Marvel Cinematic Universe

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Ultraman Orb Dark said:
It was during that period in the mid-2010s where everyone needed to have a cinematic universe. Remember the Dark Universe? Of course you don't, because only one movie was ever made.

The only reason why Sony got as far as they did was because of the memes from going to see their movies ironically, just like what's happening with the Minecraft movie right now.
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Memes aren't really why Minecraft did well, it did well primarily because of kids wanting to see a thing they recognize (and not really having any competition in the kids' movie department). The ironic memes were a thing, sure, but once the fad passed (and presumably teenagers started getting in trouble for it), it still did well week over week.

If ironic memes could actually make a movie successful, then the Sony Spider-adjacent movies would have done gangbusters. Instead, they flopped hard in nearly every instance, with Morbius flopping twice because some stupid exec thought they could capitalize on the Morbin' memes and brought it back to theaters, only for it to do even worse.

The real reason they got anywhere was because they made a Venom movie. Venom is still a popular character, and people were really excited to see him get a better adaptation than Spider-Man 3. The end result was perhaps a little meh in places, but still satisfying enough for most audiences. And then, instead of just focusing on what worked, they kept greenlighting movies for every other character they had rights to, regardless of how well-known they were. Naturally, that didn't work out, and coupled with the increasingly lackluster direction of the Venom series, it all ended up falling apart.

More bizarre is the fact that Sony still had the rights to include Spider-Man in their movies, they just didn't use him at all. They made a bunch of movies based on everyone revolving around Spider-Man and decided they didn't need to have him there because...I dunno, they're retarded? They even teased crossovers between their movies and the MCU, and then that didn't go anywhere at all, with Eddie and Venom getting yeeted back to their world and the Vulture/Morb cameo never followed up on.

Seriously, this wasn't hard. Make a Spider-Man/Venom movie, make it appropriately violent, and then spin off Venom into his own thing with further meetups and crossovers later. An easy gameplan that they didn't follow for some reason.
 
UnKillFill said:
The term "backup plan for (specific character)" feels odd to me for something that would probably work on almost every villain that wasn't like a literal god.
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It's like when you learn Batman's contingency plan to deal with evil Superman is to shoot him in the head with a kryptonite bullet, and his plan for 99% of the rest of DC heroes/villains: "Regular bullet."
 
King Dead said:
They made a bunch of movies based on everyone revolving around Spider-Man and decided they didn't need to have him there because...I dunno, they're retarded?
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They were planning to match NWH's hype by introducing every single Sinister Six member before the eventual Spider-Man movie and get blockbusters like Venom in the process. What Sony didn't understand was people would care about Morbius not because he is just another run of the mill gothic vampire BUT because he is a gothic vampire in the Spider-Man universe. Same with a big shot hunter like Kraven or any other shithead they were planning to make a movie off of. They are a dime a dozen in the media and only their interactions with Spider-Man make them unique. People have been dying for a Kraven's Last Hunt adaptation for years but a solo movie was not a good introduction for him.

Ultraman Orb Dark said:
Remember the Dark Universe? Of course you don't, because only one movie was ever made.
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It was 2 akshuaaaly. The Invisible Man was a standalone movie but they were still clearly trying to reignite the hype that had already died down. It flopped too of course.

Tom Cruise turned into an immortal necromancer with no restrictions in the end of The Mummy Reboot II. He was only "cursed forever" which is a shallow statement and not an actual downside. He would be too OP even for Dracula.

Even if they based them around their original movies I don't know how a Universal monsters Avengers would work. Even Thunderbolts has better synergy.
 
UnKillFill said:
The term "backup plan for (specific character)" feels odd to me for something that would probably work on almost every villain that wasn't like a literal god.
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And its also the kind of gay edgy shit I expect from modern writers.

"Our backup plan is that we murder him."

Oh, so that was an option all along, was it? I'd expect Reed to come up with something a little more clever than cold-blooded murder. Something like "We'll send him to the negative zone where the physical properties of magnetism are fundamentally different. While he's confused and unable to control his powers, we'll restrain him using our anti-mutant nullifiers."
 
Quarterback Rex Grossman said:
I just can't understand what Sony was thinking. They wanted to make a Sinister Six move like fifteen years ago, but instead sent Spider-Man away and proceeded to Richard around with a bunch of retarded spin-offs where classic villains are just heroes. Did they not have the rights to anything but a handful of villains? Why keep making this nonsense?
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They obviously just made those films in hopes that one of them would resonate with audiences and they'd then be able to negotiate a bigger price to rent them back to Disney. Spider-Man has made Sony way more money in the MCU than he would've made them in a Sony film.
Bay Kemal said:
Even if they based them around their original movies I don't know how a Universal monsters Avengers would work. Even Thunderbolts has better synergy.
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It would've been a rehashing of Van Helsing (or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, both of which are better films than most modern dreck), which was already a Universal monster-Avenger film, with the wolfman, Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, Mr. Hyde, all in one film. All they needed was Rick O'Connell and Arnold Vosloo to show up and we'd have the whole collection.

Personally, I've always been annoyed that Van Helsing and The Mummy films didn't get a cross-over in the early 2000's. A Stephen Sommersverse would've been MCU big if they'd played it right back then. Could've even tossed in Kate Beckinsale coming back to life as a vampire to drag in the Underworld fans.

Maybe if they'd made that Van Helsing spin-off show that NBC cancelled, things could've worked out differently.
Bay Kemal said:
It was 2 akshuaaaly. The Invisible Man was a standalone movie but they were still clearly trying to reignite the hype that had already died down. It flopped too of course.
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Could've been 3, that 2010 Wolfman reboot really feels like it was in the same universe as Cruise's Mummy film. Similar lighting, set design, etc.

Certainly felt closer than the Invisible Man did. That was just your typical A24/Blumhouse film. Not surprising given the $7 million budget and Blum as producer.
 
WhiskeyJack said:
Could've been 3
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Lurked a bit more and looks like they planned to make Dracula Untold the very first movie. That movie was shit too. Even DCEU has a better track record.
I didn't see The Wolfman so I can only talk about the "official" 3.
WhiskeyJack said:
It would've been a rehashing of Van Helsing
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I totally forgot about that. Just make a sequel at that point. The movie didn't do that well but everyone around me loved it. It still has potential even after all those years. Certainly better than making more slop with Tom Cruise.
WhiskeyJack said:
$7 million budget
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Oh it was a Blumhouse movie I never realized. You don't need special effects for someone who is literally invisible so CGI is a non-issue. I don't know how they get away with paying actors pennies though. Blum must be pointing a gun at them or something.
Technically it made profit but nowhere near the Hollywood numbers or worth investing for a dumb cinematic universe.
 
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Bay Kemal said:
It was 2 akshuaaaly. The Invisible Man was a standalone movie but they were still clearly trying to reignite the hype that had already died down. It flopped too of course.
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Wasn't there intent to have the 2014 movie "I, Frankenstein" be part of the universe? At some point anyway, the film was a disaster so I imagine any such plans were quickly brushed under the carpet. And I believe Dracula Untold was also supposed to be part of the shared universe too though they seem to be denying that now.

Bay Kemal said:
Even if they based them around their original movies I don't know how a Universal monsters Avengers would work. Even Thunderbolts has better synergy.
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There have been attempts. There was the 2024 movie Monster Mash in which Ethan Daniel Corbett plays it entirely straight as Dracula playing detective and assembling a team of monsters to track down and rescue his daughter. Somehow got Michael Madsen as Frankenstein for it.
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Van Helsing with Hugh Jackman has a surprisingly well put together plot that incorporates the classic monsters and was setting up a wider universe though I don't think there was any attempt to follow up. Richard Roxburgh as Dracula was having the time of his life with the role and of course Kate Beckinsale in a velvet corset is worth a star all on its own.
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Then way back in the 80's you had the team up movie of The Monster Squad.

Of course they were all still villains in that, not antiheroes.

Nothing will ever top the original attempt to make a combined Universal Monsters movie, though:
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EDIT: Well that's what I get for stepping away for a while mid-post. Seems like @WhiskeyJack already hit most of the highlights. And remembered League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as well. I enjoyed that film and it had the added bonus of sending the Alan Moore fans apoplectic, too. Always fun.
 
iirc Van Helsing (the jackman thing) was originally meant to be one movie kicking off a franchise but they got cold feet during preproduction and stuffed the three initial planned movies at once
but yeah it was a nice enough action horror thing
 
XYZpdq Jr. said:
iirc Van Helsing (the jackman thing) was originally meant to be one movie kicking off a franchise but they got cold feet during preproduction and stuffed the three initial planned movies at once
but yeah it was a nice enough action horror thing
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Yeah, poor budgeting killed the film, just like is happening today with all of Disney's flops. Universal planned to make various sequels and a spin-off show called Transylvania on NBC. To that end, they decided to build a full town set for Van Helsing and then Universal paid to keep all their sets intact for use in the future sequels and coming spin-off show, similar to how many film franchises of that era were doing (LOTR, POTC, Matrix sequels, etc).

However, doing all that greatly increased the production budget of Van Helsing. Not really an issue since it was meant to be split across the sequel(s) and spin-off show, but then NBC cancelled the show two weeks after the film premiered. So now the budget looks huge for the time period. Worse, Shrek 2 comes out about two weeks later, then Harry Potter 3 two weeks after that, and Spider-Man 2 the next month.

Now Van Helsing is not profitable because it has all this extra production budget expenditure, essentially 2+ movie budgets in one film, making it a flop despite its decent-for-the-time box office and all the sequel plans are scrapped.

It actually made $300 million ($500 million today, adjusted for inflation), and had an opening weekend of $51 million ($85 million today). But its budget was $170 million ($283 million today), and they must've spent a fortune on all the marketing, so it never got close to breaking-even. [Amusing to realize it still did better than the Thunderbolts are doing today]

Hellboy, another similar sort of monster match-up film released six weeks earlier, had a budget of $66 million and made just under $100 million world wide, apparently enough to justify a sequel. If they'd kept Van Helsing to a more modest budget by breaking down all the sets after filming wrapped and not spending so much to develop multiple sequels and shows simultaneously, it would've been a hit film and Universal might have had their own MCU a half-decade before the real one started. If you look up all the scrapped plans they had (including several rides at their theme park they did open) it sounds like everything Disney would later turn Marvel into.
 
MrJokerRager said:
Mr Fantastic being subverted by commies.

Given in the comics, Mr Fantastic had a disdain for commies.

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Well, Allende was technically a Socialist, but in the practice became too close to classic Soviet Communism.
So, he had links to the most hated family in Chile? Lmao.
Imagine if Allende was alive and seeing the abomination her sister became pooning. The same old man who said about searching a cure of homosexuality. Lmao.
 
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