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
Something like this
scene?
And apparently Keanu has expressed interest in playing Ghost Rider. He'd make a great Danny Ketch.
Edited by Cortez on Nov 22nd 2021 at 12:01:30 PM
No matter who plays Ghost Rider, I hope Nick Cage gets to appear in the film, maybe as one of the past Ghost Riders.
In unrelated news, remember when Ned used the Space Stone to arrive on Titan and talk about cobbler? Man, that scene was tense.
I'm just reminded of this funny bit in the Ultimate Universe where what Ghost Rider is was refused to be believed by the cast cause even after aliens and Asgardian Gods, the idea that there is a being who works for the literal Devil was too much.
Which lead to obvious shock and horror that yes he is a straight-up demonic being of the really real Hell.
Norse Gods are one thing but the actual Judeo-Christian mythology is another thing entirely.
Edited by slimcoder on Nov 23rd 2021 at 4:26:15 AM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."It's funny how much Loki vs Dr. Strange showcases how much Doing In the Wizard the early days of the MCU was into, and how little they wanted to delve into magic.
Dr. Strange was the first time they really dedicated a film to exploring "hey, these guys do magic" without any caveats. Loki, despite his backstory being that he's studied magic for hundreds of years, only seems to know variations on the one spell which - according to his series - might actually be an innate ability, because his films didn't want to delve into magic. The Thor movies mostly used magic as a plot device, and had little interest in exploring the idea.
The difference this creates when they meet is staggering. Loki and Thor go "lol, human wizards, that's quaint," then Loki gets owned in seconds, and Thor spends the next few minutes dealing with casually cast reality warping spells the likes of which the Thor movies never bothered to include.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 23rd 2021 at 5:40:28 AM
Even then one of my biggest criticisms of the Dr. Strange movie is how much it hesitates going all the way. The magic isn't just magic, it's techno-babbled as this harnessing of cosmic energies across dimensions to manipulate the universe. Strange's central trinket, the legendary Eye of Agamotto, is in fact the Time Stone, an ingot of explicitly cosmic origins. And all of the Sorcerers of Kamar-Taj are clearly Magic Knights, training in enchanted martial arts and wielding enchanted weapons. It really hesitates from making them capital-W Wizards doing Harry Potter shit to each other, something that's very quickly reversed starting with Strange's cameo in Ragnarok and going full-steam in IW and Endgame.
Contrast that with Shang-Chi, where the Ten Rings are explicitly magic items that make you immortal, Ta Lo is an explicitly magical realm full of Chinese yokai, and the Dweller-In-Darkness is a literal soul-sucking demon.
![]()
The Loki series does explicitly call out Loki's powers as being magic, though. They say multiple times that Loki can't use magic in the TVA.
Oh, come the hell on, that's just nitpicking. Giving ANY sort of explanation behind magic does not make it techno-babble. Dr. Strange has ALWAYS been about using magical artifacts and drawing power from other dimensions.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Nov 23rd 2021 at 6:57:59 AM
In fairness, although it comes up infrequently, in the comics Dr Strange sometimes mentions that martial arts training was included in his magic study
Forever liveblogging the AvengersDr. Strange does do the same sort of thing Thor did with magic, tbf, just to a lesser extent. "There's a whole wide world of magic out there. Now here's one spell that actually comes very specifically from a certain device, and then everything else is the result of this other, more powerful device." Part of it was the whole "everything has to be Infinity Stone related" issue, but even so while it doesn't explicitly curtail magic conceptually to the same degree Thor does, it does do the same thing of limiting what magic can actually do.
It was still right on the cusp of that era where Marvel was still kind of restraining themselves from fully embracing the wild and versatile aspects of their material, which happened with a lot more stuff than just the magical areas. It was part and parcel of Marvel Studios being a bit afraid to get too "comic book" in concept, which is finally starting to change.
As such this is not a thing post-Dr. Strange, oddly. There's an odd thing where magic gets explored way more through Strange when Strange himself is not the star of the movie. In Thor, in the upcoming NWH - hell, the crazy spells Strange was throwing around in Infinity Warm - etc.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 23rd 2021 at 6:47:08 AM
Comics Dr. Strange has always been about using various amulets and talismans to channel magic abilities from eldritch gods from other dimensions. We even see some of his iconic spells in Infinity War, albeit unnamed, such as the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, those red whips he used to try and restrain Thanos, which calls upon the power of the demon god Cyttorak (the same Cyttorak who gave Juggernaut his invincibility).
His dwarven mentor at first called it the Sword of Strange. But Stephen named it a Scalpel instead to emphasize that he's a doctor and not a warrior.
In most settings with magic, names are a pretty big deal. Marvel's no exception.
MCU Marvel Doctor Strange has this mindset too. Recall how upset he was after killing someone for the first time due to taking his Hippocratic Oath seriously.
Edited by M84 on Nov 23rd 2021 at 11:29:41 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised

Following up on the cleanup a few other users in these threads pursued for the What Could Have Been page for Marvel Cinematic Universe, I've been wondering if it's a good idea to do it for some of the other pages too (especially those split off by Anddrix, which just seem to be a hit-by-hit list of examples).
Migrate work-specific examples back to their own pages and save any dedicated pages attached to the Marvel Cinematic Universe namespace just for examples that cross multiple works in the MCU.
I'll also bring it up in the dedicated MCU cleanup page
, since this concerns some changes that were brought up in that thread.
Edited by AlleyOop on Nov 22nd 2021 at 9:46:44 AM