PHASE FOUR
Yes, on paper, Phase Four appears to be a "Throw EVERYTHING at the wall and see what Sticks" kind of ordeal. And to be fair and honest, it kind of is... However, I personally believe that Kevin Feige and his team over at Marvel do indeed have a plan alongside this trial and error period and know exactly what they are doing.
We all now know that Secret Wars is coming. And if you are a comic book fan like me, you know how big of a deal this is and just how much potential it can bring!
As comic book fans, we know that things are retconned and amended all the time. Heck, characters don't even stay dead or get a chance to evolve! - See my Previous Article: Broken here.
But I believe that the good folks over at Marvel and Disney, knew all too well that they couldn't top the success of Endgame, so they aren't even trying to. Instead, they are doing the whole "Throw everything at the wall and see what Sticks" thing because they know that when the time comes, they have an out.Anything that doesn’t work, that the audience doesn't gel with (whether through general storytelling or wokeness) can be undone when Secret Wars rolls around.In fact, the best thing they could do (and what I genuinely hope they are doing) is to say that all these movies since Endgame have been set in their own different universes. This way, when Secret Wars does come around, anything that they want to change or "fix" can be done in a snap, leaving us at the end of Secret Wars with the Perfect Marvel Universe.
Think of this as a one-off soft reboot, a way to change and update (or indeed fix) whilst still keeping everything in continuity and relevant. (This Secret Wars project is kind of their only chance to do it.)
I personally feel they should utilize this idea to give us back Black Panther. No offense to the new movie and the Shuri character, but I am still very much of the opinion that the Black Panther should be recast and live on, despite the loss of the tremendous actor who played him. The character (Black Panther) is just too important to the young fans out there that relate to and look up to him.
Secret Wars makes this possible. The sequel movie gave us a chance to say goodbye and grieve the loss of Chadwick Boseman, but setting those events in an alternate universe means that young boys can still maintain their beloved superhero, whilst Shuri rules in an alternate earth.
Give the Audience what they want, but with a twist.
Fan-Service but without losing what we had before: Tony Stark Should Remain Dead.
In Secret Wars, they should bring Robert Downey Jr. back as Tony Stark and have all of our other characters be so pleased to see him again. But instead of giving us what we had before, instead, have this variant fulfill the Doctor Doom role from the original comic book story. Have THIS Stark be a villain!I won't say any more than that, so as not to include spoilers for those who do not read the comics and thus do not know what Doom does in the Secret Wars arc. But if you know, you know.
The MCU has never truly been comic Accurate. With most accepting that it is set in a different universe than even the comics we all know and love. And to be fair to Disney, this has not always been their fault, what with certain rights to the characters being elsewhere at the time of production.However, Secret Wars gives us an opportunity (Should Disney choose to use it) to bring everything back together and give us fans all that we long for.We have the potential to have an MCU with all our favourite and well-remembered comic book characters and creeds: The Tech-Humans, The Mutants, The Genetically Enhanced, The Cosmic, The Supernatural, and The Gods to name but a few.
One of the key reasons I personally loved the MCU back in the early days was that I loved seeing the stories and characters I read about in my childhood on the silver screen. As I mentioned above, this wasn’t always accurate, but it was close enough!
But now as the years have passed, we are so far away from what Marvel once was.
There is such a great collection of stories and source material at hand, and it seems such a waste for Disney not to utilize it.
The Secret Wars Can Save Us!
*Any perceived investment advice is that of the freelance blogger and does not represent advice on behalf of GoCollect.
