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With the 36th film, Thunderbolts* coming out this weekend and The Fantastic Four: First Step later this summer, can Marvel Studios return to being the number film franchise?
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Well, hello everyone and welcome to Movie Goodness where we examine life through cinema here on the KB Radio Network. I am your host Kevin Reed and I'm coming to you today asking a very serious question. Can Marvel Studios bounce back? And when I say bounce back, bounce back to what we... have grown to love from this film franchise we are 35 films in not counting the you know disney plus shows that has been released over the past five years just just cinematically just on the on the big screen 35 films about to go into the 36th this upcoming weekend with thunderbolts but we've got 35 films and we've hit kind of a wall here you know with a lot of lackluster returns in investment man i mean ever since endgame and that's the that's pretty much the point that marvel it feels like marvel was just throwing stuff against the wall seeing what stuck after that you know they had no clear direction and i'm not saying that they didn't but it just feels that way You know, me as a kid growing up, deeply into comics, love comics. And when comic book movies started to kind of take off in the early 2000s, I was like, oh man, finally. I was like The Rock, finally. We've got good comic book adaptations, you know, because prior to that, yes, we had Superman the movie. Christopher Reeves, Richard Donner directing, the late, great Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor. Yes, that was awesome for its time, but it wasn't the greatest thing. You know, when you look back on it, it wasn't the greatest. But Christopher Reeves' adaptation of Superman as Clark Kent makes it such an excellent film. Superman 2 also That's the first one I saw, ironically enough. I saw Superman 2 before I saw Superman 1. It is weird. It's due to my birth. My birth was wiped between both movies. And for some strange reason, you know, when I got old enough, I watched Superman 2 first. But that's neither here nor there. We fast forward. The next real, I guess you could say, big comic book movie we got was Batman. from 1989 with uh michael keaton as batman tim burton directing the movie and it was a cultural phenomenon it was a global phenomenon a pop culture uh phenomenon and it took the world by storm and that franchise that film series uh up until it just went off the rails with batman Batman and Robin but it was an excellent a comic book franchise and marvel was they didn't have anything around the time but i think the only thing we got from marvel cinematically was howard the duck that was in the 80s and that that has been described as the worst movie not comic book movie one of the worst movies ever made always liked howard the duck yeah i can point out now that it's stupid but when i was a kid that was that was exciting to me to see a duck run around that can talk and interact with humans and so it hey it i didn't even know it was a comic book when i was growing up i think it was later in life when i found out it was a comic book actually to be honest with you i saw the comic but i thought the comic book was based off of the movie. They were like, oh, the movie? So we're going to make a comic book, Karen. No, the book came first. But anyways, that was it for Marvel. For years, they were talking about making a Spider-Man movie. For years, we saw talks of a credible Hulk movie. That was it. That was about as far as it got. And now, if you want to count this Captain America movie that came out in the... I think around 90, 91, somewhere up in there. If you want to count that, which wasn't even released in theaters, fine, you can count it. If you want to count the Fantastic Four film that they made around that same time that nobody had saw, it's fine. You can count that as well. But Marvel just, we weren't getting anything going at Marvel Studios or Marvel Films at the time. So we fast forward to the early 2000s and we finally get the announcement of a Spider-Man movie. And it came from the unlikely of places with James Cameron. James Cameron was going to make a Spider-Man movie right after he had finished making Titanic. And he had worked on the outline, storyline, and everything was moving. floyd i think leonardo dicaprio was going to play spider-man uh arnold schwarzenegger was going to be doc ock if i'm not mistaken yeah they they were setting it up to be something awesome and i was excited you know i i think i was reading keeping up with it because this is pre-internet and i was keeping up with it by um reading the uh wizard books yeah i remember that magazine with uh wizard um Yeah, that's how I was keeping up with the production and everything of that, because I was super excited. Spider-Man is one of my favorite characters. So to see him in live action, I was hyped up for it. Well, that fell through, and Sam Raimi took over, and the rest, as they say, is history. Tobey Maguire was cast as Peter Parker. William Dafoe was cast as Osborn, Norman Osborn, and we were off and running. And. Marvel finally have kind of stuck their flag in the film world because that movie was amazing for me at the time. And it still is. You can go back and watch that very first Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire and really appreciate it for what it was. It really didn't date that much. It's not that dated. You know, it is in parts. Don't get me wrong. It is in parts, but it was still good. It still holds up for the most part. uh spider-man 2 is even better arguably one of the best comic book movies ever made um spider-man versus doc ock another character i'm used to just have fantasies about seeing in live action and finally getting to see it in live action was a joy and so we got these films you know and i got kind of ahead of myself you know before we got spider-man and all of that, what really broke open the Marvel universe, not the MCU that we know now, but what really broke open this universe for comic book movies was Blade. Blade was the film that, once again, I knew of the character. I didn't read any Blade issues, but, you know, I've read issues where Blade popped up. He was in a Spider-Man. uh uh run for a little while when they were going after uh uh what's his name uh jared leto played him in the movie uh man why am i blanking on his name that's how bad the movie was but anyway he'll come to me but yeah they teamed up and i knew a little bit about blake but i was a big fan of wesley snipe so when that movie came out and you know just took the world by I was like, oh, man, this is awesome. Then you get Blade 2, and unfortunately, we got Blade Trinity, but those first two Blade movies were just bangers. I was like, man, I think we're on the right track, and X-Men came along not too long after that, the first X-Men film from Bryan Singer in the year 2000, and, you know, anybody who knows me, X-Men was my jam. I love X-Men to this day. Love X-Men because I love the storytelling in X-Men because there's so much more. It isn't just these costume mutants running around fighting against oppression and whatnot. It's so much more to it, you know, and it's such an exciting story that has been told for, I don't know, 60, 70 years or whatever. But it is an exciting story. Really love it. Can't wait to see it play out in the MCU, hopefully soon. yeah those films started coming out and they were hit and miss you know you you get a good one then a bad one a good one then a bad one and you know very inconsistent but in the year 2008 business picked up uh marvel studios decided they were going to go all in they were facing bankruptcy and so they decided to go all in you know they had already licensed out a lot of their uh characters from the comics, you know. They didn't have the rights and I was crazy that Marvel didn't have the rights to their own characters But they were broke and so they had the license off their characters in order to survive You know, they didn't have the Fantastic Four. They didn't have x-men. They didn't have blade. They didn't have spider-man They didn't have their major characters. And so they wanted to launch their own studio and in 2008 they released Iron Man and Jon Favreau really good actor, if you don't realize it, but he is a really good actor, funny guy, he directed this film, and prior to this, he directed Elf, and it was another film, it was like a Jumanji ripoff, I can't think of the name of that either, I'm blanking today, but he directed those two films, and I was interested, you know, I was curious to see how this will play out because I like the Iron Man. and in the comics and i always compared him to batman because batman is my all-time overall favorite uh comic book character it was just iron man didn't have as tragic of a backstory as uh bruce wayne but still interesting they're both billionaires neither of them have superpowers but they found the way to exist in this superpower worlds that they both live in and i always often compared to two that's why i kind of followed iron man a little bit more in marvel comics but they took a big risk in making this film and then they made the biggest risk of all by casting robert downey jr as tony stark and this is the robert downey jr who is just a couple of years removed from being in prison you know from getting in trouble with the law with the the drugs and the drinking and back and forth in court and in jail and all this other stuff and but nobody has ever no matter what he was going through in his personal life nobody ever questioned his acting the dude is a phenomenal actor i think the film that really brought him back to prominence was kiss kiss bang bang and that movie was so good and he was so good in it you know along with val Kilmer. uh r.i.p uh that was just a phenomenal movie small little movie but i think that was what helped catapult him uh back to the status where people were like okay robert's back you know he could he could still do it and it helped him land the role now it wasn't easy you know there was pushed back but eventually they were won over and here we are 35 films of going on to 36 films later and it wouldn't be here if it wasn't for robert downey jr and we're going to touch in on a little later he's still a part of the mcu but spoiler alert not as tony stark but that's neither here nor there uh that movie did phenomenal in the box office, it set up a whole universe and set up the I get not the invention because they always have post-credit scenes in movies but not in every single movie but it really planted its flag in the post-credit scene setting up something bigger down the line or for the next film down the line and when samuel l jackson popped up with the eye patch at the very end of that film in the post-credit scene as nick fury because at that point in the comics. They had changed Nick Fury from being a white man to being a black man. And not just any black man, but they modeled him, the character of Nick Fury in the comics, they modeled him as Samuel L. Jackson. So when it came time to play him on the big screen, well, let's give Samuel L. Jackson a call. And he answered, thank God. And the rest, as they say, is history. We were off and running with The Incredible Hulk, which came out of... a few months after that, Iron Man 2 a couple of years after that, Thor, Captain America, and then we got the Avengers, the culmination of all of these characters, a film that I thought was virtually impossible. impossible to achieve on the big screen because you're asking multiple actors multiple characters to share the screen with one another and they did it man they pulled it off and that movie went on to make a billion dollars and it uh wrapped up phase one and i never understood the phase well at least i didn't understand the phase thing early on i'm like what what does phase mean But it was just sections of this cinematic universe because we're going full steam ahead with a larger plot. All right, cool. But at the end of the Avengers, in this post-credit scene, we saw Thanos. And everybody lost their collective mind. And it was like, oh, my God. We're actually moving on to some big, big things, you know, if you read the comics. So we move on to phase two, we get Iron Man 3, we get Thor, the Dark World, which a lot of people, eh, not so much liked. You know, it wasn't their favorite at that point. That was the one swing and miss from Marvel, even though it was financially successful, but a lot of the fans still don't like it to this day. I didn't mind it, but it definitely wasn't the best. It was the worst up to this point. in the MCU uh then you get Captain America the Winter Soldier which a lot of people still now consider the best MCU film probably the best comic book movie uh I've heard that argument and I don't I'm not even gonna fight it I don't agree with it but I'm not gonna fight you with it because it is an excellent excellent movie uh Guardians of the Galaxy which just expand this universe literally. by going into the galaxy by going into this world and with characters that nobody knew nobody knew who star-lord was nobody knew who drax the uh uh destroyer was nobody knew about goop and rocket raccoon the talking raccoon and a talking tree did they really they really swung for the feet for the fence with that and lo and behold it worked it worked that movie was amazing um After that we get another Avengers film Avengers age of Ultron which a little a little skittish a Little skittish. I had a lot of hopes for that because Ultron is a very What's the word I could Describe as a villain. Well, he's just a he's a cold-blooded villain in the comics. And so I didn't like this adaptation of that character i didn't like this version of the character and the film suffered because all the all avengers age of ultron did was set up phase three that's all it was there for it didn't it it was not his separate movie it was just a commercial for phase three and so that i didn't too much care for um after that you get ant-man and that wrapped up phase two right so we get to phase three. And phase three is when they really, really went all in. Now we're steamrolling towards the bigger, bigger kind of culmination here. We start phase three with Captain America Civil War, which, you know, you can also retitle as Avengers 2.5. You had Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, Spider-Man. homecoming which uh it's the rights are still with sony but they shared it due to some deal which worked out for both parties i believe uh spider-man homecoming was was awesome you have uh thor ragnarok rock which also was awesome i'm telling you phase three was was just banging man Phase 3 was banging. After Ragnarok, you got... Black Panther. Black freaking Panther, Ed. Nobody saw that coming. Nobody thought that movie was going to be that good. The first Marvel film out of all the films I just named to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Didn't win, but it was nominated, and that within his right, within his own right, is an amazing task. It did win an Academy Award for best score, best costume design, I believe, or set design, probably both. But it did rack up some awards, so kudos to them. We go from that to Avengers Infinity War. And, you know, reading the comics, I knew what Infinity War was. I knew what the Infinity Saga is. And I knew what happens at the end of Infinity War. But honestly, it never really dawned on me until I was watching the movie that, wait, I think they're going to do this. They're actually going to do this. And when Thanos got all of the stone and made the snap, I just, I turned to my wife. I can't believe they did it. I can't believe they did it. I was so shocked that the villain won, that Thanos won, the Avengers lost. And spoiler alert, I like Infinity War more than Endgame. Believe it or not, that is. I enjoyed that more because of the stakes involved in what happened at the end. It was so much of an emotional impact. Don't get me wrong. There was a big emotional swing in the end game, but this one just hit different. A couple of months after that, you get Ant-Man and the Wasp, which wasn't all that good. I mean, it was all right, but, you know, coming off the Infinity War. it it was just bad placement in my in my humble opinion um captain uh not america but captain marvel came next which was fine it was fine it didn't move the needle either way but you know good on them and then we get in game then we get avengers in game and it was named m game for a reason because that's that was the end that was the end of the infinity saga that was the end well technically they count the film after this uh spider-man far from home the end of the infinity saga but it ended with end game with me that that was it i mean we wrapped up our original avengers you know tony died uh cap went to live a a happy life with peggy uh thor went on his uh a self-discovery journey and You know, Black Widow died and, you know, so on and so on. I mean, everybody pretty much moved on. And that was that. You know, they went to war with the galaxy's probably biggest bad there is. And they defeated them. You know, they had to go back in time and do a time heist to do it, but they did it. And so it was cool. It was an actual great end to this saga. And so you get far from home, which was good, you know, all of the Spider-Man movies were good. So this is where it started to kind of turn for me. This is where it really started to go like, you know, where do we go from here? How can you exceed what you accomplished in those first three phases? You know, in that entire saga, because everything was just brilliantly. done nothing was rushed they took their time all the characters were developed you had a villain that was sprinkled throughout this little 10-year journey that they went on uh in this saga and so everything had a proper payoff a proper build and a proper payoff and so we move into the multiverse saga and when they announced that I was I was very skeptical because I'm not a big multiverse person I didn't care for it in the comics and I really didn't care for it in the films and the audiences didn't either now granted a lot of factors a lot of factors uh kind of hampled this saga kind of hampled the films that were being released. Here on after you know it and it affected the quality of some of the film it did I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna be naive and say like oh man is deep Marvel just put it on cruise control No, it was a lot of things that played a part and why this wasn't as successful of a saga as The Infinity Saga the multiverse saga Started off. We're in a pandemic You have films that were slated to come out in 2020 that couldn't come out. You know, films that were scheduled to start filming in 2020 couldn't start filming. You know, films or shows that were in the middle of production had to stop filming. The world stopped in 2020. And so a lot of that affected. this soccer as well as our lives personally and everything else in the world so i'm not just saying like what was me tomorrow but everybody went through it in 2020 it was horrible so uh marvel is no exception so everything got pushed back we yeah we had to roll over with uh wandavision we had falcon in the winter soldier on all both of those uh shows were on disney plus and i think Disney Plus kind of hurt. as well because disney plus shows well we're about to witness that this weekend with thunderbolts there are characters in thunderbolts that we haven't seen unless you watch some of these disney plus shows i hate to be the bearer of bad news you know you you're probably gonna go there and wonder who is he or how did elena uh blow but how why is she at this point Well, you had to watch Hawkeye. You had to watch Falcon and the Winter Soldier. You know that these play roles in the MCU proper. So I do, and I know this, I'm stating this because I know people who have asked me, and they don't have Disney Plus. Oh, do I need to watch the show? Well, it would help. It would help. You know, that's just like, well, I'll get to it. I'll get to that when we get to that. but yeah it it really hurt it but as far as the film size the theatrical side of everything the first film to be released in the multiverse saga was black widow and that was in 2021 and that movie as as much as i was all right with the movie the movie wasn't bad the movie just came out five maybe six years too late if they would have put this out in phase beginning of phase three maybe the end of phase two it probably would have hit better you know because that's when black widow was hot the character was hot you know now you give her a solo movie after we just witnessed her die two years earlier and avengers endgame it doesn't help. It didn't help the calls at all because... You know that she's going to survive at the end of this movie. There is no stakes there. You know, at least that's how I was looking at it. And I couldn't really get into it. There was no sense of urgency or danger for her character because I know she's going to survive this movie. You know, so it didn't help the cause. I think that was just bad, bad scheduling. They should have made that movie years ago so it could have fit. properly in the mcu timeline and now the next film that was released by marvel studios was shang chi in the legend of the ten rings which is probably one of the best films to come out of this phase of this saga it was amazing and why they haven't made another shang chi is is beyond my mind it's beyond my way of thinking it is so good so good yeah it gives a little cgi messy at the end but that film as a whole was amazing i had such a good time with shang chi not so much with the eternals now and when i first saw the eternals i was like okay it's fine you know it's fine and i gave it a rare review i remember uh when it came out but when i think back now i'm like well you know i was just craved for superhero movies at that time you realize in 2021 due to the pandemic and everything uh marvel put out four movies in 2021 and so i was i was just all in on these comic book movies because for about a year and a half we didn't get any we didn't get nothing from all And so, yeah, I was just happy to see it. Now I look back, I was like, man, that movie was not that good. It wasn't really all that good. It was boring. That movie was boring. And everybody knows it. Marvel knows it. That's why you haven't heard a whisper of the Eternals. You haven't heard anything involving the Eternals in the MCU since that movie has come out. Just till recently with Captain America brave new world that we finally see Tima D celestial sticking out of the ocean. We finally got that reference after what four years In about seven eight movies later. Do you finally get a reference to it? But neither here nor there then you get spider-man no way home. Oh my god man that look the fact that that movie exists is the reason i wake up every morning smiling the fact that i was able to uh god gave me the health and strength to get up go to the theater and watch it for the first time when it came out that weekend with a crowd with the cheering with you know the first theatrical experience i've had since the pandemic and that was the first time that was in a long time that i felt like i was at the movies and it was worth the wait it was worth every second i i love that movie still to this day i'll watch it at least once a year um it is so good um after that you get doctor strange in the multiverse of madness which was kind of a letdown because you promised this multiverse of madness And all we got was madness. There was no multiverse, you know? It was nothing there. It was no dare-dare. It was just, meh. It wasn't good. It wasn't bad. It was just, meh. You know? But it was better than Thor Love and Thunder, which came out after that. Man, you want to talk about disappointing. I mean, you have Taika Waititi returning to direct after. directing uh thor ragnarok you know and once again the promise of a bigger world you got christian bale as the villain and that was the best part of the movie him the problem was he was the it was like he was the only one in the movie that realized he was in the movie everybody else was jokey jokey play play play and look it worked for ragnarok it didn't work here this was So bad. I I still wake up in night sweats thinking about Thunder um After that we get Black Panther Wakanda forever and clearly not as good as the first one but but Not one to make excuses, but man they had a lot going on with Ryan Coogler trying to make this movie Ryan Coogler had to deal, first and foremost, he has to film this film during a pandemic. That's number one. Number two, right before they're about to start pre-production, we got the tragic passing of the star of the movie, Chadwick Boseman. He passes away. And that just put a monkey wrench into everything. Because now is the question. Should we recast? Should they not? And they chose not to recast T'Challa. And look, I get it. You know, in the moment, I fully supported that. But as time went on, I was like, no, because you have a great number of people who love that character, who didn't have a Clark Kent. Didn't have a Bruce Wayne. Didn't have a Tony Stark to look up to. You know, they couldn't look in the mirror and see these characters in the mirror. But they can look in the mirror and see a T'Challa. They can look in the mirror and see a Black Panther. So that's why they should have recast it. You know, and I get the emotional aspect of it all and the respect factor of it all. I get that. A hundred percent. You know, Chadrick Boseman was Black Panther. And he will always be Black Panther. You know, he owned that role. He was amazing. as the character of T'Challa, but they should have recast. If anything, just scrap this particular idea and wait it a little while. You know, not just throw yourself into it. But in any event, you had those two, and then you shift gears to make Shuri the main character, which isn't a bad idea. this happened in the comics as well this is a actual thing sherry did take over black panther uh for a while so that's fine but during filming she caught covet and she ended up uh hurting herself in a stunt during filming you know so those were two setbacks yeah it was just it was a whole mess the mere fact that this movie wrapped and was cohesive and was actually entertaining for the most part even though like i said it wasn't nowhere near the first film but it was good enough is a miracle within itself uh but uh you had that going but that was the end of phase four so we moved to phase five and you get ant-man and the walls quantum mania and this is where business picked up this is where it really started to go off the rails Um... Quantumania was to set up the main villain of this saga. The multiverse saga was supposed to wrap up just like the Infinity Saga wrapped up with Thanos being the main bad. The Infinity, not the Infinity, the multiverse saga was going to wrap up with Kang the Conqueror. And that character was played by... Jonathan Majors. And Jonathan Majors is an amazing actor. Amazing actor. And when they first cast him, when they announced that, I don't see it. At first, I was like, really? Out of everybody, I chose Jonathan Majors, you know, because at that time he wasn't as big. I think around the time they announced that he was on this show, Lovecraft. country and i i enjoyed that show i i hate the fact that it only lasted one season that was a really good show but i just didn't see him as kate but so when this movie when they started uh you know releasing promotional material and stuff for it i'm like okay i'm sold and i could see him as the bad and then he popped up on uh loki as he who remains i was like yep i'm so this is this is going to work. Well, right before the release of this film, or it could have been, yeah, it was right before the release of Quantumania. That's when all of the, you know, foolishness happened in his personal life involving the ex-girlfriend and the domestic abuse stuff and all this here. And that was that grand opening, grand closing. That was it for Jonathan Majors. and Marvel had to quickly course correct and instead of recasting King the Conqueror they just done away with them they decided to move in a different direction now I'm not gonna fanboy out here you know cause I'm a huge Jonathan Majors fan in spite of the stuff that he was accused of and he was found guilty of or played to whatever the case may be if he was wrong he was wrong but Bye. I mean, as far as this story, and it's not about Jonathan Major, I feel if you was going to let him go, cast somebody else. Recast the role. Stick to your plan. Because when you course correct in the dead center middle of the thing, it's not going to play out right. And from that moment on, you know, it felt like every other film just didn't matter. Even though... the films that came out around this time you know uh in 2023 they were already filmed you know they were already done but it was just it just didn't feel right it just didn't feel like this was part of the same saga you know after quantumania you had uh guardians of the galaxy volume 3 which was great a good wrap up to that trilogy and then you had the marvels just horrible just horrible just it just did not it did not land did not land at all uh the less said about that movie the better and then we move on to just this past year in 2024 with Deadpool and Wolverine that that worked now it worked in a degree it didn't work for the overall MCU storytelling element wise but it did work for Deadpool you know it worked as a love letter to all of the uh Fox X-Men films which that's all it was it was just a goodbye letter from the fox universe of x-men movie and and that's that's cool that was cool i loved it but as far as pushing the mcu narrative narrative forward it did none of that it did none of that um captain america brave new world they shouldn't have made that movie that movie was so upsetting to me it's still bothers me to this day i i can't believe and i watched it twice i still cannot i can't i can't believe that movie was that bad i really just i really don't know why they made this movie this way and that movie went through so many reshoots and so many uh script changes and character changes and recasting in this role and that role and that's what y'all came up with You know, it just... it crashed and burned it crashed and burned at least in my soul um it didn't work and so that brings us to the end that brings us to the end of phase five where this upcoming weekend we get thunderbolts and that brings us to the question yeah it took me 40 something minutes to get to it but it brings us to the question can marvel bounce back can we bounce back will thunderbolts bring us back to what we grown in love from the first saga from the first three phases of this franchise you know now not every film in the first three phases was was bangers now i would be fair and honest with you you know uh iron man 2 it had his moments but it wasn't great you know iron man 3 same thing had his moments, but it wasn't great. The door to Dark World, it it wasn't all that good uh avengers age of oktron was not the greatest you know so it had some it had some misses there uh ant-man and the wasp wasn't all that good either it it had his misses but but this saga this this complete saga has crashed and burned now i've seen a lot of articles or read them i should say read a lot of articles where finger pointing is directed towards uh jonathan major's derailing it and all this here let's not fool ourselves here it was bad before all that jonathan major's mess came into play it was already the ship was already taking on water you know with eternals and the black widow thing with a multiverse of madness or love and thunder it was it was sinking it was sinking Hmm. So I'm not going to pin it on the Jonathan Majors thing. The Jonathan Majors thing just put an extra hole in the bow of the ship. You know, it just took on more water. And from that point on, it was just best to abandon ship instead of trying to get it to port. But now I think this is an opportunity. I think this is a chance. that we can get back on track thunderbolts looks fun i haven't seen it yet i'm going to see it tomorrow it looks fun it and it just feels from the trailers from uh the clips they released it feels like an old school marvel film and i say old school like it was 50 years ago but you know the first three phases and so i'm encouraged by it and then later this year, a couple of months from now, actually in July, we get the Fantastic Four First Steps, which is the first Marvel Fantastic Four film from the MCU proper. And you have Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, and Jonathan Quinn. You have some good additions here. Max Shackman directing. Galactic is in this thing, Silver Surfer is in this thing. It looks amazing, and it looks exciting. So I'm encouraged. And then next year, we get Doomsday, Avengers Doomsday. And this is where Robert Downey Jr. returns. as Victor Von Doom. No, not Tony Stark, Victor Von Doom. And for that reason, I'm not excited for that, as a lot of MCU fans are, but I am deeply intrigued. I am so curious to see how they're going to explain this and pull this off. Now, can Robert Downey Jr. pull off Dr. Doom? Of course he can. But the problem I have... We've grown and loved him for nearly 20 years as Tony Stark. We saw him have the greatest arc in film franchise history as this warmonger, you know, who sells weapons to whoever to sacrifice in his self for the sake of the universe. The greatest arc ever. And now you're going to bring them back as the villain. It's weird. And there's no proper introduction here. You know, I guess technically this is his movie. But we don't have enough time to kind of soak him in like we did with Thanos, you know, in the first saga. So that's the only thing that kind of gives me pause on it. That's why I'm not excited floating over the moon about it. But i am super interested then we get the return of spider-man after doomsday uh spider-man brand new day tom holland holland is returning dustin daniel cretin is uh directing this film he's the director of shang chi and the ten rings so uh i already told you how much i enjoyed that film so what he gonna bring to uh spider-man is he gonna bring that same energy i hope so because that was a fun energy he brought to that film um let's see where that ends and then we wrap up this entire saga with avengers secret wars in 2027 now that film if done like the comics is going to be the biggest movie of all time you know i'm talking production wise is gonna be huge if it's done like is done in the comics. So, yes, they have a way, and it will rival Endgame if they do it right. But it's all, everything, guys, it has to work from here on. If Thunderbolt, Fantastic Four, fail, crash, and burn, it doesn't even, the rest of this don't even matter. Doomsday don't even matter. Secret Wars don't even matter. That's how important. these films are and i don't think they should be taken lightly only if you're a fan of this franchise you know if you don't care if you if you're just a casual viewer of these films you you probably could care less but if you follow each and every film tooth to nail if you watch every disney plus show uh religiously you know follow this like you would follow a comic series You know, if a new issue drops on a Tuesday, you're there. You know, if you follow it like that, yeah, this is important. This is very important. But I'm encouraged. I actually feel good moving forward because, like I said, the next two films looks good. Looks good. You know, I'm not expecting Thunderbolts to be Captain America Civil War. I don't expect it to be that high. You know, I expect it to be. if it's as good as if it's as good as guardians of the galaxy volume 2 which is not as good as the first one definitely not as good as the third one but it's good enough you know it was entertaining i actually liked it but i didn't love it like i loved the first one and loved the second if it's as good if it's on that level of volume 2 of guardians of the galaxy we're good we're in good shape so That's my hope and prayer. And now after Secret Wars, nothing is really, quote unquote, announced. You know, they have a planned Armor Wars movie with Don Cheadle returning as a war machine. You have Black Panther 3. Now that has been announced. Ryan Coogler is returning to write and direct that film. And they will be a... T-ch-T'Challa in that movie? So... that ought to be interesting to see how they go blade my god blade has been uh announced but there is no date there's no movement on production they have been i i have nothing to say about blade but anyways you have uh the x-men the x-men uh is coming soon uh no dates on that no real casting on that but I think a lot will be determined after uh secret wars after secret wars we're gonna spawn off into the mutant saga and i think a lot of it will uh focus on the x-men and mutants going forward in this next saga they really should have did that instead of the multiverse saga maybe save the multiverse saga till later but that's fine you know can't can't pour the milk back in the carton now But, yeah, that's why I think Black Panther 3 is coming out around this time because we're going to get the introduction of Storm, I believe, in that film. You know, Blade. Blade isn't a mutant, but that'll be a nice way to introduce some new mutant characters and whatnot. So there's a lot to play with here. Can't wait to see what happens. But I am excited for... Thunderbolts and what it can offer it just feels like a grounded Superhero film that we haven't gotten in a while. We've been in the multiverse, you know, we've been in galaxies We we have a superhuman people all of these characters in this film are grounded You know, they're more relatable and I think that will help this film succeed. But uh, yes My answer to the question is yes, I have faith. I have confidence that the MCU will indeed rebound and get back to prominence. I would like to know what do you think going forward? Are you excited for Thunderbolts and the Fantastic Four and the two new Avengers films that are coming down the pike soon? I would love to know your thoughts. Email the show kbradiopodcasts at gmail.com. You can also search for the show on all social media platforms. Just search for the KB Radio Network. Subscribe to the KB Radio Network channel on YouTube. Like this video if you don't mind. Also, don't forget about the five stars, the reviews, the sharing. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, wherever you are currently listening to movie. goodness here on the kb radio network everybody thank you for joining me as we pose the question can marvel studios bounce back i want you all to know that i love you continue to love everyone and until we speak again you all be blessed
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With the 36th film, Thunderbolts* coming out this weekend and The Fantastic Four: First Step later this summer, can Marvel Studios return to being the number film franchise?
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Transcription
Well, hello everyone and welcome to Movie Goodness where we examine life through cinema here on the KB Radio Network. I am your host Kevin Reed and I'm coming to you today asking a very serious question. Can Marvel Studios bounce back? And when I say bounce back, bounce back to what we... have grown to love from this film franchise we are 35 films in not counting the you know disney plus shows that has been released over the past five years just just cinematically just on the on the big screen 35 films about to go into the 36th this upcoming weekend with thunderbolts but we've got 35 films and we've hit kind of a wall here you know with a lot of lackluster returns in investment man i mean ever since endgame and that's the that's pretty much the point that marvel it feels like marvel was just throwing stuff against the wall seeing what stuck after that you know they had no clear direction and i'm not saying that they didn't but it just feels that way You know, me as a kid growing up, deeply into comics, love comics. And when comic book movies started to kind of take off in the early 2000s, I was like, oh man, finally. I was like The Rock, finally. We've got good comic book adaptations, you know, because prior to that, yes, we had Superman the movie. Christopher Reeves, Richard Donner directing, the late, great Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor. Yes, that was awesome for its time, but it wasn't the greatest thing. You know, when you look back on it, it wasn't the greatest. But Christopher Reeves' adaptation of Superman as Clark Kent makes it such an excellent film. Superman 2 also That's the first one I saw, ironically enough. I saw Superman 2 before I saw Superman 1. It is weird. It's due to my birth. My birth was wiped between both movies. And for some strange reason, you know, when I got old enough, I watched Superman 2 first. But that's neither here nor there. We fast forward. The next real, I guess you could say, big comic book movie we got was Batman. from 1989 with uh michael keaton as batman tim burton directing the movie and it was a cultural phenomenon it was a global phenomenon a pop culture uh phenomenon and it took the world by storm and that franchise that film series uh up until it just went off the rails with batman Batman and Robin but it was an excellent a comic book franchise and marvel was they didn't have anything around the time but i think the only thing we got from marvel cinematically was howard the duck that was in the 80s and that that has been described as the worst movie not comic book movie one of the worst movies ever made always liked howard the duck yeah i can point out now that it's stupid but when i was a kid that was that was exciting to me to see a duck run around that can talk and interact with humans and so it hey it i didn't even know it was a comic book when i was growing up i think it was later in life when i found out it was a comic book actually to be honest with you i saw the comic but i thought the comic book was based off of the movie. They were like, oh, the movie? So we're going to make a comic book, Karen. No, the book came first. But anyways, that was it for Marvel. For years, they were talking about making a Spider-Man movie. For years, we saw talks of a credible Hulk movie. That was it. That was about as far as it got. And now, if you want to count this Captain America movie that came out in the... I think around 90, 91, somewhere up in there. If you want to count that, which wasn't even released in theaters, fine, you can count it. If you want to count the Fantastic Four film that they made around that same time that nobody had saw, it's fine. You can count that as well. But Marvel just, we weren't getting anything going at Marvel Studios or Marvel Films at the time. So we fast forward to the early 2000s and we finally get the announcement of a Spider-Man movie. And it came from the unlikely of places with James Cameron. James Cameron was going to make a Spider-Man movie right after he had finished making Titanic. And he had worked on the outline, storyline, and everything was moving. floyd i think leonardo dicaprio was going to play spider-man uh arnold schwarzenegger was going to be doc ock if i'm not mistaken yeah they they were setting it up to be something awesome and i was excited you know i i think i was reading keeping up with it because this is pre-internet and i was keeping up with it by um reading the uh wizard books yeah i remember that magazine with uh wizard um Yeah, that's how I was keeping up with the production and everything of that, because I was super excited. Spider-Man is one of my favorite characters. So to see him in live action, I was hyped up for it. Well, that fell through, and Sam Raimi took over, and the rest, as they say, is history. Tobey Maguire was cast as Peter Parker. William Dafoe was cast as Osborn, Norman Osborn, and we were off and running. And. Marvel finally have kind of stuck their flag in the film world because that movie was amazing for me at the time. And it still is. You can go back and watch that very first Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire and really appreciate it for what it was. It really didn't date that much. It's not that dated. You know, it is in parts. Don't get me wrong. It is in parts, but it was still good. It still holds up for the most part. uh spider-man 2 is even better arguably one of the best comic book movies ever made um spider-man versus doc ock another character i'm used to just have fantasies about seeing in live action and finally getting to see it in live action was a joy and so we got these films you know and i got kind of ahead of myself you know before we got spider-man and all of that, what really broke open the Marvel universe, not the MCU that we know now, but what really broke open this universe for comic book movies was Blade. Blade was the film that, once again, I knew of the character. I didn't read any Blade issues, but, you know, I've read issues where Blade popped up. He was in a Spider-Man. uh uh run for a little while when they were going after uh uh what's his name uh jared leto played him in the movie uh man why am i blanking on his name that's how bad the movie was but anyway he'll come to me but yeah they teamed up and i knew a little bit about blake but i was a big fan of wesley snipe so when that movie came out and you know just took the world by I was like, oh, man, this is awesome. Then you get Blade 2, and unfortunately, we got Blade Trinity, but those first two Blade movies were just bangers. I was like, man, I think we're on the right track, and X-Men came along not too long after that, the first X-Men film from Bryan Singer in the year 2000, and, you know, anybody who knows me, X-Men was my jam. I love X-Men to this day. Love X-Men because I love the storytelling in X-Men because there's so much more. It isn't just these costume mutants running around fighting against oppression and whatnot. It's so much more to it, you know, and it's such an exciting story that has been told for, I don't know, 60, 70 years or whatever. But it is an exciting story. Really love it. Can't wait to see it play out in the MCU, hopefully soon. yeah those films started coming out and they were hit and miss you know you you get a good one then a bad one a good one then a bad one and you know very inconsistent but in the year 2008 business picked up uh marvel studios decided they were going to go all in they were facing bankruptcy and so they decided to go all in you know they had already licensed out a lot of their uh characters from the comics, you know. They didn't have the rights and I was crazy that Marvel didn't have the rights to their own characters But they were broke and so they had the license off their characters in order to survive You know, they didn't have the Fantastic Four. They didn't have x-men. They didn't have blade. They didn't have spider-man They didn't have their major characters. And so they wanted to launch their own studio and in 2008 they released Iron Man and Jon Favreau really good actor, if you don't realize it, but he is a really good actor, funny guy, he directed this film, and prior to this, he directed Elf, and it was another film, it was like a Jumanji ripoff, I can't think of the name of that either, I'm blanking today, but he directed those two films, and I was interested, you know, I was curious to see how this will play out because I like the Iron Man. and in the comics and i always compared him to batman because batman is my all-time overall favorite uh comic book character it was just iron man didn't have as tragic of a backstory as uh bruce wayne but still interesting they're both billionaires neither of them have superpowers but they found the way to exist in this superpower worlds that they both live in and i always often compared to two that's why i kind of followed iron man a little bit more in marvel comics but they took a big risk in making this film and then they made the biggest risk of all by casting robert downey jr as tony stark and this is the robert downey jr who is just a couple of years removed from being in prison you know from getting in trouble with the law with the the drugs and the drinking and back and forth in court and in jail and all this other stuff and but nobody has ever no matter what he was going through in his personal life nobody ever questioned his acting the dude is a phenomenal actor i think the film that really brought him back to prominence was kiss kiss bang bang and that movie was so good and he was so good in it you know along with val Kilmer. uh r.i.p uh that was just a phenomenal movie small little movie but i think that was what helped catapult him uh back to the status where people were like okay robert's back you know he could he could still do it and it helped him land the role now it wasn't easy you know there was pushed back but eventually they were won over and here we are 35 films of going on to 36 films later and it wouldn't be here if it wasn't for robert downey jr and we're going to touch in on a little later he's still a part of the mcu but spoiler alert not as tony stark but that's neither here nor there uh that movie did phenomenal in the box office, it set up a whole universe and set up the I get not the invention because they always have post-credit scenes in movies but not in every single movie but it really planted its flag in the post-credit scene setting up something bigger down the line or for the next film down the line and when samuel l jackson popped up with the eye patch at the very end of that film in the post-credit scene as nick fury because at that point in the comics. They had changed Nick Fury from being a white man to being a black man. And not just any black man, but they modeled him, the character of Nick Fury in the comics, they modeled him as Samuel L. Jackson. So when it came time to play him on the big screen, well, let's give Samuel L. Jackson a call. And he answered, thank God. And the rest, as they say, is history. We were off and running with The Incredible Hulk, which came out of... a few months after that, Iron Man 2 a couple of years after that, Thor, Captain America, and then we got the Avengers, the culmination of all of these characters, a film that I thought was virtually impossible. impossible to achieve on the big screen because you're asking multiple actors multiple characters to share the screen with one another and they did it man they pulled it off and that movie went on to make a billion dollars and it uh wrapped up phase one and i never understood the phase well at least i didn't understand the phase thing early on i'm like what what does phase mean But it was just sections of this cinematic universe because we're going full steam ahead with a larger plot. All right, cool. But at the end of the Avengers, in this post-credit scene, we saw Thanos. And everybody lost their collective mind. And it was like, oh, my God. We're actually moving on to some big, big things, you know, if you read the comics. So we move on to phase two, we get Iron Man 3, we get Thor, the Dark World, which a lot of people, eh, not so much liked. You know, it wasn't their favorite at that point. That was the one swing and miss from Marvel, even though it was financially successful, but a lot of the fans still don't like it to this day. I didn't mind it, but it definitely wasn't the best. It was the worst up to this point. in the MCU uh then you get Captain America the Winter Soldier which a lot of people still now consider the best MCU film probably the best comic book movie uh I've heard that argument and I don't I'm not even gonna fight it I don't agree with it but I'm not gonna fight you with it because it is an excellent excellent movie uh Guardians of the Galaxy which just expand this universe literally. by going into the galaxy by going into this world and with characters that nobody knew nobody knew who star-lord was nobody knew who drax the uh uh destroyer was nobody knew about goop and rocket raccoon the talking raccoon and a talking tree did they really they really swung for the feet for the fence with that and lo and behold it worked it worked that movie was amazing um After that we get another Avengers film Avengers age of Ultron which a little a little skittish a Little skittish. I had a lot of hopes for that because Ultron is a very What's the word I could Describe as a villain. Well, he's just a he's a cold-blooded villain in the comics. And so I didn't like this adaptation of that character i didn't like this version of the character and the film suffered because all the all avengers age of ultron did was set up phase three that's all it was there for it didn't it it was not his separate movie it was just a commercial for phase three and so that i didn't too much care for um after that you get ant-man and that wrapped up phase two right so we get to phase three. And phase three is when they really, really went all in. Now we're steamrolling towards the bigger, bigger kind of culmination here. We start phase three with Captain America Civil War, which, you know, you can also retitle as Avengers 2.5. You had Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, Spider-Man. homecoming which uh it's the rights are still with sony but they shared it due to some deal which worked out for both parties i believe uh spider-man homecoming was was awesome you have uh thor ragnarok rock which also was awesome i'm telling you phase three was was just banging man Phase 3 was banging. After Ragnarok, you got... Black Panther. Black freaking Panther, Ed. Nobody saw that coming. Nobody thought that movie was going to be that good. The first Marvel film out of all the films I just named to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Didn't win, but it was nominated, and that within his right, within his own right, is an amazing task. It did win an Academy Award for best score, best costume design, I believe, or set design, probably both. But it did rack up some awards, so kudos to them. We go from that to Avengers Infinity War. And, you know, reading the comics, I knew what Infinity War was. I knew what the Infinity Saga is. And I knew what happens at the end of Infinity War. But honestly, it never really dawned on me until I was watching the movie that, wait, I think they're going to do this. They're actually going to do this. And when Thanos got all of the stone and made the snap, I just, I turned to my wife. I can't believe they did it. I can't believe they did it. I was so shocked that the villain won, that Thanos won, the Avengers lost. And spoiler alert, I like Infinity War more than Endgame. Believe it or not, that is. I enjoyed that more because of the stakes involved in what happened at the end. It was so much of an emotional impact. Don't get me wrong. There was a big emotional swing in the end game, but this one just hit different. A couple of months after that, you get Ant-Man and the Wasp, which wasn't all that good. I mean, it was all right, but, you know, coming off the Infinity War. it it was just bad placement in my in my humble opinion um captain uh not america but captain marvel came next which was fine it was fine it didn't move the needle either way but you know good on them and then we get in game then we get avengers in game and it was named m game for a reason because that's that was the end that was the end of the infinity saga that was the end well technically they count the film after this uh spider-man far from home the end of the infinity saga but it ended with end game with me that that was it i mean we wrapped up our original avengers you know tony died uh cap went to live a a happy life with peggy uh thor went on his uh a self-discovery journey and You know, Black Widow died and, you know, so on and so on. I mean, everybody pretty much moved on. And that was that. You know, they went to war with the galaxy's probably biggest bad there is. And they defeated them. You know, they had to go back in time and do a time heist to do it, but they did it. And so it was cool. It was an actual great end to this saga. And so you get far from home, which was good, you know, all of the Spider-Man movies were good. So this is where it started to kind of turn for me. This is where it really started to go like, you know, where do we go from here? How can you exceed what you accomplished in those first three phases? You know, in that entire saga, because everything was just brilliantly. done nothing was rushed they took their time all the characters were developed you had a villain that was sprinkled throughout this little 10-year journey that they went on uh in this saga and so everything had a proper payoff a proper build and a proper payoff and so we move into the multiverse saga and when they announced that I was I was very skeptical because I'm not a big multiverse person I didn't care for it in the comics and I really didn't care for it in the films and the audiences didn't either now granted a lot of factors a lot of factors uh kind of hampled this saga kind of hampled the films that were being released. Here on after you know it and it affected the quality of some of the film it did I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna be naive and say like oh man is deep Marvel just put it on cruise control No, it was a lot of things that played a part and why this wasn't as successful of a saga as The Infinity Saga the multiverse saga Started off. We're in a pandemic You have films that were slated to come out in 2020 that couldn't come out. You know, films that were scheduled to start filming in 2020 couldn't start filming. You know, films or shows that were in the middle of production had to stop filming. The world stopped in 2020. And so a lot of that affected. this soccer as well as our lives personally and everything else in the world so i'm not just saying like what was me tomorrow but everybody went through it in 2020 it was horrible so uh marvel is no exception so everything got pushed back we yeah we had to roll over with uh wandavision we had falcon in the winter soldier on all both of those uh shows were on disney plus and i think Disney Plus kind of hurt. as well because disney plus shows well we're about to witness that this weekend with thunderbolts there are characters in thunderbolts that we haven't seen unless you watch some of these disney plus shows i hate to be the bearer of bad news you know you you're probably gonna go there and wonder who is he or how did elena uh blow but how why is she at this point Well, you had to watch Hawkeye. You had to watch Falcon and the Winter Soldier. You know that these play roles in the MCU proper. So I do, and I know this, I'm stating this because I know people who have asked me, and they don't have Disney Plus. Oh, do I need to watch the show? Well, it would help. It would help. You know, that's just like, well, I'll get to it. I'll get to that when we get to that. but yeah it it really hurt it but as far as the film size the theatrical side of everything the first film to be released in the multiverse saga was black widow and that was in 2021 and that movie as as much as i was all right with the movie the movie wasn't bad the movie just came out five maybe six years too late if they would have put this out in phase beginning of phase three maybe the end of phase two it probably would have hit better you know because that's when black widow was hot the character was hot you know now you give her a solo movie after we just witnessed her die two years earlier and avengers endgame it doesn't help. It didn't help the calls at all because... You know that she's going to survive at the end of this movie. There is no stakes there. You know, at least that's how I was looking at it. And I couldn't really get into it. There was no sense of urgency or danger for her character because I know she's going to survive this movie. You know, so it didn't help the cause. I think that was just bad, bad scheduling. They should have made that movie years ago so it could have fit. properly in the mcu timeline and now the next film that was released by marvel studios was shang chi in the legend of the ten rings which is probably one of the best films to come out of this phase of this saga it was amazing and why they haven't made another shang chi is is beyond my mind it's beyond my way of thinking it is so good so good yeah it gives a little cgi messy at the end but that film as a whole was amazing i had such a good time with shang chi not so much with the eternals now and when i first saw the eternals i was like okay it's fine you know it's fine and i gave it a rare review i remember uh when it came out but when i think back now i'm like well you know i was just craved for superhero movies at that time you realize in 2021 due to the pandemic and everything uh marvel put out four movies in 2021 and so i was i was just all in on these comic book movies because for about a year and a half we didn't get any we didn't get nothing from all And so, yeah, I was just happy to see it. Now I look back, I was like, man, that movie was not that good. It wasn't really all that good. It was boring. That movie was boring. And everybody knows it. Marvel knows it. That's why you haven't heard a whisper of the Eternals. You haven't heard anything involving the Eternals in the MCU since that movie has come out. Just till recently with Captain America brave new world that we finally see Tima D celestial sticking out of the ocean. We finally got that reference after what four years In about seven eight movies later. Do you finally get a reference to it? But neither here nor there then you get spider-man no way home. Oh my god man that look the fact that that movie exists is the reason i wake up every morning smiling the fact that i was able to uh god gave me the health and strength to get up go to the theater and watch it for the first time when it came out that weekend with a crowd with the cheering with you know the first theatrical experience i've had since the pandemic and that was the first time that was in a long time that i felt like i was at the movies and it was worth the wait it was worth every second i i love that movie still to this day i'll watch it at least once a year um it is so good um after that you get doctor strange in the multiverse of madness which was kind of a letdown because you promised this multiverse of madness And all we got was madness. There was no multiverse, you know? It was nothing there. It was no dare-dare. It was just, meh. It wasn't good. It wasn't bad. It was just, meh. You know? But it was better than Thor Love and Thunder, which came out after that. Man, you want to talk about disappointing. I mean, you have Taika Waititi returning to direct after. directing uh thor ragnarok you know and once again the promise of a bigger world you got christian bale as the villain and that was the best part of the movie him the problem was he was the it was like he was the only one in the movie that realized he was in the movie everybody else was jokey jokey play play play and look it worked for ragnarok it didn't work here this was So bad. I I still wake up in night sweats thinking about Thunder um After that we get Black Panther Wakanda forever and clearly not as good as the first one but but Not one to make excuses, but man they had a lot going on with Ryan Coogler trying to make this movie Ryan Coogler had to deal, first and foremost, he has to film this film during a pandemic. That's number one. Number two, right before they're about to start pre-production, we got the tragic passing of the star of the movie, Chadwick Boseman. He passes away. And that just put a monkey wrench into everything. Because now is the question. Should we recast? Should they not? And they chose not to recast T'Challa. And look, I get it. You know, in the moment, I fully supported that. But as time went on, I was like, no, because you have a great number of people who love that character, who didn't have a Clark Kent. Didn't have a Bruce Wayne. Didn't have a Tony Stark to look up to. You know, they couldn't look in the mirror and see these characters in the mirror. But they can look in the mirror and see a T'Challa. They can look in the mirror and see a Black Panther. So that's why they should have recast it. You know, and I get the emotional aspect of it all and the respect factor of it all. I get that. A hundred percent. You know, Chadrick Boseman was Black Panther. And he will always be Black Panther. You know, he owned that role. He was amazing. as the character of T'Challa, but they should have recast. If anything, just scrap this particular idea and wait it a little while. You know, not just throw yourself into it. But in any event, you had those two, and then you shift gears to make Shuri the main character, which isn't a bad idea. this happened in the comics as well this is a actual thing sherry did take over black panther uh for a while so that's fine but during filming she caught covet and she ended up uh hurting herself in a stunt during filming you know so those were two setbacks yeah it was just it was a whole mess the mere fact that this movie wrapped and was cohesive and was actually entertaining for the most part even though like i said it wasn't nowhere near the first film but it was good enough is a miracle within itself uh but uh you had that going but that was the end of phase four so we moved to phase five and you get ant-man and the walls quantum mania and this is where business picked up this is where it really started to go off the rails Um... Quantumania was to set up the main villain of this saga. The multiverse saga was supposed to wrap up just like the Infinity Saga wrapped up with Thanos being the main bad. The Infinity, not the Infinity, the multiverse saga was going to wrap up with Kang the Conqueror. And that character was played by... Jonathan Majors. And Jonathan Majors is an amazing actor. Amazing actor. And when they first cast him, when they announced that, I don't see it. At first, I was like, really? Out of everybody, I chose Jonathan Majors, you know, because at that time he wasn't as big. I think around the time they announced that he was on this show, Lovecraft. country and i i enjoyed that show i i hate the fact that it only lasted one season that was a really good show but i just didn't see him as kate but so when this movie when they started uh you know releasing promotional material and stuff for it i'm like okay i'm sold and i could see him as the bad and then he popped up on uh loki as he who remains i was like yep i'm so this is this is going to work. Well, right before the release of this film, or it could have been, yeah, it was right before the release of Quantumania. That's when all of the, you know, foolishness happened in his personal life involving the ex-girlfriend and the domestic abuse stuff and all this here. And that was that grand opening, grand closing. That was it for Jonathan Majors. and Marvel had to quickly course correct and instead of recasting King the Conqueror they just done away with them they decided to move in a different direction now I'm not gonna fanboy out here you know cause I'm a huge Jonathan Majors fan in spite of the stuff that he was accused of and he was found guilty of or played to whatever the case may be if he was wrong he was wrong but Bye. I mean, as far as this story, and it's not about Jonathan Major, I feel if you was going to let him go, cast somebody else. Recast the role. Stick to your plan. Because when you course correct in the dead center middle of the thing, it's not going to play out right. And from that moment on, you know, it felt like every other film just didn't matter. Even though... the films that came out around this time you know uh in 2023 they were already filmed you know they were already done but it was just it just didn't feel right it just didn't feel like this was part of the same saga you know after quantumania you had uh guardians of the galaxy volume 3 which was great a good wrap up to that trilogy and then you had the marvels just horrible just horrible just it just did not it did not land did not land at all uh the less said about that movie the better and then we move on to just this past year in 2024 with Deadpool and Wolverine that that worked now it worked in a degree it didn't work for the overall MCU storytelling element wise but it did work for Deadpool you know it worked as a love letter to all of the uh Fox X-Men films which that's all it was it was just a goodbye letter from the fox universe of x-men movie and and that's that's cool that was cool i loved it but as far as pushing the mcu narrative narrative forward it did none of that it did none of that um captain america brave new world they shouldn't have made that movie that movie was so upsetting to me it's still bothers me to this day i i can't believe and i watched it twice i still cannot i can't i can't believe that movie was that bad i really just i really don't know why they made this movie this way and that movie went through so many reshoots and so many uh script changes and character changes and recasting in this role and that role and that's what y'all came up with You know, it just... it crashed and burned it crashed and burned at least in my soul um it didn't work and so that brings us to the end that brings us to the end of phase five where this upcoming weekend we get thunderbolts and that brings us to the question yeah it took me 40 something minutes to get to it but it brings us to the question can marvel bounce back can we bounce back will thunderbolts bring us back to what we grown in love from the first saga from the first three phases of this franchise you know now not every film in the first three phases was was bangers now i would be fair and honest with you you know uh iron man 2 it had his moments but it wasn't great you know iron man 3 same thing had his moments, but it wasn't great. The door to Dark World, it it wasn't all that good uh avengers age of oktron was not the greatest you know so it had some it had some misses there uh ant-man and the wasp wasn't all that good either it it had his misses but but this saga this this complete saga has crashed and burned now i've seen a lot of articles or read them i should say read a lot of articles where finger pointing is directed towards uh jonathan major's derailing it and all this here let's not fool ourselves here it was bad before all that jonathan major's mess came into play it was already the ship was already taking on water you know with eternals and the black widow thing with a multiverse of madness or love and thunder it was it was sinking it was sinking Hmm. So I'm not going to pin it on the Jonathan Majors thing. The Jonathan Majors thing just put an extra hole in the bow of the ship. You know, it just took on more water. And from that point on, it was just best to abandon ship instead of trying to get it to port. But now I think this is an opportunity. I think this is a chance. that we can get back on track thunderbolts looks fun i haven't seen it yet i'm going to see it tomorrow it looks fun it and it just feels from the trailers from uh the clips they released it feels like an old school marvel film and i say old school like it was 50 years ago but you know the first three phases and so i'm encouraged by it and then later this year, a couple of months from now, actually in July, we get the Fantastic Four First Steps, which is the first Marvel Fantastic Four film from the MCU proper. And you have Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, and Jonathan Quinn. You have some good additions here. Max Shackman directing. Galactic is in this thing, Silver Surfer is in this thing. It looks amazing, and it looks exciting. So I'm encouraged. And then next year, we get Doomsday, Avengers Doomsday. And this is where Robert Downey Jr. returns. as Victor Von Doom. No, not Tony Stark, Victor Von Doom. And for that reason, I'm not excited for that, as a lot of MCU fans are, but I am deeply intrigued. I am so curious to see how they're going to explain this and pull this off. Now, can Robert Downey Jr. pull off Dr. Doom? Of course he can. But the problem I have... We've grown and loved him for nearly 20 years as Tony Stark. We saw him have the greatest arc in film franchise history as this warmonger, you know, who sells weapons to whoever to sacrifice in his self for the sake of the universe. The greatest arc ever. And now you're going to bring them back as the villain. It's weird. And there's no proper introduction here. You know, I guess technically this is his movie. But we don't have enough time to kind of soak him in like we did with Thanos, you know, in the first saga. So that's the only thing that kind of gives me pause on it. That's why I'm not excited floating over the moon about it. But i am super interested then we get the return of spider-man after doomsday uh spider-man brand new day tom holland holland is returning dustin daniel cretin is uh directing this film he's the director of shang chi and the ten rings so uh i already told you how much i enjoyed that film so what he gonna bring to uh spider-man is he gonna bring that same energy i hope so because that was a fun energy he brought to that film um let's see where that ends and then we wrap up this entire saga with avengers secret wars in 2027 now that film if done like the comics is going to be the biggest movie of all time you know i'm talking production wise is gonna be huge if it's done like is done in the comics. So, yes, they have a way, and it will rival Endgame if they do it right. But it's all, everything, guys, it has to work from here on. If Thunderbolt, Fantastic Four, fail, crash, and burn, it doesn't even, the rest of this don't even matter. Doomsday don't even matter. Secret Wars don't even matter. That's how important. these films are and i don't think they should be taken lightly only if you're a fan of this franchise you know if you don't care if you if you're just a casual viewer of these films you you probably could care less but if you follow each and every film tooth to nail if you watch every disney plus show uh religiously you know follow this like you would follow a comic series You know, if a new issue drops on a Tuesday, you're there. You know, if you follow it like that, yeah, this is important. This is very important. But I'm encouraged. I actually feel good moving forward because, like I said, the next two films looks good. Looks good. You know, I'm not expecting Thunderbolts to be Captain America Civil War. I don't expect it to be that high. You know, I expect it to be. if it's as good as if it's as good as guardians of the galaxy volume 2 which is not as good as the first one definitely not as good as the third one but it's good enough you know it was entertaining i actually liked it but i didn't love it like i loved the first one and loved the second if it's as good if it's on that level of volume 2 of guardians of the galaxy we're good we're in good shape so That's my hope and prayer. And now after Secret Wars, nothing is really, quote unquote, announced. You know, they have a planned Armor Wars movie with Don Cheadle returning as a war machine. You have Black Panther 3. Now that has been announced. Ryan Coogler is returning to write and direct that film. And they will be a... T-ch-T'Challa in that movie? So... that ought to be interesting to see how they go blade my god blade has been uh announced but there is no date there's no movement on production they have been i i have nothing to say about blade but anyways you have uh the x-men the x-men uh is coming soon uh no dates on that no real casting on that but I think a lot will be determined after uh secret wars after secret wars we're gonna spawn off into the mutant saga and i think a lot of it will uh focus on the x-men and mutants going forward in this next saga they really should have did that instead of the multiverse saga maybe save the multiverse saga till later but that's fine you know can't can't pour the milk back in the carton now But, yeah, that's why I think Black Panther 3 is coming out around this time because we're going to get the introduction of Storm, I believe, in that film. You know, Blade. Blade isn't a mutant, but that'll be a nice way to introduce some new mutant characters and whatnot. So there's a lot to play with here. Can't wait to see what happens. But I am excited for... Thunderbolts and what it can offer it just feels like a grounded Superhero film that we haven't gotten in a while. We've been in the multiverse, you know, we've been in galaxies We we have a superhuman people all of these characters in this film are grounded You know, they're more relatable and I think that will help this film succeed. But uh, yes My answer to the question is yes, I have faith. I have confidence that the MCU will indeed rebound and get back to prominence. I would like to know what do you think going forward? Are you excited for Thunderbolts and the Fantastic Four and the two new Avengers films that are coming down the pike soon? I would love to know your thoughts. Email the show kbradiopodcasts at gmail.com. You can also search for the show on all social media platforms. Just search for the KB Radio Network. Subscribe to the KB Radio Network channel on YouTube. Like this video if you don't mind. Also, don't forget about the five stars, the reviews, the sharing. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, wherever you are currently listening to movie. goodness here on the kb radio network everybody thank you for joining me as we pose the question can marvel studios bounce back i want you all to know that i love you continue to love everyone and until we speak again you all be blessed
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With the 36th film, Thunderbolts* coming out this weekend and The Fantastic Four: First Step later this summer, can Marvel Studios return to being the number film franchise?
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Well, hello everyone and welcome to Movie Goodness where we examine life through cinema here on the KB Radio Network. I am your host Kevin Reed and I'm coming to you today asking a very serious question. Can Marvel Studios bounce back? And when I say bounce back, bounce back to what we... have grown to love from this film franchise we are 35 films in not counting the you know disney plus shows that has been released over the past five years just just cinematically just on the on the big screen 35 films about to go into the 36th this upcoming weekend with thunderbolts but we've got 35 films and we've hit kind of a wall here you know with a lot of lackluster returns in investment man i mean ever since endgame and that's the that's pretty much the point that marvel it feels like marvel was just throwing stuff against the wall seeing what stuck after that you know they had no clear direction and i'm not saying that they didn't but it just feels that way You know, me as a kid growing up, deeply into comics, love comics. And when comic book movies started to kind of take off in the early 2000s, I was like, oh man, finally. I was like The Rock, finally. We've got good comic book adaptations, you know, because prior to that, yes, we had Superman the movie. Christopher Reeves, Richard Donner directing, the late, great Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor. Yes, that was awesome for its time, but it wasn't the greatest thing. You know, when you look back on it, it wasn't the greatest. But Christopher Reeves' adaptation of Superman as Clark Kent makes it such an excellent film. Superman 2 also That's the first one I saw, ironically enough. I saw Superman 2 before I saw Superman 1. It is weird. It's due to my birth. My birth was wiped between both movies. And for some strange reason, you know, when I got old enough, I watched Superman 2 first. But that's neither here nor there. We fast forward. The next real, I guess you could say, big comic book movie we got was Batman. from 1989 with uh michael keaton as batman tim burton directing the movie and it was a cultural phenomenon it was a global phenomenon a pop culture uh phenomenon and it took the world by storm and that franchise that film series uh up until it just went off the rails with batman Batman and Robin but it was an excellent a comic book franchise and marvel was they didn't have anything around the time but i think the only thing we got from marvel cinematically was howard the duck that was in the 80s and that that has been described as the worst movie not comic book movie one of the worst movies ever made always liked howard the duck yeah i can point out now that it's stupid but when i was a kid that was that was exciting to me to see a duck run around that can talk and interact with humans and so it hey it i didn't even know it was a comic book when i was growing up i think it was later in life when i found out it was a comic book actually to be honest with you i saw the comic but i thought the comic book was based off of the movie. They were like, oh, the movie? So we're going to make a comic book, Karen. No, the book came first. But anyways, that was it for Marvel. For years, they were talking about making a Spider-Man movie. For years, we saw talks of a credible Hulk movie. That was it. That was about as far as it got. And now, if you want to count this Captain America movie that came out in the... I think around 90, 91, somewhere up in there. If you want to count that, which wasn't even released in theaters, fine, you can count it. If you want to count the Fantastic Four film that they made around that same time that nobody had saw, it's fine. You can count that as well. But Marvel just, we weren't getting anything going at Marvel Studios or Marvel Films at the time. So we fast forward to the early 2000s and we finally get the announcement of a Spider-Man movie. And it came from the unlikely of places with James Cameron. James Cameron was going to make a Spider-Man movie right after he had finished making Titanic. And he had worked on the outline, storyline, and everything was moving. floyd i think leonardo dicaprio was going to play spider-man uh arnold schwarzenegger was going to be doc ock if i'm not mistaken yeah they they were setting it up to be something awesome and i was excited you know i i think i was reading keeping up with it because this is pre-internet and i was keeping up with it by um reading the uh wizard books yeah i remember that magazine with uh wizard um Yeah, that's how I was keeping up with the production and everything of that, because I was super excited. Spider-Man is one of my favorite characters. So to see him in live action, I was hyped up for it. Well, that fell through, and Sam Raimi took over, and the rest, as they say, is history. Tobey Maguire was cast as Peter Parker. William Dafoe was cast as Osborn, Norman Osborn, and we were off and running. And. Marvel finally have kind of stuck their flag in the film world because that movie was amazing for me at the time. And it still is. You can go back and watch that very first Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire and really appreciate it for what it was. It really didn't date that much. It's not that dated. You know, it is in parts. Don't get me wrong. It is in parts, but it was still good. It still holds up for the most part. uh spider-man 2 is even better arguably one of the best comic book movies ever made um spider-man versus doc ock another character i'm used to just have fantasies about seeing in live action and finally getting to see it in live action was a joy and so we got these films you know and i got kind of ahead of myself you know before we got spider-man and all of that, what really broke open the Marvel universe, not the MCU that we know now, but what really broke open this universe for comic book movies was Blade. Blade was the film that, once again, I knew of the character. I didn't read any Blade issues, but, you know, I've read issues where Blade popped up. He was in a Spider-Man. uh uh run for a little while when they were going after uh uh what's his name uh jared leto played him in the movie uh man why am i blanking on his name that's how bad the movie was but anyway he'll come to me but yeah they teamed up and i knew a little bit about blake but i was a big fan of wesley snipe so when that movie came out and you know just took the world by I was like, oh, man, this is awesome. Then you get Blade 2, and unfortunately, we got Blade Trinity, but those first two Blade movies were just bangers. I was like, man, I think we're on the right track, and X-Men came along not too long after that, the first X-Men film from Bryan Singer in the year 2000, and, you know, anybody who knows me, X-Men was my jam. I love X-Men to this day. Love X-Men because I love the storytelling in X-Men because there's so much more. It isn't just these costume mutants running around fighting against oppression and whatnot. It's so much more to it, you know, and it's such an exciting story that has been told for, I don't know, 60, 70 years or whatever. But it is an exciting story. Really love it. Can't wait to see it play out in the MCU, hopefully soon. yeah those films started coming out and they were hit and miss you know you you get a good one then a bad one a good one then a bad one and you know very inconsistent but in the year 2008 business picked up uh marvel studios decided they were going to go all in they were facing bankruptcy and so they decided to go all in you know they had already licensed out a lot of their uh characters from the comics, you know. They didn't have the rights and I was crazy that Marvel didn't have the rights to their own characters But they were broke and so they had the license off their characters in order to survive You know, they didn't have the Fantastic Four. They didn't have x-men. They didn't have blade. They didn't have spider-man They didn't have their major characters. And so they wanted to launch their own studio and in 2008 they released Iron Man and Jon Favreau really good actor, if you don't realize it, but he is a really good actor, funny guy, he directed this film, and prior to this, he directed Elf, and it was another film, it was like a Jumanji ripoff, I can't think of the name of that either, I'm blanking today, but he directed those two films, and I was interested, you know, I was curious to see how this will play out because I like the Iron Man. and in the comics and i always compared him to batman because batman is my all-time overall favorite uh comic book character it was just iron man didn't have as tragic of a backstory as uh bruce wayne but still interesting they're both billionaires neither of them have superpowers but they found the way to exist in this superpower worlds that they both live in and i always often compared to two that's why i kind of followed iron man a little bit more in marvel comics but they took a big risk in making this film and then they made the biggest risk of all by casting robert downey jr as tony stark and this is the robert downey jr who is just a couple of years removed from being in prison you know from getting in trouble with the law with the the drugs and the drinking and back and forth in court and in jail and all this other stuff and but nobody has ever no matter what he was going through in his personal life nobody ever questioned his acting the dude is a phenomenal actor i think the film that really brought him back to prominence was kiss kiss bang bang and that movie was so good and he was so good in it you know along with val Kilmer. uh r.i.p uh that was just a phenomenal movie small little movie but i think that was what helped catapult him uh back to the status where people were like okay robert's back you know he could he could still do it and it helped him land the role now it wasn't easy you know there was pushed back but eventually they were won over and here we are 35 films of going on to 36 films later and it wouldn't be here if it wasn't for robert downey jr and we're going to touch in on a little later he's still a part of the mcu but spoiler alert not as tony stark but that's neither here nor there uh that movie did phenomenal in the box office, it set up a whole universe and set up the I get not the invention because they always have post-credit scenes in movies but not in every single movie but it really planted its flag in the post-credit scene setting up something bigger down the line or for the next film down the line and when samuel l jackson popped up with the eye patch at the very end of that film in the post-credit scene as nick fury because at that point in the comics. They had changed Nick Fury from being a white man to being a black man. And not just any black man, but they modeled him, the character of Nick Fury in the comics, they modeled him as Samuel L. Jackson. So when it came time to play him on the big screen, well, let's give Samuel L. Jackson a call. And he answered, thank God. And the rest, as they say, is history. We were off and running with The Incredible Hulk, which came out of... a few months after that, Iron Man 2 a couple of years after that, Thor, Captain America, and then we got the Avengers, the culmination of all of these characters, a film that I thought was virtually impossible. impossible to achieve on the big screen because you're asking multiple actors multiple characters to share the screen with one another and they did it man they pulled it off and that movie went on to make a billion dollars and it uh wrapped up phase one and i never understood the phase well at least i didn't understand the phase thing early on i'm like what what does phase mean But it was just sections of this cinematic universe because we're going full steam ahead with a larger plot. All right, cool. But at the end of the Avengers, in this post-credit scene, we saw Thanos. And everybody lost their collective mind. And it was like, oh, my God. We're actually moving on to some big, big things, you know, if you read the comics. So we move on to phase two, we get Iron Man 3, we get Thor, the Dark World, which a lot of people, eh, not so much liked. You know, it wasn't their favorite at that point. That was the one swing and miss from Marvel, even though it was financially successful, but a lot of the fans still don't like it to this day. I didn't mind it, but it definitely wasn't the best. It was the worst up to this point. in the MCU uh then you get Captain America the Winter Soldier which a lot of people still now consider the best MCU film probably the best comic book movie uh I've heard that argument and I don't I'm not even gonna fight it I don't agree with it but I'm not gonna fight you with it because it is an excellent excellent movie uh Guardians of the Galaxy which just expand this universe literally. by going into the galaxy by going into this world and with characters that nobody knew nobody knew who star-lord was nobody knew who drax the uh uh destroyer was nobody knew about goop and rocket raccoon the talking raccoon and a talking tree did they really they really swung for the feet for the fence with that and lo and behold it worked it worked that movie was amazing um After that we get another Avengers film Avengers age of Ultron which a little a little skittish a Little skittish. I had a lot of hopes for that because Ultron is a very What's the word I could Describe as a villain. Well, he's just a he's a cold-blooded villain in the comics. And so I didn't like this adaptation of that character i didn't like this version of the character and the film suffered because all the all avengers age of ultron did was set up phase three that's all it was there for it didn't it it was not his separate movie it was just a commercial for phase three and so that i didn't too much care for um after that you get ant-man and that wrapped up phase two right so we get to phase three. And phase three is when they really, really went all in. Now we're steamrolling towards the bigger, bigger kind of culmination here. We start phase three with Captain America Civil War, which, you know, you can also retitle as Avengers 2.5. You had Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, Spider-Man. homecoming which uh it's the rights are still with sony but they shared it due to some deal which worked out for both parties i believe uh spider-man homecoming was was awesome you have uh thor ragnarok rock which also was awesome i'm telling you phase three was was just banging man Phase 3 was banging. After Ragnarok, you got... Black Panther. Black freaking Panther, Ed. Nobody saw that coming. Nobody thought that movie was going to be that good. The first Marvel film out of all the films I just named to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Didn't win, but it was nominated, and that within his right, within his own right, is an amazing task. It did win an Academy Award for best score, best costume design, I believe, or set design, probably both. But it did rack up some awards, so kudos to them. We go from that to Avengers Infinity War. And, you know, reading the comics, I knew what Infinity War was. I knew what the Infinity Saga is. And I knew what happens at the end of Infinity War. But honestly, it never really dawned on me until I was watching the movie that, wait, I think they're going to do this. They're actually going to do this. And when Thanos got all of the stone and made the snap, I just, I turned to my wife. I can't believe they did it. I can't believe they did it. I was so shocked that the villain won, that Thanos won, the Avengers lost. And spoiler alert, I like Infinity War more than Endgame. Believe it or not, that is. I enjoyed that more because of the stakes involved in what happened at the end. It was so much of an emotional impact. Don't get me wrong. There was a big emotional swing in the end game, but this one just hit different. A couple of months after that, you get Ant-Man and the Wasp, which wasn't all that good. I mean, it was all right, but, you know, coming off the Infinity War. it it was just bad placement in my in my humble opinion um captain uh not america but captain marvel came next which was fine it was fine it didn't move the needle either way but you know good on them and then we get in game then we get avengers in game and it was named m game for a reason because that's that was the end that was the end of the infinity saga that was the end well technically they count the film after this uh spider-man far from home the end of the infinity saga but it ended with end game with me that that was it i mean we wrapped up our original avengers you know tony died uh cap went to live a a happy life with peggy uh thor went on his uh a self-discovery journey and You know, Black Widow died and, you know, so on and so on. I mean, everybody pretty much moved on. And that was that. You know, they went to war with the galaxy's probably biggest bad there is. And they defeated them. You know, they had to go back in time and do a time heist to do it, but they did it. And so it was cool. It was an actual great end to this saga. And so you get far from home, which was good, you know, all of the Spider-Man movies were good. So this is where it started to kind of turn for me. This is where it really started to go like, you know, where do we go from here? How can you exceed what you accomplished in those first three phases? You know, in that entire saga, because everything was just brilliantly. done nothing was rushed they took their time all the characters were developed you had a villain that was sprinkled throughout this little 10-year journey that they went on uh in this saga and so everything had a proper payoff a proper build and a proper payoff and so we move into the multiverse saga and when they announced that I was I was very skeptical because I'm not a big multiverse person I didn't care for it in the comics and I really didn't care for it in the films and the audiences didn't either now granted a lot of factors a lot of factors uh kind of hampled this saga kind of hampled the films that were being released. Here on after you know it and it affected the quality of some of the film it did I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna be naive and say like oh man is deep Marvel just put it on cruise control No, it was a lot of things that played a part and why this wasn't as successful of a saga as The Infinity Saga the multiverse saga Started off. We're in a pandemic You have films that were slated to come out in 2020 that couldn't come out. You know, films that were scheduled to start filming in 2020 couldn't start filming. You know, films or shows that were in the middle of production had to stop filming. The world stopped in 2020. And so a lot of that affected. this soccer as well as our lives personally and everything else in the world so i'm not just saying like what was me tomorrow but everybody went through it in 2020 it was horrible so uh marvel is no exception so everything got pushed back we yeah we had to roll over with uh wandavision we had falcon in the winter soldier on all both of those uh shows were on disney plus and i think Disney Plus kind of hurt. as well because disney plus shows well we're about to witness that this weekend with thunderbolts there are characters in thunderbolts that we haven't seen unless you watch some of these disney plus shows i hate to be the bearer of bad news you know you you're probably gonna go there and wonder who is he or how did elena uh blow but how why is she at this point Well, you had to watch Hawkeye. You had to watch Falcon and the Winter Soldier. You know that these play roles in the MCU proper. So I do, and I know this, I'm stating this because I know people who have asked me, and they don't have Disney Plus. Oh, do I need to watch the show? Well, it would help. It would help. You know, that's just like, well, I'll get to it. I'll get to that when we get to that. but yeah it it really hurt it but as far as the film size the theatrical side of everything the first film to be released in the multiverse saga was black widow and that was in 2021 and that movie as as much as i was all right with the movie the movie wasn't bad the movie just came out five maybe six years too late if they would have put this out in phase beginning of phase three maybe the end of phase two it probably would have hit better you know because that's when black widow was hot the character was hot you know now you give her a solo movie after we just witnessed her die two years earlier and avengers endgame it doesn't help. It didn't help the calls at all because... You know that she's going to survive at the end of this movie. There is no stakes there. You know, at least that's how I was looking at it. And I couldn't really get into it. There was no sense of urgency or danger for her character because I know she's going to survive this movie. You know, so it didn't help the cause. I think that was just bad, bad scheduling. They should have made that movie years ago so it could have fit. properly in the mcu timeline and now the next film that was released by marvel studios was shang chi in the legend of the ten rings which is probably one of the best films to come out of this phase of this saga it was amazing and why they haven't made another shang chi is is beyond my mind it's beyond my way of thinking it is so good so good yeah it gives a little cgi messy at the end but that film as a whole was amazing i had such a good time with shang chi not so much with the eternals now and when i first saw the eternals i was like okay it's fine you know it's fine and i gave it a rare review i remember uh when it came out but when i think back now i'm like well you know i was just craved for superhero movies at that time you realize in 2021 due to the pandemic and everything uh marvel put out four movies in 2021 and so i was i was just all in on these comic book movies because for about a year and a half we didn't get any we didn't get nothing from all And so, yeah, I was just happy to see it. Now I look back, I was like, man, that movie was not that good. It wasn't really all that good. It was boring. That movie was boring. And everybody knows it. Marvel knows it. That's why you haven't heard a whisper of the Eternals. You haven't heard anything involving the Eternals in the MCU since that movie has come out. Just till recently with Captain America brave new world that we finally see Tima D celestial sticking out of the ocean. We finally got that reference after what four years In about seven eight movies later. Do you finally get a reference to it? But neither here nor there then you get spider-man no way home. Oh my god man that look the fact that that movie exists is the reason i wake up every morning smiling the fact that i was able to uh god gave me the health and strength to get up go to the theater and watch it for the first time when it came out that weekend with a crowd with the cheering with you know the first theatrical experience i've had since the pandemic and that was the first time that was in a long time that i felt like i was at the movies and it was worth the wait it was worth every second i i love that movie still to this day i'll watch it at least once a year um it is so good um after that you get doctor strange in the multiverse of madness which was kind of a letdown because you promised this multiverse of madness And all we got was madness. There was no multiverse, you know? It was nothing there. It was no dare-dare. It was just, meh. It wasn't good. It wasn't bad. It was just, meh. You know? But it was better than Thor Love and Thunder, which came out after that. Man, you want to talk about disappointing. I mean, you have Taika Waititi returning to direct after. directing uh thor ragnarok you know and once again the promise of a bigger world you got christian bale as the villain and that was the best part of the movie him the problem was he was the it was like he was the only one in the movie that realized he was in the movie everybody else was jokey jokey play play play and look it worked for ragnarok it didn't work here this was So bad. I I still wake up in night sweats thinking about Thunder um After that we get Black Panther Wakanda forever and clearly not as good as the first one but but Not one to make excuses, but man they had a lot going on with Ryan Coogler trying to make this movie Ryan Coogler had to deal, first and foremost, he has to film this film during a pandemic. That's number one. Number two, right before they're about to start pre-production, we got the tragic passing of the star of the movie, Chadwick Boseman. He passes away. And that just put a monkey wrench into everything. Because now is the question. Should we recast? Should they not? And they chose not to recast T'Challa. And look, I get it. You know, in the moment, I fully supported that. But as time went on, I was like, no, because you have a great number of people who love that character, who didn't have a Clark Kent. Didn't have a Bruce Wayne. Didn't have a Tony Stark to look up to. You know, they couldn't look in the mirror and see these characters in the mirror. But they can look in the mirror and see a T'Challa. They can look in the mirror and see a Black Panther. So that's why they should have recast it. You know, and I get the emotional aspect of it all and the respect factor of it all. I get that. A hundred percent. You know, Chadrick Boseman was Black Panther. And he will always be Black Panther. You know, he owned that role. He was amazing. as the character of T'Challa, but they should have recast. If anything, just scrap this particular idea and wait it a little while. You know, not just throw yourself into it. But in any event, you had those two, and then you shift gears to make Shuri the main character, which isn't a bad idea. this happened in the comics as well this is a actual thing sherry did take over black panther uh for a while so that's fine but during filming she caught covet and she ended up uh hurting herself in a stunt during filming you know so those were two setbacks yeah it was just it was a whole mess the mere fact that this movie wrapped and was cohesive and was actually entertaining for the most part even though like i said it wasn't nowhere near the first film but it was good enough is a miracle within itself uh but uh you had that going but that was the end of phase four so we moved to phase five and you get ant-man and the walls quantum mania and this is where business picked up this is where it really started to go off the rails Um... Quantumania was to set up the main villain of this saga. The multiverse saga was supposed to wrap up just like the Infinity Saga wrapped up with Thanos being the main bad. The Infinity, not the Infinity, the multiverse saga was going to wrap up with Kang the Conqueror. And that character was played by... Jonathan Majors. And Jonathan Majors is an amazing actor. Amazing actor. And when they first cast him, when they announced that, I don't see it. At first, I was like, really? Out of everybody, I chose Jonathan Majors, you know, because at that time he wasn't as big. I think around the time they announced that he was on this show, Lovecraft. country and i i enjoyed that show i i hate the fact that it only lasted one season that was a really good show but i just didn't see him as kate but so when this movie when they started uh you know releasing promotional material and stuff for it i'm like okay i'm sold and i could see him as the bad and then he popped up on uh loki as he who remains i was like yep i'm so this is this is going to work. Well, right before the release of this film, or it could have been, yeah, it was right before the release of Quantumania. That's when all of the, you know, foolishness happened in his personal life involving the ex-girlfriend and the domestic abuse stuff and all this here. And that was that grand opening, grand closing. That was it for Jonathan Majors. and Marvel had to quickly course correct and instead of recasting King the Conqueror they just done away with them they decided to move in a different direction now I'm not gonna fanboy out here you know cause I'm a huge Jonathan Majors fan in spite of the stuff that he was accused of and he was found guilty of or played to whatever the case may be if he was wrong he was wrong but Bye. I mean, as far as this story, and it's not about Jonathan Major, I feel if you was going to let him go, cast somebody else. Recast the role. Stick to your plan. Because when you course correct in the dead center middle of the thing, it's not going to play out right. And from that moment on, you know, it felt like every other film just didn't matter. Even though... the films that came out around this time you know uh in 2023 they were already filmed you know they were already done but it was just it just didn't feel right it just didn't feel like this was part of the same saga you know after quantumania you had uh guardians of the galaxy volume 3 which was great a good wrap up to that trilogy and then you had the marvels just horrible just horrible just it just did not it did not land did not land at all uh the less said about that movie the better and then we move on to just this past year in 2024 with Deadpool and Wolverine that that worked now it worked in a degree it didn't work for the overall MCU storytelling element wise but it did work for Deadpool you know it worked as a love letter to all of the uh Fox X-Men films which that's all it was it was just a goodbye letter from the fox universe of x-men movie and and that's that's cool that was cool i loved it but as far as pushing the mcu narrative narrative forward it did none of that it did none of that um captain america brave new world they shouldn't have made that movie that movie was so upsetting to me it's still bothers me to this day i i can't believe and i watched it twice i still cannot i can't i can't believe that movie was that bad i really just i really don't know why they made this movie this way and that movie went through so many reshoots and so many uh script changes and character changes and recasting in this role and that role and that's what y'all came up with You know, it just... it crashed and burned it crashed and burned at least in my soul um it didn't work and so that brings us to the end that brings us to the end of phase five where this upcoming weekend we get thunderbolts and that brings us to the question yeah it took me 40 something minutes to get to it but it brings us to the question can marvel bounce back can we bounce back will thunderbolts bring us back to what we grown in love from the first saga from the first three phases of this franchise you know now not every film in the first three phases was was bangers now i would be fair and honest with you you know uh iron man 2 it had his moments but it wasn't great you know iron man 3 same thing had his moments, but it wasn't great. The door to Dark World, it it wasn't all that good uh avengers age of oktron was not the greatest you know so it had some it had some misses there uh ant-man and the wasp wasn't all that good either it it had his misses but but this saga this this complete saga has crashed and burned now i've seen a lot of articles or read them i should say read a lot of articles where finger pointing is directed towards uh jonathan major's derailing it and all this here let's not fool ourselves here it was bad before all that jonathan major's mess came into play it was already the ship was already taking on water you know with eternals and the black widow thing with a multiverse of madness or love and thunder it was it was sinking it was sinking Hmm. So I'm not going to pin it on the Jonathan Majors thing. The Jonathan Majors thing just put an extra hole in the bow of the ship. You know, it just took on more water. And from that point on, it was just best to abandon ship instead of trying to get it to port. But now I think this is an opportunity. I think this is a chance. that we can get back on track thunderbolts looks fun i haven't seen it yet i'm going to see it tomorrow it looks fun it and it just feels from the trailers from uh the clips they released it feels like an old school marvel film and i say old school like it was 50 years ago but you know the first three phases and so i'm encouraged by it and then later this year, a couple of months from now, actually in July, we get the Fantastic Four First Steps, which is the first Marvel Fantastic Four film from the MCU proper. And you have Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, and Jonathan Quinn. You have some good additions here. Max Shackman directing. Galactic is in this thing, Silver Surfer is in this thing. It looks amazing, and it looks exciting. So I'm encouraged. And then next year, we get Doomsday, Avengers Doomsday. And this is where Robert Downey Jr. returns. as Victor Von Doom. No, not Tony Stark, Victor Von Doom. And for that reason, I'm not excited for that, as a lot of MCU fans are, but I am deeply intrigued. I am so curious to see how they're going to explain this and pull this off. Now, can Robert Downey Jr. pull off Dr. Doom? Of course he can. But the problem I have... We've grown and loved him for nearly 20 years as Tony Stark. We saw him have the greatest arc in film franchise history as this warmonger, you know, who sells weapons to whoever to sacrifice in his self for the sake of the universe. The greatest arc ever. And now you're going to bring them back as the villain. It's weird. And there's no proper introduction here. You know, I guess technically this is his movie. But we don't have enough time to kind of soak him in like we did with Thanos, you know, in the first saga. So that's the only thing that kind of gives me pause on it. That's why I'm not excited floating over the moon about it. But i am super interested then we get the return of spider-man after doomsday uh spider-man brand new day tom holland holland is returning dustin daniel cretin is uh directing this film he's the director of shang chi and the ten rings so uh i already told you how much i enjoyed that film so what he gonna bring to uh spider-man is he gonna bring that same energy i hope so because that was a fun energy he brought to that film um let's see where that ends and then we wrap up this entire saga with avengers secret wars in 2027 now that film if done like the comics is going to be the biggest movie of all time you know i'm talking production wise is gonna be huge if it's done like is done in the comics. So, yes, they have a way, and it will rival Endgame if they do it right. But it's all, everything, guys, it has to work from here on. If Thunderbolt, Fantastic Four, fail, crash, and burn, it doesn't even, the rest of this don't even matter. Doomsday don't even matter. Secret Wars don't even matter. That's how important. these films are and i don't think they should be taken lightly only if you're a fan of this franchise you know if you don't care if you if you're just a casual viewer of these films you you probably could care less but if you follow each and every film tooth to nail if you watch every disney plus show uh religiously you know follow this like you would follow a comic series You know, if a new issue drops on a Tuesday, you're there. You know, if you follow it like that, yeah, this is important. This is very important. But I'm encouraged. I actually feel good moving forward because, like I said, the next two films looks good. Looks good. You know, I'm not expecting Thunderbolts to be Captain America Civil War. I don't expect it to be that high. You know, I expect it to be. if it's as good as if it's as good as guardians of the galaxy volume 2 which is not as good as the first one definitely not as good as the third one but it's good enough you know it was entertaining i actually liked it but i didn't love it like i loved the first one and loved the second if it's as good if it's on that level of volume 2 of guardians of the galaxy we're good we're in good shape so That's my hope and prayer. And now after Secret Wars, nothing is really, quote unquote, announced. You know, they have a planned Armor Wars movie with Don Cheadle returning as a war machine. You have Black Panther 3. Now that has been announced. Ryan Coogler is returning to write and direct that film. And they will be a... T-ch-T'Challa in that movie? So... that ought to be interesting to see how they go blade my god blade has been uh announced but there is no date there's no movement on production they have been i i have nothing to say about blade but anyways you have uh the x-men the x-men uh is coming soon uh no dates on that no real casting on that but I think a lot will be determined after uh secret wars after secret wars we're gonna spawn off into the mutant saga and i think a lot of it will uh focus on the x-men and mutants going forward in this next saga they really should have did that instead of the multiverse saga maybe save the multiverse saga till later but that's fine you know can't can't pour the milk back in the carton now But, yeah, that's why I think Black Panther 3 is coming out around this time because we're going to get the introduction of Storm, I believe, in that film. You know, Blade. Blade isn't a mutant, but that'll be a nice way to introduce some new mutant characters and whatnot. So there's a lot to play with here. Can't wait to see what happens. But I am excited for... Thunderbolts and what it can offer it just feels like a grounded Superhero film that we haven't gotten in a while. We've been in the multiverse, you know, we've been in galaxies We we have a superhuman people all of these characters in this film are grounded You know, they're more relatable and I think that will help this film succeed. But uh, yes My answer to the question is yes, I have faith. I have confidence that the MCU will indeed rebound and get back to prominence. I would like to know what do you think going forward? Are you excited for Thunderbolts and the Fantastic Four and the two new Avengers films that are coming down the pike soon? I would love to know your thoughts. Email the show kbradiopodcasts at gmail.com. You can also search for the show on all social media platforms. Just search for the KB Radio Network. Subscribe to the KB Radio Network channel on YouTube. Like this video if you don't mind. Also, don't forget about the five stars, the reviews, the sharing. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, wherever you are currently listening to movie. goodness here on the kb radio network everybody thank you for joining me as we pose the question can marvel studios bounce back i want you all to know that i love you continue to love everyone and until we speak again you all be blessed
Description
With the 36th film, Thunderbolts* coming out this weekend and The Fantastic Four: First Step later this summer, can Marvel Studios return to being the number film franchise?
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Transcription
Well, hello everyone and welcome to Movie Goodness where we examine life through cinema here on the KB Radio Network. I am your host Kevin Reed and I'm coming to you today asking a very serious question. Can Marvel Studios bounce back? And when I say bounce back, bounce back to what we... have grown to love from this film franchise we are 35 films in not counting the you know disney plus shows that has been released over the past five years just just cinematically just on the on the big screen 35 films about to go into the 36th this upcoming weekend with thunderbolts but we've got 35 films and we've hit kind of a wall here you know with a lot of lackluster returns in investment man i mean ever since endgame and that's the that's pretty much the point that marvel it feels like marvel was just throwing stuff against the wall seeing what stuck after that you know they had no clear direction and i'm not saying that they didn't but it just feels that way You know, me as a kid growing up, deeply into comics, love comics. And when comic book movies started to kind of take off in the early 2000s, I was like, oh man, finally. I was like The Rock, finally. We've got good comic book adaptations, you know, because prior to that, yes, we had Superman the movie. Christopher Reeves, Richard Donner directing, the late, great Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor. Yes, that was awesome for its time, but it wasn't the greatest thing. You know, when you look back on it, it wasn't the greatest. But Christopher Reeves' adaptation of Superman as Clark Kent makes it such an excellent film. Superman 2 also That's the first one I saw, ironically enough. I saw Superman 2 before I saw Superman 1. It is weird. It's due to my birth. My birth was wiped between both movies. And for some strange reason, you know, when I got old enough, I watched Superman 2 first. But that's neither here nor there. We fast forward. The next real, I guess you could say, big comic book movie we got was Batman. from 1989 with uh michael keaton as batman tim burton directing the movie and it was a cultural phenomenon it was a global phenomenon a pop culture uh phenomenon and it took the world by storm and that franchise that film series uh up until it just went off the rails with batman Batman and Robin but it was an excellent a comic book franchise and marvel was they didn't have anything around the time but i think the only thing we got from marvel cinematically was howard the duck that was in the 80s and that that has been described as the worst movie not comic book movie one of the worst movies ever made always liked howard the duck yeah i can point out now that it's stupid but when i was a kid that was that was exciting to me to see a duck run around that can talk and interact with humans and so it hey it i didn't even know it was a comic book when i was growing up i think it was later in life when i found out it was a comic book actually to be honest with you i saw the comic but i thought the comic book was based off of the movie. They were like, oh, the movie? So we're going to make a comic book, Karen. No, the book came first. But anyways, that was it for Marvel. For years, they were talking about making a Spider-Man movie. For years, we saw talks of a credible Hulk movie. That was it. That was about as far as it got. And now, if you want to count this Captain America movie that came out in the... I think around 90, 91, somewhere up in there. If you want to count that, which wasn't even released in theaters, fine, you can count it. If you want to count the Fantastic Four film that they made around that same time that nobody had saw, it's fine. You can count that as well. But Marvel just, we weren't getting anything going at Marvel Studios or Marvel Films at the time. So we fast forward to the early 2000s and we finally get the announcement of a Spider-Man movie. And it came from the unlikely of places with James Cameron. James Cameron was going to make a Spider-Man movie right after he had finished making Titanic. And he had worked on the outline, storyline, and everything was moving. floyd i think leonardo dicaprio was going to play spider-man uh arnold schwarzenegger was going to be doc ock if i'm not mistaken yeah they they were setting it up to be something awesome and i was excited you know i i think i was reading keeping up with it because this is pre-internet and i was keeping up with it by um reading the uh wizard books yeah i remember that magazine with uh wizard um Yeah, that's how I was keeping up with the production and everything of that, because I was super excited. Spider-Man is one of my favorite characters. So to see him in live action, I was hyped up for it. Well, that fell through, and Sam Raimi took over, and the rest, as they say, is history. Tobey Maguire was cast as Peter Parker. William Dafoe was cast as Osborn, Norman Osborn, and we were off and running. And. Marvel finally have kind of stuck their flag in the film world because that movie was amazing for me at the time. And it still is. You can go back and watch that very first Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire and really appreciate it for what it was. It really didn't date that much. It's not that dated. You know, it is in parts. Don't get me wrong. It is in parts, but it was still good. It still holds up for the most part. uh spider-man 2 is even better arguably one of the best comic book movies ever made um spider-man versus doc ock another character i'm used to just have fantasies about seeing in live action and finally getting to see it in live action was a joy and so we got these films you know and i got kind of ahead of myself you know before we got spider-man and all of that, what really broke open the Marvel universe, not the MCU that we know now, but what really broke open this universe for comic book movies was Blade. Blade was the film that, once again, I knew of the character. I didn't read any Blade issues, but, you know, I've read issues where Blade popped up. He was in a Spider-Man. uh uh run for a little while when they were going after uh uh what's his name uh jared leto played him in the movie uh man why am i blanking on his name that's how bad the movie was but anyway he'll come to me but yeah they teamed up and i knew a little bit about blake but i was a big fan of wesley snipe so when that movie came out and you know just took the world by I was like, oh, man, this is awesome. Then you get Blade 2, and unfortunately, we got Blade Trinity, but those first two Blade movies were just bangers. I was like, man, I think we're on the right track, and X-Men came along not too long after that, the first X-Men film from Bryan Singer in the year 2000, and, you know, anybody who knows me, X-Men was my jam. I love X-Men to this day. Love X-Men because I love the storytelling in X-Men because there's so much more. It isn't just these costume mutants running around fighting against oppression and whatnot. It's so much more to it, you know, and it's such an exciting story that has been told for, I don't know, 60, 70 years or whatever. But it is an exciting story. Really love it. Can't wait to see it play out in the MCU, hopefully soon. yeah those films started coming out and they were hit and miss you know you you get a good one then a bad one a good one then a bad one and you know very inconsistent but in the year 2008 business picked up uh marvel studios decided they were going to go all in they were facing bankruptcy and so they decided to go all in you know they had already licensed out a lot of their uh characters from the comics, you know. They didn't have the rights and I was crazy that Marvel didn't have the rights to their own characters But they were broke and so they had the license off their characters in order to survive You know, they didn't have the Fantastic Four. They didn't have x-men. They didn't have blade. They didn't have spider-man They didn't have their major characters. And so they wanted to launch their own studio and in 2008 they released Iron Man and Jon Favreau really good actor, if you don't realize it, but he is a really good actor, funny guy, he directed this film, and prior to this, he directed Elf, and it was another film, it was like a Jumanji ripoff, I can't think of the name of that either, I'm blanking today, but he directed those two films, and I was interested, you know, I was curious to see how this will play out because I like the Iron Man. and in the comics and i always compared him to batman because batman is my all-time overall favorite uh comic book character it was just iron man didn't have as tragic of a backstory as uh bruce wayne but still interesting they're both billionaires neither of them have superpowers but they found the way to exist in this superpower worlds that they both live in and i always often compared to two that's why i kind of followed iron man a little bit more in marvel comics but they took a big risk in making this film and then they made the biggest risk of all by casting robert downey jr as tony stark and this is the robert downey jr who is just a couple of years removed from being in prison you know from getting in trouble with the law with the the drugs and the drinking and back and forth in court and in jail and all this other stuff and but nobody has ever no matter what he was going through in his personal life nobody ever questioned his acting the dude is a phenomenal actor i think the film that really brought him back to prominence was kiss kiss bang bang and that movie was so good and he was so good in it you know along with val Kilmer. uh r.i.p uh that was just a phenomenal movie small little movie but i think that was what helped catapult him uh back to the status where people were like okay robert's back you know he could he could still do it and it helped him land the role now it wasn't easy you know there was pushed back but eventually they were won over and here we are 35 films of going on to 36 films later and it wouldn't be here if it wasn't for robert downey jr and we're going to touch in on a little later he's still a part of the mcu but spoiler alert not as tony stark but that's neither here nor there uh that movie did phenomenal in the box office, it set up a whole universe and set up the I get not the invention because they always have post-credit scenes in movies but not in every single movie but it really planted its flag in the post-credit scene setting up something bigger down the line or for the next film down the line and when samuel l jackson popped up with the eye patch at the very end of that film in the post-credit scene as nick fury because at that point in the comics. They had changed Nick Fury from being a white man to being a black man. And not just any black man, but they modeled him, the character of Nick Fury in the comics, they modeled him as Samuel L. Jackson. So when it came time to play him on the big screen, well, let's give Samuel L. Jackson a call. And he answered, thank God. And the rest, as they say, is history. We were off and running with The Incredible Hulk, which came out of... a few months after that, Iron Man 2 a couple of years after that, Thor, Captain America, and then we got the Avengers, the culmination of all of these characters, a film that I thought was virtually impossible. impossible to achieve on the big screen because you're asking multiple actors multiple characters to share the screen with one another and they did it man they pulled it off and that movie went on to make a billion dollars and it uh wrapped up phase one and i never understood the phase well at least i didn't understand the phase thing early on i'm like what what does phase mean But it was just sections of this cinematic universe because we're going full steam ahead with a larger plot. All right, cool. But at the end of the Avengers, in this post-credit scene, we saw Thanos. And everybody lost their collective mind. And it was like, oh, my God. We're actually moving on to some big, big things, you know, if you read the comics. So we move on to phase two, we get Iron Man 3, we get Thor, the Dark World, which a lot of people, eh, not so much liked. You know, it wasn't their favorite at that point. That was the one swing and miss from Marvel, even though it was financially successful, but a lot of the fans still don't like it to this day. I didn't mind it, but it definitely wasn't the best. It was the worst up to this point. in the MCU uh then you get Captain America the Winter Soldier which a lot of people still now consider the best MCU film probably the best comic book movie uh I've heard that argument and I don't I'm not even gonna fight it I don't agree with it but I'm not gonna fight you with it because it is an excellent excellent movie uh Guardians of the Galaxy which just expand this universe literally. by going into the galaxy by going into this world and with characters that nobody knew nobody knew who star-lord was nobody knew who drax the uh uh destroyer was nobody knew about goop and rocket raccoon the talking raccoon and a talking tree did they really they really swung for the feet for the fence with that and lo and behold it worked it worked that movie was amazing um After that we get another Avengers film Avengers age of Ultron which a little a little skittish a Little skittish. I had a lot of hopes for that because Ultron is a very What's the word I could Describe as a villain. Well, he's just a he's a cold-blooded villain in the comics. And so I didn't like this adaptation of that character i didn't like this version of the character and the film suffered because all the all avengers age of ultron did was set up phase three that's all it was there for it didn't it it was not his separate movie it was just a commercial for phase three and so that i didn't too much care for um after that you get ant-man and that wrapped up phase two right so we get to phase three. And phase three is when they really, really went all in. Now we're steamrolling towards the bigger, bigger kind of culmination here. We start phase three with Captain America Civil War, which, you know, you can also retitle as Avengers 2.5. You had Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, Spider-Man. homecoming which uh it's the rights are still with sony but they shared it due to some deal which worked out for both parties i believe uh spider-man homecoming was was awesome you have uh thor ragnarok rock which also was awesome i'm telling you phase three was was just banging man Phase 3 was banging. After Ragnarok, you got... Black Panther. Black freaking Panther, Ed. Nobody saw that coming. Nobody thought that movie was going to be that good. The first Marvel film out of all the films I just named to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Didn't win, but it was nominated, and that within his right, within his own right, is an amazing task. It did win an Academy Award for best score, best costume design, I believe, or set design, probably both. But it did rack up some awards, so kudos to them. We go from that to Avengers Infinity War. And, you know, reading the comics, I knew what Infinity War was. I knew what the Infinity Saga is. And I knew what happens at the end of Infinity War. But honestly, it never really dawned on me until I was watching the movie that, wait, I think they're going to do this. They're actually going to do this. And when Thanos got all of the stone and made the snap, I just, I turned to my wife. I can't believe they did it. I can't believe they did it. I was so shocked that the villain won, that Thanos won, the Avengers lost. And spoiler alert, I like Infinity War more than Endgame. Believe it or not, that is. I enjoyed that more because of the stakes involved in what happened at the end. It was so much of an emotional impact. Don't get me wrong. There was a big emotional swing in the end game, but this one just hit different. A couple of months after that, you get Ant-Man and the Wasp, which wasn't all that good. I mean, it was all right, but, you know, coming off the Infinity War. it it was just bad placement in my in my humble opinion um captain uh not america but captain marvel came next which was fine it was fine it didn't move the needle either way but you know good on them and then we get in game then we get avengers in game and it was named m game for a reason because that's that was the end that was the end of the infinity saga that was the end well technically they count the film after this uh spider-man far from home the end of the infinity saga but it ended with end game with me that that was it i mean we wrapped up our original avengers you know tony died uh cap went to live a a happy life with peggy uh thor went on his uh a self-discovery journey and You know, Black Widow died and, you know, so on and so on. I mean, everybody pretty much moved on. And that was that. You know, they went to war with the galaxy's probably biggest bad there is. And they defeated them. You know, they had to go back in time and do a time heist to do it, but they did it. And so it was cool. It was an actual great end to this saga. And so you get far from home, which was good, you know, all of the Spider-Man movies were good. So this is where it started to kind of turn for me. This is where it really started to go like, you know, where do we go from here? How can you exceed what you accomplished in those first three phases? You know, in that entire saga, because everything was just brilliantly. done nothing was rushed they took their time all the characters were developed you had a villain that was sprinkled throughout this little 10-year journey that they went on uh in this saga and so everything had a proper payoff a proper build and a proper payoff and so we move into the multiverse saga and when they announced that I was I was very skeptical because I'm not a big multiverse person I didn't care for it in the comics and I really didn't care for it in the films and the audiences didn't either now granted a lot of factors a lot of factors uh kind of hampled this saga kind of hampled the films that were being released. Here on after you know it and it affected the quality of some of the film it did I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna be naive and say like oh man is deep Marvel just put it on cruise control No, it was a lot of things that played a part and why this wasn't as successful of a saga as The Infinity Saga the multiverse saga Started off. We're in a pandemic You have films that were slated to come out in 2020 that couldn't come out. You know, films that were scheduled to start filming in 2020 couldn't start filming. You know, films or shows that were in the middle of production had to stop filming. The world stopped in 2020. And so a lot of that affected. this soccer as well as our lives personally and everything else in the world so i'm not just saying like what was me tomorrow but everybody went through it in 2020 it was horrible so uh marvel is no exception so everything got pushed back we yeah we had to roll over with uh wandavision we had falcon in the winter soldier on all both of those uh shows were on disney plus and i think Disney Plus kind of hurt. as well because disney plus shows well we're about to witness that this weekend with thunderbolts there are characters in thunderbolts that we haven't seen unless you watch some of these disney plus shows i hate to be the bearer of bad news you know you you're probably gonna go there and wonder who is he or how did elena uh blow but how why is she at this point Well, you had to watch Hawkeye. You had to watch Falcon and the Winter Soldier. You know that these play roles in the MCU proper. So I do, and I know this, I'm stating this because I know people who have asked me, and they don't have Disney Plus. Oh, do I need to watch the show? Well, it would help. It would help. You know, that's just like, well, I'll get to it. I'll get to that when we get to that. but yeah it it really hurt it but as far as the film size the theatrical side of everything the first film to be released in the multiverse saga was black widow and that was in 2021 and that movie as as much as i was all right with the movie the movie wasn't bad the movie just came out five maybe six years too late if they would have put this out in phase beginning of phase three maybe the end of phase two it probably would have hit better you know because that's when black widow was hot the character was hot you know now you give her a solo movie after we just witnessed her die two years earlier and avengers endgame it doesn't help. It didn't help the calls at all because... You know that she's going to survive at the end of this movie. There is no stakes there. You know, at least that's how I was looking at it. And I couldn't really get into it. There was no sense of urgency or danger for her character because I know she's going to survive this movie. You know, so it didn't help the cause. I think that was just bad, bad scheduling. They should have made that movie years ago so it could have fit. properly in the mcu timeline and now the next film that was released by marvel studios was shang chi in the legend of the ten rings which is probably one of the best films to come out of this phase of this saga it was amazing and why they haven't made another shang chi is is beyond my mind it's beyond my way of thinking it is so good so good yeah it gives a little cgi messy at the end but that film as a whole was amazing i had such a good time with shang chi not so much with the eternals now and when i first saw the eternals i was like okay it's fine you know it's fine and i gave it a rare review i remember uh when it came out but when i think back now i'm like well you know i was just craved for superhero movies at that time you realize in 2021 due to the pandemic and everything uh marvel put out four movies in 2021 and so i was i was just all in on these comic book movies because for about a year and a half we didn't get any we didn't get nothing from all And so, yeah, I was just happy to see it. Now I look back, I was like, man, that movie was not that good. It wasn't really all that good. It was boring. That movie was boring. And everybody knows it. Marvel knows it. That's why you haven't heard a whisper of the Eternals. You haven't heard anything involving the Eternals in the MCU since that movie has come out. Just till recently with Captain America brave new world that we finally see Tima D celestial sticking out of the ocean. We finally got that reference after what four years In about seven eight movies later. Do you finally get a reference to it? But neither here nor there then you get spider-man no way home. Oh my god man that look the fact that that movie exists is the reason i wake up every morning smiling the fact that i was able to uh god gave me the health and strength to get up go to the theater and watch it for the first time when it came out that weekend with a crowd with the cheering with you know the first theatrical experience i've had since the pandemic and that was the first time that was in a long time that i felt like i was at the movies and it was worth the wait it was worth every second i i love that movie still to this day i'll watch it at least once a year um it is so good um after that you get doctor strange in the multiverse of madness which was kind of a letdown because you promised this multiverse of madness And all we got was madness. There was no multiverse, you know? It was nothing there. It was no dare-dare. It was just, meh. It wasn't good. It wasn't bad. It was just, meh. You know? But it was better than Thor Love and Thunder, which came out after that. Man, you want to talk about disappointing. I mean, you have Taika Waititi returning to direct after. directing uh thor ragnarok you know and once again the promise of a bigger world you got christian bale as the villain and that was the best part of the movie him the problem was he was the it was like he was the only one in the movie that realized he was in the movie everybody else was jokey jokey play play play and look it worked for ragnarok it didn't work here this was So bad. I I still wake up in night sweats thinking about Thunder um After that we get Black Panther Wakanda forever and clearly not as good as the first one but but Not one to make excuses, but man they had a lot going on with Ryan Coogler trying to make this movie Ryan Coogler had to deal, first and foremost, he has to film this film during a pandemic. That's number one. Number two, right before they're about to start pre-production, we got the tragic passing of the star of the movie, Chadwick Boseman. He passes away. And that just put a monkey wrench into everything. Because now is the question. Should we recast? Should they not? And they chose not to recast T'Challa. And look, I get it. You know, in the moment, I fully supported that. But as time went on, I was like, no, because you have a great number of people who love that character, who didn't have a Clark Kent. Didn't have a Bruce Wayne. Didn't have a Tony Stark to look up to. You know, they couldn't look in the mirror and see these characters in the mirror. But they can look in the mirror and see a T'Challa. They can look in the mirror and see a Black Panther. So that's why they should have recast it. You know, and I get the emotional aspect of it all and the respect factor of it all. I get that. A hundred percent. You know, Chadrick Boseman was Black Panther. And he will always be Black Panther. You know, he owned that role. He was amazing. as the character of T'Challa, but they should have recast. If anything, just scrap this particular idea and wait it a little while. You know, not just throw yourself into it. But in any event, you had those two, and then you shift gears to make Shuri the main character, which isn't a bad idea. this happened in the comics as well this is a actual thing sherry did take over black panther uh for a while so that's fine but during filming she caught covet and she ended up uh hurting herself in a stunt during filming you know so those were two setbacks yeah it was just it was a whole mess the mere fact that this movie wrapped and was cohesive and was actually entertaining for the most part even though like i said it wasn't nowhere near the first film but it was good enough is a miracle within itself uh but uh you had that going but that was the end of phase four so we moved to phase five and you get ant-man and the walls quantum mania and this is where business picked up this is where it really started to go off the rails Um... Quantumania was to set up the main villain of this saga. The multiverse saga was supposed to wrap up just like the Infinity Saga wrapped up with Thanos being the main bad. The Infinity, not the Infinity, the multiverse saga was going to wrap up with Kang the Conqueror. And that character was played by... Jonathan Majors. And Jonathan Majors is an amazing actor. Amazing actor. And when they first cast him, when they announced that, I don't see it. At first, I was like, really? Out of everybody, I chose Jonathan Majors, you know, because at that time he wasn't as big. I think around the time they announced that he was on this show, Lovecraft. country and i i enjoyed that show i i hate the fact that it only lasted one season that was a really good show but i just didn't see him as kate but so when this movie when they started uh you know releasing promotional material and stuff for it i'm like okay i'm sold and i could see him as the bad and then he popped up on uh loki as he who remains i was like yep i'm so this is this is going to work. Well, right before the release of this film, or it could have been, yeah, it was right before the release of Quantumania. That's when all of the, you know, foolishness happened in his personal life involving the ex-girlfriend and the domestic abuse stuff and all this here. And that was that grand opening, grand closing. That was it for Jonathan Majors. and Marvel had to quickly course correct and instead of recasting King the Conqueror they just done away with them they decided to move in a different direction now I'm not gonna fanboy out here you know cause I'm a huge Jonathan Majors fan in spite of the stuff that he was accused of and he was found guilty of or played to whatever the case may be if he was wrong he was wrong but Bye. I mean, as far as this story, and it's not about Jonathan Major, I feel if you was going to let him go, cast somebody else. Recast the role. Stick to your plan. Because when you course correct in the dead center middle of the thing, it's not going to play out right. And from that moment on, you know, it felt like every other film just didn't matter. Even though... the films that came out around this time you know uh in 2023 they were already filmed you know they were already done but it was just it just didn't feel right it just didn't feel like this was part of the same saga you know after quantumania you had uh guardians of the galaxy volume 3 which was great a good wrap up to that trilogy and then you had the marvels just horrible just horrible just it just did not it did not land did not land at all uh the less said about that movie the better and then we move on to just this past year in 2024 with Deadpool and Wolverine that that worked now it worked in a degree it didn't work for the overall MCU storytelling element wise but it did work for Deadpool you know it worked as a love letter to all of the uh Fox X-Men films which that's all it was it was just a goodbye letter from the fox universe of x-men movie and and that's that's cool that was cool i loved it but as far as pushing the mcu narrative narrative forward it did none of that it did none of that um captain america brave new world they shouldn't have made that movie that movie was so upsetting to me it's still bothers me to this day i i can't believe and i watched it twice i still cannot i can't i can't believe that movie was that bad i really just i really don't know why they made this movie this way and that movie went through so many reshoots and so many uh script changes and character changes and recasting in this role and that role and that's what y'all came up with You know, it just... it crashed and burned it crashed and burned at least in my soul um it didn't work and so that brings us to the end that brings us to the end of phase five where this upcoming weekend we get thunderbolts and that brings us to the question yeah it took me 40 something minutes to get to it but it brings us to the question can marvel bounce back can we bounce back will thunderbolts bring us back to what we grown in love from the first saga from the first three phases of this franchise you know now not every film in the first three phases was was bangers now i would be fair and honest with you you know uh iron man 2 it had his moments but it wasn't great you know iron man 3 same thing had his moments, but it wasn't great. The door to Dark World, it it wasn't all that good uh avengers age of oktron was not the greatest you know so it had some it had some misses there uh ant-man and the wasp wasn't all that good either it it had his misses but but this saga this this complete saga has crashed and burned now i've seen a lot of articles or read them i should say read a lot of articles where finger pointing is directed towards uh jonathan major's derailing it and all this here let's not fool ourselves here it was bad before all that jonathan major's mess came into play it was already the ship was already taking on water you know with eternals and the black widow thing with a multiverse of madness or love and thunder it was it was sinking it was sinking Hmm. So I'm not going to pin it on the Jonathan Majors thing. The Jonathan Majors thing just put an extra hole in the bow of the ship. You know, it just took on more water. And from that point on, it was just best to abandon ship instead of trying to get it to port. But now I think this is an opportunity. I think this is a chance. that we can get back on track thunderbolts looks fun i haven't seen it yet i'm going to see it tomorrow it looks fun it and it just feels from the trailers from uh the clips they released it feels like an old school marvel film and i say old school like it was 50 years ago but you know the first three phases and so i'm encouraged by it and then later this year, a couple of months from now, actually in July, we get the Fantastic Four First Steps, which is the first Marvel Fantastic Four film from the MCU proper. And you have Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, and Jonathan Quinn. You have some good additions here. Max Shackman directing. Galactic is in this thing, Silver Surfer is in this thing. It looks amazing, and it looks exciting. So I'm encouraged. And then next year, we get Doomsday, Avengers Doomsday. And this is where Robert Downey Jr. returns. as Victor Von Doom. No, not Tony Stark, Victor Von Doom. And for that reason, I'm not excited for that, as a lot of MCU fans are, but I am deeply intrigued. I am so curious to see how they're going to explain this and pull this off. Now, can Robert Downey Jr. pull off Dr. Doom? Of course he can. But the problem I have... We've grown and loved him for nearly 20 years as Tony Stark. We saw him have the greatest arc in film franchise history as this warmonger, you know, who sells weapons to whoever to sacrifice in his self for the sake of the universe. The greatest arc ever. And now you're going to bring them back as the villain. It's weird. And there's no proper introduction here. You know, I guess technically this is his movie. But we don't have enough time to kind of soak him in like we did with Thanos, you know, in the first saga. So that's the only thing that kind of gives me pause on it. That's why I'm not excited floating over the moon about it. But i am super interested then we get the return of spider-man after doomsday uh spider-man brand new day tom holland holland is returning dustin daniel cretin is uh directing this film he's the director of shang chi and the ten rings so uh i already told you how much i enjoyed that film so what he gonna bring to uh spider-man is he gonna bring that same energy i hope so because that was a fun energy he brought to that film um let's see where that ends and then we wrap up this entire saga with avengers secret wars in 2027 now that film if done like the comics is going to be the biggest movie of all time you know i'm talking production wise is gonna be huge if it's done like is done in the comics. So, yes, they have a way, and it will rival Endgame if they do it right. But it's all, everything, guys, it has to work from here on. If Thunderbolt, Fantastic Four, fail, crash, and burn, it doesn't even, the rest of this don't even matter. Doomsday don't even matter. Secret Wars don't even matter. That's how important. these films are and i don't think they should be taken lightly only if you're a fan of this franchise you know if you don't care if you if you're just a casual viewer of these films you you probably could care less but if you follow each and every film tooth to nail if you watch every disney plus show uh religiously you know follow this like you would follow a comic series You know, if a new issue drops on a Tuesday, you're there. You know, if you follow it like that, yeah, this is important. This is very important. But I'm encouraged. I actually feel good moving forward because, like I said, the next two films looks good. Looks good. You know, I'm not expecting Thunderbolts to be Captain America Civil War. I don't expect it to be that high. You know, I expect it to be. if it's as good as if it's as good as guardians of the galaxy volume 2 which is not as good as the first one definitely not as good as the third one but it's good enough you know it was entertaining i actually liked it but i didn't love it like i loved the first one and loved the second if it's as good if it's on that level of volume 2 of guardians of the galaxy we're good we're in good shape so That's my hope and prayer. And now after Secret Wars, nothing is really, quote unquote, announced. You know, they have a planned Armor Wars movie with Don Cheadle returning as a war machine. You have Black Panther 3. Now that has been announced. Ryan Coogler is returning to write and direct that film. And they will be a... T-ch-T'Challa in that movie? So... that ought to be interesting to see how they go blade my god blade has been uh announced but there is no date there's no movement on production they have been i i have nothing to say about blade but anyways you have uh the x-men the x-men uh is coming soon uh no dates on that no real casting on that but I think a lot will be determined after uh secret wars after secret wars we're gonna spawn off into the mutant saga and i think a lot of it will uh focus on the x-men and mutants going forward in this next saga they really should have did that instead of the multiverse saga maybe save the multiverse saga till later but that's fine you know can't can't pour the milk back in the carton now But, yeah, that's why I think Black Panther 3 is coming out around this time because we're going to get the introduction of Storm, I believe, in that film. You know, Blade. Blade isn't a mutant, but that'll be a nice way to introduce some new mutant characters and whatnot. So there's a lot to play with here. Can't wait to see what happens. But I am excited for... Thunderbolts and what it can offer it just feels like a grounded Superhero film that we haven't gotten in a while. We've been in the multiverse, you know, we've been in galaxies We we have a superhuman people all of these characters in this film are grounded You know, they're more relatable and I think that will help this film succeed. But uh, yes My answer to the question is yes, I have faith. I have confidence that the MCU will indeed rebound and get back to prominence. I would like to know what do you think going forward? Are you excited for Thunderbolts and the Fantastic Four and the two new Avengers films that are coming down the pike soon? I would love to know your thoughts. Email the show kbradiopodcasts at gmail.com. You can also search for the show on all social media platforms. Just search for the KB Radio Network. Subscribe to the KB Radio Network channel on YouTube. Like this video if you don't mind. Also, don't forget about the five stars, the reviews, the sharing. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, wherever you are currently listening to movie. goodness here on the kb radio network everybody thank you for joining me as we pose the question can marvel studios bounce back i want you all to know that i love you continue to love everyone and until we speak again you all be blessed
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