Marvel Cinematic Universe

Suicide Squad introduced the team in the movie itself, so did X-Men. They could do the same for this movie if they choose to.

Yeah The Suicide Squad basically introduced all its cast and plucked them right into the mythology.

Bloodsport is listed as shooting Superman even we don't see him shooting Superman and Ratcatcher 2 is a legacy character even though Ratcatcher 1 never appeared.

Those two movies have at best a 50% hit rate. (Though tbf you could also have listed the Guardians)

Yeah, you can introduce a bunch of never before seen supervillains (though Sony would but the kibosh on half the one's Red wanted) but then you're stuck doing the leg work to introduce them and make people care.

Yeah and it was hilariously incongruent with the rest of the DCEU when TSS tried to act like there was vast world of super we'd never seen before.

Edited by dcutter2 on Mar 28th 2024 at 10:00:12 AM

When Avengers Assemble adapted the thunderbolts arc, with the exception of Beetle, none of the villains in question had appeared before.

Thats already the purpose to Thunderbolts though.

Taking third-tier minor villains and turning them into major characters. Its akin to introducing and setting up new characters cause now you making punk-mooks into actual major guys.

And as incongruent as TSS did it, its a justified means of cutting the fluff and actually getting straight to the point of introducing more cool characters.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 28th 2024 at 3:03:15 AM

Taking Third tier characters and making a movie about them is what the film is doing.

And none of the characters Red was desperate for are third tier, except maybe Moonstone.

Edited by dcutter2 on Mar 28th 2024 at 10:07:28 AM

Ehhhhh Yelena, Red Guardian, John Walker, and Bucky Barnes were all main characters of their stories.

The only characters you can technically constitute as third-tier is probably Ghost and Taskmaster.

Ghost is like the only interesting roster-addition, everyone else is just the merging of Black Widow and Winter Falcon making it too centralized to just those 2 stories.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 28th 2024 at 3:09:03 AM

What? Bucky was a main character in FatWS but otherwise they were all Deuteragonists at best including Bucky in every other appearance.

And this has gone full circle 'oh it's just BW2', except we don't know what's going to be like because we've only got the friggen cast and few publicity photos to go off.

Plus it's a film, it was never going to have a tremendously huge plot thread for everyone.

Edited by dcutter2 on Mar 28th 2024 at 10:13:40 AM

It's worth noting that a good chunk of the previously-mentioned comics roster in that other post are characters that are under Sony's jurisdiction. So having them in Thunderbolts is a lost cause no matter what.

I'm not even referring to the Osborn era line-up, but classic members like Songbird or Moonstone whose major claim to fame started with their being in Thunderbolts and are all around really cool. Songbird especially has been apart of nearly every Thunderbolts line-up, she should be in the team's debut movie.

Though yeah the Sony embargo means we can't get Beetle in this unless they change his villain name before he makes the change to become Mach-1.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 28th 2024 at 3:25:11 AM

Isn’t Beetle a Fantastic Four character?

Iirc, he’s the Human Torch’s archenemy, it’s just that Spidey borrows him sometimes.

The current Beetle (all around a much cooler character fite me) is a purely Spider-Man villainess, though.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 28th 2024 at 3:39:01 AM

spiderman is THIEF!

That might be the case in terms of general depictions, but maybe it's a different case legally.

It's like how Kingpin is in an odd spot rights wise, which is how both Sony and Marvel can use the character, but Marvel is required to have Daredevil characters appear in anything Kingpin shows up in so that he's legally distinct from Sony's usage of him.

Edited by MatthewWayne on Mar 28th 2024 at 4:41:39 AM

Outside of Beetle (which I didn't know) and Vermin (who started as a Captain America foe), Spidey's never stolen other heroes rogues.

In fact, it's consistently been the other way around. Rhino started fighting the Hulk for a bit, Sandman became a long time foe of the Fantastic Four, he and Daredevil practically share Kingpin, and Arcade would cause as much trouble to the X-Men as he did Spidey.

He usually doesn't need to. Spider-Man being the bridge between street level and crazier supervillainy means he basically has a villain for every situation, and all of his villains are super adaptable.

That said, I think most of Spidey's previously stolen villains were the result of him being Marvel's crossover king. Y'know, he crosses over with X character and they fight Y villain, and then Y villain ends up being one of Spidey's villains going forward even though they were originally X character's villain.

Like what keeps happening with Deathstroke over in DC.

Fair enough.

Once again, Spidey is the Mid-Carder of the Marvel Universe as far as heroes go. He can quite literally fight anyone.

Even Dormammu?

Guys like Dormammu tends to get beaten by guile, wits, magical artifacts and shenanigans, etc in the comics, so I could see it.

He's beaten demons and eldritch abominations and stuff before.

Sure, but he better make sure not to drop his combo and tag into Phoenix at the right spot before Dormammu can activate his Level 5 Super.

Edited by TheMageofFire on Mar 28th 2024 at 5:53:05 AM

Dormammu did bedevil Spidey a few times during the '90s cartoon, so yeah, he definitely could.

Dormmamu, I've come to bargain... to see you back in the MCU, this time as a Spider-Man villain.

Alright, what about Galactus?

Galactus and Spidey were both involved with the original Secret Wars, Spidey infamously fought one of his ex-heralds ("Firelord") in ASM vol. 1 #269-270, and Aunt May once became a herald herself ("Golden Oldie") in an alternate universe.

The irony is that Winter Soldier was largely about how all of the spy stuff in the MCU was bullshit Hydra cooked up for decades to scare everyone into giving up their freedom.

Maybe the irony helped make it work? I dunno, juxtaposition can be one hell of a drug when it comes to making compelling movies happen.