Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND

[Lord Liaden]

We can agree to disagree.

 

Yes, Thanos' plan was flawed... but he's "the Mad Titan," not "the Mistaken Titan." Thanos had been living so long with the death of his world and people, and the conviction that his way would have saved them, that he's now incapable of seeing the flaws. We've all seen real people with at least as much tunnel vision, especially over the past few years. In every other context Thanos is powerful, brilliant, determined, ruthless, cruel... a grand villain. His movie motivation is at least comprehensible. I mean, being literally in love with Death? That's hard to relate to.

 

In Infinity War he actually has a character arc, as he loses everything he built and everyone he valued, but through that accomplishes his life's goal. That timeline of Thanos displayed a measure of empathy and regret before his death, but he died at peace. Still a monster, but with depth.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Compared to the comic, the Infinity saga in MCU was... lacking.  But because they didn't have 30 years of comics to draw on and all those epic stories, they had to cut corners and work with what they had.  Which shows again that this was too early to pull the trigger on this particular story as I see it.  There were a lot of great tales they could have hit before they did the Thanos thing, but once they started they were kind of tied into it.

[Bazza]

Thanos was introduced into the MCU by Joss Whedon, and Marvel Studios picked up the baton and ran with it.

 

In hindsight Marvel could have used every Phase 2 & 3’s film’s post credit scene to advance this plot line — like a mini series, with each film’s post credit scene is an episode.

[unclevlad]

How long would that have taken, and would the genre momentum go on that long?  How much would people care about Thanos' back story?  It's one thing to spend a few issues of the comic doing things;  it's quite another to do that with high-budget, scarce-release movies.

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Oh, you can have Thanos as the big bad guy, but not with the stones yet.  He's a supervillain.  Then later, he comes back to blow up half the universe.  And it should have been love with death, not the lame environmentalist thing.  Its just when you peak with him, where do you go from there?  Every villain after that seems like a weakling.  Galactus is here to eat earth?  Thanos KILLED HALF THE UNIVERSE.  It was too big, too early.

[Grailknight]

Another issue here would be name recognition. Sure, the MCU has pulled in a large number of fans who weren't comic readers, but the core audience is still long-term fans. Thanos was the known cosmic menace they had available, especially since they did not have access to any Fantastic Four or X-men villains at the time. Perhaps it would have been better to start small with him, but you roll with what you have, and they had already started with the Infinity Stones in AoU.  One of the bigger problems of Phase 4 is that the villains aren't well known. Kang is the biggest foe the Avengers have left with the possible exception of a decent team of the Masters of Evil.

[unclevlad]

12 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 Thanos KILLED HALF THE UNIVERSE.  It was too big, too early.

 

It was definitely too early.  I'd argue it would be too big to do at ANY time. No, I never liked the plot line. 

 

But I think the problem is....after Ragnarok, then what?  You've destroyed Asgard, you've killed Odin.  What's the next step up?  

 

And remember, the focus needs to be on the heroes.  So, if Thanos collects the first stone or two before the heroes know what's going on?  It's not worth more than a scene.  

 

So, I'll reiterate that much of the problem relates to the media involved.  Movies take too long and cost too much to extend the development to the point where Thanos gets the backstory.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah film does change how you approach stories, and there's no way they could establish anything like the backstories that the Infinity Saga had in comics.  You'd need a good decade of cosmic stories with the Silver Surfer, Adam Warlock, etc.  That's just not feasible, even if you used replacement actors over time.  But the story was too big and everything after that necessarily has to be a letdown which is not great for movies, unless you deliberately focus on street level stuff.

 

I think that's why they went with loser Kang, because he threatens the entire multiverse!!1!!11!!  But there's a huge disconnect here.  The stakes are too abstract and ill-defined for audiences to connect to, so it doesn't really feel like much of a threat.  And having Kang be defeated and killed over and over doesn't exactly build menace.

[Starlord]

Doom says,  "No threat is greater than Doom."

[unclevlad]

Doom would've made the better master villain, I agree, but his main connection is to FF.

 

What you're eliciting is that NOT having Spidey, FF, or X-Men, may well have tied their hands a GREAT deal.

[Lord Liaden]

22 minutes ago, Starlord said:

Doom says,  "No threat is greater than Doom."

 

Precedents say, he's right.

[Hermit]

I admit, I would like to see a few more superhero movies/shows where the stakes were city wide or smaller. We don't have to save the world, or galaxy, or multiverse EVERYtime. To be fair, they haven't always but still, it seems a bit lopsided to me.

[unclevlad]

Escalation, escalation, escalation.

 

Once you upscale, going back down to smaller scale becomes unsatisfying to the audience.  Hey, they beat Thanos, why is the Green Goblin now a threat???  

 

It's an aspect of why I think comics have lost me...and while I might be projecting, lost many.  The constant reboot...but the reboot requires a massive-scale change, too.  I mean, I read the character arcs, and so many are just so totally ridiculous now.

 

It isn't just comics, tho, of course.  It's a huge problem in fantasy, urban fantasy, and supers fiction.  It isn't universal in supers fiction;  some keep the growth both constrained, and justified, by starting from a relatively lower level, and with the character(s) potentially having little/no experience.  Perpetual crisis mode is less common, but still happens.  Feist ultimately lost me due to that.  Just how many times can the world be threatened, even partly overrun, then barely saved???  

 

The last problem is that the solution is almost always some form of Deus Ex Machina.  YUCK.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah you can't introduce Doom without the FF.  Which, casting looks a bit... dubious at this point.  Magneto is wrapped up with the X-Men, it would be weird for him to show up solo as well.

 

Thinking through the villain list of Marvel (excluding group-specific ones like Apocalips and whatever else "they were always around and are utlimate supervillain" types, there aren't a lot of really interesting world beaters.  It would have to take a solid writer to make some of them more interesting.  But they are out there:

 

Graviton, Mephisto, Galactus, Molecule Man, Korvac, and then there are new ones I don't care about like Knull and Enigma.  You could add in guys like Mangog, because Thor is in the Avengers.  There are a bunch of scary cosmic guys like the In-Betweener, Living Tribunal, and Grandmaster (who has shown up but was treated as a joke).  They already used Ultron, in a really mid bleh movie (what a bizarre, lame villain plot??).  Not a lot left.

 

Quote

I would like to see a few more superhero movies/shows where the stakes were city wide or smaller.

 

I agree completely, this should be their focus except for the Avengers, who handle HUGE threats.

[unclevlad]

Of the ones I remember...

 

Mephisto is problematic in today's culture.  He's the Devil.

Galactus is also FF...and the 'solution' that kept him from eating Earth is a pure deus ex machina.

Enigma and Molecule Man...reading...noooo, please, no.  The write-ups on the Marvel database just accelerate the obscene escalation...not just THIS mulitverse but SEVERAL of them.  This only magifies the problems!

 

In-Betweener and Living Tribunal are so, so, so, SO much more powerful that...where's the story???  

[Lord Liaden]

The way to make the "smaller" threats impactful, is to make them personal. Things that affect the characters directly, people or ideals they genuinely care about. Comics have been doing that for generations. Saving the world, or the universe, didn't end the stories, and subsequent stories usually didn't try to top what came before.

 

Look at the Civil War movie. For all the framework of the Sokovia Accords, and fights among the heroes, the story comes down to deeply personal matters of love, trust, grief, guilt, and revenge. At the end of the movie the Avengers were broken, but the rest of the world did not significantly change. But I have yet to hear anyone argue that CW was not one of the most impactful MCU films.

Edited November 17, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Pattern Ghost]

You know, reading this thread, it struck me why they need to ditch Kang: The Kang in Loki is, by definition, the most competent of the Kangs. And he's been dealt with already. Loki's Kang already won the Kang multiversal war. The threat of another war is moot with Loki being elevated to a cosmic being, and the TVA monitoring the timelines for Kang variants.

 

I just saw a video (read: take this with a huge grain of salt) saying that there was only one Marvel movie slated for 2024 release. I think they're taking the opportunity to catch their breath and try to get their mojo back. IMO, they should be looking to replicate the earlier success of building up a longer storyline with a big event conclusion. They aren't going to do it with a bunch of second stringer characters. Iron Man wasn't as well known to the general public as Hulk, Spider-Man, and Captain America, but he was a lot more familiar than anything that came around in the second/third wave of heroes.

 

Ms. Marvel was popular with comics readers, and although I never read her book I thought it was one of the better Disney+ shows. Most people panned it as another M-She-U project, but the story was well done. The same happened with Hawkeye, which I thought was great. Two of the strongest shows in the line up were dismissed because the general audience weren't familiar with the characters involved, and didn't want to give them a chance after other projects soured their taste. A local radio idiot the other day said the title for The Marvels was boring, because it was the same as the name of the company, and unoriginal. Another critic complained that Ms Marvel and Captain Marvel's uniforms were too similar, showing an apparent lack of knowledge of the concept of legacy characters in comics. Many, many idiots have complained that they didn't need to make a female Hulk who's better at controlling her change than Bruce, where we see her as a classic character, and know that she'd gained control over her powers and decided to live as She Hulk full time in the comics at one point. There's a lot of stuff comics readers understand, and many characters we recognize, that the general public doesn't.

 

IMO, they should focus on putting Avengers and Avengers legacy characters (like all those Young Avengers they've introduced) on the small screen on Disney Plus shows, and keep them disconnected (even if they share continuity) from the movie universe. Then they move forward with a Fantastic Four or X-Men franchise that builds up to something. Or both. They can run one cosmic/multi-dimensional adventure track with Fantastic Four, and run a largely Earthbound track for X-men. There's also crossover potential for events once the X-men introduces their own cosmic and multidimensional threats. There's enough material in both franchises to keep each its own phase. Any way they approach it, they need to find new, fresh spaces to play in, but with highly recognizable characters. (I probably wouldn't start with Fantastic Four due to their prior history on screen possibly tainting the franchise given the public's lowered expectations of quality from the studio.)

Edited November 17, 2023 by Pattern Ghost

[Lord Liaden]

I believe the concept of the classic Marvel series, The Defenders, would have potential. Not the street-level heroes they assembled in the television shows, but the original "non-team" who gathered only to face particular threats. Started off with Dr. Strange, Hulk, and Namor, but drew in new members on a case-by-case basis, while older ones left to pursue their own interests.

 

That concept would allow the MCU to bring exposure to a wide range of characters from their stable, and utilize a variety of villains reflecting any of their temporary members.

[unclevlad]

Well, there's this:

 

https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/full-list-of-all-upcoming-marvel-movies/

 

Take with a lick's worth of salt, mind, but that brings FF in before Avengers, and plausibly sets up a team-up.  That list shows a LOT of peripheral projects for '24 and '25, tho.

 

[Hermit]

2 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

The way to make the "smaller" threats impactful, is to make them personal. Things that affect the characters directly, people or ideals they genuinely care about. Comics have been doing that for generations. Saving the world, or the universe, didn't end the stories, and subsequent stories usually didn't try to top what came before.

 

 

 

Pretty much this.  I think in some was that's one reason I loved Ant-Man. Yes, the stakes did include unleashing a terrifying weapon on the espionage world etc.. but it would not be a world ender. Instead we get to see a heist movie with a good man trying to be the hero he thought his daughter deserved, and another father and daughter mending their own torn relationship.

[slikmar]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

I believe the concept of the classic Marvel series, The Defenders, would have potential. Not the street-level heroes they assembled in the television shows, but the original "non-team" who gathered only to face particular threats. Started off with Dr. Strange, Hulk, and Namor, but drew in new members on a case-by-case basis, while older ones left to pursue their own interests.

 

That concept would allow the MCU to bring exposure to a wide range of characters from their stable, and utilize a variety of villains reflecting any of their temporary members.

You forgot Silver Surfer was part of that. I have always joked when people start talking about most powerful teams that the original defenders were pretty much it. Ultimate energy blaster, Ultimate Brick, Ultimate Mental/Magic. Namor is specialty, but as we all know, a power unto his own.

[Old Man]

2 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

The way to make the "smaller" threats impactful, is to make them personal. Things that affect the characters directly, people or ideals they genuinely care about. Comics have been doing that for generations. Saving the world, or the universe, didn't end the stories, and subsequent stories usually didn't try to top what came before.

 

Look at the Civil War movie. For all the framework of the Sokovia Accords, and fights among the heroes, the story comes down to deeply personal matters of love, trust, grief, guilt, and revenge. At the end of the movie the Avengers were broken, but the rest of the world did not significantly change. But I have yet to hear anyone argue that CW was not one of the most impactful MCU films.

 

Even the world-ending threats need to be personal or the film is destined to fail.  I'd argue that this is where the MCU has most consistently outperformed the DCEU. 

[Hermit]

Just now, Old Man said:

 

Even the world-ending threats need to be personal or the film is destined to fail.  I'd argue that this is where the MCU has most consistently outperformed the DCEU. 

 

And when they tried, it did not always  go well aka "Martha!"

[slikmar]

1 hour ago, Hermit said:

 

And when they tried, it did not always  go well aka "Martha!"

Sadly, I think that had more to do with the fact no one really knew that was Bruce's mom's name. I had forgotten it.

[Lord Liaden]

There's an old joke about Shakespeare's play Othello: Never has so much ridden on a handkerchief.

 

It's not that the name is obscure, but that Batman had such a radical change in attitude simply from learning that Bruce and Clark's mothers happened to both be named Martha.