Welcome to the main discussion thread for the Marvel Cinematic Universe! This pinned post is here to establish some basic guidelines. All of the Media Forum rules
still apply.
- This thread is for talking about the live-action films, TV shows, animated works, and related content that use the Marvel brand, currently owned by Disney.
- While mild digressions are okay, discussion of the comic books should go in this thread
. Extended digressions may be thumped as off-topic.
- Spoilers for new releases should not be discussed without spoiler tagging for at least two weeks. Rather, each title should have a dedicated thread where that sort of conversation is held. We can mention new releases in a general sense, but please be courteous to people who don't want to be spoiled.
If you're posting tagged spoilers, make sure that the film or series is clearly identified outside the spoiler tagging. People need to know what will be spoiled before they choose to read the post.
Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I think Phase 4 has its ups and its downs. The "formula" (as it were) of the MCU does feel like it's running a bit of a exhaustion in some levels and they need more shake-ups.
Most of the issues people express with Phase 4 I don't get, though. Endgame was the culmination of a decade (and some 20 films) of build-up. It always seemed obvious to me that the following Phase would slow down its roll to pick up the pace again, and that's a good idea. Let audiences breathe a while after the biggest cinematic event of the past 20 years. If everything is always about the next big crossover all the time they lose impact and all interesting things along the way risk getitng dilluted in crossover density. I think the MCU immediately going from Endgame to Secret Wars II (for example, given that's what everybody and their mums wants) would have been a fairly terrible idea.
I feel like there's a two-fold problem going on of expectations, saturation and perception. Expectations: the Serial Escalation of crossovers led to audiences getting used to the thrill of just the megasagas to the point no one really cares about the individual stories all that much. Saturation: it's been a cultural juggernaut for a long time and superhero movies have been a gigantic market, so obviously some things are going to become old hat and some horizons will need expanding, not to mention that Phase 4 has also marked the launch of a fairly robust tv show tie-in approach (and, for reasons that defy my understanding, a large contingent of people dislike them even existing despite them providing some of the most innovative approaches the MCU has done in years). Perception: It took four years for the MCU to reach The Avengers, Phase 4 has been three years (one of which was basically lost to a global pandemic).
At the same rate there's also just some funny bits. The exhaustion of the formula is a factor I agree with, but then both Eternals and Doc Strange 2 try to break formula and get a lot of backlash (aside of their own problems) seemingly for breaking formula (and simultaneously adhering too it too much). Likewise we know for an actual, documented fact that we're getting The Thunderbolts as a endpoint crossover of sorts (like, again, many people pointed out Phase 4 seemed to be leading up to), it's just...no one cared.
At this rate I think nothing will really satiate a large portion of the fandom unless we just immediately go for a X-Men vs The Avengers adaptation with 0 build-up.
Edited by Gaon on Jul 20th 2022 at 12:28:36 PM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."In fairness, What If…? (2021) stuck to being a traditional episodic formatnote , while throwing some continuity threads that pay off into the last two episodes. That series is also longer than usual, at nine episodes, so I feel Freshman Year could be closer to that format.
I'm excited to see how the series handles its Ditko-esque art style.
The closest Marvel has done in modern animation were those Ant-Man shorts from a few years ago.
I kind of get the feeling that the MCU has reached such saturation with the amount of stuff coming out that it's not trying to make things that consistently please large parts of the audience and that this is somewhat by design, even.
It's reached critical mass enough that you're supposed to pick and choose because it's like an all-you-can-eat buffet where you load up on the comfort dishes you specifically want, rather than finish everything on the plates that were served to you from the price fixe menu, which are not exactly gourmet dishes but which were more carefully prepared and portioned out.
More news on Disney/Marvel underpaying comic creators for their characters.
In the most recent case, the creators of Yelena Belova mentioned signing a contract to be paid $25,000 but have only received $5,000 after the release of the Black Widow movie.
In others, comic creators mention that Marvel finagles their way out of paying creators by by arbitrarily deciding that a character being in the film for 15% or less of the screentime qualifies them as only a cameo. By these metrics, Bucky Barnes in Civil War (who was the primary driver of the plot, mind you) is just a cameo, since he was in the 2hr28min film for 22min and just squeaked under the 15% rule.
Edited by AlleyOop on Jul 20th 2022 at 5:25:32 AM
Comics creators getting screwed by the Big Two? Must be wednesday.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."It’s a small detail compared to the bigger issue of ripping off creators, but the MCU insisting on calling itself “the 616” takes on an arguably petty tone in this light. As if they’re not just skimming off comic writers, they’re then insisting they’re the real center of Marvel and the comics are just free floating sources of movie IP.
That's pretty much the case though. IIRC the comics don't make the money, they just keep publishing them to keep the ip and do the merchandising that does make the money.
Though I think t hat's reading too much into naming the main mcu verse 616. It implies to me the movies and comics are separate multiverses.
The comics obviously make a fair bunch of money, otherwise they wouldn't exist by this point. They just don't make anywhere near as much money as the licensed products (movies, cartoons, toys) can make.
But there is a clear the objective that comics function essentially IP farms since around the Raimi Spider-Man era, but intensified with the MCU.
For comic artists in north-america the industry basically works thus: you get into the Big Two to put your name on the map and build a fanbase. Then you just go to Dark Horse and Image, where artists actually get a fair deal, and hope you can solidify yourself over there with your own brand. If you're lucky and successful enough you might later get some prestige deal with the Big Two that will allow you more respect and/or money.
Edited by Gaon on Jul 20th 2022 at 3:32:23 AM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I'm a member of a bunch of MCU subreddits and like, people really have gotten their panties in a knot about Phase 4's quality. Every other post is like, "MCU phase 4 hasn't been as good", "MCU phase 4 is great actually", "MCU phase 4 is just as hit or miss as the pre-Endgame phases", "Yeah not all the phase 1-3 were great but at least we had Endgame to look forward to" with a bunch of "no mcu criticism allowed!!!" sprinkled in between everything and I just never want to read the phrase "unpopular opinion" in the same sentence as "phase 4" anymore, jfc.
But yeah, superhero saturation will happen eventually. Maybe not now, and this may or may not lead to them being put to bed in ten years, but eventually. Such is the turning of the wheel for Hollywood genres.
Edited by Synchronicity on Jul 20th 2022 at 5:37:54 AM
I doubt superheroes, as a genre, are fading away. The MCU will probably end at some point, but the genre (as it were) is simply too chamaleonic to die. As Grant Morrison once put it: "It was said of Marshal Law that Watchmen killed the superhero but that Marshal Law danced on its corpse. Yet try as they might, the superhero would simply return from the dead with new powers, as he always did, to wreak vengeance on his would-be destroyers."
"All you Fascists bound to lose."People complained about saturation back then but it was either A: people expecting the bubble to burst sooner than it did, and B: early backlash to the expansion of the MCU that kind of died off when Whedon left the franchise. I recall some of the early backlash to the MCU started with Age of Ultron, but that kind of evolved into Whedon being blamed for its failures (not inaccurate, considering the movie has a lot of Whedon's worst writing traits) and Phase 3 addressed a lot of complaints people had about the MCU up to that point. Notice how people don't really talk about the MCU being full of awful villains anymore. For the most part, they've alleviated that with some pretty strong antagonists.
But let's be fair here...the MCU wasn't releasing 3-4 films a year at that point. The TV shows were so heavily disconnected from the movies that they weren't necessary to watch, and were kind of their own thing for the most part. But now? A whole bunch of movies, even more TV shows that are tying into the overarching narrative of Phase 4, and it's all supposed to be building up to...what, exactly?
I read that at first as Condorman and quite honestly it would amuse me to see Disney try.
I'd want a squadron supreme adaptation to be a series of animated movies or something. Or a one season animated series.
Its definitely something that needs to be serialized. Part of the appeal is how things just snowball and build up and how everything awful that happens stemmed from earlier good intentions.
Forever liveblogging the Avengers

Would it? Im pretty sure every Spider-Man movie so far has managed to do that while taking place over way less then a year.