f13.net

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZfuNTqbHE8

ok

now I'm excited for a marvel movie

Needs more Ant Man, but I'm excited  :awesome_for_real:

Woah.  Looks great.

Oh yeah, defo going to see Justice League now.   :why_so_serious:

Dear DC,

Suck it.

Regards,

Marvel.


That looks fun.

I'm really curious to see how the hell they find screen time for all of those characters, but I thought the same thing about Avengers and they pulled that off very nicely.  

My verdict: Fucking be there.

It's multiple films tho, eh ?

Bad idea to take off Thanos' head piece. He looks even more goofy than in earlier films.

Pretty sure I'm one of 17 people in the U.S. that just doesn't care at all about the Avengers.  :awesome_for_real:

Two, but that’s been pretty well publicized and there are a couple other movies coming out in between.

Didn't see Hawkeye or Ant-Man, maybe not everyone is there.

Surprise reveal: Hawkeye IS Thanos.  Weakest Avenger my ass!

They claim the two films are now separate, but Avenger's 4's name is a spoiler for Avenger's 3.  Obviously, they're still related. 

My guess is that Infinity War ends with Thanos killing pretty much everyone and the survivors going into the wind, then the movies between 3 and 4  (Ant-man and Wasp / Captain Marvel) setting up the return of the Avengers in the 4th movie.  Ant-man and Wasp will likely be fairly independent, but I think Captain Marvel (set in the 90s) will lay the foundation for the group that will step up and face Thanos in 4 and resurrect the Avengers.

While something that sounds cool in the comics, just being able to #castmassresurrection on all the avengers in part four seems like bad writing.

I assume "resurrect the avengers" means reboot the group with a different (cheaper) cast.   :awesome_for_real:  They're gonna need to clean house at some point.

While some of them may stay down (expiring contracts, etc...), I literally mean that characters that are dead return to life.  They might pluck characters out of time, recreate their forms, or whatever.  Infinity Gauntlet is all powerful.  I expect most/all of the original Avengers (IM, CA, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, BW) to be dead at the end of movie 3 - but at least some of them to be alive at the end of 4. 

Bad writing?  It is hard to write a story with an omnipotent foe and not have sucky elements. 

Yeah, they are replacing/recasting/redoing the legacy characters and their actors. I expect Chris Evans, RDJ and Hemsworth to move on to cameo roles at most for future Marvel movies.

Either that or this is how they'll do a recast--a younger Cap, a younger IM, etc., but still Steve Rogers and Tony Stark.

I think they were working towards what they did in the comics: Give us new versions of these characters with different characters inheriting the mantel. As that widely failed in the comics, I'll be curious if they go back to what they said while negotiating with Downey way back when: The characters might continue with new actors in them, like James Bond.

http://collider.com/kevin-feige-iron-man-james-bond/ (http://collider.com/kevin-feige-iron-man-james-bond/)

I think they are nervous to try that route, but they have to do something. Tom Riley as Tony Stark? Or Riri Williams as Iron Man?

My vote is to get back all the rights and do a hard reboot in 2025 and resign this cast until then.

I thought Vision was going to die but they straight up showed why he should die in the trailer so I'm assuming they will handle it differently.


One of the heroes that normally would die will be permanently retired due to a severe injury or placed into another dimension and growing to have the significance and impotence of Dr. Strange's 2nd villain Doramuu.


Thanos in the comics wipes out almost all of humanity. Considering the placement of 2 Marvel movies inbetween the Infinity Wars I have to assume instead of strictly focusing on that Thanos alters reality and we get a timeskip that the Captain Marvel movie elaborates on how humanity was altered by Thanos acquiring the power to warp reality.


All of the following have death flags
Hawk Eye
Captain America
Iron Man
Hulk
Vision
Wanda
Thrax


The New avengers will be
Captain Marvel
Thor
Black Panther (sort of)
Dr Strange (also sort of)
New Franchise #1
New Franchise #2
Nebula (if she becomes more popular during the Infinity War otherwise some 3rd unheard of character)

Captain Marvel takes place (mostly) in the 90s.  It could be setting up something or entirely independent, but I think it sets up something for Avengers 4.
Ant-man and Wasp may take place mostly in the Quantum Realm which would give them various ways to sidestep the impacts of Avengers 3.

This is all good speculation, and it makes total sense as a neat transition.  But I honestly wish they wouldn't do this shit.

Fuck continuity/world resets to death.  I know its painful for movies, but just cast somebody else as the character.  If Dr. Who can be successful, so can you.

I know most of the actors are going to leave, and changing things up for the 'cinematic universe' as everybody describes makes sense.  But I honestly wish they wouldn't treat the cinematic world like they do the comics.  Just have somebody different, and run with things, while keeping the essences of the character.  There does not need to be an explication for every character change.  This isn't going to happen, but its a nice thought. 

Dr. Who has actor changes written right into the concept for the character. Until Skyfall a popular fan theory was that Bond was just a code name that a spy inherits along with 007. The comics tried doing something similar with their characters but were too heavy handed about it so it failed.

It's always going to fail.  It's always too heavy handed.  Just run with it and keep the fun character regardless of who is acting him, for gods sake.  I know Dr. Who writes it into the series, but lets be frank here, how that matters to the overall story matters very little.  They could just announce randomly in one episode "Oh shit, the Dr. looks like this now!" and continue forward with things without much issue.

The Avengers 4 sets all seem to be period piece sets so far, in photographs and descriptions. So I'm thinking the Avengers are scattered across time, or otherwise have to do something to recreate/reform their history. That screams reboot to me--it lets you end the movie with a completely new cast but have mostly the same characters.

Actually this makes me suddenly think that maybe Avengers 4 also features Kang or Immortus, though I can't say I'd welcome that, since I hate the character(s). And maybe the too-revealing subtitle is Avengers Forever.

Or just the Time Soulgem, because why complicate it further.

Yeah, certainly they can just smash the Time gem or Dr. Strange can do a kind of hail-mary move to keep the glove from being finished, etc.

I think a war between Kang and Thanos would be a fun way to do Avengers 4.

Per James Gunn in 2015, no Kang.  Fox has the rights.

https://moviepilot.com/posts/3262754 (https://moviepilot.com/posts/3262754)

I suppose there could have been another rights exchange (like Ego for Negasonic Teenage Warhead), but that seems like a bigger deal... or, maybe they have a deal with Fox already to share rights and they're waiting to reveal it until after the impacts of Avengers 4 allow them to do a reboot.  Who knows? 

My best guess is Avengers 3 is a Hesit Film where Thanos assembles the gems and then obliterates pretty much everyone all at once, and then Avengers 4 is the recovery and final battle where Adam Warlock and the Avengers put him down.  There will be supporting bads in each film, but he'll be the only real major bad in both. 

Why would Kang be owned by Fox as part of the Fantastic Four rights? I don't remember him having more of an effect on FF than on Avengers.

He's related to Reed Richards.

He was kind of introduced in FF.  Marvel retconned a very old time traveling FF villain (Pharaoh Rama-Tut) and decided it was Kang, who was going back in time to gain control of Apocalypse.

Did someone mention shitty storytelling somewhere?

Regardless, it appears that prevents Marvel from using the character.

The Apocalypse part of that happened way, way, way later.

I also think GotG kinda proved that Marvel can continue to make successful movies without using Iron Man or Cap. Also, Cap's and Thor's movies showed that even if a character doesn't start off doing Iron Man numbers they can build on it with the sequels rather than getting diminishing returns, especially if they get the right creative team involved.

There's also an argument that you need a continuity reset from time to time in films precisely to avoid the tangled mess you have in comics. Look at a character like Cable (or really, any X-Man) at this point, and that's WITH various opportunities to reset or reboot continuity over the years. Look at Iron Man:

Been no-fooling dead twice.
Been turned into a teenager for an extended time.
Has had his heart repaired, damaged again, repaired.
Has had armor that was built into his body, armor that formed around him, armor he carried in a briefcase, you name it.
Has been a gigantic douchenozzle to every other hero but then magically got to lose his memories of being a douchenozzle and mostly people forgot it.

Plus with him and all of them, he's been around so long that either ALL of those adventures somehow happened in a ten year period or some of them didn't happen. Plus half of his Rogues Gallery makes no sense any more, because they are rooted in the Cold War.

I'm not sure the comics are well-served by having to vaguely pretend that all of that actually happened,etc.

It will take a while for the movies to build up that level of narrative crud, but they're arguably already edging towards it.

when RDJ is done, i'm done

They aren't. Say what you will about shit like Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis, Flashpoint or Rebirth, but DC has actually benefited from resetting the continuity a few times. Marvel had the best opportunity with Secret Wars recently and they didn't want to reset. So what's left of continuity is just odd and muddled. It's clear they've tried to do more diverse versions of those same characters in part because that's how Disney has been doing in all the big movie franchises, as well as trying to fit continuity to more fit the roster of movie properties, but they are now going back to the well again with whatever this Legacy shit is.

Recasting without a reboot would be acceptable, but they also have to start being concerned about the "I don't want to have to watch 17 movies just to know what the fuck is going on with the new movie" syndrome.

Someone I know hasn't watched any interconnected Marvel movie since Avengers 1 because of that fear. I keep telling them it's unfounded and they can skip Thor 2, Cap 2, etc but they're a completionist and there's no arguing with that. Best I've managed is to actually get them to see Ant Man since it was initially separate in the same manner Guardians was in the event it flopped.

Right. The numbers of characters who "remember" that millions of universes died in the run-up to Secret Wars are already multiplying; and Marvel is already proliferating previously-unknown cosmic beings who live outside of the existing multiverse in some vaster multiverse and now Valeria Richards is coming back as a "lost Avenger" and so on and so on. And you've got Miles Morales running around looking into who the "real" Miles Morales in this universe is (which is just fucking nuts, right? This kid is swinging around town with his family kind of intact but aware that everyone else and everything else he ever knew is dead and gone forever). It's the same mistake DC made repeatedly and then tried to solve with really dumb things like "Prime Superboy punches reality". Convoluted to the point that even the most geeky person can't begin to keep track of it.

Comic books are dumb, dilly dilly.

Dilly dilly. +1

I’m sure ill have a lot of fun watching this but this trailer did not excite me at all.

The continuity stuff isn't really comic-books per se, though. It's the consequence of long-running serial storytelling combined with a need to preserve intellectual property intact. Soap operas have a version of this problem.

Maybe I'm just being a grumpy old person here but when I read comics as a kid they were fairly self contained stories. In tv terms they were episodic instead of serialized and to be honest, I loved it. Once comics got more serialized I started losing interest because you'd be utterly lost if you missed a few issues.

Problem with this is that its really limiting on the stories you can tell.  Sometimes you need multi-issue arcs to tell a good story, or else your really stuck with "batman punches the villain of the day and everybody has a good chuckle" type stories. 

Now, Marvel has taken this way to far with their endless crossover bullshit events that require you to read a shit ton of different series to understand, and forces the writers of all of them to fuck up their continuity weather they want to or not.

It's really partly an issue with shared universes too, where at some point the accumulation of characters and stories should be leading to some fundamental changes in the nature of the world itself but somehow they don't--that's another attraction of the reboot, to avoid that moment.

Some characters/story settings avoid that by having the existence of super-powered, supernatural, futuristic, etc. people be secret or hidden. Blade I, II, III work that way. But with something like the MCU, it's hard at this point to see how that world doesn't become more and more radically fantastic. So far they've been playing it that way--the Vulture talks about how things have to change for his kind of "little guy", the world's governments push control over super-powered people via the Sokovia Accord, superheroes are a special kind of celebrity, we discover that there's been a 'secret history' of supers in the backdrop (the mystics protecting the world, SHIELD/HYDRA after WWII). But it's getting close to the point where it would be hard to see how cheap Iron Man-knockoff technology isn't having major impacts on society (prosthetics, warfare, etc.), where there would presumably be tons of attempts to duplicate the Super-Soldier formula, where verifiable knowledge of aliens wouldn't be having a big impact on human society, etc. The MCU makers like to mess around with this stuff a bit (the Korean "Church of Thor" thing) but they must know that they're close to the tipping point where MCU-Earth just can't be kept like our world if they're going to keep pushing with the shared-universe stories.

Well, there's nothing wrong with something like Dark Phoenix interspersed with your more stand alone stories. But lately it feels like it is all serialized and it is all interwoven. Really, what it feels like to me, and I think someone said it already, is that comics are becoming soap operas. The writers start getting bored and start changing stuff up to shock the audience. "Let's kill Superman/Captain America/Wolverine!" and stuff like that.

I just feel like they've lost their way some. I haven't read a ton of either DC or Marvel in years except for Wonder Woman but it feels like DC is doing a better job of keeping their characters interesting in the comics.

They've been that since Claremont's original run on X-Men.

Comics have always been the male-oriented version of soap operas - serialized escapist fantasies. ALWAYS. It's partially the nature of serialized content in general, as well as the legacy of storytelling in the '90's (which is when a lot of the current creators either started writing comics or started reading them). Also, Joe Quesada hates "rigid continuity" but loves crossovers and all other aspects of a shared universe. So the Marvel comics all want to have their cake and eat it too which you can only do for so long. Also, Brian Michael Bendis is the "creative force" behind most of their crossovers and he mostly sucks at it hard, along with not really liking super heroes.

Not any more at least since he recently signed exclusively with DC. He can go fuck up their comics for a while.

Bendis signed with DC? UGH. Good news for Marvel. I hadn't heard that.

Fuuck. DC have actually been doing some good work recently, so this is a slap in the face. Way to go shooting your own foot AGAIN, DC.

Looking forward to JUSTICE LEAGUE: CIVIL WAR  :why_so_serious:

Final US trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwievZ1Tx-8

Also, tickets are generally available now.

Already booked my ticket for that Saturday. Stoked for this one. Yes, it will be character overload but I dig it.

The first 25 minutes have leaked online. Just a warning that spoilers for those first 25 minutes may be impossible to avoid soon.

Leaked on purpose, or just leaked ?

Going to assume "just leaked", as 25 minutes is a LOT of movie to "Leak" for promotional purposes.  Like, the most I have ever seen out of a big studio is around 8 to 10 minutes as a "sneak peek" kind of thing when that sort of thing happens at our theater.

Either way, leaked on April 1st ?  Ain't watching.   :why_so_serious:

Leaked in India (Ibelieve) and on the 30th.   Not promotional.  The folks I know that read/heard the summary told me they think it is legit and contains at least one big spoiler.  I am trying to avoid the entire thing, but I doubt we'll be able to do so for an entire month.

Edit: And I couldn't.  Assholes putting major spoilers in the fucking title of their shit that just pops up on my Facebook in stupid ads.

Tickets for the Sunday showing arrived.  Allllmost set.

So far the reviews basically seem to boil down to 'Pretty darn good given the challenges of managing so many characters and having only half a story to tell (Avengers 4 coming next year)."  I'm excited.  Thursday night can't come fast enough.  Very vague spoilers follow:

The most convincing review I've seen said 'if you liked the airport fight in civil war, this is more of that. For 2 hours.'

By convincing I mean 'the only one that didn't read like the preview reviews of every other marvel film ever'.

I don't know what the pr team put in the soft beverages at MCU premieres but they do an amazing job of keeping attendees on message.

fyi apparently Forbes has printed all the spoilers so I guess log off the internet until you see it.  :oh_i_see:

I'm sure people will be safe since it's Forbes and likely behind a paywall, no one will see them.

First review I read today was comingsoon.net. Spoiler in the first sentence. I guess I'm in a blackout until Saturday.

Yeah - spoilers are hard to avoid.  I was watching discussion of the NFL draft and someone slipped in a spoiler.  Geesh.

This was pretty good, several good moments that had the crowd cheering and that ending. Kid next to me was straight up sobbing.

Chris Evens really sold that ending.  The utter despair in Cap’s face.  Damn, I hated Captain America as a kid.  I have really enjoyed him in the movies thanks to Chris.  RDJ gets huge accolades and deservingly so for his work as Tony Stark, but I am going to miss Chris more.

Took the 10yo daughter to see Infinity War today as she's a huge GotG and Thor fan. She loved the movie and is now in anticipation mode for the next one. Damn good movie, it had just the right elements of an Avengers movie with Dr Strange/GotG/Thor Ragnarok cues throughout. Loved the giant dwarf

Enjoyed it and my kid loved it.  They really have these characters dialed in.

I was entertained by it, although as is common these days there's too much CG character vs. CG character action. For me it will be hard to judge whether or not it's actually a good movie until Avengers 4 comes out.

They managed the challenges of having such a bloated cast very well.  There was character drama and real stakes... and Thanos was about as 'grounded' as he could be.  This movie took on unprecedented challenges... and nailed it.

If you want to know whether there are any credits scenes:
I am curious how ...

I doubt MAoS will even touch it. I agree with your comment on Thanos. Brolin actually did a really good job with it which will probably be overlooked.

Across the netflix TV shows they seem to have an editor-in-charge-of-crap-references whose job it is to insert lines of terrible dialog that mention events in movies without any impact on TV characters, themes or plots.

I would rather they stop doing that - but at least the impact is limited.

Curious about one of the themes of the movie and if they follow up on it in A4:

Just saw this.  Over all really enjoyed it, though they kept doing a number of cliches, repeatedly, that sort of bugged me.

Yeah, having the two biggest egotistical asshole heroes in the MCU working together was a blast.  They played well off each other.  Would love to see that team up again.

20/10 the bar is raised permanently.

An absolute master class in how to do a tent pole, franchise epic event movie with a cast of bazillions. Not trying to give all those characters separate arcs and relying on very little exposition worked perfectly. The protagonist was essentially Thanos in this one and his arc was fantastic. His motivation was a simple one that stripped all the bullshit off the comic character and boiled it down to its essence and Brolin fucking nailed it. Not only Brolin, but the CGI artists - I never got much of the uncanny valley effect with him which says a lot about the directors and their effects team.

First off I want to say that I really loved the movie. The only problems that I had with it are:

1. I think there was too much action, if that's a thing.

2.

Yep. To sort of followup to Raquel's spoiler, I think my only complaint about the entire movie is that this thing basically screams "Part 1".  The ride was fucking awesome, and then they stop it half way through and kick you off, leaving you with that "amazing meal half eaten" feeling, where you are still hungry and wanting more.  Honestly one of the few times I wish I could have just stuck my head in some kind of spoiler deflecting bubble for a year and waited to watch Infinity War until the day before part 2 released.

I...but yes, it is just part one.  It’s always know that it will be just part one of two.  I mean, I guess you can just hate all movie series, but this is no different than how LotR or various Star Wars movies end.

Hmm.

Ok.

The trouble here is the 2nd part, I feel.

But, you know, good job on the first part.

I honestly hope you’re right.  I want the end result of the final movie to be a reset of everything back to the way it was before, and everybody brought back to life.  However, I will admit, I have a hard time seeing them pass up this opportunity to write off a shit ton of characters they don’t have any room left to put on screen (since they are moving to a bunch of new hero franchises).

More likely they just treat them as dead for a bit, and then if a writer wants them in a couple of years they'll just be 'Hi, I got better'.

There is little point undercutting deaths in this actual film when they could do it inside 2 lines of dialog in another film that doesn't depend on that death for impact.

I think to understand the next movie, take note of the following:

That's actually not a bad theory at all.

Jesus Christ no.

Yeah, I think you're actually wrong on this.

There is no way they are doing Ms. Marvel when they are already releasing a Captain Marvel movie next year (who will also be in the next Avengers film, as hinted in the after credits scene).  Things like that can work in comics, but that whole situation would seem really damn wierd to the movie going crowd.

And I don’t know man, Avengers have been a marketing juggernaut.  Like, I see children in Laos and Thailand all dressed up as Thor, Ironman, and Captain America (and this is a communist dictatorship ruled by people our military bombed for decades in a CIA run secret war).  It’s going to be hard for them to give that up, not to mention literally upset a million kids if they stop making the movies.

Something like what Khaldun is saying actually makes sense.  Though it would be a bit hard to pull off as stated since you’d have to recast all the heroes ahead of time, just so they can cameo in Avengers 4.  That’s a bit daunting.

Good movie.  Looking forward to the next one.

Isn’t any else pissed that...

Also, like, can we agree to stop spoilering everything after we hit the one week mark or something?  I know its polite to do initially because people like to look at the thread to see how people liked the film, but it becomes really weird to have a thread about about a movie where all the text is hidden.

It's been 18 movies, why would anyone be upset?

It is more like a typical marvel comics crossover event.

Last couple of years they've doubled down on  making the movies like the comics. For good or ill.

Thanos is Space Deebo.

I stole that from twitter. It’s accurate as fuck though.

After 10 years of movies? Knowing that the actors are getting a bit long in the tooth for the roles and aren't going to want to play them forever?

No, I'm actually not. I don't have a problem with reset buttons if the story is handled right. Most of them are used in comics and other shitty genre fiction because the writers are too lazy to write themselves out of the corners they've written themselves into.

2 Ideas on the character resets:

1.) The actors have to retire.  Their visage and voice does not.  We have the technology now to make someone else look like the character and keep them going as ageless wonders.  RDJ's face and voice could be there as Stark for 100 more years...  Aging as slowly as he has in the comics.  Well, maybe not for 100 years, but until we kill ourselves off as a species.

2.) They don't want to lose these valuable characters.  If they do not do the CGI replace idea, they can have the character go to a lesser role in the Universe for a bit and then recast.  RDJ is an amazing Iron Man - but, just as with the comics or with James Bond, there can be others that fill the shoes and continue the character.  If they start Iron Man 4 by having Pepper killed and Stark go off the deep end into an Iron Wars storyline where the MCU is trying to stop him, you could see a personality swing in a newly cast Iron Man and have it both be a chance of character and in character at the same time.

Regardless, I think we'll 1.) either see RDJ as Tony Stark for 15 more years with less active roles as Stark and his action being more CGI/, or 2.) See them do an ENTIRE reboot to incorporate the mutants sometime in the 2020s, but have most of these actors in these roles until then.

I'd love it if they replaced RDJ as Iron Man with Riri Williams as Ironheart, just for the incels and racists diatribes against diversification of superhero movies when the douchebag Tony Stark is replaced by a 15-year old black girl.

It would probably be Shuri if i had to put money on it.

If they are opening up the time travel plot device I will just laugh, because once you open that Deus Ex Machina there is no way to shut it. DAN! Thanos saw that so he slips a fake gauntlet to his future self but Strange saw that so he slipped the fake with the real one so Thanos would have the real one and then i dunno Doom saw that so he...

Might as well just have the Doctor blast them with his Sonic Screwdriver at that point.

They already did that both in Dr Strange and in this movie. Time travel is how he got the last stone.

It's comic books. They do it all the time, and it's not just about recasting--it's about how you bring change to characters who aren't really allowed to grow markedly older. It's the same thing the Bond movies have done--you're supposed to pretend that old sad Roger Moore is still young James Bond. Only once did they actually go with "James Bond is older, isn't that funny" in that weird Connery IP-lawsuit movie that remade Thunderball. It was disappointing with Trek because they could really choose to just keep having new crews of new ships in a universe that actually changes its status quo over time. With comic books, it's really inevitable unless someone decides that they really want to go ahead and have middle-aged Spider-Man hand over the mantle to his daughter Spider-Girl and so on.

Apparently, that last Spider-man scene was mostly improvised, not pre-written.

Spoilers in Link (https://nerdist.com/avengers-infinity-war-tom-holland-improvised-spider-man/)

Just noticed a continuity error:

Several promotional images from trailers do not match the movie.  Some with the Hulk in them are quite different in the movie.

Is that image from the movie, or from one of the trailers?  Cause one of my co-workers pointed out the interesting fact that literally ALL of the promotional material for this movie (posters, trailers, standees, even an IMAX promotional poster that just shows the IMAX Logo with the Gauntlet Hand reaching out to grasp it) only shows those two stones in the gauntlet.  If it is from the trailer, it is possible it was deliberately edited that way to prevent possible spoilers about stone acquisition from leaking.

That's a good point.

I just saw this tonight, had a total blast. Managed to avoid spoilers too, so that's a plus. I'm still processing my thoughts on where 4 will go; I might post some more after I catch up on the thread.

I'm kind of with Khaldun:

They did.


In fact infinity war was supposed to come out this weekend and pushed it forward 1 week early.

AOS this weekend confirmed





Following names the villain for this season. You should watch past seasons of shield if you skipped them post Winter Soldier crossover. Knowing his name will ruin your first watch of this season because you don't know who The Destroyer of Worlds could be till this episode.



There is no chance the what was shown in the 1st few episodes of season 5 will affect Avengers 4 but I'm wondering now how they will reconcile season 6 because the movies and shield have to play off each other on some level.

Ya, I'm surprised they are integrating it as much as they are. Will be interesting to see how things go.

I assume we'll see "the moment" on MAoS, now.  I just wonder what Luke Cage, Cloak and Dagger, etc... will have to say about it.

It's definitely happening.

The Netflix urban shows I assume might do something like "It feels as bad as that night when half of New York disappeared" or something--a strictly post-facto passing reference. You're not going to watch half of Cage's friends actually disappear before his eyes or anything like that.

I really do wish they'd had one quick cameo scene of Cage, Jones, Daredevil and Iron Fist trying to help out in New York but not being able to keep up with the battle. Or alternatively, I'd love to have one of the urban vigilantes walk past Strange's house or glimpse Spider-Man in the distance, something like that.

By now the movies have made it pretty clear they are never going to acknowledge the TV shows.

Acknowledge? No

But they did use material from the TV aos for the opening of Ultron.

It is doubtful they'll do that again for Avengers 4 but it doesn't sit well with me how much aos continues to riff off it and the implications on the show has no bearing on the movies inspite it being important.

They stuck the landing with a high degree of difficulty, this was a good movie.

https://mobile.twitter.com/JamesGunn/status/993265674616221696

The Russos are pretty clear that Avengers 4 is not based upon existing comics...

That's just what I needed to read today.  :heartbreak:

Cap or tony use it and self sacrifice. Its predictable and the only way it can end but damn if it wont still be emotional as fuck after a ten year run.

I think we get one sacrifice and one retirement. Cap dies, Tony retires. Just because Downey's contract is over doesn't mean they can't bring him in for an occasional cameo as an elder statesman.

Hawkeye is also dying. That one is very obvious.

No way, after we met his family Hawkeye has the best plot armor.

There is Pepper somwhere for Tony.

I’ll be disappointed if they do have them, just because it means they’ll have to come up with some really stupid reason to bring the characters back when they make a sequel later.  Just like every time some idiot comic book writers things he’ll be edgy by ‘killing’ one of the heroes.

Just accept all of these guys are immortal and enjoy the show people.   :awesome_for_real:

I'm still pretty sure that fiddling with time will:

recast the OGs, but the OGs will get to do something heroic that essentially involves them sacrificing themselves as far as they know it

do something that reboots the MCU slightly such that there have always been mutants

make captain marvel a part of the OG Avengers

I also wouldn't be at all surprised to see a postcredit Avengers 4 scene that features Victor von Doom.

I really, really hope they don't recast anyone. I wouldn't mind Cap and Tony passing the torch, with Bucky (or whoever) taking up the shield and becoming Captain America and someone else becoming Iron Man, but some handwavey nonsense that says "Oh this guy is Tony Stark now" instead of RDJ would be complete bullshit. I'd rather they just get killed off.

Agreed, recasting original characters would be soap opera levels of dumb.

According to the filmmakers, the deaths in Infinity War are real (https://www.geeksofdoom.com/2018/05/07/avengers-inf-war-ending-a4-surprises?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+geeksofdoom+%28GEEKS+OF+DOOM%29).

What that means, who the fuck knows?

Means absolutely nothing. "Real" doesn't mean "unreversable". Also they swore up and down Hawkeye was in this movie before release.

If you want to throw away any goodwill you have with moviegoers sure, that's a plan.

The recasts will annoy if they do it, but it might be a kind of rip-the-bandaid off thing that moves them into Bond territory--from here on in, anyone can be recast if they need it. Though of course they did that already with Cheadle/War Machine easily. Maybe they'll even recast and not act like it is a change in reality, who knows. The rest I think is not going to annoy anyone really--something that changes MCU reality so that mutants have always existed might well delight people if it means suddenly Wolverine joins the Avengers.

Marvel is coming off their most successful solo movie yet with Black Panther (which did almost as much domestically as all three Thor movies combined). The GotG movies did better than most of the Iron Man, Thor, and Cap movies. There is no reason Disney/Marvel should feel the need to force old franchises to continue right now with recasting. Even at three releases a year they have more than enough to keep themselves busy right now with Spider-man, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, GotG 3, Avengers, and possibly Black Widow, or more Dr. Strange or Ant Man. That's without even getting into whatever they end up doing with the X-men and FF once all that eventually gets finalized.

Right now I don't think they have anything to gain by doing a recast. If they want those characters available for another big crossover with Avengers, FF, X-men, Spider-man, etc..., in around 5 or 6 years they'd be better off leaving things in a place where they can bring RDJ, Evans, and Hemsworth back for one movie later on.

It's certainly another way to go if they mean to do an Avengers 5 and 6 etc. (which I assume they are planning): you just go the New Avengers route where Avengers 5 features Black Panther, Spider-Man ,Dr. Strange, Falcon, Ant-Man, Wasp, Scarlet Witch and Captain Marvel. It's pretty deeply part of the history of the comic, after all--Iron Man, Thor, Giant-Man and the Wasp walked away early on, leaving Captain America with his "Kooky Avengers" (Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Hawkeye). If you move the OGs off-stage, then you might buy yourself another decade's worth of hit movies without having to even mention those characters. And after another decade, who knows, there may just be such exhaustion with the genre that the goose will lay only a few more such eggs anyway.

But I'm still pretty sure that time travel is going to be used to shoehorn mutants into the MCU somehow rather than have them suddenly appear for the first time after Avengers 4.

Not gonna lie if it was possible that Hugh Jackman rocked up in Avengers 4 putting his claws through someone's chest that'd be pretty darn awesome..:D

They've said, essentially, "We're not idiots.  We're making more Avengers movies."  However, they may not be the "Phase Bookends" that we're used to seeing... they may be more of a "GotG" in importance than a "We've built up to this for 3 to 10 years" event. 

Personally, I hope we don't "undue" Avengers 3 in Avengers 4.  I know they need to return certain characters to life, and there are some pretty clear "I'd give my life for you" build ups, but it is my hope that these characters are off the board for a year in their stories (although, for all we know, Avengers 4 will take place immediately following the events of Avengers 3).

The movies have always been supposed to be loosely chronological and take place in the years in which they are made so in universe it'll likely be 6mo-1year has passed since the end of avengers 4.  In that time however I think it's only ant man and captain marvel coming out so for anyone who "died" it wont really mean much to their individual franchises.

I'm 99% sure everyone dusted is coming back but the real question is what about those who died before that or even those who may die on the way to reversing it.  The gauntlet is shown looking pretty trashed after Thanos snaps so if using the gauntlet once to reverse the dusting will break it completely it'll be a one use deal and they may not have the power/ability to bring back anyone else.

There is true for some of the movies, but not all.  The events of IM 2, Thor, Cap 1 (the very end), and Incredible Hulk all take place within one week of each other (referenced as Fury's Big Week in supplementing comics).  Guardians 1 and 2 take place several years before Infinity War - and only a few months apart. Dr. Strange begins in a time frame a bit after the end of Iron Man 2 (per the reference to the guy injured in the Hammer armor) and ends at an uncertain time, but likely before Ultron. 

Check out this timeline that some obsessed folks assembled using all available resources - you'll want to really pay attention at 2011 and on...  Although some of it, in particular relating to Dr. Strange, seems off, most of it is right. 

I'm basically thinking that dead-dead is probably Loki, Heimdall, half the Asgardians, Xandar.

Gamora I'm guessing gets brought back to life via a different route than the rest of the deads.

I would guess at least 1-2 characters of some kind will get dead-dead in the course of Avengers 4.

Everybody else is coming back somehow.

I think you forgot to link said timeline.

The timing doesn't really work out for that right now now. Avengers 4 is pretty much done filming I think, and the Disney/Fox deal likely won't go through until sometime next year assuming Fox turns down the bid Comcast just made. If they're confident the deal with go through, they can maybe start seeding some things in the Phase 4 movies to lay some groundwork.  Unless they rush things through production it probably wouldn't be until at the very least 2021 when they would have an X-men or FF movie ready to go. That works out for the best in some respects. The MCU is will be coming off of the culmination of a 10+ year storyline which is finishing off in a massive two-part crossover. They can't follow that up immediately with an X-men crossover. They need to spend a few years focusing on standalone stuff for a couple years before they start really building up to another big event.

My best guess is that there isn't going to be to massive of a change for the MCU coming out of IW. The 2019 lineup is already locked in with Captain Marvel, Avengers 4, and Spider-man 2. GotG is a likely 2020 release. I'm not sure if they can get Black Panther 2 out by 2020 but I'm sure they'd like to have it ready by then and I bet whatever the next team franchise is going to be (whether Avengers or something else) Disney is probably looking to make Black Panther a pretty prominent part of it.

I'm betting that going forward we'll see the bigmovies as stand alone movies rather than an Avengers movie. For example, it would be Marvels Secret Wars rather than Avengers Secret Wars.

Regardless, the most we'll get on Mutants would be a post credit stinger in Avengers 4, and I doubt We'd get a substantive movie on Mutants before 2023 in the MCU. Personally, I think they should just reboot the universe around then to incorporate everything.

If we need a sacrifice for the soul stone Tony loves two people. Himself and...

(https://cdn.movieweb.com/img.news.tops/NEnQBCyEtaiOrp_1_b/Avengers-Infinity-War-Pepper-Potts-Super-Powers.jpg)

I could see them being really cruel and making him sacrifice her to save half the universe and retiring in his grief. There was a time I'd have said Disney doesn't have the balls for that but then they made Rogue One and Infinity War.

I'm guessing that they decided to go in a direction we would not predict based upon existing materials - and that either nobody wields the Infinity Gauntlet in Avengers 4, or it is Thanos himself that does. 

Right now, the big mystery for me is...  

I could see some ways for the "go into the past" thing to work out. Say,

1) That Strange sees that the only way to win is to have someone on Titan who was not actually there who could do something that none of them could do. E.g., the Time-Lost Avengers have to change history just enough to re-engineer the events of the first half of Avengers: Infinity War. But maybe this turns out to be really complicated because it involves getting someone there who isn't even part of the Avengers now, or someone who doesn't even exist in the MCU as it stands, etc.
2) That Strange sees that the only way to win is to convince Thor to throw his axe at Thanos' head, but to do that, the Time-Lost Avengers have to get that message to Thor in time in a way that involves changing history.
3) That Strange sees that the only way to win is for the OG Avengers to *all* chase the Chitauri back into the warp and fight Thanos right then and there, or to otherwise change the events of the first film, which requires changing history. Maybe by having Nick Fury recruit Strange himself to be part of the team then, or by otherwise changing the timeline of the Avengers and their membership.

I could see any of that...

... but really hope they go entirely different. I don't want to have the events of the first movie changed - I want to see them find a way to 'fix the ending' without that type of time travel cheat making so it never happened.  We know the signs that point otherwise, but I want to see a go forward solution, not a change everything solution. 

Where exactly has it been leaked that time travel is even a factor in the next movie or is this just speculation that is getting treated as fact?

How long do we have to put up with rampant and bullshit speculation ?

I mean, when is the next one out ?  It's next week ?  Please tell me it's next week ?

The fact that I actually give a fuck about what happens in the next movie is a massive testament to the quality of this one.

It is what we do after we have seen a thing and we have some feeling of caring about what happens next. Feel free to go see another movie.

Whoosh...

I agree.  The issue is the fundamental dichotomy in the mind between 'There is an easy and stupid and awful and Moffat and cheap way to get out of this' to 'This is Marvel who have astounded thus far and may in fact have something awesome'.

It's horrible.

Well the movie was filmed already, if you don't care about spoilers there are enough on set pictures that you can get a clear idea of what happens.

Like all those pics of Thanos with two gems ?  I'll pass thanks.   :why_so_serious:

Those were official trailers specifically made that way to not be spoilery.

The Captain Marvel movie is set in the '90's.

We have snapshots, but not a context for those snapshots.  We hope that the sum is greater than the parts seem to make them out to be - and statements by the directors seem to rule out some of the things people are assuming, but the directors could be full of crap, too.

I have faith that Marvel will close this out in a satisfactory way, but I think it will be really hard for it to end up being the best of all Marvel movies. 

Time will tell.

No matter what is in the next one it will be near impossible to try and separate this one from it, they really are a two part movie, albeit a 5 hour two part movie.  So if the next movie is even close to this one I'll definitely put "infinity war" as my top marvel movie.

Has there been any info on the sequel's title yet? I remember them saying they didn't want to announce it because it spoiled something in IW; I wonder how long before the title and trailer drop.

Avengers: Infinity War, The Rest of the Movie

They hinted it will be a while... I'm guessing we learn the title after Ant-man and Wasp.

I really, really liked this. Just amazingly handled massive ensemble movie, the only bit I really didn't enjoy was the Wakandan confrontation, the whole 'two groups running at each other across an open field' bit was dumb in Cap 2 and it was dumb here. That said I felt like they handled bringing the cast together much, much more smoothly. They trusted the audience to know who everyone was, they didn't give most characters any arcs but they also brought them in much more organically. Thanos was far better handled than expected and I kind of felt a better done villain with a moral code than Killmonger.

Really it felt like a movie where they were doing things they had had a chance to test out in the previous films, where they've actually gotten better at presenting this kind of thing on the screen. One of the frustrating thing about the DC movies is the directors and producers don't seem to learn from their movies. At best they make new mistakes, at worst they manage to just do the bad shit twice as much. Marvel have honed their craft and they started pretty well.

I guess the next couple of stand alones are going to be set between this and pt.II?

Ant Man and the Wasp comes out in July, and (according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Marvel_Cinematic_Universe_films#Ant-Man_and_the_Wasp_(2018))) is set between Civil War and Infinity War. The trailer implies that Scott Lang is under house arrest, I assume because of his participation in Civil War. I speculate that the end of this movie will feature several characters getting dusted a la the end scene of Infinity War, and Hawkeye showing up to recruit Scott and Hope to help set things aright in next year's Avengers 4 movie.

Captain Marvel is set in the 90s, and is scheduled to be released in March of 2019, two months before Avengers 4. Again, this is according to wikipedia.

For those curious how Infinity War would be addressed by Agents of Shield: Season 6 will premiere Summer 2019.

So... probably exactly like the movie does.

http://tvline.com/2018/05/15/agents-of-shield-season-6-summer-2019/ (http://tvline.com/2018/05/15/agents-of-shield-season-6-summer-2019/)

I keep forgetting that show exists.

It doesn't exist keep forgetting.

Hey, it's not that bad.  Some of it actually reaches the heady heights of 'watchable.'

I wouldn't have believed that at Season 1.

It is kind of a non-issue... I can't imagine that fans will rush back to it after it leaves the air for a year unless they have a huge hook (Hawkeye makes an appearance, or they add a B list character to the roster type thing...)

Told you AOS would basically ignore it. Outside of two lines of dialogue there was zero interaction with the story-line.

Yup... they clearly wrote it as a series finale.... cop out.

I didn't like this movie. In fact, I'm sick of these movies and this franchise.

The last one I liked was Guardians Of The Galaxy 1 (disclaimer: I haven't seen Thor Ragnarok and suspect I might like it).

But I don't want to pay to see any more of them at the cinema. Instead they'll be mindless Netflix entertainment.

Welcome to the minority of geekdom. 

Meh?

The majority of geekdom usually can't separate "i didn't like this" from "THIS IS OBJECTIVELY BAD" so Tale is well ahead of the majority of geekdom.  I did really love Infinity War, but I'll support his take.

If you don't like Thor: Ragnarok you have no soul.

I can see not really enjoying this if you're burned out on big action spectacle. It's a very well crafted piece but if you're sick of the whole blockbuster type genre it's not going to do much for you.

Yeah this is pretty much the best burger out there but if you don't eat meat then it's not any better than mcdonalds.

My soul did not enjoy the convoluted set-up, joining together dots of movies I had and had not seen (it would be an AWFUL movie to anyone who had not previously seen the series), big obvious pauses to line up in-jokes and do fan service, and...


I've had a mixed reaction to the past movies. For example, the Iron Man movies bored me. I find the new Spiderman very meh, unlike the popular reaction to it. But I liked Doctor Strange and the Captain America movies well enough, among others. There hasn't been a great one for a long time though.


I love big action spectacle. I am tired of these mediocre Marvel movies. So are the people involved, I think. These are like Transformers movies now - massive audience, totally forgettable. Emperor's New Clothes, sorry. You're all welcome to your opinion and I'm glad you're having fun!

I get having issues with the Marvel movies and/or being burned out on them. But comparing them to the Transformers movies is just insane. Transformers had one semi-decent movie (the very first one) and then it's just been nothing but shit. Like, I'd rather watch GI Joe 20 times in a row than see another Transformer movie.

I have nothing really to add except to add my vote to the + side.  Saw it today.  Superb "flick".   Genuinely a fun movie, hitting lots of comic highs and lows.  Terrific.

I finally went to see this tonight and enjoyed it a lot.  Hate that now I have to wait how long for the next movie, but I'll survive.

The Children of Thanos baddies were totally non-entities to me, except that big guy who fought Hulk, the vengeful female one, and the crazy one with Strange.  I mean. they just seemed interchangeable to me.  Which is fine, I guess.  At least they weren't taken out in seconds as if they were fodder.

 :headscratch:  There were others ?  I'm not being sarky, I genuinely can't think of any either - were there supposed to be other memorable ones ?

The stealth assassin with the hood who was paired with angry chick in the Vision/Scarlet witch fight near the start is the only other one I can think of.

Yeah there was four, but he named three of them and the last one was the one with the least amount of screen time.

It seems like it will be the last.

There were four kids, and they were made to be very powerful in the movie and comics.  They were flunkies.... I'd have preferred that they were set up in a prior movie to give them a bi more depth.

It begs the question though of what the fuck these vegans are doing at the House of Prime Rib.

The Transformers/M.A.S.K. stuff moved to the Hasbro thread which jgsugden kindly pointed out: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=25104.0

I loved Infinity War but blockbuster fatigue may be a thing, I'm going to miss Deadpool 2, Solo, Ant Man and maybe even Venom if the world of mouth is bad but probably not.

Imo Nu-Avengers led by Widow could be pretty fun but it must be scary at Marvel that so much of the "plan" requires us to give a fuck about a Captain Marvel character that is being introduced with a prequel/throwback movie. Prequels are shit. Everyone needs to stop making them forever.

Seems a bit of a stretch to call Captain Marvel a prequel movie.

It kinda is though ?

Depends how much time travel shenanigans plays into it and whether it's plot or theme wise supposed to be setting up stuff that's happened in the movies that have already been released. Like, I don't think Clone Wars qualifies as a prequel for the OT Star Wars because it's telling its own story earlier in the universe rather than being focused on setting up the characters and events of the OT.

Like I don't think Agent Carter is a prequel for Iron Man even though it's set earlier and features characters who play some part in the those movies.

Fair enough ;  I disagree.

It's a shared universe with shared characters.  Films set in that same Chronotopic Oeuvre therefore are prequels by default.

lolz.

So, yeah, I actually think Clone Wars, et al are Prequels if they're accepted by the universe at large as Canon.

Now, if you wanna talk 'DIRECT PREQUEL' to Infinity Wars, then maybe not.  But definitely a Prequel Film. 

Anyway.  Who cares.  Countdown to big ole reset still ongoing.

God I hope not. The mcu has done absolutely nothing to make me give a shit about black widow who went from "wow cool super spy" in iron man to "ok i guess she just hits things with sticks" in the last couple movies. Maybe Scarjo is just really done with all of this or maybe they can't write the character in an interesting way that fits with the action setting but she's about as notable as falcon to me, maybe less so.

A prequel retroactively "sets up" that was previously done.  If CM is a standalone story that focuses on CM and doesn't directly tie to the Marvel universe as we know it, then it isn't a prequel.  If it ends up being something that twists our understanding of Iron Man, the Avengers, Guardians, etc...  then it clearly is.  I think it'll be in the middle - some stuff that relates to the future (something that mimics Fury's post Iron Man statement, something that sets up the solution for Avengers 4, etc...), but a solid stand-alone story with no ties to the future.  Less "Where did Vader come from" and more "Knights of the Old Republic", if you will.

Would you consider the first Captain America a prequel just because it took place chronologically before the other MCU movies that had come out? I don't really think Captain Marvel is being made with an eye towards filling in gaps in a story we already know or to explain random lines of dialogue from other movies like Rogue One and Solo. Conversely, is Ant Man a sequel to Avengers: Age of Ultron because it takes place later?

I disagree that "happens earlier chronologically" = prequel. A prequel is an earlier chapter of the same story, Ant Man and Wasp also happens before Infinity War and it's not a prequel either. Captain Marvel is just a different story that happens at a different time.

I don't see any evidence she is phoning it in, but a super spy doesn't really make any sense if she only pops up in crossovers where everything is teams of superheroes and/or villians literally running at each other across an airfield. The only times she ever got to be a spy was her intro scene in Avengers, and I guess Iron Man 2.

To be honest, when the main thing she was given in two avengers films was to be a love interest for other more important Avengers - I don't understand why she is still putting up with it. Maybe she is on RDJ tier money on account of getting in at IM2.

A black widow film that is basically James Bond with Scarlett Johannson is the easiest thing to make work imaginable.

The problem with making more solo films about established Avengers is always going to be "where the fuck is everyone else", the last Cap film was basically an Avengers movie and even Thor had to team up with Hulk way the fuck out in space. You can have solo movies with non Avenger related characters like Strange or Ant Man, but you try to get anyone else alone at this point and it's going to feel extremely forced.

I don't think you have to make a solo movie feel like "where the fuck is Cap?" so long as you temper the conflict to something that isn't fucking global. The minute you start doing something like "giant wheel of fire in the sky threatening global destruction" you have to call in the Avengers. Dr. Strange was an exception to this because of the different sort of realm he works in (also Strange not having met the Avengers).

There are plenty of good Black Widow solo stories from the last 5 years to use as basis for a good solo film. I also thought the Red Room stuff and her role in Winter Soldier were a good use of the character.

I could see a Black Widow/Winter Soldier team up if there's a really good reason why they need to remain low key and avoid the appearance of 'supers'. Sticking a Stark cameo in at the beginning with some disastrous consequences (more investigation leads get totally closed up because of high profile than 'civilians literally dying') could work.

I guess I could see it along the lines of Cap 2, a chance to make in universe spy thriller might help shake up things feeling quite so stale by shifting genres around a bit again. I'm not really sure I could see them bothering with the build up to phase 2 and bringing in new faces.

I would love a black widow solo film but we haven’t gotten one. It’s not that i think the character is bad just utterly wasted and out of place, so much so that im staring to actively get annoyed by it.  Like Okoye would be on the front lines slugging it out, she’s a warrior and a general but widow? Wtf its like a spiderman movie set in a submarine.

Yes.


No.

Technically correct, apparently.  Any story set in the same 'universe' that precedes another is technically a prequel, apparently.  Thus, Cheers is a prequel to Law and Order SVU (Cheers -> St. Elsewhere -> SVU) (except it came before the SVU... duh),

 

I disagree.

"The Avengers aren't here" is inherently built into the premise. The audience is in that mindset before they even show up. Noone asked the question in Dr Strange or Iron Mans, or CA2. Noone sensible asks it about the TV shows.

The avenger-related-character thing seems an arbitrary rule. Anyway, everyone is avenger related now. Ant man is avenger related since avengers 2 but nbd that pym isn't collaborating with Tony Stark. Honestly I wish they'd waste much less screentime on terrible exposition dialog to explain this stuff.

Works fine in the comics too.

In black widow's case she is supposed to be a spy so having her do a secret thing is not exactly a stretch.

This is at least twice as much crossover and way more cameos than necessary or desirable. Stop it.

Pick a character. Make a film about that character. Anyone extra has to make the film better in its own right.

Civil War should have been strictly Cap vs Ironman. It should have been called that.

Avengers 2 needed about 30% fewer dudes and least 1 fewer romantic sub plots.

Cap 2 had about the right amount of crossover.

Before someone says it - I appreciate this isn't what is going to happen.

Also, just to flesh this one out a little further (and beat that dead horse into submission), this is the first film with the Tesseract, which is an Infinity Stone and the one that ends up in more of the movies than I can think on right now and also has Red Skull.

Basically, if you haven't seen this one, you have no fucking idea who the tit in the cowl is during the Soul Stone scenes.  And, yes, I know someone is going to come back with bullshit about Red Skull being 'famous', but I'm talking about those chaps who are fresh to comic book movies without knowing about comics.

It's a DIRECT prequel to so very, very much.

There is literally no way to untangle any of the Marvel movies from each other in this regard.  I literally can't think of any of them that I can't connect to the other movies.  Yes, even Ant Man.  Yes, even the second Thor movie that people seem to love to hate on.  It's got a fucking Infinity Stone as the direct plot point.  I suspect that Ant Man and Wasp has the potential to be the most 'standalone', but if they're clever they'll work stuff in there too.  The strength of the shared universe is how very finely crafted and shared it truly is and it's really special particularly when you stack it up against the competition, which at the moment is only Star Wars.  DC just fucked that chicken early.

Basically, I truly love the way these movies work together and I'm going to be sad to see them go, even if they are formulaic to the max.


Finally, I'm disagreeing with some of you, not berating you. If you truly say 'nah, that's not a prequel to me' then shine on.  Who cares.

Was there an overarching story for CA to provide a prior chapter to at that point? Without that it would just be 'episode 1'. I don't really remember.

It's really a semantics discussion at this point over what counts as a prequel. My understanding of the term is fairly narrow, IW's is pretty broad. I don't think it's something we're going to advance much on beyond realising that, I'm really not sure which is more 'correct' in terms of usage (unless jgsugden solved that).

eldaec: I think Black Widow would work pretty well with a Winter Soldier co-star, I'm not totally convinced the character is interesting enough to carry a movie purely by herself and I'm not sure the MCU needs a whole cast of extra bit players introduced for the rest. It needs more characters unless it's literally just 'BW and some baddies'. WS would be the natural choice there. Also a pointless argument since, as you said, the movie isn't going to happen at this point.

To be fair you're probably right that winter soldier would be ok in a BW movie, with the caveat that I wouldn't trust them not to turn it into her third romantic relationship with an Avenger. If in your imaginary film you cut the Tony Stark cameo I'd say you have an imaginary deal.

But I get easily triggered by the silly suggestion that these movies 'need' a superhero co-star when evidence suggests the quality of an MCU movie, indeed the quality of any superhero movie, is inversely proportional to the amount of crossover going on. The first Avengers is the only crossover driven superhero movie that I'd describe as above average.

Also Scarlett Johannsen can carry a mindless superhero spy romp just fine from a standing start. Black Widow has spent 70% of her time as an audience surrogate and the remaining 30% on bad romantic subplots - the character is surprisingly undefined given her screen time. Take her out of the avenger environment and the only traits you really need to keep are female, smart, and good at punching.

As the person who initially used the word prequel, I'm sorry how this turned out.

But the point is, in a "cinematic universe" we have movies that expanding the timeline and we have movies that are fleshing out something that is already in the past. Captain Marvel is not advancing the timeline, I do believe that will make the barrier before it becomes important and exciting higher than if it wasn't in the MCU's past. That's all.

Yeah, taking place in WWI instead of advancing the DCU timeline sure hurt Wonder Woman. I'm sure people aren't going to go see this just because it introduces a strong female character into a genre largely dominated by men.

To be fair people really love the current marvel timeline and no one gives a shit about the DCU at all.

The people who love it are outnumbered 20 to 1 by the people who have no fricking clue about it but who do remember that marvel usually make good movies in their own right.

My observation of normal people is that they remember the heroes' characters but give zero fucks about the continuing plot. I'd go as far as to guess that less than half the people who have watched this very movie would be able to tell you what an infinity stone is even today. I also suspect they would struggle to name 1 MCU villain that isn't loki or thanos. And Thanos is a stretch.

Solo stories aren't hard. You just come up with a reason why the characters are out of touch with everyone else. That's even easier in a spy-based story than it is otherwise. The Black Widow has had at least five or six iterations of stories where she seems to have (or really has) gone rogue and has deliberately dropped out of contact with/is running from superhero colleagues.

The only time it really gets hard is when you have characters like Superman and the Flash who should be able to nearly always come roaring to the rescue in seconds for superheroes less powerful than they are. And if the reason they can't is that they're already involved in a desperate battle or situation, then following the less-powered hero is by definition almost paying attention to the wrong thing. But even that can be charming if it is done right--there was an episode of the DCAU Justice League that has Booster Gold doing sidelines work while the big guys battle Mordru, but he turns out to actually get involved in the most important part of the whole battle by accident.

This is like "having a criticism" that Batman, Supe, WW and the Flash didn't turn up to save the day in Suicide Squad. Of course, that would quickly escalate to "why the fuck did they get this bunch of losers together to deal with this in the first place with those big guys available."

Of course a Black Widow movie could work. But they aren't making it. You can argue about why, but there it is.

It was a valid criticism which they tried to lampshade in the movie.

The base premise of the movie - the Squad gets sent in with an unknown objective, which was actually to secretly extract Waller from the danger zone - works just fine. It fell apart when they decided to have them all become heroes and try saving the day.

Ok, I lie. It fell apart when they decided to make the movie PG and have most of the bad guys be formless blob people.

Also when they decided to make the villain the Enchantress who uses her garbage fire ring in the sky to something something instead of international super terrorism or the goddamn Joker.

But the dancing, man, the DANCING.

Is that what that was? No, that was a seizure. I've seen seizures and I've seen dancing. That was a seizure.

(https://media1.giphy.com/media/Y0N3dGX95smre/200w.webp)

Fixed.

We have a potential title for Avengers IV taken from a cinematographer's resume...
 
Not that much of a spoiler, nor that exciting.  Makes sense, though.

That's dumb. I thought they couldn't reveal the title to IV because it spoiled something in IW? That spoils nothing. I was assuming it was something like Resurrection.

Or "The House of M" or "Power Cosmic" or whatever.

Anyway, I don't know why they would bother. The title would be marketed for months before it anyway.

90% chance that is the "working title" codename they are using for this particular movie, and won't actually be the Release Title of the film.

Yeah, they'll muck around with a couple of titles before finally settling on 'Time Reset : The Movie.'

It would be a bit odd to put a working title codename on the resume, but maybe.  I think it is the real title.

Shrug, Zoe Zaldanna let it slip it was called Avengers: Infinity Gauntlet in some interview. I'm going to go with they don't know yet.

That was pretty well debunked over a year ago.  No biggie, though.  We can wait and see.

What do you mean "debunked"? that they denied it? cause nothing they say can be taken as truth. She literally did call it that on video.

Debunked as in that it made absolutely no sense in addition to it being shot down.  They'd already said the title would be a spoiler and that would not be a spoiler of any type.  No skin off my nose if you want to think it was the title and that they'll conspire to keep that a secret.