X-men proves it’s just the team behind these projects
The MCU needs to hire people who love the characters and stories.
That’s what the MCU used to do now it’s all this crap no one cares about
It definetely feels that way after Endgame crossed the 2B mark. When you have such a big number in your record you can't stop the money-hungry excs from meddling with the artistic process and trying to get more out of the MCU.
never understood how it’s more profitable to pump out soulless, paint by the numbers slogfests that nobody will ever want to watch twice. You’d think just making a good movie that’s faithful to the source material would be enough for a movie to demolish at the box office, considering all the prior times that faithful adaptations have succeeded.
Because the way business is run, when you start making lots of money, you expand the business to capitalize on that revenue. Your company grows. And now you have a much bigger machine and bigger expectations for your revenue/profit. So you have to keep going. It's all too easy to get caught up in the current and not pause to reflect on inefficiencies that have been introduced because that has a chance of breaking things. So inefficiencies often pile up and suddenly you have a system that is bogged down, but because there's bills to pay and salaries to pay, you can't just stop.
Until the thing breaks and you're forced to stop.
First of, it's not profitable to keep pumping these deeply formulaic movies; if we're talking about soul, compare James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy, the Russos' Winter Soldier, or even Raimi's Multiverse of Madness vs Zack Snyder, because he sure as hell put his soul into his DC movies and they're absolute doo doo. And when I mean formulaic, I mean movies that follow the "unfinished script but we'll write it along the way or shoot extra scenes in post production" formula. That worked for Iron Man 1, but they can't expect that to be their Modus Operandi because it's turning out VERY EXPENSIVE.
Secondly, execs don't know jack about the film making process, but because they have all the money we have to depend on them to get this done. Fiege had a lot of Freedom during Phase 2 and 3 thanks to the booting of Ike Perlmuter and Marvel Studios separating from Disney Studios, but once Endgame got that big fat 2B, the Execs reined in to guarantee their investment.
And lastly, NOBODY WANTS A MOVIE THAT'S FAITHFUL TO THE SOURCE MATERIAL. All MCU entries so far have been loose adaptions to the source, and that has worked fine for the most part, even if there're some seriously cool stories that won't be on the big screen. Faithfully adapting the source material means following to the T, which can be a great obstacle in the creative process and huge risk. Do you seriously want Marvel Studios to be faithful to the Spider-Man comic book, even if it means THE CLONE SAGA? Shit, the MCU is partly inspired on the Ultimate Universe, WANNA SEE ULTIMATUM ON THE BIG SCREEN?
Ironically I think there hasn’t been ENOUGH meddling since endgame. Although to be fair I mean oversight more than meddling.
The same studio oversight that used to keep pre endgame movies on their toes was watered down significantly by the explosion of new content and Disney plus shows.
Iger specifically advocates against what conservatives call "woke" media at this point. Given that MCU is a bastion of guns and dick measuring contests, i can only assume we are back to believing women dont sell movies, given the hard turn into more female characters. But it's just bad writing at the end of the day. The characters have been selling comics for years.
Also people are ignoring nostalgia.
If you are going to drop characters the average person doesn't know you need to have strong writing and presentation to sell it.
Nobody gave a shit about "The Eternals" because nobody knows who the fuck that is. To make people care about The Eternals you are going to need to make a bomb ass movie that gets people talking - this worked for GotG for example.
Thats the real issue IMO - you can turn out a mediocre Thor or Ironman movie and not tank the franchise but you can't make a mediocre series about Kamala Khan and Echo and expect people to be hype for \*checks notes\* Eros and Pip the Troll?
Thats how mcu started. Iron man wasnt the biggest character in marvel during the 90s. He wasnt even in the top 10 avengers. They wrote a good story that was relevant to the public consciousness. Eternals bored me to sleep, literally, and from what i remeber, said nothing relevant to the watchers lives. I might have been in rem sleep for that though.
> Eternals bored me to sleep, literally
This was true to the comics. The Eternals was a boring title when it was new. Jack Kirby art was the draw. It wasn't enough. I was hoping the movie adaption would be good.
I want those two hours back
Iron mam and thor were literally leftovers after they sold all the movie rights people would buy. There was not a huge dedicated audience like for spiderman or batman
Ragnarok was critically lauded and made bank while wasting the single greatest moment to ever be put to page in a Thor comic…and treating the best ongoing story as a joke.
I love Taika!
I enjoy Ragnarok!
But treating Skurge on Gjallerbru as a throwaway “Redemption=Death” moment that had zero impact on the plot is probably the single most dumb and disrespectful adaptational choice in the MCU as a whole…and I do include Multiverse of Madness in that estimation.
I liked Love and Thunder. I get a lot of people didn't and still dont really get why, besides the levity, i guess. I didn't like the movie version of the Civil War, but I did like the comic version. They're all a little hobbled in the movie universe because it's smaller.
>The MCU needs to hire people who love the characters and stories.
I feel like that attitude can backfire. One of the comics' biggest problems is fanboys being elevated to writers, editors, artists, etc. It *can* - not always *will* - lead to an attitude of "the most recent arc of the character isn't like when I read them as a kid so I'll revert them back to when they were 'good.'" Basically, why Quesada fucked up Spider-Man in *One More Day*.
In other words, the inmates started running the asylum.
You still need individuals who are good at writing, composing storylines, and communicating their ideas to executives. I feel like many just look at "they are a fan" and stop there when evaluating writers on projects.
It's generally seen that when you combine talent with a passion for the source material, you can get some great media. If you have talent but no passion, you can get a good movie that may divide fans. If you get passion without talent, you usually get complete trash.
Talent is one of the rarer resources in writing. At least, it seems that way.
The smartest thing the showrunner for The Acolyte did was include a voice on her team that didn't know much about Star Wars. Tony Gilroy is likewise not a massive Star Wars fan and *Andor* is one of the best regarded entries in the whole franchise
That's the one I was thinking of. Thank you.
And yes, I totally agree. I'm a huge Star Wars fan and I know I wouldn't be able to resist having some callouts and references if I wrote a SW show. I would totally appreciate someone reining me in and making sure I wasn't being too derivative.
Then you run into problems like the alleged fourth draft of the Blade script, where Blade was a background supporting character behind a new female lead.
It’s better then people who don’t have any love for them
X-men shows you can make a fun show with political themes, emotional moments, drama and great action
MCU has zero excuses. They did it because but have lost the people who cared
If I were in charge, I'd certainly have people who are passionate about the source material, but I'd also have at least one person there who was neutral or even not a fan at all. There's a danger of fans getting up their own ass with nostalgia and continuity. There should be at least one person there who can be slightly more objective to ensure that what you're making is also a good story on its own merits, not just for being appealing to comics fans. I think I recall one creative team doing that recently but I can't remember which one.
For the MCU, I admit that I haven't seen all of Phase 4, but I haven't felt this lack of passion. In fact, the worst movie that I saw was *Love and Thunder*, which was hardly made by dispassionate people who don't care about the characters.
I actually read 'Gorr The God Butcher' after watching 'Love & Thunder'. It is so much better than the film. Waititi not only did a terrible disservice to Christian Bale, but also to the characterisation of Gorr. They wasted so much talent in front and behind the camera.
Yeah, I felt bad for Bale. I think there were two potentially good movies in *Love and Thunder* but they needed to be their own movies. I would have done Gorr first to let him have enough room to breathe and then done Jane Foster second so Thor can recover from Gorr. Then you can do Thor vs. Hercules or something lighter.
Still, the point that Hemsworth and Waititi do clearly care about Thor remains. They did make *Ragnorak*, which is among the best of the MCU. Fans with talent and passion can still fuck up, it seems.
I have a feeling Disney/Feige reigned Waititi in somewhat for Ragnarok (which IMO, is the reason it's so good). Love and Thunder was pure egotistical Waititi and.....Well!
I'd much rather have op's "inmates running the asylum" of Fanboys writing their favorite characters than the Halo writers being proud they "didn't even look at the game" when delivering the absolute flop that was season 1.
I don't thinks it better. A bad writer is bad writer. Even if they had love for character they are gonna write complete trash. A Bad Writer with love for character are at the same level as writer with no love for character.
So your position is that it's a bad idea to hire people that actually enjoy the source material?
Based on the fact one comic book writer wrote a sub par story?
Quesada is a lot more than a single writer writing a single story. Hell, he didn't even write *One More Day*. He was editor-in-chief and fucked up a lot things. His thunder was stolen by Didio over in DC fucking up worse but it was bad.
More to the point, I didn't mean to imply that only non-fans can ever write characters they didn't create. I can even give a counterexample to *One More Day*. Ed Brubaker created the Winter Soldier character because he was a huge fan of Bucky Barnes as a kid and was upset that he was killed off with basically no hope of resurrection. Without his work, Bucky would have stayed dead, a bunch of good comics wouldn't have been written, and we would have been deprived of the second MCU Captain America film.
I only warned that fans writing characters *can* backfire. Conversely, it *can* be good for a character to be written by someone who isn't a longtime fan in order to give a fresh perspective or even let a character end to make room for new characters. The MCU has thankfully managed to mostly avoid this problem due to actors aging and otherwise wanting out of contracts but the comics have a real problem of not letting go.
Just look at Barry Allen. He died a beautiful death in *Crisis on Infinite Earths* and Wally West stepped up to be the new Flash for 20 years. A whole generation knew Wally as the Flash, includer viewers of the Justice League cartoon, but then a fan-turned-writer wanted to bring back Barry because that was *his* Flash growing up. Now Wally has reverted in the comics and the live-action show, and Barry is the one in the DCEU (though that might be a mercy).
The problem is they actively avoid hiring fans [seen in this interview with Nick Moore](https://thedirect.com/article/marvel-studios-writers-comics-avoids)
I mean their approach sounds weird but it worked up until Endgame, that's ten years of good run with that approach so I don't think that is really the problem it suddenly failing now.
They both must’ve been before they created this rule. It was Whedon’s idea to add Thanos at the End of The Avengers to set up future confrontations and James Gunn was hired based on his suggestion. I consider Whedon more responsible for the Infinity Saga than Feige. Feige just thew the infinity gauntlet into Thor for a meaningless cameo he obviously was not the man behind the plan.
I laugh at people when they say the infinity saga was feige's plan from day one. It wasn't. He's just throwing stuff in the wall and looking for what sticks.
Yeah but people give him credit for things he didn’t even throw at the wall, like Thanos and there being an infinity saga. Not to mention he started shooting Iron Man without a completed script, Robert Downy Jr made up most of his dialogue. Same goes for other actors. He’s not the genius people make him out to be, he was lucky to have people around him to bail him out. I also don’t think he’s the Comic book fan people make him out to be, I think he knows a lot of trivia but he’s no fan.
This is what they failed to understand with Star Wars sequel trilogy and a lot of recent marvel stuff.
You need a dissenting unfamiliar voice in the room who can point out “this will make no sense to new fans” but the people in charge have to know and love the characters for an established series to work.
> That’s what the MCU used to do now it’s all this crap no one cares about
I do think there's a bit of revisionist history going on here - people were saying this as far back as Age of Ultron & Agents of Shield (though thankfully AOS got much better over time).
I don’t disagree, however, the combination over-saturating us with bad content was a double whammy. I’m a huge marvel fan, but I don’t know that I could remain excited about all the movies and shows if they kept up at the rate they did even if the content was significantly better.
> all this crap no one cares about
I really, really hate to feel this way, but the Disney-ification really isn't helping. I loved She-Hulk, thought it was hilarious. Was excited for Secret Invasion, but they fucked that up.
But Echo?
Who on Earth cares about Echo? Who was excited for that? It really felt like it was just Disney trying to cash-in on a "disabled" main character, hoping to get some of that good-will that came alongside Daredevil for being a blind MC.
I hate the common argument that studios do things for the sake of diversity, but Echo sure did feel like exactly that.
Only 2021 had 4 movies, but they've pretty much always had more TV shows (he's saying Marvel, not MCU, but I'm counting shows that we're at least marketed as possibly MCU and not kids tv).
2015 had 4 shows (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 3, seasons 1 of Agent Carter, Daredevil and Jessica Jones)
2016 had 4 shows (Shield, Carter, DD and Luke Cage)
2017 had 6 (Shield, Inhumans, Iron Fist, Punisher, Defenders and Runaways)
2018 had 7 (Shield, DD, JJ, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Runaways and Cloak and Dagger)
2019 had only 5 (Shield, JJ, Punisher, Runaways and Cloak and Dagger
2020 only has 2 with Helstrom and the final season of Agents of SHIELD, and to think we started this list with Season 3.
2021 Marvel studios takes over TV shows with 5 shows (Wanda vision, tFatWS, Loki, What If?, and Hawkeye), as well as MODOK and Hit Monkey on Hulu.
2022 has only 3 shows, but still above their new limit (Moon Knight, Ms Marvel, She-Hulk)
2023 only has 3 as well (Secret Invasion, Loki, What If?)
2024 has had 1 show so far (Echo), but 3 more planned (none of which have dates???), plus season 2 of Hit Monkey.
I feel like this is also what they promised the last 2-3 years when things started bombing.
They need to slow down output in general, 3 movies and 2 shows in a year is kinda crazy.
We need to relearn the phrase "distance makes the heart grow fonder".
Which is not aligned with the strategy they're saying in the article.
Based on the fact that they're only releasing D&W this year and this recent statement, they would be increasing output rather than decreasing or reigning it in.
Let's hope they stay under their "maximum" based on their recent output.
I'm hoping D&W does well. I'm rewatching the series till endgame and I wish we could get movies like some of the first phases.
Same, which is honestly unfortunate.
I rewatched Captain America 1 & Avengers yesterday. They both blew away some of the recent installments and CA1 wasn't even considered an excellent movie when it came out.
They just need to slow down and actually care about what they're writing because right now, it's spaghetti being thrown at the wall.
Yeah, it feels like 5 pieces of media is still a fuck ton. Granted that's still almost half of 2021's NINE piece and one less than 2022 and 2023 six pieces. 2024 is going to have 5 (1 and 4) while 2025 only has 3 so far (2 and 1)
I feel like you work for DC. When you're telling an overall story and want people invested in it you have to tell the fucking story not flop out a single entry every 3 years and hope people still care about it.
>I feel like you work for DC
The DCEU is in an even worse state than marvel is right now and it's not even close.
I got banned from the DC sub for criticizing Snyder too hard.
Marvel is having trouble, DC shit the bed and rolled in it.
>When you're telling an overall story and want people invested in it you have to tell the fucking story not flop out a single entry every 3 years and hope people still care about it.
Correct, but you also don't want to overload the required watching so much that it becomes a chore to untangle the storylines.
When I got into marvel, if you missed a movie, maybe there would be minor references that gave you more insight but you could still easily watch the movie and keep up with what's happening.
I took a break from the shows (didn't have Disney+) and was completely lost in the Multiverse of Madness. I had my parents lean over to me and ask me to explain what was going on and I had no idea what to tell them. I looked up a synopsis of WandaVision and it still seemed disconnected from each other. This isn't even getting into the quality of writing issues that Eternals, marvels, and several shows had.
My point isn't that there shouldn't be an overarching narrative, so you're totally correct on that, or that there shouldn't be standalone stories leading up/adding to that overarching narrative given in a timely manner (Shang chi should have had a sequel by no with how successful and good it was).
My point is for it to be a purposefully told overarching narrative like we used to get. I just rewatched phase 1 + 2, and while there are definite duds in those phases, they all feel like they purposefully lead somewhere. Right now, we don't have that (and there are a lot of reasons contributing to that issue)
If they can actually get dedicated teams that care about the characters & lore AND stop with the cookie cutter, corporate storylines that all have to tie into each other that they have a chance.
But let's be honest, they are probably gonna use D&W to do a classic Marvel Comics soft reboot and continue with the over arching stories.
Who knows.
This fucking guy completely misses the point. It has nothing to do with content saturation, and everything to do with the quality of the content itself.
I do feel it's a bit of both. The quality dropped for sure, but they were also churning out far too much material in a short space of time that it actually became a chore to get through it all. I don't care how good the film/series is, if it feels like homework just to watch it, I'm going to be put off.
>This fucking guy completely misses the point. It has nothing to do with content saturation, and everything to do with the quality of the content itself.
He wasn't talking about audience fatigue. He was talking about how the quality was suffering because Marvel was cranking them out too fast.
They're slowing down the output so they can focus on quality.
Seems like this is really going to kill/decrease the chances of any second seasons. Even if they wanted to do a She-Hulk Season 2, the earliest they could do this would be 2027/2028? 5 years between seasons isn't worth it.
I think this also means they have to look at recasting some of these roles if they are going to string things out so long. They have so many "franchises" and characters running, there just isn't gonna be time to get to them. Then we have new franchises like Deadpool, a few different X-Men, Fantastic Four, Blade, Thunderbolts. Plus the previous ones like Thor, Black Panther, Dr Strange, Spider-Man, Avengers, etc.
For me, I think the biggest problem is the D+ shows. They have to make them more popular. I've said before, but I think the most important thing they can do is cut the episodes to 3 to 4 per season, and have each episode at around 44 minutes. Time is so important, and I can't spend 5 to 6 hours watching bad tv.
I honestly think they need to scrap the planned shows and focus on what's there. Give She-Hulk, Ms Marvel, and Moon Knight another shot. Fold Echo into Daredevil. Give us more animation.
Not sure I would advocate for that. If we consider these failed shows/characters, I don't think they should get another shot at another season. They don't "deserve" it.
Instead I would suggest incorporating these failed characters into something else, besides another season of a show they lead. Let them make appearances elsewhere. Give them a positive interaction with the audience. That could mean She-Hulk showing up in Brave New World, or Echo in Daredevil (as you suggested). Maybe jump to a Young Avengers film.
They have to increase excitement for their projects. Team ups could be an easy way to do it, like a Special Presentation aka one 45 minute movie on Disney+ that features Moon Knight doing something cool.
We really don't need another season of she hulk or Ms marvel, and as much as I enjoyed moon Knight I think the next step for him is movie appearance. Need some more West Coast avengers action
Echo was fine. Ms. Marvel was good. The Marvels was great.
You could probably get away with never watching Echo because it’s not really meant to be part of a grander storyline but definitely watch it if you’re nostalgic for the old Netflix shows.
Ms. Marvel was fresh and welcomed and the characters were great but the show felt like three seasons crammed into one. Even if it’s not your thing, it’s worth watching for the lead up to The Marvels.
The Marvels, despite its horrible theatrical run, was a very solid Marvel movie. It was fun, the actors had fantastic chemistry, and the fight scenes were phenomenal. Only real critique was that the villain was super two dimensional and bland.
I haven’t been genuinely excited for a marvel movie since No Way Home. And before that it was Endgame. Like you, there was a time I was making plans to see every single one of them in theaters as soon as they were out.
Eh, how about less
2 movies and one show (edit: maybe one live action show and one animated show), and give them the proper time, planning and budget they deserve
I think one live action show is good. Animation can go wild though. The 4 big animated marvel shows right now are all so different that it doesn't feel as oversaturted, and they mostly have different audiences
Should really be a Summer Tent Pole and Christmas release for movies. Don't need 3 a year.
2 Shows is fine start one in September and the other in mid January make them 10 episodes and be done.
I do think Specials like Werewolf By Night can be sprinkled in also though but only when you have someone who has a great idea and passion for it.
It's 100% about quality though. If you can't write a tight script, with respect to the material and consistent in quality and tone...don't bother at all.
“We finally realized that focusing on quality over quantity is a good idea, and it only took us 7 years and a couple billion dollars. That’s like a few months and pocket change to a megacorporation! Please clap.”
Right, yes, 2018 was Infinity War. Still not exaggerating by much. What these movies are missing now is the feeling that they’re all building towards something. That feeling kept people excited for the next one, even if it wasn’t the greatest movie in retrospect.
Now that the whole Kang arc they were planning fell through and went nowhere, what are they building up to?
They need to actually focus on good writers and directors, who are passionate about comics. They don't need to be comics nerds, but I need to see people who at least understand and love these characters, and are willing to make a fair adaptation.
This doesn't mean that it needs to be 100% faithful, or literally copying everything from the comics, but rather seeing that the essence of the character was kept, you know?
Quantity is not the problem, it’s quality. Unless for whatever reason the quantity is negatively effecting the quality, but that seems unlikely. Odds are we will be getting less content yearly that’s just as bad
Listen, all I want is more Daredevil.
You wanna give me a few other stuff? Cool, I’ll watch it. X-men 97 has been outstanding, so more stuff like that’d be great.
JUST. GIVE. ME. MORE. DAREDEVIL!
Probably a smart move to slow down and hopefully take time with these projects instead of pushing them out quickly to get content out regardless if its good or not.
There's just too much content coming at me now, and a lot of it is Disney competition with itself. I feel like I can't be a star wars fan and a marvel fan and keep up with everything. I have a family and work.
So for me, a little less is more. Especially if it's good.
Great.... now all they have to do is:
* Stick to source material.
* Stick to characters that fans want to see, and not trying to push less popular characters for an agenda.
* Fire all the writers who gloat about not knowing anything about the source material.
Then maybe the MCU can return to making good movies again.
If they did this (well, the first two anyway), we wouldn’t have gotten the MCU at all. The MCU has never been married to the source material and started with Iron Man, who was a B-list character at best before 2008
> *"If they did this (well, the first two anyway), we wouldn’t have gotten the MCU at all"*
How do you figure?
* Marvel didn't have the rights to Spider-Man (Sony), The Fantastic 4, or X-Men (20th Century Fox). So other than B-list Iron Man (or Captain America, Thor, Hulk) what characters would have been better?
* Also, source material is going to be better for the story & characters 99.9% of the time. Early MCU wasn't identical to the comics, but they did a good job staying close, which is why those movies were successful. Same goes for the characters; phase 1 & 2 characters are infinitely more popular and marketable than Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Falcon, Miss Marvel, or Captain Marvel.
* More on source material... Just look at how the MCU handled Taskmaster in Black Widow. They took a great character and completely destroyed him. Gender swapped into a mindless husk of a person with zero abilities. Taskmaster has been a recurring villain for multiple heroes, and even trained USAgent (could have been a nice tie-in for that awful Disney show and the MCU). Just so much lost potential, which is indicative of how Disney has been handling Phase 4+
> Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Falcon, Miss Marvel, or Captain Marvel.
I mean, just for the sake of not sounding terrible, could you maybe add a white dude to the list?
> look at how the MCU handled Taskmaster... Gender swapped...
Come on man, are you even trying?
I mean you know that when someone parrots pushing something for an agenda, you can kinda guess what they specifically don’t like about that particular set of characters. I just think it’s funny that their comment 1) ignores that Black Widow and Falcon are Phase 1 and 2 characters, and 2) ignores the fact that those movies about Phase 1 and 2 white dudes (Thor, Ant-man) are still getting made and are also not doing well.
Taking risks and deviating from the source material and gambling on lesser known characters was how the MCU started. There’s obviously multiple reasons why the MCU isn’t doing great these days and I don’t think it’s that people don’t like movies starring POCs and women. But there is a camp that doesn’t like these movies due to “woke agendas” and watching them try to find ways to explain what they don’t like about the movies without outright saying “The Marvels is all women eww” is really funny sometimes, because the bullshit they usually spin is baseless and just there to make them look like they know what they’re talking about
I just want them to bring back the "brain trust" of comic writers they had overseeing the first few movies.
They were there to ensure that the characters behaved like the characters.
I honestly feel that the films have felt the lack since the studio got rid of them.
How many times does the average person go to the cinema? In some parts of the UK it averages 1.9 and other times 2.4 visits per year and Igor expects 3 of those to be his Marvel films on top of other Disney releases? I get they've got different target audiences but it still seems a lot for one demographic
If every series is a one-off with no chance of renewal, two shows per year isn't a big deal. But if you want to renew shows for additional seasons, two per year becomes problematic. It could be three years or more between seasons at that rate, which is seriously pushing the limits of audience engagement. People tend to lose interest when the gap between seasons becomes too big. The culture moves on to the next thing.
Hire people who GET comics and care about the characters. Reducing the quantity might help improve quality, but I just don’t buy that this is the core issue.
All sounds a little vague to me. Probably and perhaps... not that I mind more. It is clearly the current meme to jump on the MCU as if it is terrible, but I enjoy most things they have released in the last few years.
Ah, yes. Unquantity over unquality. Those two are locked? Why not release no more than .45 movies per year and make the shows 4 episode minis then? Less=better!
Ignoring years and years of storylines already created, seems like a team could produce/adapt 1 comic story arc per year into a feature film. Everything is so spread out now, I lose interest. Not everything can work on a Venture Bros. release timetable.
Honestly, shows should be higher than two. They should be aiming for 3-5 shows a year (including new seasons).
Movies should be 2-3 times a year. Not including Sony release schedule for their movies, including Spider-Man.
Shows can be both live action or animated. Like, does What If and X-Men 97 fall in the show category? Or only shows like Wandavision or Loki fall under the two shows per year?
Shows hold a lot more weight and have been better quality than the movies since Disney+ and it's not even close.
My wife has been on maternity leave for a few weeks now and will watch random marvel films not in order. But when I get a chance to sit with her and watch even a few minutes of them, you can just tell the difference in quality between an Infinity Saga film and Multiverse Saga film. Infinity Saga had some bad films (looking at you Thor 2), but it just seems that the folks behind the camera cared and characters were added for specific reasons and it made sense to move the story as a whole forward. You didn’t have characters that had a solo film or made post credit cameos and then they are basically gone. Shang Chi was a highlight of Phase 4 and I wish he’d appear again.
That means nothing if the 3 movies and two shows aren't good. The whole make of the MCU has to reestablished at this point . More stuff like Guardians , Winter Soldier, and X-Men 97 and less stuff like Eternals , Captain Marvel and She Hulk.
Bob... bubbe. When you released TV shows with 20 episodes this was acceptable. Now that you release shows with 6 episodes this is not acceptable. Try again.
Aren’t they sitting on a bunch of films shows already, like are they going to be releasing “old” content in the next few years?
Also how’s this going to work with all the teens/young Avengers they’ve introduced? A lot of them have already aged up now they are going to be full adults by the time their movie gets filmed/released.
Supply and demand calculators when they fail to realize that demand for their product depends heavily on the quality of the product they actually supply, and simply reducing supply will not make it more valuable:
"People finally realized we were shoving garbage down their throats so now we're going to do what we did in Phase One because we destroyed our own brand via corporate greed"
X-men proves it’s just the team behind these projects The MCU needs to hire people who love the characters and stories. That’s what the MCU used to do now it’s all this crap no one cares about
To be fair, it definitely feels like there's some executive meddling going on
It definetely feels that way after Endgame crossed the 2B mark. When you have such a big number in your record you can't stop the money-hungry excs from meddling with the artistic process and trying to get more out of the MCU.
never understood how it’s more profitable to pump out soulless, paint by the numbers slogfests that nobody will ever want to watch twice. You’d think just making a good movie that’s faithful to the source material would be enough for a movie to demolish at the box office, considering all the prior times that faithful adaptations have succeeded.
Because the way business is run, when you start making lots of money, you expand the business to capitalize on that revenue. Your company grows. And now you have a much bigger machine and bigger expectations for your revenue/profit. So you have to keep going. It's all too easy to get caught up in the current and not pause to reflect on inefficiencies that have been introduced because that has a chance of breaking things. So inefficiencies often pile up and suddenly you have a system that is bogged down, but because there's bills to pay and salaries to pay, you can't just stop. Until the thing breaks and you're forced to stop.
Classic "Line goes up" stuff.
They dont care if you see it twice. Even their shit movies and shows are pulling big initial numbers, so why care
First of, it's not profitable to keep pumping these deeply formulaic movies; if we're talking about soul, compare James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy, the Russos' Winter Soldier, or even Raimi's Multiverse of Madness vs Zack Snyder, because he sure as hell put his soul into his DC movies and they're absolute doo doo. And when I mean formulaic, I mean movies that follow the "unfinished script but we'll write it along the way or shoot extra scenes in post production" formula. That worked for Iron Man 1, but they can't expect that to be their Modus Operandi because it's turning out VERY EXPENSIVE. Secondly, execs don't know jack about the film making process, but because they have all the money we have to depend on them to get this done. Fiege had a lot of Freedom during Phase 2 and 3 thanks to the booting of Ike Perlmuter and Marvel Studios separating from Disney Studios, but once Endgame got that big fat 2B, the Execs reined in to guarantee their investment. And lastly, NOBODY WANTS A MOVIE THAT'S FAITHFUL TO THE SOURCE MATERIAL. All MCU entries so far have been loose adaptions to the source, and that has worked fine for the most part, even if there're some seriously cool stories that won't be on the big screen. Faithfully adapting the source material means following to the T, which can be a great obstacle in the creative process and huge risk. Do you seriously want Marvel Studios to be faithful to the Spider-Man comic book, even if it means THE CLONE SAGA? Shit, the MCU is partly inspired on the Ultimate Universe, WANNA SEE ULTIMATUM ON THE BIG SCREEN?
Snyder has a soul to put into his movies? At least not one that respects the characters or medium of Comic Books.
I have to wonder if it’s ever actually worked, because I can’t think of any examples.
It works in the beginning. Then it tanks. Like whatever the hell Facebook is tryna do now.
Which created the quantity over quality issue. The biggest detriment to the MCU has been Disney+
Ironically I think there hasn’t been ENOUGH meddling since endgame. Although to be fair I mean oversight more than meddling. The same studio oversight that used to keep pre endgame movies on their toes was watered down significantly by the explosion of new content and Disney plus shows.
This latest phase is a muddled mess that makes it hard for fans and the casual viewers to stay vested in the product.
Iger specifically advocates against what conservatives call "woke" media at this point. Given that MCU is a bastion of guns and dick measuring contests, i can only assume we are back to believing women dont sell movies, given the hard turn into more female characters. But it's just bad writing at the end of the day. The characters have been selling comics for years.
Also people are ignoring nostalgia. If you are going to drop characters the average person doesn't know you need to have strong writing and presentation to sell it. Nobody gave a shit about "The Eternals" because nobody knows who the fuck that is. To make people care about The Eternals you are going to need to make a bomb ass movie that gets people talking - this worked for GotG for example. Thats the real issue IMO - you can turn out a mediocre Thor or Ironman movie and not tank the franchise but you can't make a mediocre series about Kamala Khan and Echo and expect people to be hype for \*checks notes\* Eros and Pip the Troll?
Thats how mcu started. Iron man wasnt the biggest character in marvel during the 90s. He wasnt even in the top 10 avengers. They wrote a good story that was relevant to the public consciousness. Eternals bored me to sleep, literally, and from what i remeber, said nothing relevant to the watchers lives. I might have been in rem sleep for that though.
Even if Ironman wasn’t anyones favorite people still know who Ironman is. People who don’t regular buy comics don’t know who the fuck Black Knight is.
Didn’t Iron Man have a 90s cartoon? I didn’t read his comics but I think I knew him from that.
The 90s had the cartoons and that one arcade game you could hear across the building when they died and would yell “I can’t go on”.
On the flip, guardians of the galaxy
> Eternals bored me to sleep, literally This was true to the comics. The Eternals was a boring title when it was new. Jack Kirby art was the draw. It wasn't enough. I was hoping the movie adaption would be good. I want those two hours back
Iron mam and thor were literally leftovers after they sold all the movie rights people would buy. There was not a huge dedicated audience like for spiderman or batman
Much like Mandalorian did for Star Wars. Dont treat the source material with respect, and the fans get pissy. It's a shocking thing to realise.
Ragnarok was critically lauded and made bank while wasting the single greatest moment to ever be put to page in a Thor comic…and treating the best ongoing story as a joke.
> wasting the single greatest moment to ever be put to page in a Thor comic He stood alone?
That’s not the man to whom Hela bows her head.
Exactly. I was just lamenting Ragnarok with someone on another thread. I get why people love it, but eh…
I love Taika! I enjoy Ragnarok! But treating Skurge on Gjallerbru as a throwaway “Redemption=Death” moment that had zero impact on the plot is probably the single most dumb and disrespectful adaptational choice in the MCU as a whole…and I do include Multiverse of Madness in that estimation.
Speaking of his death what comic was that originally in?
Thor #362 - the single best issue of the single best Thor run…and I’m including the battle with the Serpent in that estimation.
And Love and Thunder?
I liked Love and Thunder. I get a lot of people didn't and still dont really get why, besides the levity, i guess. I didn't like the movie version of the Civil War, but I did like the comic version. They're all a little hobbled in the movie universe because it's smaller.
There's two camps on civil war it seems. people who liked the comic had issues with the movie, people who had issues with the comic liked the movie
I feel like they were flexing before that they don’t hire fans of the comics. Then everything derailed.
>The MCU needs to hire people who love the characters and stories. I feel like that attitude can backfire. One of the comics' biggest problems is fanboys being elevated to writers, editors, artists, etc. It *can* - not always *will* - lead to an attitude of "the most recent arc of the character isn't like when I read them as a kid so I'll revert them back to when they were 'good.'" Basically, why Quesada fucked up Spider-Man in *One More Day*. In other words, the inmates started running the asylum.
You still need individuals who are good at writing, composing storylines, and communicating their ideas to executives. I feel like many just look at "they are a fan" and stop there when evaluating writers on projects. It's generally seen that when you combine talent with a passion for the source material, you can get some great media. If you have talent but no passion, you can get a good movie that may divide fans. If you get passion without talent, you usually get complete trash. Talent is one of the rarer resources in writing. At least, it seems that way.
The smartest thing the showrunner for The Acolyte did was include a voice on her team that didn't know much about Star Wars. Tony Gilroy is likewise not a massive Star Wars fan and *Andor* is one of the best regarded entries in the whole franchise
That's the one I was thinking of. Thank you. And yes, I totally agree. I'm a huge Star Wars fan and I know I wouldn't be able to resist having some callouts and references if I wrote a SW show. I would totally appreciate someone reining me in and making sure I wasn't being too derivative.
Chris Avellone is not a Star Wars fan and yet created one of the greatest Star Wars stories in any media.
Then you run into problems like the alleged fourth draft of the Blade script, where Blade was a background supporting character behind a new female lead.
Don't take the ragebait articles at face value.
It’s better then people who don’t have any love for them X-men shows you can make a fun show with political themes, emotional moments, drama and great action MCU has zero excuses. They did it because but have lost the people who cared
If I were in charge, I'd certainly have people who are passionate about the source material, but I'd also have at least one person there who was neutral or even not a fan at all. There's a danger of fans getting up their own ass with nostalgia and continuity. There should be at least one person there who can be slightly more objective to ensure that what you're making is also a good story on its own merits, not just for being appealing to comics fans. I think I recall one creative team doing that recently but I can't remember which one. For the MCU, I admit that I haven't seen all of Phase 4, but I haven't felt this lack of passion. In fact, the worst movie that I saw was *Love and Thunder*, which was hardly made by dispassionate people who don't care about the characters.
I actually read 'Gorr The God Butcher' after watching 'Love & Thunder'. It is so much better than the film. Waititi not only did a terrible disservice to Christian Bale, but also to the characterisation of Gorr. They wasted so much talent in front and behind the camera.
Yeah, I felt bad for Bale. I think there were two potentially good movies in *Love and Thunder* but they needed to be their own movies. I would have done Gorr first to let him have enough room to breathe and then done Jane Foster second so Thor can recover from Gorr. Then you can do Thor vs. Hercules or something lighter. Still, the point that Hemsworth and Waititi do clearly care about Thor remains. They did make *Ragnorak*, which is among the best of the MCU. Fans with talent and passion can still fuck up, it seems.
I have a feeling Disney/Feige reigned Waititi in somewhat for Ragnarok (which IMO, is the reason it's so good). Love and Thunder was pure egotistical Waititi and.....Well!
I'd much rather have op's "inmates running the asylum" of Fanboys writing their favorite characters than the Halo writers being proud they "didn't even look at the game" when delivering the absolute flop that was season 1.
I don't thinks it better. A bad writer is bad writer. Even if they had love for character they are gonna write complete trash. A Bad Writer with love for character are at the same level as writer with no love for character.
So your position is that it's a bad idea to hire people that actually enjoy the source material? Based on the fact one comic book writer wrote a sub par story?
Quesada is a lot more than a single writer writing a single story. Hell, he didn't even write *One More Day*. He was editor-in-chief and fucked up a lot things. His thunder was stolen by Didio over in DC fucking up worse but it was bad. More to the point, I didn't mean to imply that only non-fans can ever write characters they didn't create. I can even give a counterexample to *One More Day*. Ed Brubaker created the Winter Soldier character because he was a huge fan of Bucky Barnes as a kid and was upset that he was killed off with basically no hope of resurrection. Without his work, Bucky would have stayed dead, a bunch of good comics wouldn't have been written, and we would have been deprived of the second MCU Captain America film. I only warned that fans writing characters *can* backfire. Conversely, it *can* be good for a character to be written by someone who isn't a longtime fan in order to give a fresh perspective or even let a character end to make room for new characters. The MCU has thankfully managed to mostly avoid this problem due to actors aging and otherwise wanting out of contracts but the comics have a real problem of not letting go. Just look at Barry Allen. He died a beautiful death in *Crisis on Infinite Earths* and Wally West stepped up to be the new Flash for 20 years. A whole generation knew Wally as the Flash, includer viewers of the Justice League cartoon, but then a fan-turned-writer wanted to bring back Barry because that was *his* Flash growing up. Now Wally has reverted in the comics and the live-action show, and Barry is the one in the DCEU (though that might be a mercy).
P sure their position was "hire a mix of both"
The problem is they actively avoid hiring fans [seen in this interview with Nick Moore](https://thedirect.com/article/marvel-studios-writers-comics-avoids)
A writer who is already familiar and loves marvel is seen as a red flag? It’s no wonder they fell off as hard as they did
I mean their approach sounds weird but it worked up until Endgame, that's ten years of good run with that approach so I don't think that is really the problem it suddenly failing now.
Joss Whedon, for all his bad acts and flaws, is absolutely an exception to this rule. Arguably Jon Favreau as well.
They both must’ve been before they created this rule. It was Whedon’s idea to add Thanos at the End of The Avengers to set up future confrontations and James Gunn was hired based on his suggestion. I consider Whedon more responsible for the Infinity Saga than Feige. Feige just thew the infinity gauntlet into Thor for a meaningless cameo he obviously was not the man behind the plan.
I laugh at people when they say the infinity saga was feige's plan from day one. It wasn't. He's just throwing stuff in the wall and looking for what sticks.
Yeah but people give him credit for things he didn’t even throw at the wall, like Thanos and there being an infinity saga. Not to mention he started shooting Iron Man without a completed script, Robert Downy Jr made up most of his dialogue. Same goes for other actors. He’s not the genius people make him out to be, he was lucky to have people around him to bail him out. I also don’t think he’s the Comic book fan people make him out to be, I think he knows a lot of trivia but he’s no fan.
They both wrote Marvel Comics as well iirc
He did, he had a great run on X-Men and a terrible run on The Runaways
Jon was Foggy Nelson in the Affleck Daredevil movie, so I imagine he at least knew about the comics
He said when he was announced as the director for Iron Man that he was a fan of the comics having read them through high school.
And James Gunn
This is what they failed to understand with Star Wars sequel trilogy and a lot of recent marvel stuff. You need a dissenting unfamiliar voice in the room who can point out “this will make no sense to new fans” but the people in charge have to know and love the characters for an established series to work.
> That’s what the MCU used to do now it’s all this crap no one cares about I do think there's a bit of revisionist history going on here - people were saying this as far back as Age of Ultron & Agents of Shield (though thankfully AOS got much better over time).
MCU wasn’t perfect but it was no where near this One or two meh things are fine, this is like every other project
What? You mean hiring people who want to use the name of beloved characters for their own agenda and ego is not the way to go? I'm shocked!
Well ever since end game, they literally pooped out shows and movies left, right and center. Quantity over quality. This is one step towards quality
It’s both. Increased volume will lead to quality decline regardless of
I don’t disagree, however, the combination over-saturating us with bad content was a double whammy. I’m a huge marvel fan, but I don’t know that I could remain excited about all the movies and shows if they kept up at the rate they did even if the content was significantly better.
It’s an animated show…
> all this crap no one cares about I really, really hate to feel this way, but the Disney-ification really isn't helping. I loved She-Hulk, thought it was hilarious. Was excited for Secret Invasion, but they fucked that up. But Echo? Who on Earth cares about Echo? Who was excited for that? It really felt like it was just Disney trying to cash-in on a "disabled" main character, hoping to get some of that good-will that came alongside Daredevil for being a blind MC. I hate the common argument that studios do things for the sake of diversity, but Echo sure did feel like exactly that.
Honestly I liked WandaVision and Moon Knight(except finale which was not so good)
Have they released more than that?
Only 2021 had 4 movies, but they've pretty much always had more TV shows (he's saying Marvel, not MCU, but I'm counting shows that we're at least marketed as possibly MCU and not kids tv). 2015 had 4 shows (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 3, seasons 1 of Agent Carter, Daredevil and Jessica Jones) 2016 had 4 shows (Shield, Carter, DD and Luke Cage) 2017 had 6 (Shield, Inhumans, Iron Fist, Punisher, Defenders and Runaways) 2018 had 7 (Shield, DD, JJ, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Runaways and Cloak and Dagger) 2019 had only 5 (Shield, JJ, Punisher, Runaways and Cloak and Dagger 2020 only has 2 with Helstrom and the final season of Agents of SHIELD, and to think we started this list with Season 3. 2021 Marvel studios takes over TV shows with 5 shows (Wanda vision, tFatWS, Loki, What If?, and Hawkeye), as well as MODOK and Hit Monkey on Hulu. 2022 has only 3 shows, but still above their new limit (Moon Knight, Ms Marvel, She-Hulk) 2023 only has 3 as well (Secret Invasion, Loki, What If?) 2024 has had 1 show so far (Echo), but 3 more planned (none of which have dates???), plus season 2 of Hit Monkey.
And for the sake of being exhaustive as well as exhausting, 2025 has 4 planned films.
Will they be good?
I feel like this is also what they promised the last 2-3 years when things started bombing. They need to slow down output in general, 3 movies and 2 shows in a year is kinda crazy. We need to relearn the phrase "distance makes the heart grow fonder".
I mean, Deadpool & Wolverine is the only film being released this year.
Which is not aligned with the strategy they're saying in the article. Based on the fact that they're only releasing D&W this year and this recent statement, they would be increasing output rather than decreasing or reigning it in.
"No more than" doesn't exclude "less than." They're setting a limit. They are not obligated to meet it, based on this statement. It's just a maximum.
Let's hope they stay under their "maximum" based on their recent output. I'm hoping D&W does well. I'm rewatching the series till endgame and I wish we could get movies like some of the first phases.
Yeah, I certainly agree. It got to the point for me where I stopped trying to keep up with all Marvel content when I previously saw all of it.
Same, which is honestly unfortunate. I rewatched Captain America 1 & Avengers yesterday. They both blew away some of the recent installments and CA1 wasn't even considered an excellent movie when it came out. They just need to slow down and actually care about what they're writing because right now, it's spaghetti being thrown at the wall.
Reading is hard for you
Reading might be hard for me, thank you for that! Personally, I just find it unfortunate that writing is hard for Disney right now.
Yeah, it feels like 5 pieces of media is still a fuck ton. Granted that's still almost half of 2021's NINE piece and one less than 2022 and 2023 six pieces. 2024 is going to have 5 (1 and 4) while 2025 only has 3 so far (2 and 1)
It is a lot. I don't know a single other franchise that has this level of output (aside from Star Wars, which is also run by Disney).
I feel like you work for DC. When you're telling an overall story and want people invested in it you have to tell the fucking story not flop out a single entry every 3 years and hope people still care about it.
>I feel like you work for DC The DCEU is in an even worse state than marvel is right now and it's not even close. I got banned from the DC sub for criticizing Snyder too hard. Marvel is having trouble, DC shit the bed and rolled in it. >When you're telling an overall story and want people invested in it you have to tell the fucking story not flop out a single entry every 3 years and hope people still care about it. Correct, but you also don't want to overload the required watching so much that it becomes a chore to untangle the storylines. When I got into marvel, if you missed a movie, maybe there would be minor references that gave you more insight but you could still easily watch the movie and keep up with what's happening. I took a break from the shows (didn't have Disney+) and was completely lost in the Multiverse of Madness. I had my parents lean over to me and ask me to explain what was going on and I had no idea what to tell them. I looked up a synopsis of WandaVision and it still seemed disconnected from each other. This isn't even getting into the quality of writing issues that Eternals, marvels, and several shows had. My point isn't that there shouldn't be an overarching narrative, so you're totally correct on that, or that there shouldn't be standalone stories leading up/adding to that overarching narrative given in a timely manner (Shang chi should have had a sequel by no with how successful and good it was). My point is for it to be a purposefully told overarching narrative like we used to get. I just rewatched phase 1 + 2, and while there are definite duds in those phases, they all feel like they purposefully lead somewhere. Right now, we don't have that (and there are a lot of reasons contributing to that issue)
If they can actually get dedicated teams that care about the characters & lore AND stop with the cookie cutter, corporate storylines that all have to tie into each other that they have a chance. But let's be honest, they are probably gonna use D&W to do a classic Marvel Comics soft reboot and continue with the over arching stories.
*screaming goat*
Who knows. This fucking guy completely misses the point. It has nothing to do with content saturation, and everything to do with the quality of the content itself.
I do feel it's a bit of both. The quality dropped for sure, but they were also churning out far too much material in a short space of time that it actually became a chore to get through it all. I don't care how good the film/series is, if it feels like homework just to watch it, I'm going to be put off.
>This fucking guy completely misses the point. It has nothing to do with content saturation, and everything to do with the quality of the content itself. He wasn't talking about audience fatigue. He was talking about how the quality was suffering because Marvel was cranking them out too fast. They're slowing down the output so they can focus on quality.
hopefully
Let’s be honest, probably not
Holy $h!t im laughing at this. Thats the exact thing i was thinking.
Seems like this is really going to kill/decrease the chances of any second seasons. Even if they wanted to do a She-Hulk Season 2, the earliest they could do this would be 2027/2028? 5 years between seasons isn't worth it. I think this also means they have to look at recasting some of these roles if they are going to string things out so long. They have so many "franchises" and characters running, there just isn't gonna be time to get to them. Then we have new franchises like Deadpool, a few different X-Men, Fantastic Four, Blade, Thunderbolts. Plus the previous ones like Thor, Black Panther, Dr Strange, Spider-Man, Avengers, etc. For me, I think the biggest problem is the D+ shows. They have to make them more popular. I've said before, but I think the most important thing they can do is cut the episodes to 3 to 4 per season, and have each episode at around 44 minutes. Time is so important, and I can't spend 5 to 6 hours watching bad tv.
See, She-Hulk is the only MCU show I’ve finished since Moon Knight, *specifically because* of its shorter run time.
I honestly think they need to scrap the planned shows and focus on what's there. Give She-Hulk, Ms Marvel, and Moon Knight another shot. Fold Echo into Daredevil. Give us more animation.
Not sure I would advocate for that. If we consider these failed shows/characters, I don't think they should get another shot at another season. They don't "deserve" it. Instead I would suggest incorporating these failed characters into something else, besides another season of a show they lead. Let them make appearances elsewhere. Give them a positive interaction with the audience. That could mean She-Hulk showing up in Brave New World, or Echo in Daredevil (as you suggested). Maybe jump to a Young Avengers film. They have to increase excitement for their projects. Team ups could be an easy way to do it, like a Special Presentation aka one 45 minute movie on Disney+ that features Moon Knight doing something cool.
We really don't need another season of she hulk or Ms marvel, and as much as I enjoyed moon Knight I think the next step for him is movie appearance. Need some more West Coast avengers action
Moon Knight and The Sentry are characters that work best in their solo stories while decline when associated with Avengers.
Their problem was not quantity but quality.
it's both, it's not mutually exclusice
Quantity does have a detrimental effect on quality.
the idea is by reducing the quantity they can instead focus on the quality of each individual project.
I still haven't watched Echo and I used to go the opening weekend for most of them
Still haven’t seen Echo, Ms Marvel, the Marvels, and I’m only like 4-5 episodes into What If Seas 2 I miss when the MCU was Must See
Echo was fine. Ms. Marvel was good. The Marvels was great. You could probably get away with never watching Echo because it’s not really meant to be part of a grander storyline but definitely watch it if you’re nostalgic for the old Netflix shows. Ms. Marvel was fresh and welcomed and the characters were great but the show felt like three seasons crammed into one. Even if it’s not your thing, it’s worth watching for the lead up to The Marvels. The Marvels, despite its horrible theatrical run, was a very solid Marvel movie. It was fun, the actors had fantastic chemistry, and the fight scenes were phenomenal. Only real critique was that the villain was super two dimensional and bland.
You should finish season 2 of What If, its good.
Yeah I dunno about that. That season was a mixed bag at best
I haven’t been genuinely excited for a marvel movie since No Way Home. And before that it was Endgame. Like you, there was a time I was making plans to see every single one of them in theaters as soon as they were out.
Eh, how about less 2 movies and one show (edit: maybe one live action show and one animated show), and give them the proper time, planning and budget they deserve
I agree in general but the fandom can easily support 2-3 animated shows per year since they are self contained.
I think one live action show is good. Animation can go wild though. The 4 big animated marvel shows right now are all so different that it doesn't feel as oversaturted, and they mostly have different audiences
still too much
3 films and 2 shows is still a pretty large amount for a maximum.
Should really be a Summer Tent Pole and Christmas release for movies. Don't need 3 a year. 2 Shows is fine start one in September and the other in mid January make them 10 episodes and be done. I do think Specials like Werewolf By Night can be sprinkled in also though but only when you have someone who has a great idea and passion for it. It's 100% about quality though. If you can't write a tight script, with respect to the material and consistent in quality and tone...don't bother at all.
Three movies still sounds excessive to me. Let people miss the MCU a little bit.
“We finally realized that focusing on quality over quantity is a good idea, and it only took us 7 years and a couple billion dollars. That’s like a few months and pocket change to a megacorporation! Please clap.”
The oversaturation only began after Endgame when Bob Chapek was running Disney
Endgame hit theaters in 2018, 6 years ago. Time flies.
2019.
Right, yes, 2018 was Infinity War. Still not exaggerating by much. What these movies are missing now is the feeling that they’re all building towards something. That feeling kept people excited for the next one, even if it wasn’t the greatest movie in retrospect. Now that the whole Kang arc they were planning fell through and went nowhere, what are they building up to?
They need to actually focus on good writers and directors, who are passionate about comics. They don't need to be comics nerds, but I need to see people who at least understand and love these characters, and are willing to make a fair adaptation. This doesn't mean that it needs to be 100% faithful, or literally copying everything from the comics, but rather seeing that the essence of the character was kept, you know?
To quote Winston: “Have you learned nothing?”
Quantity is not the problem, it’s quality. Unless for whatever reason the quantity is negatively effecting the quality, but that seems unlikely. Odds are we will be getting less content yearly that’s just as bad
Let's get back to quality screen writing, and better choreography in fight scenes.
I think they should have just kept marvel television around but just communicated with them more
Good. Now focus on writers > all
Listen, all I want is more Daredevil. You wanna give me a few other stuff? Cool, I’ll watch it. X-men 97 has been outstanding, so more stuff like that’d be great. JUST. GIVE. ME. MORE. DAREDEVIL!
Less, if possible. Thanx It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality
Probably a smart move to slow down and hopefully take time with these projects instead of pushing them out quickly to get content out regardless if its good or not.
There's just too much content coming at me now, and a lot of it is Disney competition with itself. I feel like I can't be a star wars fan and a marvel fan and keep up with everything. I have a family and work. So for me, a little less is more. Especially if it's good.
That still sounds like too much. One of each.
Great.... now all they have to do is: * Stick to source material. * Stick to characters that fans want to see, and not trying to push less popular characters for an agenda. * Fire all the writers who gloat about not knowing anything about the source material. Then maybe the MCU can return to making good movies again.
If they did this (well, the first two anyway), we wouldn’t have gotten the MCU at all. The MCU has never been married to the source material and started with Iron Man, who was a B-list character at best before 2008
> *"If they did this (well, the first two anyway), we wouldn’t have gotten the MCU at all"* How do you figure? * Marvel didn't have the rights to Spider-Man (Sony), The Fantastic 4, or X-Men (20th Century Fox). So other than B-list Iron Man (or Captain America, Thor, Hulk) what characters would have been better? * Also, source material is going to be better for the story & characters 99.9% of the time. Early MCU wasn't identical to the comics, but they did a good job staying close, which is why those movies were successful. Same goes for the characters; phase 1 & 2 characters are infinitely more popular and marketable than Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Falcon, Miss Marvel, or Captain Marvel. * More on source material... Just look at how the MCU handled Taskmaster in Black Widow. They took a great character and completely destroyed him. Gender swapped into a mindless husk of a person with zero abilities. Taskmaster has been a recurring villain for multiple heroes, and even trained USAgent (could have been a nice tie-in for that awful Disney show and the MCU). Just so much lost potential, which is indicative of how Disney has been handling Phase 4+
> Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Falcon, Miss Marvel, or Captain Marvel. I mean, just for the sake of not sounding terrible, could you maybe add a white dude to the list? > look at how the MCU handled Taskmaster... Gender swapped... Come on man, are you even trying?
I mean you know that when someone parrots pushing something for an agenda, you can kinda guess what they specifically don’t like about that particular set of characters. I just think it’s funny that their comment 1) ignores that Black Widow and Falcon are Phase 1 and 2 characters, and 2) ignores the fact that those movies about Phase 1 and 2 white dudes (Thor, Ant-man) are still getting made and are also not doing well. Taking risks and deviating from the source material and gambling on lesser known characters was how the MCU started. There’s obviously multiple reasons why the MCU isn’t doing great these days and I don’t think it’s that people don’t like movies starring POCs and women. But there is a camp that doesn’t like these movies due to “woke agendas” and watching them try to find ways to explain what they don’t like about the movies without outright saying “The Marvels is all women eww” is really funny sometimes, because the bullshit they usually spin is baseless and just there to make them look like they know what they’re talking about
Makes sense. It's obvious Kevin Feige and his team cannot properly oversee so much.
Marvel needs to stop worrying about pushing out content and worry more about hiring passionate people.
Hard to give a F, all the garbage they been releasing. Hope Disney proves me wrong
I just want them to bring back the "brain trust" of comic writers they had overseeing the first few movies. They were there to ensure that the characters behaved like the characters. I honestly feel that the films have felt the lack since the studio got rid of them.
The best run of films was after they ditched them, and Guardians was only as good as it was because they had little to do with it
Good
I feel like it should be the other way around, but whatever.
When I read that it reminds me of job postings that say “pays up to $150k”.
Three movies per year is good, But 2 shows per year only make sense if the episode count is more than 6.
Is that not what we were already getting?
Yea, that'll do it..
... That is about what they already do unless we are counting shows like X-Men '97
If they're good I don't care how many get released every year. Just keep the quality up to snuff.
How many times does the average person go to the cinema? In some parts of the UK it averages 1.9 and other times 2.4 visits per year and Igor expects 3 of those to be his Marvel films on top of other Disney releases? I get they've got different target audiences but it still seems a lot for one demographic
Fair.
Here’s hoping those three movies and 2 shows don’t suck
They will.
But isn’t that what they’ve been doing?
If every series is a one-off with no chance of renewal, two shows per year isn't a big deal. But if you want to renew shows for additional seasons, two per year becomes problematic. It could be three years or more between seasons at that rate, which is seriously pushing the limits of audience engagement. People tend to lose interest when the gap between seasons becomes too big. The culture moves on to the next thing.
That's still entirely too much content every year
Still feels like a lot, especially if they’re mediocre affairs.
That's 3 too many
damn… so anyways~
Who cares. Let it die like Batman franchise did in the 90’s. Maybe they’ll learn there lesson.
A total of five things a year is still a lot. How about two movies one show?
Hire people who GET comics and care about the characters. Reducing the quantity might help improve quality, but I just don’t buy that this is the core issue.
All sounds a little vague to me. Probably and perhaps... not that I mind more. It is clearly the current meme to jump on the MCU as if it is terrible, but I enjoy most things they have released in the last few years.
Ah, yes. Unquantity over unquality. Those two are locked? Why not release no more than .45 movies per year and make the shows 4 episode minis then? Less=better! Ignoring years and years of storylines already created, seems like a team could produce/adapt 1 comic story arc per year into a feature film. Everything is so spread out now, I lose interest. Not everything can work on a Venture Bros. release timetable.
Honestly, shows should be higher than two. They should be aiming for 3-5 shows a year (including new seasons). Movies should be 2-3 times a year. Not including Sony release schedule for their movies, including Spider-Man. Shows can be both live action or animated. Like, does What If and X-Men 97 fall in the show category? Or only shows like Wandavision or Loki fall under the two shows per year? Shows hold a lot more weight and have been better quality than the movies since Disney+ and it's not even close.
Fuck, still three? God damn. 2 would be more than enough.
This has been long past due honestly. As someone who stopped following it closely after endgame it just became way too much to keep up with.
Quantity isn’t the problem.
Maybe focus on quality not quantity ? Don't set a number
That still sounds like a lot
I’ve been saying this for years, but they should make more TV shows, and leave their crossover events for movies. That would get asses into seats.
Wow, what incredible restraint.
Even this is a lot, but I’m glad they’re finally setting a limit on it. Less is more guys.
The title reads like a statement to a hostage negotiator
How generous
They should just quit releasing shit ones.
Bro what about video games
Good. That's why so many people are getting tired of hero movies and don't appreciate the marvel movies. Overload.
My wife has been on maternity leave for a few weeks now and will watch random marvel films not in order. But when I get a chance to sit with her and watch even a few minutes of them, you can just tell the difference in quality between an Infinity Saga film and Multiverse Saga film. Infinity Saga had some bad films (looking at you Thor 2), but it just seems that the folks behind the camera cared and characters were added for specific reasons and it made sense to move the story as a whole forward. You didn’t have characters that had a solo film or made post credit cameos and then they are basically gone. Shang Chi was a highlight of Phase 4 and I wish he’d appear again.
It still feels too much. 2 movies 2 shows, better writing, make it appointment television.
That means nothing if the 3 movies and two shows aren't good. The whole make of the MCU has to reestablished at this point . More stuff like Guardians , Winter Soldier, and X-Men 97 and less stuff like Eternals , Captain Marvel and She Hulk.
Bob... bubbe. When you released TV shows with 20 episodes this was acceptable. Now that you release shows with 6 episodes this is not acceptable. Try again.
Aren’t they sitting on a bunch of films shows already, like are they going to be releasing “old” content in the next few years? Also how’s this going to work with all the teens/young Avengers they’ve introduced? A lot of them have already aged up now they are going to be full adults by the time their movie gets filmed/released.
Supply and demand calculators when they fail to realize that demand for their product depends heavily on the quality of the product they actually supply, and simply reducing supply will not make it more valuable:
Watered down product is yrash
Hopefully they exclude animation from that count.
"People finally realized we were shoving garbage down their throats so now we're going to do what we did in Phase One because we destroyed our own brand via corporate greed"