RDJ back in the MCU...as Doctor Doom?!

[Monterey Jack]

[Monterey Jack]

[AndyDursin]

The more I think of it, the dumber his casting is. Just looks so desperate and how poorly they've managed this post-ENDGAME phase, failing to cultivate new heroes and the lack of star power associated therein.

[Edmund Kattak]

Another problem apart from the weak development of the "Marvels" ensemble is that I've already forgotten about "The Ten Rings" storyline and characters and NEVER could sit through THE ETERNALS for the same reason. The individual stories of these people are "lost" on me. By the time AVENGERS: DOOMCOCK or whatever it's called rolls around, will all of these people be relevant (or alive) at that point?

The Disney culture schizophrenia coupled with the "Marvel" way of moviemaking makes the story and character development suffer at this stage of the game. I just watched some of the Icons Unearthed "Spiderman" examination and it makes clear that Feige likes to come up with ideas on the fly that have a cost and time factor impact. While Marvel and Sony praise Jon Watts for Spiderman, they admit that he had virtually no directing street credibility going into Spiderman which Marvel likes, but Sony was skittish on. My takeaway is that Sony was bonkers over the ad hoc filmmaking approach of Marvel (Disney), namely because Sony was solely fronting the money for the first two Holland outings. Despite the positive outcome of all three of those Holland movies, I can't help but think that Sony is even more skittish now that Disney (and Marvel) seem to be imploding post pandemic.

I still get roasted by sycophant fanboys when I say that Marvel should have stayed at Paramount.

[Monterey Jack]

I still get roasted by sycophant fanboys when I say that Marvel should have stayed at Paramount.

Paramount (and Universal for The Incredible Hulk) MCU remains the only horny MCU. Now we have acres of hot people who never want to bang.







The Netflix Marvel shows are the only post-Disney acquisition MCU products where the characters are interested in sex in any way, shape or form.

[AndyDursin]

The whole franchise turned into this seed-planting Disney thing the second they turned it over to them. When we rewatched the run up to ENDGAME with Theo you could see it -- once Disney's executives started giving "input" the movies became cluttered ads as much interested in pushing the NEXT movie as they were the film they were trying to make. It was just as bad as I thought, needing a road map to remember "wait, is this Avengers movie before Iron Man 3" and "wait, is this the movie that introduces Spider-Man or do we need to see Thor 2 first" etc.

Beyond the fact they all have the same boring climax and lame scores!

[Paul MacLean]

I can't remember much of anything about Endgame, except for the CGI-embellished big brother from Goonies trying to destroy the world, and about a thousand "main characters" trying to stop him and in a big battle that looks like every other big battle from the past 15 years.

[Monterey Jack]

The whole franchise turned into this seed-planting Disney thing the second they turned it over to them. When we rewatched the run up to ENDGAME with Theo you could see it -- once Disney's executives started giving "input" the movies became cluttered ads as much interested in pushing the NEXT movie as they were the film they were trying to make.

It used to be you'd roll out for a sequel simply because you liked the previous movie(s)...franchises didn't need to "bait the hook" by intentionally leaving plot threads dangling and doing crossovers with totally unrelated movies. There were pre-MCU examples, of course...Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi, Back To The Future II and III and the second and third entries in the Matrix and Pirates Of The Caribbean franchises, but at least there, the only movies you needed to watch when the new one came out were the previous entries within that series! Imagine Bruce Willis rolling in for a mid-credits cameo in Lethal Weapon 2, setting up in crossover "Joel Silver Cinematic Universe" adventure with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in Die Hard 2. Whether it was James Bond, Indiana Jones, Dirty Harry, or whoever, each movie within that respective series would offer up a satisfactory standalone adventure. Now you practically need a flowchart to keep track of how these Marvel movies (and TV shows!) interconnect.



It's exactly this thinking that causes teenagers to eventually drift away from actual comic books, because it becomes too cumbersome -- and expensive! -- to keep up with buying twelve issues of a dozen different superhero titles just to have a complete narrative. Even in the days when comics cost twenty-five cents, a kid's mid-70s $5.00 weekly allowance would only stretch so far at the spinner rack. And these days comics are like four or five bucks for a single issue!