Since Iron Man first hit theaters in the summer of 2008, especially with the post-credits scene of Nick Fury asking Tony Stark if he knew anything about the Avengers Initiative, comic book fans have always been hoping that all the Marvel Comics properties would soon interact with each other. X-Men and Fantastic Four characters were controlled by 20th Century Fox.
This began to change in 2011 with the massive hack of Sony servers which gave the public behind-the-scenes info on Sony execs worried about the Spider-Man film franchise and how it was lagging behind Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe under the control of uber-producer Kevin Feige. In just a few years after this hack rumors of Spider-Man being loaned out to become part of the MCU became fact.
The next major shift in fans wanting all of Marvel properties becoming part of the MCU was Disney’s purchase and merger with 20th Century Fox in 2017 and completed in 2019. With just a few small restrictions here and there (Universal still hold the rights to the Incredible Hulk character but allowed Disney to the character), the MCU was now pretty much complete.
The first thing fans wanted was a new take on Marvel Comics’ first family: The Fantastic Four.
There’s been several attempts to put the Fantastic Four on the big-screen. From the 1994 unreleased Roger Corman low-budget film to the three films when 20th Century Fox was still a separate studio, fans never really bought into those iterations. But now that the first family was back under Marvel Studios control, especially with Kevin Feige as producer, fans were once again hopeful.
The first official trailer is now out and it looks like it will lean heavily on the Fantastic Four’s 1960’s origins right down to the retro-futuristic design and theme. How the film will explain where the team has been during the MCU timeline will be a narrative that a team of screenwriters and director Matt Shankman will have to navigate.
Fantastic Four: First Steps arrives in theaters on July 25, 2025.
Yesterday, Disney+ released a trailer for all of the new Marvel shows that will be coming out later this year and in 2025. The majority of the trailer highlight Daredevil: Born Again.
Admittedly, we’ve gotten used to Marvel and its movies and its show and, as such, a new Marvel trailer is no longer the big event that it used to be. (The Marvel trailers that excite us usually involve characters like Deadpool, who comment on and satirize the conventions of the comic book movie. We love Deadpool’s jaded perspective because we’ve all gotten jaded ourselves.)
That said, the Daredevil: Born Again footage looked cool. The animated stuff was a bit of a mixed bag. (Jeff tells me that Marvel Zombies have been around for a while but I still laughed when they showed up in the trailer.) Ironheart looks insanely boring. But Daredevil, I’m cautiously optimistic about.
The trailer for TheMarvels dropped today. I got through about 30 seconds of it before I started to get a headache thinking about how insufferable the discourse around this film is going to be. Comic book films can be fun but, over the past few years, the discourse around them has become unbearable. Will this film be accused of being too woke or not woke enough? Probably both because that seems to be the way of the culture right now.
On a personal note, I have to admit that I’m at the point where I’m a bit bored with all of the Marvel films and TV shows. I was very much invested in the MCU for its first ten years but Endgamejust felt like the logical place to end the saga. Everything after that — with the possible exception of the Spider-Man films — has felt somewhat anti-climatic. The first ten years of the MCU worked because every film, in one way or another, was clearly a part of a bigger story. Post-Endgame, it’s hard not to feel like the films are lacking the epic feel that previously excited audiences.
Will TheMarvels reverse the MCU’s fortunes? We’ll find out later this year! For now, here’s the trailer:
Yay! That’s all I can say. Though I’ve gotten a bit bored with the MCU as of late, I still look forward to another chance to hang out with Guardians of the Galaxy!
To be honest, I’ve been a little bit bored with the MCU lately. I mean, the Spider-Man films were fun and WandaVision was certainly better than I was expecting it to be but, for the most part, it’s been hard to shake the feeling that, post-Endgame, the MCU has lost a bit of its spark. Endgame was such a logical place to stop that everything that’s come after it has felt a bit superfluous.
Still, if anyone can respark my interest in the MCU, it would be James Gunn and the Guardians of the Galaxy. And, fortunately, they’ve got a new film coming out next year! Here’s the trailer, which seems to promise that the Guardians will continue to poke subtle fun at the conventions of the MCU while also using those conventions to their advantage.
At the very least, it should have a good soundtrack.
Why is that relevant? Well, Moon Knight is a 6-episode miniseries based on a character who made his debut in the pages of Marvel comics. The character has a loyal following of readers but the Disney miniseries has introduced him to a whole new group of people, many of whom have never even held a comic book, let alone read one. I’m one of those people. If not for the miniseries, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea who Moon Knight is because, for the most part, I’ve never been a comic book reader. I would have to imagine that if I was a comic book reader, it would bug the Hell out of me that people who have never read a comic book are now suddenly acting as if they’re experts on all of the various costumed characters who have been published by Marvel and DC over the past few decades. I can remember how upset I was when everyone suddenly decided that they were an expert on Dario Argento and Italian horror just because they had read some lame article on the remake of Suspiria. No, I wanted to say, you haven’t done the work!
Unfortunately, that’s the way of the world now. With the current pop cultural dominance of the MCU and the DCEU, everyone’s a super hero fan regardless of whether or not they’ve ever read a comic book. And, with the explosion of social media over the past decade, everyone is now in a position to present themselves as being an expert regardless of whether they’re tweeting their own thoughts or just plagiarizing what they’ve read on Wikipedia. It doesn’t matter whether the topic is politics, television, history, science, religion, or comic books. Everyone now claims to be an expert and, as the old saying goes, when everyone’s an expert, no one’s an expert. Again, if that annoys the Hell out of you, I sympathize.
Perhaps you can take some consolation in the fact that, even though I watched all six episode of Moon Knight today, I hardly feel like an expert as far as the character is concerned. For the most part, I enjoyed Moon Knight but I would be lying if I said that I was always able to follow what was going on. Oscar Isaac plays Marc Spector, a mercenary who is mortally wounded in Egypt but who is revived by Khonshu (voiced by F. Murray Abraham), the Egyptian God of the Moon, who tasks Spector with protecting humanity from evil or something like that. Sometimes, however, Spector becomes Steven Grant, a mild-mannered and neurotic Brit who works in a museum gift shop and who is haunted by strange dreams. When Grant discovers that he’s actually Spector, this leads to him meeting Spector’s wife, Layla (May Calamawy) and also having to battle Arthur Harrow (Ethan Hawke), a fanatical cult leader who is trying to get his hands on ancient scarab that will …. let him do stuff, I guess. Harrow’s evil, Moon Knight’s good, and I guess that’s all we really need to know. Moon Knight is basically a typical MCU “let’s all fight over the artifact” story, with the main twist being that all of the Gods are Egyptian instead of Norse and the hero has dissociative identity disorder and might actually very well be a patient at psychiatric hospital.
With all that in mind, Moon Knight is actually pretty entertaining. It’s biggest strength, not surprisingly, is Oscar Isaac, who appears to be having a ball playing several different versions of the same character. When he’s Marc Spector, he gets to play at being a grim and serious action hero. When he’s Steve Grant, he gets to play a comedic bumbler who gets the chance to prove that he’s stronger and more capable than anyone gave him credit for. Isaac does a good job with both roles and the show is at its best when it’s just Isaac arguing with himself. Playing a villain in an MCU production is often a thankless task but Hawke’s brings the right edge of fanaticism to Arthur Harrow and F. Murray Abraham voices Khonshu with the just the right combination of righteous indignation and weary frustration. The show makes good use of its Egyptian setting and the fourth and fifth episodes are enjoyably surreal as they delve into the corners of Spector’s mind.
Unfortunately, the show’s conclusion leaves a bit to be desired. After all that build-up, it all pretty much leads to a standard MCU street battle and the possibility of more Moon Knight action in the future. That said, I enjoyed the show for what it was. Turn off your mind, relax, and float across the Duat, as the old saying goes.
Thor is one of the more remarkable success stories of the MCU.
He started out as the kind of boring super hero whose origin didn’t make much sense and who felt a bit out-of-place with the other Avengers. (It was always funny to him how quickly they all were to accept the fact that Norse mythology was based on reality.) But, thanks to director Taika Waititi and actor Chris Hemsworth, he’s been transformed into one of the most beloved characters in the MCU. Waititi and Hemsworth both realized Thor was a ludicrous character and the best way to handle that would be to embrace the silliness of it all.
That was the approach that they took with Thor: Ragnarok and it appears to be the same approach they’ll be taking with Thor: Love and Thunder. And, of course, Chris Pratt and the Guardians of the Galaxy are the perfect people to help them do that!
Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke both should have an Oscar by now. Well, they won’t win any for Moon Knight because it’s a miniseries. They might get some Emmy love but eventually, everyone wins an Emmy so it’s not as big of a deal. I mean, I’ve got an Emmy somewhere around here. It arrived in the mail and I was like, “Cool, I guess I won something.”
My point is, Oscar Issac and Ethan Hawke should both be in a lot of stuff. Anyway, here’s the trailer:
Through the Shattered Lens 