.  I want to see the security guard who stands no realistic chance of protecting the place from supervillains.  I want to see the facilities guy say "you want me to build what?" and then retreat to his filthy basement office, shaking his head.  AoS and Powerless got close, but still couldn't quite focus on the frictions between the lives of supers and normals.  Is this a lame idea?  What do you guys think?

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think there is enough there to have a title that is only stories like this (Astro City touches on this regularly in its stories).  I wouldn't have it follow just one group of people but be stories, separate tales about events and people, with some crossover, but mostly just whatever good stories people come up with

 

[Ternaugh]

16 hours ago, Cassandra said:

 

Yeah, they spent a little too much time in the future.

 

They spent a little too much time in tunnels. It was exciting if we got to see sunlight during an episode.

[RDU Neil]

15 hours ago, Old Man said:

I'm dying for a TV show about the normal-human staff that works at Avengers headquarters.  I want to see the lawyer who cleans up all the legal issues caused by the heroes' constant trespassing and property damage.  I want to see the security guard who stands no realistic chance of protecting the place from supervillains.  I want to see the facilities guy say "you want me to build what?" and then retreat to his filthy basement office, shaking his head.  AoS and Powerless got close, but still couldn't quite focus on the frictions between the lives of supers and normals.  Is this a lame idea?  What do you guys think?

 

14 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I think there is enough there to have a title that is only stories like this (Astro City touches on this regularly in its stories).  I wouldn't have it follow just one group of people but be stories, separate tales about events and people, with some crossover, but mostly just whatever good stories people come up with

 

I agree with both of you. I would love to see a show that has the focus be on "normals juxtaposed with supers" but I think they might need to take the more modern approach of different charaters, different stories, different writers, every week. Sort of like a Black Mirror for a supers universe. Or what is that show about the pot dealer, and how he is just around, but episodes show the lives of all his customers, rather than focusing on set group of characters and plots.

 

Superhero stuff is going to have to mature, and quickly, because it has already become oversaturated. If someone like me doesn't watch half of the superhero shows available, when most of my five decades on this planet I would have killed for ONE half-decent show (there was a time when Agents of SHIELD would have been good)... then something needs to change. Netflix Marvel started out really strong, but has begun to fall into its own self-referential trap (still strong in places, like the ending of Luke Cage Season 2 was really powerful). To me, they have a lot of "characters" to play with in their world/universe... but they have yet to focus on the world itself... giving us glimpses (and leaving us wanting more rather than explaining every little thing) of all the crazy and wonderous and dangerous things out there... THAT show I'd watch. That show, to ground it, would work best if showed through the eyes of the norms. An Agents of SHIELD focusing less on a plucky band of stereotypical characters and their soap opera lives, could have a large, varied, non-standardized cast as we saw a much wider slice of the world.

 

I'd love a show like that.

[zslane]

Oversaturation isn't the problem. The problem is pervasive, low quality writing/storytelling. The real reason we don't watch half the superhero shows on tv is that they aren't good enough to waste our time on. The thing is, if they don't keep trying by making more new shows each year, then there's never a chance that a good one will come along, so proliferation is a necessary evil. We need Hollywood to put out roughly ten shows for us to get just one good one (it turns out Sturgeon was right).

[Cassandra]

Update:  In order to fit in with ABC's current line up, Agents of SHIELD will now be a game show.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I keep going back to this but its like westerns.  In the 1950s and 1960s there were a kabillion western TV shows and movies coming out.  It was a super hot genre for a long time then suddenly people got sick of it.  Comic books are that genre right now, but there's going to come a point when people are just tired of it. 

 

Part of the charm of comic book movies is that they're just about the only fresh content coming out, not a remake, not a sequel, not yet another teen movie, etc. 

 

Another part is the more or less zombie-like mindless fixation on childhood nostalgia that is regurgitating the same things over and over from the past (see: Ready Player One) and I suspect that's not gonna keep going a lot longer.

 

So far Superhero movies are pretty fresh in terms of presentation and ideas, you can't really point to any tired, overused tropes or annoying themes that keep coming back up except in a broad sense (DC's grimdark atmosphere).  And there are so many characters out there waiting to be presented that people are still waiting to see them.  And, I mean James Bond is kind of repetitious and reallly old but keeps being liked and welcomed even when the quality dips.

[zslane]

The "Western" was a fairly limited genre, one steeped in a time period that had less and less cultural relevance with every passing year. As a pop culture phenomenon it had a built-in expiration date just by virtue of being "historical" in nature. The superhero genre, being sci-fi by nature, can continue to have cultural relevance potentially forever, without ever having to resort to nostalgia for its appeal.

[Cassandra]

1 hour ago, zslane said:

The "Western" was a fairly limited genre, one steeped in a time period that had less and less cultural relevance with every passing year. As a pop culture phenomenon it had a built-in expiration date just by virtue of being "historical" in nature. The superhero genre, being sci-fi by nature, can continue to have cultural relevance potentially forever, without ever having to resort to nostalgia for its appeal.

 

What about The Wild Wild West?  (The TV show, not the movie.)

[Christopher R Taylor]

That is one of the most interesting things about the superhero genre: The Fantastic Four meeting Bluebeard, Iron Man and Dr Doom in Camelot, Legion of Superheroes in the far future, Excalibur dimension hopping, X-Men Brood stories of horror, Deadpool's goofy satire and humor, on and on.  Anything goes, literally.  And sometimes in one comic you can see hopping between multiple genres by story.  The Fantastic Four gets bored and goes through the Negative Zone barrier to explore, then is attacked by Skrull, then goes back in time to explore Reed Richards' ties to Kang the Conqueror in ancient Egypt, then Diablo uses magic to attack them. Daredevil fights street punks, then ninjas, then is in court defending someone he caught.

 

Its wide open, and crazily so.  And I truly hope that people making comic book movies take advantage of this facet of the genre.

[Greywind]

Time/dimension travel is one of the things that convolutes storylines that leads to massive retconning, and therefore best avoided at all costs unless such has been planned for from the beginning.

[zslane]

So far the MCU hasn't had time travel per se (Agents of SHIELD notwithstanding), only very localized time manipulation (via the Time stone). I hope it stays that way, but given how "cosmic" Feige wants the MCU to become, I'm not overly optimistic.

[Hugh Neilson]

4 hours ago, zslane said:

The "Western" was a fairly limited genre, one steeped in a time period that had less and less cultural relevance with every passing year. As a pop culture phenomenon it had a built-in expiration date just by virtue of being "historical" in nature. The superhero genre, being sci-fi by nature, can continue to have cultural relevance potentially forever, without ever having to resort to nostalgia for its appeal.

 

What replaced the Western?  Science Fiction.

 

How did that work?  Scratch out "horse" and write "rocket pack"; cross out "Wagon" and write "spaceship", scratch out "six shooter" and write "Ray Gun", cross out "Indians" and write "Aliens".  The pretty girl and the saloon get to stick around.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I'm fine with time travel into the past to strange places, as long as they stick with fun stories instead of "everything has to fit together in the cinematic universe and make sense to 'I f'in love science' fanatics" fixation.  I mean, even though Marvel Comics has a shared universe, they still do stand alone stories that aren't part of a huge overarching stories

 

Quote

What replaced the Western?  Science Fiction.

 

Not really, to do that, you'd have to have 15 sci fi shows on TV and 5-10 sci fi movies a MONTH coming out

[Grailknight]

8 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I'm fine with time travel into the past to strange places, as long as they stick with fun stories instead of "everything has to fit together in the cinematic universe and make sense to 'I f'in love science' fanatics" fixation.  I mean, even though Marvel Comics has a shared universe, they still do stand alone stories that aren't part of a huge overarching stories

 

What replaced the Western?  Science Fiction.

 

Not really, to do that, you'd have to have 15 sci fi shows on TV and 5-10 sci fi movies a MONTH coming out

 

But that's what happened.  The 50's and 60'are loaded with sci-fi and atomic horror. Most of it was comically bad but where do you think Godzilla, THEM , The Blob or Andromeda Strain came from?.  Likewise there was a slew of sci-fi shows on TV but not so many because of the limited budgets.

 

The genre drifted more to pure horror in the 70's and on though but it never really went away. The boom is more attributable to tech advances in SFX and CGI so it may be more sustainable.

[Old Man]

6 hours ago, zslane said:

Oversaturation isn't the problem. The problem is pervasive, low quality writing/storytelling. The real reason we don't watch half the superhero shows on tv is that they aren't good enough to waste our time on.

 

I dunno, I would be watching a lot more supers stuff if I had the free time.  AoS, Black Lightning, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage at minimum.  I also hear Iron Fist's second season is a significant improvement over the first.  And I'd still rather watch Flash, GA, LoT, Daredevil, and Supergirl over crap like Big Bang Theory or whatever the police procedural is called this decade.  That's ten shows right there, no way is anyone watching all of them (nor should they be).

 

Anyway, I'll continue to enjoy it while it lasts, never forgetting when the only supers show on TV was Lois & Clark.

[Grailknight]

And many people are watching shows that they don't know are comic derived. Most people know about The Walking Dead but don't realize that Lucifer and I, Zombie came from comics.