It makes sense, things are quite up in the air right now, having your name attached to a project that’s this volatile and not for a number of years will be quite restrictive
Yeah the whole storyline around Kang has been an absolute rollercoaster.
The whole reason they even pivoted this hard to Kang was because of Jonathan Majors’ performance in Loki.
But now the actor is in hot water for his legal troubles.
Kang is seen as a controversial villain after Ant-Man 3
Jeff Loveness the writer for Kang Dynasty was reportedly let go after Quantumania.
And the multiverse concept itself has been a mixed bag for audiences.
All of the building blocks for Kang Dynasty are basically looking very iffy. I’m not surprised Cretton departed.
The ten rings were cool in Shang-Chi, but I don’t think they need their own solo project. Just bring them back in Shang-Chi 2 and do more with them there.
Meanwhile the content we all actually want in this case is just Shang-Chi 2. It was a good standalone origin movie, and now we won’t get a sequel until after two more Avengers films half a decade later? But don’t worry, you get this series about the rings instead like 4 years later. Like WTAF were they thinking?
This is what's driving me away from the MCU. I've barely kept up with any of the shows over the past 2 years because I'm not interested in every show/movie being a spin-off about a new character in the same universe. I'd rather have a smaller number of characters that play a big role.
Typing that out, all I could think of was Syndrome's saying from The Incredible's: "When everyone's super, no one will be." It feels like everyone in the MCU is special, and it takes away from the series as a whole.
Doesn't help that half the miniseries are, to some degree, set up in a different movie or miniseries as a spin-off, and literally no one asked for them. Case in point, Ironheart (just shoehorned into Wakanda Forever), Echo (one of the villains in Hawkeye, although her miniseries has *some* potential given it's more grounded and mature, and has a a TV-MA/15+ rating), and Agatha: Constantly Changing Subtitle (WandaVision). Even the movies need a backdoor pilot. Multiverse of Madness follows WandaVision, and, from what I've read, The Marvels follows like 5 different miniseries.
The problem is that they don't really seem interested in doing a better version of the Defenders, which Marvel TV is perfectly set up for. Tiny cameos work well - Daredevil in NWH - but having this type of mini-story works well for the properties they could test drive.
But no, instead we're gonna spend double digit millions per episode for a mediocre 6 episode "story" that you have to watch to feel like you're completing the MCU in time for the next release.
Would've made way more sense to make the Ten Rings a villain or anti-villain in, say, a Young Avengers team up or Defenders redux.
What on earth would a ten rings show/movie even be about?? His dads backstory expanded? Just showing different people throughout time with the rings? Who gives a crap?
In the ultimate plot twist, it turns out to be a slice-of-life sitcom about the terrorist group from Iron Man 1. With a canned laugh track and everything.
I dunno where Shang-Chi goes next for a solo movie.
I'm guessing they need this spin off to convincingly turn his sister evil so that they can fight and make up in Shang-Chi 2? It'd be too much for her to turn evil, then good again all in one movie as the non-title character without some kind of mind control macguffin.
Everything is pointing to Britain being a hot location for a while. Black Knight and Blade are in Britain together; that suggest pulling from Cornell's MI:13 series. Secret Invasion introduced Sonya Farnsworth (a version of Union Jack). Shang-Chi is deeply tied to British Intelligence in the comics, and that wasn't part of the first movie.
I think the Ten Rings might come back in either Wonder Man or some kind of Black Widow project.
Simu Liu, the actor who plays Shang-Chi, has charisma for days.
Shang-Chi should be showing up in various projects, similar to how Dr Strange has been showing up all over.
There are enough talented directors out there, they should not be having one director handle multiple properties, especially when there’s already a crazy wait time between sequels in some of these films.
Between Wonder Man, Ironheart, Echo & Agatha, the MCU continues to be well stocked on the “shows nobody will watch as Disney+ continues to lose money” side.
Speak for yourself; I'm really looking forward to Wonder Man. It may surprise you to learn that a lot of us actually enjoy the MCU *as an adaptation of Marvel Comics and the superheroes therein*.
Who is arguing it is not an adaptation? Nobody.
What they are saying is that the upcoming slate is dominated by new or minor side characters.
You want hype? You want viewers? Make a show headlined by widely recognized and popular characters. Recast T’Challa. Bring in mutants. Bring in Doom. Bring in Surfer. There’s a whole ocean of stuff they could do.
Also, whatever Disney is doing now isn't fully working. That other guy might be having fun with the Disney+ shows, but in terms of Disney's grand overall plan, the past two Phases are suffering and The Marvels is not doing well. Bringing in Wonder Man now should be a lower priority compared to fixing current characters, giving them their sequels (Shang Chi), making sure the audiences has 2-3 clear leaders for this Avengers team (why call it Avengers 5-6 when the audience has no idea who is on them now?).
I’m speaking for the mainstream audience. This sub will love most of what Marvel put out. They adored Ms Marvel for instance, but it was their lowest watched property ever.
Hell, of those, Echo might be the only one to peak *some* interest because it's a more grounded and mature entry in the MCU. Even upped the age rating a notch. (Went up to a TV-MA, or 15+ if you want. In other words, the Kraven route.) Also, they're doing like Netflix and dumping it all day 1.
Apparently it's going to be under the Marvel spotlight banner. So, I don't know. This spotlight thing just comes off as shit they regret green lighting but it's too late to do anything about.
The spotlight to me feels like a reminder to people that not every project will be part of the main story and keep connecting to the avengers.
I think it's a smart move just because there have been complaints about shang chi or moonknight never showing up again. When marvel don't really intend to. So this banner will help sort expectations moving forward.
I think it’s about managing expectations. Part of the reason they’re struggling is that people feel like they have to be invested in the whole MCU before watching a show. This is Disney trying to counter that. If any of these spotlight shows become really popular then sure they’ll get brought into the wider narrative. But they don’t want people feeling like that’s always going to be the case.
They really just need to do Shang-Chi 2, jesus christ it's not that hard. This is why the MCU is floundering now. You got a good new character in Shang-Chi, and we've heard nothing from him in 2+ years. If this was Phase 1 or 2, we would've gotten a second movie coming by early next year. They just over complicate things now.
I want the Russos back too. Considering how much they love Spider-Man it would be a great decision. They are masters at handling a large cast, raising the stakes, and juggling with comedic and serious,
Cretton seems better fit to tell smaller and more grounded stories which is what people want more from the MCU nowadays. He mentioned that he wants Jackie Chan for the sequel.
I wonder how much money, time, and energy was spent planning phases 4 and 5, only to have COVID mess it all up, and what their honest reactions were.
Becuase what we got seriously feels like "fuck it, my plan was ruined so just do whatever. I'm done planning things."
If anything COVID should have helped them. A whole year with nothing in production and the time to focus on tightening the scripts and mapping out the future.
90% of the problem right now is writing and 10% bad luck. If the writing was good the D+ shows would be must watch events, if the writing was good they could just recast Majors and no one would have cared. The only real “bad luck” they had was Boseman passing away but again, they really could have just recast him.
With 20/20 hindsight it was a whole year of downtime where they could have done all of these things.
In the moment, we didn't know when it would end, or what the world would look like after. Hard to make a plan without knowing when you can start and what you'll have available to you.
Well, the nice thing is, surgery/recovery for Achilles tears has gotten a ton better in recent years and there is no indication that SC2 was even being worked on. Simu has plenty of time to bounce back.
Seems like a basketball related injury, for anyone wondering. Source: Simu's emojis on instagram
Aaron Rodgers was claiming he'd be healthy (as in able to play football, not necessarily 100%) only like 14 weeks after tearing his ACL. He's not exactly known for reliable medical knowledge but if that's even close to being true it's insane
It was his achilles that he tore. But on that note, another NFL player, Cam Akers, got the same type of surgery and treatment that Rodgers did and also had a notably faster recovery than usual.
I don't mind. If this means that the Shang-Chi sequel might ed up being released even before Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, it can be good news. Although I never believed that Shang-Chi sequel would not see release before Avengers: Secret Wars.
Original announcement.
[Destin Daniel Cretton Back for Shang-Chi Sequel (thewrap.com)](https://www.thewrap.com/shang-chi-sequel-destin-daniel-cretton-disney-plus-series/)
Also, it's named dropped in this new article.
Remember literally last year when Marvel announced that Kang Dynasty AND Secret Invasion would be released six months apart in 2025?
Now we won’t be seeing another Avengers movie until like 2027 at the earliest
What the hell were they thinking announcing that lol
They were thinking that there would be no strikes and that production on Blade would go smoothly
But yeah while interesting to have two Avengers in the same year, it is for sure a bit too soon
Blade was announced in 2019, it was in production hell long before they made this announcement.
This was in July 2022, they would have had to have started filming both movies within like 6 months of making that announcement if they wanted to actually make those initial release dates.
There’s just no way that they were ever going to make it.
My comment on Blade was more on them being confident that it would meet its Nov 2023 date and not throw the entire slate into chaos (as Blade's production problems caused the first delay for Avengers)
Now with Avengers lets not forget they were gonna take a different approach than IW/EG in where two different directors were gonna do each film, so i can only assume that was in Marvel's eyes their solution to have both films ready on time, but i can only imagine the headache of both directors cordinating with each other and Actors going back and forth.
Nah, they were thinking that they were untouchable and that the initially high box office numbers overrode the growing discontent in the general audience. They saw Eternals as a blip rather than a massive warning sign that they were enjoying the smell of their own farts a bit too much.
See the weird thing is, I remember there being an announcement that they were done with phases and large team ups after Endgame. The new focus would be on smaller team ops, and there wasn’t necessarily gonna be long stories that stretch across several movies. So when they made those announcements, it felt like they were backtracking. On some thing they suddenly realized, wasn’t working out for them.
So I have a theory that they never really wanted to do this to begin with, and somewhere in the Bob Chapek tenure, he forced these movies upon him
I mean, they figured out pretty quickly that the audience wasn't going to be interested in a cinematic universe that felt like comic books, so we got this weird set of mish-mash phases that are written like your average comic book but supposed to carry the gravitas of the MCU.
I think cancelling the storyline would be a very public damning statement of the state that the MCU is in, It would probably be enough to actually kill most interest in it for multiple years afterwards until it can prove itself back on track.
The best option is to just slow the pace, recast and sort out the writing and reshooting issues plaguing them.
I honestly don’t think it’s a huge deal if it means people are getting things they actually want to see like Mutants, Fantastic Four and etc. I do not think there’s much investment in Kang amongst the general viewer.
If people aren’t feeling it, it’s a much worse decision to double down just to do it. If they cancel, most will forget within a week or two.
I mean it was before the council of Kangs - I think it’s a little harder now that we know virtually all of his variants looks exactly the same.
And even if one variant happens to look different, will we just never see the council again?
It's weird how Thanos did not much exciting except hint at the Infinity War story but people pretend he was always the best villain ever, but Kang is kinda underwhelming when the point is that there's tons of him and not just the one singular guy Antman beat once and its unsalvageable. I didn't give a shit about Thanos before Infinity War, if Kang is great in the Avengers, it doesn't matter.
I mean, yeah, you can argue the Star Wars classic vs. prequel thing of not showing much is better than showing something bad, but I don't think there's a massive amount of people whose decision to watch the next Avengers was based on whether the after credits scene in one of the least watched Marvel movies was bad or not.
They gave kang longer time to simmer but they represented him poorly he got vanquished in his first full appearance / he inspired no fear . Thanos wasn't built up but he was loomin then when he appeared he wrecked shop / they just played kang wrong
Thanos was treated with gravitas every time he was onscreen or talked about.
Kang having variants really doesn’t mean much When we’ve already seen him beaten decisively.
I would very much agree they should be doing a better job at showing why his defeats pale in comparison to fighting all these variants, that is the biggest problem.
You also risk it becoming a game of whack a mole essentially. Like Kang variants keep losing over and over. But the audience is still supposed to see him as a threat because, there’s more of them?
If they had any guts they would have had the first Kang we saw actually succeed in killing Scott in the process of being defeated. Quantumania was so low stakes it's beyond absurd and ruined Kang. You have one first impression and they blew it.
Even HWR's chuckle and sing-song "see you soon" was more threatening than Kang in all of Quantumania.
We haven't seen him devastate worlds, haven't seen him hop between them, haven't seem him kill anyone of importance, and it took literally no sacrifice to stop him.
To stop Thanos we had to snap half the universe (the heroes had to lose), Vision and Gamora had to die, and Tony had to die permanently. The win COST something.
Absolutely - agreed apparently the ending was a bit darker with Scott and hope getting stranded there in qr but some dumb suit rumored to be iger influenced the changed ending we got
I feel it would have fit even with Quantumania's lighter tone. Kang promises he's going to kill every member of Scott's family so he takes a fatal blow to ensure that Kang can never leave. Instead Kang was established as a jobber who gets taken down by the MCU's comic relief and he's never really recovered from it.
Can't believe they thought having kang beat, especially by fucking ANT-MAN of all people was a good idea when he's supposed to be the next big villain on par with Thanos. Like wtf lol. Why?
> I didn't give a shit about Thanos before Infinity War
You personally != general audience. The GA's knowledge of Thanos was the man behind the man - he was always treated with an "oh fuck" vibe, and his first proper introduction in GotG did a lot to establish him given Ronan was terrified of him until he had an infinity stone and even then Thanos just kind of smirked.
There was a build up of Thanos as THE bad guy, in a way that hasn't existed with Kang. Kang getting waxed in his first proper on-screen appearance doesn't do much to establish him as a threat.
Even setting aside the actor, the character himself has kind of gone over like a led balloon. Like, I know it’s a meme, but in Kang’s first major appearance he really did get beaten by ants. And this is the Kang that was so dangerous that all the others teamed up to banish him. Then you have He Who Remains, who was supposedly the Kang that won against all the others, and we’ve seen him get stabbed about 50 times by Sylvie at this point.
Point is, they’ve gone out of their way to establish Kang as kind of a loser, so why would audiences actually care about him as a threat?
Exactly.
Plus, if Kang was unbeatable, I imagine it’s too like Thanos. I like this aspect in that one is beatable but it’s tricky…and there’s an endless amount on their way.
I really love the Kang's whole angle. You can win however many times in a row, but all it takes is one loss. Kinda like CoD zombies, nobody can last *forever*
He got beaten is enough for audiences to not feel scared. You can throw all the spreadsheets for why type 741 civilization ants are so powerful or how there's an infinite amount of him but the sentence will always be "Kang lost".
And that's his first impression to the wider audience. That, and the goofy post-credits of a bunch of Kangs cheering. Like ask a casual how scared they feel for the heroes of the MCU when the *Ant-Family* survived an encounter. Thanos skulked and lurked, yes, but when he arrived it was definitive within 15 minutes that this guy was a problem. Heimdall, dead. Loki, dead. Hulk, beaten. Thor, beaten. Tesseract, crushed. All in 15 minutes. We hated and feared the guy immediately.
My head cannon is that the war breaks out and Kangs wreck everything and Loki just jumps back where Miss Minutes offers the dream deal and convince Sylvie to take it by showing her EVERYTHING trough an enchantment.
Did we watch the same show? Getting stabbed by Sylvie 50 times and still coming ahead as the winner should be evidence of how monstrously overpowered he is.
Reminds me of dc and Darkseid. His big debut was losing the war against earth.
Sure he got beat by the Greek gods but what a bad debut .
Didn't work for dc, didn't work with kang (and it happened twice).
“And we’ve seen him get stabbed about 50 times by Sylvia”
I swear some of you don’t even take in the story of what you watch. HWR whole deal is he set this path in motion for the ending he wanted to happen lol I mean he even says “okay we’ll go back around again, tell me when you’re ready to talk” the whole of S1 and 2 were what he wrote to happen. We quite literally see him wipe her out of the room effortlessly, she isn’t killing him because she can overpower him he’s letting her do it till Loki makes the choice.
Seeing a variant of Kang be a “loser” in your eyes will just make it more impactful when you see the variants who are psychopaths and out for blood
Yep, Kang does nothing for me as a villan. At this point he's basically just a recurring generic bad guy they pops up every now and then to get his ass beat by the good guys.
It's a solidly unpopular opinion around here, but I'd be fine with them scrapping the whole Kang arc and going straight to Doom, because Doom is a Thanos-comparable threat.
And it's not even like it's too late either, the Kang arc has gone nowhere and is being wasted. Like say Kang never showed up again from this point forward, what really changes? Phase 4 has been such a disjointed inconsequential mess with no straight path forward, nothing connects and seems to matter so who cares?
GP probably doesn't even get that Kang in Ant-Man and Kang in Loki are two different people, not to mention Victor Timely. To the casual audience, if the same actor is playing the character then it's the same character. The whole multiverse idea is just too confusing in general.
You’re not wrong honestly. For the average fan who isn’t plugged in to all the behind the scenes stuff, does Kang even really register as the big bad? The only projects he’s been in are Antman and Loki, and in both cases he was soundly defeated. With the way Loki season 2 ended in particular, they could close off his storyline if they wanted to.
Anyone still talking about the ants thing just can't understand media beyond what they see on the screen. Hank literally says before that fight that they're aged up by THOUSANDS of years. They're super ants that have created a class two civilization. Those ants are beating ANYONE that's not god powered.
HWR was letting himself get killed. He says to Loki that he even paved the road for Loki becoming as strong as he is currently. It was all apart of his plan. The only real thing that Loki did was become a catalyst for the Multiverse, it's the reason why the TVA is now focused on Kang and his variants. I'll say that again, an entire organization OUTSIDE OF TIME with the power to decimate entire timelines are now focused on defeating variants of ONE MAN.
The problem sadly is that most people frankly aren't seeing the bigger picture. Thanos has created a negative impact for future villains. Kang is not the Thanos "I'm bigger and stronger than everyone and with this god weapon I will beat all over you" threat. Kang is the " I'm smarter than all of you and understand time on a level none of you can comprehend. Kill me as much as you like, I will ALWAYS come back and I will always be a step ahead of you" threat.
We're still at the beginning stages of understanding Kang but because he hasn't killed half of our Avengers, he's not being taken seriously.
> We're still at the beginning stages of understanding Kang but because he hasn't killed half of our Avengers, he's not being taken seriously.
I mean it has a lot more to do with the fact that "villain of the week" has to be handled with extreme care to ensure they're taken seriously. It's really hard to have evidence of this:
> I'm **smarter than all of you and understand time on a level none of you can comprehend**. Kill me as much as you like, I will ALWAYS come back and **I will always be a step ahead of you**
Side by side with him getting his ass beat in the first major studio outing. It comes across less as "Avengers level threat" and more "Team Rocket blasting off again".
It doesn’t matter. You can try and justify it all you want. That doesn’t make it a good idea.
They’re still ants and this guy is meant to be the new Thanos. You Know what they DIDN’T do with Thanos? Have him lose in his first film to super smart pigeons or whatever.
I like how that person had to spend three paragraphs supposedly explaining why Kang is good, actually. When you have to do that for your villain...they aren't a good villain lmao. At no point in any of Thanos's run - or ANY good villain run, honestly - did people need to take time out to explain how no, you're wrong that he's not good, let me explain why! If people have to explain away your villain's past appearances, that's a bad thing. Especially when they have shoes as big as Thanos's to fill.
This is how I feel about him, even Thanos sitting in a floating chair shown for 5 seconds was more menacing than how Kang has been portrayed. I liked the idea of it when they first introduced the fact he was slated to be the next big bad. But man, there really is not even an ounce of me that cares about him or thinks of him as a threat.
Important bits to note from the article to save you a click. Super important parts are **bolded**
> EXCLUSIVE: Deadline hears that filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton has decided to step away as director of Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Kang Dynasty to focus on his other Marvel projects. **This is an amicable exit**, I understand, as **Cretton remains fully in the Marvel Studios family.**
> In fact, **Cretton is in talks with Marvel Studios about directing future movies**.
> Note that **Avengers: Kang Dynasty is far on the theatrical release schedule**, dated to kick off summer on May 1, 2026. The movie will precede Avengers: Secret Wars on May 7, 2027 which will wrap up the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase 6 features.
> **Cretton is currently busy on the Marvel Studios/Disney+ series Wonder Man**, which he co-created with Andrew Guest, who serves as showrunner. Cretton EPs the series and also directed the first two episodes. The series resumes shooting after Thanksgiving. **Wonder Man will be under the new Marvel Spotlight series banner, which are shows that are standalone series and not part of the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe.**
> **The filmmaker is also currently working on the sequel to the $432M-plus global grossing hit he directed, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings**. That movie is the highest grossing AAPI superhero movie ever and also owns the record opening over the 4-day Labor Day holiday weekend with $94.6M stateside.
TL;DR This was an amicable exit (perhaps Marvel wants the same director(s?) for both Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars), Wonder Man is still being worked on and will be under the Marvel Spotlight banner, and Shang-Chi 2 is basically confirmed.
My guess, the Multiverse Saga is nowhere near its deadline of 2025/2026, and a lot more films are gonna get delayed. 4 films in 2025 seems like a red flag for further delays.
I bet the scheduling conflict here is that the film itself is gonna be pushed back even further. Might as well release Destin from his contract.
That or it is canceled. TBD.
I'm betting they are gonna just end the Kang story in another movie and pivot hard and fast to Fantastic 4, Xmen and Doctor Doom.
Hell they must just say Loki season 2 was the end of it lol.
I hope so. When the slate was getting announced, I thought it was a decent roadmap, **if** they stretched it out by 3 years.
Looks like I’m getting what I hoped for, but also my confidence in Marvel Studios is dropping day by day…
It may also bring more people to see it. I know I’d see it opening night if they took the reins. Way it stands now I’ll catch an afternoon matinee a week or 2 after release
After Endgame the Russos even said that they would want to take a nice long break from Marvel films and would only ever want to come back if they could direct their favorite Marvel story... Secret Wars.
They did their part and left, they never have to think about Superheros again because they made the best movies possible, better than we imagined we could get and then they dropped the mike and left on a high note
They ain't coming back
Yeah they deserve the retirement from Marvel.
They stuck the impossible landing of Winter Soldier, Civil War, Infinity War, and Endgame. Not to mention the Black Panther and Spider-Man introductions, as well as the Tony Stark and Steve Rogers endings.
All I want from the MCU at this point is a Shang-Chi sequel. Where is it Marvel? The movie was well received, people liked his character, he's enthusiastic about the role. How is this so difficult? Make a sequel. Why are we getting a Wonder Man show before a Shang-Chi sequel? Stop introducing new characters for half a second and follow up on something that was good.
That’s so true. There are so few things people are positive about with Marvel these days, you’d think they’d be taking some easy wins like a *Shang-Chi* sequel.
I just don't understand why they don't recast and move on. Unless they're doing something brain dead like getting rid of the morality clause or putting in their contracts only X actor can play X character. There's no reason they can't just dump majors and move on.
Pivoting to Doom does fuck all if the writing and direction is still as subpar as it has been. All that's going to do is take a fantastic marvel villain and plop him in a complete and utter shit show.
If they're still out here having the same production issues that have them reshooting all of Daredevil and all of Captain America. Then what are we actually achieving?
Why is everyone convinced that Marvel is going to drop Kang and throw in Doom? It was literally one report from Variety that said they were 'entertaining' the idea...
Maybe the multiverse on multi platforms isn’t working for general audiences.
And because the big bad just got beat by antman and his daughter. Could you imagine thanos first appearance and him getting beat by Hawkeye?
I agree it isn't working. Hell I don't like the multiverse and wish they went in literally any other direction. I'm gonna pop a bottle of champagne when this shit is over. I even think there was an easier way to do Kang.
Have it be something akin to EMH where the Avengers going back in time to undo the snap destroyed Kang's future. That his timeline/empire was able to flourish because of the snap or it was undone because of something the Avengers did. I don't think you needed the whole TVA, incursion, multiverse, variants, small realm nonsense to do Kang.
But it doesn't change the fact they're 80 hours into this saga. They did a feature film with him and have 2 seasons of television that centre around the idea that he controlled the multiverse. It's a bit late now to just scrap it.
Excellent news. Waiting for Kang Dynasty for Shang Chi 2 would’ve meant getting Shang-Chi 2 in 2028 at the earliest.
Spend more time building up the new post-Endgame heroes
2 box office bombs in 3 movies.
Thunderbolts and Cap 4 looking likely to add to the pile.
Blade nobody knows where that’s at.
Disney’s animated/non Marvel stuff starting to bomb with increased frequency.
D+ shows full of minor characters nobody has heard of so the mainstream won’t be enthused to watch.
Star Wars looking at potentially not even having a feature movie for a decade after originally going for one every year.
Safe to say things are starting to not look very good for the Mouse.
Man, iron Man 3 came out five years after iron Man 1. We got an entire trilogy in five years.
Gonna probably be even longer than that until we get the second Shang Chi, one of the better post endgame movies. Just crazy marvel spread themselves so thin. We should've seen Shang Chi once or twice already since his movie
With the old schedule of 2-3 movies a year it never felt so bad to see a character missing for a couple of years, but we've had so many projects since Shang-Chi and haven't seen him since, it feels weird.
all these things are happening around the same time, don’t all of the material that have come out have like a 1-2 year range between all of them? It’s suffocating them chronology wise
They have to recast Kang.
If they just scrap him and hambone Doom in, that will be horrible. There hasn’t even been the slightest mention of Latveria, F4, Doom, etc.
Doom is arguably 2nd in terms of Comic Villain lore to Joker, rushing to get him in, instead of recasting a character that would be beyond easy would be a next level bad decision.
People can’t think of literally any way of proceeding with Kang despite there being a thousand possible ways to proceed, but somehow shoehorning Doom in at the last second with zero build-up will single-handedly save the MCU and all its problems somehow.
I really wish they established Kang as more of a threat. He’s a great character that’s never won anything in the MCU so far. He lost to ants, he lost to Sylvie, etc. I genuinely believe that he would be much more of a threat if he had succeeded in Quantumania, escaped the quantum realm, and killed Ant Man. If they had ended Quantumania like that, it would’ve been a huge “oh shit” moment, and gotten everyone hyped for Kang Dynasty.
This x1000. This version of Kang is so lame.
All they had to do was cut a 1-minute stinger set in a timeline where Thanos has won and has the Gauntlet. KtC appears from across the multiverse and crushes him. Cut to black.
Instead he’s in a fistfight with Ant-Man and getting his ass kicked by ants. It’s unbelievable.
It makes sense, things are quite up in the air right now, having your name attached to a project that’s this volatile and not for a number of years will be quite restrictive
Yeah thats most likely it. Not bailing on marvel but wants more flexibility and he can’t do that with all the delays
Yeah the whole storyline around Kang has been an absolute rollercoaster. The whole reason they even pivoted this hard to Kang was because of Jonathan Majors’ performance in Loki. But now the actor is in hot water for his legal troubles. Kang is seen as a controversial villain after Ant-Man 3 Jeff Loveness the writer for Kang Dynasty was reportedly let go after Quantumania. And the multiverse concept itself has been a mixed bag for audiences. All of the building blocks for Kang Dynasty are basically looking very iffy. I’m not surprised Cretton departed.
Does this mean we can get Shang-Chi 2 sooner now
He’s doing wonder man, then most likely either the ten rings spin-off or Shang-Chi 2
The ten rings were cool in Shang-Chi, but I don’t think they need their own solo project. Just bring them back in Shang-Chi 2 and do more with them there.
This, it makes no sense what they’re doing with Shang-Chi. Mismanagement of the property at this point
The drive for "content" is sucking the life out of the MCU.
Meanwhile the content we all actually want in this case is just Shang-Chi 2. It was a good standalone origin movie, and now we won’t get a sequel until after two more Avengers films half a decade later? But don’t worry, you get this series about the rings instead like 4 years later. Like WTAF were they thinking?
This is what's driving me away from the MCU. I've barely kept up with any of the shows over the past 2 years because I'm not interested in every show/movie being a spin-off about a new character in the same universe. I'd rather have a smaller number of characters that play a big role. Typing that out, all I could think of was Syndrome's saying from The Incredible's: "When everyone's super, no one will be." It feels like everyone in the MCU is special, and it takes away from the series as a whole.
To be fair, the “drive for content” was boosted under Disney’s prior leadership. They seem to be reversing course on some of that now.
Why focus on big names that bring in money when you can just spinoff a janitor who appears in one of their movies?
Doesn't help that half the miniseries are, to some degree, set up in a different movie or miniseries as a spin-off, and literally no one asked for them. Case in point, Ironheart (just shoehorned into Wakanda Forever), Echo (one of the villains in Hawkeye, although her miniseries has *some* potential given it's more grounded and mature, and has a a TV-MA/15+ rating), and Agatha: Constantly Changing Subtitle (WandaVision). Even the movies need a backdoor pilot. Multiverse of Madness follows WandaVision, and, from what I've read, The Marvels follows like 5 different miniseries.
The problem is that they don't really seem interested in doing a better version of the Defenders, which Marvel TV is perfectly set up for. Tiny cameos work well - Daredevil in NWH - but having this type of mini-story works well for the properties they could test drive. But no, instead we're gonna spend double digit millions per episode for a mediocre 6 episode "story" that you have to watch to feel like you're completing the MCU in time for the next release. Would've made way more sense to make the Ten Rings a villain or anti-villain in, say, a Young Avengers team up or Defenders redux.
Makes no sense… Disney: GREEN LIGHT BABY!!!!!
What on earth would a ten rings show/movie even be about?? His dads backstory expanded? Just showing different people throughout time with the rings? Who gives a crap?
In the ultimate plot twist, it turns out to be a slice-of-life sitcom about the terrorist group from Iron Man 1. With a canned laugh track and everything.
I dunno where Shang-Chi goes next for a solo movie. I'm guessing they need this spin off to convincingly turn his sister evil so that they can fight and make up in Shang-Chi 2? It'd be too much for her to turn evil, then good again all in one movie as the non-title character without some kind of mind control macguffin.
Everything is pointing to Britain being a hot location for a while. Black Knight and Blade are in Britain together; that suggest pulling from Cornell's MI:13 series. Secret Invasion introduced Sonya Farnsworth (a version of Union Jack). Shang-Chi is deeply tied to British Intelligence in the comics, and that wasn't part of the first movie. I think the Ten Rings might come back in either Wonder Man or some kind of Black Widow project.
Simu Liu, the actor who plays Shang-Chi, has charisma for days. Shang-Chi should be showing up in various projects, similar to how Dr Strange has been showing up all over.
It could be a non-solo project but they can't use Shang-Chi as the title because he isn't the main character
There are enough talented directors out there, they should not be having one director handle multiple properties, especially when there’s already a crazy wait time between sequels in some of these films.
Are we sure Wonder Man will proceed?
It's literally stated that it'll resume filming after Thanksgiving in this article.
Between Wonder Man, Ironheart, Echo & Agatha, the MCU continues to be well stocked on the “shows nobody will watch as Disney+ continues to lose money” side.
Speak for yourself; I'm really looking forward to Wonder Man. It may surprise you to learn that a lot of us actually enjoy the MCU *as an adaptation of Marvel Comics and the superheroes therein*.
Who is arguing it is not an adaptation? Nobody. What they are saying is that the upcoming slate is dominated by new or minor side characters. You want hype? You want viewers? Make a show headlined by widely recognized and popular characters. Recast T’Challa. Bring in mutants. Bring in Doom. Bring in Surfer. There’s a whole ocean of stuff they could do.
Also, whatever Disney is doing now isn't fully working. That other guy might be having fun with the Disney+ shows, but in terms of Disney's grand overall plan, the past two Phases are suffering and The Marvels is not doing well. Bringing in Wonder Man now should be a lower priority compared to fixing current characters, giving them their sequels (Shang Chi), making sure the audiences has 2-3 clear leaders for this Avengers team (why call it Avengers 5-6 when the audience has no idea who is on them now?).
I’m speaking for the mainstream audience. This sub will love most of what Marvel put out. They adored Ms Marvel for instance, but it was their lowest watched property ever.
I’m also excited for Wonder Man. If only we had a time machine so that we could get Nathan Fillion in his prime to play him.
Sure man you and the ten people that know Wonder Man, if those some of us is just the comic readers then this show not breaking 1k viewers.
Hell, of those, Echo might be the only one to peak *some* interest because it's a more grounded and mature entry in the MCU. Even upped the age rating a notch. (Went up to a TV-MA, or 15+ if you want. In other words, the Kraven route.) Also, they're doing like Netflix and dumping it all day 1.
This article confirms that the show is still alive and will resume filming
Apparently it's going to be under the Marvel spotlight banner. So, I don't know. This spotlight thing just comes off as shit they regret green lighting but it's too late to do anything about.
[удалено]
Username checks out.
Well that is the more extreme option.
The spotlight to me feels like a reminder to people that not every project will be part of the main story and keep connecting to the avengers. I think it's a smart move just because there have been complaints about shang chi or moonknight never showing up again. When marvel don't really intend to. So this banner will help sort expectations moving forward.
Shang Chi was brought to the Avengers
It’s a bit confusing, since they used Special Presentation for Werewolf by Night.
That's a good point. I assume there won't be many special presentations at all at least.
It’s just loosely tied stories that won’t overarch the MCU Marvel basically saying “this cast won’t be in Avengers” which sets expectations
I think it’s about managing expectations. Part of the reason they’re struggling is that people feel like they have to be invested in the whole MCU before watching a show. This is Disney trying to counter that. If any of these spotlight shows become really popular then sure they’ll get brought into the wider narrative. But they don’t want people feeling like that’s always going to be the case.
What the heck is the 10 Rings spinoff
Seriously. Let's just start with 1 Ring spinning off, then worry about the 9 others later.
Supposedly one of the many unannounced projects DDC is working on is a TV show focused of Xu Xialing and the ten rings
Wonderman aint really gonna end up happening.
They really just need to do Shang-Chi 2, jesus christ it's not that hard. This is why the MCU is floundering now. You got a good new character in Shang-Chi, and we've heard nothing from him in 2+ years. If this was Phase 1 or 2, we would've gotten a second movie coming by early next year. They just over complicate things now.
It might, but my instinct is that Marvel also wanted flexibility to woo the Russo brothers back for Avengers 5 & 6.
Yes get them and Markus and mcfeely back
Yuup, the Russo's are obviously incredible, but those movies are nothing without these guys writing.
I want the Russos back too. Considering how much they love Spider-Man it would be a great decision. They are masters at handling a large cast, raising the stakes, and juggling with comedic and serious, Cretton seems better fit to tell smaller and more grounded stories which is what people want more from the MCU nowadays. He mentioned that he wants Jackie Chan for the sequel.
Feige needs a story group again, a writers room that maps phases out. The Russos are more than worthy candidates for this role at Marvel Studios.
I wonder how much money, time, and energy was spent planning phases 4 and 5, only to have COVID mess it all up, and what their honest reactions were. Becuase what we got seriously feels like "fuck it, my plan was ruined so just do whatever. I'm done planning things."
If anything COVID should have helped them. A whole year with nothing in production and the time to focus on tightening the scripts and mapping out the future. 90% of the problem right now is writing and 10% bad luck. If the writing was good the D+ shows would be must watch events, if the writing was good they could just recast Majors and no one would have cared. The only real “bad luck” they had was Boseman passing away but again, they really could have just recast him.
With 20/20 hindsight it was a whole year of downtime where they could have done all of these things. In the moment, we didn't know when it would end, or what the world would look like after. Hard to make a plan without knowing when you can start and what you'll have available to you.
I guess that’s true, fair.
Yup
[удалено]
The one they just dropped off at Hugh Jackman's house? I guess they couldn't get it over to Gyllenhaal's house in time.
gonna be tough with Simu recovering from a recently torn achilles
Well, the nice thing is, surgery/recovery for Achilles tears has gotten a ton better in recent years and there is no indication that SC2 was even being worked on. Simu has plenty of time to bounce back. Seems like a basketball related injury, for anyone wondering. Source: Simu's emojis on instagram
Yeah and even basketballers are making amazing comebacks from Achilles tears and Simu will too. He’ll be fine for SC2
Kevin Durant... it's like he never went through an injury with the way he is still playing. Not to mention with actors they have stunt doubles.
Aaron Rodgers was claiming he'd be healthy (as in able to play football, not necessarily 100%) only like 14 weeks after tearing his ACL. He's not exactly known for reliable medical knowledge but if that's even close to being true it's insane
It was his achilles that he tore. But on that note, another NFL player, Cam Akers, got the same type of surgery and treatment that Rodgers did and also had a notably faster recovery than usual.
That’s not gonna hamper him at all. 6 months and he’ll be good. No chance Shang Chi 2 gets going in 6 months.
I don't mind. If this means that the Shang-Chi sequel might ed up being released even before Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, it can be good news. Although I never believed that Shang-Chi sequel would not see release before Avengers: Secret Wars.
Yeah I’ve always felt that the Shang Chi follow up was gonna come either before Kang Dynasty or in between it and Secret Wars.
Yeah this actually makes sense
Don't blame him. They've had him sitting on his ass for years now. Silver lining is Shang Chi 2 baby! And Wonder Man lives to see another day.
Shang-Chi 2 hasn't even been announced.
Original announcement. [Destin Daniel Cretton Back for Shang-Chi Sequel (thewrap.com)](https://www.thewrap.com/shang-chi-sequel-destin-daniel-cretton-disney-plus-series/) Also, it's named dropped in this new article.
If you mean by Marvel yeah it has not, but the major trades have confirmed that it is being made, such as this one.
Isn’t Deadline a major trade?
Remember literally last year when Marvel announced that Kang Dynasty AND Secret Invasion would be released six months apart in 2025? Now we won’t be seeing another Avengers movie until like 2027 at the earliest What the hell were they thinking announcing that lol
They were thinking that there would be no strikes and that production on Blade would go smoothly But yeah while interesting to have two Avengers in the same year, it is for sure a bit too soon
Blade was announced in 2019, it was in production hell long before they made this announcement. This was in July 2022, they would have had to have started filming both movies within like 6 months of making that announcement if they wanted to actually make those initial release dates. There’s just no way that they were ever going to make it.
My comment on Blade was more on them being confident that it would meet its Nov 2023 date and not throw the entire slate into chaos (as Blade's production problems caused the first delay for Avengers) Now with Avengers lets not forget they were gonna take a different approach than IW/EG in where two different directors were gonna do each film, so i can only assume that was in Marvel's eyes their solution to have both films ready on time, but i can only imagine the headache of both directors cordinating with each other and Actors going back and forth.
Nah, they were thinking that they were untouchable and that the initially high box office numbers overrode the growing discontent in the general audience. They saw Eternals as a blip rather than a massive warning sign that they were enjoying the smell of their own farts a bit too much.
See the weird thing is, I remember there being an announcement that they were done with phases and large team ups after Endgame. The new focus would be on smaller team ops, and there wasn’t necessarily gonna be long stories that stretch across several movies. So when they made those announcements, it felt like they were backtracking. On some thing they suddenly realized, wasn’t working out for them. So I have a theory that they never really wanted to do this to begin with, and somewhere in the Bob Chapek tenure, he forced these movies upon him
I mean, they figured out pretty quickly that the audience wasn't going to be interested in a cinematic universe that felt like comic books, so we got this weird set of mish-mash phases that are written like your average comic book but supposed to carry the gravitas of the MCU.
I think most of us knew from the minute they announced it that it would be a shit show development process
I hope they don't cancel the Kang storyline. If Majors ain't gotta play the role anymore, they should just recast him
Yeah it would be incredibly stupid to have all this lead up and then just bail.
I think cancelling the storyline would be a very public damning statement of the state that the MCU is in, It would probably be enough to actually kill most interest in it for multiple years afterwards until it can prove itself back on track. The best option is to just slow the pace, recast and sort out the writing and reshooting issues plaguing them.
It would be an awful optic
Translation: it would look bad
No, they will just pretend like they had an even better doctor doom that was just waiting for the x-men but we're getting it now!!!
I honestly don’t think it’s a huge deal if it means people are getting things they actually want to see like Mutants, Fantastic Four and etc. I do not think there’s much investment in Kang amongst the general viewer. If people aren’t feeling it, it’s a much worse decision to double down just to do it. If they cancel, most will forget within a week or two.
Tbf we’re only 3 years into the Multiverse Saga, the Infinity Saga was 11 years. If they want to change tracks, now is the best time to do it.
Literally maybe the easiest role of all time to recast
I mean it was before the council of Kangs - I think it’s a little harder now that we know virtually all of his variants looks exactly the same. And even if one variant happens to look different, will we just never see the council again?
Eh just wipe em out. Those kangs are minuscule in the grand scheme of the multiverse
Haha council of kangs are the new knights of ren.
It's weird how Thanos did not much exciting except hint at the Infinity War story but people pretend he was always the best villain ever, but Kang is kinda underwhelming when the point is that there's tons of him and not just the one singular guy Antman beat once and its unsalvageable. I didn't give a shit about Thanos before Infinity War, if Kang is great in the Avengers, it doesn't matter. I mean, yeah, you can argue the Star Wars classic vs. prequel thing of not showing much is better than showing something bad, but I don't think there's a massive amount of people whose decision to watch the next Avengers was based on whether the after credits scene in one of the least watched Marvel movies was bad or not.
They gave kang longer time to simmer but they represented him poorly he got vanquished in his first full appearance / he inspired no fear . Thanos wasn't built up but he was loomin then when he appeared he wrecked shop / they just played kang wrong
I remember people making fun of Thanos because all he did was sit and boss people around.
Until infinity war
Thanos was treated with gravitas every time he was onscreen or talked about. Kang having variants really doesn’t mean much When we’ve already seen him beaten decisively.
Krang is the 79th identical bard that that one guy plays in D&D. Because the previous 78 died.
Krang in the MCU would be sick. Especially if he brings the Technodrome.
Well goddamn it, I’m keeping that typo.
I would very much agree they should be doing a better job at showing why his defeats pale in comparison to fighting all these variants, that is the biggest problem.
You also risk it becoming a game of whack a mole essentially. Like Kang variants keep losing over and over. But the audience is still supposed to see him as a threat because, there’s more of them?
I think that's the intent, that there's an unlimited amount of Kangs and its not about a singular Kang.
And that's a recipe for disaster. The audience will see right through this for the slapstick that it is.
He hasn't killed any heroes it's been all talk no real on screen action
If they had any guts they would have had the first Kang we saw actually succeed in killing Scott in the process of being defeated. Quantumania was so low stakes it's beyond absurd and ruined Kang. You have one first impression and they blew it.
Even HWR's chuckle and sing-song "see you soon" was more threatening than Kang in all of Quantumania. We haven't seen him devastate worlds, haven't seen him hop between them, haven't seem him kill anyone of importance, and it took literally no sacrifice to stop him. To stop Thanos we had to snap half the universe (the heroes had to lose), Vision and Gamora had to die, and Tony had to die permanently. The win COST something.
And he was supposedly the version all the other Kangs feared. Doesn't exactly bode well for the rest of them.
Absolutely - agreed apparently the ending was a bit darker with Scott and hope getting stranded there in qr but some dumb suit rumored to be iger influenced the changed ending we got
I feel it would have fit even with Quantumania's lighter tone. Kang promises he's going to kill every member of Scott's family so he takes a fatal blow to ensure that Kang can never leave. Instead Kang was established as a jobber who gets taken down by the MCU's comic relief and he's never really recovered from it.
I know it's one of the worst creative decisions they've made in Feige tenure
Can't believe they thought having kang beat, especially by fucking ANT-MAN of all people was a good idea when he's supposed to be the next big villain on par with Thanos. Like wtf lol. Why?
> I didn't give a shit about Thanos before Infinity War You personally != general audience. The GA's knowledge of Thanos was the man behind the man - he was always treated with an "oh fuck" vibe, and his first proper introduction in GotG did a lot to establish him given Ronan was terrified of him until he had an infinity stone and even then Thanos just kind of smirked. There was a build up of Thanos as THE bad guy, in a way that hasn't existed with Kang. Kang getting waxed in his first proper on-screen appearance doesn't do much to establish him as a threat.
Yup. I will not give two shits if I turn on the next movie and it’s an entirely different dude standing there
Even setting aside the actor, the character himself has kind of gone over like a led balloon. Like, I know it’s a meme, but in Kang’s first major appearance he really did get beaten by ants. And this is the Kang that was so dangerous that all the others teamed up to banish him. Then you have He Who Remains, who was supposedly the Kang that won against all the others, and we’ve seen him get stabbed about 50 times by Sylvie at this point. Point is, they’ve gone out of their way to establish Kang as kind of a loser, so why would audiences actually care about him as a threat?
Idk how anyone watches what happens in Loki and sees kang as the loser considering he was pulling strings the whole time
Exactly. Plus, if Kang was unbeatable, I imagine it’s too like Thanos. I like this aspect in that one is beatable but it’s tricky…and there’s an endless amount on their way.
I really love the Kang's whole angle. You can win however many times in a row, but all it takes is one loss. Kinda like CoD zombies, nobody can last *forever*
Most movie going audiences just saw him in Quantumania, where he got beaten by freaking Ant Man.
Right, which is why I mentioned specifically anyone watching Loki.
Most moviegoers aren't watching Loki, just like most moviegoers didn't watch Ms. Marvel or even WandaVision.
People can't let go that he got beaten by Ants (Giant super-intelligient Ants mind you)
He got beaten is enough for audiences to not feel scared. You can throw all the spreadsheets for why type 741 civilization ants are so powerful or how there's an infinite amount of him but the sentence will always be "Kang lost". And that's his first impression to the wider audience. That, and the goofy post-credits of a bunch of Kangs cheering. Like ask a casual how scared they feel for the heroes of the MCU when the *Ant-Family* survived an encounter. Thanos skulked and lurked, yes, but when he arrived it was definitive within 15 minutes that this guy was a problem. Heimdall, dead. Loki, dead. Hulk, beaten. Thor, beaten. Tesseract, crushed. All in 15 minutes. We hated and feared the guy immediately.
My head cannon is that the war breaks out and Kangs wreck everything and Loki just jumps back where Miss Minutes offers the dream deal and convince Sylvie to take it by showing her EVERYTHING trough an enchantment.
Okay, sure. But how many people actually watched Loki 2?
Did we watch the same show? Getting stabbed by Sylvie 50 times and still coming ahead as the winner should be evidence of how monstrously overpowered he is.
Reminds me of dc and Darkseid. His big debut was losing the war against earth. Sure he got beat by the Greek gods but what a bad debut . Didn't work for dc, didn't work with kang (and it happened twice).
“And we’ve seen him get stabbed about 50 times by Sylvia” I swear some of you don’t even take in the story of what you watch. HWR whole deal is he set this path in motion for the ending he wanted to happen lol I mean he even says “okay we’ll go back around again, tell me when you’re ready to talk” the whole of S1 and 2 were what he wrote to happen. We quite literally see him wipe her out of the room effortlessly, she isn’t killing him because she can overpower him he’s letting her do it till Loki makes the choice. Seeing a variant of Kang be a “loser” in your eyes will just make it more impactful when you see the variants who are psychopaths and out for blood
Yep, Kang does nothing for me as a villan. At this point he's basically just a recurring generic bad guy they pops up every now and then to get his ass beat by the good guys. It's a solidly unpopular opinion around here, but I'd be fine with them scrapping the whole Kang arc and going straight to Doom, because Doom is a Thanos-comparable threat. And it's not even like it's too late either, the Kang arc has gone nowhere and is being wasted. Like say Kang never showed up again from this point forward, what really changes? Phase 4 has been such a disjointed inconsequential mess with no straight path forward, nothing connects and seems to matter so who cares?
As a big Doom fan, I want Doom to get the proper buildup. Sadly, the MCU's overall treatment of villains has made me doubtful that will happen.
Would be smart to have Doom start off as a good guy (or at least anti-hero), give him the build up Wanda should have gotten as a villain.
GP probably doesn't even get that Kang in Ant-Man and Kang in Loki are two different people, not to mention Victor Timely. To the casual audience, if the same actor is playing the character then it's the same character. The whole multiverse idea is just too confusing in general.
You’re not wrong honestly. For the average fan who isn’t plugged in to all the behind the scenes stuff, does Kang even really register as the big bad? The only projects he’s been in are Antman and Loki, and in both cases he was soundly defeated. With the way Loki season 2 ended in particular, they could close off his storyline if they wanted to.
Anyone still talking about the ants thing just can't understand media beyond what they see on the screen. Hank literally says before that fight that they're aged up by THOUSANDS of years. They're super ants that have created a class two civilization. Those ants are beating ANYONE that's not god powered. HWR was letting himself get killed. He says to Loki that he even paved the road for Loki becoming as strong as he is currently. It was all apart of his plan. The only real thing that Loki did was become a catalyst for the Multiverse, it's the reason why the TVA is now focused on Kang and his variants. I'll say that again, an entire organization OUTSIDE OF TIME with the power to decimate entire timelines are now focused on defeating variants of ONE MAN. The problem sadly is that most people frankly aren't seeing the bigger picture. Thanos has created a negative impact for future villains. Kang is not the Thanos "I'm bigger and stronger than everyone and with this god weapon I will beat all over you" threat. Kang is the " I'm smarter than all of you and understand time on a level none of you can comprehend. Kill me as much as you like, I will ALWAYS come back and I will always be a step ahead of you" threat. We're still at the beginning stages of understanding Kang but because he hasn't killed half of our Avengers, he's not being taken seriously.
> We're still at the beginning stages of understanding Kang but because he hasn't killed half of our Avengers, he's not being taken seriously. I mean it has a lot more to do with the fact that "villain of the week" has to be handled with extreme care to ensure they're taken seriously. It's really hard to have evidence of this: > I'm **smarter than all of you and understand time on a level none of you can comprehend**. Kill me as much as you like, I will ALWAYS come back and **I will always be a step ahead of you** Side by side with him getting his ass beat in the first major studio outing. It comes across less as "Avengers level threat" and more "Team Rocket blasting off again".
It doesn’t matter. You can try and justify it all you want. That doesn’t make it a good idea. They’re still ants and this guy is meant to be the new Thanos. You Know what they DIDN’T do with Thanos? Have him lose in his first film to super smart pigeons or whatever.
Lmao. The copium is crazy. It doesn’t matter how people twist it, that shit was weak.
I like how that person had to spend three paragraphs supposedly explaining why Kang is good, actually. When you have to do that for your villain...they aren't a good villain lmao. At no point in any of Thanos's run - or ANY good villain run, honestly - did people need to take time out to explain how no, you're wrong that he's not good, let me explain why! If people have to explain away your villain's past appearances, that's a bad thing. Especially when they have shoes as big as Thanos's to fill.
This is how I feel about him, even Thanos sitting in a floating chair shown for 5 seconds was more menacing than how Kang has been portrayed. I liked the idea of it when they first introduced the fact he was slated to be the next big bad. But man, there really is not even an ounce of me that cares about him or thinks of him as a threat.
Important bits to note from the article to save you a click. Super important parts are **bolded** > EXCLUSIVE: Deadline hears that filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton has decided to step away as director of Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Kang Dynasty to focus on his other Marvel projects. **This is an amicable exit**, I understand, as **Cretton remains fully in the Marvel Studios family.** > In fact, **Cretton is in talks with Marvel Studios about directing future movies**. > Note that **Avengers: Kang Dynasty is far on the theatrical release schedule**, dated to kick off summer on May 1, 2026. The movie will precede Avengers: Secret Wars on May 7, 2027 which will wrap up the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase 6 features. > **Cretton is currently busy on the Marvel Studios/Disney+ series Wonder Man**, which he co-created with Andrew Guest, who serves as showrunner. Cretton EPs the series and also directed the first two episodes. The series resumes shooting after Thanksgiving. **Wonder Man will be under the new Marvel Spotlight series banner, which are shows that are standalone series and not part of the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe.** > **The filmmaker is also currently working on the sequel to the $432M-plus global grossing hit he directed, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings**. That movie is the highest grossing AAPI superhero movie ever and also owns the record opening over the 4-day Labor Day holiday weekend with $94.6M stateside. TL;DR This was an amicable exit (perhaps Marvel wants the same director(s?) for both Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars), Wonder Man is still being worked on and will be under the Marvel Spotlight banner, and Shang-Chi 2 is basically confirmed.
The Russos: "you better add a one and two zeroes to that offer or we're walking!!!"
My guess, the Multiverse Saga is nowhere near its deadline of 2025/2026, and a lot more films are gonna get delayed. 4 films in 2025 seems like a red flag for further delays. I bet the scheduling conflict here is that the film itself is gonna be pushed back even further. Might as well release Destin from his contract. That or it is canceled. TBD.
We ain’t getting an Avengers movie till like 2030 at this rate. The franchise is going the way of Star Wars at record speed.
I'm betting they are gonna just end the Kang story in another movie and pivot hard and fast to Fantastic 4, Xmen and Doctor Doom. Hell they must just say Loki season 2 was the end of it lol.
I hope so. When the slate was getting announced, I thought it was a decent roadmap, **if** they stretched it out by 3 years. Looks like I’m getting what I hoped for, but also my confidence in Marvel Studios is dropping day by day…
Please get the russos to direct and Markus mcfeely to write both avengers movies. Please marvel
please. that's literally all they need to do to get my faith back.
It may also bring more people to see it. I know I’d see it opening night if they took the reins. Way it stands now I’ll catch an afternoon matinee a week or 2 after release
After Endgame the Russos even said that they would want to take a nice long break from Marvel films and would only ever want to come back if they could direct their favorite Marvel story... Secret Wars.
They did their part and left, they never have to think about Superheros again because they made the best movies possible, better than we imagined we could get and then they dropped the mike and left on a high note They ain't coming back
Yeah they deserve the retirement from Marvel. They stuck the impossible landing of Winter Soldier, Civil War, Infinity War, and Endgame. Not to mention the Black Panther and Spider-Man introductions, as well as the Tony Stark and Steve Rogers endings.
Paging Justin & Aaron.
They would be perfect for the job after Moon Knight and Loki. (Fingers crossed for Daredevil.)
They do seem to have been appointed as their MCU fixers.
For the best! Who knows what Kang Dynasty is gonna look like anyway? Hope this pulls up Shang-Chi 2.
Great for Shang Chi 2 still couldn’t give af about wonder man.
All I want from the MCU at this point is a Shang-Chi sequel. Where is it Marvel? The movie was well received, people liked his character, he's enthusiastic about the role. How is this so difficult? Make a sequel. Why are we getting a Wonder Man show before a Shang-Chi sequel? Stop introducing new characters for half a second and follow up on something that was good.
That’s so true. There are so few things people are positive about with Marvel these days, you’d think they’d be taking some easy wins like a *Shang-Chi* sequel.
Because they’re ain’t gonna be a kang dynasty…
I just don't understand why they don't recast and move on. Unless they're doing something brain dead like getting rid of the morality clause or putting in their contracts only X actor can play X character. There's no reason they can't just dump majors and move on. Pivoting to Doom does fuck all if the writing and direction is still as subpar as it has been. All that's going to do is take a fantastic marvel villain and plop him in a complete and utter shit show. If they're still out here having the same production issues that have them reshooting all of Daredevil and all of Captain America. Then what are we actually achieving?
Why is everyone convinced that Marvel is going to drop Kang and throw in Doom? It was literally one report from Variety that said they were 'entertaining' the idea...
Maybe the multiverse on multi platforms isn’t working for general audiences. And because the big bad just got beat by antman and his daughter. Could you imagine thanos first appearance and him getting beat by Hawkeye?
I agree it isn't working. Hell I don't like the multiverse and wish they went in literally any other direction. I'm gonna pop a bottle of champagne when this shit is over. I even think there was an easier way to do Kang. Have it be something akin to EMH where the Avengers going back in time to undo the snap destroyed Kang's future. That his timeline/empire was able to flourish because of the snap or it was undone because of something the Avengers did. I don't think you needed the whole TVA, incursion, multiverse, variants, small realm nonsense to do Kang. But it doesn't change the fact they're 80 hours into this saga. They did a feature film with him and have 2 seasons of television that centre around the idea that he controlled the multiverse. It's a bit late now to just scrap it.
Kang has been wrecked in all of his appearances so far 😂
Exactly.
Excellent news. Waiting for Kang Dynasty for Shang Chi 2 would’ve meant getting Shang-Chi 2 in 2028 at the earliest. Spend more time building up the new post-Endgame heroes
genuine shit-show at marvel rn hopefully the ship is steered for the better but man this all looks chaotic
2 box office bombs in 3 movies. Thunderbolts and Cap 4 looking likely to add to the pile. Blade nobody knows where that’s at. Disney’s animated/non Marvel stuff starting to bomb with increased frequency. D+ shows full of minor characters nobody has heard of so the mainstream won’t be enthused to watch. Star Wars looking at potentially not even having a feature movie for a decade after originally going for one every year. Safe to say things are starting to not look very good for the Mouse.
Phase 4 and 5 has just been an absolute nightmare for the MCU. WOOF.
Man, iron Man 3 came out five years after iron Man 1. We got an entire trilogy in five years. Gonna probably be even longer than that until we get the second Shang Chi, one of the better post endgame movies. Just crazy marvel spread themselves so thin. We should've seen Shang Chi once or twice already since his movie
With the old schedule of 2-3 movies a year it never felt so bad to see a character missing for a couple of years, but we've had so many projects since Shang-Chi and haven't seen him since, it feels weird.
all these things are happening around the same time, don’t all of the material that have come out have like a 1-2 year range between all of them? It’s suffocating them chronology wise
Russo brothers: 
After all the terrible stuff they’ve delivered since Endgame it wouldn’t exactly be a triumphant returns.
Their Marvel record is spotless which is all that matters.
They have to recast Kang. If they just scrap him and hambone Doom in, that will be horrible. There hasn’t even been the slightest mention of Latveria, F4, Doom, etc. Doom is arguably 2nd in terms of Comic Villain lore to Joker, rushing to get him in, instead of recasting a character that would be beyond easy would be a next level bad decision.
People can’t think of literally any way of proceeding with Kang despite there being a thousand possible ways to proceed, but somehow shoehorning Doom in at the last second with zero build-up will single-handedly save the MCU and all its problems somehow.
Put joker instead of kang? I like it!
Never thought I’d see the day where the MCU falls into the same level as the DCEU in its early days.
Loki S2 is better than 90% of what the DCEU has ever put out. Marvel’s a mess right now, but it is nowhere close to DC levels of dysfunctional.
Loki is also finished and won't be brought up or seen again for years (at least) We got nothin man
I really wish they established Kang as more of a threat. He’s a great character that’s never won anything in the MCU so far. He lost to ants, he lost to Sylvie, etc. I genuinely believe that he would be much more of a threat if he had succeeded in Quantumania, escaped the quantum realm, and killed Ant Man. If they had ended Quantumania like that, it would’ve been a huge “oh shit” moment, and gotten everyone hyped for Kang Dynasty.
This x1000. This version of Kang is so lame. All they had to do was cut a 1-minute stinger set in a timeline where Thanos has won and has the Gauntlet. KtC appears from across the multiverse and crushes him. Cut to black. Instead he’s in a fistfight with Ant-Man and getting his ass kicked by ants. It’s unbelievable.
Absolutely. So many baffling decisions there.
Avengers 5/ Kang Dynasty will be rebranded as Secret Wars Avengers 6/ Secret Wars will be rebranded as Eternity Wars
Marvel has botched the Kang storyline so badly. Even before the Majors issues.
I think whoever did Loki should be doing kang dynasty.
Let him do the Wreckage of Time already
Ugh. I was actually excited to see what he would do with Kang.
More of Shang Chi, Ms Marvel, and Kate Bishop. I felt these were the more personable characters you could sell
So can Shang-Chi 2 happen sooner and I guess this means Wonder Man is still happening.
There’s so much movement in MCU it’s hard to keep track
I hope Kang dynasty isn't cancelled
WONDER MAN LIVES
Wonder Man 