The Marvel Cinematic Multiverse

[Cassius_Smoke]

These characters are already in the Marvel universe and have been for quite some time. So they are using them, exactly as you’d like.

Yeah they are, but we already have a Hulk, Thor and hawkeye. We don't have a firebird, or a marvel girl. I'm just saying give us female characters but give us something new too.

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, I guess there are plenty of unused superheroes. To my knowledge, She-Hulk is pretty popular and has been around since 1980 so, just as one example, at 40 years old she is a very established Marvel character and an easy choice. And it doesn’t look like Hemsworth or Jeremy Renner are going anywhere (the Hulk’s movie role is more sketchy with the rights) so it’s not like they are being replaced.

While it would have been great to have a whole bunch of unique superheroes with a good gender mix historically, that just didn’t happen so I get the point but it’s a complaint probably better sent to the 1950s. Or 1959 when DC created Supergirl.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I guess. It's probably one of the reasons why I like xmen so much. It's a mix of gender and powers and they all have to work together to get **** done.

On another note, Disney doesn't have a great history of writing female characters. Almost all of the princesses are damsels in distress, Rey is the definition of a mary-Sue, black widow plays second fiddle and Captain Marvel is another Mary-Sue. They only one that works for me is Scarlet Witch. They need to try harder.

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, I reckon the whole Mary-Sue thing really speaks volumes about those who use the term Mary-Sue. This isn’t the Reddit hole you’re looking for.

[Neon Ignition]

I'm curious how they move forward with Captain Marvel, though the first film was fine it wasn't a memorable one and in essence she seems to have the Superman issue of her having power levels that might make the storytelling difficult. I know in the comics they've gone to dark territory with her but as with the Iron Man movies, the MCU hasn't been so keen to go there with the big screen incarnations so it'll be interesting to see what line they take.

Scarlett Witch is one I'm very keen on seeing how WandaVision goes about things on. She's an immensely wasted character to date which I'm not sure if some of that is due to hesitance because of the dominance of other characters and her historical X-Men connection but there's a lot of potential in fully realising her on screen and also explaining where her Russian accent went to

Black Widow, I get the push because for a long time she was the most prominent female hero in the MCU, but she's always been a rubbish character which feeds into my low anticipation for her post-homous movie. Like Hawkeye, she's not really a superhero and falls too easily into generic spy character boxes that many other films already cover so I wouldn't have minded if Endgame was it.

She-Hulk, to be honest I don't know enough about her. My main concern would on paper match that of Endgame's Hulk where because she doesn't have the duality of personalities that standard Hulk does the appeal could potentially be harmed. Endgame's Hulk was beyond easily the worst on-screen Hulk incarnation MCU has ever done so I'll need this series to not just be more of that.

Black Panther, if the rumours of Shuri becoming the next Black Panther hold true then I'd be happy with that. Feels like it would be a natural progression.

I'd quite like to see Spider-Gwen happen, though the name has always been poor on that one. I know Kamala aka Ms Marvel gets talked about a lot following the recent game but I don't get the appeal of that character at all, she seems to just be like Mr Fantastic and he's rubbish as well.

Nova getting some solo movie action would be good, Storm could be good finally done properly in time. No more Jean Grey though.

[Dogg Thang]

I realise I'm repeating myself but they've been telling Superman stories constantly with, as far as I know, not a single break since 1938. The villain in the first movie, which many cite as the best, is not even a particularly strong human. Anyone who thinks his powers (or Captain Marvel's) makes storytelling difficult is only thinking on the simple level of a boxing match and there is a hell of a lot more to story than a boxing match.

Yes, Scarlett Witch has been wasted. I would like to have seen her get a movie but it feels like that window has gone. I don't have much interest yet in the show although will be watching what people think. Black Widow for me is in the same category as Fury - good supporting character but won't it just be a regular spy movie? I don't know.

I'm all for the others though. Shuri in particular was amazing and I would definitely love to see a movie with her in the lead. I think overall though, the bottom line is that there have been a stupid amount of movies with only men in the lead role and until that is matched, which at the current rate will happen roughly around never, there is a huge amount of catching up to do and men should sit down and not complain about it.

[Neon Ignition]

There's decades of stories but as with all characters I guess an immense amount of guff to wade through coupled with alligning the decent stories with live action limits. Like you say, Lex in the original movie works but a huge part of that is that he and Superman only share two scenes together and Superman is unaware Lex exists for most of the runtime. Superman is also an odd character of sorts because the legacy of the character outside of both the comics and the films also carries his appeal a very long way along with the nature of his origin story and its parallels outside of the pages which isn't the same for Captain Marvel. I think my curiosity in how she's moved forward is also because despite her having a solo film already released she still feels like a blank slate, the film largely serving as a tool so it makes sense when she turns up in Endgame and briefly punches Thanos. She has the thinnest origin story of the solo movie characters so with that out the way and the biggest comic stories for her being off limits it's just interesting to see how Marvel plans to push her given the planned intention for her to be the new central figurehead for the next era.

It's definitely insane that for all the DCU's failings they managed to get a female led superhero movie off the ground before Marvel did. That being said, it seems like quite a few of them like She-Hulk are loosely tied by chance to either Universal or Sony as well which has been a road block and remains one stopping solo movies from ever being made (well, on Universals side). Crazily, unless MCU moves around the timeline again, by 2028 Morgan Stark could take on the Iron Man role Characters literally growing up with the audience

[Dogg Thang]

Lex works in Superman when writers realise that the challenge of Superman is not kicking his ass - that's exactly why Man of Steel was rubbish. The challenge is in stopping him from doing what he exists to do - help people and save people, again exactly why Man of Steel was rubbish because it missed that. If it was really about a character being overpowered, you just create a more powerful villain. But I don't think that makes a better story. It just gives you a punch out. Like was Doomsday ever a better villain than Lex? Or the Joker? Or any other villain with barely a superpower? I don't think so. I don't think outmatching a superhero physically has automatically made any story better.

And yes, after Endgame it kind of feels like the time is right to build a new generation. Although it felt like that was happening at the very end of Age of Ultron and then it just didn't. There is so much potential now to build from here... which is something it really feels like they did the opposite of with Far From Home, now that I have more distance from the film.

[Neon Ignition]

That's why I pray DC never does a live action version of mecha-suit Lex, every time it rears its head in something like an Injustice game or one of the cartoons etc a piece of my soul dies a little.


The way things sound from the announced projects it sounds like Phase 4 will be a short kind of epilogue more than a new start like Marvel first mentioned. They're leaning hard on the Disney+ series but only a certain % of the films audiences will see and keep engaged with the TV content with the films remaining the key deliveries and with so many of the upcoming films being things like Black Widow, Captain Marvel 2, Spider-Man 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and also by the sounds crossing over characters so much it still seems like it'll be used to sign off some characters (BP, GOTG), move some around on the board (CM, Thor) and then open up new avenues and narratives like with the Multi-verse (DS, Spider-Man) so we'll end up waiting till Phase 5 before the new characters get to shine properly. It's insane that we're now about to hit the MCU being 13 years old already and the second era it builds will likely see it reach all the way to being 25+ years old. Staggering the scale of the project and its success.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Yeah, I reckon the whole Mary-Sue thing really speaks volumes about those who use the term Mary-Sue. This isn’t the Reddit hole you’re looking for.

Not really sure what the connection is between Reddit and the term Mary Sue.
Both Rey and Captain Marvel never find adversity or difficulties in anything they do. I never once felt that either character was ever going to fail.

[Dogg Thang]

It's a common term found on the dregs of the internet, where men want to control when and how women characters are introduced and don't like it when they might threaten a man's fragile ego and then don't complain when, say, a male baby exhibits superior powers. It's also why we don't have IMDB boards any more. It's just not a term with a lot of positive associations on the internet.

[Neon Ignition]

The MCU needs more diversity in its leads for sure, as great as the existing films are an awful lot of the characters are - when boiled down - Tony Stark variants of just being glib speaking blokes

[Dogg Thang]

Overall, while yes they need more diversity absolutely, I do think they've done pretty well to separate and justify the personalities. They've needed a bit of tweaking as they go and they do have an over-reliance on one-liners, which don't work for every character, but given how many characters they have introduced, I'm pretty impressed with how little direct repetition we've had.

The story structure, on the other hand, that's a different matter. We've had so many that are essentially just repeating the same beats set up back in the Hulk movie.

[Cassius_Smoke]

It's a common term found on the dregs of the internet, where men want to control when and how women characters are introduced and don't like it when they might threaten a man's fragile ego and then don't complain when, say, a male baby exhibits superior powers. It's also why we don't have IMDB boards any more. It's just not a term with a lot of positive associations on the internet.

Didn't know it had negative connotations, I was just using it in the way I knew.
A character (male or female) who overcomes problems with ease, sometimes either through miraculous means or otherwise. For example Rey easily matching Kylo in a lightsaber fight when she's never even picked one up before. It's just lazy.

[Dogg Thang]

Ah okay. Yeah, it's not really applied to men and, yes, very commonly used in places that are built on misogyny - not laying that criticism on you but it definitely has that connection. Very rarely, if ever, are these types of criticisms applied to male characters because the issue at the heart of it tends to be that a woman character has had the audacity to demonstrate that she is as capable or better than a male lead. That's usually where the term is applied.