Marvel Cinematic Universe Thoughts (No Spoilers past Thor 2)

[Elheru Aran]

Ello.

So I've been checking out a lot of Marvel stuff lately. Thinking about how it all goes together.

Warning: If you haven't watched Thor: The Dark World, well, there are open spoilers for that film here.

Iron Man and Incredible Hulk (Norton) don't really have any visualization of what is to come, apart from Fury's offhand comment about the Avengers and the presence of SHIELD.

However, Captain America and Thor both have major foreshadowing going on, especially a glimpse of the Infinity Gauntlet in Odin's weapons vault and the Tesseract/Cosmic Cube.

Then Avengers blows it all wide open with the revelation that Thanos is behind the alien invasion of Earth and Loki's shenanigans.

I don't really know that Iron Man II and III had a whole lot to do with the rest of the MCU other than building Stark's character and introducing some interesting stuff. Thor II, I think, has been the most obvious elaboration of the direction the MCU is heading with the revelation that the Aether becomes an Infinity Stone, the Tesseract is another, and the Collector is out there.

So we are fairly clearly heading towards some form of the Infinity Gauntlet meta-story. This really was pretty obvious after they showed us Thanos; it's Chekov's Gun in action. It would be completely pointless for them to do that and then do nothing with him later, especially now that the Gems are in the game.

Now the next three movies on the list as far as I know are Captain America Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. GotG is most likely going to be where we get another Infinity Gem or two from. I wouldn't be surprised if they pull out Adam Warlock in one of the post-credit stingers (maybe the Guardians discover his cocoon?).

Speculation: perhaps Ultron is powered by an Infinity Stone? He could take the place of the Champion? The Avengers lose big to him and Thanos pulls their asses out of the fire, taking possession of the Power Gem in the process? It's a bit out there, I know.

Thoughts? Comments? Your ideas?

Oh, and how do you think the Spider-Man, Fantastic 4 (if that ever gets rebooted), and X-Men/Wolverine franchises will overlap if they do in any way? I could certainly see, say, Captain America having a flashback where he's on a mission in WWII or something, and Logan is part of his squad...

[FSTargetDrone]

Oh, and how do you think the Spider-Man, Fantastic 4 (if that ever gets rebooted), and X-Men/Wolverine franchises will overlap if they do in any way? I could certainly see, say, Captain America having a flashback where he's on a mission in WWII or something, and Logan is part of his squad...

Overlap with MCU? Not at all, given that Sony/20th Century Fox are running those franchises. Though there is a possibility, however, that the characters of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver could overlap, though possibly with different actors.

It's really too bad, too. Just imagine what could be if not for the rights' issues.

Here is a more detailed explanation of the rights and who has which.

[JME2]

If Thanos is involved in AOU, I hope it's minimal or a brief appearance ala his original cameo.

The MCU is definitely building to an Infinity Gauntlet-style endgame. But the key to the cinematic Thanos is to quietly build him up in the background until they're ready for the big game.

It's a fun idea, that while everyone's dealing with Winter Soldiers, Extremis war machines, and Dark Evles, bad shit's going down in deep space -- and they don't know (well, Loki knows and I'm sure Thor suspects given he deduced Loki had a backer).

[Elheru Aran]

Oh, and how do you think the Spider-Man, Fantastic 4 (if that ever gets rebooted), and X-Men/Wolverine franchises will overlap if they do in any way? I could certainly see, say, Captain America having a flashback where he's on a mission in WWII or something, and Logan is part of his squad...

Overlap with MCU? Not at all, given that Sony/20th Century Fox are running those franchises. Though there is a possibility, however, that the characters of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver could overlap, though possibly with different actors.

It's really too bad, too. Just imagine what could be if not for the rights' issues.

Here is a more detailed explanation of the rights and who has which.

Oh, I know they're never going to have a serious presence in each other's movies. It's something I think Marvel should really have talked them into, or written into the contract, though... something like "character X may appear in movies based upon group Y for so many minutes of screen-time".

JME: The problem is, how do we show people more of Cosmic Marvel without completely throwing them for a loop? GotG is a start, but then you've got things like Silver Surfer (which I'm pretty sure Fox still has rights to), Galactus (ditto), Ego the Living Planet, Kree, Skrulls (unless they're rolling with the Chitauri thing; I'm talking about the purple-pussed shapeshifters), etc... At least Guardians is introducing the Nova Corps. That's something.

[White Haven]

Well, if we're talking about things Marvel should or shouldn't have written into contracts, I think that discussion starts and ends with 'a finite end date,' doesn't it?

[Ted C]

I think that the FF rights are actually reverting back to Marvel, which opens up possibilities for them to cross over with the Avengers-related franchises.

[Iroscato]

I think that the FF rights are actually reverting back to Marvel, which opens up possibilities for them to cross over with the Avengers-related franchises.

Actually, Fantastic Four is getting a reboot courtesy of Fox to keep ahold of the rights. It's made some...interesting casting choices, chief among them Michael B. Jordan as the Human Torch. And of course, because he's black, the internet started shitting into its own hand and flinging it at the walls in response - it was actually quite funny, if slightly upsetting, reading some of the comments about it.

[Majin Gojira]

The only thing that bugs me about the choice is that they didn't make Sue Storm black as well. Aside from having more diversity out there, the disparate casting forces a scene to explain why the siblings are not of the same race to keep the average film goer from going nuts. Or, more nuts than things are already.

[Crazedwraith]

Adoption. Half-siblings. Make them not siblings is this continuity. It's not hard and it can easily incorporated as the films need to introduce the characters anyway.

[Scrib]

Oh, I know they're never going to have a serious presence in each other's movies. It's something I think Marvel should really have talked them into, or written into the contract, though... something like "character X may appear in movies based upon group Y for so many minutes of screen-time".

Why? How on Earth are they going to split the money to make it worthwhile?

It seems to me that even in a perfect world where Marvel got the rights back stuff like the X-Men are not going to-and perhaps should not- overlap. At this point it seems that it would require a bit of twisting to explain how the current MCU grew without meeting mutants. The FF? Sure. Spidey? Sure. Mutants...

Does anyone really want a fully integrated universe anyway? Marvel has-as of now in the eyes of a film-only fan- done pretty well with questions like "why doesn't X other hero just solve the problem?" (although IM3 and Thor 2 pushed it a bit with SHIELD) do we really want to create bloat? It seems like it'd be worse than anything that could happen in the comics, since it's not just plot and organizational reasons that limit them but production constraints too (who wants to waste one movie of Sam Jackson's eight film contract on explaining why he's not doing shit in FF 2?).

Is an even bigger universe a good thing?

[ray245]

It's a horrible thing to make a cinematic universe too bloated. The last thing you do not want to is to make the general audience too tired to keep track of all the events in the other movies. Crossovers are bad when you are attempting to crossover everything you have invented. It often leads to simple question like what were all the other heroes doing when one superhero is being overwhelmed.

[JME2]

It often leads to simple question like what were all the other heroes doing when one superhero is being overwhelmed.

This has been one of my big concerns about Phase 2 since The Avengers came out.

I think they've managed to handle it decently so far, but it's only going to get more difficult to maintain as the Avengers' individual films wrap up and more heroes are added to the cinematic slate (ex. Ant-Man, Dr. Strange).

[Ahriman238]

I'm perfectly content to have standalone stories that very quietly build up to one major movie. Keep it in the after-credts scene, it's worked so far.

[Kojiro]

Adoption. Half-siblings. Make them not siblings is this continuity. It's not hard and it can easily incorporated as the films need to introduce the characters anyway.

Isn't making Sue black a more elegant solution? I know there are solutions and those solutions aren't difficult but they're solutions to a self made problem.

It seems to me that even in a perfect world where Marvel got the rights back stuff like the X-Men are not going to-and perhaps should not- overlap. At this point it seems that it would require a bit of twisting to explain how the current MCU grew without meeting mutants. The FF? Sure. Spidey? Sure. Mutants...

I think they do mention at some point in the X films and comics that the rate of mutants is exploding in recent times. Combine this with Fury's line in Avengers of 'the world is filling up with people that can't be matched' and you could have mutants as a relatively new development. That said I would be stunned, if he existed in that universe, if SHIELD didn't know about Xavier.

[Crazedwraith]

Adoption. Half-siblings. Make them not siblings is this continuity. It's not hard and it can easily incorporated as the films need to introduce the characters anyway.

Isn't making Sue black a more elegant solution? I know there are solutions and those solutions aren't difficult but they're solutions to a self made problem.

Oh yeah. Just making Sue black to would be much better. Not arguing that point. Just for simplicity and of course more POC Women in big roles would make it a good thing.

But on the other hand I don't think explaining it going to take up that much time or cause the film to come grinding to a halt or anything like that either.

[Elheru Aran]

Seriously?

Sue: something something my brother (indicates Johnny) something

Other person: Uh, your brother...?

Sue (or Thing, or Reed, whomever): Oh, [insert sibling relationship of choice]

Audience: Ahhh, there we go.

Just throw that in the first five minutes of the movie or something. It honestly doesn't need to be difficult.

[Crazedwraith]

Yeah, pretty much what I meant.