44 minutes ago, UK Eagle said:

Even commercial free, I get the coming up spam. I actually watched some of Andor on my PC to avoid it,

I saw one comment that said

Spoiler

Did anyone in Marvel not think that perhaps it was a bad look to have Ironheart and cohorts be criminals as POC/LGBTQ? Are they not enforcing some stereotypes that exist in the ether?

I didn't think about that but I guess someone could nitpick it

41 minutes ago, UK Eagle said:

And the new FF trailer is out there

I don't hate it at a;;, but it doesn't make want to see it in the Cinema either.

Really curious how they display Franklin's powers. He's ridiculously powerful

1 hour ago, Mike030270 said:

I didn't think about that but I guess someone could nitpick it

I wouldn't have, either, but it was only when I thought about their reply, I thought, damn dude. You are right

1 hour ago, Mike030270 said:

Really curious how they display Franklin's powers. He's ridiculously powerful

I suspect the fact he is in the trailer a few times says something

FF Spoiler

An ending from the one of screeners has some very, very vague details leak about that character and their impact on the film. Of course, the reshoots may have made that ending moot by now. But your comment may not surprise

Regarding Ironheart or other products that may not be as popular, but could serve a portion of the fanbase, making it a show on Disney+ makes sense. There are a lot of iterations of comic characters with different takes on them, and there are new characters or things introduced in newer comics. So you have more casual fans that know the bigger named characters, or those that grew up with comics but haven't kept up with it, they see it as Marvel/Disney pushing some kind of agenda or changing up characters, but they're actually based on comic book series they've done. But when making a live action adaptation, you're going for more of a mass audience. So picking something newer or obscure is a risk. Disney/Marvel have to do a better job reading the audience reviews, reactions, the financials and make better decisions. Did anyone really want a show about Ironheart? If so, how much money did they spend on it? The comics have some "woke" agendas put in (for lack of a better phrase), such as a gay Captain America. There's also a series where Steve Rogers joins Hydra. There are lots of wild things they've done in comics too. Like Ultron had something like 25+ versions of re-creating himself. So when adapting for live action, you have to balance being true to the spirit of the characters and make it work for live action audiences.

I see people online debating it and some will say Ironheart was a comic book series...but do many people even know about that? There are lots of comic book series, a lot of strange alternate versions of characters and things like that. So you can't expect casual movie/show viewers to keep up with that.

In Ironheart, she is supposedly an MIT student but if I recall in Black Panther 2, she was in Chicago according to wiki (I don't remember her story that much, had to look it up). But all they had to do was have Tony recognize her talent, train and mentor her and then it would make more sense that she creates her own suit and becomes a hero instead of independently reverse engineering Tony's suits. In Civil War he spoke at MIT and said he was funding all their projects. They could have used that opportunity for him to mentor her. Since they introduced her after Endgame when Tony died, they could have just had her working at Stark Industries, have a character like Pepper, Maria Hill or Happy (like he did with Peter) talk to her about the ongoing work she's doing and allude to Tony mentoring her previously. Yes, it's possible that since Iron Man there could be others that figure out how to do it, but for audience's sake you want them to accept the character and so you have her introduced as already part of the team and stamp of approval from Tony/Avengers.

Speaking of relatively unknown things to casual viewers, regarding Franklin Richards, just read the wiki about his character and it's just one example of a random character with so many crazy backstories and iterations. I never read FF comics and I never heard of him. So when you said Franklin, I was like who is Franklin? So I searched to read through this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Richards_(character)

Also regarding the changes in this movie where Silver Surfer is a woman, and the idea that Sue Storm is the "leader" these are actually things also from the comics. Since this is the 3rd iteration of the FF movies, it makes sense to do things differently. There is a comic book version of Silver Surfer that is a woman, and that's what this character is so it's not "woke" changing a character, it's based on the comics already. I don't know if Sue is actually the "leader" in this, but the producer said she's "the central character" of the movie, and the heart of the Fantastic Four. I read that she took over as the leader in the comics after Reed died. It's possible that some fans took the producer comments to make rage bait YouTube videos complaining about them making a woman the leader, when either she's just the focal point of the story (because there have been 3 version of Reed Richards on screen including John Krasinski's in the Strange Multiverse movie).

We've also seen fan overreaction from marketing to realize the movie wasn't necessarily like that. So curious to see how it plays out.

3 hours ago, NOTW said:

Speaking of relatively unknown things to casual viewers, regarding Franklin Richards, just read the wiki about his character and it's just one example of a random character with so many crazy backstories and iterations. I never read FF comics and I never heard of him. So when you said Franklin, I was like who is Franklin? So I searched to read through this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Richards_(character)

Check out comicvine for battles. It'll give you an idea of how powerful different characters are. It's also not limited to Marvel. Pretty interesting. They mostly go by feats shown in comics, tv, movie, etc. to discuss who would win between different characters

1 hour ago, Mike030270 said:

Check out comicvine for battles. It'll give you an idea of how powerful different characters are. It's also not limited to Marvel. Pretty interesting. They mostly go by feats shown in comics, tv, movie, etc. to discuss who would win between different characters

Cool. Yeah I didn't read that many comics as a kid, I watched cartoons, shows and movies mostly. So some of the newer stuff I look up to read about it. When Age of Ultron came out I read up on it, and realized there were something like 25+ iterations of Ultron as he kept re-creating himself so they were fighting new versions. Then the movie had - as Honest Trailers put it - a few days of Ultron.

21 hours ago, NOTW said:

I see people online debating it and some will say Ironheart was a comic book series...but do many people even know about that? There are lots of comic book series, a lot of strange alternate versions of characters and things like that. So you can't expect casual movie/show viewers to keep up with that.

There are some people in the nerdsphere who are massively into comics, and whether it be Ironheart or Miss Marvel or whoever, their consistent point is "no one bought the comics in volume because they weren't good and the run got cancelled". - whether you like them individually or not, the overall point is right. While those characters technically "exist", the sales figures are mid 4 figures, so taking that lack of recognition into a movie or TV series, dooms them to failure unless its absolutely amazing (Daredevil). Because who the hell is Ironheart and why should I watch it? Especially when a lot of recent content has been at best average?

One thing Gordon Ramsay says that sticks with me is and I am paraphrasing this. Its not the customer that complains that you need to worry about, its the customer that doesn't complain and never comes back that you need to worry about,

Further ramblings

If you take a step back, you can say that the changes in the US comic industry over the past 20 years have let Manga fill the nerd gap and grow - crikey, I'm currently watching the One Piece cartoons and they are effing great. New comics from big companies aren't big business anymore because I think, Marvel and DC have become disconnected from their core audience. Mark Millar (Kick Ass, Kingsmen), and Rob Liefeld (Deadpool) are great reads on X because you can feel their passion for comics and their sadness of what has become of that once thriving industry.

I don't think the constant activism from the creative industry in general has done their bottom line any favours either You allow politics too deeply into a nerd based industry and tell them they are wrong or waycist etc, it never ends well; whether it be comics, WarHammer, etc. The nerds won't have it and won't spend their money (my point above). Alongside telling a customer to go away if they don't like it or its not written for you. Its just bad business

1 hour ago, UK Eagle said:

There are some people in the nerdsphere who are massively into comics, and whether it be Ironheart or Miss Marvel or whoever, their consistent point is "no one bought the comics in volume because they weren't good and the run got cancelled". - whether you like them individually or not, the overall point is right. While those characters technically "exist", the sales figures are mid 4 figures, so taking that lack of recognition into a movie or TV series, dooms them to failure unless its absolutely amazing (Daredevil). Because who the hell is Ironheart and why should I watch it? Especially when a lot of recent content has been at best average?

One thing Gordon Ramsay says that sticks with me is and I am paraphrasing this. Its not the customer that complains that you need to worry about, its the customer that doesn't complain and never comes back that you need to worry about,

Further ramblings

If you take a step back, you can say that the changes in the US comic industry over the past 20 years have let Manga fill the nerd gap and grow - crikey, I'm currently watching the One Piece cartoons and they are effing great. New comics from big companies aren't big business anymore because I think, Marvel and DC have become disconnected from their core audience. Mark Millar (Kick Ass, Kingsmen), and Rob Liefeld (Deadpool) are great reads on X because you can feel their passion for comics and their sadness of what has become of that once thriving industry.

I don't think the constant activism from the creative industry in general has done their bottom line any favours either You allow politics too deeply into a nerd based industry and tell them they are wrong or waycist etc, it never ends well; whether it be comics, WarHammer, etc. The nerds won't have it and won't spend their money (my point above). Alongside telling a customer to go away if they don't like it or its not written for you. Its just bad business

All good points. Just because a character does exist in the comics, doesn't mean it's a good choice for live adaptation. And some characters are better served as supporting cast.

With the MCU, they took characters that were popular in comics that they didn't have the contractual rights to and turned them into equal popularity, partly because of brilliant casting. They gave each major character a solo movie to lead up to the Avengers and there weren't too many movies and shows yet. And when they did introduce side characters they weren't the main focus so fans could slowly learn to enjoy them. Black Widow was in Iron Man 2 then made sense in Avengers. Hawkeye was teased in Thor. Falcon and Bucky introduced in Captain America. Now, Ironheart was introduced in Wakanda Forever but it felt crammed in. I don't know if that's the plot from the comics, but it would have made more sense since she was an MIT student to have a connection to Tony.

I saw a review that said the show opens basically contrasting that Tony had billionaire white privilege but Riri built her suit from nothing. I mean she had money and a grant to do it from MIT if I recall. But that's tone deaf and stupid. Iron Man built the MCU, and he proved his skills apart from having money or technology in several scenes even without his suit. Batman is one of the best characters ever and he was rich, so what. I also don't really like Ironheart's suit, or the actress. So the series doesn't interest me.

You're right about getting preachy and political to an extent, however the comics often did that and were social and political commentary, sometimes allegory. There are ways to make that appropriate and fit in the plot, and other ways it just feels shoehorned in. I actually think the story of America accepting a black Captain America was a good one, they didn't execute it perfectly but that one made sense. Will America accept a black Captain America given it's history? Have we made enough progress? Do that many people really care? But the "do better" about housing terrorists was off the rails. There should be diversity and attention to political and social issues and reflection of current events, but some producers and directors just can't help crossing the line into cringe worthy preaching.

There are times I want to switch the TV or watch a film to get away from the real world. Its been hard to do that in the past 10 years because of the creative industry needing to tell us about certain things they deem as a priority while having a level of writing etc that has been bad. The West Wing was largely a great TV program that did not necessarily align with my views,, but I watched and enjoyed it.

I think Disney/Marvel got caught up with the DEI/#,metoo movement and that meant they made some (in retrospect) rash decisions that they now lack the smarts to workaround . I don't mind Cap not being white or being a commie, but only if the story is strong enough to support it (it wasn't in that Falcon TV series). But within the wider Hollywood context of race swaps, gender swaps, sexuak preferences, etc, it was one in a number of examples where few succeeded or made money.

I've not seen Wakanda Forever, but your points on other films are great. I saw someone complain about that Tony Stark stuff saying he built the original suit in a cave while being held hostage by terrorists, from a load of scrap. He had no billionaire niceties, so the Ironheart premise was just illogical from the get go. And if they'd read the comics or watched the films, they'd have known that.

On 6/15/2025 at 12:43 PM, Mike030270 said:

The movie Megan has been advertised like crazy. The first movie was actually pretty good but I think the story of AI vs AI is pretty stupid but it'll probably do well at the box office

We are going to end up with two androids playing a flute again, aren’t we?

All I keep seeing online about Ironheart is the same tired debate. It's not good vs you're just a hateful bigot if you don't like it.

Also:

It was getting review bombed because there were negative reviews before the show was even released

I agree with some of the legit criticism though

22 hours ago, paco said:

We are going to end up with two androids playing a flute again, aren’t we?

I watched it the other night, no skin flutes played through the movie

It goes the T2 route compared to the original in a lot of ways. The kid also does Martial Arts and idolises Steven Seagal

So reading spoilers about Ironheart, I don't get the thought process on this decision:

Introducing Mephisto, in a show that a lot of people aren't even interested in watching in the first place. It made more sense to introduce him in WandaVision, Dr. Strange 2, or use him as a villain to unite the remaining heroes after Endgame in an Avengers-like teamup. The same problem with taking Hulk characters and putting them into a Captain America movie, which should have been about something else. Are they spinning a wheel to pick what characters and plots to put together?

5 hours ago, NOTW said:

So reading spoilers about Ironheart, I don't get the thought process on this decision:

Introducing Mephisto, in a show that a lot of people aren't even interested in watching in the first place. It made more sense to introduce him in WandaVision, Dr. Strange 2, or use him as a villain to unite the remaining heroes after Endgame in an Avengers-like teamup. The same problem with taking Hulk characters and putting them into a Captain America movie, which should have been about something else. Are they spinning a wheel to pick what characters and plots to put together?

I think having "that guy" (I don't feel like doing spoilers on mobile) in this is an effort to get people to watch it. I've honestly thought about giving it a shot once I heard he shows up, but I'm sour in Disney right now....

17 hours ago, NOTW said:

So reading spoilers about Ironheart, I don't get the thought process on this decision:

Introducing Mephisto, in a show that a lot of people aren't even interested in watching in the first place. It made more sense to introduce him in WandaVision, Dr. Strange 2, or use him as a villain to unite the remaining heroes after Endgame in an Avengers-like teamup. The same problem with taking Hulk characters and putting them into a Captain America movie, which should have been about something else. Are they spinning a wheel to pick what characters and plots to put together?

My guess is in the editing of Ironheart, they removed a whole bunch of stuff and with the general MCU malaise, future plans got changed where said character would been prominent. Remember, this series has been sat in purgatory since 2022 because it was known to be a complete stinker internally.

This whole phase of the MCU, and in fact anything since Endgame, has really been so poor. There’s a few good series or movies but for the most part it has been awful.

We are now at the start of Phase 6 of the MCU. Most fans didn't realise that Phase 5 had even started, let alone ended.

A lot is going to hinge on FF and at the moment, I'm not that optimistic it will perform well. This year for Marvel has been not good.

1 hour ago, UK Eagle said:

We are now at the start of Phase 6 of the MCU. Most fans didn't realise that Phase 5 had even started, let alone ended.

A lot is going to hinge on FF and at the moment, I'm not that optimistic it will perform well. This year for Marvel has been not good.

Phase 6 only has 4 movies and a bunch of shows to end it out

49 minutes ago, Mike030270 said:

Phase 6 only has 4 movies and a bunch of shows to end it out

Aka

The one where they reformat the MCUs hard drive to hope that it fixes the issues they have.

It's a brave strategy

What fans want (some of which they promised but fumbled or changed direction or delayed):

• Blade TV series/movies with Mahershala Ali. That announcement was exciting, and great casting.

• Captain America shows/movies with Sam/Bucky that are the style of the Winter Soldier movie. Military spy action thriller. Like they just dropped that the POTUS became Red Hulk, the political and security ramifications of that would be chaos. They will move on and forget it ever happened.

• Planet Hulk, old Hulk, something to give Hulk seriousness and anger again, and showcase his power. Alternate universe or changing the current Hulk, whatever.

• Daredevil: Netflix style. Not a drama about Matt Murdock where he's barely DD. That season was forgettable, whereas the Netflix one had re-watch factor.

• Thor as a serious character, or limited comedy/sci-fi. Ragnarok was fun. But after Thanos, he should have remained as he was in the beginning of Endgame: angry, brooding, focused. Then being a badass going back to missions on other planets and being more of a Viking warrior type.

• Live action Miles Morales.

An idea that will never happen:

• Reboot Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. show. People liked Randall Park as Agent Jimmy Woo in WandaVision and thought they should do an X-Files style investigation show. (Should've kept Maria Hill alive to run a new iteration of SHIELD). The WandaVision show had SWORD, whatever. Just a series to do smaller stories in a case of the week stories. That's where you test out introducing new characters to see if audiences like them enough to expand their role into other shows or movies, or at least do the smaller characters justice to put them in live action. That could've been a thread through the new movies, SHIELD helping sort out a post-blip world. What happened to the White Vision in that series? The SHIELD team can be cleaning up the mess after bigger events in the movies.

Some thoughts:

• An upcoming film, not in the Disney MCU, contains a version of a character that should be liked, and is a step change from what Marvel has made the character. Will come down to the execution of said films, but they tend to make big money.

• How Marvel cannot make a Blade film is beyond me, A simple premise, easily executed with an actor like Ali actively wanting in. It should be a money printing machine for Marvel because so many people want Blade.

• There is talk about redoing Jessica Jones in some format - so perhaps redo the Defenders.

• They could look to do GoTG space type program. Especially with them adding in Galactus and female Silver Surfer, feels like an independent brand off for a series looking at worlds and societies destroyed by him.

• Let alone the Xmen which should be another money making machine, such is the popularity of the comics.

Ergo, they will nothing of the above and do more multiverse stuff.

Ironheart - Didn't hate it. The super smart person continually making obviously stupid decisions grates but they did a good enough job with the characters to make it all work. Someone's gotta say it though, Riri? C'mon.