When we meet Hiddleston has recently finished filming Avengers: Doomsday, picking up from the “glorious purpose” that Loki found at the end of season two. “My contribution has been contributed,” he says of the forthcoming film. And then, slightly less evasively: " It is monumental. The centre of the story is absolutely brilliant, and was so surprising when I read it. It just has never been done before."
Sure, but none of those are cinematic universes, although some are close.
A single standalone film.
No connected films.
Technically with the Wicked films this kinda works, especially since “Wicked For Good” doesn’t make much sense without having seen the original Wizard of Oz. Of course this all happened well after the MCU was established.
I know the “Universal Monsters” franchise exists, but I’m not aware of them crossing over much.
Each Bond is a new start and even within a given Bond little carries over. Daniel Craig did change this up a bit by being more interconnected with direct sequels, but it’s still just a singular series of Bond films.
So TV crossovers and spin-offs are where the cinematic universe starts, but with Cheers obviously not cinema.
90s Trek definitely has these moments within the television shows. Most films stick specifically to a single series with maybe a quick cameo, but Star Trek Generations crosses TOS with TNG, so this fits but it is just one film.
The original films have the prequels, so we do see the start of what will become a cinematic universe. Technically we have Droids and Ewoks… But those weren’t serious attempts. Rogue One would really start the overall cinematic universe, but that’s 2016, after The Avengers, so it was after it was established that cinematic universes can work. The Clone Wars came out in 2008, which is a direct tie in. (Also Clone Wars came out as a prequel to Revenge of the Sith.) So Star Wars dipped it’s toes with television tie is.
Just one film. TV series are largely stand alone from Doctor to Doctor, similar to James Bond. If there were more films this would probably fit better.
No films AFAIK.
No connecting films AFAIK.
Just films with sequels.
Mostly films called Transformers, but a few spin-offs. I think the MCU was first.
Wildly different between storytellers.
Again we can debate the details, and I’m happy to, but the MCU built a world of different protagonists, and put them all together. Technically it’s just adapting the comic books, that’s what they do, but at the scale the MCU did it, they stand first.
the dark tower is one of the films in the universe, others include IT, the Stand, Pet Sematary, etc.
There are ~15 movies based on Lovecrafts works, and more influenced by…
with respect, I find your definition of what a universe is pretty arbitrary. The MCU movies don’t have a single writer, director, Auteur etc either.
Mimic is talking about cinematic universes. These are things that could technically be brands unto themselves with different themes and genres, but then you take them and combine them. They aren’t just shared, but living and breathing.
No Stephen king universe stuff has come together to form a mashup of all of those. Yes, they reference/share, but that’s totally different.
Lovecraft? Once again, same principle.
Captain America has his own movies with a history and political theme. Iron Man has tech and politics. Hulk is a monster vs man. Thor is fantasy and mythology. You could literally have these heroes never interact, but they do on multiple occasions!
They can each have, and do have, their own complete movies and arcs while also having things that affect the other’s movies while also having them come together to confront larger problems and then going back on their separate ways. None of what you referenced before are cinematic universes.
They are universes, yes, but you don’t have the entirety of Lovecraft come together to fight Cthulu or something. It’s not like Original Trek, Next Generation, DS9, Voyager, etc all work on their own missions then team up for a big confrontation or issue and then go back to their own stuff on screen. Star Wars all share the universe, but you don’t have multiple entities really doing things in the same timeline on their own and then come together. They contain arcs and different entities in the universe. The closest we may have come is Clone Wars/Rebels/Bad Batch and the Mando and Grogu stuff but even then these happen at different times and not simultaneously.
I still maintain, “the protagonists of every connected story must engage in hand to hand combat with a single antagonist at one point in the story simultaneously” to be a pretty unsatisfactory description of an oeuvre, I also am unconvinced that both “cinematic” and “universe” only applies to movies based on comic books - and Marvel even breaks this definition by having Marvel tv shows.
The TV shows are connected, though. Things that happen in them affect the movies and vice versa.
Living. And. Breathing.
Same for Stephen Kings works. In fact Doctor Doom - or an analog thereof - also appears in The Dark Tower.
I see someone hasn’t seen the Herbert West trilogy starring Jeffery Combs. 😌
You guys forgot Godzilla.