@therealsilvermane

Character-wise, the MCU Guardians of the Galaxy are a lot like the Micronauts and the MCU Mantis bears a strong resemblance to Bug. So the GOTG might be the closest the MCU gets to that until Captain Universe shows up in the future.

Once you put the hat on, you might realize that the Micronauts can’t show up because they’re wholly owned by Hasbro, even Bug (as explained by James Gunn who wanted to use Bug in GOTG). I think the only character Marvel can use from those old comics is Captain Universe.

Is there a more tired overused story setting in all of science-fiction fantasy than Atlantis? I’m not sure. I initially thought DC’s Aquaman movie, with the casting of Jason Mamoa, missed a chance to do something different and place Aquaman’s kingdom in the Pacific or Indian Ocean and tie Aquaman’s roots to Oceania, like Mamoa himself. That’s why making Namor the ruler of a new underwater kingdom, Talokan, with Mayan roots in Wakanda Forever was so creative, original, and kind of groundbreaking.

Janet Jackson as a MCU metaphor was not my original intention, but maybe you're on to something, but maybe not in the way you originally intended. And as today marks the start of Black History Month and coincidentally marks the 19 year anniversary of Janet Jackson's 2004 Super Bowl Half Time show, let's, as she says in her song "I'm So Lonely", break it down. I think it might be safe to say now that Janet Jackson was thrown under the bus after the Super Bowl, by everyone from the public to virtue grandstanding public officials to news media to black celebrities like Chris Rock and Spike Lee to Justin Timberlake himself who immediately took like zero blame for the incident almost immediately after bragging about it on-air. Janet Jackson was Hester Prynned, Scarlet Lettered, and almost completely cut off by CBS godfather Les Moonves because she wouldn't apologize in person at the Grammies later that month. As Justin Timberlake's career seemed to almost take off after that incident, Janet Jackson, who was in the twilight of an epic music career anyway, was not afforded a happy second half to her career. 19 years later and in the wake of #metoo and Les Moonves's own cancellation, it's now a majority opinion that Janet Jackson was the victim of yesterday society's unfair treatment of black women. Janet's recent induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was not only a recognition of her career, but an industry apology. Justin Timberlake recently publicly apologized to Janet Jackson on his IG for not standing up for what was right back then. A same public official who expressed outrage at Janet in 2004 recently admitted that that his and the public's outrage was overblown. I think the sentiment that attacked and Scarlet Lettered Ms. Jackson in 2004 is the same sentiment that has attacked Carol Danvers for daring to be foreshadowed as the future of the MCU, that's attacked Marvel Studios in Phase Four for elevating so many women to lead hero status like Shuri or Kamala Khan, and that attacked She-Hulk for not only daring to have her own show but daring to twerk on Disney TV. In 2023, 19 years to the day after Janet not baby's 2004 Super Bowl Half-Time show, the unfair treatment of black women and women in general in our culture seems to still be a thing.

Speaks to how re-watchable the MCU is. Fatigue is for losers. Sprinkles are for winners.

If my simple math is correct, Shang-Chi has the highest 2021 domestic box office take prior to Spiderman No Way Home. No movie even comes close except for Venom 2.

A Shang-Chi sequel isn't coming out in May 2023 nor has it been given a release date from Marvel Studios, but it has been greenlighted. That was reported way back in December 2021. Simu Liu even chatted about it in an interview last year: “I think I know as much as anyone else, right? There’s going to be a sequel, I think that part was obvious but it was also made official. As far as when I think that’s just a question of timing and how well my back holds up through the years. I’ll make 40 of them if we can.” According to TheCosmicCircus.com, the title "Shang-Chi and The Wreckage of Time" has been trademarked by Marvel, meaning this is the possible title of the sequel. If so, the word "Time" in the title says it probably ties in with the greater Kang storyline. And SC director Daniel Destin Cretton is directing Kang Dynasty, so...

That is true. I will un-amend my statement that Shang-Chi caused MGM to push up James Bond's release date and amend the 2021 box office statement. Because I'm into facts.

Shang Chi didn't even bomb... it was one of the biggest movies in 2021. In fact, Shang-Chi was and is the biggest domestic box office movie of 2021 (outside of the event film Spider-Man No Way Home which debuted at the tail end of 2021). Shang-Chi also blew away box office expectations (in a pandemic and an environment of gloom and doom that movie theaters were dead). The opening weekend box office prediction for Shang-Chi was low 50 million. Its final weekend box office was 71 million and its final Labor Day Weekend total was 85 million, shattering the normally slow Labor Day weekend record. SC's second weekend box office was also strong at 36 million, further shutting down the doubts about the movie. Along with overwhelming positive critics reviews and good word of mouth, Shang-Chi was an unexpected and qualified hit. Not only that, Shang-Chi had an intangible effect on movie theaters by showing the industry that people will show up for a good movie at the movie theaters if that's the only way to watch it. After Shang-Chi's surprise opening weekend, a domino effect occured as movie studios adjusted their release and streaming schedules (i.e. Venom 2) due to this unexpected goodwill towards theater-only movies. And that's how Shang-Chi saved the movie theater industry. https://studybreaks.com/tvfilm/shang-chi-and-the-legend-of-the-ten-rings/ https://www.businessinsider.com/shang-chi-proved-movie-theater-owners-right-after-black-widow-2021-9

If you look at Marvel Comics super-hero stories from the Silver Age to the modern age, they are all pretty much character driven stories, with no real deviation into horror comics, experimentation/underground comics, or romance comics. Spider-Man had elements of romance with MJ and Gwen Stacy. Werewolf By Night, Ghost Rider, and Man-Thing were kind of horror comics, but not really. The Marvel Comics universe has really been one big story from Fantastic Four #1 in 1963 to any Marvel Comic that came out this month. The Marvel Cinematic Universe kind of reflects this. At the same time, we have absolutely seen Marvel Studios use different storytelling genres in some of its films and Disney+ shows. The Captain America and Falcon films and Disney+ show have been political thrillers. Ms. Marvel was definitely a teen coming of age story (and I'd argue probably a better coming of age story than any of the three Spider-Man franchises). Werewolf By Night was a retro-style horror story. She-Hulk was a half-hour Ally McBeal-style comedy series. Eternals was a combination of period drama and art-house movie making from Chloe Zhao. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was a hybrid Wuxia movie (historical Chinese martial arts fantasy). And this doesn't even include the different types of stories told in their straight-up super-hero tales. Ant-Man movies are basically heist stories. Captain Marvel is a buddy road trip movie. GOTG films are dysfunctional family stories. And I'd say Wandavision was very experimental storytelling. That's a lot of variety. If you look at DC comics, some of their best comics were genius writers like Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, or Grant Morrison coming in and telling unique twists on traditional super-hero stories, i.e. Watchmen, Swamp Thing, Dark Knight Returns, All-Star Superman, Animal Man, or Sandman. In turn, a lot of the best DC movies and TV shows reflect this, like HBO's Watchmen series, Tim Burton's Batman, Christopher Nolan's Batman, the more recent The Batman, and Joker. These movies or TV series were dark, edgy, and pushed boundaries, not unlike their comic book counterparts. Again, that's some pretty good variety. Basically, I disagree with this first half of your post that I quoted.

At least you're calling out both Marvel and DC for your fatigue. A lot of comments read like a MCU-Anonymous therapy pool. Personally, I feel "it" would feel less crowded if DC would just stop trying to create their own MCU again and again and again. They failed with the Snyderverse. They apparently failed with the immediate post-Snyderverse. And I saw Gunn's Suicide Squad. What makes anyone think the Gunnverse will be any different? Einstein is misquoted as saying "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Here's some useless fan advice to WB: let Marvel Studios handle the expanded super-hero universe thing, and let DC Studios just focus on quality one-off super-hero tales like The Batman or Joker every now and then. You might lose less money that way and not overcrowd the market with super-hero movies that the general public doesn't show out for i.e. Birds of Prey, Suicide Squad 2.0, Black Adam, etc. Sony certainly isn't helping with their awful Venomverse, either. Nobody, and I mean nobody, cares that Kraven and Madame Web are on the horizon. As for the MCU in Phase Four, I have definitely noticed less fan chatter amongst casual fans, which describes most folks I know. The NOVELTY of a successful super-hero universe that we saw in Phase One seems to have worn off. And perhaps the superhero FAD we saw amongst casual fans during parts of Phase Two and all of Phase Three, when we got hit after hit like GOTG, Ragnarok, Black Panther, two Avengers movies, etc, may have worn off, too. Perhaps there's something to the quantity of MCU output the past two years without any real Avengers level "event' films besides Spider-Man No Way Home, which seems to be the main focus of some Phase Four critics, that this Phase lacked focus, i.e. a lead up to a Phase Four Avengers movie. Whatever. At this point, I feel Marvel can do whatever they want to do. They've earned it, and enough moviegoers still show out for their movies. I do feel general interest and casual fan chatter will pick up with Quantumania, as the MCU starts kicking into gear with more story continuity and the pieces introduced in Phase Four start paying off. And perhaps delaying some projects and spreading out others will allow general fans to catch up on Disney+. It is a LOT of content. Summing up, I think the novelty and fad of the expanded universe thing has toned itself down, and now it's just a regular part of our moviegoing landscape. One thing I'm sure of, super-hero comic book movies are here to stay, and may even be considered their own movie genre now.

When I criticized the $2B Avatar WoW outside of my fan review here, I was specifically referring to James Cameron's criticism over the portrayal of family and individual growth in super-hero movies, and that I felt some super-hero movies did the "family" thing better than Mr Cameron did in Avatar 2. It had nothing to do with the movie's box office or how much folks liked the movie or not. I don't care if Avatar 2 makes $4B. I will still feel that his portrayal of family life in Avatar 2 was weak when compared to some super-hero movies, like Black Widow, Shang-Chi, or Ant-Man. And when it comes to a popular blockbuster type movie, I don't think I've ever discounted box office receipts. And there are caveats to that, too. When looking at the muted box office receipts of movies like WW84, Dune, or Shang-Chi, you can't discount the fact that they were released during the pandemic or lacked a China release, which is probably the only times I've put an asterisk on box office receipts of some movies i.e. Eternals and Shang-Chi.

Steve Rogers is still active as Cap in his own recently rebooted series that runs concurrent with a Sam Wilson Cap rebooted series. The two series will cross over in an event series called Captain America Cold War this spring.

Did I say money doesn't matter? I don't believe I did. What I said was that box office isn't the the primary parameter for judging if a movie is good i.e. Avatar WoW. Movies cost money and need to make money in return to even talk about them being any kind of "success." Drotto above said that the MCU will continue to decline in Phase Five. "Decline" can mean several things and I assume it was meant quality and box office. I retorted that story-wise, we will start to see the new big villain Kang start to matter in the MCU films and we'll see the debut of fan-favorite Adam Warlock, two big MCU story developments. Box office wise, they should see a boost due to the return of China as a box office market. My point above was both story and box office will conceivably get a big boost to start Phase Five. Savvy?

To start Phase Five, we've got main villain Kang and Adam Warlock making their movie debuts, and China back at the Marvel table. The numbers will only go up.

Captain Marvel-led ‘Avengers’ #1 launching May 17th The all-new Avengers lineup will be led by Captain Marvel and includes Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Black Panther, Scarlet Witch, and Vision. And as it goes in the comics, so it goes in the movies, so sayeth Kevin Feige. 2023 will be the Year of Captain Marvel. And the rabbit...

All you really have to do with both Captain Marvel and Shazam's IMDB User Ratings is look at where the largest numbers congregate. Both hover around 7 without using a calculator. Fine. Captain Marvel and Shazam were both on average 7.0 movies when it comes to fan favorability. I can accept that. Captain Marvel wasn't a 45% favorability movie like the highly manipulated RT audience rating that Capra threw up above.

I meant drop the 5 star votes. But whatever, when it comes to a movie like Captain Marvel that puzzlingly stirs the wrong people up, you can't go by a RT audience score regarding the quality because of the troll bombing by those same wrong people that's unfortunately so prevalent today.

You mean this useless RT audience score that’s been fire bombed by a legion of anti-Captain Marvel trolls over and over again? Of course you’re free to throw it up as evidence as many times as you want but it’s a useless score and most people who keep track of this type of stuff know it. To get a true feel for an actual general audience score (minus the haters and the champions), I’d say disregard the 1 stars and the 4 stars and look at the rest, which will probably bring it closer to the RT critics score in the mid to high 70’s.

The other counterpoint is that most people without an anti-Captain Marvel agenda generally liked the movie. A lot of MCU fans even loved the movie. With a 79% RT critics score, it's middle of the MCU pack in that regard. Couple that with its billion dollar take and Captain Marvel can be considered another feather in Marvel Studios' success cap. The movie certainly wasn't a failure. And neither is Titanic, Avatar, or Avatar WOW.

So can I rest my case about Avatar Number Two, then?

Because money is everything. That's why The Force Awakens is the greatest Star Wars film ever made not accounting for inflation or other market factors like home video or streaming.