It’s not the modern day stuff that’s the problem, at least not in principle (the half-hearted way they’ve included it post-Desmond is not always great though). The problem is the Precursor shit, Minerva and Juno and the like — it’s utter nonsense and not the fun kind, and more importantly it’s been doled out so…

That only means it’s (or should be) a clean jumping on point, not necessarily a total reset.

Sandman wasn’t the most popular show in the world though*. The stats Netflix provides aren’t great (total viewing hours by week?), but Extraordinary Attorney Woo definitely outperformed it, and I’m pretty confident it was also a hell of a lot cheaper.

I mean, there’s the Thunderbolts, and then there’s other teams using/being published under the same name.

I don’t think Kurosawa ever made a film about ninjas, so it’d be pretty hard to rely exclusively on his work for inspiration.

That, but also the comics exist and these films induce a lot of speculation, so there’s no way to preserve the twist as a twist. On a practical level too — even if the Masters of Evil had been recurring villains since the MCU’s outset, there’s no way Marvel could make, promote, and release a live-action movie without…

I don’t know that Zemo’s Thunderbolts could work in the MCU. It’d be impossible to pull off the twist, and that’s like 90% of the fun of the original concept.

Yeah, I put “villains” in quotes for a reason.

That’s why I put “villains” in quotes.

The comics share little in common with this team, besides the title, but I imagine he’ll be cast in the role Hawkeye had when he took over the team: the villain-turned-hero leading a team of “villains” to become heroes.

Was going to say the exact same thing.

I never finished that first season. I can’t think of any other show where I’ve intentionally skipped episodes, but with Parks and Rec I went from 1.02 or 1.03 to 2.01 and never went back to fill in the gap. It’s actually kind of impressive how tiresome and unfunny season 1 is, given the obvious talent of everyone…

No, the work is in being a shithead.

“I don’t see where these upcoming movies are thematically going”

I don’t believe raw viewership is the prime metric.

You presumably mean Spock always coded as Atlantean. Namor came almost 30 years before Star Trek after all.

My dude, if Marvel didn’t want that bit of symbiote floating around the MCU, it wouldn’t be. Marvel and Sony chose to give themselves an option for the future. It may never be followed up on, but they did it on purpose, and they did it together.

The legitimacy is already there. Tom Hardy’s Venom is connected to the MCU now. And you do realise Sony didn’t have full control of No Way Home, right? There’s no doubt some give and take, but if they play in the MCU toybox, they play by MCU rules — they can’t leave their character behind without Marvel’s approval.…

that MCU symbiote legally can’t be Venom or anything that much looked like Venom, unless it’s in a Sony film