The Marvel movie slate

So......Marvel announced it's whole slate of movies for the next three years.  By now you've seen it a million times already so you don't need me to splash it up here for you.  But just in case you didn't, here's a rundown:

• 2015 - Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man
• 2016 - Captain America" Civil War and Doctor Strange
• 2017 - Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Thor: Ragnarok, and Black Panther
• 2018 - Avengers: Infinity War, Part 1, Captain Marvel, and the Inhumans
• 2019 - Avengers: Infinity War, Part 2

You combine that with DC's movie lineup, Fox's X-Men: Age of Apocalypse, and Sony's future Spider Man projects and you have a treasure trove of good stuff coming over the next five to six years.  Marvel is the clear leader in the clubhouse here. They've already put out ten successful films to date, four of which are almost universally praised for being awesome (Iron Man, The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Guardians of the Galaxy).  The jury is very mixed on their other offerings (a lot of people I talk to don't like the Iron Man sequels at all and are just meh on the first Cap movie and the Thor films) but Marvel as a whole is such a trusted brand that everyone assumes going in that they're going to give us something good.  So it's to be expected that we all went bonkers in anticipation when the announcement came down.  It also put to rest a lot of the baseless complaints that were being lobbed about that Marvel wasn't doing much in the way of giving us a world of diverse characters.  Marvel bigwig Kevin Feige's words in a recent interview (that he was for having movies centered around female characters and characters of color but the timing had to be right) were twisted to sound as if he really wasn't interested, when in reality they were planning it all along and just had to line things up before they announced it all.  So what do I think this all means?

• I was kinda wrong about Civil War - In a previous post I told everyone to chill out with the "yeah, they're doing Civil War!" talk.  Well, it turns that Cap 3 will indeed be titled Civil War.  Where I will at least claim to be partially right is that the story in the film will not be the one from the comics just like Winter Soldier and Age of Ultron borrowed the titles from comic stories but little else.  So obviously there will be some kind of falling out between Cap and Iron Man over their place in the world, and that Black Panther will be involved in the movie some kind of way.  Other than that, you got me.  Obviously with the movie coming in 2016 there won't be any Spider-Man to play out his arc from the print version.I don't see Tony becoming a full on government man based on his previous skepticism of all things SHIELD in earlier films but we do have a year to square that.  So we'll see what happens there.  

• No Black Widow film - Those wondering when we'd get a female led film, especially in light on DC's Wonder Woman announcement, have been answered with the Captain Marvel announcement.  But some people were wondering why we're getting a film for Marvel and not Black Widow, who's already been introduced on film and played a big supporting role in both the Avengers and Winter Soldier movies.  I think the answer is pretty obvious: she's not that big of a deal, really.  Before the movies Black Widow was a C-list Marvel character at best, and he prominent place in the film universe is largely due to Marvel studios having to dig deeper in their well of characters because of all the film rights issues.  Even without the X-Men and Fantastic Four rights there are still several female characters who rank higher than her, Marvel being one of them.

• The other guys - With things laid out through 2019, you can forget about Spider-Man, the X-Men, or the Fantastic Four being a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  I know that so many people have been hoping and praying for Marvel to get the movie rights to all of these characters back but I just don't see it happening.  First of all, Fox and Sony have to relinquish or sell back that rights, and that's just not going to happen.  I'm convinced that a lot of crapping on the Amazing Spider Man films comes from people hoping the movies tank so that Sony won't want to do them anymore and sell the rights back to Marvel.  Amazing Spider Man 2 and X-Men: Days of Future Past both made over $700 million worldwide.  Those aren't flops no matter how you try to spin it. Even if the movies started to lose money, the properties are still too valuable to hand over.  And look at it this way: having those characters on board would squeeze all of the oxygen out of the room.  I'll explain that later.

So we know what Marvel has in store for us along with DC.  Good times ahead everyone, enjoy!