After the Infinity Saga got here to an finish with Avengers: Endgame in 2019, the deck was successfully cleared for the MCU to get weirder and spotlight some contemporary, younger faces. Whereas that’s occurred to some extent within the type of nice surprises like Ms. Marvel or Moon Knight, issues have been pretty shaky for the franchise from Section 4 onward, and it doesn’t seem like that’ll be altering anytime quickly.
The Girl Who Would Be Photon
Lately, Shang-Chi & the Ten Rings star Simu Liu did an AMA over on Meta’s sizzling new platform Threads. Naturally, Liu was requested in regards to the standing of his second solo film (presently simply generally known as Shang-Chi 2) and he plainly acknowledged that its launch standing is presently up within the air. It was initially meant to observe an Avengers film, however as a result of that “retains pushing again as a result of circumstances past my management,” it leaves the state of his personal film in flux. And since each Avengers: Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars had been respectively pushed to Could 2026 and Could 2027 final month, meaning there’ll be a 5 or six-year hole between Shang’s titular movies.
Shang-Chi isn’t the primary MCU character to be on this predicament—Physician Unusual didn’t get a sequel to his 2016 movie till final 12 months, however that character had sporadic appearances in different media, and was a key participant in Avengers: Infinity Struggle. By the point Physician Unusual within the Multiverse of Insanity rolled round, Marvel had already carried out the work of positioning Benedict Cumberbatch’s sorcerer as a key participant going ahead. It’s presently unclear if Shang can have that very same remedy given what we all know is slated to come back out comparatively quickly, however this latest delay highlights how messy issues have been for the MCU in recent times. Even when that messiness is because of actual world circumstances exterior of its management just like the COVID-19 pandemic, its dealing with of these occasions isn’t actually nice—2021 and 2022’s deluge of releases would have you ever considering the studio was going out of enterprise within the subsequent week. It wasn’t simple to get a really feel for the longer term when there’s a lot combating for oxygen and virtually cannibalizing one another, to say nothing of different Disney media additionally releasing in the identical airspace.
Disney’s appeared to have realized its lesson from the final two years and is deliberately giving extra respiration room for Section 5 materials like Ironheart and Echo. However too many releases is the least of the studio’s issues this 12 months: tales of VFX crunch and abuse allegations of its top-billed stars hover over the the large image future. The current, ongoing WGA Strike additional throws issues into disarray as some tasks like Blade and Thunderbolts are delayed indefinitely whereas others comparable to Deadpool 3 and Captain America: Courageous New World are nonetheless in manufacturing at time of writing. However with the specter of an actors’ strike looming on the horizon, these productions might quickly floor to a halt within the subsequent couple of days.
Marvel and Disney will finally be superb, until yet one more occasion units them again by a 12 months or two. However the string of occasions which have kneecapped Phases 4 and 5 within the final couple of years present how simply the studio can get tripped up, and why it in all probability doesn’t harm to take issues one step at a time quite than making an attempt to dash to the end line.
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