"When Will the Marvel Cinematic Universe End?" Topic

"Steven Spielberg thinks that superhero movies will go the way of the Western. As in, moviegoers will get tired of them and stop watching them and the movie studios will stop making them. That sounds hard to believe since slapping Marvel on anything basically guarantees a gazillion dollars but how long can this current Marvel Cinematic Universe of shared worlds over multiple movies feasibly go on for? When will it end? Can it really go on forever?…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Given Westerns were a major force in the cinema for fifty years then they have some time left yet, unfortunately.

Already tired of them, but once the audience has overdosed on them, and suddenly one doesn't make loads of money the movie makers will stop making them and find another fad to ram down cinema audiences' throats.

The Avengers was the last one that I saw. Lost track and interest after that.

The continuing plots may be the thing that kills them. Haven't seen the new Cap A film yet, but I'm thinking that I should revisit at least the first two and also the Avengers movies in order to refresh my memory of the plots.

The other factor will be when they want to reboot Iron Man when Robert Downey eventually stands down. They'll need to leave a couple of years to do that, and by then Cap A and a few others will look "tired" as well.

I don't see it ending any time soon (fortunately) because Marvel keeps making GOOD movies with their properties. If the scripts get bad (like DC's) then I can see them going the way of the dodo, but not for a long while.

It won't happen any time soon because studios have worked out that as those who pass the age of 30 get jaded and bored with them, a whole new bunch of 14-18 year olds get interested. And of course the SFX will be slightly better, and the new actors will appeal to the younger audiences so it won't matter if the plot is the same, rehashed. The one way the superhero movie might wither and go away is if the Far Eastern movie audience stop watching them. That's where the box office money is made.

The thing that keeps them around is that they have a decent story – maybe not great, but good enough – Then they have very good special effects and big action to keep the story going.

Also, with the Marvel universe, they have decades of story lines to pull on. They are already working on the second generation of Avengers for when the original ones fade out.

I don't know how well that will work though, because soon all of the well know characters will fade to the background, and the lesser know characters will take the lead.

I have greatly enjoyed most of the MCU and find them rewatchable. They hit the right combination of action and comedy and quotable phrasing that keeps me entertained.

Even Ant-man which I did not see in the theater because I hate Paul Rudd, I found to be enjoyable and rewatchable.

The Spiderman movies have been dragging and are dead to me.

The X-Men/Wolverine movies have been hit or miss. Days of Future Past gave me a glimmer of hope as a reboot and I am interested to see how well Apocalypse does, but it also may be the end of it for me.

DCU has been mostly miss. I have only enjoyed some of Dark Knight. I find them overly serious and they need some good humour to kill the over drama. I did not enjoy Bats vs. Supes.

How strong is going zombie genre in table top gaming and how long do you think it's going to last?

When I was twelve years old, only 16 years ago, I rented twenty zombie movies for twenty dollars.

One film was made in 1976, in Italy. And of course, Romero put out movies much earlier than that.

Forty years later and there's no sign of its demise.

Super hero movies have been in cinema since at least the 1930s.

Marvel writes soap opera, DC writes myth. It is harder to write the latter *well* for movies as a medium.

(as an aside, the fact that Greco-Roman myth is one long soap opera should make Wonder Woman easier to write well, not harder)

The DC movies have been stuck on the mythic qualities of their characters, ignoring the more approachable "side" characters or relegating them to TV. The Marvel characters not currently under the Disney umbrella usually suffer much the same problem. Too much ICON, not enough person.

By comparison, the Disney Marvel movies and TV shows have been whatever the characters call for. Political intrigue, super agents in trouble, a heist story, a war story, true crime, psychological thriller, etc. They *happen* to have a Cape (or two, four, etc) in them.
You see the weaker movies in the Marvel series emerge when they forget that.

Not my cup of tea. From my point of view, the sooner the better.

Fortunately, I believe they will be around for quite a while.

The Mouse House has shown that it is very adept in making its Marvel Cinematic heroes (Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc.) relatable and likeable with widespread appeal. The fact that these characters are not as popular and iconic as non-Disney Marvel characters such as Spiderman (Sony), the Fantastic Four (20th Century Fox) and the X-Men (20th Century Fox) only proves that it's not the who that matters but how you do it.

People are tired of watching the same heroes rebooted every ten years just so that a studio can hold onto the property. Remember how Sony announced plans to not only make three Andrew Garfield Spiderman movies (less than 10 years after the Tobey Maguire trilogy) plus spin-offs on the Sinister Six and Venom? Because the second installment was so disappointing critically and at the box office, they hit the reset button again and announced the third actor who will play Spidey (Tom Holland), who will make his first appearance in this Friday's 'Captain America: Civil War' in the first cross-over between Sony and Disney franchises that may be a glimpse of things to come. And we all know how last year's reboot of 'Fantastic Four' turned out. Managing our interest and expectations is equally important. "Too much too soon" is bad.

It goes without saying that writing good stories and keeping things fresh are keys to success, but when the first movie is a tough act to follow, the follow-up can only be disappointing by comparison. This is what happened to 'Iron Man 2' and 'Age of Ultron.' We'll have to see if 'GotG,' 'Ant-Man' and the first successful R-rated superhero movie 'Deadpool' (owned by 20th Century Fox) can avoid the same "sophomore slump."

And we all know how last year's reboot of 'Fantastic Four' turned out.

I really enjoyed that as a Science Fiction film rather than a Superhero film. Maybe it was just me. Ok, it was just me.

The FF reboot just wasn't a very good movie, not even as a franchise-free SF movie. Putting the FF name on the front aspired to be the lipstick on the pig, but then they got the FF themselves wrong, too.

The FF are a soap opera for real, and really should be part of the MCU as a TV show. The snappy patter that kept the Avengers movies from being complete effects-fests would actually be more at home with the FF. Write each episode from one of the four's point of view, with a long term structure somewhere between Supernatural, X Files, and Doctor Who. They only time you hear all of Mr. Fantastic's explanations is in his own episodes; for episodes centered on any of the others he gets "tuned out" to some degree, though each of them tunes him out in different ways. They all talk to each other normally, but Reed also tunes each of them out in particular ways.

Yes, Reed Richards is an a-hole. Always has been. Best hidden supervillain the Marvel Universe possesses. He does what he wants when and where he feels like, manipulated the creation of the team in the first place, and generally listens to no one's advice. Even without the invisible trophy wife, her hotheaded kid brother, and the old brawler buddy, he is prime soap opera material, and should be written accordingly.

Hopefully, they'll keep running for a while, since they're keeping a certain artist I know employed.

Wish someone would do some new, Sci-Fi genre space movies though, not in the Star Wars setting.

Need some new stuff for that.

I enjoy them so I hope they never end.

What MCU has done so well is not simply make standard Superhero genre films. But that they have made great film with a whole variety of tones and genres (verging from the Space Opera to political thrillers to heist movies etc), which just happen to star Superheroes as main characters.

They also don't take themselves too seriously, with humour flowing organically from the respective characters. The humour is a great counterpoint to the action and the drama.

Yes the films have faults (name a film series that does n't) but they also have good to great stories at their heart featuring character development, as the characters deal with variety of emotions from PTSD to grief at loss of loved ones, betrayal by own superiors, and vengeance. And that is without delving too much into Spoiler territory for Captain America Civil War.

And this variety of tones and genres is going to get even more pronounced this year with the release of Doctor Strange when it delves into multiple realities.

This being San Diego ComicCon week, we're seeing all sorts of updates,including the second Doctor Strange trailer. It provides some of the things missing from the first, and I am more optimistic than before.