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.
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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
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Even the weaker MCU films have moments that have pay off in the stronger films or shows.
For instance, I've been rewatching Age of Ultron after watching WandaVision and it's amazing how many little details around the Maximoff twins ended up getting payoff in WandaVision. Like:
- Wanda's discomfort when Pietro is describing their parents' deaths to Ultron: she's uncomfortable not just because Pietro is bringing up such a painful subject, but because they were watching Dick Van Dyke.
- Her powers act on their own to vaporize the Ultron drones in the church after Pietro dies, similar to her later creation of the Hex, or her powers choking the Westview residents when they confront her.
- A deleted scene shows Pietro distributing stolen food, medicine and clothes on the streets to other Novi Grad citizens, just before he and Wanda are lured by Ultron to the church. Their father sold bootleg DVD boxsets, so that would mean Pietro took up after his father, though steered away from things that might traumatize his sister.
- Agatha says the Scarlet Witch is destined to destroy the world. Had Ultron succeeded, Wanda would've technically fulfilled that prophecy as described in the Darkhold: Ultron came to life because Wanda let Tony take the scepter, and then she and Pietro were willing accomplices to Ultron while they thought he just wanted to destroy the Avengers. Every heartbreak Wanda has suffered since could be interpreted as the universe's way of punishing her for choosing to break from her destiny.
Edited by dmcreif on Aug 10th 2021 at 10:20:01 AM
Okey Dokey!I brought this up in the DC Movies thread before, but I actually think DC could have essentially done what they did and forgone much of the Phase I setup, if only because Supes, Batsy, and Wondy were more immediately recognizable in the 'aughts than the Avengers (the big Marvel cinematic properties in the mid-2000s were X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man, mind, and we had like eleventy billion Superman and Batman properties). It's just that much of the writing involved in setting up Justice League was.........a hot dark mess.
As for stuff like the Dark Universe, it was kinda dead in the water because neither of the attempts at kickstarting it made any sort of splash on the public consciousness.
Ironically Zack Snyder's Justice League ends up proving that the DCEU did need to do the whole Phase 1 build-up because so much of its way-too-long runtime is spent giving establishing introductions to characters that hadn't been introduced yet because they didn't have their own movies. Cyborg gets a whole 15-minute montage essentially speedrunning the first act of a Cyborg movie because it helps understand his deal and it wasn't done previously. Hell, Ray Fisher ragged on Joss Whedon (paraphrasing) "turning Frankenstein into Quasimodo" and how much push-and-pull there was between the two and Geoff Johns on adding Cyborg's "Booyah" Catchphrase and all of that could be easily resolved by doing a Cyborg movie first.
What's made the MCU stand so strong is it slowly built a franchise-wide metatext over time, and it's gotten to the point where the MCU can now freely exploit that metatext both to build up current and even future movies (and now shows) but can also use it to retroactively enrich previous movies as well. And they clearly understand that: one thing commendable about Phase 4 is that it's a franchise-wide "back to the drawing board" as it tries to create a bunch of new building blocks in the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame, as evident by this multiverse-focused Thematic Series, all of the Early-Bird Cameos of the Young Avengers, and this overall emphasis on Passing the Torch.
The MCU did with movies what they did with comics.
Create the characters, build them up, and them start crossing them over.
It helped that, like the comics, they mostly had one dude running the show initially.
One Strip! One Strip!^^I agree with you. I am saying that *the way Snyder wrote it* it ended up overstuffed. But I don't also think they needed five films to introduce everyone, because S & B should need less introduction.
Anyway, "the mouse house doesn't properly compensate the comic creators" has been common knowledge for some time (Mantlo/Brubaker), but this report
alleges they send a flat $5000 and a premiere ticket if they adapt your work:
[...]
Several sources who have worked with Marvel say that remuneration for contributing to a franchise that hits it big varies between the $5,000 payment, nothing, or – very rarely – a “special character contract”, which allows a select few creators to claim remuneration when their characters or stories are used. There are other potential ways to earn more – many former writers and artists are made executives and producers on Marvel’s myriad movies, cartoons and streaming series, for example – but those deals depend on factors other than legal obligation.
“I’ve been offered a [special character contract] that was really, really terrible, but it was that or nothing,” says one Marvel creator, who asked not to be named. “And then instead of honouring it, they send a thank you note and are like, ‘Here’s some money we don’t owe you!’ and it’s five grand. And you’re like, ‘The movie made a billion dollars.’”
[...]
Some creators told the Guardian that they did not know that Marvel even had the special character contract like DC. In fact, the Guardian has seen an application for the “Marvel Special Character Contract”, in which creators can formally ask Marvel whether one of their characters qualifies for extra payouts. In the application form, Marvel explicitly reserves the right to tell creators their characters aren’t original enough to get the bonus, warning that “the decisions are final” and not subject to appeal.
Edited by Synchronicity on Aug 10th 2021 at 12:21:28 PM
The MCU chose to handle Tom Holland's Spider-Man on the logic that one can always go to the Tobey Maguire trilogy or the Andrew Garfield duology to get his origin story.
Okey Dokey!Imagine if Man of Steel handled Superman’s origin like All Star Superman
Forever liveblogging the AvengersThe BIG problem with the Snyder Verse is a lack of communication and eventual course corrections. Snyder had his vision and a plan, it would cover 5 movies and pretty much use up every character in some way by the end. All the Leaguers would have a 'ending' after just 5 films (Mo S, Bv S, JL and the 2 never made JL sequels). Bats- Dead, Lois/Clark- HEA with kids, Diana- Queen, Arthur- King. Barry and Vic I can't recall but the 'Big Guns' would be more or less done after just 5 films in a few years.
WB didn't WANT that, they wanted what Marvel had a HUGE expanded world where they could spin movies, shows, and other media for over a decade a constant stream of millions of dollars that would grow into BILLIONS of dollars of revenue.
And either nobody told Snyder that...or Snyder didn't care and did his thing anyway...and by the time WB found out it was WAY too late to correct.
- The BIG problem with the Snyder Verse is a lack of communication and eventual course corrections.
I compare this to the course-corrections of the MCU. Shang Chi looks like a partial effort to fix the Mandarin controversy of Iron Man 3. Thor: Ragnarok soft-rebooted the Thor franchise without retconning the first two movies. WandaVision retooled Wanda's origin story slightly in a way that didn't contradict her prior movie appearances so she's an actual sorceress and not just an enhanced.
And you definitely see better communication at most levels in the MCU. See James Gunn providing input towards the Russo brothers for Infinity War and Endgame, and Taika Waititi for Thor: Love and Thunder to maintain consistency for the Guardians of the Galaxy.
- I'd say whatever the hell they were trying to do with the first Suicide Squad's reshoots and calling Whedon to finish the JL movie after Snyder had to step down.
They hired the company who did the teaser trailer to edit an alternate cut, then had to edit and do reshoots to try and get something in between the lighthearted Trailer Park cut and David Ayer's edgier cut.
Edited by dmcreif on Aug 10th 2021 at 2:17:09 PM
Okey Dokey!
There were a lot of people who were disappointed that Ben Kingsley as Trevor Slattery wasn't actually a legitimately terrifying terrorist leader. And it's not too hard to notice that Aldrich Killian isn't exactly one of the MCU's more popular villains.
Edited by MatthewWayne on Aug 10th 2021 at 11:28:18 AM
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."I just find it funny that people pretend to be outraged that the Mandarin was changed when he's not exactly a well-known character.
Granted, Ben Kingsley did a good job, but Killian fits the movie's themes more.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"![]()
Eh, there are some people who knew who he was. I have a friend who's a huge Ben Kingsley fan, and was exciteed to see the Mandarin in Iron Man 3, assuming that they gave the Mandarin an Adaptational Nationality to avoid the yellow peril stereotype. He wasn't happy to learn that he was playing Trevor Slattery instead.
Edited by MatthewWayne on Aug 10th 2021 at 11:31:49 AM
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."My problem is again not the twist itself, but the fact that I just found Killian boring. If he was more entertaining then I don't think he would be as hated by the fanbase.
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread

Agreed with MatthewWayne. Now that the MCU has established the idea of a cinematic universe, other studios assume they can rush past building the foundation with self-contained small-scale movies and jump right into the big money maker crossovers with minimal setup. Much to the detriment of the few starting movies they do, which get overloaded with setup for future movies to the point it bogs down the movie itself.