Now that I’ve taken a look at characters from already established franchises in the Marvel Universe that could join the Avengers soon, it’s time to predict which new franchises Marvel is likely to introduce in the near future. MaristPlayBoy is here to give his take on the best fits for the Marvel Movie Universe as it stands today.
If you missed it, click here to see which characters from the already established franchises I think have a good shot at becoming Avengers in the near future.
Since I am cannot just re-watch The Avengers over and over again, I, like any comic book fan who’s been following these movies, cannot help but try to predict what’s coming next from Marvel Studios. There are so many different directions Marvel can go into, and given the strength of the movies they’ve produced thus far, they are free to pursue whatever they want…providing, of course, that they have the rights.
Now, I could go at length explaining what Marvel can and cannot make given the deals they made with other producers before they were bought by Disney and had the freedom to make their own movies, but I don’t need to because MovieBob already beat me to it. Seriously, just click the link and watch the video. It will explain everything and be more interesting than anything I could have done to explain it.
While I am not going to explain why Marvel can’t make certain movies (watch the video already), I will say that I don’t think the losses are actually that big, at least not in terms of continuity. See, the franchises that were lost are largely independent of the Avengers. Franchises like Ghost Rider, the Punisher, and the much more prominent Spider-Man aren’t really affiliated with the Avengers. Neither are Daredevil and Elektra. They wouldn’t tie in to the continuity produced here anyway, with the possible exception of a nice cameo or two. And is a cameo worth the huge piles of money it would cost to get these characters back?
Not yet, at least. It’s much better for Marvel to let these franchises get run into the ground until they’re not profitable, buy them back on the cheap, wait for the bad vibes around these franchises to die down, and then have them resurface later. There are still plenty of titles to keep them busy until then, so they can play the waiting game, and given the quality of these movies, I think Marvel will emerge victorious on this one.
The only two franchises lost that seem to really be a shame are the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. The Fantastic Four on their own aren’t really big Avengers members, but they share many common enemies like the Skrulls that would have been fun to see. However, Marvel’s ingenuity helped them get away with that one by calling them the Chitauri, the Ultimate Universe version of the Skrulls, to which they had the license (yay loopholes).
The biggest loss, therefore, is that of the X-Men. Because Marvel Studios does not have the rights to the X-Men, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, typical Avengers members, have a lot of limitations on their use, meaning we likely won’t see them on the team in any substantial way. Also, the X-Men and the Avengers tend to fight a lot, and seeing such an epic battle scene would have been quite amazing, but sadly does not seem meant to be unless Marvel is willing to pony over A LOT of cash to make such a deal happen.
So will any of these characters find their way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Not in the near future, at any rate. Even IF Marvel could find a way to acquire these IPs back again, it will be quite some time before the stench of some of the awful, awful, AWFUL movies these franchises produced will wear off. And given Marvel’s been rather quiet about gathering any of these IPs (and it doesn’t seem to be Disney’s way to buy things from other major producers, though they’re going to do something with the giant piles of money The Avengers continues to bring in), I doubt we’ll see any of these crossing over with the Avengers in the near future.
But in the end, I think that’s ok, mostly because there are so many other awesome movie franchises that Marvel has yet to produce. What do I mean? Come back tomorrow to find out. In the meantime, comment below or follow us on Twitter at @RedShirtCrew and let me know what franchises are worth buying back from the major producers. Until then, this is MaristPlayBoy, signing out
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