Disney Suing to Keep Rights to MCU Characters

I don't think it's a Disney versus Marvel thing. In this case Disney and Marvel are one party and they're opposing the original creators or the estates of the original creators (including the estate of Stan Lee) citing that the characters were created as "work for hire" and therefore Marvel and subsequently Disney own the copyrights to those characters - not the original artists and storywriters.

It's not your Uncle Walt's Disney anymore, so my sympathies are with the original artists. However, I'm cynical enough to believe that there's a good chance this is really all about a cash settlement and agreement for future royalties and in return Disney gets to keep unquestionable control and ownership over the characters.

 

Yes I am aware of the comics history. But taking the Men out of it and I believe the new magneto won't be a holocaust survivor- I'm sure Disney will just bastardized the characters even more. I mean they turned Thor into a sulking fat whiny mess of a man...one of the strongest Alpha characters in the comics.

 

For misguided diversity reasons they have been replacing these icon characters with mostly women and non white people so Disney could just use these characters.

You don't need Peter Parker anymore, just use Miles and don't refer to him as Spider-Man.

Dr Strange is being replaced soon by a new master of the mystic arts.

Same for Cap, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Hulk etc. Thor I guess is public domain, there are tons of new mutants to use.

Just retire the characters with legal issues and use ones that are all locked up legally.

I hate it myself, art should not be driven by political agendas, but Disney don't seem to have much idea how to treat the fanbase. They have done a good job at killing the Star Wars franchise.

And it is possible to be a normal person and hate this without being far right, toxic or a hater. Bad stories are bad stories.

 

True, but not just Disney, look what DC is doing. Basically getting rid of henry Cavill who was excellent in playing Superman, only to be replaced to be more politically correct.
They also took another bad-ass character in the comics and totally neutered Wonder Woman in the last movie. 1984 was awful and portrayed WW as needy and pining away for a man constantly. I watched BvsS last night and the fight scene of WW against Doomsday was a total 180 from how she was portrayed in 1984.
Comic sales are already in the tank, not sure applying the same ideals is going to improve in the movie's revenues.

 

Excellent post. The worst part of all this: what exactly is it teaching the kids aside from lots of skin-deep horsepucky and deep-seated dysphoria? My kid grew up knowing Chris Evans as Captain America, but then watched the baton passed to Falcon in Endgame and found it very unsettling. It had the exact opposite reaction in my kid to what the geniuses at Disney probably wanted. This could have been predicted by Disney. The more they focus on identity as a function of skin color and gender (and worse) the more they alienate people--so I have to assume that's part of their agenda now.

Of course this is separate issue from Bryan Singer's X-Men movies, where he hammered his own homosexual agenda and coming out narrative. Like I said in another thread, it would be great if people in Hollywood were capable of subtlety.

 

You are right. And no-one buys those female led Marvel comics. They keep starting series and then cancelling them due to falling sales.

And their logic is to do that for the films as well? Insane!

 

I don't know where the CW-network superhero series find homes on the British television landscape, but much has been made over here, about how the tv DC Universe has been "awokened" in the past decade. You may not see it if you just take the recent films as their main reimaginings. But every CW series about DC properties has had in infusion of female-relating strong characters injected into their franchise. It is less about "wokening" though, as it is simply seeing who the available audience is for supporting these shows.

The Flash retains an Infantino-inspired sci-fi vibe, but now it's as much a Scooby-gang show as it is a narrative about the hero.
Get a look at Batwoman (or if you will, "Batman Without Batman" )...better yet... run away...fast.
Arrow pioneered the ethos of "behind every great man there's at least three demographically-focus-grouped hot chicks".
Supergirl...also known as, "...because Superman wasn't available, except in limited instances"; they even had to give her a "Lena" Luthor, a female Perry White, and a racially-balanced Jimmy Olson.

I could go on and on, but...y'know, I'm a male, so apparently my input isn't required...

 

I hope Disney loses. They destroyed both Marvel and Star Wars for me.

 

I think Disney (especially the parks) is in major decline. Not sure how many of you have kept up with the recent changes.

 

To be a bit more accurate...they may have destroyed both Marvel and Star Wars for themselves, as they are the legitimate owners...they have the paperwork. You probably weren't even in the running when the bidding started.
Whatever you love/loved about Marvel and Star Wars...they can't take away from you what you have already enjoyed. Try not to be so territorial about somebody else's property, and you'll be happier.

 

Good point. I was an 80’s kid so the original trilogy will always be a trifecta, and my Friday nights were the Dukes of Hazzard and then The Incredible Hulk. Of course even back the Star Wars merch was a big thing, but to see how Disney has turned the franchise into something I can’t honestly articulate my feelings about on this forum without getting kicked off… suffice to say the current incarnations are #NotMyStarWas, #NotMyMarvel, #NotMyDisney.

Even the parks… ugh. I first went to Disney World in 2001. There is no comparison between that first trip and the nickel-and-dime-you-to-death racket they are running now.

 

Why do you think that is?

 

Because they're not being marketed to the quintessential Marvel-Zombie-boy. Same guys who got their panties in a twist when somebody had the temerity to cast a Ghostbusters re-make with *ugh* girls in it.

I love going to my local comic shop, and chatting with my favorite clerk, who can not only tell you about the new title you need to be reading in just two sentences - and sell it to you, but, she also agrees with me about how happy she is to finally be working in a store young women feel comfortable exploring.

 

If it was already "woke," why does someone want to change the name of the team now?

What does policing language in nitpicky ways have to do with representing people? This change would be about whether the word "man" should remain a generic word for all people, as it has been used throughout the known history of the English language. I don't believe we've ever seen any evidence that an obsessive, nitpicky, overly literal redefining of language has increased human rights for anybody.

That is a complete misrepresentation of the objection to the Ghostbusters remake. Fans objected to it because it did not continue the universe of the original films nor bring back any of the original human characters, male or female. It also did not represent Harold Ramis' or Dan Aykroyd's plans for a new Ghostbusters sequel as they had publicly discussed for years. Aykroyd had teased that a new Ghostbusters team would be recruited by the older GBs that had both male and female members. No known objection was ever made to the idea by any fans.

Do you think Superman was neutered in Superman II? He gave up his powers to have a romance with Lois Lane. It's an almost identical storyline to what Wonder Woman went through in WW84. Superheroes should have weaknesses to make them more relatable and vulnerable. And characters who don't have friends, family or love interests are also less relatable. Superhero comics have a long tradition of having romantic subplots. The newer Marvel movies have suffered because of minimizing this aspect.

 

Agreed, and X-men always had a universal theme about the individual that stood out far more than any group or gender or race. When Bryan Singer put his stamp on it, I don't think he had the same intentions. Let's not even get into his track record of sexual misconduct that has followed him his entire career.

I agree with you, though I haven't followed Ghostbusters as closely as you have. Never saw the remake. No interest.

 

I got turned off following superhero comics when they started killing off or severely damaging so many superheroines in the '80s. It didn't help when I did look in from a distance after 1986-87 to see all the males seemed to have hulk-sized muscles, colossal fantasy guns, and be straining at stool, while the women had broken spines and helium-filled boobs. I know now I missed some quality stuff not like that attention getting b.s. and have been digging into those not so 'dark' periods of various titles for awhile. Who wants to even walk into some comic books specialist shops where there is an insane grinning Lobo in the window and people are huddled in the dark inside 'killing' each other in a role play game? Sadly there were as many shops like that as brightly open all-ages inviting types.

Taking an established character and making them suddenly a ______, is like giving table-scraps to those groups, hand-me-downs at best; they should mostly just be creating new characters instead of re-purposing an old one, or even an old name. The two big original booms in the '40s and '60s were from new things being created... seems a no-brainer to go that direction like non-U.S. comics and smaller companies have succeeded with. But noooo, companies just want to remake and re-milk the same old things they have managed to control and own until the last penny is squeezed out on a funko or whatever limited edition thing they can churn out. The large younger market that Japanese comics and Scholastic books have could have been Marvel's, and their new comics might be something other than a shrinking specialist collectable.

Maybe Disney should put them and the once mass medium of U.S. comic books out of it's misery anyway? And why doesn't Disney make many of the kind of excellent quality comics they once did, or are they doing 'graphic novels' or psuedo 'manga'? Kids will pay $100 for running shoes or video games but not $5-10 for a comic, that's too much? You have to put them where real kids will find them though, and have them be of decent quality with complete stories.

They are probably mostly squabbling over some reground bones to repackage for the hundredth time at this point, might as well be talking about how Tarzan or Sherlock Holmes is going to be really big again when more like Lilo & Stitch and Squirrel Girl are the real hope for any audience growth.

 

When I see them going extreme PC on street signs, entertainment, pronouns etc. I just think someone has waaaayyyy too much time on their hands (and lacking coming up with something more directly positive to do or focus on). Virtue signalling is like praying in public; 'they have their reward'.

 

It's worth noting that Magneto was not originally conceived as a Holocaust survivor. That was a retcon originated by Chris Claremont sometime in the mid-80s. And it was quite a perverse retcon, since the original Magneto was an obvious Hitler analog (one of many created by Jack Kirby). He was a murderous megalomaniac who believed he was part of a superior race, and wanted to enslave those whom he considered genetically inferior. Doesn't get much more Hitler than that. Making him sympathetic and all the subsequent BS about him being like Malcolm X was (to use your words) a bastardization of the original character. I would welcome a return to something more akin to the original conception.

 

Marvel never should have caved to Disney in the first place

 

Those are good points. And these characters were created by people working in a field stigmatized for decades as disposable trash for children. One could argue that the creators largely signed away their rights, or agreed to the work for hire terms.

Whatever the legal arguments may be, and despite your valid point that many comic characters are arguably the aggregate creation of multiple creators over years or decades, I would hope to see the estates of Kirby and Ditko get their fair cut of the Marvel movie gravy train. Their minds created characters, or “intellectual property,” worth probably billions of dollars. And of course there were many other artists and writers who played a part in creating the world Disney now controls and exploits.

 

I'd been off superheroes for decades anyway, even though I'm still a rabid comic reader. Indies, essentially. The only thing that really interested me in the past few years was Miracleman, the 'Ultimate" Marvel universe retcons, and the Kent Busiek/Mark Ross DC books (oh, and Astro City..."astrocity", as I call it...). I'd watch the Marvel (and not-Marvel) Marvel films, but I don't hold them to the same standards of "canon" as I used to back in my comic-zombie days.

Marvel's MCU universe films are a lot of fun, and I can do without 'em or enjoy them for what they are. But I have never forgotten what a nasty business it can be, trying to hold your franchise together just for the sake of making money. I've been out of the super-hero business since Neil Adams started campaigning to make DC treat Siegel and Shuster humanely despite all the money they'd denied them over the years. When I think of all the hero-worship and projection that went into creating an "uber-mench" that really stood behind humanity, it makes you re-consider what it is you are supporting with that 12 cents every issue.

To me, super-heroes propped-up by publishers with no ethical standards, is the worst sort of a con a kid can buy into.

I had long abandoned any sort of adolescent trust in the Disney Corporation that was instilled in me, growing up around thousands of representations of happy, fuzzy cartoon characters.

 

I think that was a laudable attempt to add depth to comic book characters who were one-dimensional before. The word "bastardization" does not apply, because these are adding things to characters to fill in gaps in their backgrounds, not taking their established qualities away. Heck, I never liked Doc Ock in the comic books much. The Spider-Man 2 movie added more depth to him than I was aware that he had before, with the Jekyll/Hyde personality, his deceased wife and his failed experiment. Maybe it was in comics before, but the ones I read had him as a one-dimensional mustache-twirler. The Magneto back story worked quite well. It makes sense that some people who are abused or mistreated end up lashing out and becoming abusers themselves. "Hurt people hurt people."

 

One person's "adding depth" is another person's watering down of the character. Making Magneto sympathetic and even quasi-heroic (which stemmed from and happened in tandem with the addition of the Holocaust backstory) was a fundamental change in the nature of the original character. So if one doesn't like the change and thinks it makes the character worse, "bastardization" would be a valid descriptor.

At any rate, my main point was that making Magneto no longer a Holocaust survivor amounts to a restoration of the original concept rather than a bastardization, since being a Holocaust survivor was not part of the original character concept but was an alteration added more than 20 years after his creation.

 

That's a whole can of worms and requires a pretty big answer, and I don't have the answers to everything.

Firstly I would say they just aren't very good. They have been hiring YA book writers to write comics, and they don't really have any love for the medium, some of the female writers go even so far as to alienate the very people who are their target audience. One came out and said quite bluntly 'if you don't like my politics then don't buy the book'. I mean we are talking superhero comics here, there isn't any need to try and force some radical feminist agenda into them. Start your own comic if you want to do that!

But the writing is poor in general. It's like the female Dr Who - bad idea, alienated the fan base, really poor actress - but if the stories had been good they could have gotten away with it I think, with a better actress, as that's the bottom line.

I don't think either that it's a sexist reaction by the male dominated fan base. Nobody had any issues with say Storm leading the X-Men, or female characters in the past leading comics like Black Widow or Ms Marvel or whatever. I'm a big fan of Something Is Killing The Children which is a great read, with a female lead.

Just write good stories and keep the politics out of it and you can succeed. But what we have seen over the last few years is a real decline in talent and an agenda that just alienates the fan base.

It's like changing the gender of characters - if it's done in moderation, in an organic way, then I don't think anybody has any issue with it. But when you set out to literally replace every white male with a female then that is not going to work.

It's just a dumb and failed argument to blame 'haters' or a 'toxic' fanbase. It's just people who don't like the product, and just because there are more and more of them that don't like it they get labelled a toxic fanbase. It's a way of nullifying their completely legitimate concerns.

And what exactly is wrong with actually pleasing your fanbase? Making stuff the fans will enjoy? Why has that become an alien concept? It seems that many of the people making the content seem to detest the actual fanbase! Well go away then and let people who love the medium and fans make the stuff. I mean, do they want to sell comics or not? Make them so that the people who would buy them want to buy them. It seems pretty simple to me.

 

Latest Hollywood Reporter article on the matter.

Disney’s Avengers Size Legal Problem – The Hollywood Reporter

Seven years ago, in an event both momentous and foreshadowing, Disney blinked.

At the time, Disney’s Marvel unit was facing off against the estate of comic book legend Jack Kirby over whether his heirs could terminate a copyright grant and thus reclaim rights on characters including Spider-Man, X-Men, The Incredible Hulk and The Mighty Thor. And, this needs to be stressed: Disney was winning. A federal court ruled in 2011 that Kirby’s contributions as an illustrator between 1958 and 1963 were works made for hire and not eligible for termination. By 2014, the Kirby estate had taken the dispute up to the Supreme Court. And, this also needs to be stressed: The Supreme Court only agrees to review a tiny fraction of cases. And yet, in the face of the improbable — the justices actually intervening and then snapping their fingers like Thanos to change the fate of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — Disney blinked. The company couldn’t take the chance, no matter how small. It settled with Kirby’s estate, with insiders placing the value of the deal at tens of millions of dollars.

Now Disney is facing new copyright termination attempts from the heirs of other comic book authors including Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko, and one must wonder whether history will repeat itself. In seeking declaratory relief through preemptive lawsuits filed on Friday, Disney touts the Kirby case as “virtually identical circumstances.” The entertainment giant clearly hopes that judges will come to the same conclusion that the contributions on characters including Iron Man, Loki, and Doctor Strange were works made for hire. But even if Disney repeats its success from a decade ago, that would merely mean another trip to the Supreme Court facing the same calculus as the petition that compelled a settlement seven years ago. So is Disney’s new leadership more risk tolerant? That’s basically the only reason why these latest copyright terminations wouldn’t settle.

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