Black Panther

Also, Vibranium wheat could totally be a thing.

As for Wakanda being right next to Congo, most of Congo isn’t particularly well explored.

Wakanda sustains itself on Hyper Oats

The thing about Wakanda that sells it for me is it clearly wasn't self-sufficient and isolationist in the past.

It's a confederation of tribes and nations that are self-sufficient together.

edited 19th May '18 12:46:02 AM by CharlesPhipps

Well, I was never into X2 and the Spider-Man trilogy was a giant let-down for me, so from my perspective, the MCU is the turning point in Superhero movies. It just is. That doesn't mean that the other movies were terrible, but the MCU has managed what none of them did: To engage the general audience. I think if a comic book movie manages to engage people which don't care about comics or even comic book related shows whatsoever, that is the point at which you have a good movie.

What makes you think general audiences weren't engaged by X2 or the Raimi Spider-Man movies?

box office results. The MCU basically demonstrate how much the X-men movies could have made if they had managed to reach a non-comic book interested audience.

The X-Men movies are barely related to the comics, though.

Maybe, but that is not the point. A movie can be true to the comic and still engage the general audience. Or it can be as generic as the X-men movies were and coast on the name attached to it and a few good performances.

Regarding box office: when you adjust for inflation, Spider-Man remains the 3rd-highest-grossing solo superhero movie ever (after Black Panther and The Dark Knight), at $636 million, so it definitely engaged audiences. That was followed by $551 million for Spider-Man 2 and $448 million for Spider-Man 3 - again, inflation-adjusted. Black Panther is the only solo MCU movie to exceed any of those grosses (and yes, I'm adjusting the MCU for inflation as well).

The inflation-adjusted gross for X2 is $326 million, which is more than that of Winter Soldier and Thor Ragnarok, and close to Spider-Man: Homecoming, so that doesn't really support the theory of it not connecting with audiences.

I think it's fair to say that X-Men started the revival of superhero films, Spider Man showed that they could be cash cows, The Dark Knight set a new bar for box office success and showed they could be "respectable" and serious, Iron Man showed you could be successful even with a character non-comic-reading audiences hadn't heard of, and The Avengers showed that a large-scale, large-cast ensemble superhero movie could be done successfully.

edited 19th May '18 6:45:15 AM by Galadriel

This only shows to me that the name was enough to get the attention of the audience, but not enough to get it to come back for more. Nearly every MCU movies (the notable exception is Age of Ultron) has made more than the previous one in the same sub-franchise. Spider-Man has been on a downward spiral since the first movie, and the first time this really got turned around was with Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Again, how do you get "the audience didn't come back for more" from the two successive Raimi films making more than almost every MCU solo film, including Homecoming? Isn't that the same attitude we were worrying about for the BP sequel, where even if it makes loads (say, $500 million), it could be unfairly dismissed for not making as much as the first one?

I get that you, personally, like the MCU and only the MCU. That's fine. But in objective, box-office terms, the X-Men movies were moderately successful, and the Raimi Spider Man movies were huge and were the thing that spurred the creation of new DC and Marvel movies.

edited 19th May '18 7:04:10 AM by Galadriel

Look, I am not denying that the modest success of the X-men movies and the remarkable success of Spider-Man opened the door for more more comic book adaptation, and that they are important in terms of the development of the genre. The only thing I say is that the MCU managed to do even better by turning comic book movies into the single most successful genre around, and that this development is largely because the MCU movie are simply more appealing to an audience which isn't particularly familiar with comic books. And yes, I genuinely feel that there was a jump in quality. Just like there was a jump in quality within the MCU itself in the middle of phase 2. And that is a good thing, it would be kind of sad if the genre hadn't developed at all.

I mean frankly aside from the shared universe stuff I’d argue it hasn’t.

Also the Nolan movies probably deserve at least as much credit.

I personally despise Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man and I think the Dark Knight trilogy is pretentious and overrated, but those films made Scrooge Mc Duck level money and plenty of critics disagree with my low/medium opinion of the films.

What I like is not the same as fact.

Spiderman, X-Men and the Dark Knight prove that in terms of general audience Superhero films were already sailing high. MCU took that and made them absolutely dominant, but the genre was by no means dead before it came out.

I'd argue that what the MCU did more than anything else was create a formula for an interconnected universe that keeps the audience coming back even through vaguely mediocre films. The Zero Punctuation review for one of the Assassin's Creed games described the series as a dying man being force marched across a desert, with enough good entries that the series can occassionally find bursts of life - and that's what entries like GOTG, Winter Soldier or the latest one-two punch of Black Panther and Infinity War have been, allowing the franchise to coast along with all the Ant-Mans, Iron Man sequels or Thor films.

"Just like there was a jump in quality within the MCU itself in the middle of phase 2"

Putting aside the Spiderman/X-Men debate...

I have to disagree with this.

There are two really solid films in Phase 2, Winter Soldier and GOTG, and Iron Man 3 is okay but has a lot of problems. The rest is actively mediocre at best.

Wheras Phase 1 has two of the MCU's best solo outings with Iron Man and Cap 1, and Avengers is still really solid. The rest is mediocre-to-terrible.

So I actually think it maybe had on average a continuation of good-to-bad, rather than improving.

edited 19th May '18 8:47:09 AM by Sigilbreaker26

Iron Man 3 and Age of Ultron are roaring dumpster fires, the mediocrity of the rest of Phase 2 balances it out into a mixed bag. Phase 3 is, minus Doctor Strange, where the quality went up.

Well, I was stating an opinion and explained on which factors I base this opinion. Nobody has to agree with said opinion.

The Dark Knight Trilogie is difficult, because it was less sold as superhero and more as Nolan movies. And then the whole tragedy happened.

In any case, history will decide. Usually it takes a generation or two to give a movie a truly fair shake, since only the best manage to resonate even after years.

Well, I said the jump happened in the middle of Phase 2, so no, I didn't count Ironman 3 into the quality jump (or Thor: TDW for that matter). I would put the quality jump in the middle of Phase 2, because both The Winter Soldier and Got G gave the MCU a necessary pusch. Yes, Age of Ultron had its problems, but it was also more ambitious, and Ant-man worked surprisingly well. And then Phase 3 happened.

edited 19th May '18 8:47:33 AM by Swanpride

Phase 2 only have one absolute trash entry IMO, which is Thor 2. I definitely find it worse than IM 3 and probably Ultron as well. I haven't seen Homecoming or Ragnarok, but Thor 2 is basically the last outright awful film Marvel have made that I've seen. (there are only 3 films I'd consider terrible in the MCU, Thor, Thor 2 and TIH and even then Thor is watchable if you're toasted).

But that's what I've been saying - the MCU is a guarantee of basic competence but its formula hampers crazy hits.

I'd say Ant-Man and Doctor Strange are basically the same, both entirely mediocre. Watchable, yes. Forgettable? Yes.

edited 19th May '18 8:53:40 AM by Sigilbreaker26

No the Nolan movies were very much sold as Batman movies.

It's a mood discussion anyway, since the thesis was that the third wave of Superhero movies pushed the genre to another level, and the Dark Knight Trilogy belongs into the third wave anyway. After the The Dark Knight was released in the same year as Ironman.

That’s “moot”.

I can sympathize with people who have the opinion that a lot of the MCU films coast by on not being terrible more than being great since that used to be what I thought as well (I don't anymore). I did mostly have that opinion only when there were only the phase 1 films and iron man 3 around however, since then I think things have generally gotten better.

edited 19th May '18 10:14:00 AM by Draghinazzo

I'd love to contribute to this discussion, but I feel like it'd be more appropriate to move it to the actual MCU thread

I feel that's a more accurate description of Phase 2 than of the MCU as a whole. During that era, there's a lot of the MCU being safe to the point of actually doing their characters a disservice, and not really expending a whole lot of effort to either grow their franchise or deliver quality stuff for the ones they had, so they succeeded in neither growing wider or taller and instead just ended up with a lot of standard, uninspired releases. Plus a a tv show that eventually became pretty darn good, but it was touch and go for a while there and the universe as a whole never really supported it as it should have, and another that might done better in a different climate.

A lot of that can probably be chalked up to the battle of wills going on in their studio at the time (fuck Perlmutter) and their own hesitance to fully embrace what they were creating, but they're starting to get better. They're not fully there yet, but I agree that I wouldn't use that kind of thing to describe the MCU any more.

edited 19th May '18 2:46:52 PM by KnownUnknown

Phase 3's definitely been a solid step in the right direction, for sure.