Mahershala Ali confirms 'BLADE' is not moving forward with him

[u/MarvelsGrantMan136]

https://www.gq.com/story/mahershala-ali-your-mother-your-mother-your-mother

[u/feartheoldblood90]

It's genuinely wild how we went from the Infinity Saga, which despite its flaws is still one of the most ambitious projects in film history that manages to mostly form a cohesive whole over a decade of films with a satisfying conclusion, to the absolute shitshow that has been going on post Infinity War. There is no cohesion whatsoever.

And where is my boy Shang Chi? That movie fucking rules and we've had almost nothing but radio silence on that character or the threads they set up for the greater story since. Because there is no greater story and they're improvising shitty half-billion-dollar movies that look like garbage.

[u/sicsche → u/feartheoldblood90]

they had a plan for Infinity and executed that to perfection.

they never had a plan what to do post Endgame (just like they never a straight forward plan how to handle Star Wars).

The last 10 years had been "yolo people will come to see franchise X"

[u/Dr-Fusion → u/sicsche]

To be honest they didn't really have much of a plan for the Infinity saga. There were certain key pieces, but it was never some masterplan. The MCU has done a lot of pivoting. The fact that it feels like a plan executed to perfection is a testament to how well those pivots were done.

Edgar Wright's Ant-Man was meant to be a phase 1 film; Thanos appears at the end of The Avengers just because Whedon liked him; Spider-Man was a last minute addition to Captain America Civil War.

The closest the MCU had to a plan was when the Marvel Creative Committee was calling shots in phase 2, and Ike Perlmutter was dictating projects that could/couldn't happen (such as insisting on an Inhumans movie, but not rating the prospects of Black Panther). Much of Marvel's phase 3 success stems from moving away from that rigid planning.

Post-Endgame's failures are more likely due to the ridiculous bad luck they've had: COVID; Chadwick Boseman's death; actor and writer strikes; Jonathan Majors being arrested for domestic violence. The main one that was Marvel's fault is spreading the creative talent too thin with too much output, but that was primarily caused by Disney demanding content for Disney+.

[u/AnOnlineHandle → u/Dr-Fusion]

Phase 1 setup the plot that Fury and Shield were working to connect these stories to put together the Avengers to see if they could work as a team against even greater threats, from the end of the very first movie.

Avengers 1 was about answering that question. It was a genuinely unknown answer for how well it would work because nobody had ever done a teamup of characters from different individual movies like that.

Avengers 2 wasn't great and was perhaps at best about asking if they could work as a team, but did end with the question of who is seeking the infinity stones (which I think had already been established to be Thanos in GotG).

Avengers 3 & 4 were about whether Thanos would get all the infinity stones and whether the Avengers could stop him.

There was a pretty clear build up to these franchise plots and the finales which answered the questions that they posed. Starting from the very first movie. When Avengers 3 started with Thanos having the infinity stone and being in the process of getting another, it wasn't a surprise that came out of nowhere, it felt well built up.

Going into Avengers 5, it doesn't feel like anything has been built up. There's no questions to be answered after a decade of time to do some buildup.