The Marvels | November 10, 2023 | Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter

[Bob Train]

Just now, SpiderByte said:

You understand that franchises don't need a billion dollar hit every year to continue to exist, right? The MCU will not hard reboot so long as Feiges is there. Full stop. Entertaining otherwise is just plain stupid.

Marvels, Thunderbolts, Cap 4 have no hype. Blade and F4 are failing to get off the ground. Spider-Man 4 and Deadpool 3 are the only pre-Kang Dynasty movies with any hype, and they will easily be the biggest movies coming out until then.

 

They need to do fire the Rick and Morty writers and bring back the talent that made the Infinity Saga. Making Cap 4, Thunderbolts, and Marvels in the first place was a mistake, they should have brought in the X-Men sooner instead as there is still interest there.

[SpiderByte]

1 minute ago, John Marston said:

 

you realize you have to make a profit though right? A lot of upcoming  projects  may not do that 

You think everything is bombing because of Marvels and Quantumania?

 

And keep in mind, both of those are not new franchises, those are both sequels.

 

Despite the doom and gloom of this board, ultimately momentum can absolutely be regained. 2026 is plenty of time. We know they have at least 4 r rated projects in the works, so for people who are "too old" as someone claimed earlier, they'll have something too.

 

I also think a lot of this board lives in a bubble about how much the world now allegedly despises Marvel. The MCU is a long, long way from ending.

[ThomasNicole]

22 minutes ago, SpiderByte said:

A year and a half after? I don't think the momentum on just WandaVision was that strong. Especially when people were so insistent that Ms Marvel, a show that came...four weeks after Doctor Strange, was universally despised (by people on this board) because of Disney+

DCEU was still a shiny possibility in August 2016, only 2 years before the mega bomb Justice League that pretty much killed the franchise (despite a hit here and there). 
 

MCU facing some new problems can be traced back to 2021. They have huge beloved hits such NWH on theaters and WandaVision / Loki on TV. But they also found blase reception from it’s audience probably the first time in a decade with Eternals and to a lesser extent, Black Widow. 
 

They still are having succesful things, they have GOTG3 this year on theaters and Loki S2 on TV. 
 

But this is a universe, you can’t just throw the “oh it’s only 2 years and they still have big hits” argument ignoring how much things Marvel releases. 

 

MCU was nearly critic proof once, people loved everything they do, some things more than others but the feeling was overall great and the media discourse are great about every single project, including reviews. 
 

Now this is not the case. For every NWH / WF / GOTG3 you also have Eternals, DS2, Thor 4, Quantumania with mixed or average reviews, awful discourse online and divisive reception from audiences. For every WandaVision or Loki, you have shows that nobody really cared much about it like Hawkeye, Ms Marvel, She Hulk, Secret Invasion. 
 

MCU isn’t dead, i’m sure they’ll have hits and beloved projects coming soon. It’s just not a completely reliable brand for audiences anymore.
 

If most people once though they could always see a Marvel projects and they would probably like it, now it’s more of a hit or miss situation. This usually leads to what The Marvels are facing, disinterest. If it looks good, people show up, if not they don’t care anymore. 
 

Or in a shorter answer: you shouldn’t drop 22 projects in a span of 27 months. With a project nearly every month, it’s way easier to have quality problems, lost themselves in a sea of different attempts of genres / characters / plot lines and ultimately, alienate the general audiences. 
 

There’ll be inevitable failures coming up along successes, and they’ll be important for Marvel to put themselves back on track with less projects and more focus. This way maybe they can gain confidence back from GA.

Edited October 30, 2023 by ThomasNicole

[Sckathian]

55 minutes ago, HummingLemon496 said:

Yes, Blue Beetle disproves this "it's not superhero fatigue, it's only BAD superhero movie fatigue" thingy that people kept on parroting after GOTG 3/ATSV were hits.

The problem is fatigue is caused by the breakdown down of audience expectations. Blue Beetle could have been a 5 star Oscar worthy film, but if people don’t engage with the product because it’s ‘another super hero film’ then they won’t see it. We are in western territory and that’s really not Marvels fault, but there’s just been too much rubbish out there for too long.

 

GOTG3 I maintain is not a super hero film which explains its success but ATSV shows that if you are different enough (and have one of the ‘core’ superhero’s) then you can do well.

 

I think there is an arguement the MCU will hold Marvel back over time when really we should have a new Iron Man already and be set for a new trilogy of Iron Man films. 
 

They are trying to do that with Captain America but they have had to go with a poorer actor because that’s what the MCU behemoth demands.

[SpiderByte]

5 minutes ago, Bob Train said:

Thunderbolts, Cap 4 have no

 

Blade and F4 are failing to get off the ground.

One: no shit Sherlock, nome have released any trailers and three of them hadn't shot a single frame of footage. Declaring them DOA before any filming begins is a tech.

 

FF and Blade hasn't been able to get off the ground because of a six months long strike . Blade was set to film weeks before the strike began and FF shoots in the spring.

 

6 minutes ago, Bob Train said:

they should have brought in the X-Men sooner instead as there is still interest there.

Only on BOT can someone, in the same breath, say "people want something fresh and new" and then instantly follow it up with "trash all the new heroes and only do the old ones"

[TMP]

1 minute ago, ThomasNicole said:

Or in a shorter answer: you shouldn’t drop 22 projects in a span of 27 months. With a project nearly every month, it’s way easier to have quality problems, lost themselves in a sea of different attempts of genres / characters / plot lines and ultimately, alienate the general audiences. 

I cannot believe anyone approved this. Just staggering when you lay it out like this - what a disaster in planning lol

[emoviefan]

7 minutes ago, SpiderByte said:

You think everything is bombing because of Marvels and Quantumania?

 

And keep in mind, both of those are not new franchises, those are both sequels.

 

Despite the doom and gloom of this board, ultimately momentum can absolutely be regained. 2026 is plenty of time. We know they have at least 4 r rated projects in the works, so for people who are "too old" as someone claimed earlier, they'll have something too.

 

I also think a lot of this board lives in a bubble about how much the world now allegedly despises Marvel. The MCU is a long, long way from ending.

Could not agree with you more. 

[Ozymandias]

That South Park episode coming out right before this is lol

[SpiderByte]

I really don't see how people think new heroes will cause fatigue but only ever doing hard reboots somehow won't

[Sckathian]

I will add I think Marvel fans are way over estimating the excitement the Fantastic 4 will draw in, I just don’t see audiences getting over the bad taste of the prior films.

 

Though I do think it’s Marvels best unused asset right now. They really need a Guardians 1 situation of a slam dunk film but I do worry they will instead trend towards random cameos/other Avengers being in the film.

[interiorgatordecorator]

the world suddenly deciding its done with the mcu is funny, yes, but I was pretty excited for the deadline headline if this had a great ow

 

"Marvel's The Marvels marvels at the box office with a marvelous BO haul" type buffoonery

[Bob Train]

8 minutes ago, TMP said:

I cannot believe anyone approved this. Just staggering when you lay it out like this - what a disaster in planning lol

Exactly. Back in the Infinity Saga, even though they were of course making it up as it went along, due to only 2-3 projects a year, they could easily use reshoots to patch up any obvious continuity issues/gaps in the story line.

 

Nowadays, half the projects have nothing to do with overall MCU storyline, no one has any idea who the important characters are or how any project relates to another, and important characters go 3 years without appearing in anything despite the 5-7 projects a year.

 

The overall MCU storyline is what drives interest, but now it is unclear if there even is one. Not every project in the Infinity Saga related to Thanos, but they pretty much all related to another project which then related to Thanos.

Edited October 30, 2023 by Bob Train

[ThomasNicole]

1 minute ago, TMP said:

I cannot believe anyone approved this. Just staggering when you lay it out like this - what a disaster in planning lol

Right? It’s insane to break it down. 
 

2021: 4 movies / 5 TV shows 

 

2022: 3 movies / 3 TV shows / 2 TV specials 

 

2023: 3 movies / 3 TV Shows 

They’re trying to slower it down, but it’s still way above the 2-3 movies projects per year they drop until 2019. You just need to see clearly the amount of things to understand why people are lost in the timeline, in the plot lines, and why the production entered on chaos mode including all the scandals with VFX etc. 

 

2021 especially was insane and the bigger mark on the disinterest that is reaching it’s peak now: 9 projects in 7 months. They compensate the mini hiatus due to Covid with complete overload of content, and it did backfire on them because the amount slowed down too little since and the quality has been shakier.

[interiorgatordecorator]

I see empirecity is having some fun 

[Sckathian]

1 minute ago, SpiderByte said:

I really don't see how people think new heroes will cause fatigue but only ever doing hard reboots somehow 

I actually agree with this but only because Doctor Strange and Iron Man were not really known by general audiences until they made their debut. The point though is not every superhero is interesting.

 

Games show this very very well. Why do Spidermen games do this so well? Because we want to swing like Spider-Man. It’s the entire draw. It’s movement/momentum is more interesting than Superman moving in a straight line through the air. So they do gangbusters.

 

So you will always have a limit of interesting heroes. The point is to build on those and make franchises. The MCU has arguably changed the Thor name forever with it likely making audiences think of the MCU character rather than the true folklore God.

 

But the MCU by being continuous is an obstacle to just churning out stories with these characters. I still think DCs wire ‘let’s have multiple Batman’s’ will fail but it’s going to be super interesting how that performs and is probably going to be the most influential thing in the industry for many years to come.

[TheFlatLannister]

35 minutes ago, TMP said:

DP3 will do like $700m and we’ll have a cavalcade of WWW threads. Also Strange 2 was on the heels of the momentum of wandavision - the MCU has pretty much lost that momentum and it’s gonna take years to build that back up. Audiences grew up - I feel like this is something to celebrate?

Yeah there’s no indication at all that Deadpool 3 will gross less than both previous installments. Every interaction metrics points to it being a juggernaut unless we believe online impressions mean nothing. 

[ThomasNicole]

Another way to put it on clearly: 

 

MCU released 23 projects in 11 years (2008-2019). 
 

MCU released 22 projects in 2 years and 4 months (2021-2023). 
 

This is data, impossible to spin it. There was clearly an important balance in delivery before that was totally destroyed in only 2 years. 
 

We all know there’s Disney pressure on it, the D+ desperation that wasn’t necessarily Feige’s desire. But it happened, Bob Chapek was fired for many reasons, but breaking the right balance that MCU perfected in the past decade was the biggest one.

Edited October 30, 2023 by ThomasNicole

[MysteryMovieMogul]

27 minutes ago, Bob Train said:

CBM fatigue is real. None of the 5 live-action CBM sequels (Quantumania, Shazam 2, Gotg3, Marvels, Aqua2) will match their predecessors DOM. We have seen some many other sequels match/surpass their predecessors DOM this year (Creed 3, Scream 6, Wick 4, EDR, Transformers, Insidious etc.). Spider-Verse 2 stands alone as the only CBM sequel to beat it's predecessor DOM.

 

As for Indiana Jones beating MI7, that isn't too surprising. Every Indy movie adjusts to $450m+ DOM, it is the bigger IP stateside. On top of that, it had a much better release date, whereas MI7 chose perhaps the worst release date it could possibly have chosen.

I still think it's just natural reaction to sequels that aren't as good. And yeah, I'll say it. I thought GotG3 was awful. Shazam 2 was awful. Quantumania was awful. Spider-Verse 2 did better because it was a great film. That's why I don't think there is CBM fatigue. The Batman 2 will most certainly beat its predecessor. 

 

But I also don't trust Marvel to fix the problems and start making better films. They want to micromanage too much.

[interiorgatordecorator]

1 minute ago, ThomasNicole said:

 

We all know there’s Disney pressure on it, the D+ desperation that wasn’t necessarily Feige’s desire. But it happened, Bob Chapek was fired for many reason, but breaking the right balance that MCU perfect in the past decade was the biggest one.

 

chapek came in in march 2020, where the disney plus shows only greenlight afterwards? 

[The GOAT]

8 minutes ago, interiorgatordecorator said:

I see empirecity is having some fun 

He lurks here, but hasn't officially logged on since last year. What is he afraid of?