A Visual Representation of why The Multiverse Saga feels so disjointed
Let's step away from the obvious reasons such as content needing to be made from Disney+. You may have to scroll and click on the "Avengers: Age of Ultron" node to see the entire tree depending on your browser.
I wanted to visually represent how almost every succeeding entry in the Infinity Saga brought a main character to cameo or star in the next film. This is what the attached photos to each film represent. This is what created the strong connective tissue The Infinity Saga had. As an example, even though all of Phase 1 feeds into The Avengers, The Avengers is branched from The First Avenger because that was the film that preceded it. Most of these are just characters returning from the post-credits from the last film, and some of them are even just footage from future films being repurposed as post-credits scene.
This is what I'd consider a substantial cameo: a non-variant/illusion version of a character returns and has dialogue. This is why I didn't add things like link the Black Widow "Helen" who appeared in the Black Widow film to her cameo fighting at the Golden Daggers Club in Shang-Chi or the variants in What If...? Not including Stan The Man either since his cameos don't move the story along.
You'll observe that the Infinity Saga took less risks in diverting from their "main" story. At most, The Avengers and Civil War only split off into 3 story paths. Endgame split off into 6. While the Infinity Saga is one long vertical line, this results in The Multiverse Saga being a wide horizontal block. This doesn't even account for all the projects that have no connective (substantial) cameo tissue like Eternals, Moon Knight, Werewolf by Night, X-Men '97, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, and Eyes of Wakanda.
A lot of this were business / global issues that couldn't be controlled, creative was certainly being overloaded, and actors are expensive but better preparation could have been done to make The Multiverse Saga as vertical as the The Infinity Saga. As much as we needed an "Avengers"-level film between Endgame and Doomsday, just doing something like having Wong, Kamala, Monica, The Watcher or any of the other lower-paid actors in the vast MCU appearing in post-credits scenes (that move the "main" story) could have been substantial in itself.
All this to say that Disney either needs to either start doing multi-film contract with smaller actors again, or needs to start paying their actors what they are worth. If that is what's preventing characters from appearing more often between successive works, it seems like an easy problem to fix.
I wanted to visually represent how almost every succeeding entry in the Infinity Saga brought a main character to cameo or star in the next film. This is what the attached photos to each film represent. This is what created the strong connective tissue The Infinity Saga had. As an example, even though all of Phase 1 feeds into The Avengers, The Avengers is branched from The First Avenger because that was the film that preceded it. Most of these are just characters returning from the post-credits from the last film, and some of them are even just footage from future films being repurposed as post-credits scene.
This is what I'd consider a substantial cameo: a non-variant/illusion version of a character returns and has dialogue. This is why I didn't add things like link the Black Widow "Helen" who appeared in the Black Widow film to her cameo fighting at the Golden Daggers Club in Shang-Chi or the variants in What If...? Not including Stan The Man either since his cameos don't move the story along.
You'll observe that the Infinity Saga took less risks in diverting from their "main" story. At most, The Avengers and Civil War only split off into 3 story paths. Endgame split off into 6. While the Infinity Saga is one long vertical line, this results in The Multiverse Saga being a wide horizontal block. This doesn't even account for all the projects that have no connective (substantial) cameo tissue like Eternals, Moon Knight, Werewolf by Night, X-Men '97, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, and Eyes of Wakanda.
A lot of this were business / global issues that couldn't be controlled, creative was certainly being overloaded, and actors are expensive but better preparation could have been done to make The Multiverse Saga as vertical as the The Infinity Saga. As much as we needed an "Avengers"-level film between Endgame and Doomsday, just doing something like having Wong, Kamala, Monica, The Watcher or any of the other lower-paid actors in the vast MCU appearing in post-credits scenes (that move the "main" story) could have been substantial in itself.
All this to say that Disney either needs to either start doing multi-film contract with smaller actors again, or needs to start paying their actors what they are worth. If that is what's preventing characters from appearing more often between successive works, it seems like an easy problem to fix.
Commentaires
With a seperate team of showrunners and overseers like marvel animation and tv. I just think it would be cool to explore certain stories that feature obscure characters, stories that are too contrerversial or stories that might be creatively unpalatable in other universes.
After all, if disney can greenlight projects like Star Wars: visions, why can’t the mcu try doing that.
To be honest, I’d also be up for them launching their own “Elseworlds”-type label for films not beholden to the MCU, where they can challenge the perception of what a “Marvel movie” is by making some weird or creatively interesting stuff.
But then they just neglected the Eternals themselves entirely.