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."
It is not unique to drag back RDJ to play one of the most ionic villains ever created. It is nothing but creatively bankrupt and risk averse. After watching the FF in the theater I had a little hope but I am done with Disney and Marvel. I have collected comics for over 50 years and wrote my Masters thesis on comics a myth but I can do this anymore.
Doubt. If I’m ever surprised by Disney slop I’ll eat my hat. I don’t think it’s possible for a company that is so risk adverse to do something unique.
I mean the entire concept of a Cinematic Universe is a direct result of the MCU, which largely is a creation of Disney. We can argue about the details but when you hear Cinematic Universe, the MCU is what people think of first.
There are plenty of reasons to hate Disney, and there are plenty of remakes and sequel that are terrible and uncreative, but those are the safety money projects. They get made because people see them.
Fantastic Four was a great film. Was it the third time the IP was launched? Yes. Do comic books get relaunched all the time? Yes. So does the same happen for comic book movies? Yes. No one was upset when Christopher Nolan was planning to put out his Dark Knight trilogy. We already got 90s Batman, why do we need more. No.
But fine, you want an original IP, Thunderbolts. Thunderbolts had never been put to screen before, excellent film.
I loved Thunderbolts! I really hope it did well in post-cinema markets because I’d hate for Disney to get more risk-averse than they already are!
Other multiverses:
Stephen Kings Dark Tower
the works of H P Lovecraft
Frank Baum’s (the wizard of) Oz stories
Frankenstein
Dracula
James Bond
Cheers (Fraiser, The Tortellis)
Star Trek
Star Wars
Dr Who
Warhammer 40k
Dr Seuss
GI Joe
Transformers
The Bible / The Torah / The Quran
Sure, but none of those are cinematic universes, although some are close.
Stephen Kings Dark Tower
A single standalone film.
the works of H P Lovecraft
No connected films.
Frank Baum’s (the wizard of) Oz stories
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.
Frankenstein Dracula
I know the “Universal Monsters” franchise exists, but I’m not aware of them crossing over much.
James Bond
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.
Cheers (Fraiser, The Tortellis)
So TV crossovers and spin-offs are where the cinematic universe starts, but with Cheers obviously not cinema.
Star Trek
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.
Star Wars
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.
Dr Who
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.
Warhammer 40k
No films AFAIK.
Dr Seuss
No connecting films AFAIK.
GI Joe
Just films with sequels.
Transformers
Mostly films called Transformers, but a few spin-offs. I think the MCU was first.
The Bible / The Torah / The Quran
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.
Works of HP Lovecraft
No connected films
I see someone hasn’t seen the Herbert West trilogy starring Jeffery Combs. 😌
I can’t think of an example of them actually using this thing that they crafted. The best part of the MCU phases was realising that they were (somewhat) interconnected and then embracing the communities of fan speculations but recognising that they rarely were as adventurous as the speculators it got stale.
They always have actors spouting off, would not be surprised if they had a metric for delivering viral headlines and receiving payments.
The consequences of each entry rarely impacted the next or anything close until maybe it got to be a minor plot element just to say they had - see the giant cosmic fetus sticking out of MCU earth. It would have been cool to see how the world grew between Iron Man acknowledging his tech and superhero status publicly and vibranium being given to the public but they just became random tidbits without consequence.
F4 was solid, obviously made by committee again though so we got left with the shadows of its charm and weight. Thunderbolts was very good, and novel.
Oh I agree post Endgame they overall fumbled the ball.
The best story we have Wanda. WandaVision Wanda is processing grief but being otherwise villainous. She turns full villain in Multiverse of Madness (which I admit was poorly done since it just sorta happened, but I can fill in the blanks and make it work.) and dies. Then Agatha All Along continues that story and mystery of what happened. It looks like VisionQuest is going to give us the next step. And I fully expect Doomsday to finish this story. That’s a great use of connected characters.
Sam Wilson Captain American? Shield handoff in Endgame was great. They gave him his struggle with the moniker TV series, it had some issues but mostly worked. Then… We finally got his solo film this year but otherwise the character was on the bench. The solo film was just a mash of ideas and while it wasn’t the worst… it wasn’t great.
Hulk? Has a nice little story with his cousin She-Hulk but otherwise absent. Also a kid for some reason. Also She-Hulk meets Daredevil and then nothing. And Daredevil met Echo and nothing. And Echo met Hawkeye and Fisk… But that was nothing in the end.
Ms Marvel! She got the intro TV show, mostly well done. Teased mutants… How many years ago? Then was in The Marvels, a rushed film with a weak villain story wise but she was great. Oh and she’s building the Young Avengers team. Maybe? It’s been years.
Shang CHI!!! Comes out swinging. Excellent film! Where the fuck has he been?
Agree of the Wanda thing, the last battle sucked but Agatha was really good.
What I mean for impact across the universe is that unless it is deliberate plot element then the default is that the world is the same as ours. After 15 years of open superheroism and mass planet wide terrorism I would hope that some of the tech would have made the planet different. There are zero impacts shown for all the technology and magic that the earth posseses. It should look like an alien planet now, hell capes should be a fashion item in universe given their prevalence in pop culture there
The Snap. We should have had an entire series set during the Snap and an entire series dealing with a world post Snap. Captain America and The Winter Soldier touched upon it briefly, but it should have been so much more in depth.
Absolutely, the winter soldier show was good despite its neutering of its story. It ended up middling as a result of cutting any substance from baddies and the universe…and that ending was meh
