Just the thought of Avengers 5 and its alleged “60 returning characters” has us feeling oh so very tired
Rumors that Deadpool & Wolverine's Shawn Levy is being looked at as a possible director have already got our hands quaking
Aux News Avengers
It feels like it’s been nap-time for the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a minute, right? Sure, the franchise fussed for a bit—trying, in the aftermath of fiscally ridiculous blockbuster Avengers: Endgame, to keep the post-lunch-time zoomies going, mostly with its big, expensive pivot to TV. But it eventually went down, to the point that the franchise is releasing only a single film (semi-import Deadpool & Wolverine) into theaters this year, after facing some decidedly lackadaisical box office results over the last year and change.
Of course, what we’ve actually gone and done is let the MCU lull us into a false sense of peace. Now, our hands start to shake as soon as we hear the merest traces of the great beast starting to stir, as with rumors today (propagated by Deadline) that Disney might hire Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy to direct Avengers 5, which could feature 60 different returning characters from the franchise’s past. Just like that: Full-blown, exhaustion-driven panic attack.
None of this is official, of course, although Levy—who’s also heavily involved in Stranger Things over at Netflix—has reportedly been given a copy of the untitled film’s script, from Loki writer Michael Waldron. (It used to be titled, mind you; the film was originally announced as The Kang Dynasty, before Jonathan Majors’ conviction on assault and harassment charges derailed that particular push.) It used to have a director, too, before Shang-Chi’s Destin Daniel Crettin stepped away from the project in late 2023. And do you feel it? The tendrils of messiness forming, as this thing starts to slowly take shape? The whole point of an Avengers movie, after all, is to reconcile and synthesize Marvel’s various theatrical efforts over a span of a few years. But the franchise has gotten so vast, and so weird, since 2019, that we don’t know how the hell they actually do it: Eternals and Marvels and time travelers and Moon Knights and whatever the fuck is going on with Blade all somehow existing in a shared framework that no longer seems to meaningfully exist. All that, and about a hundred different rumors about which stars will reprise their roles, in which proportions, for a movie that will be seen as a massive failure if it doesn’t make a billion dollars, minimum, at the box office.
Anyway, Avengers 5 is currently scheduled for a May 1, 2026 release. Make your peace with your gods while you can.
212 Comments
Eh, I feel confident at the very least 20 of those will be cameos possibly even of characters that won’t appear like Iron Man. Maybe more.
Apparently RDJ has been talking a return in the press. So who knows
This is it. This is what all the homework was leading up to.
Oh no! This time, I didn’t do a bunch of it!
Except its kinda going to be a Part 1 right?
Hacky headlines about being “so very tired” have me so tired, so very tired.
Tired of headlines uninspired?
Remember that Adam West movie from the 80s called Zombie Nightmare? (It was one of the better MST3K episodes from season six.) Shawn Levy was this loathsome but very memorable character:I just discovered this and I wanted to pass it on. Please go about your normal business…
Best part of that movie for me: “Ace Of Spades” in the opening credits. 🤘🤘
Can’t wait to fall asleep watching this!
I’m gonna watch it as a double feature. Sleep through the second act of the first showing, sleep through the first act of the second showing, then walk out before the third.
At least Avengers 5 should come after Fantastic 4.
Take the sequential numbering as a win.
Hmm. Av5ngers or Aveng5rs?
aVengers
Aven5ers
Avenger5
And then finally the Sinister Six movie.
You just know that Sony is going to do a Sinister Six movie without Spiderman. They’ll probably turn it into some sort of Ocean’s 11 heist type story.
Shouldn’t they maybe figure out what Avengers 4 is before leaping headlong into Avengers 5?
AvengersAge of UltronInfinity WarEnd Game
They were pretty clear that Infinity War and Endgame were all one thing split into two parts. Isn’t “Secret Wars” supposed to be Avengers 5 and who knows what Avengers 4 will be now that there’s no Kang?
Whatever they’ve said, it’s pretty clear the next one is Avengers 5. I don’t think they’re gong to shoehorn in another one in under two years.
if you really want to get technical they’ve all been firsts. Avengers 1Avengers Age of Ultron 1 Avengers Infinity War 1 Avengers Endgame 1
I thought it started as Avengers 3: Parts I and II and then they declared they weren’t going that way and it would be two separate movies.
This should be Avengers 6The AvengersAvengers: Age of UltronAvengers: Captain America: Civil WarAvengers: Infinity WarAvengers: End Game
Fair
I’ll be very disappointed if Disney doesn’t use this whole multiverse thing to bring Roger Corman’s low-budget F4 into the MCU.
I’d love it if Disney were that geeky, but it’s Disney so I’m used to disappointment.
who is shawn levy blowing??
Ryan Reynolds
Reynolds? Canadian. Levy? Very Canadian. Coincidence?!
Do you think Gamemaster Anthony is available to direct?
Ilike all the Avengers movies and I hope this one will be good too.
I do not like Shawn Levy, but he’ll have to do some heavy lifting to fumble Deadpool.He’s just the most generic director. And Deadpool fanboys are already hanging off his nuts because he has “experience with blockbusters and comedies”. Ok. I’ll pass on Cheaper by the Dozen, Free Guy, and the Adam Project. I did enjoy This is Where I Leave You. I’ll give him that one.
I liked Real Steel, Date Night, and even the Night At The Museum movies. The problem is I don’t really remember the movies themselves, just that I liked them. And even then, I’ve never rewatched or wanted to rewatch them. You described him perfectly, he’s the most generic director and that makes him a perfect director for the MCU. Handing him a project with stakes as high as the next Avengers movie, though? Good luck, because it really might come down to chance.
I saw the first Night At The Museum in theaters. I liked it! Not phenomenal stuff, but a fun little romp.
the thing i really liked about the last 2 deadpool movies is they hired actual action directors. i don’t love reynolds’ schtick but i’d be lying if he doesn’t have a complete and total grasp of the character, so i appreciated that he handled the comedy and the directors got to go crazy with action sequences.shawn levy is a family comedy director, which is a weird choice for an r-rated comic book action movie to begin with, but i just don’t have faith he’ll bring that juice.(though i suppose if it’s all run through the same pre-viz, directed by committee system as every other mcu movie it won’t make a difference.)
I am not a particular fan of Levy, but before Winter Soldier and Infinity War/Endgame, I would have said that two guys who mainly directed episodes of Arrested Development and Community were also a weird choice for the Avengers.
not a bad point, but i can see getting excited about hiring tv guys after whedon did his thing with the first avengers.
I realized noticed that the F4 team members are all mainly TV actors.
Deadpool really is his perfect role. It’s Van Wilder as a superhero.
I gotta say, I don’t really think I care whose directing an MCU movie most of the time. Who is writing it seems so much more important. Marvel has their house style and I struggle to think of many shots that have really left an impression on me.
Turner D. Century wouldn’t be a returning character har har har
could’ve used him in Loki, just lift him from 1900 or whatever and drop him in 2024.
I am sure that Turner D. Century approves this comment.
Man, I’m glad I bailed on the MCU.
You’re so much cooler than us
Finally, the culmination of all the exciting plot threads! Plot threads like… uh…1. Scarlet Witch is bad! But also I guess she’s dead.
2. There’s a new Captain America! But also his show sucked.
3. There’s multiple Marvels! But no one saw that movie. Forget it.
4. The Eternals are- wait. No. Definitely forget that.
5. There is a multiverse that was caused by Loki! Or maybe Doctor Strange! Or the Katherine Hahn character? I don’t know.
6. Kang! Oh wait. No.
7. Everyone forgot Peter Parker’s name! Which is a problem he can fix by just, like, telling them his name.
8. What the fuck happened in that Ant Man movie?Yep. This is gonna be thrilling.
Scarlet Witch is bad! But also I guess she’s dead.They could take a page from Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and name the film after the Avengers but have the plot actually be about a different character, with the Avengers as sidekicks.
Avengers: Lower Decks
They could take a page from Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and name the film after the Avengers but have the plot actually be about a different character, with the Avengers as sidekicks.Strange had the most screen time and an actual arc. You’re thinking of Civil War.
Don’t forget:
9. There’s a new Black Panther! But everyone knows it’s a sad substitute for the guy we were building things around and also the actress is completely nuts.
10. Thor has a daughter! But that movie sucked too.
11. Star-Lord is still kind of around! But without all his friends that were the best parts.
12. What the hell do we do with the Fantastic Four and X-Men now that we have them?
(I will stand by the Captain America show being better than it gets credit for though).
I firmly believe that Falcon and Winter Soldier had a storyline about the Flag-Smashers releasing a worldwide virus to reduce the population a la The Snap…and had to be drastically re-edited when Covid-19 hit. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
Ok so what the fuck happened with Secret Invasion?
In reading these comments I can’t help but wonder, what is Secret Invasion? (I’ll google it; I’ve just gotten lost in so much of the Marvel stuff)
I was a Disney+ show about some Skrulls plotting to take over earth as their new home world. Interesting premise, terrible execution.
Now I need to google Skrulls lolI have been going through the Marvel movies with my kid so maybe I’ll encounter it at some point.
Absolutely. If that’s not what happened I’ll eat my hat…. well okay I’m not really a hat guy so I’ll go to the store, buy a hat, and then eat my hat!
The crew of the show already admitted to that. It’s not fantheory anymore; it’s confirmed.
I was loving that show but yah the backhalf was very “wait did I miss a scene or two with the Flag-Smashers?”
Agree with you on Falcon and the Winter Soldier being better than people give it credit for. Now, I mostly enjoyed it because Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, and Daniel Bruhl used every ounce of their collective and considerable charm and charisma to lift it above kind of a muddled narrative (the Flag Smashers storyline was… meh), but still.
My biggest issues with F&WS were that they took a weird pivot with the Flag Smashers tonally from “Yeah they might have a valid point, maybe we should at least hear them out” to “Nope they’re (Karli especially) basically just murderous terrorists” so they could have a fight-filled finale without having to muddle through anything resembling moral consequence; and that Isaiah Bradley’s very legitimate grievances against the government for their experiments on him (honestly one of the best parts of the show) were solved and handwaved away because… they gave him a statue?
it also gave us Zemo dancing:
13. Remember or care about that Shang-Chi fellow? Yeah? No? Us too.14. We spent tens of millions to CGI She-Hulk shaking her butt on TV. Job well done!
don’t forget brett goldstein as hercules. that’ll surely pay off any minute.
Him and Harry Styles Starfox are getting their own buddy cop film. We swear.
They fight Michael Mando’s Scorpion in this one.
Lol how sad it must be to hate women this much
(I will stand by the Captain America show being better than it gets credit for though).I think, unfortunately, a lot of Marvel’s recent problems were caused by external forces they have no control over.It seems clear that the original plot for F&WS got fucked by Covid (apparently, the plot was supposed to be about a man-made virus causing a global pandemic. whoops!). Who knows if the show ever would have been good, but it definitely would have been better.Same goes for WandaVision. There’s definitely excellent elements of that show, but the ending seems confused. It’s very likely that this was caused by the shuffling or release orders due to Covid. WandaVision was supposed to come AFTER Dr. Strange 2 which makes much more sense. Imagining Wanda’s arc in that series being her coming to terms with the terrible things she did in DS2 seems much more satisfying.
I hear the same issue occurred with Secret Invasion. That was potentially supposed to come AFTER The Marvels and was probably heavily re-edited due to this shift.These are all rumors, but I do think that Marvel was stuck in a bad position and that some of the crappy storytelling in recent years wasn’t entirely their fault.Still, their biggest external force problem is one they really can’t get around: 16 years of this type of storytelling is too long for most people and that’s inevitably going to drive people away. Superhero movie fatigue is real. No cultural phenomenon burns that hot for much longer than a decade. The culture itself is always going to change in that period.
Everyone would still know that Spiderman exists, and his actions during the events of Endgame. They just won’t know his secret identity.
“There’s multiple Marvels! But no one saw that movie. Forget it.” – incels need to stop pushing this narrative.
I’m sorry, buddy, but it’s not incels that are turning away from Marvel. It’s an American movie going public that is sick of watching the same movie over and over again since 2008.The Marvels is a massive bomb. That is an objective fact. It lost Disney an absurd amount of money. This has less to do with the fact that it stars women and more to do with the fact that it stars a C-list superhero and two characters that the audience was supposed to watch TWO DIFFERENT TV shows to know about. This might have worked when Marvel was red hot, but it certainly didn’t work now when people are sick of superhero movies.If it makes you feel any better, Ant Man 3 lost a ton of money too. Does that dispel your “only incels could possibly hate my favorite comic book movies!!!!!” theory?I know it hurts to admit this since I’m sure you’ve dedicated an upsetting amount of time becoming the pre-eminent MCU expert in your (assuredly booming) social circle. But it looks like you’re gonna have to develop an actual personality soon. The MCU’s time as a dominant pop culture force is done.Don’t worry, though! Culture is cyclical! I’m sure superhero movies will become back in vogue in only 30-40 years or so! You just need to stay alive that long and your encyclopedic knowledge of Iron Man’s different suit varieties will totally become cool again! You can do it! Eat healthy and stay alive!
More than half of those amount to you just not liking those films… noob commentary
One solution. Deadpool kills the Marvel Universe. Or God Emperor Doom start over with a new world.
I know you’re being hyperbolic for clicks, but why would *any* film or its rumored future create panic? That just doesn’t sound like a healthy approach to movies.
It’s wild to think that the notoriously-shit Zombie Nightmare is still the best movie Levy’s ever been associated with. The tired faux-naughtiness of the D&W trailers suggest this will not change in 2024…
I wasn’t as enamored with Real Steel as everyone else, but in terms of general consensus/perspective, I think that’s the best movie he’s ever been associated with.
You know how I can tell you are not into comics?You think 60 characters with a decade or so of backstory is overwhelming.
I think it’s more about how Disney thinks that Marvel fatigue will be solved by THROWING MORE MARVEL AT YOU!Sixty characters of Marvel! Some you’ve lost interest in! Come, heathens! Renew thy faith in our masses!
I mean it’s just a movie, don’t see it if you think that’s overwhelming.
Well sure, but we have to admit that Avengers Endgame wasn’t seen by only comic book fans. That kind of box office came from the broad public, some of which are certainly fatigued by superhero movies. We can’t pretend it isn’t a thing.
I mean surely you can’t think they mean launching like 40 other tentpoles. They obviously are referring to side characters…
You don’t think 60 characters in a single movie risks being a bit overwhelming?
I think there were dozens of characters in Endgame and everyone seems to think that’s the gold standard, so no, I think it’s ok.
Endgame had the narrative conceit of The Snap to shrink the cast down by half, and really, it was mostly tertiary characters that were snapped so that the movie could focus on the OG Avengers.Infinity War was the one that struggled with too many characters, in my opinion.Avengers 5 is going to have a big issue where most of the current roster (is there a roster? Was Avengers HQ ever rebuilt? If so, who even still works there?) has never met, or has only met in a mid-credits tease. They nearly have to start from scratch with the team building because most of the original Avengers are now dead or retired, and the next generation has just been doing their own thing in the solo movies.I don’t see how they can do it without spending half the runtime on the Eternals shaking hands with the Marvels and the new Guardians roster and so on.
There were literally almost 40 characters in Endgame and everyone holds it up as the high water mark of the MCU. I don’t think Infinity War had too many characters either. Then again I grew up loving stuff like Secret Wars, I have the original Infinity Gauntlet run and DC’s Invasion comics up on my wall, so maybe I’m just better equipped to handle more than a couple characters at a time in a movie than most people?
“I don’t see how they can do it without spending half the runtime on the Eternals shaking hands with the Marvels and the new Guardians roster and so on.”I see plenty of ways they can do it without spending an hour on characters shaking hands. I watched the new Garfield movie and said ‘I could have written that’, so I’m thinking that a screenwriter that’s decent can come up with even better ideas than either me or you.
I grew up reading comic books, and it’s much different than watching a movie. You read and absorb the art at your own pace, whereas the pacing and speed of a movie is fixed. And reading those books today is a different experience than when I was a kid, because you can open a book to a splash page with 50 different characters and “pause” the story to immediately look them all up, their names, their backstories, their powers, etc. You can take as long as you like, then go back and reread the last few panels in case you forgot where you were. And while you can do that with a movie at home, you can’t pause a movie in the theater or look up characters on your phone without being rude. So yeah, most people don’t react well to 50 different speaking named roles in a movie.Shit, even when I was a kid, reading those giant event comic books could be pretty alienating. I would always gravitate toward the crossovers with the most characters that I already knew (usually from other media and rarely from the comics themselves), because the crossover would make little-to-no attempt to inform readers about lesser-known characters. At least in the 80’s up through the very early 00’s, editors would include notes to tell you what issue provided broader context. I feel like nowadays comics are very much, “lol look it up.”
Personally I don’t see the need to include the Eternals, or even the new Guardians roster. I feel like the Eternals have their own shit to deal with, and as I understand it no Eternals 2/Celestials movie is coming out between now and the next Avengers to wrap all that up. If half the team is in that big dude’s custody, it’d be hard to work them into the film. Plus some of them are dead and have to be reconstructed. We were warned that STAR LORD WILL RETURN, plus he’s on earth now so I expect to see him, maybe Mantis or some of the others. I’d be fine with Rocket’s new team just getting their own movie or better yet mini-series down the line.
Here’s my hot take: Infinity War is a better film than Endgame.
I’m pretty sure none of the OG Avengers had met before the original Avengers film. Do you not remember that scene where Cap/Thor/Iron Man have a threeway fight in a forest and Stark makes a lame joke to Thor about Shakespeare in the park. Not once did they meet before The Avengers. So I don’t understand your point.
It’s true, that first Avengers movie spends about the first half of its runtime getting six characters to shake hands. (It’s worth noting that Cap has already met Tony’s dad, Black Widow met Tony during her undercover mission in Iron Man 2, and Hawkeye has crossed paths with Thor).But, like, that’s 6 characters, with non-Avengers like Fury and Coulson already having met several Avengers in prior installments. The MCU is much larger now. If it takes over an hour to show six characters meeting and do it well, it follows that it would take several hours to introduce like two dozen newer characters to each other with the same level of care.
Not unless you assign each of them a two-page monologue.
Not necessarily. Not all 60 characters would be primary characters. The focus would likely be on a much smaller group, with other characters providing supporting roles.
Certainly some wont even have dialogue it’ll just pan by their face a la Stark’s funeral.
The problem isn’t the amount of backstory, it’s the massive drop in quality on average since (and, arguably, including) Endgame. Meh movies and shows (none were really that bad except maybe Iron Fist) were the exception in the first three phases whereas almost everything else was either good or great. Since Phase 4 began, it’s been the other way around, and the only solution Disney/Marvel Studios has tried is just “throw more movies and shows at them!” yet clearly without the planning or care that they used to have. On top of that, many of the things that Phase 4 set up aren’t even relevant anymore or have been abandoned completely anyway, and the only really good thing from Phase 5 was really just good because it was a James Gunn movie whereas everything else has been either okay-at-best (The Marvels) or downright garbage (Secret Invasion).
I liked Iron Fist actually. A lot of people weren’t looking for a story about a kid with horrible PTSD returning from years of being tortured in captivity only to find out that the one person he thought he could trust was the person who betrayed him, but I found it to be an interesting take.
The netflix shows weren’t really part of any of the phases though.I think a lot of people are looking back at the older movies with rose colored glasses though.
It was still weird for him to be white tho? Idk hear me out here: the idea of a young white guy mastering techniques and traditions laid out by Asians is blatantly racist and very “white saviour”-y.
It doesn’t matter that it’s boring it’s also straight up racist.
IDK hear me out here: Asians don’t need you to defend them.
I love the idea that a white guy can master a bunch of traditions Asian people made. That’s so cool.
I like the idea that Asians are all one people and you are gonna be the one to save them from the racism of a friggen Marvel TV show.For your next trick, you’ll save the Africans!
This is entirely taste and opinion though. Since Endgame, the MCU has made so much more of an effort to spotlight their female and POC heroes, I’ve been absolutely loving it. The Marvels was super fun, Shang Chi has some of the best fight scenes in the MCU, Eternals is hands down the most gorgeous MCU movie to date, and no MCU movie has made me cry like No Way Home did. There have been a couple that didn’t quite hit for me (Ant Man 3, Thor 4) but for myself and others like me who have been waiting with bated breath for FINALLY something other than boring white me, I’m living.
IMHO, you are overpraising phases 1-3 and judging post-endgame movies and TV because of superhero fatigue.
Sixty sounds low, honestly. Take Ant Man. That has like ten core characters. Add in a bunch of Quantum World characters, you’re already at a quarter of that number.
Core characters for Ant Man are Scott, Cassie, Hank, Hope (whose actress just announced she’s taking a break from acting, so probably not appearing), and Jan. Scott’s ex-wife and the X-Con group (even Luis) are supporting roles, which don’t much factor into the Avenger-y stuff. I only include Cassie with the core characters in the hopes they’ll do the Young Avengers thing teased at the end of The Marvels.
Yeah, and no one saw that movie because it was a piece of shit.
The Quantum World characters weren’t returning.
Reminder: Quantumania was, in fact, terrible.
Throw them in a pot, add some broth, a potato, baby you’ve got a Marvel stew goin’!
in one fuckin movie? that sounds like a good idea to you?
Sounds fine to me! There were almost 40 in Endgame and it worked fine.
They’ll be 60 characters in the movie. 50 of them will be cameos or extended cameos, 5 will be ancillary and the 5 will be main characters. This will also include villains.
Exactly.
It’s wild that most of the commenters dont realize this
Yeah, but Endgame was literally 3 hours long and billed as both a Part 2 to the previous Avengers film and the culmination of ten years of storytelling. It worked fine in context, and Avengers 5 will presumably have a much different context. So not a great comparison IMO
Yeah, but you have no idea what this movie will be about or what context they will be presented in, so whining about it at this point is dumb.
I don’t think most people are whining. That it may have 60 returning characters is one of the only ideas we have about it, so there’s not a lot else to say and it’s not going to sound fine to everyone. I was just pointing out that the 40 returning characters for Endgame was seen as more of an exception than a precedent for most people.
The article is whiny and there are a lot of people whining in the comments. Like, this dude down here just called me a prick, what the fuck?
Well, name calling isn’t whining either, but that’s between you two.
Avengers 5 is likely going to be a 2-part movie as well
It wasn’t just that Endgame was part 2 of 2, it was a culmination of the previous decade of movies. It was a huge event, a victory lap, a fuckin’ endgame, and we all knew that’s what it was going to be. So things that would’ve seemed excessive in Iron Man 2 or the first Avengers movie seemed appropriate instead.If Avenger5 is going to be an event on the same level, then 1) we don’t even know it yet, 2) subjective, but even six years after the last one it feels too soon, and 3) the momentum doesn’t seem to be there for it. We’re not even sure if Kang is still going to be the villain.
People made similar complaints about Infinity War 2-3 years before it opened too.
not every comic book is good!
That’s true!
Most people aren’t into comics for that exact reason. The movies aren’t for the people who love the comics.
And yet these are comic book movies about comic book characters with stories told in comic book style. If you haven’t figured that out by this point I’m not sure what to tell you.
Yeah Murry I have actually figured out that they’re based on comics, prick. That’s irrelevant to my point. The movies are way more widely consumed than the comics, and they’re entirely different mediums. They can’t make money on these properties based solely on the dwindling number of comic book readers, that was the entire reason they started taking movies seriously, so the movies are a different thing for a different audience.
Hey fuck you, there’s no reason to call me a prick.Stop being an asshole, asshole.
Don’t condescend to me like a prick, prick.
Nahhhhh I got into the comics after Endgame and they do go kinda of hand in hand. If what you’re trying to say here is “I’m not interested in reading” well that’s on you. That’s just called being ignorant. And if you’re a fixed mindset person enjoy completing the puzzle youve solved a million times over.
You do know there are other things you can read besides comic books right? You should give them a try, it might help with your poor reading comprehension.
lmao I love when people say this because you’re basically saying “I refuse to be a person who reads!” looooool
Do you realize that being an MCU fan first means that when you read the comics you hear the lines in their voice? You should really try it it’s nice.
It is, and only comic book virgins think it isn’t.
lol ‘comic book virgins’, apparently it’s the ‘80s again and I’m a big fat virgin nerd for having read comic books 30 years ago when I was a kid. Only some kind of horrible nerd would be able to remember things like that, regular people don’t have oversized crazybrains and can only remember one or maybe 2 characters at any given time.
Good job.
In this context, “comic book virgins” reads like “people who have never read comics before” and like you meant to agree with them.
Amen
Yes! Thank you. Please let the rest of us who still enjoy the MCU just appreciate it in piece. There is no “Marvel fatigue” . There is just bad faith jealously from people who didn’t make billions of dollars with their artistic and technical skills.
Who the fuck cares about comics. This is a movie not a comic.Stick to the issue at hand.
I’m surprised they haven’t moved forward quickly with a Shang-Chi sequel, felt like that was the one bright spot among the phase 4 movies, aside from GotG vol 3. To my surprise, i’d put the Marvels as the 3rd best movie post-Endgame. everything else has been disappointing imo (again, just in terms of the movies, im not going to get into the D+ series)
I think Multiverse of Madness is pretty unfairly maligned. It suffers from:1) overpromising/underdelivering on multiversal hijinks in the same year Everything Everywhere All at Once came out; and2) relying far too much on the audience being familiar with WandaVision (while also inexplicably reversing her character growth in that series).But otherwise I thought it was fun! Certainly a lot more fan than Doctor Strange 1.
Yeah I loved MOM in theatres. The backlash has always confused me. A friend complained that the film did not contain “the correct cameos” and therefore was bad. It was even super short it was like a fun little rollar coaster ride that didn’t over welcome it’s stay. Zombie-Strange was solid too.
To me 1 and 2 were fatal errors for that movie, so I don’t think it is unfairly maligned. It was fun, but I’ll just never forgive it for Wanda’s character assassination after Wandavision did so much for what was previously (in the movies at least) a pretty nothing character.
sequel is one thing, i think it’s crazy he hasn’t even cameo’d in anything or been mentioned by anyone.
Except for a brief time in the early 70s when every kid in the US was obsessed with Bruce Lee and the Enter The Dragon, Marvel has never known what to do with Shang Chi. But I have no interest in a slapstick, powered up Shang Chi with an annoying sidekick myself. That’s SO far from the OG character, who never really fit in the 616 Universe as it was.
hey, if it was up to me, step one would have been to not make a shang-chi movie in the first place. didn’t mind the movie personally but i haven’t been compelled to rewatch anything mcu in years.
I mean, maybe an original supe who is Chinese? Automatically making your Chinese guy a martial arts /wizard is surprisingly lazy in 2020.
We almost got Steven Yuen as Sentry and now it’s re-casted as a white guy. Do they not realize what a big deal it would have been to have a super Asian character who isn’t a martial arts master? ffs MCU
Shang-Chi exists purely as an attempt to milk the Asian community in a similar way that Black Panther made huge bank. They never had any plans for Shan-Chi beyond that. It was honestly conceived as an apology for Iron Fist. They even hired an Asian director in the way that they hired Coogler for BP. Super tokenism.
well even if that was the plan – they’re doing a bad job of it! if you’re gonna milk an audience, fucking milk them!
Except for a brief time in the early 70s when every kid in the US was obsessed with Bruce Lee and the Enter The Dragon, Marvel has never known what to do with Shang Chi.Shang-Chi was the most popular book Marvel sold. So they thought they would get clever by doing the exact same thing with a white guy named Danny Rand. His book didn’t sell. So they shoved him into their first black superhero’s book. He didn’t help that book sell. So they killed him.Then Shang-Chi’s rogues’ gallery collided with rising racial awareness of stereotypes (and copyright) and Shang-Chi got pushed into the background.Then in the 90’s, Danny Rand was resurrected from the dead and shoved into anything involving martial arts to make him seem popular again. Which meant the white martial artist got tons of page space while the previously more popular Asian martial artist was completely ignored by Marvel.Until Marvel got a bunch of its properties back and remembered Shang-Chi was more popular than Iron Fist. So they made a terrible Iron Fist show on the cheap and then hugged their Shang-Chi movie tightly refusing to let anyone mess with it until… the MCU decided it was ready to have an Asian guy star in a movie.
The director was juggling a bunch of other stuff. Most of that other stuff is done now, & he dropped another project (the aforementioned Avengers 5!), so now he’s working on Shang-Chi 2.
60 legacy characters means 60 new-&-improved-now-with-90%-more-DEI versions of those characters, right?
Not gonna lie, that does sound depressing. I would prefer they form a new core Avengers team and face off with a re-cast Kang or whoever. For some reason, I’m constantly drawn to the roster of Mark Waid and Mike del Mundo’s 2017 incarnation that included: Sam’s Captain America, Lady Thor, Spidey, Hercules, Wasp, and Vision facing off with Kang. Something like that would be cool, (obviously, they can’t use all those characters). No need to go bombastically bigger than Endgame. That was the culmination of 20+ movies. This should be the start of something new, but I know that will probably not be the case.
My prediction/wish for post-Endgame didn’t come true but I still think it could be a good way to build the franchise back up: I think they need to focus on fun team-ups and smaller stories. I think the best part of Ragnarok and the reason it worked overall was because most of the movie was about Thor and Hulk navigating Sakaar together and trying to get back to Asgard, and Hela’s apocalyptic threat was kinda softened by the resolution and how much fun the rest of the movie is. They did a little crossover stuff with Love and Thunder but it was still an apocalyptic threat (undercut by squishing it into one movie, that should’ve been a Thor and a GoG two movie arc at least) and the Guardians didn’t really play a big role in it, and Multiverse of Madness had cool ideas in making Scarlett Witch the villain but it was a little messy overall and still apocalyptic stakes. Spiderman works consistently in part because he’s not saving the world, and we should see the rest of the Avengers kinda doing normal hero stuff with a more constrained threat, and combine that with a friction generating team-up culminating in growth and cool combo attacks in the third act. Throw hints to the apocalyptic threat into the credits scenes again until a big full cast Avengers movie feels earned.
I think that would work. They have to realize that just because everything in the comics takes place in the same world, EVERYONE doesn’t have to be in every story. Take Inferno (the original 1988 story). That was exclusively a mutant-centered story, but because the demons took over NYC, it touched all different kinds of titles in different ways. All the heroes of NYC didn’t come together to defeat the main threat, the X-Men handled that, but everyone got a taste of what was going on without derailing the books they followed. That’s how the MCU should operate. These big, expansive stories should be adapted, but you don’t have to throw every person who has shown up on screen into them. Just have their stories influenced to acknowledge that, yes, the MCU is all connected.
I wonder what would audience think if, say, a Galactus story was focused on the Fantastic Four side of the events, and they only mentioned the Avengers on a newscast or something indicating they are “containing the situation in [other parts of the world]”. Would people feel disappointed in that?
Well, judging from what’s coming out of the casting for the FF film, that’s pretty much what we’re going to get next year. I would argue that Galactus is a big enough threat that it would warrant the inclusion of mostly everybody, but what I’m saying is that they don’t have to do that every Avengers movie now since they did it in Infinity War and Endgame. Although, to take your idea to the next step, it would be very cool if they had two separate movies telling the same story, but one from the FF POV and the second from the Avengers’. So, you’d get the global threat, but not have to cram everything into one 2-hour block.
They definitely had different plans when they stitched Thor with the Guardians at the end of endgame. Taika definitely looked at that as “how do I undo this to get Thor alone again?” I actually think that was meant to be the end of Thor and the idea of a Thor 4 came after. Or that Thor was meanth to appear in GoG3 I think (omg why didnt we get that)
tsk don’t call her Lady Thor. A big thing in the comics is that she HATES being called “Lady” Thor. She’s just Thor dude.
Is that in the movie? Because most people haven’t read the comics.
I think it may be. She definitely says something like “THE NAME IS MIGHTY THOR” as she wrecks Gorr. I just don’t remember what he called her that she was correcting. That whole her being Thor thing was always really weird to me. Like as I understand it, Thor isn’t a mantle. It’s the dude’s name. Wielding the power of Thor should not make you Thor…
Lol. My apologies to Thor Foster. Just differentiating her from Thor Odinson.
it’s a real thor in her side, eh?
the funniest part is we can’t even theorize what’s going to happen. used to be these comment sections were people guessing about the story…but there isn’t one, so it’s just a bunch of people going ‘i’m excited for this’ or ‘this sound like shit’ based on nothing other than vibes.i frankly have no idea what to expect from a new avengers movie. there aren’t any avengers! the current movies and shows are not building to a team-up event in my eyes. unless, of course, the key to this phase was in echo or the handful of what if episodes i skipped.i will say this – shawn levy sucks ass.
There IS such a thing as “superhero movie fatigue” and I’m sick of being told there isn’t.It was a thing 10 years ago.
I did all my homework and can’t wait to watch this to check my math.
If the prospect of seeing more superhero movies exhausts you to be so needlessly negative about some fucking rumours, maybe either stop following them so closely or just re-examine your attitude.
The MCU is homework, and this is the final exam.
The multiverse stuff was fun, but the MCU really needs a Crisis on Infinite Earths kind of event to pare down all the characters and versions now that all (almost) of Marvel is under Disney now.
i’m sure Secret Wars is meant to address that, somewhat.
sounds fun
60? Is that all? Meh. I WANT MORE!!!!
Endgame was Exile On Main Street. The end and finale of the classic era, the imperial phase, whatever. Everything else is Goat’s Head Soup forward. Have we had a Some Girls yet? I don’t know because I stopped paying attention. It feels like we’ve had more than one Dirty Work though, and that’s not a good thing.
No one is saying there are 60 characters with lines, jeez, keep calm. How many characters were in Endgame? Tons, and as I recall, Dowd gave it a B minus (which with Dowd might translate up to an A).I guess we can go on about “Marvel fatigue” or whatever we’re calling it, but worrying that an MCU movie featuring a mess of Avengers will have too many characters is just silly.And as long as I’m here I’ll chime in once again to say that The Marvels was a goddamn delight. So there.
I enjoyed the first act of The Marvels when they were all switching with each other but the villain was very, very lackluster and dragged the movie down every time she showed up. Still better than a lot of the other MCU movies lately.
the entire time i kept thinking about how i wish the movie was just about them fighting a giant robot, like in the comic kamala was reading (writing?) at the beginning.
yeah it ranks as my 3rd favorite post-Endgame, surprisingly. the villain could’ve used more development but some of that was the movie wanting to make the environmental catastrophe Danvers unleashed a surprise until the 3rd act
Yeah I think they need to clarify what they mean by characters. But I assume they do actually do mean characters who are more than extras or cameos. Otherwise it’s a non-story.
For real. Like technically the guy in ROTJ that crashed his A-Wing into the Executor had a name, Arvel Crynyd. Every Ewok had a name, like Logray, Paploo, Chirpa, Wicket, etc. That guy that Han threw a toolbox at in the shield substation was named Dyer. It’s gonna be like that. We’ll see Phyla-Vell from Guardians 3 run by with Hope from Thor 4 and do a combo punch on a time monster, and they’ll be done. It’s fine.
Hope from Thor 4I suspect you mean Love (groan.) Though I also would not bet against there being a character named Hope in Thor 4.
Oh yeah, been a minute. Forgot there’s a Hope and a Love in the MCU.
Not anymore! Unless they recast Hope. I posted this on Gizmodo but I hope they just have the character always be giant and only ever show her legs.
They should just say that when they left the microverse she went to the wrong dimension and died in that What If episode where she was a giant zombie.
Personally my vote is for a short scene using old footage where she gets smooshed on a windshield.
I swear in the passed two years Ryan Reynolds and Chris Hemsworth both announced a break from acting. Hope will be there. Even if it’s just a massive payday to stand and look pretty Evangeline Lily is definitely attending.
Oh no papa I couldn’t possibly think of a movie, it makes me ever so tired. Oh, can you just imagine it? I shall have to retire to the fainting couch and imbibe a restorative tonic. 60 is simply too high a number, dear father, please, have one of the lads from the labor yard imagine this film instead, you know I suffer from weak logic and draftsman’s complaint! I know, I shall simply imagine a lolly instead. Yes, a big round lolly with only one color. A proper number of colors for a writer of my constitution.
I’m getting the vapors just thinking about it.
Then don’t watch it.
Thoughts from an internet rando:1. Shawn Levy is kind of the perfect guy to do this movie. He competently makes movies that have no discernible directorial style, so he can emulate the Marvel House style seamlessly and with minimal pushback.2. Along those lines, I was watching OG Avengers the other week and was struck by how tonally, it is absolutely a Joss Whedon film. Whedon obviously is problematic, but he was the right creative steward at the time for defining what the MCU was going to look and sound like.3. The first Avengers had a pretty clear narrative of assembling a random group of heroes to face off a cosmic threat, with the through line of Fury working for an organization designed for such a purpose. After the first Avengers, there was a real sense of teamwork with the OGs as they frequently showed up in other people’s movies. Avengers 5 seems to have… none of that. And they are going to have to start manufacturing reasons for it.4. Final CGI fight aside, I really liked Shang-Chi and the fact that it has now been 3 years since we have heard from the character is a bit of a let-down. I get it, COVID and the MCU figuring it out, but that has been a bummer.5. I haven’t really enjoyed the turn towards TV. Some of the shows were good, but I really liked the MCU when it was a couple movies a year, a TV show (AoS/Agent Carter) and that was it. I know I don’t have to watch the stuff I don’t care about, and I don’t, but I would rather just be able to keep my commitment to a few movies a year.6. The quality of the movies post-Endgame has been lacking. The shows a bit too, but outside of Shang-Chi and GotG 3, there has been more “meh” than “awesome!”7. I can’t help but feel that the impending arrival of FF and X-Men has sort of taking the emphasis off the Avengers as Feige and team focus on the new stuff. That’s probably *not* true, but it feels that way.
The dialogue in the OG Avengers is soooo fucking quippy I can’t even understand what Tony Stark is saying half the time. It just feels like Joss Whedon rattling off with himself.
i also think the first avengers movie largely looks like complete shit until at least after the first half.i remember being worried when i first saw it because it looked so much like a crummy tv show in the opening.
The end-credits scene in Love & Thunder with Jane at the gates of Valhalla is almost shot-for-shot a scene from the Jason Aaron run of comics and immediately after that she crashes down to earth and gets another shot at living.
She’s absolutely just going to come crashing down from the sky mid-fight in Avengers 5. People don’t seem to realize they were setting that up.
you and i are on the same page, especially with #4 & 6.someone mentioned Shang-Chi’s director has been busy with other stuff. i’m sure Simu’s been busier too i suppose. not sure about awkwafina.personally would like to see the sequel be one in which Shang-Chi has to reluctantly work with his now-head-of-the-ten-rings sister Xialing. maybe leave the magic village out to keep the CGI budget down and have a less overstuffed 3rd act. Then wrap up a trilogy with Shang-Chi having to try and coax Xialing back to the good side, i dunnojust so long as they don’t send him into space to investigate the origin of the 10 rings (e.g. the mistake Ant-Man 3 made) or tie it in with Eternals or something.
Personally think jumping right into another huge event type movie is a mistake by Marvel. The Avengers movie of old made megabucks at least in part because there was massive hype for them. That doesn’t exist right now because the movies of late have just not done the job. A smaller scale Avengers movie that reestablishes a team and pays off some of the smaller setups from the last two Phases would be a good litmus test on if people are going to show up in droves again for a mega-budget event.
i think they should put the avengers branding to bed completely and only bring it out when they eventually reboot the core 4.not saying don’t do ‘secret wars’ or whatever but that doesn’t ALSO need to be an avengers movie. just call it marvel’s secret wars.
I agree, but I’m sure their thinking is that a movie with Avengers in the title automatically makes like $250 million more.
well it shows just how lazy exec thinking is. it’s not like it was ‘avengers fans’ who went and saw the avengers, they invented the brand for a lot of people.you’d think ‘hey let’s invent a bunch of other ones!’ would be top of the list, but you can’t have that much imagination in the C suite.
Yeah. I checked out of curiosity how much a few Avengers movies made versus Civil War which was basically an Avengers movie in all but name. It was a few hundred million. So like I get it a little, they’ve sorta seen evidence that this is the case. But you’re absolutely right, they should be more adventurous. Though now they’ve got X-Men too and they’ve realized they can only release so many of these a year so I’m not holding my breath.
it’s not even adventurous, it’s just doing the same thing with a different name haha. instead of milking something to death…save some milk and sell some different milk!
I remember thinking at the time that “Marvel’s Civil War” was a better title than “Captain America: Civil War”. I’m sorry it just wasn’t a proper Cap film.
This plan is for 2026.
My take is that the first franchise only worked because of the particular combination of actors and characters. I just don’t see a continuation, minus those elements, being must-see.
Assuming they include the X-Men and Fantastic 4, that’s roughly 1/3 of the 60 characters. Then throw in the current Avengers lineup, perhaps a couple of original Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and Wakanda – it’s not that difficult to get close to 60 characters. I would expect that most of those characters would be in supporting roles, with the movie focusing on a handful of primary characters.
The fuck is us, peckerwood?
This’ll be a fun distraction I guess
Sonething something multiverse..you can get 55 characters out of the way in 30 seconds with multiverses
The “60 returning characters” comment was so random. Why did the makers of the most popular film franchise feel the need to brag in that way when they obviously meant supporting characters like maybe bro from the Ant-Man theif squad pops up or Pepper or Obadiah in a video clip or w.e.
It’s just so random that they felt the need to announce that.
Wong. I demand more Wong.
Sure, we all do!
I think you all take this way too seriously and over stress the importance of watching every single release. 60 returning characters does NOT mean 60 leads. But hey, gotta exaggerate and start a hate train years early to get them clicks right? Last straw for me with this rag. I’m not hear to read ranting on something we have zero concrete information for.