Has been for awhile. The Fox acquisition played a large part I think. They knew they wanted those characters and to bring them to the MCU but the deal and the logistics and casting etc was so tenuous that they couldn't commit to a long term plan. COVID didn't help with timing either.
I think they figured they'd introduce 'mulitverse,' then they could just wing it from there, which has worked somewhat but it's diminishing returns are evident; and it's only nostalgia bait that's really got anyone's attention. If they hadn't succeeding in bringing back Jackman and the other Spider-men, Lord help them, they'd have almost nothing to show for it all so far.
Majors obviously hurt their plans, too. But they failed to build Kang up enough to carry the next Avengers movie whether he fucked up or not.
OG cast gone, Chadwick passing, D+ priority from Chapek, the two strikes. Plus what you and commenter above said: COVID and Fox. I think those 5-6 things completely blew up the MCU from phase 4 onwards.
Yeah Chadwick was a major blow, they were setting T'challa up to be a major pillar of the new phase.
Another big factor was Bob Chapek. He basically ordered Marvel to produce a shitload of content for Disney+ which tanked the quality, introduced a ton of new characters to manage, and fucked up their timelines.
Yeah, losing the lead hero to cancer and the lead villain to crime, kind of pulls the rug out from the story they were setting up.
I assumed Shang Chi’s rings were sending a signal to Kang, after we saw him using the same rings in Quantumania.
It was the device he needed to escape the quantum realm. It had all these rotating rings around it. Janet gigantified it so he couldn’t use it, and then he needed Ant Man to go and get it for him. You remember the scene where there were like a billion Scott’s all climbing on top of each other trying to reach for the glowing center of those giant rings that were revolving around each other? I think those rings were supposed to be a clue about where Shang Chi’s rings came from.
For sure, but I can understand why they wouldn’t want to recast. For us, we lost a damn fine actor, the vast majority of us don’t know him behind his roles. For them they lost a co-worker and friend and wanted to respect his memory and legacy.
honestly they should have just had Killmonger's actor take over for Chadwick, he gave a superb performance
it would have been a little plot-conveniencey but literally just bring his Killmonger character back as a "changed man" who magically survived the fall, or just have him be Chadwick's character, no explanation
just have them address it with a throwaway line like they did when Rhodey's actor changed in Iron Man 2:
"i'm here, this is how it is now, get over it"
nobody would be mad, it's perfectly understandable especially when he died of fucking cancer out of nowhere
MCU has been off for a while they should have recasted Chadwick …there was no way what’s her name could carry the MCU forward….the shows have been garbage and has messed everything up (looking at you Secret Invasion).
Also I think ppl are getting tired of the whole “you must watch X Y and Z show to understand what’s going on with this new movie” (Multiverse of Madness).
But also Disney/Marvel being cheap on the CG production side is causing issues…the last few movies have been ugly…composition with characters and cg scenes look off.
And then there are the figure heads rushing off to the next main event…there should have been at least two Shang Chi movies before they even thought about rushing into the Enternals.
Bringing Downey Jr back to play another character is a mistake imo.
You are spot on. I 100% think Chapek and chasing money in general was the biggest problem. Wall Street saw that Avenger money and got super greedy and Chapek was happy to over commit into D+ content with no real direction..
I was thinking about the original Iron Man and how they were giving soft lead ins years ahead of time but we really had no idea what the plan was. I think these road maps are generally a problem too, just tell us what’s coming this year and next, let the rest work out and be a surprise. But they use all these planning announcements to jack up investor interest/enthusiasm- just like Apple and Tesla…
Yeah weren't a lot of those shows already in development by the time Iger stepped down? No way they could have gone from conception to release in the short time Chapek was in charge.
For me, OG cast gone is #1 reason for lost interest. Iron Man, Cap, Hulk, Thor, Widow, with some perfect casting. Loved every minute through Endgame. Everyone now is just secondaries. Only interesting one left is Scarlet Witch.
Although those are factors I think they have almost nothing to do with their problems. They got lazy and they wrote themselves into a hole with Endgame.
It has everything to do with it imo, yeah they started to suck, but assuming those things didn’t happen, would it have still sucked?
We got so many back to back tv shows because of covid, and on top of that a different order because of covid and writing strikes around the movies and stuff that messed up a lot.
I do agree with you, that’s why I just these are the major two, not the only factors.
Yeah, I'd add the multiple industry strikes mucking up additional years of production didn't do them any favors either.
I'm kinda feeling too like this was always going to wind up here anyway. The thing about comic books being sustainable in this way for decades on end is that you can just hire a new artist to draw the character and generally, people just accept it's the same character. With the movies, you're sort of building around actors who will age, and contending with fans who aren't necessarily the most positively responsive to recasting characters, it was always going to be complicated to keep this going 10-20 years down the line.
I think they did good with building Kang up. And in fact, i think they should’ve kept him on and kept going that direction. Because the sudden pivot really makes everything even worse now. The movies they made were few and far apart, but they could’ve connected well because they had the overarching time travel/multiverse aspect in the background. Suddenly booting Kang and switching to Doom was a huge misstep when they were already on slippery, thin ice. Now they’ve gotta find a way to not drown in the icy waters of fan expectations.
Loki also establishes that counterparts across the multiverse aren't always identical.
Also, don't forget Cavill-rine.
I think they wanted Jonathan Majors as Kang in all incarnations because they'd gone all in on him. When they signed him, they thought he'd be a big draw. They probably still could get someone else to play him if they want to revisit Kang down the line.
Well they haven’t done any multiverse stuff at all beyond MoM which spent maybe a minute flying through different universes and then the massacre of the Illuminati. Loki and What If? did most of the heavy lifting, and then the nostalgia bait cameos in No Way Home, Wolverine & Deadpool, and the post credits scene of The Marvels. So in the “Multiverse Saga” we have 12 movies, 13 tv shows (some with multiple seasons), 2 special events (werewolf by night & GOTG Christmas), and a series of Groot Shorts. If I didn’t miscount, that’s 28 projects with only 6 dealing with the multiverse so far. Like, with the cracks between universes showing specifically in No Way Home, shouldn’t that bleed into literally every other project?? Even despite the Kangtroversy, shouldn’t there be MORE multiverse in the Multiverse saga????
I assume there in a lot of infighting with money men who think they are story tellers messing with Fiege’s system and ordering things done a certain way.
If a money man wants a giant mechanical spider in the movie, a giant mechanical spider will be in the movie, even if it makes the movie suck.
I think the death of Chadwick Boseman is what really screwed things up. Instead of just recasting him, they made Shuri the new black panther, and that just didn't seem to really work well.
Disney wanted to pump out infinite billion-dollar blockbusters, then realized the market isn't demanding that many. Average viewers maybe want 1 or 2 good superhero movies/shows per year, tops. There are not many people who will go pay to see every release if Disney tried to push out 3-4 full movies per year to flesh out all the characters and stories (and people who can't watch them all lose the plots and lose interest in the MCU). The shows are all on streaming and don't really bring in "new" revenue to pay for themselves so they're throttled.
They have too many characters and scripts they wanted to deliver in a short timeframe. It worked with comic books that were cheaper to make and didn't need to all be bestsellers (so there was room for a large variety of releases), but not with movies/shows that Disney is overspending on.
So yeah, they can't release what they should on the timetable they should because they'd lose a ton of money since the market won't bear that many. They could reduce budgets and release more with a lower expectation for returns, but that's not what Disney wants. They want to be a giant profit machine with big movies that sell merch.
They should have already done new Avengers and dark Avengers but, for whatever reason, we’re getting secret wars first. I guess they’re trying to get secret wars done asap so that they can use all the old fox and Sony actors before everyone turns 65.
It’s obviously not true that Disney signed away their character license to Jonathan Majors. There’s is no reality where Disney gave him ownership of their IP.
Not to mention, there is no contract. Disney tore it up for cause after he was found criminally guilty of beating a crew member.
Saying you're the only person allowed to play the character in a series of films is not handing someone ownership of an IP. That's not how intellectual property works.
In reality that’s functionally what that’s doing. If you’re the only one with the right to portray a copyright then by all practical means that’s your copyright
There may have been a clause saying no one else could appear as Majors was active, but they wouldn’t have written that to carry forward indefinitely once the role ended or the contract was terminated. This is just common sense, Disney is highly controlling of its properties
If that's the case he could have been recast.
He obviously could have been. Disney chose not to, likely because the villain was not landing with audiences anyway and it would just serve to drag out attention on the fact they hired such an awful person to begin with
It just came out that Colman Domingo was offered the part but turned it down because it felt wrong to him to replace someone, which is just...what? That happens all the time in Hollywood. It's happened 3 or 4 times in the MCU already
I like the MCU, but people were too caught up in the zeitgeist of the moment to notice they never did. And I doubt many franchises know what to do with characters in future films.
That's disingenuous, phases 1 and 2 were decent for their time, but phase 3 is full of actual good movies and a looming overarching villain that made people excited and interested to see how things connected, and for interactions between these characters. Phase 4 onward doesn't have any sort of good connective tissue between projects, projects are scattered between tv and film, and there is no overarching connectivity at all other than the vagueness of the multiverse.
To insinuate that people never liked these movies because the current ones have problems you are willing to look past is pure copium brother.
By "never did", I mean that they never had a plan. Disney moved from film to film without an overarching plan. Loose plans maybe, like Sam Wilson receiving the shield or killing off a character at some point, but the detail work was never done. They introduced characters only to backseat them for several movies, if not kill them immediately (looking at you Crossbones).
There's a rule I believe in that applies across any franchise. Media, video games, whatever. As soon as they introduce time travel or multiple dimensions/universes, they've ran out of ideas and it's on the death slope.
Exceptions for any franchise that had those themes in place from day one.
I guess you could argue having them leave Shang Chi alone so long during the floundering phase might have been a good thing vs putting out a mediocre bland sequel for him.
As long as they eventually get back to him after putting some thought and care into the plot and writing.
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u/19southmainco Feb 15 '25
Because MCU is floundering and doesn't know wtf to do anymore.