Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND

[Lord Liaden]

Marvel movies over the past several years have almost amounted to a license to print money. That includes with properties few even among comics fans took seriously. Only time will tell if that continues, but Marvel's track record has earned a lot of trust and goodwill. If Kevin Feige believes in it enough to make it into a movie, I'm optimistic.

[Grailknight]

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

In this case, since they're such a meh creation almost nobody even remembers or cares about, taking a new direction is probably a feature, not a bug.  But talk about the movie no one asked for, a very strange direction to go.  Probably fits into whatever new big threat they want to try to build up to with the Avengers this time. Except now it will be more like Secret Wars, because the Fantastic Four and X-Men will probably also be involved somehow.

 

If they make a good movie, it'll do well. If they don't then they move on. Everything doesn't have to be Endgame. Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Marvel and Ant-Man were all good enough to get sequels made or green-lit. Black Panther exceeded everyone's expectations. As big spectacle summer blockbuster type movies go, only Bond can rival the MCU for commercial and qualitative success. 

 

The MCU has succeeded without the rights to two of their three biggest comic properties and only had Spider-Man added just recently. So what if the next Black Widow, Eternals, and Shang-Chi aren't A or B-listers. even if they gross a mere 400-600 million each on average they're just holding place until Fantastic Four and X-Men launch. If they drop the ball on those two then we can say Marvel fell off. But if even one of them becomes a Black Panther level success or they go to 700 million on average then the MCU dynasty is supreme.

[Bazza]

3 hours ago, zslane said:

You'll notice that not a single one of the other so-called Spider-verse movies feature Spider-Man. Tom Holland doesn't want to be in Sony's Spider-verse; he feels his home is the MCU. That means Sony will likely have to move forward with a different Spider-Man if they want that character to be part of some kind of shared cinematic universe. My vote is that they establish a live-action Miles Morales and continue their Spider-verse with him. Tom Holland can continue to be the MCU's Spider-Man and everybody wins.

Currently, Tom doesn’t have a Marvel Studios contract and is still filming the movie. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

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So what if the next Black Widow, Eternals, and Shang-Chi aren't A or B-listers. even if they gross a mere 400-600 million each on average they're just holding place until Fantastic Four and X-Men launch

 

There is a real concern about momentum, though.  If Marvel's next offerings are all meh, then the perception might be that they've lost their mojo and it will be more difficult to pull fans back into the theaters.  Bond has that sense right now: the 007 movies seem to have lost their magic.  DC is struggling with perception, people expect a DC superhero movie to suck and are pleasantly surprised when its not terrible.  Even a pretty good movie like Wonder Woman was highly praised mostly because it wasn't as terrible as people figured it would be.  That's not a place you want to be as a company.

 

And mostly I fear that Hollywood will come to the irrational conclusion that comic book movies were a short fad and move away from them like they almost completely dumped Westerns, for example.  That would be a tragedy, given the hundreds of amazing stories waiting to be adapted to screen sitting out there from nearly a century of comic books.

[Ternaugh]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

There is a real concern about momentum, though.  If Marvel's next offerings are all meh, then the perception might be that they've lost their mojo and it will be more difficult to pull fans back into the theaters.  Bond has that sense right now: the 007 movies seem to have lost their magic.  DC is struggling with perception, people expect a DC superhero movie to suck and are pleasantly surprised when its not terrible.  Even a pretty good movie like Wonder Woman was highly praised mostly because it wasn't as terrible as people figured it would be.  That's not a place you want to be as a company.

 

And mostly I fear that Hollywood will come to the irrational conclusion that comic book movies were a short fad and move away from them like they almost completely dumped Westerns, for example.  That would be a tragedy, given the hundreds of amazing stories waiting to be adapted to screen sitting out there from nearly a century of comic books.

 

They lost their magic for me somewhere around the time that Timothy Dalton took the role.

[Old Man]

59 minutes ago, Ternaugh said:

 

They lost their magic for me somewhere around the time that Timothy Dalton took the role.

That franchise is just uneven. Octopussy was awful. The Brosnan era was meh. Of the Craig films, Casino Royale and Skyfall were brilliant and the other two were, like, the opposite of that. 
 

Meanwhile the MCU has been a model of consistent success, financially at least. 
 

(I have my own theories about what it will take to succeed with the Bond franchise in 2021 A.D., but that would require another thread.)

[Scott Ruggels]

3 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Marvel movies over the past several years have almost amounted to a license to print money. That includes with properties few even among comics fans took seriously. Only time will tell if that continues, but Marvel's track record has earned a lot of trust and goodwill. If Kevin Feige believes in it enough to make it into a movie, I'm optimistic.

Guardians of the galaxy, succeeded on its casting, and its direction. I don’t see this happening for the eternal’s, as the Director is an art house Director, the protagonist, or lead, is an unknown, putting Angelina Jolie andSalma Hayek, into supporting roles.

[Christopher R Taylor]

For the late Moore films, Octopussy was pretty good (other than a few bits, like the half-a-car).  But yeah the Craig era has been really uneven and for me (just my opinion) hasn't felt like James Bond.  Which is odd because most of Casino Royale was very close to the book.

[Pattern Ghost]

1 hour ago, Scott Ruggels said:

the protagonist, or lead, is an unknown

 

She's on the rise, though, and an excellent actress. Provided the movie isn't as bad as the teaser makes it look, she won't be an unknown for long.

 

Though to me, she's not an unknown, because I've seen her in Humans and Crazy Rich Asians, and she was good enough in both to make her presence in Eternals a draw for me.

 

 

[Bazza]

On 5/28/2021 at 6:19 AM, Greywind said:

Sony may still be looking at a Sinister Six movie down the road.

Or by Christmas...  

[Greywind]

4 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

For the late Moore films, Octopussy was pretty good (other than a few bits, like the half-a-car).  But yeah the Craig era has been really uneven and for me (just my opinion) hasn't felt like James Bond.  Which is odd because most of Casino Royale was very close to the book.

 

Can't be. They were playing the wrong card game

[Grailknight]

6 hours ago, Old Man said:

That franchise is just uneven. Octopussy was awful. The Brosnan era was meh. Of the Craig films, Casino Royale and Skyfall were brilliant and the other two were, like, the opposite of that. 
 

Meanwhile the MCU has been a model of consistent success, financially at least. 
 

(I have my own theories about what it will take to succeed with the Bond franchise in 2021 A.D., but that would require another thread.)

 

Goldeneye was meh? Goldeneye?

 

We shall have to agree to disagree.

[Hugh Neilson]

22 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

In this case, since they're such a meh creation almost nobody even remembers or cares about, taking a new direction is probably a feature, not a bug.  But talk about the movie no one asked for, a very strange direction to go.  Probably fits into whatever new big threat they want to try to build up to with the Avengers this time. Except now it will be more like Secret Wars, because the Fantastic Four and X-Men will probably also be involved somehow.

 

21 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Hey, nobody asked for a Guardians of the Galaxy movie, either.

 

21 hours ago, Starlord said:

 

Or Ant-Man

 

There is a significant advantage to a "meh" property.  You can adapt them to better appeal to the audience and/or better fit the new media.  Change Superman and there is a huge outcry.  How many people have expectations of who the Eternals are and how they will act in the movie?

 

The success of G0tG proved that MCU can make successful movies with "below B-list" properties.  "Movies no one asked for"?  Who asked for Iron Man or Thor in the first place?  Really, what we now call "Phase 1" was a bunch of comic fans who believed they could bring characters they loved to the movies and make the audiences love them too.  They pulled it off.

[Greywind]

Iron Man was in development hell forever. Look at all the people that were attached at different points. Tom Cruise Stark?

[Christopher R Taylor]

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There is a significant advantage to a "meh" property.  You can adapt them to better appeal to the audience and/or better fit the new media.  Change Superman and there is a huge outcry.  How many people have expectations of who the Eternals are and how they will act in the movie?

 

Yeah I mentioned that above, and its definitely a freedom you don't have with, say, Spider-Man.  Some people are grumbling a bit about the rainbow casting of carefully selected ethnic characters which feels kind of contrived, but, eh, doesn't matter to me because who cares about the Eternals?

 

But this whole mercenary "here's a character, we need these elements in it for the overarching story, now go write a script" thing feels kind of off.  It can work, or you can get Thor 2 and Iron Man 3.  Without a story to make a movie around, its not really inspired so much as "hit these beats at these points and move our bigger story along."  And at this point, that's what all of Marvel's movies feel like.  They aren't so much making movies from stories as they are making movies to push a concept along to get to a story, if that makes any sense.

 

There has been SO MANY great stories in comic books over nearly a century now that it feels like we're being cheated out of them.  Did we really need goofy Thor being slapped around by Strong Women and obliterating everything that makes up his character in Ragnarok?  Or couldn't we have gotten, say, the Cask of Winters Simonson story with goofy elements like Frog Thor? 

 

I mean there are so many great stories they could use, but aren't now because they are going into obscure, side characters just to make their meta storyline work.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Greywind said:

Iron Man was in development hell forever. Look at all the people that were attached at different points. Tom Cruise Stark?

Iron Man also famously had no script. 

[Greywind]

But Favreau got it all right.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say something really controversial here and suggest that maybe you might not want to make all your movies like the way they did Iron Man

[archer]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say something really controversial here and suggest that maybe you might not want to make all your movies like the way they did Iron Man

 

I don't know, "Doolittle" did okay with just putting RDJ and a bunch of talking animals out there in front of the camera and letting them adlib the whole movie.

[Bazza]

5 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 How many people have expectations of who the Eternals are and how they will act in the movie?

*raises hand*

[Starlord]

Original Spider-Man Voice Actor Paul Soles Passes Away At 90

[Bazza]

*Note to self: When Timothy Dalton is cast in a Marvel Studios film/D+ series to consult Ternaugh to see if the MCU has jumped the shark* 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I thought Dalton did quite well, and he is my favorite Bond, but they never really gave him much of a chance with scripts.  I thought Pierce Brosnan was a terrible choice at first, but he did a fine job as well, even if his last movie was horrible.

 

Quote

 

I don't know, "Doolittle" did okay with just putting RDJ and a bunch of talking animals out there in front of the camera and letting them adlib the whole movie.

 

I didn't think anyone alive even liked that movie

[Bazza]

I may have seen Dalton as Bond, but i do remember him in Chuck. I also liked Brosnan as Bond. However in many ways, the tropes that make Bond, Bond are dated in today's culture (different norms). 

[Old Man]

17 minutes ago, Bazza said:

I may have seen Dalton as Bond, but i do remember him in Chuck. I also liked Brosnan as Bond. However in many ways, the tropes that make Bond, Bond are dated in today's culture (different norms). 

 

The key Bond tropes are womanizing, gadgets, glamor/tuxedos, exotic locations, and action.  The first two have to be strongly adjusted in 2021 (though Casino Royale went a long way towards flipping the womanizing trope).  Craig-Bond has been a little short in the high society area, though he does get to dress up at least once an episode.