f13.net

This is technically Jessica Jones casting, but I think we know it'll be more relevant for his own series...

http://tvline.com/2014/12/22/mike-colter-luke-cage-marvel-netflix-series/ (http://tvline.com/2014/12/22/mike-colter-luke-cage-marvel-netflix-series/)

He does look very Luke Cagish.

So, like, why Luke Cage? What's he got that fits a Netflix or ABC series?

He's the husband of Jessica Jones.

Right. Except I'm as ignorant of "husband of Jessica Jones" as I am of "wife of Luke Cage"  :grin:

Got excited when I saw a connection between "Jessica Jones" and "Alias" by way of wikis. But it was the wrong "Alias". I've been trying to find the simple why-I-should-care synopsus of either Luke or Jessica, but I'm only running into all the usual secondary characters comic meandering history stuff.

Which I assume means I'm missing something.

The feeling I get from interviews and such is that Marvel is so successful, they can do anything they want. So it's kind of become this weird studio of comic book geeks all laying on the living room floor scattered with back issues reading obscure titles and going "Wouldn't a Luke Cage series be freaking cool?" Then they get a whole bunch of money and networks beg to air their shows. It's actually kind of scary and I suspect it's going to collapse and explode in some spectacular way.

Luke Cage is a long standing B (second tier) character.  He has been in a bunch of series and has a lot of history.  In recent years, his popularity has been on the rise.  I'd call him just a nip behind Daredevil in popularity from comic fans.

Jessica Jones is a more recent invention, but she has a strong following based upon the 'adult' nature of her story.  

Both characters fit into the idea of a 'street level' (as opposed to world saving) group of heroes that can have more adult storylines than MAoS or Avengers.  It is a chance to expand the brand and do stories that are more like Alien than Star Wars, or more like Bale's Batman than Keaton's.  

That's kinda like wondering why you should care about Guardians of the Galaxy if you didn't know any of the characters. Ultimately the comics don't matter, these things live or die based on their own quality and we won't really get an idea of that until they start showing some previews of these shows. I don't think they've even announced a Daredevil release date other than 2015 yet, and apparently they just finished filming the last episode of that within the last couple days.

Yeah, the test for Marvel is going to be when they have money invested in something that just doesn't work. Will they kill it to protect the franchise as a whole, or will they risk it, inevitably have something bomb hard, and send them into the usual over controlled death spiral?

They need to take creative chances, but not double down on the bad risks.  The Netflix stuff seems to be their trial balloon for that, someplace they can safely screw up.

--Dave

Funny you should say that, because that's EXACTLY what I was wondering when GotG was first announced. "So lemme see, Fantastic Four, Avengers, Thor, Captain America, Spiderman, and.... space raccoon? What the what?!"

Was a very fun movie though :-)

jgsugden's explanation makes more sense to me: martial skills from normall people doing extraordinary things. Bale's Batman or even Arrow, or even to a degree the Steel version of Man of Steel (whoever that ironworker was, Henry-something I think), or Daredevil. Sounds like Cage has a following and doesn't require crazy special effects, so now I think I get it.

Nope. Jessica Jones and Luke Cage both have super powers.

Luke is in fact near the top of the power curve as far as Marvel goes isn't he?

marvel power curve

heh

Edit: Wikipedia!



Why does he need healing if his skin is unbreakable? He sounds phoned in.

They've upped his power level just a bit since the '80's. He used to be a real low level type of power - the Marvel Universe books listed him as able to lift about 2 tons (Hulk by comparison was at least 100 tons and more the madder he got). Bendis used him in his Avengers runs and made him a lot stronger than that.

He's equivalent to She-Hulk at least, and actually may be even more damage resistant now.

Strength and damage resistance are fairly easy to show on a reasonable budget though. Jessica Jones can fly also, but I guess we'll see if she does on the show. With Daredevil I guess it depends on how they show his heightened senses. Iron Fist probably needs good fight choreography more than high budget special effects.

Glowy fists aren't hard to cgi!

Originally he was essentially a junior-version Hulk, another "supersoldier serum" experiment. Not nearly as strong, but not a barely-sentient rage monster, either. Only thing he shared in full measure was indestructibility, which was the gateway to his powering up.

In various versions, he has been incredibly powerful (in one he was a cannibalistic zombie that eventually ate Galactus). I think we'll see something closer to plain vanilla origin Cage for this, maybe 10 times stronger than a normally strong man, hard to hurt but impossible to kill.  That leading to powering up to something closer to Avengers levels will probably be the overall arc.

--Dave

These are netflix series so expect them to have a decent budget.

Basically, here's what they're working with:

Jessica Jones doesn't make quite as much sense in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as she did in the comics. In the comics, she was a woman with super-strength and invulnerability who did what you're supposed to do when you get those things, and that's put on a skin-tight costume and act like a superhero. She wasn't very good at it, felt uncomfortable doing it, and then got mind-controlled by a creepy supervillain who used his powers the way people in the real world would use mind-control powers--and people who got mind-controlled felt the same way we would about being made to do things against our will.

So she quit trying to be a superhero, developed a drinking problem and struggled with depression, and become a private detective whose cases typically entangle her in superhero business. I think that's what you're going to get in her series--take away the backstory of trying to wear spandex and failing and just go straight to "superpowered detective with a self-destructive personality".


---

Luke Cage was originally a blaxploitation character--think Shaft with super-strength and invulnerability. He teamed up with a martial-arts character who was created to imitate Bruce Lee, so basically two B-movie genres mashed together. If Marvel really felt gutsy, what they'd do is get Quentin Tarantino to be exec producer on any series focused Cage and his buddy Iron Fist--that's the sensibility that would capture the characters best, in many ways.

Where's my money, Honey?  :why_so_serious: (http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2011/08/07/i-love-ya-but-youre-strange-wheres-my-money-honey)

Can't get that link to work at all.

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2011/08/07/i-love-ya-but-youre-strange-wheres-my-money-honey/


here's another one:

http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2007/01/luke-cage-needs-to-know-wheres-my.htm

That would be awesome.

I'm curious how they'll handle Jessica Jones.  A lot of ways to go there...

I take it you never read Power Man and Iron Fist, then?
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/Power_Man_and_Iron_Fist_50th_Issue_cover.jpg)

I had a couple of issues, though to be honest, I'm not sure why? Maybe they were given to me before I started collecting comics "properly" back in the day. Perhaps it's also to expand the racial character base of Marvel's series, since Ultimate Fury seems to be the only black guy so far?

They've been around for a long time though.  Heroes for Hire was a fun comic series.  Luke Cage is also an Avenger.  Cage and Iron Fist are actually in the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon going on right now as well.

At this point, hasn't everyone been an Avenger? Like, I understand that both Spidey and Wolverine have been Avengers since I stopped reading. I know Beast was. Any other X-Men? Daredevil?

Daredevil has been an Avenger, yeah. Everyone has been now. Dr. Strange has been! I think it's honestly a bit about making sure that Marvel has a possible claim to almost all of their characters if they choose to push it.

The recent Sony leaks showed how detailed the discussions on character rights go.  They're very detailed.  When they've clarified the rights to a unpowered villain that appeared in one issue of a Spider-man comic (which would clearly seem to fall with Sony), you know they've locked up all the A, B, C and D tier characters (hero and villain).

Cage's Wikipedia page covers his history pretty well.  They've done a lot to rehabilitate an exploitative character.  I'm wondering if they'll tweak his origin story to either make him an Inhuman or a product of the MAoS season 1 Centipede program...

I'm still genuinely shocked they introduced inhumans on MAOS with a movie coming up.  Ususally cross pollination like that is the realm of actual comics and generally does not work well in other mediums but I'm sure marvel has so much clout now they can try just about any idea to see if it works. 

As for luke cage's origin, why bother changing it at all? Cage is given a variant of captain america's super soldier serum and his powers are nearly identical to caps.  It would seem unnecessary to actually change his origin since it already fits perfectly into the cinematic universe.

I agree, they'd be better suited to going with a variation of the super-soldier serum than trying to make Cage an Inhuman. Of course, that could also depend on what they plan on using to explain the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver in Age of Ultron.

I'm not surprised that they introduced the Inhumans on the TV show as opposed to waiting for the movie. Why not? Even if you never introduce the bigger elements like Attilan or any of the Royal Family, you still get some name recognition in the public for a group that has NONE among non-comic book geeks. It gives the TV show somewhere to go, and even if they cancel the show before the movie comes out, you haven't really hurt the movie brand at all.

I've got that entire run (of like 19 issues, heh) of that comic in my spare bedroom.  Good run drawn by my onetime favorite artist John Byrne.  Though I liked Iron Fist better than Luke Cage.

I think they may set up Inhumans on MAoS, but I think the most they'd do is borrow from the Crystal or Medusa origin stories and have one Inhuman from the movie franchise on a TV show.

As for Cage, I think anything is on the table.  His original experimentation storyline with SS serum isn't too far from Hydra experimented on him in prison with Mists or Centipede (which included Super Soldier elements anyways).  My biggest question is whether they give us some of the early 80s feel of the character or if they wash out all of the exploitation era components and start him off with the modern interpretation.  I don't care who experimented on him with what when he gained his powers...

I'm pretty sure that the idea of the Inhumans in general is a way for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to have "mutants" without having to call them that.

It also fits a bit with the way the comics themselves have made a ton of new Inhumans that were offshoots of the original Inhumans, who didn't even know they had the genetic markers that are enabled by the Terrigen mists.

I almost wish they wouldn't go full on mutant powers like they are going to because while mutant powers are awesome(I mean call them inhumans all you want same diff) I dislike power sets that are given "because reasons" when it comes to heroes. I mean ok you all have a gene that when activated makes one person fly, another turn to ice, another turn into animals, another manipulate hair....etc,etc.

Don't get me wrong, the x-men franchise is big for a reason, people love watching cool powers and such but god damn is the whole concept of mutant/inhuman powers lazy.

Well yes, Stan Lee created mutants largely so he could make a lot more characters without having to give them all origins.

My question is whether we get the Terrigen Bomb or not.  If they're building to a true Marvel Universe with thousands of powered characters running around, they need an event like that one to create the influx of powers.... but that will change everything.  Regardless, I think I'm more excited about these Netflix series than I am about the Doc Strange and Ant-man movies...

I really hope they don't go that route.  I'd like the marvel movie universe to remain a superhuman light world, instead of the self parodying 'half the population are superheros and manhatten gets blown up once a week' world that the comics are in.

Even if they try to avoid that, slowly but surely the MCU is going to fill up with superpowered people. The question is whether they stop at some moment and decide to tell stories about a fantasy universe that's really notably different from our own, or whether they continue with the premise that the MCU is our world only with a few small differences.

I kind of hope for the former, but it's best if they ease into it really slowly, over a decade + of movies.

Pretty sure age of ultron is going to fuck up the MCU earth to the point where they can't pretend it's our world anymore.

I think they've been escalating consistently.  Avengers featured an alien invasion in New York and the very public reveal that there are multiple races of aliens out there (Asgardians, Chitauri, etc...) Captain America 2 featured the revelation that the government had three flying warships with the capability to kill millions with ease.  That'd mess a lot of people up...

According to trailers, Avengers 2 is going to feature [spoilers]an army of Robots and the first public appearance of super powered people that do more than use technology and smashing[/spoiler]. 

There are going to establish that there are thousands of Super-capable individuals out there soon.  They've already shown a number of them with limited explanations of where the powers of Scorch, Absorbing Man, etc... originated.  And, the storyline they're building to over the next 4 to 5 years is based in pretty far out there comic stuff.   Whether it is the Terrigen mists or some other explanation, we'll be seeing more and more heroes and villains - and a more fantastic world.  I see no way around it.

See, I love this. If they go the Astro City route, I will be very happy. I love the idea of humanity changing to adjust to fantastic shit. I hate the what the mainstream comics do, which is constantly return to default.

Marvel humanity should have outposts on planets around Earth, should have alien tech in major cities, should be moving to a world government, etc.  Like Miracleman but without the really hardcore Alan Moore-isms.

The first half of this post made me think that it'd be nifty if HBO or similar did Transmetropolitan the series.

Transmetropolitan would be so so hard to get right, though. The voice would be really hard to get right.

Remember that these netflix series are focusing on less world spanning problems, I think they have said kingpin may be the only supervillain in the entire daredevil run.  So I wouldn't expect jessica jones to be very different, the tone they seem to be implying is more intimate and real world as the movies get more fantastical.

The Daredevil producers compared the show to the Wire.

If i was making a tv show i would compare it to the wire even if it was a cooking show.

I meant in tone, hehe.  Although I am sure they hope it will be as good as The Wire. 

Daredevil will be more of a crime drama, but there is more than just the Kingpin in it.  I know of at least one other minor villain scheduled to appear. 

Stop posting things that I want to expand on!  I'm not surprised DD will have more than one but the tone of DD, JJ and IF are all going to need to mesh well since they will all be a part of the defenders "universe".  It's just not gonna be smallville with a supervillain of the week and mutants*cough* inhumans everywhere and that's fine.  MAOS is much better suited to villain of the week, it's a one hour tv sci-fi on network tv and that's where those things thrive.

You can stop speculating about what Daredevil will be and how it will be connected to the MCU. The creators pretty much spell it out here (http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/12/29/daredevil/).

I get the feeling it'll be a 2-sided crime drama, showing the rise of the Kingpin "Once Upon a Time in America" style on one side and the creation of Daredevil "West Side Story" style on the other.  :why_so_serious:

Well if I wasn't lazy I would have linked that myself but I'm saying the tone of JJ and IF will likely be very similar not that DD isn't already explained.

They certainly could be, but they could be as different as Thor, IM, Cap I and Hulk were.  They'll all be 'street level' hero stories, not 'save the world' stories.  However, there is a lot of room for difference in those street level stories.  In the comics, the street level comics tend to be very different...

Thanks for the Power Man and Iron Fist flashback. I had a bunch of those back in the day.

Sep 30, 2016.

Love the new trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytkjQvSk2VA

The teaser with "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" was the shit.

Reminder: Luke comes this Friday.

Sweet Christmas in September.

Only had time to watch one episode so far.  Really liking it.  The first real Luke Cage fight scene is really well done.

Well I thought this was due on Monday, was surprised to see it on Netflix today. Half way through ep 1 now. Loving it so far.

Damn you, now I have to reactivate my Netflix account.

I was enjoying it throughout episode 1, but the last few minutes, while pretty simple, really nailed it.

Yep. S'good.

Music was spectacular (ep 1).

Yes and yes.

Wife and I will probably do this ~1/week again. Lots of other stuff we're watching atm too.

Show was really good, but some of the villains near the end lacked real impact I found. Plenty of room for a second season though. Most of the action is pretty good, but there are definitely a few times where its like "yep, this is still a TV budget  :why_so_serious: "

It also really hammers home that 'yes this is part of the MCU' this go around. No beating around the bush at all.

Yeah, but can they say Ironman, Thor, Hulk or Inhumans at least once?

Off the top of my head I remember them saying Captain America and Iron Man.

I don't understand why they kept censoring the word "fucking" on the Wu-Tang song that played during the big fight in episode 3.  They have no problem with any other words including "nigger".

Really? It's an American show. Sex is bad but violence and racism is how we do.

Episode 3 Spoiler:


ROFL

I wasn't there yet.

The actual use of "sweet Christmas" and the 70s outfit did it for me.

Half way through. Yeah, the 70s look was awesome.

Loving the live music, which is interesting because I've never really considered myself a fan of those genres. Admittedly, I've had to go and look up who each performer was.

I finished last night. Although I enjoyed the whole thing, I feel like it petered out a bit.  I felt like they were more driven by story beats than by the story in the last several episodes. There was also something, although forshadowed, that felt insanely out of place and made little sense. 

In terms of ranking the series we've seen so far, I'd say all 4 Netflix seasons have been better than any of the ABC stuff... but this was not my favorite Netflix series.  I loved a lot of it, but there was some important stuff that just didn't work and felt a bit unexplained.

All in all I enjoyed it especially for the first half but I felt it lost a lot of steam and tension when  and the Shades character felt a little bit out of place though that might have been due to the actor who didn't really fit into the role in my opinion.

Shades seemed like he belonged in the Matrix.

He might have looked like (more or less) the comic character but he didn't feel the same:
(http://cdn3-www.superherohype.com/assets/uploads/2016/09/shades1.jpg)

I just want Deadpimp, goddamned Fox. Or is it Sony? Goddamned licensing.

If Sony, and I'd have to imagine it would be if Marvel does not have the wrongs (I refuse to call them rights for a character named Deadpimp), has the rights, then the Spider-man deal should open the door for Marvel.

Deadpimp, as one of Deadpool's alters, is presumably with Fox.

--Dave

Ahhh... I focused onpimp, not dead. Shame on me.

Half way through, enjoying it so far.  Though I'm kind of getting tired of the fact that apparently EVERY SINGLE cop in NY in theses series is working for the bad guys.  They've leaned on it too heavily between all the series, and it's a lazy writing way of getting villains out of situations.

Based on first episode only...

Liked the total lack of superpowers and equally the willingness to not explain every damn thought and expression. Possibly I'm giving extra credit on this because the thing I watched beforehand was Agents of Terrible Exposition.

Didn't like the hint that there will be an unnecessary origin story.

I still find the way they talk about fairly small neighbourhoods as if they were entire cities weird and annoying. I suspect if you lived on Mars and saw this episode after watching JJ, you' d assume Harlem was in a different state to Hell's Kitchen.

Many people have pointed out the music, but what worked for me about it was that it prevented the show becoming too real, which is important assuming the show becomes more escapist later on.

It is lazy, but it is a huge trend in Marvel street level comics.  Part of the reason the heroes are needed is that the police are mostly in the pockets of the bad guys.  This is something that trends back and forth with the political winds, but there are cops on the take in Spider-man, Daredevil, Moon Knight, etc... 

So apparently, some (white) people are getting into a tizzy on Twitter because Luke Cage, which takes place in Harlem...doesn't have many non-black characters.  :uhrr:

Heh, fuck Twitter users.

I guess you could say it's pretty "black", but that's clearly the intent. Is it authentic? Is it being laid on a little thick? Beats me, I'm not black and not from Harlem. It doesn't get in the way of the show, which is well acted and well written. I've liked almost everything outside of the prerequisite origin story.

It didn't?

*I* didn't notice because *I'm* a smug SoB that doesn't see color in people. 

This is one of those situations where I want to ask some of my friends that are from NY (recently) how realistic it is... but... No.

Not many white people in Harlem except around Columbia University.

My main question for anybody who knows:  Is Harlem still fairly rough like that?  They tried to give it an in universe story reasons for Daredevil, but from what I hear, Hell's Kitchen has actually gentrified into a pretty nice neighborhood.  So it's a little giggleworthy they keep trying to portray it as the original comics from the 60's and 70's portrayed it.  Curious if it's the same with Harlem or not.

At any given time, you can find people in a tizzy on Twitter on nearly any subject you can think of. Getting people into a tizzy is the default state for Twitter. I bet that I would have found flat earthers crowing about the SpaceX mess. But on certain subjects, you can write a story that consists entirely of "point and laugh at these trolls and the idiots they incite" embedded tweets, and have it go viral.

It's a sweet gimmick for both the trolls and the "journalists" that write the stories, to the point that the line between them is getting very vague.

--Dave

Edit: Yes, it's a very 'black' show, and it also deliberately invokes the tropes of the blaxploitation movies that inspired the original comic. But it's about as controversial as "Good Times" or Sanford and Son.

I was bothered by how much of the plot was driven by idiocy.  Too much Luke beating up henchmen without doing anything about the real problem, he could have ended cottonmouth at any point he wanted, and he should have wanted to after they killed Pops.  Also when Diamondback had him dead to rights and gives him a talk about how one judas bullet nearly killed him and the next one was going to finish the job then half asses the shot and hits him in the shoulder i actually yelled at the screen.  Don't put the hero in unwinnable situations that he gets out of through luck/stupidity, that is just bad writing.  Soundtrack was amazing, the acting and characters were good, the plot was mostly dumb.  Probably my least favorite Marvel/Netflix show so far.

Harlem has gentrified a good deal, especially closer to Central Park. So to some extent the show's Harlem is a bit like Daredevil's Hell's Kitchen, which is not at all a rough neighborhood in the real NYC any longer and hasn't been for a long time.

Agreed. Harlem isn't white but it isn't dangerous either, until maybe 180th street. It starts at 110th. 110th to 125th is/was considered the hispanic section and above 125th is the black section. As Manhattan rents have increased over the last 15 years, gentrification moved furrther and further north but has paused and maybe even retrenched in the last few years.

I'm only up to episode 4, but I just rewatched episode 1 with my wife. On a second viewing, I couldn't believe how similar it is to season 1 of The Wire. The club, the gangsters, the cops, the street culture, the micro-arcs in the story, the story elements, it's like a rewrite of the Avon Barksdale days, but in the Marvel universe. I know they've said that was where they were going, but on my second viewing, it was almost like a good rip-off of The Wire, not just vaguely similar!

I loved the show. It was a love letter to the neighborhood I spent a lot of my formative years in. That barbershop actually is a barbershop. The church where they had the funeral is just down the block. Most of the action you see takes place a few blocks below 125th Street and Lenox/Malcolm X.

It reminded me of the area from the late '80s, so kudos to them. Aside from the uneven pacing, I enjoyed it more than any of the MCU films I've seen.

Half way through.

Can't help thinking they have a problem in that they can't seem to find a way to build any sort of threat to Luke.

People keep talking about ways to hurt him but not actually doing it. Then suddenly something does happen, and it has no real build up, and no real credibility because I don't imagine the guy the show is named after was just killed instantly.

The episode where they threaten other people to get at Luke worked well - but then everyone forgot they can do that.


But it is fun.

Maria had two very good ideas that got completely ignored by cottonmouth.

Yeah, I was a little disappointed when those got ignored in favor of magic bullet.

I'm on ep12 and what bothers me more than the pacing and weird inability to think by the villains are the variances in his powers.

They never really decided how strong he was and what his limits are. He just busted three pairs of handcuffs and a reinforced police vehicle, but then is almost trapped because there's no door. Go through the wall already. Steel is stronger than masonry, he's got it.

I found this to be somewhat disappointing compared to the other Marvel Netflix shows, despite a fairly strong start. The degree of plot-required idiocy, horrific pacing and the fact I never came to enjoy/like most of the characters sealed the deal. Not sure I'll bother with season two when it eventually lands.

There is a lot of The Wire throughout, but the last episode, and the montage at the end of that *really* reminded me of it.

Watched ep1. Didn't grab me like JJ did, though I plan to watch it all certainly.

Why would Luke scoff at dating the woman who walked into the barber shop and then bang the lady from the bar that same night? Didn't fit.

The fight scene at the end made him too powerful even if it aligns with the comic and JJ. That level of invulnerability will be hard to threaten.

Cottonmouth was the best part of ep1.

The joy of seducing a women vs. taking a girl who is blatantly throwing herself at you?  Also, second girl significantly hotter.

It's not really a stretch.

I loved this series but yeah, if you are looking for a super hero action comic, this isn't it. Cage walks through 3/4ths of the show not having to worry about shit but his own inner conflicts and to me that's fine.  This is pretty much what a good drama about superman would be, ways to tell a story where the primary motivator is not "How do I beat up the villain?"

The series had me engrossed from beginning to end and even though the pimp stormtrooper looked a little silly I really liked the story.

More I think about it, more I think this would have been flat out better without Diamond Back in it.

Second half would have been better focussed around Cage trying to get the folder without wrecking Harlem in the process. Mariah trying to use the folder to control Cage woild be credible and her trying to drown / poison Cage would make for a better show than guys punching each other with no effects budget. Also would be easier to give Misty's "stop fucking up my town" viewpoint more weight.

I have other minor niggles...

The MCU links were transparently written in after the script was complete and if they are going to do it that badly I'd rather they don't bother.

Given the amount of time in flashback, Willis's motivation is surprisingly sketchy.

Turk. I like the guy, another character with obvious Wire influences, but one minute he's selling guns on a street corner - next dealing in military grade hardware, in between he's an informer for Cottonmouth, and by the end he's buying stolen Nikes.

Claire. Not the same character as in Daredevil. I like both Claires, but she is going to be in every show they need to figure out who she is. Also she came dangerously close to sassy girl sidekick at times.


But it was fun, would recommend.

I think some of the issues with claire is she is literally trying to figure out a way to wrap her head around all the crazy stuff that seems to be surrounding her. She now has had close contact with three super powered individuals and had her career wrecked by NINJAS. She is trying to feel her way towards a new path for herself and some of it is does she want to be the sassy side kick or have some role supporting and helping these super individuals in other ways. She has seen these people go out and make a difference in their areas and she wants in on that.

Undead ninjas.

Diamondback was fucking terrible. Doesn't help that I hate the actor (not personally, I just don't like watching him). Compared to every other villain they've trotted out, he was such a one note mustache twirler. Doesn't help that they gave him magic bullets, daddy issues, and a Deus Ex Power Suit, which was about the dumbest looking thing I've see in any of these series.

For as tight of a narrative as these series have, they all seem like they could have gracefully ended 3-4 episode earlier, if they just cut some stupid out of the plot line.

edit: And was it just me or was Theo Rossi pretty awful in this as well? Could be residual SoA stink, but he just seemed ill suited for this role, and his delivery grated on me.

Finally finished this. Had to force myself to watch the last 3-4 episodes. Started off really well but by then end I no longer cared about anyone in it.

When your hero is, like Jessica Jones, just strong and tough, you have to step the plot up to make it interesting. JJ had a really good villain. Cottonmouth was OK but Diamondback and Mariah were incredibly tedious and one dimensional. I totally agree with you Rasix, I really don't like the actor playing Diamondback. I didn't like him in Boardwalk Empire and he was playing the exact same part in this. I didn't like the actor playing Shades nor the actress playing Mariah either, neither of them had any range at all. Mariah was particularly bad.

The only physical threat to Luke Cage was the Judas bullets and despite having what looked like a high tech rifle with high tech sights Diamondback managed to fuck up every single shot he took with it. Play more CS:GO and l2headshot noob. And that suit. Fuckin lol. Props budget ran out hard eh? And your final big fight scene boils down to flashbacks and punching and the tired (and poorly explained) cliche of 'I just stopped hitting him cos it was feeding his power'. Zzzzz.

The sense of place was OK, clearly much more impactful to those who know the area, which I don't, but it did have an authentic location feel to a lot of it. Comparisons to The Wire feel really off to me. I can see how it could have been influenced by it but the people in The Wire - especially the cops - were believable. The people in this were cardboard caricatured cliches. The music was occasionally good, extra points for the Method Man cameo, but again front-loaded to the first few episodes.

I think they should combine Jessica Jones, Daredevil (by far the best show of the three so far) and Luke Cage into one show and compress the three 13 episode season 2's into a single 10 episode season for all of them.

Liked it well enough, but agree with the general sentiment that it started strong and then limped across the finish line.

I was particularly disappointed that they made Claire into a love interest.  It detracted from the bad-ass nurse image she had established.

It seems like the thing for them to do is to stop making 13 episode seasons and instead make 5 to 8 episode seasons and release them twice as often.   Film them all at once, but break the stories down to these lengths and put the feeling of a closed season on them.  I'd rather get a Marvel Netflix series 6 times a year with shorter story lines than 2 or 3 times a year and feel like the back half is dragging constantly.

They needed to set up Diamondback and his technology more.  They tried, but every piece of setup felt out of place.  They needed a character in the story that was from Hammer to ground it. 

Regardless, if I were ranking all episodes of the Marvel Netflix series individually, some of the worst would be from this series.  However, the start of the series also gave me some of my favorite episodes - and perhaps my favorite moment in that first punch.  It is tough to evaluate as a whole.

Comparisons to the wire were about thi
Regarding the Wire I'm pretty sure everyone is just pointing out the shots and techniques they stole outright to make this show feel 'urban', don't think anyone is claiming this works on the same level. Most of it was superficial - but the ending in particular was effective. The best thing in this show was Misty Knight, the willingness to have her earn an unhappy ending and fuck up more than once in ways that didn't stop her seeming competent and which I found believable exceeded my expectations.

On combining DD JJ and LC, you know they already announced that right?

I did not know that, what a good idea.  :grin:

Yeah what I was saying was they both have the same basic season 1 plot: proud African-American gangster runs his operation from the second level balcony of his nightclub, generating large amounts of paper cash - and deaths - that must somehow be managed, while his associate attempts to launder money for legitimate, legal interests. A guy working for the club flirts with a girl at the bar. Meanwhile on the streets of the neighbourhood, everyone's lives and deaths revolve around the gangster's empire and we get to know the characters of the streets, their language, and the places they hang out. The cops are a third force of characters: imperfect, but skilled in their own way, with their own problems... and slowly they uncover the extent of the gangster's empire and deal with its fallout.

Luke Cage just set that in the Marvel universe, and is not as good.

I think part of the problem is that it is inevitably compared to DD and JJ, which is an extremely high bar (DD is arguably the best thing to come out of Netflix, period). I was entertained enough that I don't regret the $8 for reactivating my Netflix account, which is the target it really needed to aim at. Enough like it and I might keep the account going all the time.

--Dave

They absolutely need shorter episode orders for these. They can't sustain these shows over a greater length, I think in part because of budget but also because they really don't know what kind of story to tell about these characters that is fully episodic that is not freak-of-the-week.

Luke Cage has sharp knees.

FWIW I'm ok with a comicbook show 'not being as good as the Wire'.

Before we lose all sense of perspective, the direct comparison should be Agents, Arrow, Supergirl or even The Walking Dead.

This was much better than any of them. I think the reason I came out of this with specific niggles is that it aimed high so gets judged to a higher standard.

It is no Lois and Clark - but few things are.

Why aren't we comparing it to Daredevil and Jessica Jones?

I am, they were both better than LC.

I came away not really enjoying this series.  As others have said, I was interested from the start but never really felt that Cage was threatened and the villains kept getting in each other's way.  There was also way too much convenience in how Cage just happened to be half-brothers with the shadowy guy supplying high-tech weapons to the gangsters in his new adopted home.  What're the odds that he and Diamondback would both wind up on the same turf, really?  It's not like Diamondback (or Shades for that matter) even knew he was still around at this point.

Agreed that the Method Man cameo was fantastic, though.  "It's you!"

Despite the niggles I thought it was about as good as Daredevil but Jessica is still the best live action thing Marvel have done. Including the movies.

I think Daredevil is still getting a pass on its minor problems because it came first and after tolerating Agents we were all shocked that DD was almost as good as Lois and Clark.

Live action TV superheroes...

L&C > JJ > LC/DD >>> MacGuyver > Everything Else > Agents

I couldn't stand Lois and Clark and remain baffled at the love it gets.

Finished it last night. I enjoyed it, particularly because it was a different pace and tone from everything else so far. Much more slow, plodding, all that music, just very different.

I agree on the variability of his relative strength, and some of derp to handwave things obvious to the audience (like, he's looking right at the power unit on Stryker's suit and can't be arsed to, ya know, tear it off? And then use some dumb story about making him angry instead of what obviously happened [he got tired]?).

But overall, much looking forward to Fist and then Defenders.

I stopped around ep9. It started strong. It I have no desire to finish it.

I think the inference was that the suit was absorbing kinetic energy everytime Luke punched him. So he stopped fighting back so the suit would run out of juice. Also on the comment on how silly it looked earlier: it did look silly, but was clearly an attempt to pay homage to the character from the comic - it was reminiscent of the comic Diamondback's costume. (Apparently an Earth 616 character? Not the Captain America version of Diamondback, who was a girl with pink hair who threw diamonds at people...)

(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/d2/98/43/d2984360bd56d14bc5ea7ce9998a272d.jpg)

I think that would've been more entertaining.  :drillf:

I watched about half of the series before my interest petered out, but it didn't take long before I was convinced that he was the best thing about the show. He just oozed charisma, and he wasn't a cardboard villain. Two weeks ago I was listening to an interview of some guy on NPR on my commute, I had come in after it had started and didn't know who it was, but he was fascinating. Turned out to be him (http://www.npr.org/2017/02/16/515587027/in-moonlight-actor-mahershala-ali-found-characters-he-recognized).

I haven't yet seen the film Moonlight, but it's no surprise to me whatsoever that Mahershala Ali just won an Oscar.

In our household, we know Mahershala Ali as "Remy Danton" from House of Cards. He stood out in that, too. We recognised him in Luke Cage, kept watching, and then what happened was a real WTF and we never finished the series.

He was amazing in the 4400, back when his name was even longer.

Season 2 is live.  I'm on episode 2 and it is going a little weird at the start of the episode.  Nike? 

The more I think about, the more that the divide between the movies and shows makes Stark look like a giant racist pedophile.  Some kid dresses as a Spider and runs around NY - so Stark buys him toys and takes him away for a weekend in Europe.  A black man shows up - bulletproof and super strong - and Stark is nowhere to be seen?

They toyed with the idea of having Luke Cage have a cameo in Infinity War in the NY scenes... I really wish that they had.

I'm some episodes into the second season and it seems to be far too long for the story they are telling. Maybe they'll have something different for the latter half of the season.

Nope.  I watched the whole season while doing some weekend work.  It wandered and meandered through story ideas, but felt about 10 episodes too long.  There were no amazing performances this season.  

They had Danny Rand around for a bit.  It was the best rendition of Iron Fist, yet... but still not good.  I felt like the ending was fairly random as well.  

I'm beginning to think they should cancel Iron Fist, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones and then merge them into a Heroes for Hire series.  Maybe if they follow all three of them they'll have enough content for a 13 episode season.  They have a lot of ties together in the books and keeping them in their separate shows limits those storylines.

Struggling to understand the heavy accents in this series may also have a toll, apparently.  I just threw an inadvertent 'Mon' in at the end of a statement to a coworker.  Ugh. 

I'm just past half way and its pretty meandering. I like Bushmaster, and surprisingly Piranha is growing on me. Much like season one though, the main characters are pretty boring.

I will say that this season has rekindled my interest in listening to Blues. The music has been spectacular so far.

I liked season 2 more than the first.  I don't mind the slower pace, but it really doesn't end strong.

What did you like more?  At least Season 1 had one great acting contribution in the first half of the season.

On reflection all I keep coming up with is the lack of Diamondback.  I really hated Diamondback.

Bushmaster was pretty good and that they found a way to challenge Luke without going stupid and ruining the scale of the story.

The rest of it was really more of the same.

I'm about half way through.

My only real complaint is the same one I had in the first season. This shouldn't be set in a few streets of manhattan - would work better a city of its own.

Doesn't feel too slow to me.

It isn't Jessica Jones, but better than daredevil, iron fist, or any other current TV superheroes.

For those that care:  There is a tiny little crossover to Cloak and Dagger.  They mention a copy that moved to New Orleans by name, and that character is on C&D.  They repeatedly reference how she came from Harlem on C&D.

Canceled as well.  As Rosenberg is leaving Jessica Jones after Season 3, I am smelling that shows end as well - which just points me towards a Heroes for Hire type show.

I wonder if Disney jacked up the fees for access to their IP?

Hopefully stuff will come to fill the void, but I don't like this trend.  I prefer the world where I am inundated with frequent, decently produced superhero TV shows to the one where Disney puts a stranglehold on everything, produces it themselves and/or makes me buy their streaming service (which I will not).

I know there are some less that postive opinions around here about Luke Cage and Iron Fist, but I would still prefer to watch these kinds of shows over 90% of everything else out there.

It might well be that Netflix isn't willing to pay whatever Disney is asking since Disney is launching its own service and Netflix has Millarworld (http://www.millarworld.tv/articles/netflix-buys-millarworld) in case they want to develop their own characters.

Netflix cares about 3 things: how many new subscriptions a show brings, how cheap it is to produce, how many awards it wins. Iron Fist and Luke Cage both failed at all of that.

Luke Cage was kind of bad, I never finished the first season.

I liked the first half of season 1, when it was The Wire in the MCU. Diamondback was a pretty shitty villain though, and the finale left me with no desire to watch Season 2.

One of their key metrics is how long it takes for a season to be binged as well.  So if you love a show, binge hard.

The elephant in the room is Disney Streaming. Disney deal with Netflix must not be going all too well.

It has nothing to do with how well it's going. It's all about having a content map moving forward for their new offering. They are going to want all Disney/Marvel properties on their platform.

Plus LC and IF sucked anyway.

They've said that there will be Marvel products on several channels and services for the foreseeable future.  They're putting elite material on the streaming service - movie characters - to draw people in there, but they'll have Hulu, ABC, Netflix, etc... Marvel shows.

I'm an f13 outlier in that I like the Netflix stuff (other than Jessica Jones, though S2 was better because no Tennant/mind control BS). The cable stuff can go, Agents and Gifted are bad. Gifted is really, really bad horrific teen angst drama. Though again, I'm an outlier in that I loved Peggy's show (and it's one of the only Marvel things the fiancee also enjoyed greatly, I still hear her mention it now and again).

Pretty sure none of that is an outlier. I agree with you on almost everything, except i loved Tennant and thought JJ season 1 was much better than 2.

I liked Agents and loved Tennant in JJ S1, and haven't watched Gifted. I like all the Netflix stuff that I've seen except Iron Fist S1 because it is utter shit outside of Colleen Wing.

ABC and Freeform are owned by Disney and Disney also has a 30% stake in Hulu. When MAoS wraps up, ABC won't have any Marvel content going unless they announce something between now and next summer. Freeform passed on New Warriors and it doesn't look like anybody else is picking it up either so far. Netflix is cutting back their Marvel shows. Of the 11 non-X-men Marvel TV shows that have launched, 3 of them ended after two seasons, 1 didn't make it past the first, and 1 (Defenders) hasn't had any follow-up announced past the first season. That's not an impressive track record. It's also become clear that none of these shows will ever have any sort of interaction with the movies, so the MCU link is no longer a reason for any network or service to pick up a Marvel series especially knowing they're going to have to compete with Marvel's service soon.

There may be Marvel products on a number of channels and services for the foreseeable future, but does that mean new products? I'm kinda doubting it.

http://collider.com/female-superhero-series-abc/
 (http://collider.com/female-superhero-series-abc/) https://comicbook.com/marvel/2018/06/10/new-warriors-tv-series-update-jeph-loeb/  (https://comicbook.com/marvel/2018/06/10/new-warriors-tv-series-update-jeph-loeb/)Pretty good record, but you're failing to note Defenders was not intended to be repeated.And yet, if you Google, you'll find a lot of snippets about Marvel shows in development.Google articles about Marvel shows in development.  2 minutes will indicate you're wrong. If you want to claim they're BS articles, feel free.

Been a while since I've seen a good SirBruce-ing

Jesus fuck don't SirBruce shit.

Fuck.

Two links in there and one of them is a nearly 5 month article with one quote about the status of New Warriors finding a home: "We're working on it.". The other is that they're developing a show with female heroes. If that's the stuff you chose to link to I can only imagine the substance of these snippets you speak of.

Sorry, I forget that people value their opinions over facts here.  Carry on.

Silly me, I was just basing my opinions on the rapid cancellation of two Netflix shows, the film side of Marvel being handed the reins for Disney's streaming service content, the inability of Marvel TV to find any takers for a series they developed (including channels they own), a high profile failure in The Inhumans, the upcoming end of MAOS, and a pile of evidence that suggests that Kevin Feige really doesn't seem to want to share his toys with Marvel TV.

But hey, there's every reason to believe that unlike Damage Control, Most Wanted, and New Warriors, "Untitled female-focused series" will launch on ABC before we know it.

Untitled show with women in it sounds like a discussion over lunch not a real show. Which is OK, all shows start that way.


It seems like the new shows are struggling for a real concept.

Netflix and the good seasons of agents have a concept, but it is darker and less prime time oriented.

Early agents and Agent Carter were just MCU-BUT-ON-TV which was fine for selling a show 5 years ago - but less so now that Disney have shown no interest in cross platform promotion. Also the on screen results have been mediocre.

Fwiw if I were abc I'd be looking to double down on something lighter and suitable for prime time. Think Supergirl or Lois and Clark. Marvel has plenty of 'daylight' characters that could be used. Crossover be damned. What matters is marvel recognition for marketing - especially on a lighter show.

Spider-man restyled as 'Gwen and Peter'. Something like that.

I think they could have done MCU-but-on-TV more fully and consistently; they didn't because Feige rightfully values his own quality control and doesn't have a consigliere he could trust to do the TV stuff, plus Perlmutter has been trying to use the TV material as a power play, since he doesn't seem happy just counting his money and letting the people who know what they're doing do it.

The TV side is not helped at all by Jeph Loeb being creatively in charge, because his work has been "spotty" at best for the past decade. His TV work has also been really weak (some of the worst seasons of "Heroes" for example and second season of "Lost").

Loeb is a really strange case. Some great work and some astoundingly bad work--enough to make me wonder if the great work was really done by someone else or something.

This is almost entirely true.

But I'd add that I'm not sure Feige himself could do the MCU-but-on-TV, they'd need to find someone who can do what he does and can make a TV show.

The films are great fun but they have limits. They struggle with characterisation other than the protagonists, the plot structures are as formulaic as the A team, and they are overdependent on explosions in the third act. A longer form like TV show up these weaknesses unless you make it a super light show and then it won't really feel like part of the MCU.

Decent Forbes article (https://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillbarr/2018/11/01/marvel-studios-marvel-television-mcu-disney-streaming-service-falcon-winter-soldier-bucky-loki-scarlett-witch-kevin-feige-jeph-loeb/#d66370416848) saying a lot of things I've been thinking lately in regards to Marvel TV. Basically they just need to acknowledge at this point that they're making Marvel shows but not MCU shows. Not everything has to be connected. I still haven't watched Runaways, but having read the comics it's a story that maybe works better as its own thing.

Yeah, sort of for Runaways, even in the comics? But I think this is where Feige and the movie team must be thinking somewhere in the back of their heads that the TV content could function as a kind of AAA feeder for the cinematic universe--that if a character or group takes off like crazy in their TV format, that you can then import them into the movies at some point. But if something sinks like a stone--or isn't well-executed--you can wash your hands of it or even just flatly reboot it when it comes into the movies. Like, if they suddenly *did* want Iron Fist in the films, they could recast and reboot the character without any worries.

To some extent, that was the value of Runaways being firmly set in the MU when it was a comic-book--it was set way off to the side, in a situation shared by no other characters, but when and if some of the characters had appeal beyond Runaways, you could move them into other teams, other settings, and so on. There's no value to so firmly firewalling off content that you can't repurpose it elsewhere. At this point, that's what the comics are really for--an IP farm that will once in a while generate a new good character or setting, and in the meantime will promote the other content that is making the really big bucks.

I think at this point Feige trusts himself to know that he just needs the right creative people and the right concept. If there's a talented director who matches up with a great pitch for Runaways, that's a lot more important to him than whether or not Runaways is a hit for Hulu.

I kinda feel like if they were ever going to import a Marvel TV character into the movies it would have been Daredevil after the first season came out, even if just for small appearances. They might have needed to negotiate some stuff with Netflix, but if Marvel and Sony could work out a deal for Spider-man I'm sure they could have figured something out with Netflix. I think they'll have the courtesy to wait until Netflix winds the series down before they do something else with the character, but at this point I almost fully expect him to be the first Marvel TV character where the film side says "forget all that stuff the TV guys did, here's the real MCU version of the character". Assuming there's not a full MCU reboot in the works at some point.

Well I'm positively shocked that didn't work out. (https://deadline.com/2019/02/marvel-female-superheroes-drama-dead-no-pilot-abc-1202550132/)

Note that they're working on other Marvel series.  I also think the MAoS renewal for 2 sesons might be a reflection of them realizing they could do better than what they were seeing from the Female series, and wanting to keep Marvel on the air to capitalize on the Avengers boost this summer will bring.

To the best of my knowledge, MAOS hasn't received a boost from the release of any MCU movie. It's also going to have a hard time getting a boost from Endgame since season 6 premiers in July, over two months after Endgame opens.

There were no boosts (AFAIK) on an episode by episode basis.  The episode after Civil War did not spike in viewers, IIRC, for example.  However, when everyone is talking Marvel, Marvel shows are going to have free advertising.  If the MCU movies had stopped in 2015, MAoS would not still be on the air.  People will be talking about Marvel movies more this summer thann at any time in the past with Captain Marvel, Endgame and Spidey....

Expecting maos to get a boost from an mcu film makes no more sense than expecting xmen comics to get a boost. Different characters, different media, no particular connection.

I suspect the effect on marvel as a whole is not massively stronger than the effect on superheroes as a whole. Gotham or Green Arrow probably benefit almost as much.

Nerds like us know the difference - I doubt many others do.

Even when you DO know the difference, it probably goes like this:  Huh, that movie was good and know I want to see more superhero stuff.  Let me go look and figure out which ones people are saying are the best ones.

That's kinda what I do.  I know which ones belong to which, but I could give absolutely no shits.  I will watch whichever ones I think are good, I don't care which universe they belong to.  Daredevil belonging to the Marvel timeline, for example, is more a net negative to me, because it occasionally makes me pop out and think "hey, this is pretty serious.  They could just bring in the Hulk to absolutely skullfuck all these zombie ninjas".  Knowing they are all in the same city at the same time doesn't necessarily help things.

/Comic Book Guy

DAREDEVIL would never unleash the Hulk in New York City to fight some ninjas. The Hulk is a last resort, scorched earth type of option. He's as likely to need putting down as the ninjas once the ninjas are done.

/Comic Book Guy

Hah, but you know what I mean.  Replace Hulk with Ironman or whatever.

Also I believe Hulk was off-world for pretty much the entirety of the Netflix shows' runs.

Edit: For that matter, past the first season of Luke Cage maybe, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, and Spider-man are possibly the only active Superheroes in New York. Strange wasn't exactly common knowledge and Spider-man is still mostly inexperienced. Tony probably had his own stuff going on.

That is sort of like saying, "Huh.  We're doing a community theater production of The Village.  Why don't we just get Emma Stone and Ewan McGregor to star in it?"

They don't all know each other.  The ones that do have been tied together pretty reasonably, with arrogant jerks that go solo going solo and team players having guests.

And in another shocking bit of news Marvel TV finally gets some new projects off the ground but they're animated and have no connection to the MCU (https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/marvel-hulu-howard-the-duck-modok-hit-monkey-dazzler-tigra-1203134321/).

This pretty much seems to be the way forward for Marvel TV (and the only reason I'm posting it in thread is because it's related to that ongoing conversation and also there's probably only one person here who would give enough of a fuck about this news to make a thread for it). I'd be surprised if they ever get to touch anything MCU-related again, and hey a couple on these projects sound ok. Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum doing a M.O.D.O.K. series could be fun. Kevin Smith doing Howard the Duck is... potentially not terrible I guess. Chelsea Handler is involved in Tigra & Dazzler, so no thanks. And then there's Hit-Monkey from the guys who directed the painfully unfunny Office Christmas Party. There will also be a special called The Offenders which brings all these characters together. These are all appearing on Hulu.

Patton Oswalt has been wanting to do M.O.D.O.K. forever. It's his Deadpool.

If they don't kiddifiy this too much it could be pretty fun. A humorous take on characters too B-list to even make the Defenders...

I'm down for the MODOK one, at any rate.

Dazzler and Tigra is a weird combo. I wonder what the take will be.

Hit-Monkey would be meh no matter who was doing it.

Kevin Smith on anything sucks and has sucked for a long time. But with Howard the Duck, I kind of think there's nowhere to go but up. Never been a particularly funny character, and the movie deserves every bit of derision that's ever come its way.

Read the description of Tigra/Dazzler to get an idea of where it is headed.

This is all aimed at Adult Swim audiences, I think. 

Regardless, the other bit of news is that Hulu is going to evaluate the Netflix shows when it gets closer to the 2 year expiration and may pick up some, or all, of them.  However, that will only work if the leads remain unemployed or are doing something that allows for them to split time.

Two years from when?  From the cancellation of each series, or a collective date where it all expires?

2 years of release of the series to which they are tied.  That applies to the first 4, but not Punisher, which may be why we have not seen a Punisher cancellation announcement, yet.  They may drag it out .

I do not know how this impacts characters like Karen Page that span multiple series in significant roles. 

I'm betting someone brings these characters back, but we'll get a Heroes for Hire series that bounces around these characters a bit as ome of the major actors will have other roles by then.  The timing would also be intersting to have all of these characters return for a mini series that is designed to lead up to the next Spider-man movie...  I could see them specificall design a cordinated effort once - along the lines of the MAoS/Civil War connection - to tie New York together.

Nothing the TV people do will be effected by or have any effect on the MCU movies. The head of the TV division is an utter dickwad that hates Kevin Feige. They are not going to work together for anything.

Yeah, and the only reason that persists is because Marvel's corporate ownership is still financially complicated due to its really bad, weird financial history from the late 1980s onward. Otherwise, I'm sure the suits even higher up the food chain would love to have a guy that Feige can work with being the head TV honcho.

It's really why there was so much hate in the press for The Inhumans--that whole show was a poison pill that Feige fed to the current TV guy, knowing it was shitastic--I am 100% sure Feige and his guys were egging on the critics privately to make the fiasco as bad it could be.

The streaming service will probably clear this up some and there will be vertical integration of the MCU and the streaming series. At that point, you could begin to imagine something like "Marvel Team-Up" happening that begins to deal with what life is like in a world where these people live and operate in the same universe. Though I'm sure the contract costs for someone like Cumberbatch or Holland are going to make a 4-episode team-up between Spider-Man and Luke Cage happen pretty much never.

They also have to think reaaaaaaaally carefully about where the saturation level is. An Avengers movie will stop being a big event if you can bloat yourself with a constant stream of more ordinary MCU adventures. Moreover, the more of that content you have, the more likely it gets that one of your creative people takes a character or a property that's been popular and working well and does something really dumb or bad that actually reduces the value of that property in future work. In the comics, they have become accustomed to just saying, "We will never speak of this again", of dropping a premise that everyone realized was absolutely awful. In the movies, it's going to be a lot harder to scrub off the memory of a really bad 4-part streaming series involving a character that everybody liked up to that point.

I still think the Inhumans as a concept could have worked, especially if they'd gotten Vin Diesel to do Black Bolt.

Of course, a property that odd given to the simpletons that worked on the ABC TV side of things but weren't even allowed to work as the B team on Agents of SHIELD didn't have a chance in hell of doing something good with it.

You're assuming the head of TV keeps his job.  Inhumans, losing Netflix shows right around the apex of the movies, the harsh relationship with films....  A change may come in the next 6 months.

Well I agree there. As a concept they are no dumber than any other comic book group. It was the execution that was terribad -- although I have to admit that I kinda liked Carnak...

I actually think Marvel might be running out of characters that aren't complete ass.

Kind of, actually. At least ones who can have a show built around them. I think we already came to that conclusion about the "street-level" types but it's true overall, too.

Hmm, yeah mostly.  I think they've hit all the big names at every power level at this point.  Mind you, a creative director can always pull a Guardians/Ant-man and figure out how to do fun things with characters you never thought would be adapted.  But except for random specific characters in the x-men and F4 IP's they haven't had access to at this point, not a lot of low hanging fruit left.  Even if I don't like him, at the street level I suppose Moon Knight is still an option, as he does have a following. 

I'd be happy if the big screen got a better version of Iron Fist (or just merged him with Shang-chi or made a new character or whatever) that is super magic powered kung fu master.  If they got an actual fight choreographer, that could be a lot of fun.

A character being complete ass has absolutely no bearing on whether they can make a good show or movie out of it. GOTG was them saying "fuck you, we can make anything work". The only A lister Marvel has had access to is Spiderman, and they did just fine without him before Civil War.

A gritty Moon Knight take that uses Warren Ellis's Mr. Knight in a suit personality for inspiration could be trippy as fuck and awesome. Trying to make it fit within a universe concept may be a bit difficult though.

My only qualifier with Moon Knight is that US Tv has never really been able to do Mental Illness well, particularly Multiple Personalities. Its either "mental Illness is sexy" or "all mental illness is homicedal rage with gibbering." Plus they could go all Batman on him. Or, even worse, Deadpool.

There's always Squirrel Girl  :why_so_serious:

They could - theoretically - spiderverse their output and just do different takes on the same characters and do Ultimate and Golden Age versions of their lineup. I don't think that the viewers would be as open to that as the comic book readers

I'm actually in full total agreement with you.  Any great writer should be able to take what ever insane concept hero and do something fun with it.

But all the low hanging fruit is gone at this point.  A fuck up is going to really look like a really massive fuck up.

Yeah. How soon everyone forgets that Marvel Studios whole flippin lineup when they started were B-listers. Iron Man, Hulk, Thor -- these were not heavy hitters at the time.

Good writing/directing/acting can turn any character into gold, just as bad writing/directing/acting can turn a A-lister into dross.

Going off topic for Cage, but I really think loosing (firing) Gunn is going to seriously hurt the Marvel universe. I liked Infinity War overall, but I did feel like the Guardians weren't portrayed that well. Quill was an absolute smuck instead of just being hotheaded, that sort of thing.

So, like, there are characters and premises that a gifted writer can look at and say, "Wow, that could be really good." Like, "human beings are genocided by their own robotic creations, flee in one ship and a rag-tag fleet to try and find a legendary lost planet". That did not have to be a kid with his robotic dagget and weird Mormon camp, etc., it just took someone to notice.

And then there's characters and premises that just really cannot be fixed, where the best you can do is lean into how lame they are and have fun with it in a kind of postmodern way. Marvel has some of those; it may be running out of characters that a smart writer can find hidden richness within.

For TV (and Hulu in particular) there's stuff they can lean into that maybe doesn't fit in with the tone of the MCU or would be too mature for Disney+. Like I'd rather see a Tomb of Dracula series than see them just try to reboot Blade as an MCU character. Similarly, a mature Hellstorm series could be pretty cool also. Beyond that, who knows. Legion wouldn't have been a no-brainer for building a series around, but that turned out pretty well.

Jessica Jones did a wonderful job of portraying PTSD at the very least.

The X-films were fine to bad, and the Fantastic Four films were ... yeesh.  I woul think that they also count as A list character sets that they can do something with in the next decade.  I'm bettering Spider-man, X-men and Fantastic Four are the core of this next decade of films while the Avengers fade a bit.

Thor and Iron Man, yes. Hulk though, he had a TV series and 2 movies before the MCU version, so he was at least well known. And one of the Movies was very close to the "official" start of the MCU. Hulk has been a character that never really seems to shine much on his own, he needs other people around to carry things when he is not smashing things up or having Puny Banner Angst.

I can imagine them pushing black panther and captain marvel just as hard. 

If I were running MCU I'd also want to experiment with one of the older names being taken over by a new character. Captain America being the most obvious possibility. Iron Man needs a break, and replacing Thor is a bit weird.

And there is still no sane reason not to make Black Widow movies. Hot lady James Bond writes itself.

They are making a Black Widow movie. Thor has disappeared from the MU in the past. Iron Man has been succeeded multiple times, a few times by Rhodey and lately by Riri as Ironheart (the approach I'd love to see them go with). Both Bucky and the Falcon have taken up Captain America's name and costume.

Marvel will figure out an approach to this that will likely work. Their track record leads me to believe whatever they choose, they'll manage to pull off successfully.