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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.

    Original post 
Since Thor and now Captain America came out this year, I wanted to get what Tropers thought of the concept and execution of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. Personally I love the idea and wonder why this idea hasn't been seriously tried before. It sorta seems to me like the DCAU in movie form (And well, ummm, with Marvel), and really 'gets' the comic book feel of a shared universe while not being completely alienating.

Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM

TheAirman Brightness from The vicinity of an area adjacent to a location Since: Feb, 2011 Relationship Status: Historians will say we were good friends.
Brightness
#104226: Jun 25th 2019 at 9:29:59 AM

Probably thanks to the extended cut (is it out already?), Avengers: Endgame has surpassed Avatar’s original theatrical run!

"Did you do it?"

"Yes."

"What did it cost?"

"Any hope of salvation from this capitalist hellscape"

PSN ID: FateSeraph | Switch friendcode: SW-0145-8835-0610 Congratulations! She/They
RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#104227: Jun 25th 2019 at 9:33:25 AM

Doom Patrol's got "we really need people to sign up for this new streaming service" money behind it. You can't expect the same sort of investment in other circumstances (see: Hulu's Runaways).

alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#104228: Jun 25th 2019 at 9:47:10 AM

[up] Not really. Runaways was able to have a partially CGI dinosaur in it and it looked great. And we don't actually know the budget for Doom Patrol - but it wasn't the first show on the streaming platform, that was Titans.

Plus, the X-Men show would probably be on Disney+ and they had a ton of money anyway.

Beatman1 Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Gone fishin'
#104229: Jun 25th 2019 at 9:47:26 AM

[up][up]Shame it didn’t seem to work out.

All that being said, an X-Men series is gonna be a tough sell because of the powers. Acting with a mask isn’t too bad, Charlie Cox spent most of Daredevil in a mask, glasses or some variant thereof, and wirework for stunts is...annoying but doable, but what are the odds Angel’s wings aren’t the new Madusa hair?

If you could afford it that would be great, and I like a lot of the concepts here like making the main villains Factor Three instead of going right to Magneto or Phoenix yet again. But budgeting and practical effects will be an issue.

Edited by Beatman1 on Jun 25th 2019 at 12:51:01 PM

Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#104230: Jun 25th 2019 at 9:50:05 AM

Make him fly like Superman,there problem solved evil grin

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#104231: Jun 25th 2019 at 9:50:31 AM

[up][up] It did for Doom Patrol, apparently, which is going to get a second season. Whether or not that's on DC Universe, I don't really care, because the show is so good.

but what are the odds Angel’s wings aren’t the new Madusa hair?
Inhumans was plagued not just with a lack of time and budget, but a lack of caring, too. The director of the first episode said he was hired because he could do it "fast and cheap." Instead, look at Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and what they have been able to do with CGI — especially Ghost Rider, whose flaming head was seen in pretty much all of the first eight episodes of Season 4 and looked amazing.

Get the people who did the CGI for AOS for an X-Men show and it will look gorgeous.

[up] They could also make Angel's wings partially puppetry and partially CGI to save money, just like how they did with Old Lace. It would also make them look more realistic.

Edited by alliterator on Jun 25th 2019 at 9:52:09 AM

RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#104232: Jun 25th 2019 at 10:15:53 AM

A flaming skull should be relatively easy to CGI. The skull itself is just an inert object, and fire has the benefit of not needing to have a specific form or texture, just so long as it's generally firey. Making living, organic things look real, especially highly textured things like wings, is one of the most difficult tasks you can ask a visual effects team to do.

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#104233: Jun 25th 2019 at 10:23:04 AM

Daredevil and Jessica Jones are the ones I have a harder time picturing what the MCU would do. the Daredevil show we had was basically the most perfect adaptation of the character you could ask for and there's really not much else to do with him that wouldn't be highly controversial and a risky gamble (such as adapting DD's lighter and base-breaking material with the Waid days) or a (possibly far lesser) retread of the Netflix show. JJ is much the same, and unlike DD, she doesn't even have much else to draw from since her comics history is far smaller.

I could go for a DareDevil reboot. The show we got beat the pants off the Ben Affleck version to be sure, but there was still room for improvement. The Hand was atrociously handled, for one thing. But the biggest thing that sticks out in my mind was Wilson Fisk, Kingpin of A Couple City Blocks, No Big Deal.

Fisk should have been the Defenders villain, but the Netflix shows wasted him on being Matt's personal nemesis. A small-time nobody to mix it up with our street-level vigilante, with zero influence beyond Matt's backyard. A scary crime guy who is present in Matt's life, but pretty much irrelevant to the large scheme of NYC as a whole.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#104234: Jun 25th 2019 at 10:23:18 AM

Fire is notoriously one of the most difficult things to animate, next to water and cloth. Even Tangled, the most expensive movie of its time with fantastic animation for 70 feet of hair and a flooding mine, couldn’t quite nail fire.

RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#104235: Jun 25th 2019 at 10:29:06 AM

But don't you only need to animate, like, a couple seconds of it, then just put it on a loop?

Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#104236: Jun 25th 2019 at 10:35:11 AM

Audiences tend to notice the loops very quickly. Tangled had to settle for “a glowy triangle that we very quickly pan away from”. A loop wouldn’t work for a character you have to stare at for long periods. When they move around, the flame is affected by wind, plus it affects the lighting on everything else in the scene.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jun 25th 2019 at 10:37:06 AM

chasemaddigan I'm Sad Frogerson. Since: Oct, 2011
I'm Sad Frogerson.
#104237: Jun 25th 2019 at 10:35:42 AM

Yeah, doing the X-Men on a TV budget would be like doing a show that stars a flying android that shifts through walls, or a show where one of the characters uses robotic bird wings to fly around during his fight scenes.

... Oh wait...

Beatman1 Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Gone fishin'
#104238: Jun 25th 2019 at 10:35:54 AM

The wings would have to be practical. Maybe keep them in a harness and then extend them for action scenes?

While the odds of it happening are nil, the concept of an X-Men TV series, a real one, would have intrigue on name value alone. Not a spinoff, not a C-lister, the real deal, taken from the comics X-Men would be a massive thing.

RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#104239: Jun 25th 2019 at 10:49:07 AM

[up][up] I can easily imagine the Falcon & Winter Soldier story having the Falcon gear destroyed or lost in the first or second episode and only recovered for the finale.

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#104240: Jun 25th 2019 at 10:50:29 AM

@Tobias: Even if I agreed with you about Fisk (which I don't), I don't know if there's enough to justify another show, being the huge gamble that it is. Almost every adaptation has some flaws and room for improvement somewhere, but the Netflix DD show is honestly the best you could ask for. Jessica Jones also had a sluggish pace, Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy and "white feminism" problems leveled at it, but it is, within the reasonable, the best you could ask for given this character. "Let's make the Netflix show but with Fisk as more powerful" isn't something I see as sufficient to justify a reboot, particularly when there's such a high chance it could just end up as "the netflix show, but lesser".

The Hand is a misused angle that I can more easily see being used to justify a new MCU Daredevil angle (i.e a Daredevil show where he's more often tangling with massive ninja conspiracies than criminal mobs), but even then Daredevil's whole ninja thing has always been one of its more divisive elements even in the comics (and the show actually ended up illustrating this with the reception to the Hand's arc) and have always been better villains for more "out there" heroes like Iron Fist. I don't know if the MCU would look at how loathed the use of the Hand was in the Netflixverse and go "we now need to make Daredevil entirely about the Hand", particularly given The Hand's usage in Daredevil season 2 was actually pretty close to how they are often used in the comics. Reestructuring a DD reboot around his plight with The Hand would also be running into the much-complained Mighty Whitey problem.

I just don't see it as a risk worth taking, at least not now when people are still reeling from Daredevil season 3 and calling it the finest superhero adaptation tv-show in history.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#104241: Jun 25th 2019 at 10:53:51 AM

I don't think there's any need to reboot Daredevil, but a rebooted Elektra appearing the movies, that I could see.

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#104242: Jun 25th 2019 at 10:56:26 AM

A Elektra show is also something I see as more plausible than a Daredevil reboot.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#104243: Jun 25th 2019 at 11:02:30 AM

A flaming skull should be relatively easy to CGI.
It really isn't. As already pointed out, flames are really hard to CGI well and the show not only had the flaming skull, they had the face animated in such a way that they showed the skin being burned off revealing the skull:

Look at those scenes and tell me that isn't great CGI. And then tell me those same CGI animators couldn't do wings.

RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#104244: Jun 25th 2019 at 11:15:54 AM

I guess I just don't notice a huge difference between examples of well-done fire CGI and poorly-done fire CGI. It's all just formless orange glow.

HailMuffins Since: May, 2016 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
#104245: Jun 25th 2019 at 11:19:04 AM

@Gaon: What about a stealth sequel?

There's still a ton of stuff the Netflix series' never touched, such as Mister Fear, a more faithful adaptation of the Owl, and arcs such as "Out".

Not to mention characters like Echo and Blindspot (a personal favorite behind Matt himself).

There's still stuff to mine independent to what was already there, is what I'm saying.

And in my mind, a better way to use the Hand is to forget about all the ninja stuff and frame them as this ancient, lovecraftian cult of death with seemingly endless political influence and power.

Y'know, the kind of thing that, even if Matt won, gives the impression that they're so big and old any victory is fleeting and he'd never be able to truly do anything that hurt them in the long run.

alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#104246: Jun 25th 2019 at 11:19:28 AM

[up][up]Let me just give you a hint about how hard it is to animated realistic looking fire: for Game of Thrones, the dragons were CGI, but their flames were real.

Edited by alliterator on Jun 25th 2019 at 11:19:38 AM

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#104247: Jun 25th 2019 at 12:02:43 PM

@Hail Muffins: What I'm trying to say is that while there are several arcs left to adapt, but very few directions. The Netflix DD got the neo-noir themes, atmosphere and characters of the Miller-Brubaker-Bendis triad down to a tee (and to my recollection all you mentioned was from one of those three) to the point Marvel adapting something like (to pick an example you mentioned) Without Fear would basically require them to ape the Netflixverse's atmosphere and characterization of Hell's Kitchen, at the very least. So a MCU reboot would need to either retread the Netflixverse's take on DD (which isn't how the MCU rolls) or go a different direction (which is considerably more difficult given the Netflixverse DD's faithfulness to the "gritty" DD). Stealth sequels aren't the MCU's style, namely because it's a counter-productive method of business, given it'd be asking viewers to stay attached to their rival's product.

This is without even getting into the problem of finding replacements for the cast, whose portrayals have become rather iconic.

I just don't see it as a worthwhile risk from Marvel's perspective. They either stay in the shadow of the Netflix property or they risk alienating their fanbase (which is something they do not need in their new streaming platform that requires such a fanbase in force to work).

It's more or less the same reason why I doubt Marvel is immediately going for Wolverine after acquiring the X-Men rights. It makes more sense to go elsewhere.

Luke Cage, Iron Fist, the entire rest of the X-Men (except maybe Xavier and Magneto) have much more room to breathe and ground to cover.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
HailMuffins Since: May, 2016 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
#104248: Jun 25th 2019 at 12:15:52 PM

[up]Fair enough, maybe they should just go with Moon Knight for a new Neo-Noir show in the Disney streaming service.

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#104249: Jun 25th 2019 at 12:23:21 PM

Having a Moon Knight and a Elektra show as the sort of Spiritual Successor duo (with the MCU's own take on things, obviously) to Netflixverse would be something I can get behind.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
GNinja The Element of Hyperbole. from The deepest, darkest corner of his mind. Since: Apr, 2015 Relationship Status: I'd need a PowerPoint presentation
The Element of Hyperbole.
#104250: Jun 25th 2019 at 12:33:49 PM

I'm actually wondering how Black Mariah and Kingpin would interplay. Because they both have the same end goal. Controlling New York.

Kaze ni Nare!

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