honeycookiez

This outcome is expected since the day Iger has back in town, he also has a good network and relationships in mainland China. However, this can't be a guarantee for other films, and other studios.

This is such good news, a win for every party involved, as I expected they chose to loosen the restriction to ease people's minds, which is a brilliant move. To be fair It's not like the other scenario is far-fetched but it would definitely ignite more resistance from Chinese people.

Well speaking about the China film market I think there might be 2 scenarios, either they loosen the restriction to ease people's minds (of course I don't expect those got banned because of somethings somethings that are related to Tibet can get unban, that is simply not possible), let some tentpole films in (like some of Marvel films got banned for random reasons such as NWH), OR they become more strict moving forward with foreign films as a "punishment" for the protests. I think it's 50-50 and both scenarios are highly possible

Hail King Iger, Hail King Jim

This is such incredibly good news! Disney's future in China is starting to look brighter. If Marvel can also mend the relationship with the film bureau in the next phase then

Yeah, to be fair it's just me, I don't like how Taika humanized Gorr and gave him a quick redemption. On the other hand, what they did with Namor was pretty amazing. Namor in the comic is a charming, slutty, smug ah*le, you would feel like he could bang any female, even a monster (and of course he did!), he usually used his special "skills" to negotiate with women and "hypnotize" them! and it's exactly what he did to Shuri (and the female audience, lol). Can't wait to see the first encounter of Namor and Sue Storm in MCU.

I think it's such a relief that phase 4 ended with BP2 and especially the introduction of Namor, the fact that MCU Namor's origin got changed has turned out to be one of the new cool aspects of him, how social media is reacting to Namor now pretty much proves that Marvel has succeeded in bringing Namor to the big screen, the characteristics are very much on point, the fact that a lot of female audiences are still in awe with Namor even tho he impaled Shuri and murdered her mother is exactly what I expected Marvel to do and luckily this time they didn't fail me like what Taika did to Gorr.

I read these things on Reddit and they said the studio is very aware of the reactions,especially the fans' opinions, Marvel studio even have burn account lurkings on /r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers/ and had even contacted the mods of that sub. In short, they said they will "soften" the release of some projects to work on the issues that people pointed out, including the CGI stuff, they have just created an inhouse CGI team which might help moving forward. I've also seen you say something that Eastern Asia doesn't like Simu/Shang Chi and ironically now the West doesn't either (you will earn a lot of like on Twitter if you call Simu "incel" after that infamous scandal), perhaps that is the reason why they don't immediately announce any big solo film project that is related to SC at all.

Indeed, it's a lightning-in-the-bottle event, plus with the right management, Feige is like the chosen one, he also had the aid of Bob Iger at the time when Iger sided with him and sidelined Perlmutter. Not to mention the other factors like the market growth rate, other rivals failed to capture the attention of young people. The odds were in Marvel's favor at the time when they just started to build the franchise. The general audience has already picked their favorite children of the superhero genre, I think now in their mind there are only Marvel/Spiderman and ...Batman (and those who are related to him). DC as a brand doesn't mean much to common folks.

Thank you for the great info, my bad for making such an assumption because many of us thought China would save BA since they like ...The Rock and for whatever reasons people could come up with, some even ridiculously trace back to Aquaman 1, a film got released during the holiday season and the blackout season plus also a rip-off of the RGB glowing aquarium concept of Avatar which Chinese people like. So I guess even in an alternative dimension where BA gets a release date, it wouldn't make any different for its box office anyway since the Chinese audience wouldn't throw their money out of the window for free to save the hierarchy of DC.

Well, it seems like the god is really against DC this time I suppose, Black Adam is a really important DC project moving forward and its box office will decide the fate of a lot of future DC projects. Speaking about Keanu Reeves, both he and Norman Reedus were running for MCU Ghost Rider last year but after the Tibetan scandal, rumor has it that the role immediately went to Norman, and Norman himself even posted a bunch of Ghost Rider pictures and vague tweets on Twitter to celebrate since most of Walking Dead fans know he loves to spoil stuff and he's like the Tom Holland of the Walking Dead franchise, it even added more fuel to the flame when Keanu himself said he was happy with whatever decision the studio made.

Oh god, are you sure? The Tibetan is a very sensitive subject, it's similar to how Keanu Reeves got banned in the mainland

People on social media noticed that Marvel included Moon Knight in their newest intro for the Ms Marvel show but they also removed Shang Chi and Eternals main team. Wasn't there a rumor that the Chinese local film office requested them to remove Shang Chi from the intro months ago?

The drop looks fatal, my brother who is currently living and working in Osaka, Japan said he planned to see MoM this weekend but local theatres have reduced its screenings in the freaking 2nd week, and the time schedule doesn't fit his free time, which is a big yikes. Japan has never cared much about US superhero culture in general but it seems like they're even crueler to it now post covid, compared to the other Asian countries that have a majority of the population speaking Chinese and mainland China pre-covid.

At this point, pretty sure the overhyped, uncertain rumors about a truckload of cameos really hurt this film. The fact that the "Superior iron man who would be played by Tom Cruise" rumor got trending on Twitter for a while when the trailer got released was just ridiculous and out of nowhere. Nevertheless, I still think DS2 has a great jump if you compare it to DS1, thanks to how Marvel has kept shoehorning Strange in almost every MCU film since 2016, which makes him become familiar to the general audience. I have already mentioned this in the DS2 thread but Doctor Strange himself is a lackluster character, before DS2, in the eyes of a lot of young MCU fans he's just a grumpy, unfriendly uncle. Here on Reddit people are even discussing why Wong becomes so popular lately https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/uoat00/why_is_wong_so_popular/ (In short, the conclusion, is Wong had a down-to-earth personality that made young people feel comfortable with, while Strange had a gigantic ego.) On Twitter, people are more engaging with Theron's declaration post that she just joined MCU through a small cameo in DS2 (the post gained nearly 420k likes, which is very impressive). It's a sad but undeniable fact that they are more interested to see other side characters in Strange's film but not Strange himself. Perhaps this might change in the future with how Strange's character arc and character traits have panned out in this film.

I hope Feige doesn't consider "back to the old formula" after MoM

From a certain point of view, yes, we understand why he had to sweet talk to the shareholders, There are a lot of ways to positively address the situation without @ss pulling it and dragging China along to save face while the other competitors and companies are still getting along very well with China. On Weibo, people are saying "then we should just ban all Disney films" (which means including Avatar). Thank Chapek for another massive F-up unprecedented "power move".

Jeez, as expected, I have no problem with seeing Chapek effed himself with the Florida gov but please why does he need to bring the others down to his hell hole too

Yikes, I've got a bad feeling that China will ban Avatar too out of spite, at first they only target Marvel, but now... Chapek is such a sh*tty Bob's variant, from the drama with Scarlett Johansson to the DSG bill, to this statement. I want my Bob Iger back.

Yeah, an unattractive trait. According to the writer, they will explore his future journey in a different way with that new (spoiler) character LINK I guess they will romanticize uncle Strange moving forward to fit the audience and female moviegoers' taste.

I think it's worth mentioning that Dr. Strange isn't an appealing character to the young audience, the concept of a grumpy wizard uncle who loves to brag about moral compass just doesn't land very well. On Reddit, even Moon Knight attracts more new young fans than Dr. Strange. How Dr. Strange MoM is performing at the box-office now is very impressive, considering all factors, imo

Eternals got B cinemascore MoM is on par with Thor 2011

There are smaller, less famous actors who don't want to commit for a long time, for example, Anthony Mackie said he will only stay around for 10 years and we all know that they don't have a trilogy focusing on his character for the next 10 years, they have a lot of characters to introduce, which means Mackie will probably out of the picture soon. Paycheck is just a part of the reason but it's not the sole reason.

You're talking as if the other franchises don't do the same gimmick. The veteran actors are fine with it, Benedict himself said he has no plan to depart MCU, then why do we have to worry about it and criticize the thing they don't mind?

Not really, Feige himself said in the premiere today that it's Sylvie/Loki unleashed the multiverse because Sylvie killed Kang/HWR, otherwise, NWH and MoM wouldn't exist. The last episode was a bit cheesy and dragging because of that pull-push romance arc between 2 Loki(s)