Last week saw Variety publish which broke as many MCU news stories as there are Kang variants wait🍬ing to hea🉐r if they’ll be recast.
Apparently Blade has been through four rewrites and its star, Mahershala Ali, almo🅷st walked away from the project entirely. In one draft, the titular vampire hunter was reduced to the fourth lead.
Marvel had considered abandoning Kang as the big bad 🐟for this phase, not because of Jonathan Majors’ arrest for assault, but because Ant-Ma▨n & the Wasp: Quantumania bombed at the box office. The studio is now considering a switch to Dr. Doom.
A single She-Hulk episode apparently cost $25 million, which Variety estimates is higher than any of the episodes in Game of Thrones epically-scaled final season. The whole season ran $225 million, in part, due to a late decision to rework the story so that Tatiana Maslany's initial transformation into She-Hulk could move from the eighth episode to the first.
But the most desperate news in the story is that Marvel is reportedly considering bringing the original Aven𝓀gers back. Meaning that Robert Downey, Jr. and Scarlett Johansson would return as Iron Man and Black Widow, despite both characters dying in Avengers: Endga🐼me. I’m imagining a slip with the words “Original Avengers Reunion” written on it is inside a glass box at Disney HQ that says “In Case Of Emergency, Break Glass,” and the declining box office performance of Marvel’s recent movies is pushing the studio perilously close to picking up the hammer.
An Avengers reunion movie would probably make a ♐lot of money. But, it’s the kind of trick you can only play once. And, it would undeniably cheapen the payoff and closure Endgame represents. Yes, it was very sad when Iron Man died, and yes, his funeral was positioned as the emotional denouement of a story arc that stretched over 22 movies. But, it’s not worth bringing him back in under ten years because our movies aren’t making as much money.
These kinds of “what if we just bring back the dead character from before?” moves usually just feel cheap. You can see the filmmakers attempting to paint themselves out of a corner. Remember when 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Rise of Skywalker decided that Palpatine had rise✤n from the dead for some reason, despite having no presence in the first two films in the trilogy? I do, and it sucked. Decisions like this are transparently cynical in a way that may result in short-term gains, but will inevitably lead to a long-terꦗm loss of trust and interest.
But, the bigger problem is that Marvel is still making films at all. Endgame did what it said on the tin — it ended the story the first 22 movies were telling. But Marvel put out another movie less t♑han three months later. A year and a half after that, it radically expanded the scope of the MCU with a barrage of movies and TV shows, pumping out more content in Phase Four than it had in all the others combined. You can repackage the MCU however you want, bring back the characters who defined its first decade, but audiences seem re🐼ady for new things.
Since Avengers: Endgame in 2019, only two MCU movies💫 have grossed🍒 over a billion dollars: Spider-Man: Far From Home and Spider-Man: No Way Home.
That might be movies based on IP that has emerged in the lifetime of younger members, as the success of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Five Nights at Freddy’s suggests. It might be adult dramas from major auteurs, as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Oppenheimer nearly grossing a billion dollars could lead us to believe. It might be original horror stories with good marketing as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Smile, M3GAN, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Talk to Me suggest. Or, you know, it might still be franchise releases, but executed with a high degree of craft, as Barbie, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Avatar: The Way of Water, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:John Wick: Chapter 4 indicate.
I’m putting my money on new things. Not because new ideas will necessarily be hugely ꦅprofitable at first, but because young audiences coming of age right now need stories that aren’t half-a-century old. I love Star Wars, and I’ve enjoyed plenty of Marvel movies over the years, but it’s beyond time for new mythologies to begin to emerge. Your parents’ nostalgia can only take you so far.
