TV/Movies Megathread

[The Larch]

The trouble with marvel films overall is something that you see in a lot of genre series whether it's dragonball, buffy, stargate, etc... That is power bloat.
Every new villain has to be bigger and badder than the one that went before.

Power creep is an inherent feature of these large superhero universes, be they Marvel or DC. That's why in the comics every once in a while they have to do a massive universe-wide reboot event to clear out all the craziness that acumulates over time and go back to "factory settings". In the pre-MCU movies they would just reboot the whole thing and start over again, like in the Batman or Spiderman ones, but the MCU has become so massive that they just can't do that and do a new Avengers saga every 10 years or so.

[Josquius]

I'm not a big marvel expert but I do remember reading something about how the Inhumans are really just a more famous version of the eternals (I've heard of neither) however after the failure of the low budget TV show they've pretty much killed the Inhumans.
Also wasn't there some thinking that in turn the Inhumans were just an attempt to do xmen without the xmen license, which is no longer a problem?

Reboot and power creep - they will need to some day. Doing it with the multiverse seems the logical place. Thanos isn't exactly the most powerful guy around, there's quite a few above him they can do like galactus. But not too many.

[The Larch]

I'm not a big marvel expert but I do remember reading something about how the Inhumans are really just a more famous version of the eternals (I've heard of neither) however after the failure of the low budget TV show they've pretty much killed the Inhumans.

Not an expert on either group as well, as they're both solidly c-tier in the Marvel hierarchy (Inhumans could be argued to be b-tier), but even if both are part of the "cosmic" side of Marvel stories, they act in very different ways, with Inhumans more integrated with regular stories and characters on Earth (hell, there's at least one Inhuman that is part of SHIELD in the comics, and they started out as an offshoot of the Fantastic Four) and the Eternals being part of the more esoteric galactic background of Marvel and featuring only in strictly cosmic stories.

Also wasn't there some thinking that in turn the Inhumans were just an attempt to do xmen without the xmen license, which is no longer a problem?

Never heard of that.

Reboot and power creep - they will need to some day. Doing it with the multiverse seems the logical place. Thanos isn't exactly the most powerful guy around, there's quite a few above him they can do like galactus. But not too many.

Yup, the multiverse angle allows them to sidestep things a little, but it's an additional layer of mess on top of all the current messes they already have. Also, there's no need to include the multiverse if you want to put Galactus into a story, but putting Galactus

[garbon]

I've no idea on the TV show but the Inhumans have been part of Marvel since the 60s. Enemies of the Fantastic Four.

[The Larch]

I've no idea on the TV show but the Inhumans have been part of Marvel since the 60s. Enemies of the Fantastic Four.

Yup, and the Eternals since the 70s, IIRC.

[garbon]

I've no idea on the TV show but the Inhumans have been part of Marvel since the 60s. Enemies of the Fantastic Four.

Yup, and the Eternals since the 70s, IIRC.

The Inhumans were also in other media as they showed up in the F4 animated series. I knew of them as a child who didn't read comics.

[celedhring]

Now that Disney got the rights to the X-Men and F4, Marvel has some heavy-hitters in reserve.

I suppose the main problem with introducing the X-Men is how "mutants" have never been a thing in the MCU.

[Sheilbh]

The trouble with marvel films overall is something that you see in a lot of genre series whether it's dragonball, buffy, stargate, etc... That is power bloat.
Every new villain has to be bigger and badder than the one that went before.

Also - after, what, 40 films there's been one memorable charismatic, villain in Loki.

Which I think contributes to this. The villain gets bigger and badder but the space for the performance normally doesn't. I think the lack of good villains is a problem because if you're invested in the character/performance the stakes can be smaller.

[The Larch]

Now that Disney got the rights to the X-Men and F4, Marvel has some heavy-hitters in reserve.

I suppose the main problem with introducing the X-Men is how "mutants" have never been a thing in the MCU.

Mutants will have to be handwaved in, there's no point in doing a convoluted story to introduce them at this point. Fans know pretty well who they are, and they are quite well known to the general public anyway.

[celedhring]

The trouble with marvel films overall is something that you see in a lot of genre series whether it's dragonball, buffy, stargate, etc... That is power bloat.
Every new villain has to be bigger and badder than the one that went before.

Also - after, what, 40 films there's been one memorable charismatic, villain in Loki.

Which I think contributes to this. The villain gets bigger and badder but the space for the performance normally doesn't. I think the lack of good villains is a problem because if you're invested in the character/performance the stakes can be smaller.

There's been a few more villains that imho were good (Zemo, Thanos, Killmonger), but yeah, it's never been their forte.

X-Men and F4 can help a bit there too, with some really classic comic book villains (Magneto, Dr. Doom). Although it's going to be hard to top both McKellen's and Fassbender's portrayals. Dr Doom certainly has more room for improvement 

[Josquius]

Now that Disney got the rights to the X-Men and F4, Marvel has some heavy-hitters in reserve.

I suppose the main problem with introducing the X-Men is how "mutants" have never been a thing in the MCU.

IMO the xmen are the main thing that highlights the idiocy of a marvel shared universe (in dc its supes and similar less famous guys).
So... Super heroes are cool and respected but this particular type of super powered person, and only this type, is hated and a major social issue?
It just makes so much more sense for the xmen story for xmen to be in its own universe. By the nature of mutants they're practically a shared universe in themselves.

[Sheilbh]

Killmonger is a fair point - he was great.

[The Larch]

The trouble with marvel films overall is something that you see in a lot of genre series whether it's dragonball, buffy, stargate, etc... That is power bloat.
Every new villain has to be bigger and badder than the one that went before.

Also - after, what, 40 films there's been one memorable charismatic, villain in Loki.

Some of the best Marvel villains remained outside of the MCU because their rights were tied to some of the properties that Marvel sold out back in the day. Magneto (and all his associates, like Mystique and Juggernaut) was tied to the X Men, Doctor Doom to the Fantastic Four (and going cosmic, Galactus), and Spiderman has a whole rogues gallery of his own that is quite cool but has not yet been fully introduced into the MCU. The Avengers have Loki (through Thor) and then you start scratching your head or looking for weirder and less prominent characters. There's Ultron (originally a Hank Pym villain, not Iron Man's), but the movie in which he featured was terrible, and Thanos is a bit of everyone's rival, as his goals affect everyone on earth. Also, some of the more iconic villains were used in the stand-alone movies and not brought back, like Red Skull in the first Captain America, and the Mandarin was implied in the 3rd Iron Man movie but not fully explored. Also, other iconic characters like Kingpin are way bellow the current power level of the main characters, so they have to be reserved for less overpowered heroes like Daredevil or the Punisher, like in the Netflix shows, or Spiderman on his own (like in Into the Spiderverse).

It is also a problem for DC films, IMO, as only Batman has a properly developed rogues gallery full of iconic villains. Superman has Lex Luthor and then there are villains like Darkseid or Brainiac, but outside of comic book nerds nobody really knows who they are.

Which I think contributes to this. The villain gets bigger and badder but the space for the performance normally doesn't. I think the lack of good villains is a problem because if you're invested in the character/performance the stakes can be smaller.

The MCU has dramatically underexploited the main source of iconic villains in cinema history, scenary chewing classically trained British actors. They only hit it right with Tom Hiddlestone and Loki, which I don't think is a coincidence.

[garbon]

Ahem, the Mandarin was explored in a film this year.

[celedhring]

Aussies with posh accents are a decent impression of Brits, too. Cate Blanchett was a riot in Thor Ragnarok.