Marvel Cinematic Universe

[mikeyp102]

 

So with the MCU growing all the time, thought it may be best for it to have it's own thread rather than taking over the Film thread at all times. 

Best to start by quoting the main man:

4 hours ago, Chindie said:

Yeah it's fine, I like talking about this stuff.

Basically the film rights to Marvel's stuff is a mess. They nearly went bust in the early 90s and to save themselves they sold off movie rights to various characters, and major characters got bought (on crazy terms). Spider-Man and associated characters went to Sony, X-Men and associated characters went to Fox (and a few others went as well, Fox had Fantastic 4 and associated properties, and Daredevil, Universal got a really weird deal on the Hulk and Namor, Marvel's Aquaman). In the late 90s they started making movies from what they bought. 

In the mid-2000s Marvel take a punt on their remaining characters, mostly B tier characters from the Avengers, and start their own studio, with the big plan of doing what the comics do, tying their characters together in the same consistent world. Nobody else has really done that before. That made the MCU, a series of films that are all connected made up of various series all overlapping each other.

The MCU doesn't include the stuff by Fox (and all the Sony stuff prior to Spider-Man Homecoming, and probably anything else Sony do with Spider-Man characters - it's unlikely Venom will be MCU either). So no X-Men related stuff is in the MCU (there's an exception to this where 2 X-Men characters, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, are also traditionally Avengers, but Marvel can't highlight that in the MCU movies and actually had to change their backstory to avoid the rights issue - in the comics they're Magneto's kids, in the MCU they're genetically modified human experiments). This means that, as far as the MCU is concerned, there aren't any X-Men, Logan isn't a thing and Deadpool doesn't exist. And likewise the Avengers are not in the X-Men universe on Fox's films. Deadpool makes references to MCU stuff occasionally but that is because Deadpool is basically a pisstake (in the comics he's actually aware he's in a comic, in the movies he makes 4th wall breaking jokes etc).

Marvel don't have anything to do with Fox stuff, there's just an acknowledgement at the start that its a Marvel character.

This could all change though. Disney are trying to buy Fox, if that is approved they get the Fox characters back and that could mean Deadpool and X-Men become MCU properties going forward. They also can now use Spider-Man and basically made the last film for Sony.

And that's without getting into the TV stuff, which is even more complicated (Marvel film and Marvel TV projects (the Netflix stuff, Agents of SHIELD) are run by different people and they hate each other, so the TV stuff officially is in the same MCU universe, but there's next to no real crossover. It's only minor references).

Hopefully that makes sense.

 

Thanks for the explanation Chindie, I knew that Sony and Fox had rights to some characters but didn't know why. I've read that the Disney/Sony deal is close, so with that in mind, where do you see the MCU going after Avengers 4? I've never read a comic, but heard it's likely that they will go down the Skrull route? Or maybe even Norman Osborn (guessing that is very much Sony dependant?) 

Listened to a pod cast recently, which had a good idea of Star Lord turning into the next enemy, if everyone is restored apart from Gamorra, whilst unlikely, I liked the idea as potentially he has vast power from his dad's side. 

 

[villa4europe]

Captain marvel spoiler 

Spoiler

The baddies are going to be the skrulls, i dont see them being introduced and then disappearing, i would expect them to be the direction of whatever phase it is next (3?)

Where that goes i dont know, i dont know those comics

 

[hogso]

Spoiler

Ah yes, the Scurll's, my favourite villains

I can't see past Infinity War as my favourite at the moment. Might just be due to seeing it so recently, though. 

[Chindie]

Ah, the fun of annoying people in the Film Thread dies...

Some potentially spoiler-y discussion of where they might be going with the MCU with spoilers from the comics follows.

The Skrulls are likely to be a major thing. The Skrulls are an alien race that have been involved in a few stories in the comics. They are at war with another alien race, the Kree (who we've already seen - Ronan in Guardians of the Galaxy is a Kree radical), which is going to be dealt with Captain Marvel, as the Kree are involved traditionally in her origin (though they're changing it a bit for the film because they realised it's very similar to the Green Lantern's origin). I'd be pretty surprised if they had the Skrulls as a one and done threat, mostly because they can be used to do some cooler ideas from the comics (spoilers ahoy), such as

Spoiler

Secret Invasion

which isn't actually that good of a story but the idea is fun and gives them tons of leeway to change things. The only issue with the Skrulls is that they don't really have any standout villains they can pinch. The most well known Skrulls can't be used as the Fantastic 4 rights include them specifically, so at best they'll have to have a couple of unique Skrulls being the face of the threat.

Which will probably preclude them using them as the Thanos replacement. Who they go for as a new super big bad is an issue. The villains Marvel has that are all encompassing threats like Thanos are tied up with the Fox stuff in the main. If they get Fox though, I hope they just jump straight to Dr Doom.

More generally, going forward I think they'll retire the original Avengers. People's contracts are up, they're wanting to move on, and the future slate focuses on the newer characters, who have been set up as replacements, some more obviously than others (Strange is so clearly the new Stark it hurts, Bucky took up the mantle of Captain America in the comics...). I also expect them to push more into cosmic stuff, Marvel's cosmic side of the universe is incredibly rich, with GoTG and Thor barely touching on it, and I expect Captain Marvel will only delve a little further. But there's a lot to play with there, especially of the Fox deal goes through. The Fantastic 4 rights tie up loads of the cosmic characters, even really obscure ones allegedly (Ego was actually initially in them into a deal was done for GoTG2), but with that resolved the floodgates open. There are whole massive crossover storylines like Annihilation (and it's sequel, Conquest, which is about the arrival of a huge armada in space destroying everything in its path, lead by weird ug alien Annihilus, lord of the Negative Zone) which barely feature Earth or Earth heroes. I do expect Marvel to further embrace the weirder stuff they have on the books. They supposedly have looked at doing an Eternals film, which is going properly obscure.

If nothing else though, I hope they do a Moon Knight film. He's a great character. Fiege has said he's on the cards, and it really would be a little different for them. Moon Knight is about a mercenary baked Marc Spector, who gets killed whilst on a mission in Egypt. His body is revived by Khonshu, the Egyptian moon god, to act as his avatar on Earth. Unfortunately this also drives him mad and he ultimately ends up with 4 split personalities, who may or may not actually be real. And when he is able to be Moon Knight, he's like a particularly vicious Batman.

[mikeyp102]

I was thinking they’ll get rid of Cap and Iron man, possibly even hawk eye. I think they’ll keep Thor alive to use sporadically, but he’ll set up another planet for asgardians so will use him being king for a while to stay out of the movies. The way that they had Hulk not showing himself and Banner saying they have stuff they need to sort out links to me that they may do another Hulk movie (can Banner and Hulk be separated?)

[Demitri_C]

2 hours ago, mikeyp102 said:

I was thinking they’ll get rid of Cap and Iron man, possibly even hawk eye. I think they’ll keep Thor alive to use sporadically, but he’ll set up another planet for asgardians so will use him being king for a while to stay out of the movies. The way that they had Hulk not showing himself and Banner saying they have stuff they need to sort out links to me that they may do another Hulk movie (can Banner and Hulk be separated?)

Hulk movies are the worst.  Hulk is good with support work around him as shown in Thor ragarok and the avengers films.

[rjw63]

Load of fanboi bollox

[Tayls]

Just back home after watching Infinty War. Man, what a film. I really enjoyed it. Bit gutted about the loss of most of the characters, particularly Spider-Man, I’m hopeful that something will happen there which means they get back in the game. 

I don’t quite understand what is going to happen with Thor, now that he is the only remaining Asgardian? What happens in the comic books from this point? 

[mikeyp102]

7 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

Hulk movies are the worst.  Hulk is good with support work around him as shown in Thor ragarok and the avengers films.

Agreed in the past they have been awful, but these films have moved on a lot in the last few years. They are good at mixing up the character, as you mention Hulk in the Thor film and Iron man in  Spiderman

[Rugeley Villa]

My lad might sign up to VT just for this thread 

[Demitri_C]

12 minutes ago, Rugeley Villa said:

My lad might sign up to VT just for this thread 

Good lad! Tell him to sign up !

[JB]

7 hours ago, Tayls said:

Just back home after watching Infinty War. Man, what a film. I really enjoyed it. Bit gutted about the loss of most of the characters, particularly Spider-Man, I’m hopeful that something will happen there which means they get back in the game. 

That’s my biggest criticism of the film. The deaths had zero emotional impact. There is literally no way that the deaths are permanent. As if there won’t be another Black Panther, Spider-Man, Dr. Strange or Guardians of the Galaxy movie. In fact they’ve already been announced. How they bring them back is key to the next film. Has the potential to be really lame but given who survived, it seems to me that they’re setting up for a changing of the guard of sorts.

Fair play to Marvel, though - I had no interest in comics or superheroes and to be honest, would probably have sneered at those who did, but having really enjoyed the last 3 or 4 of their movies, I’m invested now. A good film is a good film and that’s what they’re banging out consistently. 

[Demitri_C]

2 hours ago, JB said:

That’s my biggest criticism of the film. The deaths had zero emotional impact. There is literally no way that the deaths are permanent. As if there won’t be another Black Panther, Spider-Man, Dr. Strange or Guardians of the Galaxy movie. In fact they’ve already been announced. How they bring them back is key to the next film. Has the potential to be really lame but given who survived, it seems to me that they’re setting up for a changing of the guard of sorts.

Fair play to Marvel, though - I had no interest in comics or superheroes and to be honest, would probably have sneered at those who did, but having really enjoyed the last 3 or 4 of their movies, I’m invested now. A good film is a good film and that’s what they’re banging out consistently. 

I agree if they had killed some that we knew there wouldnt be new films then i can accept it. People like Loki, Hawkeye etc

[wazzap24]

6 hours ago, JB said:

That’s my biggest criticism of the film. The deaths had zero emotional impact. There is literally no way that the deaths are permanent. As if there won’t be another Black Panther, Spider-Man, Dr. Strange or Guardians of the Galaxy movie. In fact they’ve already been announced. How they bring them back is key to the next film. Has the potential to be really lame but given who survived, it seems to me that they’re setting up for a changing of the guard of sorts.

Fair play to Marvel, though - I had no interest in comics or superheroes and to be honest, would probably have sneered at those who did, but having really enjoyed the last 3 or 4 of their movies, I’m invested now. A good film is a good film and that’s what they’re banging out consistently. 

I think the emotional pay off will come in the next one.

Yes, most of them will be brought back, but I expect there to be a cost and that cost will be Iron Man and Cap IMO. My guess is they will have to sacrifice themselves in some way to save the others. 

[leemond2008]

When the films first started coming out I loved them, being a big fan of the comics it was quite an exciting time to see them done so well on the big screen.

Whilst most of the films have been brilliant I wish they would take a break from them now, take 5 years out and come back, give people a chance to breath, I still enjoy the films but that initial excitement has gone.

[lapal_fan]

**** spoilers man..

[Risso]

I've got to take the two eldest kids to the cinema to see the latest one this afternoon.  Not looking forward to it one bit, terrible films.

[MrDuck]

On 12/05/2018 at 16:23, mikeyp102 said:

Agreed in the past they have been awful, but these films have moved on a lot in the last few years. They are good at mixing up the character, as you mention Hulk in the Thor film and Iron man in  Spiderman

I watched The Incredible Hulk movie the other day, I thought it was really good! I've only just started watching these Marvel movies, but so far I'm really enjoying them.

[Zatman]

So seriously controversial question. Is MCU close to overtaking Star Wars as a cultural phenomenon?

Think hype for the recent Avengers as big as any recent Star Wars 

[ender4]

5 hours ago, Zatman said:

So seriously controversial question. Is MCU close to overtaking Star Wars as a cultural phenomenon?

Think hype for the recent Avengers as big as any recent Star Wars 

That's already happened for anyone under 30 years old.  Not controversial at all.

Star Wars had 3 sh1tty films 50 years ago, 3 ok-ish films 20 years ago... and 3 films recently which aren't really a cultural phenomenon (except for people who watched the 50 year old films). 

 

Whereas MCU has had 19 films over the last 10 years, which everyone watched/watches (or is catching up with now), and everyone talks about each time the latest film comes out.

 

Edited May 14, 2018 by ender4