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
Rhodey was recast more probably because Terence Howard (his original actor) came out as a lunatic
shortly before Iron Man 2 was to be filmed (the accusations first emerging in early 2009). Back in those days, Marvel didn't have actors bound by multiple-movie-contracts so the process was a lot simpler. Now, however, Lily is probably hired for at least a couple more movies.
In the context of characters retiring and stuff, I agree that in the case of the MCU its good since allows characters to grow and pass on their legacies.
But at the same time I still would like more movies of Tony and Steve in general. Of course it doesn't mean they should be permanently retired after all.
We never did get a true adaptation of Demon in the Bottle for one.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
Part of the reason we didn't and likely aren't ever going to get Demon in a Bottle is because Robert Downey Jr. really didn't want to revisit a mindset that had previously destroyed his life. And sure, you could do it with the Tom Cruise variant or something else, but then that opens a whole other can of worms.
Really, I think the Closest Thing We Got to that arc was with Thor in Endgame. It would be cool if Love and Thunder continues to explore his alcoholism as well, but I'm not holding my breath.
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."Recasting characters is always, always controversial. Until the movie comes out. Even when they're playing a different version of the same characters, people will always hate the new actor right up until the moment they see the film. Then that new actor gets embraced and accepted into the overarching canon.
Happens to every James Bond. Every Batman. Every Spider-Man. Happened with Terrence Howard and Don Cheadle. Happened with Edward Norton and Mark Ruffalo.
Nobody likes the idea until they see it on the screen, and then it becomes normalized and they start talking about who wore the suit better or comparing notes about different actors' interpretations. Once the movie's out, the new actor is canonized and people become more accepting of future appearances.
Ultimately, it's not true to say that people dislike recasting. Rather, people expect to dislike recasting more than they actually do in practice. Conventional wisdom says it's a bad idea, but so long as the movie is good, nobody actually loses any sleep over it.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 20th 2022 at 6:07:12 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.It’s an over focus on Dark Knight chaos terrorist serial killer stick.
In fairness, that depiction of the Joker arguably predates Ledger's take, starting with The Killing Joke and Death in the Family.
I though Howard got let go due to asking for money for Iron Man 2.
I feel like when these conversations about recasts come up, people are under the impression that the MCU will last forever or is the only place where these characters will appear. There's video games and animation too. And just because we won't get a new T'Challa in the MCU, doesn't mean we won't get one in the future after the MCU's done.
True, however I do expect the MCU to last another decade, and after it collapses I expect less prominent heroes to get a lot less screen time.
Which could mean a looong wait for another live action T'challa. And live action portrayals always have a bigger impact on the general populas than other adaptations.
Black Panther is a pretty high-profile character so I feel like Post-MCU he would be among the characters with a higher chance of getting a movie.
Of course the next best thing is a video-game along the lines of Insomniac's Spider-Man and the Batman Arkham Series in terms of bigness.
Edited by slimcoder on Feb 21st 2022 at 12:51:45 PM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Come to think of it, have any of Marvel's "newer" heroes gotten any video games? I feel like there's a lot of potential with the likes of Doctor Strange, Shang-Chi and Black Panther.
Hell, I'm pretty sure you could make Marvel Zombies into a standard beat-em-up game.
Edited by MatthewWayne on Feb 21st 2022 at 7:57:29 AM
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."
As solo titles, no. Marvel Games has usually favored ensemble titles to cover those bases in recent memory. As far as I'm aware, only Iron Man, Spidey, and the upcoming Wolverine game are exceptions.
Shang-Chi is a funny case for me, as my familiarity with the character started with his inclusion in Marvel Future Fight 5 years ago.
Edited by XMenMutant22 on Feb 21st 2022 at 12:08:59 PM
Marvel did make video game tie-ins for each of their films up until... I think Thor: The Dark World was the last. Then we entered the dark times where Marvel just fucking stopped caring about making video games for like a decade so they could focus on building their Gacha Game empire or whatever the hell happened there, and they haven't fully recovered.
There was a time when we had like three new Marvel games coming out every year. Mind you, most of those were movie tie-ins, Spider-Man titles, X-Men titles, or some combination thereof. But then they started making things like Future Fight and Contest of Champions, and the number of non-Gacha Marvel games dwindled to a halt.
Now it's like, "Oh my god, they're making a new Spider-Man game in like four years! And maybe in 2067, we might see Black Panther."
Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 21st 2022 at 9:06:34 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Tie-in movie games in general fell in disuse. They're trying to leverage the MCU into more elaboraate properties like the Marvel's Avengers game but that just fell flat on its face.
The hope is Insomniac (doing Spidey and Wolverine games, ironically, so both technically not core MCU) can get somewhere with it.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I wonder if game development time and costs have gotten so huge that they simply can't pull off the "deliver it by theatrical release" trick that they used to. There don't even seem to be shitty tie-in mobile apps any more.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"There was also Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3.
Very MCU oriented, but also had the X-Men active (after they'd been snubbed from Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite).
They later put in the Fantastic Four, and more X-Men DLC. I still haven't played that part yet myself.
One Strip! One Strip!
X2: Electronic Arts and Activision
have vocally claimed in the early 2010s that doing licensed console tie-in games like before was hurting them, and rolled back.
Like I said before, in Marvel Games' case, they prefer their long-running mobile games for adding MCU tie-in materials, via themed updates, around their respective releases.
I don't count Marvel's Avengers, Infinte, or Ultimate Alliance 3 as examples because they're more the result of Audience Coloring Adaptations. Besides visual cues, they're divorced from MCU canon or content besides specific alternate costumes. (For instance, every Marvel mobile game had some kind of tie-in to the Disney+ shows. None of the aforementioned games even attempted that.)
The only console game that's a strict MCU tie-in, after SEGA's games, was LEGO Avengers (and even that threw in comic-exclusive characters to unlock).
Edited by XMenMutant22 on Feb 21st 2022 at 12:41:18 PM
UA 3 is a decent mix of having an MCU look but still using the wider comic-book cast and concepts.
Notably while the primary plot is another "Thanos gathers the Infinity Gems" story it does bring a nice surprise in the involvement of his son Thane.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Marvel discovered how lucrative predatory microtransaction/lootbox economies were and basically stopped wanting to make anything else. Even when they started getting back into console games, that mindset was still there as demonstrated by Ultimate Alliance 3 and Marvel's Avengers.
IIRC, it was only the immense backlash for Marvel making premium microtransaction economies disguised as video games coupled with the immense success of Activision's Spider-Man that convinced them to dial that back and give us the quite-good Guardians of the Galaxy.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Ultimate Alliance 3 didn't have lootboxes. It had some grindy RPG elements that could be comparable to some mobile games' progression system, but the only thing you paid for was some of the expansion DLC with new characters and stories. Alternate skins were free though.
Also, the recent Spidey games are Insomniac, not Activision (they lost the license years ago).
Edited by XMenMutant22 on Feb 21st 2022 at 12:59:41 PM
Oh, that's right, UA 3 didn't have microtransaction level-up boosts, did it? It was just clearly designed to have microtransaction level-up boosts that ultimately weren't implemented. The result was the exact kind of unfun grind-based experience that all microtransaction-driven mobile games wind up having once the microtransactions have been stripped out and the truth of bad game design laid bare.
Which is especially noticeable in contrast to its preceding titles. Before Marvel started drinking the mobile game kool-aid, Ultimate Alliance games leveled up all of your characters side-by-side. The quantity of characters and the ability to go, "Ehhh, I'm tired of being Dr. Strange. I want to be Black Panther now!" is the whole point of these games.
UA 3 stripped out that mechanic to force players into 87 hours of leveling Black Panther before they can play as him. It's exactly the kind of design decision that's used to sell "Skip the Grind" boosters in mobile games, but without the marketplace for selling the boosters.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 21st 2022 at 10:12:25 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Playing UA 3 yeah the way it functions makes switching characters unfun since everyone else is lower-leveled than your playable character.
So I pretty much just played with the same characters throughout the game, only switching out when I get new ones who are auto-leveled to your level when you get them.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."There are many reasons lmovie tie-game games fell out of favour, but I wonder if another factor in their decline is just how film studios nowadays are wary about spoilers getting out. Obviously, you still have stuff like toylines or trailers leaking plot details, but most modern blockbusters generally try to withold important plot developments until the movie's out. Hell, a lot of times they don't even tell the actors how the story goes to avoid that issue.
Granted, most of the MCU tie-in games didn't have this problem. Only Iron Man 1, The Incredible Hulk, and Thor: The Dark World tried to retell the story of the film, and there's enough differences in there that it's not exactly the same. A lot of other MCU games tried to go with an original story.
Like, imagine getting spoilers for Endgame or No Way Home because somebody leaked the crappy tie-in game that showed how the plot would unfold.

Those happened after the first two MCU films, before they had established interconnected continuity as being their thing.
Like, if you recast a character, then you can't do those moments where they show up in someone else's movie and the audience instantly recognizes who they are and what they're about, because the audience can physically no longer recognize them.