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How are you doing you wonderful nerds, Scott here and not too long ago Owen from Owen Likes Comics stopped by
to talk about what he believes is the biggest flaw with DC's movie universe.
You guys had a lot of opinions about that, nah, actually you guys were mostly civil and respectful towards one another.
Which is what I love about you, but in the interest of fairness and potential pandering clickbait.
I wanted to make a follow up video discussing the Marvel Cinematic Universe and one huge potential problem I think is on the horizon.
Aka my incredibly correct theory about how the MCU is going to die, maybe probably not but the MCU does share a surprising amount in common with another one of Marvel's ventures.
One that failed fairly recently, and one that was fairly intertwined with the Marvel Cinematic Universe even being one of the film franchises biggest inspirations.
I'm talking of course about the now-defunct Marvel Ultimate Comics line.
Some context, the 90s as I'm sure we all know were not a great time for the comic book industry, well they started great but then things quickly got worse.
There was the speculator bubble, where investors and fans believed modern comics would be worth their weight in gold someday.
That didn't pan out, causing comic sales to plummet. Marvel racked up massive debt which forced unending layoffs and eventually causes Marvel to file for bankruptcy.
The company wanted to regain its cultural relevance with its iconic characters.
It was having a hard time bringing in new readers because there was so much history and backstory and continuity in their extensive and ever-growing shared universe.
Even some of the stories they were telling at the time were needlessly complex.
Is Spider-Man a clone? I don't know.
In the year 2000, Marvel decided to experiment with a brand new universe where they can update their heroes.
Tell new stories in the modern era and create an environment where the writers could take risks without impacting the main continuity.
Marvel's original comic line would still exist, but this new one would be published alongside it.
With hopes that it would also serve as a decent jumping on point for new readers who may have been overwhelmed with the 50-plus years of Marvel's continuity.
The result was Ultimate Comics, as I'm sure sure a lot of you are aware the Marvel Cinematic Universe was largely based on the Ultimate Comics line.
Not a perfect one-to-one copy, but the movie characters tend to have more in common with their Ultimate counterparts than their classic comic book roots.
The Avengers started as a S.H.I.E.L.D initiative, assembled by Nick Fury who bears a striking resemblance to Samuel L Jackson.
Hulk was a failed super soldier experiment, Hawkeye was as far as we know not a reformed criminal but simply a S.H.I.E.L.D agent.
Spider-Man is a modern-day high school student etc.
The people behind the first MCU film Iron Man, reportedly decided to have Robert Downey Jr. take the personality of Tony Stark from the Ultimate Comics.
Rather than the classic stories, and honestly it's not surprising that the movies took at least a little inspiration from the Ultimate Comics.
They both accomplish similar goals, take the classic aging Marvel characters update their looks, origins, and personalities for a modern audience.
While including enough of the source material to satisfy longtime fans and it was a success.
With Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-men becoming instant hits.
That success was carried over to the Ultimate version of Marvel's Avengers aptly titled The Ultimates.
Debuting in February of 2002, it became the best-selling comic book of that entire year.
You know kind of like how Avengers did pretty okay at the box office.
Marvel's Ultimate Comics line drove the publisher back to the top.
Critics praised them, fans rushed to read them, artists and writers wanted to work on them.
All things that can be generally said about the MCU, very similar reactions in culture.
The Ultimate comics were cool until they weren't, and here is where we can start to get worried about the MCU.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe echoes the same success the Ultimate Comics had, and also features similar points of failure.
Just a few years in, there were some problems with the Ultimate Comics line that led to its demise.
For starters comics were constantly delayed, the quality of the stories were diminishing, and the novelty of seeing alternate versions of beloved
Marvel characters was wearing off as the writers were running out of new interesting heroes and villains to showcase.
The MCU started in phase 1 by taking its time to methodically introduce new characters into their films,
but by phase two it was like you want an ant guy okay. You want a tree and a talking mammal in space with a handsome man okay.
You want a single movie that introduces a fast boy, a magic lady, a James Spader bot, and a character who is the embodiment of the uncanny valley okay.
Thankfully Marvel has a wealth of characters from their comics to incorporate, especially now that they have Spider-Man in their franchise.
The guy has the best villains in the Marvel Universe, which is definitely one of the MCU's biggest weaknesses.
I mean let's see there was the uhh, the white guy who's a head of a company turned out to be kind of evil.
Then there was the guy with the weird face who wanted some kind of powerful magical objects.
Then uhh, then robots. The Ultimate Comics suffered more problems than just the novelty wearing off.
The major downfall started when Jeph Loeb and David Finch gave us the infamous event Ultimatum.
Loeb explain that Ultimatum was meant to be,
Quote: [Text on screen]
End Quote. It was violent and needlessly brutal, heroes and villains dying left and right.
So much death, but hey at least the MCU isn't ramping up to any massive world-changing crossover event that is foreshadowed mass hero death.
Oh no! but hey Infinity War might be great.
I don't know but I do know that Ultimatum was terrible and Marvel's Ultimate Comics universe was dying because of it, and not even Miles Morales could save it.
Maybe that was okay though. Most of the good ideas from the Ultimate Universe started popping up in the main continuity,
and especially in a brand new endeavor Marvel was embarking on. A connected Cinematic Universe.
However it was part of the problem, its success started having an impact on Marvel's characters and stories across the board.
As Brian Michael Bendis explains,
Quote: [Text on screen]
End quote.
Its own success effectively made itself obsolete.
Now again thankfully the idea of other comics incorporating ideas directly from the MCU has yet to have.
Oh, okay but yeah that's, yeah okay I see what you're saying, but to be fair that sort of thing has been happening with Marvel movies since Blade, Spider-Man, and X-men.
Does that make these movies less special when their ideas are adapted into the source material, you can argue not really since there are different mediums.
The Ultimate Comic Universe and Marvel's main 616 Universe were both comic book lines competing for the same comic book audience,
but there was another big reason the Ultimate Comics failed.
One of the core selling points of the Ultimate Universe at launch was that readers wouldn't have to worry about the continuity,
and yet more than 10 years in it became plagues with that exact problem. As comics creator Jonathan Hickman explained
Quote: [Text on screen]
End quote.
I feel I don't need to remind everyone that we are about ten years into the MCU, with something like twenty three films and nine TV shows.
Either out currently or on the horizon and thanks to the looming threat of Thanos and the Infinity stones popping up in all these different movies,
it seems like the stories and characters are only going to get more and more interwoven and complex.
Building a rich world is great don't get me wrong, but again it runs the risk of having continuity swallow everything and confusing audience member who,
uh maybe didn't pay that close attention to the details and yes this is a risk that literally any expansive universe takes.
Movie, comic, or otherwise.
Marvel isn't unique here but their cinematic universe is much further down the road than most, if not all others.
Does that mean that the MCU is going to die soon? I don't really know anything for sure, all I can say is that personally I'm optimistic.
I don't believe this superhero fatigue that people tend to talk about, I love superheroes I want everyone to see how great superheroes are.
Not just Marvel superheroes but all superheroes. I just can't help but see a lot of similarities between the marvel cinematic universe,
and the ultimate comics but long as Marvel hires good writers, and directors, and actors, and if superhero films from other studios can challenge Marvels place.
Than I believe that ultimately we'll be fine.
I spoke a lot just now but I would love to know your thoughts,
write down in the comments below what do you think the health of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is?
Is it still going strong? Is it losing its luster a bit?
Also if you haven't seen Owen's video about the DCEU, definitely go check that out he did a fantastic job with it.
Didn't harshly bash it but simply gave it some constructive criticism. I'll have that linked at the end and in the description down below.
Thank you so much to our patrons who directly support these videos over at Patreon.
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head on over to patreon.com/nerdsync.
My name is Scott, reminding you to read between the panels and grow smarter through comics.
See ya.