The King in Black comics with Knull as a villain were pretty weak, but a movie arc with Eddie Brock as the King in Black and the whole time-travel stuff would be fun.
Knull would make a shitty movie anyway.
He only barely works in the comics because of years (decades) of the building of symbiote lore. Trying to shoehorn him into the venom world of the movies or (worse) the mcu/sony Spider-Man movies would be horrible.
And Sony has already proven they no longer understand what to do with anyone from the spiderverse if it isn’t animated. Venom, Madame Web, Morbius, all flawed , and that’s being generous in the last two.
The Raimi trilogy were good, but even they were flawed in significant ways. Again, they didn’t understand the characters very well. I love them anyway, but they relied a ton on Tobey carrying the load and established fandom to blur those flaws. Same with Garfield’s turn.
Even Holland’s movies have issues, they just aren’t as glaring because the MCU proper started out with the assumption it isn’t supposed to be 616 but a separate and distinct universe of its own, which means established fans and new ones can jump in at the same time.
But Knull? He’s out of place, period. Even in the comics his whole story is just a “big bad for a crossover” excuse. Trying to use him in any movie is dubious, but trying it without establishing why he should matter is failboat
Knull is insanely funny if you’re swedish.
There’s a lot of hope that this is a sign that Sony and Disney have made a deal to return Spidey to Marvel.
With Sony in talks about buying WB, it would make sense that they don’t need spidey anymore.
Mmmmm IDK about that. I think your underestimating how popular Spider-Man is. I know that as far as merchandise goes (T-shirts, toys, etc.) Spider-Man out sells Superman and Batman combined, by a lot.
Marvel does own merch rights. But Spider-Man movies are always profitable. Even Amazing Spider-Man 2 was. It’s free money.
However the spin-offs, outside of Venom, have been break-even at best.
Sony can’t make Spider-Man movies.
Batman by himself is the fifth most profitable merch IP in the world. Spider-Man isn’t even in the top ten. Idk where you got your info from.
“Sony can’t make Spider-Man movies.”
What do you mean?
“Idk where you got your info from.”
You haven’t noticed sony hasn’t made a Spider-Man movie in over a decade?
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 2023
Production companies:
Columbia Pictures(SONY)
Marvel Entertainment
SONY Pictures Animation
Pascal Pictures
Lord Miller Productions
Arad Productions
Distributed by:
SONY Pictures Releasing
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Across_the_Spider-Verse)
Can’t tell if ignorant, or playing dumb…
Back in the before times, I remember Sony’s deal was that they had to keep making movies in order to hold onto the rights.
This would be best. Post Secret Wars the door is wide open. Sony and Marvel can make an extended version of the Spider-man deal and in addition to mutants we can get all of Spider-Man’s friends & enemies.
Superhero movie fatigue is real, and Sony’s mediocre Spiderman villain spinoffs didn’t help.
I’d argue that Sony was the reason for a lot of the superhero fatigue. The objectively worst MCU movie, QuantumMania, was still much better than Morbius, Kraven, and Madame Web. Some of the “bad” movies, like Eternals, Marvels, Love and Thunder, Multiverse of Madness, Black Widow, received disproportionately more hate than they deserved. As a lineup, it’s all very mediocre, but they were spread out over several years. For fans, they were fun (flawed) excursions into each of those character stories. For non-fans, they were yet another opportunity to gleefully shit on superhero movies to drive engagement or to push a political agenda or just because they think superheroes are the reason we don’t get auteur indie films anymore.
Eternals had too many characters and generic monster blobs. But the characters were nuanced and complex, and the plot wasn’t nearly as incoherent as critics said.
They also had a gay hero and a disabled hero, and they gender-swapped two of the male heroes. Certain people didn’t like that.
The Marvels had a boring villain and absurdly imbalanced stakes during the obliteration of two different plants and their native species. Also, a musical contrivance that I enjoyed more than most normal people.
They also had all female heroes, a female antagonist, and the first Muslim hero in films. Certain people didn’t like that.
Look, if you line 'em all up in a row, it’s basically the food court at the mall. There’s a wide variety of options, maybe one or two that are good, the rest are also there, and some bigots are grumbling about weird people who aren’t like them. That’s post-Engame MCU. Sony is like that kiosk near the court that definitely isn’t part of the food court, and they definitely don’t have the requisite plumbing to have a handwashing sink. Their poor hygiene practices have drawn bugs and rats, and they have a big sign that says that napkins and condiments are only for their customers.
Getting rid of Sony doesn’t make Marvel better, but it does reduce a lot of the strain on the viewing public.
The objectively worst MCU movie, QuantumMania, was still much better than Morbius, Kraven, and Madame Web. Some of the “bad” movies, like Eternals, Marvels, Love and Thunder, Multiverse of Madness, Black Widow…
Bruh, Love and Chunder was WAY worse than Quantumania.
I mean, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but you’re wrong. Love and Thunder was, at minimum, a completed movie. The self-parody went way too far, and it wasted what was potentially the best villain since Loki. More Gor and less of an Australian actor trying to do a Greek accent that ended up sounding French. Also, it had screaming goats, so it was not a good movie. But it was a fully-rendered, complete film with some cool visuals and at least a semblance of an engaging story.
Jane is dying of cancer, and becoming Mighty Thor protects her but also accelerates her demise.
What about the nature of power, and who is ultimately responsible when bad things happen?
Is faith justified by the (in)actions of higher beings?
What does it mean to be “worthy”?
Love and Thunder was the third act of Thor’s character arc, where he discovers what is important, and what his purpose is. Is he a hero? A king? A protector? A petulant braggart? A leader? A killer? A God? What does he really want to be? What would he wish for?
He finds the ulitmate boon, the thing he’s been looking for since the first Thor movie, his life’s purpose. He returns “home” fully changed and seeking new adventures not for glory, but to break the cycle of oppression sought by the powerful.
Love and Thunder is not well done, and the message is muddled, but Quantumania is just bad. There are a few funny bits, Paul Rudd is always charming, and Kang was portrayed by a good actor who may or may not be a bad person (not the point of this discussion). But it suffered from the same self-parody problem as Thor, and it didn’t look good. The quantum realm wasn’t interesting, the story was internally inconsistent, ants developed weapons and saved the day because time shenanigans(!?), MODOK happened and was a huge disappointment (I did laugh out loud at him becoming an Avenger), and it all looked like they were rehearsing scenes while they waited for the sets to be done being built. Quantumania was an aggressively bad movie with almost no redeeming qualities or character development. Cassie grows a bit (pun intended), and Scott learns to see her as a young adult (and, dare I say, a Young Avenger), Janet slays some of the demons from her past, Hank learns his wife was fucking tiny Bill Murray, Hope is also in the film, and Kang is set up to be the next big threat to the Avengers Multiverse (except forget that bit because reasons). The stakes could literally not be smaller.
Isn’t it likely that in the microsecond after they all return to human size, the ants developed a whole new oppressive civilization using the remnants of Kang’s technology and their own, subjugated all the subatomic residents, and are a potential threat to the larger universe? Kang was going to escape, why not the techno-ants?
All the post-Endgame movies and shows have been about introducing the Young Avengers lineup. Wiccan and Speed, Patriot, Hawkeye II, America Chavez, Kid Loki, plus Ms Marvel, Phyla Vell, Skaar, and Riri. Obviously Stature will be there, but I would argue that Love is set up to bring more to the table both in power set and pathos.
That’s not to say Love and Thunder was a good movie. But it had good within, and isn’t that what really makes us all worthy?
Our logic is the same, only our conclusions different:
Thor: Love and Thunder: A mostly wasted chance to examine the love, sacrifice, power and worthiness.
Quantumania: A dumb excursion into the microverse.
There’s more of value in “Thor 4: For more Thor”, but it’s also a bigger disappointment, than
“Ant-Man: It’s Bonkers How Small they are This Time”“Honey, I Shrunk the Kid, and Your Parents, and Myself”. Haha.
To add to the “fatigue” you also have DC not helping out much either. Sony was definitely bottom barrel but even DC struggled at times to fill it even half way. (And sometimes they were absolutely garbage too.)
I think there was for a time a feeling that at least with Marvel you’d get something great. However when even they’re just ok the whole field starts to look empty.
I think that’s partially why Captain America Brave New World, despite being the worse film, generally did about the same as Thunderbolts. If a film is just going to be “ok” it should at least have some familiar faces.
I just love seeing all the books from my childhood coming to life on the big screen, and being able to talk to friends about comic book nerd stuff. Marvel, at the very least, has been respectful of the source material and given the filmmakers resources to create an interconnected universe. I don’t care if they make a few stinkers as long as they keep trying to make better movies.
Sony and DC both have transparently disrespected the source material and the fans. They have made bad decisions about how to bring those comics to life, and created films that were inexcusably bad.
DC at least makes me hopeful with the new Superman trailers, but I’ll reserve judgement until I actually see it.
The Marvels had a boring villain and absurdly imbalanced stakes during the obliteration of two different plants and their native species. Also, a musical contrivance that I enjoyed more than most normal people.
I enjoyed the Ms Marvel TV show for what it was, and the Kamala Khan character (and actor) getting a big screen appearance I thought was a good path. What irked me about the movie was that Ms Marvel was prevented from using her powers for 85% of the movie, only really being able to have a good showing in the final act. Further, we were told the MacGuffin bangle that let her amplify her powers from the TV show would give her godlike powers if she ever got the other one. Well she got the other one and it was barely a bump up.
There was also the contrived plot point about one race stealing air and water from other inhabited planets. Like, there are millions of other planets with air and water. Why doesn’t Captain Marvel simply find one and help the antagonists pull air and water from those leaving the inhabited planets alone?
It wasn’t the worst comic book movie I’ve seen though. I gave up watching Black Adam halfway through shortly after the “heroes” showed up and wanted to put the beatdown on the one entity pushing back against the oppressive mafia gang.
It should be pointed out that the dull boring villain in that movie was pulling resources from those planets specifically to hurt Captain Marvel. So just finding another planet wouldn’t really have worked as the goal was to cause her anguish and pain. It was Revenge.
I know I’m expecting too much from a marvel movie, but geopolitically, destroying entire other civilizations simply for revenge is bad policy.
I’m hoping we get more Ms. Marvel where she explored the full strength of the Nega Bands.
And the Kree were clearly targeting planets that didn’t just have air and water, they were trying to hurt Captain Marvel. The movie didn’t do a great job at expanding on the idea, but Dar-Benn (had to look that up) was on a revenge mission. I don’t know if it was the actress or the writing, but she was just so forgettable that it was hard to keep track of her motivations. But first she went after the Skrulls, then the planet where Captain Marvel’s husband lived, then the Earth. The fact that she killed millions of Skrull refugees and billions of singing people didn’t seem to bother anyone too much.
But even factoring in all of those problems, it’s nothing as bad as Shazam 2 or fucking Madame Web, I just cannot get past how shitty that god-damned movie was. There wasn’t one single redeeming quality about the movie. Black Adam at least gave us a decent Doctor Fate. Flash bright back Keaton for Batman. Sure, those characters
Flash and Black Adam Spoilers
Neither movie is worth your time, and also those characters died.
At this point it’s more that they’ve all been pretty shit since no way home. Thunderbolts is the best one since then and it’s just ok
Good.
