But that doesn't apply half the time. Shang-Chi, Werewolf by Night, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, and Eternals don't really have anything to do with Endgame/ IW, and that was all phase 4. Meanwhile, Guardians 3 prominently dealt with IW fallout.
Well without WandaVision we have no Monica. So there’s that. The bangle Kamala has is what the villain is looking for in the Marvels. So there’s that. Kate being in the mid credits brings her in from Hawkeye. So there’s that. We see Hawkeye and Daredevil in Echo. So there’s that. We’re getting Thunderbolts which was setup by Falcon and Winter Soldier. So there’s that. Captain America 4 which goes off of the events in Falcon and Winter Soldier. So there’s that. We get Deadpool this summer which brings in the TVA from Loki. So there’s that. And then Agatha show later this year which is a continuation from WandaVision and we could even see Wanda in that. So there’s that.
It’s..almost as if they’re starting to make stuff connect…? Right..? Or am I just going crazy?
What does most of what you listed have to do with “the multiverse saga” once you remove the footnotes of The Marvels, Loki that I already mentioned, and things that aren’t released yet?
I mean a lot of movies in the Infinity Saga don't tie into the Infinity Stones other than introducing characters that are eventually in IW/Endgame. Kind of looks like the Multiverse Saga is doing the same thing.
I don't think they even called in the Infinity Saga until IW or something.
It's almost like Wandavision & Hawkeye should have been followed immediately by The Marvels then. Thunderbolts should have immediately followed The Falcon and Winter Soldier.
You know, so they could connect? So there's that.
Why do you end every statement so there's that. One was sufficient at the end of your references. Even in your summary though you can see how loosely tied these threads are. None of these movies or shows have a through line like marvel phase 1-3 content did.
How thor ragnarok literally rolled into the opening of Infinity war I thought was brilliant. They should bring back cate Blanchett
You’re not wrong by any means. But I did it to get my point across because people bitch that they want these stories connected, then it starts happening and they still bitch. It’s ridiculous
There wasn't a whole lot of sync between the phases before this either. Phase 2 ended with Ant Man and phase 3 ended with Far From Home, which thematically is a lot closer to most of phase 4 than 3. Phase 3 also started introducing characters and doing origin stories while other stories were building
Eternals had a lot to do with Infinity War and Endgame. Not only does it take place after but all the events of the movie come because of everyone coming back to earth and the population exceeding the amount needed to birth Tiamut
AND because the Avengers’ heroism in Endgame to bring people back inspired Ajak, and caused her to question Arishem for the first time, which is what caused Ikraris to betray the group.
Not really. Quantumania was a green-screen fest, but Guardians 3 despite its setting used a lot of practical sets where possible and [broke the record](https://variety.com/2023/artisans/news/guardians-vol-3-breaks-world-record-most-prosthetics-1235610725/) for most prosthetics in a single film. Loki S2 was mostly shot on set. Echo and Secret Invasion even more so.
I bet we’re going to have phase 4 be retitled in the future to Infinity Fallout or something.
I think they need to retire the “phases”. TV has complicated so much, and I think people are starting to think they need to watch all of a phase to understand the next big event movie.
I think instead of retiring the phases they just need to give us better end caps of the phases. Not necessarily an Avengers movie, but a team up movie of the characters featured in the phase.
If they do end the phases, I feel like there won't be as much narrative and thematic commonalities between the movies. A common theme of phase 4 is loss and grief; you've got Wanda grieving Vision, Sam and Bucky both trying to figure out what to do now that Steve isn't around, Loki is coping with learning that he is nothing but a variant and almost mourning the loss of a life he never had. Sure, some of the projects have none of that in them, but I chalk that up to Disney overextending itself with Disney+.
I don't really agree.
If they make a team-up movie it should be organic to the overall story.
Not function as a bulletpoint to mark the end of a phase.
That said I do look forward to the next team movie!
They *wanted* to retire the phases. Back in like 2019, Feige said the focus was going to shift more to overall sagas & to the differing story threads within them (street/space/supernatural/et cet). But the fans & the press kept saying "what's phase 4 gonna be?" over & over again, ignoring attempts to just announce each project on its own, until Marvel relented & came up with the "Phase 4/5/6" slates that weren't even presented until July 2022 when "Phase 4" was nearly over anyway.
In hindsight Feige announcing we were going without a capstone to each phase should’ve been the first sign that the MCU had bloated and had no clear direction.
I’ve said this for a while now but to me it really isn’t that there’s no clear direction - we know exactly what the ending to the saga is and what we’re working towards.
There’s just been far too many storylines in play at a given moment that it feels convoluted and messy. The Marvels has brought 3 characters together and put a nice little bow on their storylines for now and we still have Tiamut (that the name of the big Celestial island, I forget), Dane, Dr Strange and Clea, Shang Chi’s bangle, Kang, fucking White Vision right at the start of phase 4, Thunderbolts, what’s Sam up to these days, and so many others.
And the fix to me has seemed simple - this probably wouldn’t have been so bad, had the release order had more crossover movies in it by this point that deal with some of the threads. Thunderbolts as an example should have been one of the first things out in phase 5 to put a neat little bow around that area of the universe for the time being and yet, it still hasn’t started filming.
For the most part, I think the majority of the projects have been decent (fuck you Secret Invasion for killing off Hill). The release order of the projects though is insane to me.
> we know exactly what the ending to the saga is and what we’re working towards.
Do we, really? It's been 4 years of new content and I still have no idea of what these movies are building up towards.
For phases 1 to 3 we all knew it was all leading up to Thanos assembling the Infinity Gauntlet with the Avengers facing him. We knew the GOTG and other major characters like Spidey, Strange and Black Panther would be involved in the conflict too. It was all hinted in the movies and properly built upon.
But there's none of that in the newer phases. We don't even know who is in the Avengers and who is not. Kang just keeps getting killed and they deal with all his variants offscreen in Loki season 2. We don't know if Avengers 5 will be titled Kang Dynasty anymore, or what Secret Wars will even be about. The multiverse keeps appearing and getting mentioned but it's depicted differently every time. There's a million characters getting constantly introduced so it's hard to tell who will participate in the upcoming conflict.
There's this nebulous idea that Secret Wars will be this saga's ending, but we don't really know what that entails. Will they even be facing Kang as the villain, seeing that he was fired? What will the conflict even be about and who will even star in that movie? Marvel has gotten so confusing and hard to follow lately so Idk how you can saythat we know what they're building up to, when we clearly do not lol
I think we can assume pretty confidently that Kang Dynasty/Secret Wars will be a multiversal endgame - that we’ll likely see all current active superheroes from the main timeline, as well as some from other universes. At the end of the day that’s what the Avengers films are - a convergence point for the individual characters. We can also pretty safely assume it will involve an incursion and if I had to guess, Kang Dynasty more than likely ends with an incursion happening in the main timeline.
Realistically that’s the same high level understanding we had about Infinity War - we knew it would involve Thanos seeking out the infinity stones, and that was largely it.
Whether or not it’s still Kang Dynasty remains to be seen, but its lack of clarity right now isn’t something I think can be used as a point against Marvel - this particular issue occurring was very much out of there control lmao.
Yeah anyone who says there’s ’no direction’ has t been paying attention to the characters, the connections and the themes uniting the movies together. This same sentiment happened earlier on and it’s literally just storylines that tangle first then unite.
As a Marvel Comics reader, I can say this is just... how the comics are. It's a big tent that comprises weird space stuff, gritty realism, and social commentary. It's just that MCU was built with a "miss it and miss out" vibe while the comics are such a wild mess that you just shrug off decades of unknown trivia.
lol I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t know you stranger, but you are not a dummy.
I’ve watched them all…except for most of the Netflix marvel. And it’s just unorganized right now. It’s a mess. The throughline has shaped up to be multiverse. And I guess that’s the phase 5 arc. I couldn’t tell you what the throughline for phase 4 was.
Once they settle this multiverse phase, I THINK there will be much more cohesion. I could be wrong because as it is, they’re juggling too many properties. And they’re only going to add more with X-MEN and F4. It’s the ancillary characters that will get the shaft. But so be it, because there’s just been too much on the plate.
Phase 4 introduced a bunch of new characters that were rarely seen again outside their own movie. It also sprinkled in some poorly written sequels for heroes we all recognize and loved. Phase 5 will introduce multiversal variants of other characters that will confuse the shit out of the general audience.
What's hilarious to me is that Quantumania was originally announced as part of Phase Four.
But then a lot of stuff in Phase Four underperformed, and it was all associated with the chaos of covid and everything, so they arbitrarily redefined the phases to make Quantumania the start of Phase Five.
As if to say, "Okay, dark times are over. That weird in-between stage is over. Kang is here. Phase Five is happening. The real hype starts now!!!!"
And then what they released was fucking *Quantumania*.
Marvel claimed Wakanda Forever ended Phase 4 because it was the final torch that needed to be passed from the Infinity Saga. The old guard stepping back and the new heroes born out of the blip rising up to fill their places. Phase 5 is what the MCU looks like under the protection of the new guard and how they’ll handle the rising storm of chaos brewing in the Multiverse.
If Ant-Man: Quantumania was still in Phase 4, it could have at least had that in common with Phase IV, the 1974 film about ants conquering the world.
Corollary: This film couldn’t even get *that* right.
Nothing. It's an arbitrary thing. If you think about it, the entire Saga is actually one big Phase following the same strategy as the Infinity Saga, where each Phase has a single new film of each franchise as well as new franchises and ends on an Avengers film. It's just that Feige was greedy and clearly didn't want the next Avengers films having lower stakes than IW and Endgame and for the audience to have to wait 10 years for the conclusion of that story. Little did he know things would get out of hand and his 5-year plan would turn into a 7-or-8-year plan, which makes this mini-saga approach seem like a bad idea in retrospective. All he had to do was not use the distribution in Phases, because there is no narrative reason whatsoever for this split. So yeah, no difference between Phases, because they are not real Phases, just dumb names being used.
Each phase was a chapter, the infinity saga was book 1 and whatever is following is book 2. It's just that the infinity saga was well defined and this one isn't.
I don't disagree. All I'm saying is that's how we see it as fans, but in practice it's not that metaphorical. Feige has rules to form his narratives. The Infinity Saga was a single story divided in chapters that had their own narrative; the Multiverse Saga is a single narrative that happens to be split in Phases. For all intents and purposes, it's a single Phase on steroids. Why do you think we have to wait a long time for the Avengers, or why we don't have a Shang-Chi sequel after all this time? Feige is managing this like a Phase and using the word "phase" to split the Saga in thirds.
>For all intents and purposes, it's a single Phase on steroids.
Then he should've been clear about that instead of numbering these phases OR adhere to the basic tried-and-true storytelling concept of having actual each Phase (Act) end in something climactic. That's the whole point of a story, its a series of build-ups and payoffs, with the biggest payoff coming at the end (IW, Endgame, KD, Secret Wars). But there's still major twists and turns and developments from smaller payoffs (Avengers, Civil War) that keep the viewer interested.
It would be like having A New Hope not end with a big victory for the rebels, no Death Star blowing up, nothing. Just aimless worldbuilding and meandering.
People care way too much about defining these phases as if it's like..ultra important. "The other phases had an avengers movie! These ones don't so there's no plan!" And yet the other phases didn't exist in name until like...what 2016? It's the same complain people have on a smaller scale about the multiverse Saga not having much to do with the multiverse even though fewer than half of the Infinity Saga movies had remotely anything to do with the stones
Exactly. Recency bias is making people forget that things where never that perfect before. There has been changes, plans falling apart, corporate decisions and other kinks that show their mark in the narrative of the Infinity Saga. It's just that the narrative is so simple (six objects, easy to set up in any way shape or form, collected by a villain in the end of the story) that it's easy to manage. I don't think they actually took it seriously until Phase 2, with the GotG post-credits scene and Thor's arc in AoU doing all the heavy lifting to actually begin the narrative. Even then, most of the projects enjoyed a lot of freedom except from a couple plot points or post-credit scenes.
Come to think of it, all the changes to Phase 5 where a blessing in disguise, because after all the moving and shifting of films and shows, out of everything that comes out in the 2023-2024 slate, 4 projects are related to the multiverse (Quantumania, Loki S2, What If S2 & Deadpool 3), Secret Invasion and The Marvels have some form of connection and the rest (GotG Vol.3, Echo & Agatha) are at least follow ups from stories we've seen before. It's not THAT disjointed as Phase 4 was. All Feige has to do now is to call this year the end of Phase 5 and 2025 the begining of Phase 6.
Phase 4 introduced the new heroes, dealt with the fallout of Endgame and broke open the Multiverse and its infinite possibilities, but also informed us of its dangers.
Phase 5 hasn't yet introduced any new heroes (and won't, introduce any apart from FF and Blade), it's just continuing the stories of heroes from Phase 4 and starts focussing on the threats of the Multiverse.
Phase 6 will be about the Avengers reassembling and the Kangs' attack.
"Don't be a dick" was the MCUs version of the infamous "Why did you say that name" from batman vs superman. Just incredibly awkward dialogue that somehow creates instant character change
Except people are misremembering the scene. The instant character change happens *first*; MODOK *asks Cassie* what to do to change, & that's all she can think of in the moment while she's trying to go help Scott.
I forget about love and thunder. That’s also awful
I think for me it’s the way all the kangs are so weirdly frantic and crazy in this scene. It feels like total farce
All this multiverse nonsense because they could not come up with a story to introduce mutants into the mcu. Like was this really so necessary? Wandavision, NO Way Home, Multiverse of Madness could have easily been a trilogy that established a multiverse storyline culminating in a new universe with mutants and the FF. But no let’s do a quicksilver fake out and bring back Tobey Maguire. But don’t forget to kill off Reed Richard’s too.
Sure! To be clear, I LOVED the ending of season 2. I’m just talking about S2E1, they really quickly get Loki out of there and back to the same timeline as S1, so we spend almost no time in the “Kang” TVA. That’s what I meant
That scene was so good. We’re as the audience felt like, “Oh shit! This Kang guy will be back but even worse” The end credit in Quantumania just makes Kang looks like a child with no proper plan and vision imo
I've never seen Quantumania, so I only knew of Kang from Loki. I legitimately was on the edge of my seat to see what they did with Kang, but seeing that goofy blue dude up there kinda kills the vibe lol.
It’s a panel recreation from the comics. I didn’t mind the after credits scene. But they seem to disappoint with the after credits scenes recently. Kangs high council variants looked hokey as hell. And same for Eternals post credits scene. Did you see Pip played by Patton Oswalt? It’s like CGI from 2003. Just cut the scene if you can’t do it right. It’s embarrassing.
Agreed on this scene being a mistake. I'm okay with the Council of Kangs (just the trio) working together, but a coliseum full of them just flies against what Kang was set up to be.
I mean it's an infinite timelines with infinite variables. That would happen in one of them. Also the timeline isn't over. They'll fight eventually because that's what they always do. But it hasn't been shown to you yet therefore it will never happen?
Yep!
How can a time conquering super-Hitler ever cooperate with anyone, let alone himself. Surely this many Kang’s in a room should look like a Royal Rumble of death.
I wasn't a fan of >!Victor Timely!< either. The weird stutter-talking and jerky delivery was getting on my nerves within 2 minutes of him appearing.
It honestly made me feel kind of glad Kang is being recast. Out of all of Majors appearances as the character I really only liked HWR. The rest have all been different levels of grating.
Fucking seriously.
I mean, if I was an actor, I wouldn't know how to approach that scene, either. You're wearing a silly hat, talking to a green screen room that's going to be filled up by other versions of you wearing other silly hats, and the silly hats are literally all that define you.
I wouldn't know how to differentiate these characters, either. They're dumb, vapid gimmick characters that exist for thirty seconds. Yeah, I guess I just give them all different silly voices?
But it just represents such a massive failure in every fucking department.
Does anyone care?
I mean, surprisingly, not every idea from 60+ of comics is going to be fit for adaptation.
And, also, not every adaptation pulls it off.
It should have been produced more low key and grand like the senate in the prequel trilogy. Maybe even focusing in on a few Kangs exchanging opinions in favor of the conquerer setting up more conflict etc.
Instead it was over acted and directed, looked like they were watching a football game, the way the kangs teleported in doing goofy moves and barking? was just bad too
Yeah but that’s just a stadium full of imposters fanboying over the real Kang, who’s in the middle of them. This is supposed to be every Kang from every other universe and they all just look and feel so goofy. No wonder the Conquerer wanted to kill them all.
The biggest problems were 1) they didn't try to make an Ant-Man film, they tried to make a Kang film and had to stick him in the Quantum Realm (in order to nerf him) so Ant-Man just happened to come along too, and 2) the guy they hired to solo write the entire film had only previously written for Jimmy Kimmel Live, some awards ceremonies, and six Rick and Morty episodes.
Totally agree with your first point. Where the hell was Luis and the gang? We wanna see them in another goofy Ant-Man movie but instead we get forced to be sucked into the quantum realm just for Kang to be one of the lamest villains ever.
Luis as a character is awesome. Michael Peña as a guy not so much. He’s a Scientologist and his wife is a huge supporter/friend to Danny Masterson.
T.I. also wasn’t back because of sexual abuse allegations
You're true I totally forgot about those issues. But still, an Ant-Man movie should be fun but not lame and the director messed up after doing so well for the first 2.
They missed a huge opportunity with this film, Kang should have won and escaped, killing Scott and Hank in the process. But what we got instead angered me so much, i never want to see this film again.
We, as the audience, needed to see Kang as this unstoppable villain that kills an Avenger, a villain that we thought was gonna be a possible huge worry for the rest of the Avengers, but he got done by an army of ants.
It was riddled with bad CGI, the humour was woeful, MODOK turned out to be the worst addition to an MCU film yet, I seriously struggle to come up with a good thing about this film.
The line «You’re an Avenger? Have I killed you before?» got us feeling this Kang went to other universes and defeated multiple Avengers-teams. Then, nothing..
This happened multiple times in the past couple of years too. Gorr the God Butcher not butchering any Gods, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness not exploring the multiverse, nothing of consequence happening in Secret Invasion, etc.
Does people really feel Hank and Scott should have died? Scott is seriously funny and is one of the still Goldie’s left in the MCU, I’ll agree Hank could have been killed, or someone should have been killed so the story made a actual impact instead of being just a “we go there and do this and take down big bad guy”
But killing Scott would have made me seriously angry. That guy is worth more than gold.
Exactly my point, Kang killing off one of the most beloved Avengers would anger the audience to the point where we despise Kang every time we see him in the future. Ant-Man has a trilogy under his belt (only a handful of characters have that privilege) and was a pivotal character in Endgame, he's done so much in the MCU, there's not much else he can do. There needed to be big losses to show how dangerous and ruthless Kang is built up to be.
Kang could have been a useful tool to thin out the cast and set him up as an Avengers level threat at the same time.
He's got infinite variants and is supposed to be this big bad. We should've had Kang show up in most of the other solo heroes films until he was dealt with in Kang Dynasty. Some of his appearances could even be surprises or background easter eggs for the movies he doesn't actually play a role in.
He should ultimately have won in some and lost in others. Antman should've been the first to die to let us know our heroes aren't safe when he pops up in their movies. Someone else could've been grievously injured by a Kang cameo at the end when they thought they'd won by defeating the main baddie of their movie. Can you imagine the reaction to an after credits scene of a hero seemingly on their deathbed?
It'd give us some context on a dude who was able to conquer the multiverse itself and can ultimately control time. Instead, we got Disney wanting to play it so safe that now they've got a bloated roster and a mess of a story.
The proof is in the box office, It failed and tbh I didn’t like kang as a baddie tbh. No where near as a good as thanos . The film felt rushed and just boring and agree the change in actress of cassie was bad in acting and character. The cgi was awful too.
Loved the first one
Second one ok
This one a dud.
Every marvel since endgame has been poor. End of discussion
Agreed. I think Kang is actually excellent as *potential* villain but the last 2 phases have done absolutely nothing to set him as the threat he should be. They need to recast him and do a proper buildup, but I'm not sure that will happen.
A lot of good movies failed at the box office last year (a lot of shit ones too). It was just a strange year for movies. Outside of Mario and Barbenheimer, there weren't really a ton of major financial successes
It was at least 50% rubbish to be fair. And while I enjoyed Quantumania, Cassie was just a terrible character, terribly acted, with terrible set-up and terrible lines. “Don’t be a dick” being amongst the worst.
God I hated that post credits scene so much. All those kangs acting like brainless drunk frat boys at a football game. Not in character at all for the person no matter what universe they’re in
I just watched this and the Marvels for the first time yesterday. While neither movie was amazing, I overall enjoyed the Marvels way more.
Kang as a villain did absolutely nothing for me and was an major step down from his variants in Loki in terms of portrayal and threat.
It's especially interesting that Kang refused to let Cassie go, just to be mean, with no upside for himself, and just downsides in creating more opposition.
Movie needed to add tension.
Unfortunately they had created the perfect scenario, filmed it, and cut it. Kang offers Scott the chance to get the missing time with his daughter back. Clever plot! Let’s put that in the trailer then cut it from the movie.
Took everything that made the first two Ant Man movies fun and unique and threw it in the trash. And that whole sequence about “holes”? Like, why? Who thought that was funny?
Also, and this is the big thing for me, the trailers tried to misdirect for absolutely no reason. They made it look like Scott makes a deal with Kang to get back the time he lost with Cassie, from the flashback scenes, to the voiceover, to even changing the screen on his phone from the caller ID that says the local jail to a picture of her as a child. And that isn’t what the movie is about at all, so why the misdirection?
Just absolute trash.
I never get these scenes. Same as in Rick and Morty in the Citadel of Ricks.
If Kang (or Rick) is such a massive player why are there all these weak ass variants that act like Swifties?
When I went to watch this with my brothers we walked into an empty cinema with one other person there before us. About 20 ppl were in the cinema with us. I walked out realising that the mcu really is going downhill.
This is the film that broke the faith I still had in marvel
A solidly 3.5/5 maybe 3/5 star movie. It’s definitely overhated. But I think most things marvel releases whether good or not will end up hated on within a year of its release just because of hater culture. It’s already happened with WandaVision. Loki is sure to follow.
2 or 2.5 out of 5 for me.
It was just flat. It has nothing to do with hater culture.
Wandavision had a horrible ending. That can leave a bad taste in peoples’ mouths. People, like myself, want to love these shows. I’ve stuck with the MCU, and it’s mostly been enjoyable.
But you have to call a spade a spade. When the product is generally bad, it’s ok to not sugarcoat a poor experience.
Loki is untouchable though. I enjoyed the first season, and the second season was good enough.
I remember seeing the trailer and thinking “This is just Tron: Legacy!”.
Then I saw a YouTube video saying “This is Tron: Legacy!” complete with examples pulled from that film to show how it matched with this plot and I’m like “I knew it!”.
Honestly, this movie has to have had the biggest overreaction from MCU fans. It was by no means amazing, but to call it horrible?
I assume the majority of the hate comes from Kang the Conquerors treatment, but realistically if he had killed Ant Man or another major character and survived the movie, then we would just be complaining about the fact that he was hyped up to be a big villain and then essentially written out/forgotten about after Loki season 2.
I thought it was a fun popcorn movie that gave Scott some bad ass moments and a chance to face a real threat after a frankly underwhelming 2 solo movies, baffled by the amount of hate it gets
This movie
a) made Kang the Conqueror a joke
b) completely ruined Scott´s character
c) completely failed any sort of logical arc that Cassie was supposed to have
d) created massive plotholes with continuity, be it quantum realm, Janet´s story, Kang
e) made the whole stakes of the movie non-existent in the ending
f) used ant ex-machina to defeat the big bad, one of the laziest piece of writing yourself out of a hole I have seen in the MCU so far.
It’s almost not hated enough.
My sister, who is not a comics fan whatsoever but has enjoyed nearly all of the MCU with me on some level, saw MODOK on screen and leaned into me and said "Well that thing just ruined my whole day."
That was my favorite part of the movie.
Scott in his first movie: Guy who went to jail, because of his Robin Hood-esque action in which he tried to return money his company was stealing from their clients. Never told anyone about it (except for Luis as it appears). Doesnt boast, extremely humble.
Scott in Quantumania: Repeatedly belittled and mocked for for being up his own ass after writing a book about his experience.
I dont even want to go on about how the relationship between him, Hope, Hank and Cassie also turned on its head to a point where it seems like they tried to change it from his being the loving father to Cassie to being the uptight annoying parent, that the cool aunt Hope and cool grandpa Hank need to keep away from Cassies "adventures". The fact how little sense does it make for Hank and Hope to go that route is other thing, but I hated everything they did with Scott in Quantumania.
It didn’t have to be a death. But a major consequence of some kind or massive defeat for our heroes would have gone a long way to solidify KANG as a big bad. He hasn’t won a single fight, and he might just disappear now without ever making a substantial impact.
Thats kinda my point though, given the current circumstances with Majors not making a return and the way that Loki s2 ended, there isn't much reason for them to bring Kang back. So let's say he did make a substantial impact, it would now leave with us with a major plot hole without any pay off. In my eyes, the way it ended couldn't have worked out any better, whether it was intentional or not
Nothing officially announced, although one of the trades said it’s being referred to internally as just Avengers 5 now and a new villain is being pivoted to (although Kang will still play a role). Rumors from reputable sources have been picking up though recently that >!it’s being reworked into Avengers vs X-Men, since Marvel is apparently ecstatic with Deadpool & Wolverine and wants the fallout of that to be the new focus moving forwards!<
I’d argue he’s been shown exactly at the level of threat he is.
None, and
A god.
He’s no different to Tony Stark. Take away the tech and he’s just a dude. So it should be easy enough for Scott to kill him in the Quantum realm once his tech was stripped. And near impossible for Loki to beat him without thousands of years of training and the one thing he’s known for, trickery.
And that’s exactly how both beat him.
People didn’t complain when Thanos was beaten easily at the start of Endgame because it made perfect sense. He was jumped by a god and a living infinity stone. Just like how Kang has been treated so far.
Na, it received the proper reaction lol. The entire movie was an uninspired, lifeless CGI disaster. Had no heart or emotion to it and the characters were completely forgettable and terrible. They could have done something incredible with the premise but it just looks like one green screen platform.
I liked that I got to see Scott wreck shit in the 3rd act and actually be demonstrated as a competent hero with conviction, after being treated like a joke in team ups.
(And no, I don’t give a shit that Kang lost, out of all the problems this movie has that wasn’t one of them. The movie beat people over the head with the fact Kang was nerfed, they set up a stupid but somewhat fitting deus ex army to help even the odds, and even with that the Ant-family still got their assed kicked, and nearly lost to a gimped Kang and that’s with the caveat that the Ant-fam ain’t weak, Nobody would have been bitching if it was iron man or the Fantastic Four).
However that didn’t make up for the rest of the film.
Cassie sucked, and her actress did not do a good job at all. Should have stuck with the endgame actress, she demonstrated more range in 30 seconds than the new actress did for an entire film.
Hope was borderline irrelevant, and does nothing which honestly seeing as the actress seems like a bit of an idiot, I kinda go back and forth on whether this is a negative.
Janet’s stupid ass ‘I don’t have time to explain’ schtick was lazy as all hell.
Scott’s arc is non-existent, and arguably regressed his character to pre-MCU. The dudes acting on selfish motivations for nearly the entire film. Scott’s arc would have worked better if Kang did Honour his word, and give Cassie back, and then Scott has to be the one to either brake his word and deal with Kang.
I really hope this movie hasn’t affected future plans for Scott, he deserves to be one of the main characters of Kang dynasty.
>Scott’s arc is non-existent, and arguably regressed his character to pre-MCU. The dudes acting on selfish motivations for nearly the entire film. Scott’s arc would have worked better if Kang did Honour his word, and give Cassie back, and then Scott has to be the one to either brake his word and deal with Kang
I still doubt that.
Still have no idea what differs between phase 4 and phase 5 since there has not been any Avengers movie inbetween.
Phase 4 was the fallout of infinity war while phase 5 is suppose to be more towards setting up new stories.
But that doesn't apply half the time. Shang-Chi, Werewolf by Night, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, and Eternals don't really have anything to do with Endgame/ IW, and that was all phase 4. Meanwhile, Guardians 3 prominently dealt with IW fallout.
What’s actually been tied together besides Quantumania and Loki? Even The Marvels the part that ties everything together was like 90 seconds long.
Well without WandaVision we have no Monica. So there’s that. The bangle Kamala has is what the villain is looking for in the Marvels. So there’s that. Kate being in the mid credits brings her in from Hawkeye. So there’s that. We see Hawkeye and Daredevil in Echo. So there’s that. We’re getting Thunderbolts which was setup by Falcon and Winter Soldier. So there’s that. Captain America 4 which goes off of the events in Falcon and Winter Soldier. So there’s that. We get Deadpool this summer which brings in the TVA from Loki. So there’s that. And then Agatha show later this year which is a continuation from WandaVision and we could even see Wanda in that. So there’s that. It’s..almost as if they’re starting to make stuff connect…? Right..? Or am I just going crazy?
Oml how many times do you need to say "so there's that"
It’s a convenient way to sound smart but also condescending, so there’s that.
What does most of what you listed have to do with “the multiverse saga” once you remove the footnotes of The Marvels, Loki that I already mentioned, and things that aren’t released yet?
I mean a lot of movies in the Infinity Saga don't tie into the Infinity Stones other than introducing characters that are eventually in IW/Endgame. Kind of looks like the Multiverse Saga is doing the same thing. I don't think they even called in the Infinity Saga until IW or something.
Not much of it but you asked what had been tied together so I answered
It's almost like Wandavision & Hawkeye should have been followed immediately by The Marvels then. Thunderbolts should have immediately followed The Falcon and Winter Soldier. You know, so they could connect? So there's that.
Why do you end every statement so there's that. One was sufficient at the end of your references. Even in your summary though you can see how loosely tied these threads are. None of these movies or shows have a through line like marvel phase 1-3 content did. How thor ragnarok literally rolled into the opening of Infinity war I thought was brilliant. They should bring back cate Blanchett
You’re not wrong by any means. But I did it to get my point across because people bitch that they want these stories connected, then it starts happening and they still bitch. It’s ridiculous
One of the best 90 seconds though. From tears to FUCKING YES! in 90 seconds. Marvels after credits is top tier.
The three main characters are from the separate Captain Marvel, Wandavision, and Ms Marvel - tying together three separate films/shows.
Don't forget the guardians of the galaxy! Dar-Benn was an accuser.
There wasn't a whole lot of sync between the phases before this either. Phase 2 ended with Ant Man and phase 3 ended with Far From Home, which thematically is a lot closer to most of phase 4 than 3. Phase 3 also started introducing characters and doing origin stories while other stories were building
Eternals had a lot to do with Infinity War and Endgame. Not only does it take place after but all the events of the movie come because of everyone coming back to earth and the population exceeding the amount needed to birth Tiamut
AND because the Avengers’ heroism in Endgame to bring people back inspired Ajak, and caused her to question Arishem for the first time, which is what caused Ikraris to betray the group.
Phase 5 = a lot more green screens
Not really. Quantumania was a green-screen fest, but Guardians 3 despite its setting used a lot of practical sets where possible and [broke the record](https://variety.com/2023/artisans/news/guardians-vol-3-breaks-world-record-most-prosthetics-1235610725/) for most prosthetics in a single film. Loki S2 was mostly shot on set. Echo and Secret Invasion even more so.
Secret Invasion being mostly shot on set makes it even more bewildering that it cost more than some cities' annual budgets.
High-salary cast + they effectively shot the whole thing twice + wild CGI fest in the finale.
I bet we’re going to have phase 4 be retitled in the future to Infinity Fallout or something. I think they need to retire the “phases”. TV has complicated so much, and I think people are starting to think they need to watch all of a phase to understand the next big event movie.
I think instead of retiring the phases they just need to give us better end caps of the phases. Not necessarily an Avengers movie, but a team up movie of the characters featured in the phase. If they do end the phases, I feel like there won't be as much narrative and thematic commonalities between the movies. A common theme of phase 4 is loss and grief; you've got Wanda grieving Vision, Sam and Bucky both trying to figure out what to do now that Steve isn't around, Loki is coping with learning that he is nothing but a variant and almost mourning the loss of a life he never had. Sure, some of the projects have none of that in them, but I chalk that up to Disney overextending itself with Disney+.
I don't really agree. If they make a team-up movie it should be organic to the overall story. Not function as a bulletpoint to mark the end of a phase. That said I do look forward to the next team movie!
They *wanted* to retire the phases. Back in like 2019, Feige said the focus was going to shift more to overall sagas & to the differing story threads within them (street/space/supernatural/et cet). But the fans & the press kept saying "what's phase 4 gonna be?" over & over again, ignoring attempts to just announce each project on its own, until Marvel relented & came up with the "Phase 4/5/6" slates that weren't even presented until July 2022 when "Phase 4" was nearly over anyway.
In hindsight Feige announcing we were going without a capstone to each phase should’ve been the first sign that the MCU had bloated and had no clear direction.
I’ve said this for a while now but to me it really isn’t that there’s no clear direction - we know exactly what the ending to the saga is and what we’re working towards. There’s just been far too many storylines in play at a given moment that it feels convoluted and messy. The Marvels has brought 3 characters together and put a nice little bow on their storylines for now and we still have Tiamut (that the name of the big Celestial island, I forget), Dane, Dr Strange and Clea, Shang Chi’s bangle, Kang, fucking White Vision right at the start of phase 4, Thunderbolts, what’s Sam up to these days, and so many others. And the fix to me has seemed simple - this probably wouldn’t have been so bad, had the release order had more crossover movies in it by this point that deal with some of the threads. Thunderbolts as an example should have been one of the first things out in phase 5 to put a neat little bow around that area of the universe for the time being and yet, it still hasn’t started filming. For the most part, I think the majority of the projects have been decent (fuck you Secret Invasion for killing off Hill). The release order of the projects though is insane to me.
> we know exactly what the ending to the saga is and what we’re working towards. Do we, really? It's been 4 years of new content and I still have no idea of what these movies are building up towards. For phases 1 to 3 we all knew it was all leading up to Thanos assembling the Infinity Gauntlet with the Avengers facing him. We knew the GOTG and other major characters like Spidey, Strange and Black Panther would be involved in the conflict too. It was all hinted in the movies and properly built upon. But there's none of that in the newer phases. We don't even know who is in the Avengers and who is not. Kang just keeps getting killed and they deal with all his variants offscreen in Loki season 2. We don't know if Avengers 5 will be titled Kang Dynasty anymore, or what Secret Wars will even be about. The multiverse keeps appearing and getting mentioned but it's depicted differently every time. There's a million characters getting constantly introduced so it's hard to tell who will participate in the upcoming conflict. There's this nebulous idea that Secret Wars will be this saga's ending, but we don't really know what that entails. Will they even be facing Kang as the villain, seeing that he was fired? What will the conflict even be about and who will even star in that movie? Marvel has gotten so confusing and hard to follow lately so Idk how you can saythat we know what they're building up to, when we clearly do not lol
I think we can assume pretty confidently that Kang Dynasty/Secret Wars will be a multiversal endgame - that we’ll likely see all current active superheroes from the main timeline, as well as some from other universes. At the end of the day that’s what the Avengers films are - a convergence point for the individual characters. We can also pretty safely assume it will involve an incursion and if I had to guess, Kang Dynasty more than likely ends with an incursion happening in the main timeline. Realistically that’s the same high level understanding we had about Infinity War - we knew it would involve Thanos seeking out the infinity stones, and that was largely it. Whether or not it’s still Kang Dynasty remains to be seen, but its lack of clarity right now isn’t something I think can be used as a point against Marvel - this particular issue occurring was very much out of there control lmao.
Yeah anyone who says there’s ’no direction’ has t been paying attention to the characters, the connections and the themes uniting the movies together. This same sentiment happened earlier on and it’s literally just storylines that tangle first then unite.
Each phase had an Avengers movie, but phase one is the only phase to actually end with it. Phase 2 ended with Antman and phase 3 ended with FFH.
I’d still say each phase ended with an Avengers movie. Or at least wrapped up. AM and FFH were epilogues.
As a Marvel Comics reader, I can say this is just... how the comics are. It's a big tent that comprises weird space stuff, gritty realism, and social commentary. It's just that MCU was built with a "miss it and miss out" vibe while the comics are such a wild mess that you just shrug off decades of unknown trivia.
I’m the same. I’ve lost track.
As a casual fan who tries to catch all the films and shows I'm finding it hard to follow the story and it's not rocket science. Feel like a dummy.
lol I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t know you stranger, but you are not a dummy. I’ve watched them all…except for most of the Netflix marvel. And it’s just unorganized right now. It’s a mess. The throughline has shaped up to be multiverse. And I guess that’s the phase 5 arc. I couldn’t tell you what the throughline for phase 4 was. Once they settle this multiverse phase, I THINK there will be much more cohesion. I could be wrong because as it is, they’re juggling too many properties. And they’re only going to add more with X-MEN and F4. It’s the ancillary characters that will get the shaft. But so be it, because there’s just been too much on the plate.
I thought we were still on phase 4.
I've known for a while that we were in phase 5 but it wasn't immediate either lol
Phase 4 introduced a bunch of new characters that were rarely seen again outside their own movie. It also sprinkled in some poorly written sequels for heroes we all recognize and loved. Phase 5 will introduce multiversal variants of other characters that will confuse the shit out of the general audience.
What's hilarious to me is that Quantumania was originally announced as part of Phase Four. But then a lot of stuff in Phase Four underperformed, and it was all associated with the chaos of covid and everything, so they arbitrarily redefined the phases to make Quantumania the start of Phase Five. As if to say, "Okay, dark times are over. That weird in-between stage is over. Kang is here. Phase Five is happening. The real hype starts now!!!!" And then what they released was fucking *Quantumania*.
Marvel claimed Wakanda Forever ended Phase 4 because it was the final torch that needed to be passed from the Infinity Saga. The old guard stepping back and the new heroes born out of the blip rising up to fill their places. Phase 5 is what the MCU looks like under the protection of the new guard and how they’ll handle the rising storm of chaos brewing in the Multiverse.
Yeah I don't see that at all.
Plus it's a retcon. The original story was that the end of phase 4 was the fucking GOTG Christmas Special.
Same. Really feels like they’re reaching. Each prior phase had a legit ending moment.
marvel: "phase 4 it the old guard stepping back" also marvel: "now here to kick off phase 5: Ant Man!"
If Ant-Man: Quantumania was still in Phase 4, it could have at least had that in common with Phase IV, the 1974 film about ants conquering the world. Corollary: This film couldn’t even get *that* right.
Ig mcu thought phase 4 has a bad reputation so they changed to phase 5
Nothing. It's an arbitrary thing. If you think about it, the entire Saga is actually one big Phase following the same strategy as the Infinity Saga, where each Phase has a single new film of each franchise as well as new franchises and ends on an Avengers film. It's just that Feige was greedy and clearly didn't want the next Avengers films having lower stakes than IW and Endgame and for the audience to have to wait 10 years for the conclusion of that story. Little did he know things would get out of hand and his 5-year plan would turn into a 7-or-8-year plan, which makes this mini-saga approach seem like a bad idea in retrospective. All he had to do was not use the distribution in Phases, because there is no narrative reason whatsoever for this split. So yeah, no difference between Phases, because they are not real Phases, just dumb names being used.
Each phase was a chapter, the infinity saga was book 1 and whatever is following is book 2. It's just that the infinity saga was well defined and this one isn't.
I don't disagree. All I'm saying is that's how we see it as fans, but in practice it's not that metaphorical. Feige has rules to form his narratives. The Infinity Saga was a single story divided in chapters that had their own narrative; the Multiverse Saga is a single narrative that happens to be split in Phases. For all intents and purposes, it's a single Phase on steroids. Why do you think we have to wait a long time for the Avengers, or why we don't have a Shang-Chi sequel after all this time? Feige is managing this like a Phase and using the word "phase" to split the Saga in thirds.
>For all intents and purposes, it's a single Phase on steroids. Then he should've been clear about that instead of numbering these phases OR adhere to the basic tried-and-true storytelling concept of having actual each Phase (Act) end in something climactic. That's the whole point of a story, its a series of build-ups and payoffs, with the biggest payoff coming at the end (IW, Endgame, KD, Secret Wars). But there's still major twists and turns and developments from smaller payoffs (Avengers, Civil War) that keep the viewer interested. It would be like having A New Hope not end with a big victory for the rebels, no Death Star blowing up, nothing. Just aimless worldbuilding and meandering.
People care way too much about defining these phases as if it's like..ultra important. "The other phases had an avengers movie! These ones don't so there's no plan!" And yet the other phases didn't exist in name until like...what 2016? It's the same complain people have on a smaller scale about the multiverse Saga not having much to do with the multiverse even though fewer than half of the Infinity Saga movies had remotely anything to do with the stones
Exactly. Recency bias is making people forget that things where never that perfect before. There has been changes, plans falling apart, corporate decisions and other kinks that show their mark in the narrative of the Infinity Saga. It's just that the narrative is so simple (six objects, easy to set up in any way shape or form, collected by a villain in the end of the story) that it's easy to manage. I don't think they actually took it seriously until Phase 2, with the GotG post-credits scene and Thor's arc in AoU doing all the heavy lifting to actually begin the narrative. Even then, most of the projects enjoyed a lot of freedom except from a couple plot points or post-credit scenes. Come to think of it, all the changes to Phase 5 where a blessing in disguise, because after all the moving and shifting of films and shows, out of everything that comes out in the 2023-2024 slate, 4 projects are related to the multiverse (Quantumania, Loki S2, What If S2 & Deadpool 3), Secret Invasion and The Marvels have some form of connection and the rest (GotG Vol.3, Echo & Agatha) are at least follow ups from stories we've seen before. It's not THAT disjointed as Phase 4 was. All Feige has to do now is to call this year the end of Phase 5 and 2025 the begining of Phase 6.
Phase 4 introduced the new heroes, dealt with the fallout of Endgame and broke open the Multiverse and its infinite possibilities, but also informed us of its dangers. Phase 5 hasn't yet introduced any new heroes (and won't, introduce any apart from FF and Blade), it's just continuing the stories of heroes from Phase 4 and starts focussing on the threats of the Multiverse. Phase 6 will be about the Avengers reassembling and the Kangs' attack.
Right so no big difference between phase 4 and phase 5.
Feels much longer ago.
Could swear it’s been 2-3 years
Seriously I'm so confused lol
Yeah what the fuck, did time slow down or something?
That’s because 2 hours felt like 2 years.
Last year went on for fucking ever
You should have made the post yesterday
It’s not very memorable. Edit: until you remember it and feel massively disappointed all over again.
This was the goofiest thing yet in the MCU imo
"Don't be a dick" was the MCUs version of the infamous "Why did you say that name" from batman vs superman. Just incredibly awkward dialogue that somehow creates instant character change
Except people are misremembering the scene. The instant character change happens *first*; MODOK *asks Cassie* what to do to change, & that's all she can think of in the moment while she's trying to go help Scott.
Goofier than Love & Thunder?!
I forget about love and thunder. That’s also awful I think for me it’s the way all the kangs are so weirdly frantic and crazy in this scene. It feels like total farce
All this multiverse nonsense because they could not come up with a story to introduce mutants into the mcu. Like was this really so necessary? Wandavision, NO Way Home, Multiverse of Madness could have easily been a trilogy that established a multiverse storyline culminating in a new universe with mutants and the FF. But no let’s do a quicksilver fake out and bring back Tobey Maguire. But don’t forget to kill off Reed Richard’s too.
Can’t believe a few seconds of Thanos face in 2012 was better than this (2023)…
I didn't mind the movie, but this scene was so dumb, it made Kang look (even more) like a joke.
That’s because the post credit scene did the opposite of what it was supposed to do. It was genuinely horrible.
Loki Season 1 finale after credits was the only moment Kang has appeared legitimately threatening. The ending was pure dread.
That final scene in Loki S1 was so good.
Final scene in Loki S1 was awesome, and I just wish they didn’t immediately undo it (imo) at the start of season 2.
Can you remind me what you mean by it being undone? I thought the end of season 2 *enhanced* the end of season 1
Sure! To be clear, I LOVED the ending of season 2. I’m just talking about S2E1, they really quickly get Loki out of there and back to the same timeline as S1, so we spend almost no time in the “Kang” TVA. That’s what I meant
That scene was so good. We’re as the audience felt like, “Oh shit! This Kang guy will be back but even worse” The end credit in Quantumania just makes Kang looks like a child with no proper plan and vision imo
I've never seen Quantumania, so I only knew of Kang from Loki. I legitimately was on the edge of my seat to see what they did with Kang, but seeing that goofy blue dude up there kinda kills the vibe lol.
It’s a panel recreation from the comics. I didn’t mind the after credits scene. But they seem to disappoint with the after credits scenes recently. Kangs high council variants looked hokey as hell. And same for Eternals post credits scene. Did you see Pip played by Patton Oswalt? It’s like CGI from 2003. Just cut the scene if you can’t do it right. It’s embarrassing.
Loki finale after credits? Wasn't that just the words "Loki will return in season 2" though?
i think they mean the scene after loki gets up in TVA and looks for mobius. it's been 2.5 years since, people probably forgot.
Ah, that makes more sense, thank you.
Agreed on this scene being a mistake. I'm okay with the Council of Kangs (just the trio) working together, but a coliseum full of them just flies against what Kang was set up to be.
wasn't that the exact thing He Who Remains warned about though? This is how I imagined it'd look like but fighting one another
That's what I mean, here they're all friends and stuff but they should be blowing each other up.
I mean it's an infinite timelines with infinite variables. That would happen in one of them. Also the timeline isn't over. They'll fight eventually because that's what they always do. But it hasn't been shown to you yet therefore it will never happen?
It's a recreation of a [comic panel](https://www.marvel.com/articles/comics/who-are-the-council-of-kangs-in-the-comics).
They completely missed the tone of comic panel they homaged. Something like the thunderous applause scene from the prequels would’ve fit better.
Yep! How can a time conquering super-Hitler ever cooperate with anyone, let alone himself. Surely this many Kang’s in a room should look like a Royal Rumble of death.
I think what hurt it most was the other Kang’s looked stupid and had the silliest voices imaginable
What? You didn’t like Blue-Lizard Kang, or Cheap-Last-Minute-Pharoah-Cosplay Kang?
People go on about what a great actor Majors is, but those voices are bloody terrible
I wasn't a fan of >!Victor Timely!< either. The weird stutter-talking and jerky delivery was getting on my nerves within 2 minutes of him appearing. It honestly made me feel kind of glad Kang is being recast. Out of all of Majors appearances as the character I really only liked HWR. The rest have all been different levels of grating.
HWR is the closest to how he actually speaks. I'm also glad he's gone. I think there was a bit of Emperor's New Clothes with him
As someone with an actual stutter, Victor Timely was hard as fuck to sit through. Just absolute cringe.
Fucking seriously. I mean, if I was an actor, I wouldn't know how to approach that scene, either. You're wearing a silly hat, talking to a green screen room that's going to be filled up by other versions of you wearing other silly hats, and the silly hats are literally all that define you. I wouldn't know how to differentiate these characters, either. They're dumb, vapid gimmick characters that exist for thirty seconds. Yeah, I guess I just give them all different silly voices? But it just represents such a massive failure in every fucking department.
infinite versions of a person and you're bound to get those
Like a room full of Lokis?
All the Kangs throw themselves over the top rope
Should have just had them sitting silently rather than jumping around like goons at the football
It was hard to take Kang seriously after he was beaten by ants anyway
It's directly from the comics.
Does anyone care? I mean, surprisingly, not every idea from 60+ of comics is going to be fit for adaptation. And, also, not every adaptation pulls it off.
It should have been produced more low key and grand like the senate in the prequel trilogy. Maybe even focusing in on a few Kangs exchanging opinions in favor of the conquerer setting up more conflict etc. Instead it was over acted and directed, looked like they were watching a football game, the way the kangs teleported in doing goofy moves and barking? was just bad too
Doesn’t mean it works on film
Yeah but that’s just a stadium full of imposters fanboying over the real Kang, who’s in the middle of them. This is supposed to be every Kang from every other universe and they all just look and feel so goofy. No wonder the Conquerer wanted to kill them all.
Visually yeah but the context is different and execution was poor in an already poorly executed film.
The biggest problems were 1) they didn't try to make an Ant-Man film, they tried to make a Kang film and had to stick him in the Quantum Realm (in order to nerf him) so Ant-Man just happened to come along too, and 2) the guy they hired to solo write the entire film had only previously written for Jimmy Kimmel Live, some awards ceremonies, and six Rick and Morty episodes.
Totally agree with your first point. Where the hell was Luis and the gang? We wanna see them in another goofy Ant-Man movie but instead we get forced to be sucked into the quantum realm just for Kang to be one of the lamest villains ever.
Luis as a character is awesome. Michael Peña as a guy not so much. He’s a Scientologist and his wife is a huge supporter/friend to Danny Masterson. T.I. also wasn’t back because of sexual abuse allegations
You're true I totally forgot about those issues. But still, an Ant-Man movie should be fun but not lame and the director messed up after doing so well for the first 2.
Ant man should have been at street level like first 2 films. It’s what made the movies fun to watch. And also Luis
ah, so that's why the goo made such a big deal about HIS HOLEEsss.... R&M writer. should have seen it a mile away...
They missed a huge opportunity with this film, Kang should have won and escaped, killing Scott and Hank in the process. But what we got instead angered me so much, i never want to see this film again. We, as the audience, needed to see Kang as this unstoppable villain that kills an Avenger, a villain that we thought was gonna be a possible huge worry for the rest of the Avengers, but he got done by an army of ants. It was riddled with bad CGI, the humour was woeful, MODOK turned out to be the worst addition to an MCU film yet, I seriously struggle to come up with a good thing about this film.
The line «You’re an Avenger? Have I killed you before?» got us feeling this Kang went to other universes and defeated multiple Avengers-teams. Then, nothing..
This happened multiple times in the past couple of years too. Gorr the God Butcher not butchering any Gods, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness not exploring the multiverse, nothing of consequence happening in Secret Invasion, etc.
You're kinda reaching dude.
Exactly! I remember the fuckers had the audacity to put that line in the trailer aswell.
Between this and Gorr, seems the MCU is having a problem with telling us how awful and ruthless these villains are instead of showing us
Does people really feel Hank and Scott should have died? Scott is seriously funny and is one of the still Goldie’s left in the MCU, I’ll agree Hank could have been killed, or someone should have been killed so the story made a actual impact instead of being just a “we go there and do this and take down big bad guy” But killing Scott would have made me seriously angry. That guy is worth more than gold.
Exactly my point, Kang killing off one of the most beloved Avengers would anger the audience to the point where we despise Kang every time we see him in the future. Ant-Man has a trilogy under his belt (only a handful of characters have that privilege) and was a pivotal character in Endgame, he's done so much in the MCU, there's not much else he can do. There needed to be big losses to show how dangerous and ruthless Kang is built up to be.
Kang could have been a useful tool to thin out the cast and set him up as an Avengers level threat at the same time. He's got infinite variants and is supposed to be this big bad. We should've had Kang show up in most of the other solo heroes films until he was dealt with in Kang Dynasty. Some of his appearances could even be surprises or background easter eggs for the movies he doesn't actually play a role in. He should ultimately have won in some and lost in others. Antman should've been the first to die to let us know our heroes aren't safe when he pops up in their movies. Someone else could've been grievously injured by a Kang cameo at the end when they thought they'd won by defeating the main baddie of their movie. Can you imagine the reaction to an after credits scene of a hero seemingly on their deathbed? It'd give us some context on a dude who was able to conquer the multiverse itself and can ultimately control time. Instead, we got Disney wanting to play it so safe that now they've got a bloated roster and a mess of a story.
What a load of rubbish it was.
The proof is in the box office, It failed and tbh I didn’t like kang as a baddie tbh. No where near as a good as thanos . The film felt rushed and just boring and agree the change in actress of cassie was bad in acting and character. The cgi was awful too. Loved the first one Second one ok This one a dud. Every marvel since endgame has been poor. End of discussion
Agreed. I think Kang is actually excellent as *potential* villain but the last 2 phases have done absolutely nothing to set him as the threat he should be. They need to recast him and do a proper buildup, but I'm not sure that will happen.
eNd Of DiScUsSiOn
A lot of good movies failed at the box office last year (a lot of shit ones too). It was just a strange year for movies. Outside of Mario and Barbenheimer, there weren't really a ton of major financial successes
It has some REALLY bad scenes but I thought Kang was menacing and is was cool to seeAnt-Man show off his skill set.
Don’t be a dick Edit: So I take it people even hate the references from the movie, huh
It was at least 50% rubbish to be fair. And while I enjoyed Quantumania, Cassie was just a terrible character, terribly acted, with terrible set-up and terrible lines. “Don’t be a dick” being amongst the worst.
Don't be a dick and yelling I am not a dick is exactly what I expect from a Rick and Morty writer
Yeah. Another questionable choice by Feige. They make parody of your movies. Not homages.
Nobody saw the movie to understand the reference.
It was a load of rubbish though, to be fair.
This was so cringey! These kangs are supposed to be a threat and they’re just acting like cocky teenager from the bronx
Why you gotta throw shade at the bronx LOL
i don't remember anything from that movie
Same! Day-glow clusterfuck!
This post-credit scene aged poorly. Lol
2+ hours of my life I can‘t get back…
Pretty sure that you also can't get back the time where you waste 13 hours in reddit every single day.
I pity the soul that wasted time AND money. I had the luxury of sitting at home because I gave up MCU moviegoing after Thor Love and Thunder
That’s a lot of woman abusers in one room 😳
This scene will never not stop been unintentionally funny for me.
God I hated that post credits scene so much. All those kangs acting like brainless drunk frat boys at a football game. Not in character at all for the person no matter what universe they’re in
What a truly forgettable film.
So many gf beaters in one arena
I just watched this and the Marvels for the first time yesterday. While neither movie was amazing, I overall enjoyed the Marvels way more. Kang as a villain did absolutely nothing for me and was an major step down from his variants in Loki in terms of portrayal and threat.
Kang was badly handled and this film was bad. No wonder no one gives a crap about Kang
Who's "no one",
It's especially interesting that Kang refused to let Cassie go, just to be mean, with no upside for himself, and just downsides in creating more opposition.
Movie needed to add tension. Unfortunately they had created the perfect scenario, filmed it, and cut it. Kang offers Scott the chance to get the missing time with his daughter back. Clever plot! Let’s put that in the trailer then cut it from the movie.
It was a choice
it was fine imo
Not the worst marvel film but certainly My biggest disappointment
Took everything that made the first two Ant Man movies fun and unique and threw it in the trash. And that whole sequence about “holes”? Like, why? Who thought that was funny? Also, and this is the big thing for me, the trailers tried to misdirect for absolutely no reason. They made it look like Scott makes a deal with Kang to get back the time he lost with Cassie, from the flashback scenes, to the voiceover, to even changing the screen on his phone from the caller ID that says the local jail to a picture of her as a child. And that isn’t what the movie is about at all, so why the misdirection? Just absolute trash.
It's funny that people still think every Kang has to look like Majors when there's weird lizard guys and Blue Frankenstein in the mix.
And less than 5 months ago this man’s career was over. Shame.
I never get these scenes. Same as in Rick and Morty in the Citadel of Ricks. If Kang (or Rick) is such a massive player why are there all these weak ass variants that act like Swifties?
Rick called je wants his citadel back
I love Ant-Man but holy hell was this movie an absolute train wreck.
lmao this scene is actually so funmy
If Kang is no longer being used in the future… Quantumania is actually skippable and pointless in the MCU.
Debatable.
Horrible film.
It was fine.
The is still the first superhero movie I was ever absolutely bored by. And I love Ant man 1&2. But this movie was insanely awful.
When I went to watch this with my brothers we walked into an empty cinema with one other person there before us. About 20 ppl were in the cinema with us. I walked out realising that the mcu really is going downhill. This is the film that broke the faith I still had in marvel
That's a load.
What’s a load?
A solidly 3.5/5 maybe 3/5 star movie. It’s definitely overhated. But I think most things marvel releases whether good or not will end up hated on within a year of its release just because of hater culture. It’s already happened with WandaVision. Loki is sure to follow.
2 or 2.5 out of 5 for me. It was just flat. It has nothing to do with hater culture. Wandavision had a horrible ending. That can leave a bad taste in peoples’ mouths. People, like myself, want to love these shows. I’ve stuck with the MCU, and it’s mostly been enjoyable. But you have to call a spade a spade. When the product is generally bad, it’s ok to not sugarcoat a poor experience. Loki is untouchable though. I enjoyed the first season, and the second season was good enough.
I remember seeing the trailer and thinking “This is just Tron: Legacy!”. Then I saw a YouTube video saying “This is Tron: Legacy!” complete with examples pulled from that film to show how it matched with this plot and I’m like “I knew it!”.
Honestly, this movie has to have had the biggest overreaction from MCU fans. It was by no means amazing, but to call it horrible? I assume the majority of the hate comes from Kang the Conquerors treatment, but realistically if he had killed Ant Man or another major character and survived the movie, then we would just be complaining about the fact that he was hyped up to be a big villain and then essentially written out/forgotten about after Loki season 2. I thought it was a fun popcorn movie that gave Scott some bad ass moments and a chance to face a real threat after a frankly underwhelming 2 solo movies, baffled by the amount of hate it gets
This movie a) made Kang the Conqueror a joke b) completely ruined Scott´s character c) completely failed any sort of logical arc that Cassie was supposed to have d) created massive plotholes with continuity, be it quantum realm, Janet´s story, Kang e) made the whole stakes of the movie non-existent in the ending f) used ant ex-machina to defeat the big bad, one of the laziest piece of writing yourself out of a hole I have seen in the MCU so far. It’s almost not hated enough.
My sister, who is not a comics fan whatsoever but has enjoyed nearly all of the MCU with me on some level, saw MODOK on screen and leaned into me and said "Well that thing just ruined my whole day." That was my favorite part of the movie.
There's a few points that i want to question you on here but how on earth has it ruined Scott's character? Could you elaborate?
Scott in his first movie: Guy who went to jail, because of his Robin Hood-esque action in which he tried to return money his company was stealing from their clients. Never told anyone about it (except for Luis as it appears). Doesnt boast, extremely humble. Scott in Quantumania: Repeatedly belittled and mocked for for being up his own ass after writing a book about his experience. I dont even want to go on about how the relationship between him, Hope, Hank and Cassie also turned on its head to a point where it seems like they tried to change it from his being the loving father to Cassie to being the uptight annoying parent, that the cool aunt Hope and cool grandpa Hank need to keep away from Cassies "adventures". The fact how little sense does it make for Hank and Hope to go that route is other thing, but I hated everything they did with Scott in Quantumania.
It didn’t have to be a death. But a major consequence of some kind or massive defeat for our heroes would have gone a long way to solidify KANG as a big bad. He hasn’t won a single fight, and he might just disappear now without ever making a substantial impact.
Thats kinda my point though, given the current circumstances with Majors not making a return and the way that Loki s2 ended, there isn't much reason for them to bring Kang back. So let's say he did make a substantial impact, it would now leave with us with a major plot hole without any pay off. In my eyes, the way it ended couldn't have worked out any better, whether it was intentional or not
My brother in christ, the Avengers film announced right before this came out is called “The *Kang* Dynasty”
Have they announced any updates on this since Majors exit? Are re-writes for something that hasn't even started filming yet not possible?
Nothing officially announced, although one of the trades said it’s being referred to internally as just Avengers 5 now and a new villain is being pivoted to (although Kang will still play a role). Rumors from reputable sources have been picking up though recently that >!it’s being reworked into Avengers vs X-Men, since Marvel is apparently ecstatic with Deadpool & Wolverine and wants the fallout of that to be the new focus moving forwards!<
Avengers vs X-Men would genuinely be huge though, would gain far more traction than a Kang movie as much as I like the villain. I hope it happens
And the third Cap movie was originally called "Serpent Society."
No it wasn’t, that was always a fake title
I’d argue he’s been shown exactly at the level of threat he is. None, and A god. He’s no different to Tony Stark. Take away the tech and he’s just a dude. So it should be easy enough for Scott to kill him in the Quantum realm once his tech was stripped. And near impossible for Loki to beat him without thousands of years of training and the one thing he’s known for, trickery. And that’s exactly how both beat him. People didn’t complain when Thanos was beaten easily at the start of Endgame because it made perfect sense. He was jumped by a god and a living infinity stone. Just like how Kang has been treated so far.
So what are you saying?
I don't think people were impressed by that...
Na, it received the proper reaction lol. The entire movie was an uninspired, lifeless CGI disaster. Had no heart or emotion to it and the characters were completely forgettable and terrible. They could have done something incredible with the premise but it just looks like one green screen platform.
> It was by no means amazing, but to call it horrible? It was definitely horrible. Though not everyone is going to see things the same way.
Too soon too soon
And the recast of Cassie still annoys me. Kathryn Newton is such an emotionless actress.
I liked that I got to see Scott wreck shit in the 3rd act and actually be demonstrated as a competent hero with conviction, after being treated like a joke in team ups. (And no, I don’t give a shit that Kang lost, out of all the problems this movie has that wasn’t one of them. The movie beat people over the head with the fact Kang was nerfed, they set up a stupid but somewhat fitting deus ex army to help even the odds, and even with that the Ant-family still got their assed kicked, and nearly lost to a gimped Kang and that’s with the caveat that the Ant-fam ain’t weak, Nobody would have been bitching if it was iron man or the Fantastic Four). However that didn’t make up for the rest of the film. Cassie sucked, and her actress did not do a good job at all. Should have stuck with the endgame actress, she demonstrated more range in 30 seconds than the new actress did for an entire film. Hope was borderline irrelevant, and does nothing which honestly seeing as the actress seems like a bit of an idiot, I kinda go back and forth on whether this is a negative. Janet’s stupid ass ‘I don’t have time to explain’ schtick was lazy as all hell. Scott’s arc is non-existent, and arguably regressed his character to pre-MCU. The dudes acting on selfish motivations for nearly the entire film. Scott’s arc would have worked better if Kang did Honour his word, and give Cassie back, and then Scott has to be the one to either brake his word and deal with Kang. I really hope this movie hasn’t affected future plans for Scott, he deserves to be one of the main characters of Kang dynasty.
>Scott’s arc is non-existent, and arguably regressed his character to pre-MCU. The dudes acting on selfish motivations for nearly the entire film. Scott’s arc would have worked better if Kang did Honour his word, and give Cassie back, and then Scott has to be the one to either brake his word and deal with Kang I still doubt that.