Marvel News

The Captain Marvel trailer dropped and it had two related purposes: 1) clarify the plot of the film since the teaser apparently confused many (my guesses from the teaser were reasonably on-target), 2) introduce Captain Marvel in preparation for her appearance in Avengers 4. There isn't a lot of new material in the trailer vs the teaser, but the plot is spelled out: Carol Danvers is found by the Kree having lost her memories; the Kree alter her, giving her increased power and longer life; she's caught up in the war between the Kree and Skrulls when she comes to earth and her memories begin to return; Nick Fury helps her recover those memories and it seems as though part of her journey is rejecting her old Kree allies (Yon-Rogg et al) as she resolves the conflict. The trailer was better than the teaser (a general sentiment from what I can tell), but still not in the upper echelon of recent trailers (ala Thor: Ragnarok etc). I'm still getting used to Brie Larson's voice as Danvers (the clipped nature of trailers makes it harder for it to impact me), and while the final affects shown aren't quite as clunky some seen in Black Panther (the fight in the heart of Wakanda and, to a lesser extent, part of the car chase in Korea), I think there's room for refinement. On the whole, however, I think what was shown accomplished what it needed too.

The trailer seems to have ended a feud of sorts between fans--there were complaints about the teaser that Captain Marvel didn't smile/seem happy. This complaint lead to journalists talking about how rarely other characters smiled in promotional material and saying the property was being held to a double standard. Whatever you think the truth is, the marketing folks for the MCU had no interest in fighting the good fight (if that's what that is), nor did the MCU want to go full Ghostbusters or Star Wars and wage war on part of the fanbase, so we see Brie Larson enjoying herself in at least part of the trailer and understand why she's so taciturn otherwise.

You can knock me over with a feather--the David Callaham script we heard about a month ago is for... Shang-Chi? Deadline reports the movie is being fast-tracked (see below) as Disney chases Black Panther money (!; the two properties aren't remotely comparable in terms of their background or their relative impact). Added to the character's obscurity is the difficulty is making a martial arts movie work at the box office. Can the MCU do it? It's possible, but Callaham needs to have one hell of a script to make it happen. I briefly discussed the character back in October, but dismissed him getting his own movie because of how dead the genre is (not martial arts itself--the niche is fine and MMA is very popular--but the the films as popular entertainment--arguably there have been no big hits in the last twenty-years (Rush Hour 2 made the most money at 226 million in 2001, which is 322 in 2018 dollars--just slightly more than an adjusted Incredible Hulk). To summarize the hurdles for this film:

• No one has ever heard of Shang-Chi (this didn't matter for Guardians of the Galaxy, but that's a very different property); his very pedestrian nature was made clear when news about the film didn't trend in North America (or Australia, the UK, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Korea, or Japan--after which I stopped checking--this is unlike Captain Marvel whose trailer trended worldwide)
• His gimmick (martial arts) is generic and common--most MCU characters use martial arts
• He's Chinese, not "Asian" (or even "Southeast Asian")--being Chinese does not automatically make him appealing throughout Asia
• There's nothing particularly interesting about his comicbook history; he had stereotypical adventures during the martial arts boom of the 70s/early 80s, but then his comic died and he became a periodic bit player for other, more popular. heroes (never experiencing the renaissance of Iron Fist had ten years ago, for example)

These are all surmountable obstacles, but it's one hell of a mountain to climb. I think he absolutely needs an established character appearing in his film (Doctor Strange would be an obvious choice, but the MCU may want to steer clear of that given the 'controversy' surrounding the first film--and just using Wong would not count as a meaningful addition). Someone this obscure needs at minimum a lead-in from another movie (Black Widow?). The A-list character would participate ala Iron Man in Spider-Man: Homecoming or Hulk in Thor: Ragarok. I take these elements as absolutely necessary for Shang-Chi to succeed as one would expect an MCU-movie to succeed (I have to think one of the lessons learned from Ant-Man and the Wasp is that adding lesser-known characters to a franchise does not give it the boost that adding established characters does).

A final point: why the fast-track? There's no fan demand for this, so why is the MCU in such a hurry?  I've seen arguments that Marvel is aiming hard for the Chinese audience, but they already do incredibly well in China. What I think is going on is related to what I talked about before: putting out three films in 2020. Let's briefly recap the situation:

• 1) Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was moved from 2020, leaving the MCU with just Black Widow and The Eternals on their slate
• 2) Disney wants at least three MCU films a year (supposition on my part, but a safe one)
• 3) With such a short turn around (less than two years) any effects-heavy or star-heavy project is impossible (the former due to time, the latter due to commitments)

A character like Shang-Chi (with his lore) is both inexpensive and relatively quick to do, so what I think happened is that the idea of a film for the character has been floating around the MCU for quite some time, but the sudden need to hurry out a title in 2020 is what pulled the trigger. Perhaps they'll include Namor in the film (he's often fan-cast as an Asian character), although despite his lengthy history I don't think he has enough cache to bring people in (it could be the same problem as adding Wasp to Ant-Man--the addition of an unknown to a small property doesn't boost it). It'll be interesting to watch developments as the project unfolds.

The theory that Thanos is in the past on Titan (via an image of concept art that came out; Kinda Culty presented this theory awhile ago and I included it in my discussion of Avengers 4) was debunked at the Collider Q&A. The idea never made much sense to me as it seemed very ancillary to the main thrust of the plot.

Andre has posted a video about the Netflix cancellations of its Marvel shows and rightly points to corporate politics as the reason--that Netflix does not want the shows to act as support to Disney's rival streaming service. The only thing in the video that I question is the idea that the viewership numbers of Luke Cage and Iron Fist season two are lower--as I pointed out at the time that information comes from Business Insider which had the same opinion of Daredevil season three and then had to back off that when they got hold of better data (trying to measure social media impact was not a great indicator of viewership). All that really matters, as Andre points out, is that Disney is a competitor and Netflix has no interest in helping them.

I haven't seen anyone talk about the fate of the remaining Marvel Entertainment TV properties (ie, Agents of Shield, The Runaways, and Cloak & Dagger), now that the MCU-proper is entering that sphere. I think it goes without saying that all properties that were not created through Kevin Feige don't 'count' and are therefore not part of the MCU. While there's theoretical creative space to bring at least the latter two shows into the fold, I don't expect that to be the case as Feige has shown no inclination to play ball with Ike Perlmutter's part of the Marvel Universe.

For quite some time Jeremy Conrad and his buddy Daniel RPK (passim) have been putting out vague rumours--eventually they claimed the Avengers 4 trailer would be part of a good week for Marvel. The pair got scooped by John Campea of all people (who, to my recollection, hasn't had a correct scoop in years), who provided tangible dates for its release as well as the Captain Marvel trailer. The tendency of the aforementioned duo to put out vague rumours has managed to get all such banned from Marvel's subreddit. Conrad, incredibly, was whining on Twitter that some 'small site' had scooped he and Daniel prior to Campea putting out the information--Conrad basically pulled a Campea on someone smaller than himself--which does not paint him in a positive light.

To go further into this for a moment: the big scoop this week wasn't when the trailer would drop (we all knew it would be around the same time as the Infinity War teaser last year), but that Shang-Chi was in development. No one had this news--not Conrad, not Daniel RPK, not Umberto Gonzalez, etc. THS had the scoop about the writer (link above), but with no idea what he was working on. I bring this up because I want to illustrate just how rare such scoops are--Conrad's whole site is based on one scoop (The Eternals; he may have the A4 title correct as well, but that's still to be determined); Umberto's last was simply Catherine Longford being cast in Avengers 4 without knowing who she was playing; Daniel hasn't had anything MCU-related that I'm aware of; we can also cross off Derek Cornell (The Disney Insider) as a valid source as his rumour about a new Guardians 3 director has been debunked. Since I started this blog THS has had the best track record, although as I pointed out last time they have issues as well.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)