Marvel (MCU) Phase IV

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Deuce66, Jul 21, 2019.

  1. Dr. Pepper

    Dr. Pepper What, me worry?

    This always reminds me of what the x-men should try and feel, disorientated and on the run, but always trying to help each other make it through. Reactionary and always being pursued with quickly hashed out plans that kind of work but always leave ramifications an casualties. Follow up films and series could be constantly created as the team gets separated and reunited over and over again in different combinations.

     
  2. Jord

    Jord Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Netherlands
    It's been a while now and the hype has died down so I was wondering how you are looking back at both Infinity War and Endgame?

    My thoughts

    Infinity War
    Still exciting to watch, even though you know the ending. The different storylines are all interesting and I love how the switching between storylines gets faster as the movie progresses.
    We get a lot of interesting fights that use the characters' powers well, even though the heroes love in a believable manner.

    Endgame
    Lacks action throughout the movie. Yes we get a big fight at the end but I feel it gets muddled once the cavalry arrives. I myself prefer the fight with Thor/Iron Man/Cap vs Thanos over this one. For as long as it takes, it could use more fighting.
    I don't mind the killing of the first Thanos. It was exciting and unexpected.
    I didn't like how Hulks big transformation happens off screen and Hulk is now basically a strong Banner, taking away all of the tension of the character. He also doesn't smash anymore. Disappointing ending to a storyline that was interesting and build up well in Thor Ragnarok and IW.
    Captain Marvel feels very shoehorned in. She's basically a god but can only be in the first and last part of the movie because she has other things to do basically. She's a such a powerful character and could be used well against Thanos but it's obvious that she was later added to the script. You could delete her role and just change some things about the start of the movie, especially in such a technology-heavy universe. I don't mind her but she also didn't add much.
    Ending to Iron Man's ending was very well done though and the best way this 10 year journey could have ended. (Except for him though, lol)
    The time travelling was I guess the best way to tackle getting the stones back but since they can always get more Pym particles by going to the alternate timelines, it basically gives the heroes a get-out-of-jail-free card.

    In short, IW is still very exciting but EG is a bit boring on rewatch due to the slower pace and lack of action. The EG experience in cinemas was incredible though with people cheering, clapping, jumping down the aisles. It was crazy but in a good way.
     
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  3. rock4ev

    rock4ev Forum Resident

    Location:
    CA USA
    ???
    I know that, and I have known that before any Marvel movies were made.
    I read, followed and owned (obviously not owned every book, I had holes in my collection) since they started.

    All I stated is what I said in my post,.... we will see.
    Read it and try to understand my post about next phase for what I said in it without interpreting failure or success, as I didn't state either, only that it would be a big feat, just as it was an incredible feat what was accompanied.

    Nuff Said
     
  4. rock4ev

    rock4ev Forum Resident

    Location:
    CA USA
    ???
    Jeez, you don't you think that falls into what my original post says??
    You took a tiny context of my post and quoted it.
    I mention in my original post "we will see" and "it was an incredible feat" (especially with so many movies/saturation) " it will not be easy to repeat" .
    I did not say it can or cannot be done, tho you somehow chose to take a side about something I didn't even say ??? Seriously it's like you understood and misunderstood me, when we are all on the same page about the topic and it's future.
    Uh yeah they have the stories, I don't think needed to mention that or suggest any they should or shouldn't do.
    I possibly miss judged something or someone would misunderstand what I was saying about such an incredible and successful dozen years of movies that leaves giant shoes to fill is yet to be seen, all the while never pointing a direction it will go, and that I am a fan too.

    Again
    Nuff Said
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2021
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  5. Dr. Pepper

    Dr. Pepper What, me worry?

    I agree with pretty much all of this. EG was mired in the sadness and ramifications of the blip (1st act) for too long. I would have minimized that and expanded the time travel (2nd act) and the final battle (3rd act). I think it actually could have worked better as a whole post blip phase of multiple marvel films better. An Antman and Ironman cross over film could have been about Antman coming back because of the rat and coming to terms with his daughter's aging five years, then going to Tony to figure out the whole time travel solution as Tony is enjoying his life and coming to terms with the fact that he has to change everything back. A Hawkeye and Black Widow crossover film could Have examined Hawkeye's descent into the darker vigilante realm more thoroughly and Black Widow's reaching out to try and help her friend deal with his new life in a healthier way. A follow up film with Thor an Hulk could have been full of comedy and Banner's choice to fuse his two halves together on screen and dealt with the scared reticent Hulk that we say in IW. Then all of these films could have taken us into the End Game of the Time Travel blip fixing finally that would have truly earned the spectacle that it was.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2021
  6. rock4ev

    rock4ev Forum Resident

    Location:
    CA USA
    No shade being cast here, I totally agree and know of their stories and it would seem like not a problem to make incredible movies, though it's the choices of what stories to use and what not.
    The IP is valuable and vast no doubts about that, decisions on what, what not, who, who not in every part of the films from story, casting, directors, etc... those will be crucial in what makes the difference in good or bad, or an all time classic product on the screen.

    The IP and all that comes with it alone has it's draw, decisions will be more difficult for any stand alone movie let alone a decade long and plus stretch to have success.
    What we just had was rare, as it is much more difficult to make good decisions/choices than bad ones. I would definitely like to see some new, good and quality films hit the screen.

    Cheers
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2021
  7. Jord

    Jord Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Netherlands
    That is a great idea. Maybe that's at the core of the issues I have with the movie, it feels like multiple movies stuffed together. If spread out you could give the characters more time to develop instead of having instant change for Hulk or Thor becoming a fat suit joke throughout the movie.
     
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  8. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
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  9. rock4ev

    rock4ev Forum Resident

    Location:
    CA USA
    Just in my opinion, I seriously think the magic is over for Marvel.
    I felt it would go downhill slowly.
    What they created when it was Fox was lightning in a bottle, and as myself and a couple others here had thought, they had great stories going back to the beginning of the comics so ideas would not have been a problem ever in plots/story.
    But it appears someone (???) saw big bucks and more cheese for a greedy mouse stands to ruin what might have had another couple decades of great product.
    Money success doesn't mean great product, so they will get some of that but I strongly feel (aside from Dr Strange) mouse's run is done. There are smart and creative people in Hollywood, but for the moment (all world problems aside) mouse house will not get any great not already inked deals done for quality product with quality people.
    Marvel will be back, but damage, change of ownership and it's greed caused tremendous taboo to work for be in one of their Marvel movies.
    Spider-Man should do good too, (Sony owned), but trying to tie in whatever they thought could and have ideas for, getting that inked and started I don't think will be easy.
    I feel to fix and make quality, they will need a new very strong person in charge with complete decision making on all aspects of films and direction for going forward.
    It could happen? But under the direction after everything was inked and came under mouse banner and their decisions were not apart of the deals/films/contracts.
    They bought it and have mismanaged their steps being in charge. And that doesn't inspire confidence in all talent in making films like before, and just like music industry everything is coming to a change and quality of new artists suffered though were/still are out there.
    Though there are valid reasons why big dollar films are not logical for returns on them, there will be excuses for failure of future Marvel movies, though again I feel the behind the scenes people know this, the public is very much different. They can make anything platinum. But we saw that run it's course in music.
    This is new territory now and I think how it's handled will be vip for future of films.
    Could just be a hiccup and everything goes back to being well or could be like how music industry bungled change and in return couldn't invest market or sell/foster talent
    That is how they used to make tons of money. Now after took them decades to figure out they cut out so much, but they are back to (them) making money again.

    I think I'll just stop there, as it's more than enough.
     
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  10. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Nice write up.

    Sorta Kill Bill 1 vs Kill Bill 2.

    Over the years Ive come to appreciate KB2 more.
     
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  11. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Magic over”?
    I’ve not seen any of the off shoot tv MCU stuff.
    But.. I feel the characters are getting over saturated.. and diluted. End of an era.
     
  12. Chrome_Head

    Chrome_Head Planetary Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA.
    Have to say, I think it is going to be hard for Marvel/Disney to top the run of films from the last 10 years, which crescendoed with Infinity War / Endgame which were terrific.

    I'm not particularly excited for either Shang Chi or the Eternals. I am excited for the next Spider-Man. Marvel have lost a lot of their A-game characters and actors due to their story choices, and that is not going to be easy to compensate for.
     
  13. Isaac K.

    Isaac K. Forum Resident

    I don't think they lost their A-game characters because of their story choices, I think it's because the actors that played those characters didn't want to continue on forever. I know that Chris Evans only had something like a finite 7 movie deal by choice. That pretty much decided everything ultimately.
     
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  14. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    Probably had something to do with them not wanting to keep increasing the pay of the actors also.

    I think their ace in the hole upcoming should be bringing Dr. Doom in through Fantastic Four. They can build up to another big crossover with Secret Wars, where Doom plotted to get cosmic powers. They've also got the chance to restart X-Men and do it more comic faithfully, but F4 seems to be coming first, as they need to wait a little while longer for X-Men to let people forget about Fox's movies. They're kind of lucky the pandemic is happening as they're going through this weaker phase of characters, because they can just blame any underperformance on the pandemic, and Disney should give them another shot to build things back up again. X-Men really has opportunities to do solo character movies, because Fox never was able to develop a lot of the fan-favorite characters very well by only doing ensemble films. They could actually start by putting together the original team of Jean, Cyke, Beast, Iceman and Angel in one movie. Then get solo movies with some cameos by the original X-Men to bring in the later team members like Rogue, Storm, Kitty, Nightcrawler, Gambit, Psylocke, Jubilee and of course Wolvie.
     
  15. Jim B.

    Jim B. Senior Member

    Location:
    UK
    It really is the greatest movie franchise of all time. In terms of quantity and quality and box office nothing comes close.

    And it is an amazing achievement when you think these are just comic books that many people would laugh at in the past. Plus how they have tied it all together and the Infinity War film was such an achievement to have a comic book crossover story that actually worked.

    If you had asked any comic book fan whether they could pull this off 20 years ago they would have said no way. Maybe one-off acceptable films would have been the ambition. But Marvel have combined all sorts of gods and aliens and humans and it has all worked and never looked silly.

    The problem is how do you follow that? There does not seem to be much interest in the next batch of films and I think a lot of fans are turned off by the attempts to get all PC with all the film choices and gender/sexuality/race swapping just so they can tick some diversity box. There are enough varied characters anyway in the Marvel Universe of all types to not need to do this.

    So if they can get over this, and just focus on good storytelling without the need to send a message, then if the do the X-Men right and FF then I think we will see a slow down over the next year or two and then they will come back stronger with Mutants and the FF as there are some fantastic stories to be told there. So they have the potential to be even more successful if they are not stupid.

    gender/sexuality/race swapping for no reason just upsets fans and is pointless tokenism. All they have to do is pick the X-Men team of Giant Size X-Men number 1 and you already have a black African woman, a Russian man, a blue German, a native American man, a Japanese man and then Cyclops and Wolverine. It's perfect for everyone and a global market.

    I fear for the Avengers though as we could be heading for an all female team as Ironheart is a woman, Thor is going to be a woman, Hawkeye will be Kate Bishop, She-Hulk is coming, Black Widow is a woman...which is not going to please anyway as it will alienate the fan base and female audience they think they will be attracting, as women like to see good looking men on screen. It's the James Bond argument - it's popular as women are attracted to him and men want to be him. When I went to see the last Avengers film I was amazed at the groups of young girls at the cinema. They like the good looking guys. Same with Aquaman, it pulled in a majority female audience.

    Anyway, so in summary if they don't get bogged down with politics and just focus on telling good stories and keeping true to the comics I think the future is very bright.
     
  16. rock4ev

    rock4ev Forum Resident

    Location:
    CA USA
    I could have worded it better instead of using "magic over" (one reason texting or typing I'm not a fan of for misunderstandings) but in this case it stands for the special period, honeymoon, the ya know the gist of what I'm getting at I hope.
    Success they can still have but the special moments / years when it was happening in real time and the impact it had and the chemistry of the actors/characters as as well as creators has passed I feel. It happens in any form of entertainment.
    I hope that clarifies what I think and meant.

    Cheers
     
  17. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    I hope so. I was a big X-Men fan in the 60s, with that original team. I never identified with or enjoyed the movies.
    As for future Disney/Marvel movies, I'm impatient to see the next Thor and Dr. Strange adventures (hopefully two more of the latter, to make a trilogy) but beyond that, I'm not expecting much because I didn't follow the comics after the 60s Ditko/Kirby glory days.
     
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  18. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    I think the modern Marvel comics have an all-female team with a lot of those characters, and it's called A-Force. The problem now is they're starting to pull stories from the recent Marvel comics, like Jane Foster Thor, which were not as widely read as the '60s-'90s comics. And, as you say, the forced diversity agenda has gone into full force in the modern comics. So the movies may start reflecting that. My fear for X-Men is they'll decide not to re-do most of the characters Fox did, and instead come up with a whole lot of all-new or reinterpreted, demographically swapped mutant characters that just don't resemble the classic characters. The modern comics already changed Iceman's sexual preference, so you can be sure they'll put that into the new movies if they use him.

    You're absolutely right about the female fans. Just look in the comments on any social media. They are constantly drooling over Evans, Hemsworth, even Rudd. Female audiences are very interested in seeing attractive, masculine men in romantic plots with women who they can relate to. It's why Titanic was such a mega-hit. By the end of the new Star Wars trilogy the fans were going nuts trying to "ship" some kind of romantic couple into the movies, and the movies barely ended up exploring that at all. These fans are being given scraps in the romance department in Marvel and Star Wars, and enjoying what they can get. But they would love to see a lot more romance in the movies. Overdoing the "girl power" with female characters who are constantly trying to show off their independence by rejecting men is the last thing most of the female fans want from the movies. That satisfies a fringe agenda, and not at all the thinking of the mainstream public.
     
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  19. Curveboy

    Curveboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    I think you are far, far off the mark.

    First, Marvel have done what Disney did; they have the kids. As long as the have the kids they have the money.
    Second, Disney+ is now over 103 million subscribers; that is money in the bank and the Marvel shows are doing very, very well.
    Third, the X-Men and Fantastic Four are coming.
    Fourth, they have many properties in the pipeline we can't even begin to guess. Kevin Feige is going to go down in history as one of the--if not the--greatest producers of all time. I may not agree with all of his decisions nor enjoy every Marvel property but the man has pulled off something that has never been done before and now everyone is trying (badly) to replicate it.
     
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  20. Jim B.

    Jim B. Senior Member

    Location:
    UK
    Yes I agree.


    I do think they would be insane to create new demographically swapped mutants though. Surely the whole point of an IP is that people are invested in the characters they have read and watch cartoons of over the last 50 years. I liked the Fox films ok, and think Days of Future Past is one of the best films in the genre, but I don't feel they ever quite got the spirit of the comics. So there is scope to use the same mutants but do it better, and I think overall the most popular team is the 1975 one with the addition of Kitty Pryde, Gambit and Rogue, maybe Bishop and Forge.


    People didn't seem to mind we had two previous versions of the Hulk before this one so as long as they get it right they could get away with it. And Spider-Man was effortlessly slotted into the MCU when we had 5 previous films.


    There are so many mutants these days though, you can of lose track.
     
  21. JediJones

    JediJones Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    The example is Spider-Man though. They opted to make Spider-Man their least faithful adaptation in the MCU. They applied the "reinvention" model. And it served the character and his mythology very poorly. Whenever I see polls, Tobey Maguire still seems to win out as the best Spider-Man. But the MCU Spider-Man films have done well, so they've learned the lesson that it's okay to throw out the heart of a character and change everything about his story as long as his appearance still looks recognizable.

    The X-Men films created about as strong as an impression on the public as the Raimi Spider-Man movies did, especially Wolverine. And they themselves have already rebooted/recast most of the team once, and run the Dark Phoenix Saga twice. So I suspect the MCU is going to decide to take the Spider-Man approach, and "reinvent" the X-Men in one way or another, so that it won't bear too much resemblance to the comic books, cartoons or Fox movies. I don't know if that means Professor X will now be something other than a white male, a la Ancient One, or they'll build up the team with brand new mutants no one's ever seen before anywhere (or that may be only recent additions in newer comics), or stay away from the concept of a school and a unified team and make the characters more globally disconnected. They may also skip Wolverine and just use X-23. I suspect if a team is formed, Storm will be the leader, as she was in the 1980s, which would probably be a popular choice that checks off a lot of boxes for them, including differentiating from Fox.

    You didn't mention Psylocke, but she's absolutely one of the most popular X-Men. She was the single most popular X-Men hero according to a Comic Vine poll. I'm just scared to see how unsexy they would make her costume. Here's a Twitter poll with more responses, about 100 each for the top ten, where Psylocke came in at 11. You have get down to about 20 to find characters Fox never used. But you can also see there a ton of lesser known characters they could use if they wanted to avoid Fox characters completely. X-23 is also a very popular character, who I would say the MCU is very likely to use:

    [​IMG]

    This site also has a long list of X-Men characters ranked:

    The Best X-Men Characters Of All Time
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2021
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  22. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    If that's the kind of thing that concerns you, I think Marvel is in pretty good hands :laugh:
     
  23. Curveboy

    Curveboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    Uh, I guess you didn't see X-Men: Apocalypse?

    [​IMG]
     
  24. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

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  25. Curveboy

    Curveboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    PS - a lot of that list HAS been used, including X-23 in Logan.
     

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