Ok so The Marvel Cinematic Universe is about to close off phase 4 with the release of Wakanda
Forever later this year.
The studio is unmatched in it's cohesiveness and though many have tried to imitate it,
none have matched it' Even the studio that's in second place still hasn't come close to
pulling off what Kevin Feige has accomplished and so many of them have struggled to even
get out the gate with their shared universe plans.
Though it seems almost perfect in it's design, the original plan for the MCU was a lot different
and I thought we'd ask What If Feige had've gone with his original vision.
Throughout this video we're gonna be going over what the universe was originally meant
to look like, the characters in it and also the storylines that we would've got.
So come with us watcher as we break it all down amd discuss what was originally supposed
to happen.
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I'll leave that as the pinned comment and with that out the way Welcome to the Heavy
Spoilers show, I'm your host Paul aka your friendly neighbourhood Spoiler-man, now lets
get into the breakdown.
Now in order to discuss the full plan we have to talk about how hard up that Marvel were
in the 90s as it massively effects the way that the plan was laid out.
Marvel Studios started up in the 90s and it mainly worked as a part of it's parent company
that dealt with licences.
This involved the office selling off major characters to other studios so that the company
could keep afloat.
I'm sure you've heard the story about how they had to sell office equipment to other
places just to keep the lights on and they had truly fallen from greatness.
In this time they lost the film rights to Spider-man, The X-men, Fantastic Four, Hulk
and all their flagship characters.
Hulk did sort of get a co-operative deal with Universal but it was pretty much the company
trying to scramble for as much cash as they could before it all came crashing down.
In 1996 they filed for bankruptcie but slowly they managed to claw their way back.
At the time, American Businessman Carl Icahn started buying bonds in the company at 20%
of their value and he eventually took over the company.
In 1997 during the bankruptcy renegotiation phase Toy Biz then bought Marvel from the
banks and shortly after this it was taken over once more by Ron Perelman who regained
control once more.
Slowly it was pulled out of bankruptcy and it would go onto become the juggernaut that
we now know it as today.
Now in 1998 the company got somewhat of a big revival in the mainstream with the release
of Blade
Blade was a big gamble for them and under the name Marvel Enterprises the film released
to positive reviews and also a box office of 131 million off the back of a 45 million
budget.
It wouldn't be long before other studios started to propel the property purchases that they'd
bought and we saw the X-men and Spider-man drop to great success.
This also got a lot of interest in the comics and Marvel sales slowly but surely started
to pick up.
They got a lot of secondary gains from selling this stuff and the brand related income that
came in from merchandising offered them new opportunities.
Marvel Studios started to look at self financing in 2004 and they put together in place a plan
to make ten films.
This was going to span across an 8 year window with us getting roughly one a year but in
some instances two.
It's important to bear in mind that they didn't own the rights to Iron Man at this time and
thus he's not included in the original plan.
New Line owned him up to November 2005 and then when they were released it vastly altered
what they were going to do.
What they wanted to create though was this.
A Captain America movie that started it all off, an Avengers one, Nick Fury, Hawkeye,
Power Pack, Shang-Chi Black Panther, Ant-Man and Cloak And Dagger.
Now the one that probably stands out to you the most there is The Avengers who would've
had a completely different line-up.
We don't know the specifics here but Nick Fury would've followed the same role that
he did in the eventual Phase 1 that we got.
He'd go round recruiting the other members of the team and they'd be made up of the other
characters that I mentioned.
So yes, Shang-Chi and Black Panther were originally going to be part of the team along with Hawkeye
and Captain America.
There's also of course Doctor Strange and Ant-man who did end up coming into the MCU
after Civil War and it shows how much things changed once Marvel started regaining their
IPs.
Out of the entire line-up they had only Captain America and The Avengers ended up actually
being released in the original 8 years showing how much stuff can shift about.
Now along with getting the Iron Man rights back, they also secured them from other studios.
Hulk was freed up slightly from Universal along with Thor from Paramount and Black Widow
from Lions Gate.
So you can see how getting all this back started to change things and interestingly, Tony Stark
was never supposed to be the face of the MCU.
It's weird to think about this especially due to how iconic Robert Downey Juniors portrayal
is but he was thought of as a character that they could use to introduce others rather
than being the main guy.
The position of power was originally going to fall to The Hulk who Marvel had had success
with due to the Ang-Lee movie and of course the legendary 70s TV show.
Robert Downey Junior wasn't even really wanted to be part of the universe at the time due
to controversy surrounding him and it was only due to Jon Favreau that they were convinced
to take the shot.
His movie was a big success and after Iron Man was released Marvel announced that the
other films they had coming out would lead into the Avengers.
Slowly things started to all slot into place with the shared universe plan all coming together
bit by bit.
Tony appeared in The Incredible Hulk, Thor was hinted at in Iron Man 2 and then Thor
itself ended with a tease to the Avengers with Captain America showing the first trailer
for it.
Now from this point onwards, Marvel came to realise how important that it was to have
a plan in place and they of course finished out The Avengers with a tease towards Thanos
in the post credits scene.
The studio also started to showcase their plans far in advance so that they could make
minor changes to it if needs be.
Dropping an entire line-up allowed them to see audience reaction, get ideas for how to
better tie things together and generally just shift stuff around.
If you look at their original plans you'll see that we were originally supposed to be
getting Captain America The Serpant society along with Avengers Infinity War Part 1 and
2.
This was of course changed to Endgame and Serpent society was dropped in favour of Civil
War.
Marvel admitted that after Batman V Superman was announced that they decided to change
direction and having such a plan laid out like this allowed them to be reactive and
see where trends were going.
There was also Spider-man Homecoming that originally wasn't part of the lineup but this
all changed after the Sony Email Hack.
That studio were heading down the Amazing Spider-man route but they ended up talking
it out with Feige and the two sides came to a deal that allowed him to come back into
the universe.
There's also the Inhumans that were dropped after the series didn't go down too well but
on the whole Marvel has been a big success.
They've reached a point now where they've got back the rights to all their original
characters and going forward into Phase 5 and 6 we'll be seeing more from the Fantastic
Four and likely the X-men.
Some of the stand out things about the original plan too are characters that we never really
got in the MCU.
Though Cloak and Dagger got a show, we still haven't heard anything about Power Pack and
they're probably the most obscure characters on there.
There's also the Nick Fury movie which I think we will sort of get when Secret Invasion rolls
around.
Looking back at what was originally meant to be it's kinda crazy to think how things
have changed and it shows the big comeback journey that Marvel went on.
Here's an organisation that had to sell filing cabinets to stay afloat and they now completley
dominate the industry.
Though we don't know exactly what the plots of these movies would have been it's interesting
to see how it all changed and it really makes you wonder if what we got is the best thing
that we could have.
Personally I think that it is and the big risk in Robert Downey Junior really paid off
as it allowed them to get attention on their company during a time when DC was dominating
with it's Dark Knight trilogy.
It's really interesting to see how stuff in the original plan has now been drafted in
and the versions we got but I'd of course love to hear your thoughts on it in the comments
below.
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If you want something else to watch then make sure you check out our breakdown of perfect
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We break down the entire thing so it’s definitely worth checking out if you wanna know more.
With that out the way thank you for sitting through the video, I’ve been Paul and I’ll
see you next time.
Take care, Peace