What-If Disney Never Bought Marvel?

Ironically i feel the same way about most of Disney's series ,.. especially Loki !

 

Honestly?

I think the movies would be better and have more tonal variety. Sure a lot of the pre-MCU superhero movies are bad, but there were a lot of soul in the original Spiderman movies, original Iron Man, etc.

Would we get a Shang-Chi movie that is full CGI instead of a Bruce Lee-meets-James Bond movie series that is more akin to the original 70s series?

Feels like Marvel properties are being held back (and oversaturated) by the Disney brand.

 

What makes you think Shang Chi would be a thing in this timeline?

 

I mean, its *possible*, but only just. And if it did happen, its far more likely that it would be In Name Only than any hoped for "true art" adaptation, because that is traditionally what you got.

Which is one of those things people need to admit: the MCU and its shared universe model changed the equation fundamentally. If you reject the model, you reject *all* its effects, not just the ones you dislike. You don't get to keep the marketing bootstrap while eliminating the consistent creative vision and continuity, because said consistent vision and continuity is what *caused* the marketing bootstrap.

 

Marvel Making Movies - IGN

^Back from 2005 - Shang-Chi was one of the original properties part of Marvel's film deal. He was certainly seen as someone with film potential (and the original Master of Kung Fu run is very cinematic!)

 

yeah you make a salient point. I give the MCU credit for taking strides to remain faithful/not ashamed of the comic origins, while modernizing some of the characters (best effort that captured that is still the original Iron Man movie).

Idk tbh. The shared universe thing has kind of lost its luster for me. I still appreciate what the MCU has done (especially build-up to Infinity War/Endgame), but I can't help but think that we are sacrificing quality, originality, spirit and potential for a lot of these characters.

Disney owning these characters is great for marketing, but has really held back a lot of these properties in terms of tone, substance, creativity, etc. There's an overt saccharine feeling to a lot of the Marvel characters that just wasn't there (even in recent incarnations like 2005ish comics-wise).

Might be controversial: but I kind of miss stand-alone franchises, and I think a lot of the characters would've been better served by it. Would we see a Ragnarok adaptation that was better than what we got? Possibly. Would we get a Shang-Chi franchise that wasn't full of fantasy and over-the-top CGI fights? Would certain characters like Thor or Shang-Chi be allowed a more serious tone?

Can't help but look at other successful franchises/big blockbuster movies (James Bond, Plant of the Apes, Dune, etc) and feel a way about the over-saturation of the Marvel brand, especially in a particular standard tone.

 

Might be controversial but why is serious automatically better? I think Shang-Chi is one of the best marvel movies in existence exactly as is. I've started reading some of the comics because of it, and they are slightly more serious and fun enough to keep going but nowhere near as good as the movie. I also vastly prefer the old Brosnan Bond to Craig's movies, and I would even say that Black Widow feels very much like an MCU attempt at a 'Bond movie' and it is, possibly, my favorite bond movie of all.

Serious can be very good and I can even agree Ragnarok was too off-kilter for the story being told but less serious can also be just as good in its own right, when done well.

 

Whether you think "serious" is better or not is kind of tangential to the issue at hand, is the thing. You can have a joint setting with all its marketing benefits, or you can have complete individual creative freedom in setting tone and theme. If you choose the latter because you don't like having to maintain a consistent creative vision, then that means you are sacrificing all the effects, and that includes the marketing benefits of "New movies are not actually new".

 

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If Marvel were not with Disney, from which studio which studio would give them complete individual freedom?

 

None, most likely. However, I'm not really talking about creative freedom for the studio, but creative freedom for the individual directors/screenwriters making the individual movies, in the traditional form of the "director-friendly" studios like WB. Which is not an entirely accurate picture of reality, but then again, the claim that Marvel Studios is some oppressive tyrant chaining poor innocent directors is *also* not an accurate picture of reality.

If anything, the two would likely be somewhat contrary. If Marvel Studios were owned by someone like WB, there would probably be more mandates from the execs on the studio, in terms of "We want X movie by Y date", such that it would pretty much destroy any effort to make a coherent MCU. . . but at the same time, the fact that corporate mandates prevent the formation of the MCU would probably *also* result in directors being more free to do what they want with the individual movies themselves.

 

Movies would have taken themselves more serious(Do not misunderstand with "edgy" or "darker " Marvel issue is that they are put comedy scenes in moments that are supposed to be taken serious. Take X-men 3 as an example. "Juggernaut ***** scene" was before the death of Jean and much later after Charles death. In the MCU we often see scenes of Groot dying and next Starlord dancing. Guardians of Galaxy is forgiven because this comedy match with the alien concept of the movie. But we also see this with Civil War. With also see this with Infinity War. Loki dies and suddenly we have a scene of Stark saying that Banner is embarrasing. Even when it was stated that Stark was really scared of aliens there outside) but it would be more ashamed of crazy unknown stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy and even Thor(since this is less famous than Superman or 4F).

But I don´t think that Kevin Feige would have been the lead figure of MCU. He actually had vision and is a shame that the different studios didn´t want a shared universe back in early 2000s.

 

I think creatively Marvel might've still pulled off a lot of what they did and MAYBE would've had more daring films with special effects probably not being as good as they've been.

However what Disney provided them after the success of Avengers was essentially a blank check to get themselves a wealth of resources that I don't think Fox, Paramount or Universal could financially provide. The type of creative talent Marvel has been able to snag because of limitless resources cannot be understated.

 

I hate to say it. But Fox had no interest to merge its universe with 2008´s Iron Man. Iron Man had a better box offirce than any previous Foxverse film back then. Fox started to have vision in 2013 when they planned to restart the franquises, started to do something 3 years later, many projects weren´t delivered before Disney bought Fox and many spin offs could´ve been done(X Force without Deadpool, X-Factor etc) to assemble them in a big even just as Marvel did in 2012. The same applies with Sony.

 

I feel kinda the same but I found the 2000s soul in Captain America 2, the opening scene of Captain America 3 and this particular scene of Black Panther(even if blood is censored)

That was Disneys brand. Is also weird if we take in consideration that Disney did Pirates of The Caribbean trilogy that has a different tone from the MCU.

Is also true that they were other shows with different tone running with the Infinity Saga. Since Marvel is owned by Disney people wouldn´t think that Disney is the problem.






But now that Disney has its own streaming platform , that Disney is pushing us to watch all the new material there and the shows we found(Falcon and The Winter Soldier, Wandavision, Loki and Hawkeye) share the same tone. We don´t find the tonal variety of the 2000s or 2010s.

I believe that many MCU films have the "Disney brand" vibe because it tries to replicate the humor of Guardians of The Galaxy. Characters that were less known than Thor, Captain America or Iron Man. Also, movies aren´t well rated every time they take themselves serious. Look at Thor, Thor Dark World and Eternals. If the pattern is as such, even if Captain America 2 showed the opposite. Disney will stick to the formula, tone and comedy used in MCU Spiderman, Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant Man movies.

Lets see how will Disney handdle Moon Knight, Ghost Rider, Echo and Blade. The thing is that Disney will want to sell toys and some of those characters won´t be meant to that if Disney doesn´t water them down or gives a **** to drop adult content in their main platform.

What worries me is how will Disney handdle the X-men. I´m not saying that they have to wear black leather or act edgy. But putting comedy scenes in moments that should be taken serious is what is stealing the soul. X-men 97 should be a good oportunity for Marvel Studios to study X-men tone in animated shows and adapt them to the MCU.

 

You sure? The difference of yearly reveniews aren´t far from each other IMO

 

Interesting take. I also miss the stand alone movies. If you take a look. Captain America 3 was a crossover, Thor 3 was a crossover, Iron Man 3 was bad, all MCU Spiderman movies have been crossovers, Wandavision is a weird experiment ngl(The idea wouldn´t have stood alone by itself, but kinda does because the character has a lot things seen behind. The character itself doesn´t have prequels or the prequels are named with different name), hawkeye was also a crossover, many elements of Loki like time travel were introduced in the Infinity saga etc.

I just hope that Moon Knight, Blade, Fantastic Four, Eternals, Spiderman and even X-men will have a stand alone trilogy. Something similar like Thor and Captain America did in the first MCU phases(ignoring that their 3d movies were crossovers). I wouldn´t have a problem if there´s a 7th movie of Spiderman involving the Defenders or a crossover movie of Fantastic Four, Eternals and Guardians of the Galaxy with an intended scale as civil war though.

 

It's a function of the operating capital and backing. Marvel would probably still be sending out films costing $150-$200 million to make. IFW & EG as we know them probably would've never been made because of the price tag. Disney brings marketing but also a huge ability to raise funds that other studios don't. Phase 1 yes, probably remains mostly the same. Maybe Avengers is scaled back some. Up to Avengers the MCU was doing ok but not lighting the world on fire. In fact MCU doesn't blow up until after Avengers and people are able to see the pieces put together. At that point Marvel's valuation goes way up and speculation runs wild, maybe this attracts other buyers who pay more than Disney did. Pretty sure the TV side and AoS doesn't happen. Netflix shows may happen but it's still rule by Marvel brass. Fiege doesn't have the controls as fast.

 

I think other studios like Paramount and Universal would've been a little frugal yes. I don't think WB would've ever bought Marvel since they had the DC property. Disney also makes money on a whole lot more than just their movie studio.