Nothing sinister here; Watts just needs a break from the superhero realm after completing the Spidey trilogy with Tom Holland and Zendaya. He had expected to make Fantastic Four his next film, the third feature iteration of that franchise and first since Disney acquired Fox, which controlled the franchise. Watts has spent the better part of the last decade directing and promoting the Spider-Man films, after being hired off Cop Car, a small-budget indie thriller that premiered at 2015 Sundance. He needs a breather.
Itās easy to look at a headline like that and make the leap to assuming the project is troubled, but this seems pretty reasonable. I think based on his Spider-Man movies, Watts would have been a good fit for Fantastic Four, but Iām curious to see who takes it up now.
The guy went from Clown and Cop Car to directing three of the biggest movies for Sony and Marvel. I can totally get why heād need a break and want to try other stuff.
I had never heard of this. Kevin Bacon? Iāll have to track it down!
Edit: Bah, itās on Netflix, never mind, it can wait.
Yeah, I was never sure if he was hired for Fantastic Four because he had a specific vision for the movie, or just because he did well on the Spider-Man movies so they moved him on to the next thing. I would much rather have a director who loves the characters and has a strong idea about where they should go, so hopefully they find that person.
I have a conspiracy theory that Watts is off FF because heās on Spider-Man 4 now that it was confirmed thatās actually a thing thatās happening. Remember, it was assumed Hollandās turn as SM was three-and-out, but that changed somewhat recently.
Yeah I rewatched and saw the same thing. Itās the part where Cap and Bucky are passing the shield back and forth, the shield is completely to the side and the repulsor blast hits him squarely in the chest. The shield isnāt anywhere close to blocking it.
I hadnāt heard Spider-Man 4 was definitely happening, just the hopeful PR from Sony saying of course theyāre interested in that idea, blah blah blah.
This seems to be definitive. Of course this was all apparently news to Tom Holland, but I think thatās more about getting a much more lucrative deal this time around.
Well I wouldnāt say definitive, āin the worksā could still mean at the financial/contractual negotiation stage. But I hadnāt seen Feigeās response to Pascal. Iāll grant itās incrementally further along than I realized if Sony and Disney are already talking and itās not just Sony hoping.
Cop Car is great (well, great fun, and pretty good!) It was on the movie podcast.
Soā¦ MCU phase 1 was about introducing the individual heroes and setting up Avengers. Phases 2 and 3 were about the infinity stones and setting up Infinity War/Endgame.
What is phase 4 about? I guess weāre about halfway through it now, 5 out of 11 movies released, plus 7 D+ shows, andā¦ Iām not seeing a unifying element? Some of them (Eternals, Moon Knight) are barely connected to the MCU at all. What is it building up to?
I guess it could be an Avengers-style team up of the newer characters, but to do what? I guess the end of Loki could be a clue (although I am having trouble recalling exactly what the resolution to that was now). I mean, thereās some loose ends in Eternals, but that seems like it would be a weird thing to focus on, since the Eternals were so disconnected from the MCU. Iām not seeing anything like what was done with the Infinity Stones in phases 2 & 3.
Where is phase 4 going? What do people here think?
My guess is Secret Wars. But I agree that thereās nothing so far that unifies the very different takes weāre seeing.
Maybe itāll be Kang, but heās not due to show up again until Ant Man in February.
The first Infinity Stone didnāt show up until almost the end of Phase 1 (and it was just called the Tesseract), and Thanos only appeared as a cameo at the end of Avengers. But I would say they didnāt really establish Thanos until halfway through Phase 2, when he actually appeared as a character and the Infinity Stones were named.
Given that, I would say that Phase 4 is about introducing the new characters and setting the board, and we wonāt really know the villain until Phase 5. But it looks like theyāre laying the groundwork for Young Avengers, Thunderbolts/Dark Avengers, and Secret Wars. I would be willing to bet that Secret Wars* is the huge final movie of Phase 6 or Phase 7, as foreshadowed in Doctor Strange 2.
*the 2015 Secret Wars, not the 1984 one
Definitely Kang, but I think itās also about the multiverse in general. They want to introduce, or at least open the door to all the heroes they didnāt get to add before. That means X-Men, Fantastic Four, and many others.
Iām wondering if theyāll have some kind of cross-multiverse cataclysm that places all the superheroes in the same universe, or if theyāll just switch to another universe for some stories.
I donāt remember if this was something Fiege stated specifically or if it was someone speculating, but I read somewhere that Phase 4 is about laying a few different, shorter ātracksā of storyline that arenāt necessarily intended to all be intertwined. Some tracks might only exist in Phase 4, and some might extend beyond that.
This is roughly how I see the tracks:
- Relatively grounded earth stuff - Black Widow, Captain Falcon, Hawkeye, She-Hulk, Black Panther 2, Ironheart, Armor Wars
- Multiverse stuff - WandaVision, Loki, What If, Doctor Strange 2, Spider-Man 3, maybe Ant-Man, maybe Fantastic Four
- Cosmic space stuff - Eternals?, Thor 4, Guardians 3
- Earth-based magic and alien stuff - Shang-Chi, Eternals, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, The Marvels, Secret Invasion
It does kind of feel like they are heading toward Secret Wars, but it feels a little premature to me. If I were planning it, I would have Phases 4-6 be primarily about the wackiness of the multiverse while introducing the X-Men and Fantastic Four. Maybe adapt Hickmanās Fantastic Four run here, or do something with Dark Avengers/Secret Avengers and Siege. Cap off Phase 6 with a new Avengers movie that sees Kang defeated and the multiverse brought to some sort of equilibrium. Then Phases 7-9 would slowly ramp up to Secret Wars as incursions start breaking down the multiverse. With all of their superhero properties fully integrated and on the same table, this would be the phase where we could get stuff like Avengers vs X-Men, Fear Itself, Time Runs Out, and cap it off with Secret Wars. Then you do a full reboot and start completely over.
The aftermath. Dealing with consequences, emotional, psychological, physical, historical.
Pretty much every show or movie has dealt with consequences and choices, even Shang Chi, as an origin story, is about dealing with his past (or more often his fathers).
Basically hijinks and shenanigans, and Iām fine with this.
I donāt know the comics, so all this talk of āSecret Warsā means nothing to me.
I like the answers so far, though! Except where you tell me I have to wait until phase 6 for resolutions. Iām old, man, I canāt wait that long!
If we assume that Phase 4-6 is ten years and 7-9 is another ten years, that seems like a really long time to build up to Secret Wars. I think itās such a big event that it might be better to do it later, but I also think that the movies have worked when they do things as soon as possible instead of waiting. Iām not sure that we can wait to resolve Secret Wars in 2040 and 2041.
In Doctor Strange 2, a character talks about āincursionsā, where one reality impinges on another reality, and one or both are destroyed. In the comics, this was a storyline that was hinted at for over a decade, where characters kept going to alternate dimensions and weakening the fabric of reality. This all culminated in Secret Wars (2015), where the Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe collided, and a bunch of stuff happened. Basically, they took the favorite characters from the Ultimate Universe and brought them over to the regular Marvel Universe.**
I donāt know how they would do this in the movies, but it could be a way to introduce characters that theoretically should have been around for years, like the Fantastic Four or the X-Men.
**if you need me to briefly explain the Ultimate Universe, I can do that too.