Marvel Cinematic Universe

Yeah, I'd agree with that. Marvel sold off all of the characters people cared about at the time and were able to do a surprisingly good job building a franchise off the B and C-list characters no one gave a crap about. I have way more feelings for the other characters than I do Spider-Man, but I can see why so many people are upset. The studios obviously don't care, though.

I kinda forgot about the talk about splitting the earth and space-related films. I agree with you that spending too much time away from Earth would be a mistake. I wonder why they decided to toss Scarlett Johansson off the cliff, because keeping the team together was Natasha's role in Endgame and it would've made sense to keep her around on Earth as a familiar face with the newer recruits. But setting up anyone else as the face of the Earth team besides Spider-Man would've been in the MCU's best interests, knowing the deal could fall apart at any time.

So stupid. Why purposely antagonize the fans, especially when you've got a fanbase that takes it all really seriously? These bosses have been really shitting the bed lately, between this and Sony's CEO saying Kevin Feige (and by extension, Marvel Studios) didn't do much for them.

I remember there being a backlash before Homecoming came out, but after the film was released, I think it mostly died down. I was skeptical at the time because I generally find it annoying when actors don't look like their characters in the source material (and lately there seems to be this weird trend of erasing redheads, which bugs me), but she's a good actress and does a good job in the films. I also get why Stan Lee would be opposed to changes to his property but Marvel seems really weird about Spider-Man in general. Like there was a story not terribly long ago about Disney/Marvel refusing to let some dad put a Spider-Man logo on his child's gravestone, with the reason being something about how "they didn't want the character associated with death." Now the real reason probably has more to do with keeping their copyrights, but it's still sort of an odd protectiveness of the character imo.

Ugh, Disney.

I think it depends on the series. Some shows work better binged and some you need that time between episodes. I like the freedom of being able to watch whenever.

Yeah, Thor's definitely become one of my favorite characters, and as excited as I am about the idea of Jane Thor, I was not wanting to see Odinson pushed aside. I agree that when he does eventually leave the franchise, they should do it in a big way, but I'm hoping that won't be for a while. I don't see any reason why Love and Thunder needs to be some "passing of the torch" film like I see it being called in shitty clickbait articles. If Hemsworth still wants to make movies, no reason why both Thors can't kick some ass and share the screen.

 

So, it seems Sony and Disney made a deal and Spidey's back in the MCU. He'll be back for at least one standalone film and at least one non-Spidey MCU film according to articles like this one. So this was all a whole lot of nothing.

 

I mean, it went about how I expected. I'm not sure what the point all was, though. As a PR stunt, it failed to make anyone look good, but I suppose it's kept Spidey in the news and on people's minds during FFH's digital release on the 17th and its bluray/dvd release coming up on Tuesday, so there's that.

I wonder if they'll use the one standalone film to tie up the MCU loose threads and ease Spider-Man out, or if they'll go all in on the Iron Man Jr angle, considering they could end up right back here again. My guess is that the other film would be Avengers 5, probably in Phase 5. I doubt they'd waste the character in someone else's standalone film if they can only use him one other time, especially since he didn't really have a relationship with anyone else but Tony. It'd be weird for him to pop up in any of the films already announced, imo.

 

So Marvel just recently announced five new release dates for unknown films. One is in 2022 and the other four are in 2023. I would assume one is Guardians 3 and another is Ant-Man 3. After that, I don't know. Captain Marvel 2? Blade? I'm guessing it's still too early to see X-Men or the Fantastic Four films, but I suppose it's a possibility.