MCU News & Notes

The Illuminerdi, which gets its material from Daniel (cf), is reporting that John Krasinski will appear in Doctor Strange 2 as Reed Richards. If accurate it confirms one of the longest running casting rumours there is in Marvel, as he's been fancasted since before I started writing about the MCU. The word is he'll be a multiverse appearance, but Sutton believes public pressure will force Feige to keep him in the role (rather than getting whatever 'brave' bizarre choice MCU's casting directors would thrust upon us). Normally I'd dismiss Sutton's idea, but the MCU brand has suffered enough that Feige might actually yield to that pressure.

Reshoots for films, particularly MCU films and shows, are normal--planned long before principal photography has finished. However, we're seeing a couple of cases of massive reshoots that are worth going over:

• Doctor Strange 2 is getting over thirty days of reshoots (that's roughly a third of the time it takes to shoot a film). According to Daniel, they reshot most or all of the America Chavez scenes while adding more cameos (the latter undoubtedly in response to Spider-Man 3's success). Are the Chavez changes a response to the tepid reaction fans have had to the various introduced characters in Phase Four? It's certainly suggestive, particularly given what's happened to Ms. Marvel (below), but what's less clear is how things are being changed. I have to wonder if, ala Witcher season two, the original film had everyone falling all over themselves to tell Chavez how amazing and brave she was.
• Ms. Marvel wrapped filming almost a year ago (official organs say it wrapped in May, while Kamran Pasha claims it wrapped earlier--the point is it has been awhile); originally the show was intended to have the release date used for Hawkeye, but was given a massive delay in October. Rumours are that the show either tested poorly or that Marvel isn't happy with it, so they are desperately trying to fix it. I'm not sure what you can do to rescue an IP that isn't inherently popular, but particularly when its limited fanbase were already not happy with some of the casting. What the MCU intends isn't clear, but they are trying to do something to fix it as these are not typical reshoots.

What I don't expect is that either IP will magically bring back the quality we expected prior to Phase Four. Instead, what it may do is drag these productions somewhere towards average and, in the case of Doctor Strange 2, that might be enough to drag up the box office (especially if the cameos are particularly notable). Normally Marvel tries to keep cameos under wraps, but given how much letting everyone know about them in Spider-Man 3 helped, I can imagine Feige letting early reviewers 'spoil' those appearances to try and drum up more interest (as he did with Eternals, even though that attempt failed). We also have to keep in mind Blade's filming was pushed back significantly, presumably because its star wasn't happy with whatever low caliber script Stacy Osei-Kuffour had provided [cf].

More Nielsen Ratings:

1. Witcher 2,191 (December 20; 1st overall)
2. Hawkeye 580 (finale December 22; +10%, 4th overall)
3. Lost in Space 569 (-56%, 5th overall)
4. Wheel of Time 467 (finale December 24; -8%; 10th overall)
5. The Great British Baking Show 292
6. Selling Tampa 243
7. Money Heist 231
8. The Queen of Flow 218
9. Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous 215
10. Twentysomethings: Austin 185

As expected, given how big it hit last year, Witcher debuted very strongly (almost double The Wheel of Time's opening), but I'm curious to see what the drop off will be--there's no doubt this season has not been received as well as the first (the impact of that will be felt first by the unwanted prequel Netflix is giving us, Witcher: Blood Origin, which viscerally reminds me both of Wheel of Time and the cancelled Game of Thrones prequel series). Hawkeye received a marginal bump for the finale (the power of Kingpin), but a finale couldn't help Wheel of Time's slide down to oblivion (a fan of the show actually thought it was worse than the Game of Thrones finale--ouch). We can summate viewer retention for both of the latter shows:

• Hawkeye 853->580 (68%)
• The Wheel of Time 1,163->467 (40%)

There was much greater interest in Amazon's fantasy epic initially (albeit far less than generated by The Witcher, which makes sense both because the latter is a more popular IP and it had Henry Cavill as an excellent Geralt), but it had a much harder time retaining that interest (granting that Hawkeye still dropped a third of its audience for what was already the lowest viewed MCU show to date). The general praise I've seen for Hawkeye is "it's not as bad as the other MCU shows" and that people like Steinfeld (not for her performance as Kate Bishop, but just the actress). Damning with faint praise isn't much of an endorsement. On the other side, it's much too early for the media to properly dissect how badly Amazon's fantasy effort failed, but someone at the company must be worrying about their much more expensive Lord of the Rings adaptation--while the latter will have much better production values, if the writing quality is just as bad, it's going to suffer much more than Robert Jordan's mostly forgotten epic.

This article was written by Peter Levi

MCU News & Notes

The most interesting thing to me about Sutton's Marvel scoops were his takes on the X-Men and Wolverine (cf). In both cases he was talking about pretty faithful adaptations of classic stories, something that isn't reflected in Phase Four (which is why I've wondered about wish fulfillment). There are a few possibilities, given that I believe Mikey has sources at Marvel (never a question with Marvel Entertainment or Sony, but for awhile I was uncertain about Marvel Studios): 1) this is an idea that's been kicked around because of how iconic the characters are, but before the clowns running Phase Four got their hands on it (Victoria Alonso etc), 2) the surface details are true, but it's going to have the 'all different' angle like the limp version of Kingpin in Hawkeye, 3) the characters will be handing things off to 'better'/modern characters ala Echo, America Chavez, etc. As far as I know, no one has asked Sutton about this and he may not know. Given the approach in Phase Four, I think the lesson Feige will take away from No Way Home is that if you want to kill the past, you need it initially to get people to watch (even if not many people, ala Hawkeye, see below). Perhaps Feige will plug in some of the old Fox actors to get them to perform the handoff (Hugh Jackman to pass the torch to X-23 perhaps--that seems to be what he was trying to do in 2019 when he talked to both Jackman and Patrick Stewart). In some ways it doesn't matter what he's doing if the writing standards at Marvel remain low. For my part, the X-Men were my favourite and I don't want the MCU to tackle them until they've corrected course (if they ever do).

Nielsen ratings for streaming are out for the end of November and first two weeks of December:

1. True Story (Nov.24) 943 (2nd overall behind Red Notice)
2. Hawkeye (Nov.24) 853
3. The Wheel of Time (episodic) 663 (-43%; 6th overall)
4. Cowboy Bebop (Nov.19) 629 (+52%; cancelled before completion)
5. The Great British Baking Show (episodic) 584 (+14%)
6. Selling Sunset (Nov.24) 549
7. The Beatles: Get Back (Nov.25) 503
8. The Queen of Flow (episodic) 480
9. Tiger King (Nov.17) 479 (-30%)
10. Hanna (Nov.24) 372

Then:

1. Lost in Space (Dec.1) 1207 (1st overall; slightly bigger opening than WoT)
2. True Story (Nov.24) 607 (-35%)
3. Hawkeye (Nov.24) 560 (-34%; 6th overall)
4. The Wheel of Time (Nov.19) 537 (-19%; 8th overall)
5. Selling Sunset (Nov.24) 440 (-20%)
6. The Great British Baking Show (episodic) 426 (-27%)
7. The Beatles: Get Back (episodic) 408 (-19%)
8. The Queen of Flow (episodic) 377 (-21%)
9. School of Chocolate (Nov.26) 376
10. Money Heist (December 3) 374

Then:

1. Lost in Space 1,018 (-16%; 1st overall)
2. Hawkeye 527 (-6%; 6th overall)
3. The Wheel of Time 509 (-5%; 7th overall)
4. Money Heist 426 (+14%)
5. Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous (Dec.3) 337
6. The Great British Baking Show 324 (-24%)
7. The Queen of Flow 324 (-14%)
8. Selling Sunset 278 (-37%)
9. True Story 255 (-58%)
10. Cowboy Bebop 218 (change unclear)

Things to note: more people tuned in for Kevin Hart's True Story than the premiere of Hawkeye; Hawkeye landed with 73% of the interest of Wheel of Time's premiere and then promptly lost a third of its audience (it's opener had the lowest rated MCU D+ opening); as for WoT, the clunky Amazon show tanked hard in its second week, proceeding to lose almost another fifth of its audience in its third week (so more than half the initial audience gave up on it). Funnily enough, Cowboy Bebop, which opened poorly, saw a significant increase in consumption in its second week, but along with cancellation tanked afterwards. It's important to point out that unlike the Netflix shows, which dump all their episodes at once, both Amazon and Disney+ are episodic--this means drops in viewership are not related to people having binged and moved on, but rather audiences failing to retain interest (you can make the Lost in Space-Wheel of Time comparison very easily, where the binged LiS barely lost its audience in the second week, while the episodic WoT lost almost half).

The reason relying on hard data like this is important is because of how disparate anecdotal evidence can be. Most of the people I know who watched Wheel of Time enjoyed it (despite its many, many issues)--think of how skewed that could make my perspective. It's the same case for Witcher season two, which has at least as many issues as the first--the people I know who watched it, enjoyed it, but it simply hasn't performed like it did previously (no massive spike in players on Steam, no hit song, no huge upswell in streaming numbers on Twitch, etc).

One of the strangest trends in the outrage sphere is claiming cultural Marxism is part of Hollywood decision making--what? Andre thinks subverting expectations is inherently Marxist--I don't know what to say to that, but if Wikipedia can be trusted, this idea seems derived from Jordan Peterson re-injecting it into popular discourse (eg). What's baffling about it is why they think mega corporations have these sympathies (they are, by definition, pro-Capitalist). Most of the outrage YTers are loosely Libertarian (as much as they have any political ideology), but I don't think this sudden by-rote sentiment emerged spontaneously. They are responding to a trend that plays well with their audience, but what is it? I think it reflects BreadTubers who identify as Marxists and Communists (not an identity they take seriously, just using it as a cudgel to attack opponents--Hasan Piker et al). I think because the influencers attack the audience for the outragers (broadly older white men), it's useful to attack in turn using the same terminology. This is admittedly trivial, but as someone who has paid attention to this collection of eccentrics and grifters for years, I was initially baffled to suddenly hear anti-communist and Marxism remarks.

While we are touching on the Orwellian madness of the current era, I'd be remise if I didn't mention current events. Let me preface it with something most people don't remember: Wil Wheaton nuking himself from Twitter when they refused to ban Alex Jones, then getting booted from the lefty alternative Mastodon (cf)--he just wasn't quite pure enough to stay. Why am I bringing up Wheaton, who continues happily posting on Facebook? Because he is one of many canaries in the coalmine--if you are going to play the cancel culture game, it's just a matter of time before the mob comes for you. Patton Oswald did not realize taking a picture with his friend Dave Chappelle would threaten his career, but his hilarious apology failed to stop the criticism. Lindsay Ellis, on the other hand, cancelled herself rather than deal with attacks. I'd normally have a lot of sympathy for both, but they have participated in witch hunts like this, so I see it as karma. For fans of either, both will be fine--it's extremely rare for 1%ers to get cancelled--Oswald's career won't be hurt and Ellis will re-emerge to make more long form video essays. All we can hope for is that, unlike Wheaton, perhaps one of them will learn from this experience and be less eager to join the next cancel mob. What's insufferable about these people (including the YT outragers above), is almost none of them actual do anything to push for fundamental change--they aren't out in the streets pushing an agenda--it's all just theater (profitable theater).

This article was written by Peter Levi