#please give us deadpool marvel rivals

[rosie-artz]

Wanted to doodle my 3 Marvel rivals mains

I love them 💗

[sineala]

A Few Thoughts About Hurt/Comfort

I have been asked this month to make a post about hurt/comfort in Avengers comics. And I love h/c -- I actually have a massive number of WIPs right now that are h/c -- so I am very happy to talk about it! Anyway, this is not really all that planned out and this mostly turned into an excursus on Tony Stark's pain. I'm sure you're all surprised.

Like pretty much everyone else, I'm sure, I have found that everything lately has been... pretty tough. And the coping mechanism that really got me through last year and this year was reading and writing a lot of h/c, on the theory that, however lousy a day I'm having, I can absolutely make sure that Tony Stark has a worse one. And then I can make sure he gets hugs. Wish fulfillment? Why, yes. (Once at Hallmark I was trying to find a "get well soon" card, forgot what it was called, and described it to my wife as "a hurt/comfort card.") I think Marvel Comics -- the Avengers side, in particular -- is an interesting canon for h/c for a lot of reasons. Though, honestly, if you asked me to recommend you, a hurt/comfort fan, a new fandom, I would probably just hand you some Starsky & Hutch DVDs. Go watch "The Fix" and get back to me later. If you like that, there's way more where that came from. But there's still lots to love in Marvel! Superhero comics are really a goldmine as far as the hurt side of h/c. Because superheroes, and you probably have noticed this, get hurt a lot. They get hurt repeatedly, in fantastical ways that are probably impossible in real life both physically and emotionally (at least, I don't think anyone's invented mind control yet), and even the heroes without superhuman healing powers tend to get physically hurt a whole lot worse than actual people can take. Currently in Iron Man comics, Tony has a broken back and is dealing with this by locking himself into the armor as a backboard and injecting himself with massive doses of painkillers. He's busy! He's got stuff to do! He doesn't have time to lie around and heal! So, basically, if you name a kind of pain that you would like to see happen to a character, it's probably happened to superheroes. Multiple times. The downside, though, is that comics do not really deliver that well when it comes to the comfort part of h/c. They could. It's not inherent to the medium that they don't. But because of the serial nature of comics and also the fact the primary audience is dudes who want to read about people in spandex punching each other, a lot of the time they don't really feel the need to provide closure and write about people dealing with any of the hurt. (Raise your hand if you're still annoyed with the end of Hickman's Avengers run.) But at the same time, I think that's a quality that makes Avengers ripe for h/c fanfic. Because, generally speaking, fandom likes to provide the things that canon doesn't, and fandom is more than happy to provide the comfort. If you enjoy canonical h/c in comics, I think you really can't go wrong with Iron Man. One of the big innovations of modern Marvel Comics was the concept that heroes would also suffer from relatable human problems, and in practice what this means is that a lot of heroes start with a fully-loaded angst-ridden backstory and origin story, ripe for h/c. So Tony starts out by incurring a heart injury that he fully expects is going to kill him, which he responds to by vowing he won't get close to anyone so they won't be sad when he dies, and throughout the early Silver Age is constantly on the brink of death as his heart nearly gives out on him practically every issue. And then even after his heart gets (mostly) better, there are various plots involving his armor being detrimental to his health and him choosing to fight on anyway. It's hard for me to think of another superhero hitting that particular variety of h/c in exactly the same way. Sure, superheroes risk their lives constantly, because this is how superhero comics work, but Tony is the only one I can think of who is this constantly this badly off, physically. Like, think of all the other heroes who have had a continual solo presence as fan favorites across Marvel history -- Captain America, Thor, Spider-Man, Wolverine, maybe even Deadpool. You know what those guys all have? Healing factors! For the most part, they are not running around continually on the verge of death, and while there are certainly memorable arcs involving several of them being severely injured and/or dead, you really have to work at it. It's not their constant state of affairs, whereas Tony is the kind of superhero who shows up to a fight already bleeding out under his armor. Yeah, I know Extremis gave him a healing factor. But he didn't have it very long, and also he did some extremely dangerous things while he did have it; I'm pretty sure I've never seen Wolverine saying that he'll just solve a problem by cutting off his own foot. So, anyway, yeah, there are a bunch of good arcs involving h/c for Tony. If you're looking for physical injury, he has a whole bunch of heart problems over the years, gets several new hearts, then ruins his brain, et cetera. That level of hurt is basically the background pain of Tony's life; every so often, his heart will get damaged or he'll have to live in the armor or the armor will be killing him, et cetera. If you're looking for more unusual trauma, I am, as always, going to rec Manhunt, a relatively obscure arc in late v3 (IM v3 #65-69) in which Tony has an extremely bad week. His tech is stolen and used to bomb a building. Then he gets shot in the chest. Then while he's at the hospital a nurse tries and fails to poison him, and she then tries to beat him to death. Then he checks himself out of the hospital and a helicopter shoots missiles at him. Then he becomes a fugitive from justice. And then, oh, yeah, he has to fight the Mandarin. It is... a lot. (Volume 3 of Iron Man is pretty good as far as h/c possibilities. You've got a lot of physical pain, Carol's drinking arc, the Sentient Armor, both DreamVision arcs, and Manhunt. Manhunt is finally supposed to be out in trade this month, by the way.) There are of course the drinking arcs, which probably count as their own type of hurt. But if you haven't read the second drinking arc (IM #160-200), please do. Marvel likes to up the stakes on events (Fear Itself, Secret Empire) by making Tony drink, and it does work, I think. I feel like I've spoken at length about Tony's drinking elsewhere so I don't really want to rehash it all here. And then there's the emotional pain. Angst and drama is something that happens to a whole bunch of characters, yes, especially in comics, but somehow Tony seems to end up with possibly more than his fair share of it. Fandom likes to make a lot of Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, so much so that you might think, if you didn't know canon, that this was just fandom running with a throwaway mention of Tony's terrible childhood and making it worse. But, no, canon really does go there with a reasonable amount of frequency. Howard's actual first appearance is in a flashback where he's ordering teenage Tony to break up with his girlfriend because she's the daughter of one of Howard's business rivals. And then we get into the verbal abuse, and the physical abuse, and the time Howard made Tony take his first drink, and the part where Howard was a demon in hell who Tony fought while he insulted him. And more! Currently, in canon, Howard is alive again and is in league with Mephisto for the express purpose of ruining Tony's life. Also when Tony was a baby, Howard tried to trade him to Dracula. I think you can make an argument that fandom is actually showing restraint when compared to canon. Tony also has a whole lot of Terrible Exes whose presence and/or former presence in Tony's life can be used for a lot of hurt. If you've read any amount of fanfic, you probably know that the exes who get the most play in fandom are Sunset Bain and Tiberius Stone -- not that Tony and Ty were ever canonically a couple, of course, but fandom is definitely enamored of this idea. Ty and Sunset both have relatively similar interactions with Tony in canon, in that they are both liars and emotional abusers, heavy on the gaslighting, with the purpose of becoming more successful than Tony. They both also attempt to murder Tony, although this is after he figures out they're evil, at least. (Yes, I know, this is not how either of them usually appear in AUs.) Tony also has a bunch of exes who also have just straight-up tried to murder or otherwise hurt him, sometimes while they are dating, and sometimes before Tony dates them: Whitney Frost, Indries Moomji, Kathy Dare, and Maya Hansen come to mind. There are probably more I'm not thinking of! But, yes, if you want to write about a guy in a series of terrible relationships, please consider Iron Man comics. If mind control is one of your favorite flavors of hurt, Tony's pretty good for that too. We all know about The Crossing. I suppose when I say "mind control" I mostly mean "armor control" because there are an awful lot of plots where someone else makes Tony's armor do whatever they want it to do and Tony is along for the ride -- Demon in a Bottle, Sentient Armor, and Execute Program are the first things that come to mind. There is also a fairly obscure What If that is What If Iron Man Lost The Armor Wars in which Justin Hammer apparently really wants Tony in a mind control collar to take off all his clothes and lounge around in his underwear. No, really. I think a lot of pain for Tony often revolves around his issues with control, generally -- his alcoholism comes into play here again. The entire aftermath of Civil War is also notable for its propensity to hurt Tony over and over and over. Is he stoically soldiering on through his grief after Steve dies? Hell, no! He cries, like, six separate times. He 100% blames himself for Steve's death. It's great. Everybody loves The Confession and the funeral in Fallen Son, but one of my personal favorites is Avengers/Invaders, in which Tony is confronted with a time-traveling Steve from WWII and in order not to screw up the timeline, he can't tell Steve he knows him. He is clearly not coping well. He shuts himself in a room with a giant wall of pictures of Steve! Also there's a part where he has to try to convince Steve he can trust him and he ends up having to tie Steve to a chair to talk to him, and Steve looks at him and asks, "Who did you kill to get where you are?" and I feel like that is probably one of the worst moments in Tony's life. No wonder he gave himself amnesia. So now we might want to ask, okay, but why is hurting Tony in fanfiction so much fun? I mean, I can tell you why I think it's fun. I can't speak for anyone else. One reason is that he is very emotional and very affected by everything he does. Sometimes you will see people complaining that the heroes of m/m fanfic cry too much and this is not realistic. This is not a problem if you're writing Tony! He can cry as much as you want and it's perfectly in character. I don't think it would be as fun to hurt him if he didn't express so much of his pain. But he does. He also feels guilty, and for me that's a very satisfying character element. If he were well-adjusted and didn't blame himself for so many things, it wouldn't be nearly as fun as watching him blame himself for everyone whose death he thinks he is responsible for, whether or not he is. And then he just keeps going, and it's, y'know, nice to watch him be resilient, too. So, I guess, I think hurting him is interesting because it's easy to hurt him, his weak points are pretty obvious, and he reacts a lot. Steve doesn't hurt quite as much as Tony does, in canon. It's certainly possible to hurt him -- I mean, they did actually kill him after Civil War, after all -- but I don't think the canonical patterns of hurting him are as numerous. Obviously deseruming Steve is a fairly popular go-to in terms of physical hurt; he's been deserumed at least three times that I know of. I think's easy to see the appeal there of taking a character who is fairly physically resilient and making him... much less so. Certainly Marvel seems to see the appeal. But other than that I don't think he has any other really common way to get physically injured. Unlike Tony, whose origin story is basically "oh no, I've acquired a disability," Steve's origin story is "I drank a serum that cured all my disabilities." Which, I mean, great wish fulfillment but there's not really as much there to poke at. Pretty much all of Steve's pain is emotional, but, unlike Tony, his pain isn't often specifically in response to someone directly, purposefully hurting him. Hickman's Avengers run is a big exception, yes. His pain seems to come up most often as a kind of situational angst. He feels like a man out of time. He feels out of touch with the modern era, with people his own age. He feels guilt because he feels responsible for Bucky's death. He feels like he can't trust the government and therefore he can't be Captain America. He worries that he doesn't know how to have a normal life. And, yes, these are deep and important worries but it's different than, like, Indries Moomji dumping Tony with the intent to make him sad enough to start drinking. Very few of Steve's villains want to personally ruin Steve's entire life the way Tony's villains do; mostly they just want to do things like bring back the Nazis. In terms of Steve's potential for h/c, I think Steve is harder to hurt than Tony is. Physically, he is definitely harder to hurt. You can deserum him, sure, but unless you want everything you write to be a deseruming fic you're probably not going to want to do that more than a couple of times. And if you want to hurt him physically while he has the serum, you have to hurt him hard. Usually past the point where a regular human would ever survive it. He's also harder to break, emotionally, than Tony is -- which means it's very satisfying when you can get him to break, but this is a guy who's only cried twice (that I remember) in canon. So if you want to get him to cry, you really, really have to wreck him, and he doesn't have as many obvious weak spots. He also doesn't generally sit around blaming himself for things that aren't his fault, and the whole "stewing in guilt" genre of plots for him basically came down to "he was sad that he thought Bucky's death was his fault," and that's really the biggest regret he seems to have, and also Bucky's not dead anymore. The Steve/Tony relationship itself, I would think, is also appealing to h/c fans because canon provides a lot of ways for them to hurt each other. Some people only ship pairings who would never, y'know, take turns beating each other half to death in major event comics. (And for a lot of Marvel Comics history, that was also Steve & Tony, so if you want them to be BFFs who have never fought, you can just set your fic earlier.) They have definitely hurt each other both physically and emotionally, so if you're looking for something easy and satisfying as a h/c fan, you can just read or write something where they... make up. What about Marvel characters other than Steve and Tony? Surely some of them are angsty, yes? Well, yes, but also it depends on the particular flavor of angst that you like. If you like the way Tony hurts, you may very well enjoy Doctor Strange comics, because they have a very similar attitude towards life -- they are both former alcoholics whose origin stories involve physical disabilities, who routinely make tactical decisions that negatively affect their continued existence and/or happiness a whole lot. It's very much an "I must suffer alone in the dark and no one will ever know what I am doing to save the world but it's the right thing to do" sort of vibe. Like, you can read comics where Strange is lying in hell with two broken legs, hallucinating that Clea has finally come to save him. Strange's biggest fear, akin to Tony's control issues, is basically that one day he's going to be an asshole again, so he's out there trying as hard as he can to do good. Also, if you like tentacles, he has all of them. I mean that. Carol also occasionally hits similar angst spots, and her drinking arc is great. A lot of people like Natasha, too; I have read zero Black Widow comics but I get the impression many people enjoy her brand of angst. The mutant metaphor is a little different in terms of overall vibe, but some people really like it as a source of angst -- the whole "protecting a world who hates and fears them" thing. It may not work for you, but if you like your hurt to include things like systemic oppression, go pick up some X-Men comics. Start with something like God Loves Man Kills. I feel like I liked this sort of thing a lot more as a teenager but that I kind of aged out of liking the mutants quite so much. It's also worth mentioning that not everything that hits the spot in one universe will be the same in the others, and I'm mentioning this because I feel like I have to say something about MCU Bucky. MCU fandom seems to get a lot of mileage out of Bucky's guilt about being the Winter Soldier, everything he was forced to do, et cetera. I have definitely read my share of those fics, and FATWS sure went right for that angst too. But as far as I can tell, he doesn't hit the same way at all in 616. And I like him a lot in 616; I'm always pleased when he shows up on a team. (He was so good in Strikeforce. Everyone was so good in Strikeforce.) But the thing is, 616 Bucky is, basically, phenomenally well-adjusted, given everything he's gone through, and I'm including the time he wrestled a bear in a gulag. He gets over having been the Winter Soldier, and now he's just, y'know, a guy with a cool arm who likes to bring guns to every fight to horrify his teammates, and he snarks at Clint. If you're looking for that angst, that is really not him these days. He's all better. So pretty much all that is canon. So what do we do in fandom for h/c? Well, as far as I can tell, a decent amount of it is canon-based or very canon-close -- there are a whole lot of stories exploring the angst of Civil War or Hickman's Avengers run. Tony's drinking comes up a fair amount, and if one of Tony's Evil Exes comes back to haunt him, it's pretty much only Tiberius Stone. I don't think I've read a lot of fic with Steve getting deserumed; it doesn't seem as popular in fandom as in canon. When Steve gets hurt, he tends to just get physically whumped pretty hard, and there's a fair amount of that for Tony too, but of course Steve can take more. There's also a thriving, uh, subgenre of pain involving Hydra Steve doing terrible things to Tony, presumably the terrible things he would have wanted to do to Tony in canon if Tony had had a flesh body. There's the usual kinds of h/c setups that appear in basically every fandom as well -- sickfic, whump, dub-con/non-con. You get the idea. But since fandom in general likes to take specific inspiration from canon, there's a lot of fic where the hurt tends to resemble things that happen more in canon. Like, I feel like comics fic probably has more tentacle fic and more mind control than canons that don't come pre-stocked with those. Probably everybody has a whole lot of "tied up by bad guys," though. And then, of course, fandom brings the comfort that canon does not. This is true in pretty much every fandom -- I mean, you aren't going to find a lot of actual canons where Character A saves Character B from mortal peril and then there's gay sex -- but, like I was saying, comics don't provide a lot of closure before it's onto the next thing. Usually with a different creative team, who has no interest in wrapping up anything from the last team. Steve and Tony talked about the incursions exactly once after Secret Wars and nobody mentioned the part where Steve spent several months trying to hunt Tony down and kill him. Tony is never going to remember the events of Civil War. Hydra Steve died ignominiously in a fire and no one has ever talked about him again. Honestly, if you're looking for a way to get some comfort in your fanfic, picking an event, any event, and just having the characters talk about it will be way more than any of them get in canon. I feel like honestly that can often be a pretty satisfying to read. And even though comics canon physically hurts characters pretty often and pretty badly, they also often skip right past the recovery. Maybe you'll get one page of a character in a hospital bed at the end of the story arc. Maybe you won't. Demon in a Bottle has one splash page of Tony going through alcohol withdrawal and then he's all better. I think Manhunt skips to Tony getting out of the hospital at the end. That's just not a story that they want to tell very often. The second drinking arc is notable in that it devotes almost as many issues to Tony's recovery as it does to getting him to rock-bottom. Similarly, Steve is done with his Nomad angst way way faster than you probably think he is (though The Captain does go in for a fair number of issues). So one of the things we often want to do in fandom is focus on all the bits that canon skips over, both in the "why did no one ever mention this story arc ever again" way and the "wow, so how long are they in the hospital after that" way. That's really all I can think of about h/c! I'm off to write some more of it!

[blackgirlsuperherorants]

With more articulation, I'm ready to talk about why the push for Lokius simply bothers me, and this can be said for other m/m or w/w ships that fans push to be canon so hard just because they ship it.

It's the framing. The framing that if Marvel doesn't do it (or whatever the brand is), it's because homophobia, and if other fans don't like it/ship it, it's because homophobia (even if they ship other queer ships and are queer themselves.) And the biggest problem with that is that it overshadows the REAL issue of lack of queer representation on screen in mainstream nerd media, especially from big things under the Disney umbrella (Marvel and Lucasfilm/Star Wars, especially.)

It makes it bad that your ship isn't canon instead of bad that there haven't been any queer romances on screen in the MCU.

And like, as a writer myself, I find myself dissecting the stories of other media all the time. I can watch an MCU movie or series and pretty much assess what direction the story is going in by the narrative points they're hitting. I knew Sylki was basically gonna happen (even if just a kiss) because narratively, that's what the show was doing as soon as they had that "what is love" conversation on Lamentis-1. It didn't mean I liked it. But I knew it was happening.

Similarly, there's no romantic undertones to Loki and Mobius. None. For Marvel to make them a couple, it would mean they'd be doing it simply because the two present as men and it would make stans happy. And while there's something to be said for fan service, it would be annoying to watch them cram two guys together who aren't romantic in the slightest. I'd much rather see Loki meet some guy and have the same type of undertones they were giving to Sylvie and form a real bond to where the kiss feels earned and warranted. Not just put him with the nearest man because "he gay lol."

And how you guys are claiming it's being queer that makes you want this is beyond me. It's not being queer that makes you want this. I don't want queer characters that fuck everyone of whatever gender(s) they're attracted to even when it doesn't make sense for them to. I want real love stories. I mean, yeah, sometimes we can have a slut character, because that's fun, too, but that's not even what y'all think Lokius is. You seem to want them to be in love. But why? Because he's the first friend Loki made that isn't through Thor?

I hate that, too, because I hate this idea that queer people cannot have friends of their same gender without wanting to fuck them. IDK how y'all are, maybe y'all are like that, but I almost never have wanted to fuck any of my friends. The only few exceptions have been when I tried to befriend someone I had a crush on (in which case, usually the friendship can't work, really, because I have a crush on them.) I also think it's okay if you can have casual sex with friends, or if you have a friendship that develops into romance, but Jesus, do you people not have friends that you don't want to fuck? I am bi, maybe more pan (gender kind of doesn't matter to me, I guess) and I'm friends with people of all kinds of gender identities and like... I love them as people, which is why they're my friends, but I DO NOT want to fuck them. Especially my closest friend. I talked about her, before, here, but she's like my sister. The thought of fucking her is gross, to me. Not because she's gross, but because it feels incestuous.

Loki shouldn't want to fuck Mobius just because they developed a friendship. And that's very much how it's written on the series. They almost dislike each other (or Mobius is at least indifferent to Loki) and then they become friends.

That's not to mention the power dynamic that exists, there. And I know some of y'all are subs, but yeah, it's a bit gross to imply a sexual relationship with Loki's captor.

But on to Sylki. It sucks that I feel like most of y'all hate Sylki because Sylvie is a girl, and not just because it's bad in other ways. Like, the reasons Sylki is bad have less to do with "it should have been Mobius" and more to do with it being a lazy 1980s action movie plot that should have never happened. I'm not as creeped out by the selfcest (as many of you wouldn't have been if she was a he, I'm almost positive), but what's bad about it is that they couldn't have a strong female lead character without her being the love interest of the main guy. She didn't need to be, especially because she was a Loki variant, anyway. There was no need for it to have romantic undertones, and there was no need for them to kiss. It was sexist more than it was homophobic (and I can't help feeling like y'all are kind of being biphobic in this case. Maybe I'll talk about that, later, but yeah.) It was sexist bullshit. And there's valid criticism that Sylvie is underdeveloped. She's just angry and something for Loki to project affection onto.

I was also hoping they'd do a "found family" type of thing with Sylvie and Loki and let her be like the sister he never knew he needed, but no, they had to go trope and make her the love interest. It was lazy and bad and basically went "If Loki girl, main Loki want bone!"

Basically, having the main character fall for a character just because of their proximity and gender is bad and I hate it (and it would have been bad with Mobius, too, but yeah.)

Both the Mobius and the Sylvie thing also feel kind of racist, to me, because the show has prominent Black women who aren't even presented as desirable to Loki. And y'all, of course, ship him with anyone but the Women of Color. Y'all can pull true love with Mobius out of your ass, but he couldn't possibly fall for the Black women. lol.

Anyway. Not every show needs ships, and this show shouldn't have had any. I hate it. It's bad.

I guess on the biphobia front, I have heard some takes that it's not biphobic because Loki being queer in the MCU which hasn't shown any queer relationships, and Loki being the first openly queer character means they shouldn't have shown him with a woman presenting character. Which, I guess I get where you're coming from... but I have also been in fandoms for a long time and I see mostly girls saying this shit, which is what leads me to feel like it's simply jealousy. It happens all the time when a long-beloved single male character/celebrity suddenly starts dating a woman. Everyone hates it. And like, we haven't seen Loki be with ANYONE in the MCU, because mostly he's been doing villainy and his dating life hasn't been relevant. If the demigod says he's bi, he can kiss a woman. Especially a woman version of himself. Like I said, I hate it for other reasons, but pretending it's because he should have kissed Mobius is utterly delusional. He probably shouldn't have kissed anyone. Not in this series. There was no reason for any canon romance, especially because the show has a season 2 and we'll have time to see Loki develop earned, deserved romance with someone.

I'd much rather see them create a character just to be his boyfriend than have y'all push Marvel into making Lokius canon, which is a nonsense ship that only happened because Mobius is the only prominent male-presenting character before we meet the other Lokis.

My sincere wish is for people to remember that their ships are just ships and to enjoy them without getting all self-righteous about it. I TOLD y'all that Lokius wasn't gonna be canon like 4 episodes back, and here y'all are acting shocked and like Marvel took something from you. NOBODY expected y'all to ship Lokius. It's not even queerbait.

You can make clear arguments as to why Sambucky was queerbait. It's there in undertones in the actual series.

You cannot watch Loki and tell me you thought it was queerbait, unless you think men can't have conversations or hug goodbye without being romantically involved. Which means, in my opinion, that you need to learn about healthy masculinity.

Again, this is not a defense of Marvel. They DO need to let characters be queer, for real, and not just by saying " A bit of both". Like, let Loki be queer. Let Deadpool be queer. Let these queer characters be queer on screen. Yes.

But please stop making it about your ship. I'd rather see a flashback of Loki dating a guy and see him kiss someone he loved back on Asgard than watch y'all force Lokius. Because my queer rep is not about your crackship. It really isn't. And the fact that y'all keep calling us homophobic for not liking your ship REALLY needs to be addressed.

Like, when will y'all stop? I got on Stucky shippers about this shit in the past. All of us gay as hell, too, we just don't like YOUR ship. A lot of us like other queer ships. A lot of us like queer ships in other fandoms, too, and even have queer OCs. YOUR ship just ain't it. Stop forcing it. Literally, most of the ship wars between MCU fans have been queer ship vs queer ship, not really queer ship vs straight ship. Like, the number one Stucky rival ship was Stony. Not Steggy. People are not homophobic for not wanting your ship.

Sometimes it's because they ship something else.

And sometimes, like me, it's because they want something to make sense narratively and not happen for the sake of it happening. It's always better writing to have a character meetcute a new love interest than to magically turn a platonic friendship into a romantic relationship. Like, even when the characters are straight. Like, when Moesha dated Hakeem. It was just weird, even if he was kind of a great boyfriend. He was just supposed to be her friend, and people didn't really like it because it didn't fit narratively.

And that's why ships for the most part should be left to fanfiction, with the exception of a few where fans are right to call out the writers for not making it canon because it's clearly bait (like what happened to Destiel shippers. To see Lokius shippers compare themselves to THAT was so ridiculous. Destiel shippers had a decade of evidence only to be let down by a criminally unfair ending. Lokius shippers saw two men have a deep conversation once and lost their minds.)

Anyway, I'm not saying don't ship Lokius. I don't even hate it, really. I just think it obviously shouldn't be canon, and fans pretending like they were robbed of it is ridiculous. Literally, Ao3 exists for this reason. I will never see Steve fuck Sam Wilson, so I wrote it into my fanfic. I am not mad that they didn't actually date in the main MCU storyline.

[hubskitchen]

Hub’s Kitchen Episode 4: Why the DC Extended Universe Failed (DCEU Retrospective)

DISCLAIMER: This is a continuation of the previous installment of Hub’s Kitchen. Please read that episode before reading this one. Or not, it’s your choice. Also, spoilers for: Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman, and Justice League.

What’s up guys, my name’s Hub, and welcome to another installment of Hub’s Kitchen. Episode, installment, same difference, this isn’t an academic essay now. In the last episode, I talked about some cinematic universes and what problems they faced or are going to face. At the end, I said I was saving one particular cinematic universe for this episode, and that it needed its own episode dedicated to it. Well, I’m gonna talk about that universe today. Prepare yourselves, as I dive into the horror that is known as: The DC Extended Universe.

If there’s one cinematic universe that can rival the Marvel Cinematic Universe in terms of popularity and success besides Star Wars, it’d be DC’s cinematic universe. The Marvel/DC rivalry has been going on since the 1960’s, when a good chunk of Marvel’s heroes were introduced during the Silver Age of comic books. Throughout the past 5+ decades, both have had their major successes and major blunders. DC has always had the advantage in the animation side of things compared to Marvel, but that doesn’t mean Marvel hasn’t had good shows. The Spectacular Spider-Man and Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes series are some of my favorite animated shows of all time. I prefer Marvel because of the heroes and how more human they are compared to DC’s catalog, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like DC. My first exposure to superheroes was the Justice League animated series from the widely beloved DC Animated Universe, and I’ve been a superhero fan since. In a perfect world, the Marvel/DC rivalry on film would be a monumental and huge war, both sides unleashing their various heroes onto the screen for audiences to love, and giving more fans more room for debate in the long-fabled who’s better debate: Marvel or DC? Instead, it’s more like Marvel is curb stomping DC into the fucking dirt. I feel a brief history lesson is necessary to really bring this whole thing into context.

HOW THIS ALL FELL INTO PLACE

Several years ago, from the 70’s to the 90’s, DC had the upper hand on film, especially with classics like Superman: The Movie, and Tim Burton’s Batman ‘89. Meanwhile, Marvel struggled to get anything onto the screen, with failures like the 1989 Punisher, the 1990 Captain America, and the cancelled, but only viewable through bootleg 1994 Fantastic Four movie. Then, Marvel went bankrupt in 1996, and to keep them afloat, they sold all the movie rights to all their characters to various movie studios. Sony got Spider-Man, FOX got the X-Men and Fantastic Four, etc. During this period, Superman already fell from grace with the 1987 bomb Superman 4: The Quest for Peace, and Batman would soon follow with 1997’s Batman and Robin, one of the most infamous comic book movies of all time. The genre would see a new beginning with 1998’s Blade. In 2000, FOX launched their first X-Men movie, and in 2002, Spider-Man came out, which is the movie that I believe is what started the comic book movie boom that’s still going on, and would be the template that the Marvel Cinematic Universe would follow. DC, meanwhile, rebooted Batman with 2005’s Batman Begins, which would later follow up with 2008’s The Dark Knight, which is often considered to be the greatest comic book movie of all time. Unfortunately, not everything was working out for both Marvel and DC. Superman Returns, the first Superman movie since Quest For Peace, while a modest hit, wasn’t the hit Warner Bros were expecting it to be, and today, Superman Returns isn’t looked at very fondly. While FOX successfully launched the X-Men onto the world of film, the Fantastic Four wouldn’t get the same level of success with both the 2005 film and it’s 2007 sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer. Sony was also in a pickle with 2007’s Spider-Man 3, which disappointed audiences. Pile that on with Hulk, Daredevil, and Ghost Rider, and Marvel was having some pretty notable failures in their catalog. However, while Universal, FOX, and Sony failed with the aforementioned films, something huge was coming from Marvel Studios when Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk released in 2008. The first Iron Man had the famous end credits sequence with Nick Fury telling Tony Stark that he was a “part of a bigger universe,” and in The Incredible Hulk, we see Tony Stark in a scene of the movie, leading fans to believe that something was coming. 2010 and 2011 marked the releases of Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger, and in 2012, the culmination of all 5 movies released: The Avengers. The Avengers was a massive success, being that it was the first movie to make over $200 million in its opening weekend in the United States. The movies from Iron Man to The Avengers would later be known as Phase 1 of the MCU. Knowing where Marvel Studios is today, it’s amazing how huge they’ve become, making Marvel into a global phenomenon, at least in the realm of movies. This left Warner Bros pressured to make a cinematic universe of their own DC superheroes and get a Justice League movie out as soon as possible. However, this wasn’t actually the first time WB tried to set up a DC cinematic universe.

GREEN LANTERN

In 2011, Green Lantern was released in theaters. On the surface level, Green Lantern was following the footsteps of the first Iron Man: Taking a B-list character and making a movie that would set up the foundation of what would later be a cinematic universe. However, that didn’t work out for Warner Bros. Green Lantern was released to mediocre to terrible reviews, and was a flop at the box office, grossing $219 million on a $200 million dollar budget. Thus, all plans for sequels to Green Lantern were cancelled. The movie is often considered to be one of the worst comic book movies of all time, and was subject of a joke in Deadpool, with “Please don’t make the super suit green, or animated!” Good thing Ryan Reynolds got his big break with that movie. In 2013, WB released Man of Steel in theaters. Man of Steel was directed by Zack Snyder, who directed 300 and the live action adaptation of Watchmen in 2009. The head writer was David Goyer, who wrote for the Dark Knight trilogy, and one of the producers was Christopher Nolan, the director of the Dark Knight trilogy. *In Bubsy voice* How could any of this possibly go wrong?

MAN OF STEEL

It could go wrong, but not horribly wrong. Instead of releasing to rave reviews, and making over a billion dollars at the box office, Man of Steel released to mixed reviews, and in WB’s eyes, underperformed at $668 million dollars. To this day, Man of Steel is one of the most divisive comic book movies of all time, with some seeing it as a great reinvention of Superman, and others seeing it as a betrayal at who Superman is. Not exactly the foundation you want to build your cinematic universe on, huh? As for me, I side with the more negative reactions to Man of Steel, but not as much as I did back in 2013. With the benefit of hindsight, I see Man of Steel as a movie that could have been great, but it wasn't. The issue with Man of Steel, and the thing that kills the movie for me, is that they changed Superman to accommodate the world the DC Extended Universe built up, rather than have Superman be the character he’s always been. I’d be fine with a less experienced, more doubtful Superman, if after this movie, he slowly, but gradually becomes the Superman people expect. We’ll talk about that in a bit, but it didn’t help that the movie spent so much time telling us that Superman will be great, instead of just showing us. Given what we see, Supes destroying shit in Smallville and Metropolis, I don’t think he’s going to be great at all. It also didn’t help that the movie was slow as shit. I can take slow-paced stuff, but you need to really have me engrossed in order to deal with it, ‘cause a slow-pace can kill something for me. I could go on further, but we need to move this along. Overall, I think Man of Steel is mediocre, but not terrible. So, given how this movie underperformed, what do you think Warner Bros’ would do for the future? Hit the Batman Emergency button, of course! Because Batman did wonders for Warner Bros with the Dark Knight trilogy, they decided to put Batman in the follow-up to Man of Steel. But they couldn’t stop at just putting a Batman and Superman conflict into this movie. They also needed to add Wonder Woman, ‘cause the DC Trinity needs to be on screen now that The Avengers got their movie. That still wasn’t enough, however. Let’s take elements of The Dark Knight Returns and Death of Superman storylines and adapt them. Okay, this could still work. Hold on! We need to let the audience know that Justice League is coming, so let’s put in Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg into a scene that literally advertises their films and the Justice League movie. Now we need to double down on the dark and gritty tone people were divided with on Man of Steel, and let’s try to be even more profound and deep, unlike that stupid kiddy Marvel crap that’s successful for some reason. This is for the intellectually elite, motherfuckers! This movie will be a masterpiece! It’ll mop the floor with that stupid Marvel movie, Captain America: Civil War! People will love our movie, right?!

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

Haha, ha, WB executives are fucking hilarious. Batman v Superman, which I’m just going to refer to as BvS from now on for simplicity’s sake, released to negative reviews and was even more divisive than Man of Steel with audiences and fans. WB wanted this movie to make $1.1 billion, which is what Captain America: Civil War would end up making. Instead, despite a strong opening weekend, BvS had the second largest opening weekend drop off, with 2003’s Hulk still retaining that record. BvS would only end up making $872 million at the box office, which WB labeled as another underperformer. In my humble opinion, BvS is the worst comic book movie I’ve ever seen, and is a good contender for the worst of its genre. “But Hub,” I hear some of you say, “Wasn’t Age of Ultron accused of the same issues BvS had? Why did that film still end up being successful?” A few reasons. Age of Ultron, despite it not receiving rave reviews like the first Avengers movie did, still received fairly positive reviews and word of mouth, and still made $1.4 billion at the box office, which is less than the $1.5 billion the first Avengers made. That’s diminishing returns, but not by a lot. Second, while I’ll agree that AoU isn’t one of Marvel Studios’ best films, as it suffered from studio interference, I can at least say that the movie wasn’t broken at the seams. It got derailed a few times (Hi, Thor pond scene and Hulk X Black Widow relationship), but it the characters still felt like themselves, there were some legitimately great moments (Vision and Ultron in the woods is a good example), and wasn’t trying to be profound and deep. It tried to tell a more grand story than the first Avengers, but it was never pretentious, even if the movie bit off more than it could chew. AoU had to do a lot, too much in fact, and the movie came out as a mess, but not a terrible mess, or even irredeemable one. It’s honestly a miracle that AoU ended up as good as it was, given the circumstances. Heavily flawed, but I can admire what it set out to do. Had to get that unnecessary, but also necessary “Marvel isn’t perfect” thing so I don’t get accused of being a Marvel or Disney shill. Christ.

Back onto the actual subject, BvS is a fucking trainwreck on every possible level if you ask me. Okay, maybe not so much the music, but even then, Wonder Woman’s theme is the only song that I can remember. Then again, I don’t pay attention to music when I watch movies, as I listen to those on my own time. The story was so badly told, and the stand out moments were so horrible, I’m shocked that this movie was approved with the script that it was given. This is one of the few times I think of my theater experience when watching a movie. Man of Steel’s theater experience made me sick with the shitty shaky-cam, but this movie made me angry while watching it, and I never get angry when watching movies, so you have to be really bad in order to make me angry when watching. Two moments in particular, the infamous Martha scene and Superman’s death made me want to walk out on the movie. I’ve never wanted to walk out of a movie before, so that was a first for me. I think the biggest sin BvS makes that isn’t destroying famous comic book stories and having some of the worst versions of Batman AND Superman, is that not only is BvS slow to the point of boring, with very little of actual importance happening, but the movie tries to be so profound in its messages and imagery, like this is some fucking college arthouse film. A lot of people say the worst thing a movie can be is be boring. I respectfully disagree. For me, the worst thing a movie can be is be boring and trying to act like it’s so smart with its themes. The whole god amongst humans thing has been done to death, quite literally in the case of this movie, and the way it’s presented and written, comes off as overly pretentious. I can’t wait for someone to tell me that this movie is for the intellectually elite, while also saying that I need a high IQ in order to understand this movie. It’s why I prefer a movie to be rushed and have little actual meaning, than a movie that’s slow paced and try to be profound. This applies to bad movies only, of course.

There’s two cuts that exist for BvS: The one that was released in theaters, and the 3 hour, rated R extended cut, dubbed the “Ultimate Cut.” Yes, because the first movie about Batman and FUCKING Superman TOTALLY needed a rated R cut. I’ve watched the Ultimate cut, or more like I was forced to watch it because my brother made me sit with him and watch it. There’s a reason why I never trust the man with movies. But, how is the Ultimate cut? Well… it’s better… *sigh* Okay, it’s more complete this time around. It doesn’t feel like a huge chunk was cut out for no reason, and there’s more context surrounding the events of the movie, but does that actually fix the movie? Judging by my statement, no, no it doesn’t. Many of the problems that were in the theatrical cut are still present in this version: Batman and Superman hate each other for their own reasons but do the things they say they hate about the other, making them hypocrites, Lex Luthor’s plan makes no sense and is overly convoluted, Lois Lane is still useless, the action is still poor overall, Wonder Woman is still an afterthought, the title fight that the movie has its entire purpose riding on is still lackluster at best, the Martha scene is still stupid, and the movie essentially destroyed all hopes of a great Superman story by wasting the Death of Superman storyline. What else can I say? I fucking hate this movie, the end. Holy shit, that was a long section. How’s about something shorter?

SUICIDE SQUAD

This is gonna be a very short segment compared to the BvS one, but that’s because in a shocking twist, I haven’t actually sat down and watched Suicide Squad. I’ll still talk about how the movie ended up the way it did and how it was received, but I can’t actually comment on the movie itself. I’m also putting Suicide Squad’s history here because the BvS segment is long enough. Anyway, after BvS underperformed, Warner Bros panicked and decided to make a course correction with Suicide Squad. People liked the trailers, which made the movie appear to be DC’s answer to Guardians of the Galaxy. In fact, the people who made the trailers ended up editing the movie. Yes, really. The concept of the movie sounded awesome. A ragtag group of villains forced to do good things or they die is a really interesting concept and if executed well, could be seen as a new form of comic book movie. The anti-Avengers, you could say. However, that wasn’t meant to be. Suicide Squad was received about as well as BvS was, with some saying it was even worse than BvS. Seeing as how I haven’t seen the movie, I can’t comment on it, but given what I’ve heard, it sounds like a shitty version of Guardians of the Galaxy, both of them, and the sequel wasn’t out when Suicide Squad came out. At the very least, the movie was said to have been more profitable than BvS, even though it made $746 million at the box office on a $175 million budget. So, 3 misfires so far, and the best received one divided audiences and critics. The DCEU was in serious trouble, and there needed to be a miracle in order to save this franchise. Well, unbeknownst to Warner Bros, their savior, to a degree anyway, would come from an underestimated superhero, or should I say, superheroine!

WONDER WOMAN

Remember when I said that Wonder Woman was an afterthought in BvS? Well, she was, but she had a movie coming out. I find it funny that we live in a world where the Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Deadpool, the Suicide Squad, and Doctor Strange got their own movies before Wonder Woman, the third member of the DC Trinity. The world is weird. Diana’s movie came out, and it blew away expectations. Not that they were high to begin with, but let’s not be so cynical here. Wonder Woman released to great reviews and audiences loved it. The movie made over $412 million dollars at the U.S. box office, more than any of the Marvel Studios films at the same box office, and outperformed Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man for the highest grossing superhero origin movie, and Spidey held the record for 15 years. The movie would end up making $821 million dollars at the global box office, making it the second highest grossing movie in the DCEU, with BvS being the highest grossing, but unlike BvS, Wonder Woman didn’t underperform and was a huge hit. So, what did I think of Wonder Woman? Well, gotta give credit where credit is due, but the DCEU has an installment where I can confidently call good. Diana herself was better characterized than she was in BvS. My favorite scene in the movie is when she and Steve Trevor are about to go to No Man’s Land, but before they embark on the train ride there, Diana gets ice cream from an ice cream vendor, and tells the ice cream man that he’s wonderful. This is something that this franchise has been sorely lacking: Little touches. The movie also used the dark and gritty motif of the DCEU correctly. This is because the movie was set during World War 1, which was a shitty time, and we had Themyscira, a bright and colorful place to contrast with the shitty London and battlefields. The first two acts, minus the underwhelming action that relied too much on slow motion for my tastes, were well handled and even great. Despite what I said about the action, that No Man’s Land sequence was awesome. However, and this hurts me to say this, the third act happens. Ooooh, the third act. If there was one movie that was so close to greatness, only to have the ending nearly ruin it, it’s this movie. I know I’m going to be labeled sexist for not saying Wonder Woman is a great movie, but please, bare with me. So, throughout the movie, Diana wants to kill Ares, the god of war. The legend of Ares states that he’s the reason why mankind goes to war with each other. However, Diana kills General Stryker (I’m calling him that because it’s the same actor from X-Men 2), and she believed him to be Ares. I mean, to be fair, he was huffing up some magic powder or something, so I can believe that. After killing General Stryker, Diana sees that the humans are still preparing their assault. Diana is horrified to see this, and she asks Steve Trevor why the humans are still at war now that she killed Ares. Shortly after this, the real Ares comes and then the movie goes into the usual third act climax. Now, I don’t have a problem with third act climaxes. So, why do I have an issue with it here? Ares was mentioned being alive early in the movie, so what’s the big deal? I think it has to do with how the movie was written. The way the movie played out, it seemed like Diana realizing that humans are, in her words, “so much more,” than what they seem. This could have explained why she gave up the Wonder Woman mantle and stayed in the human world for a century. Not having a third act climax in order to develop a character, with the message that humans are much more, even at their worst, would have been amazing. Instead, the movie throws all of that away for a final fight with Ares and Steve Trevor sacrificing himself. It felt tacked on and cheapened the movie. It came off as rewarding Diana for being naive, which is something I hated about the movie. Her entire character arc was rendered meaningless because of that last act. There’s also some questions after the fight that are never answered. Now that Ares is dead, does that mean World War 2 and the Cold War never happened in this universe? If killing Ares ended all conflict in humanity, why is the world so grim when Man of Steel begins? This act single handedly derailed the movie. What could have been a potential masterpiece only ends up being decent in my opinion. I won’t go as far as to say the third act ruined the movie, but it does end up hurting the movie by quite a bit if you ask me. I should reiterate that Wonder Woman is overall, a solid movie, but the third act really holds it back. Now, let’s get to the fifth and final movie in this, I guess you could call it, DCEU Retrospective, the big JL.

JUSTICE LEAGUE

Fun fact: Did you know that there was going to be a Justice League movie long before The Avengers? The movie was called Justice League: Mortal, and was going to release sometime around 2007/2008, if not later than that. However, I guess WB decided “Naaah, we got our golden boyo Christopher Nolan here doing Batman movies for us. The audience will be confused if two live action Batmen were on screen.” Not giving the audience enough credit, I see? I mean, I’m not sure what happened, but I’m pretty sure you can look up a video Justice League: Mortal.

Justice League faced tons of behind the scenes problems. There were talks of Ben Affleck (aka, DCEU Bats) directing which never went through, the movie being completely reworked just mere weeks before shooting began because of BvS’s terrible reception, Joss Whedon (the guy who wrote and directed the first two Avengers movies) taking over as director and reworking the movie after Zack Snyder tragically lost his daughter from suicide, etc, etc, etc. Now, I’m not saying a movie that has behind the scenes problems is doomed to failure. After all, A New Hope had several behind the scenes problems, with George Lucas even writing the film off before it premiered, and look at how well that movie ended up turning out. Although I was livid after BvS and missed Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman gave me some hope that Justice League wouldn’t be that bad. Well… I was sort of right on that.

Let me get one thing straight: Justice League is a terrible movie. The story reeks of “Been there, done that, seen it before, seen it better, and will see it better in the future.” The characters were flat at best, and irritating at worst (looking at you, second-rate MCU Spider-Man aka Flash), and the villain is one of the worst I’ve ever seen (seriously, Steppenwolf is a fucking mid-boss, so why is he the big bad of 4 years?). To top it off, the film is a tonal and visual mess, and what I mean by the latter is that Joss Whedon’s Avengers-esc style clashes heavily with Zack Snyder’s supposed deep and dark vision. Justice League comes off as, to quote one of my favorite YouTube channels, Midnight’s Edge “A Frankensteinian abomination.” That being said, at least the film didn’t try to shove philosophical messages down my throat or try so fucking hard to be deep and meaningful, so JL’s already better than Man of Steel and BvS in that regard. I also liked that we finally got a Superman that actually felt like Superman should instead of what MoS and BvS tried to make him be. I left Justice League feeling… indifferent, I guess? I didn’t like it, but I didn’t hate it either. All I know is that I should have been feeling a lot more positive about this movie than I actually did. The Justice League animated series from the DC Animated Universe was my introduction to superheroes, and I still think holds up wonderfully today. I may have not been a fan of how Season 1 handled Superman in regards to the villains of that show, but I still think it’s a fantastic show. It’s a fucking shame that Warner Bros essentially failed to make a movie worthy of the name: Justice League. To make Justice League look even of a failure, we’re gonna have to talk about box office again.

Wanna know how much Justice League costed to make, including reshoots? $300 million. Justice League is the second most expensive movie ever made, with Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides being the most expensive. Want to know how much money it made, or has made so far? $655 million. Yes, only that much. On its opening weekend in America, it made $93 million. It couldn’t even make $100 million! It took the movie a fucking month to make the same amount The Avengers made in its opening weekend. If that’s not a “Get fucked, DC,” I don’t know what is. So, now that I spent this entire time going over each DCEU movie in detail (sorry that this has been so long to begin with), it’s now time to answer the question: Why did the DC Extended Universe fail?

WHY THE DCEU FAILED

If you ask me, the main reason the DC Extended Universe failed was because Warner Bros didn’t have a set plan or a person with a vision to keep the universe in tact. The reason Marvel Studios and the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been consistently successful is because of one man, and that man is Kevin Feige. Originally being a producer for the early X-Men and Spider-Man movies, along with other Marvel films, he was the brainchild behind the MCU, and has been an executive producer for each movie in the MCU so far. When a movie doesn’t measure up to the rest, which was the case with Thor: The Dark World, the MCU didn’t go into a panic and have the next few movies affected by Thor 2’s failings. Instead, the franchise carried on, and all the problems of The Dark World were addressed and mostly solved with Thor: Ragnorok. DC, meanwhile, doesn’t have a Kevin Feige. Warner Bros made the choice to make the DCEU director-driven, rather than producer-driven. The problem with making a mega-franchise with multiple franchises inside is that you need to have them be producer-driven to have a consistent vision. I know that a common complaint with the MCU is that it tends to revolve around a single formula, often referred to as the “Marvel Formula,” but a consistent vision needs to be in check to keep things in line. Having director-driven movies is good, but can lead to a clash of visions. Maybe I should do a Hub’s Kitchen episode on that. Hmm… Because of BvS’s failings, Suicide Squad and Justice League had to be radically altered during shooting and post-production, rather than before shooting and during pre-production, which was the case of Thor: Ragnorok going in a different direction than the previous Thor films.

I also feel that not sticking to what made the characters so beloved is another reason the DCEU failed. I’ve always been one to say that accuracy doesn’t make a movie good, but even so, I still believe that the main point of the character should be completely in tact. Marvel Studios has done a great job at this, even when they had to slightly rework characters like Spider-Man for example. Despite him having a tech suit made by Tony Stark, Peter still made his original suit, his web shooters, webbing, is still a smart kid, and relatable. Meanwhile, the DCEU decided “Hey, you know Superman? Yeah, let’s make him a complete brooding asshole and have him kill people for no reason other than its cool.” Or “Hey, you know Batman? Yeah, he’s a killer now and then suddenly he’s a third-rate Tony Stark wannabe.” Even better “Hey, you know Flash? Barry Allen Flash? We’re gonna make him Wally West and make him incredibly annoying, because COMEDY!” Thankfully, Wonder Woman got off pretty well. I know nerds like me are the only people who read comic books, but as far as an adaptation is concerned, we want the core basics of the characters to be intact. The DCEU didn’t do that, and a lot of fans jumped ship. Audiences were also alienated, mainly because for Man of Steel and BvS, the heroes weren’t acting like heroes, or people for that matter. I think that covers that whole dilemma, and now, it’s time to wrap everything up.

CONCLUSION

I’m sorry that this episode was as long as it was. I just feel that I needed to go in-depth as to why I felt the way I did and why the DCEU failed. I love superheroes. I’d go as far as to say superhero stories are my favorite kind of stories. I grew up with superheroes, okay, mostly Spider-Man, but still. So I hope you all can understand why I hated the DCEU as much as I did, and why it ultimately failed. I feel like whenever people generalize others who love the MCU and hate the DCEU as them saying “Marvel can do no wrong,” are missing the point. It’s not that we believe Marvel can do no wrong. It’s that we want good representations of the heroes we read and love, so maybe the average Joe can understand why we love these funny books so much. Whatever issues the MCU has can (mostly) be forgiven because the good stuff outweighs the bad. The DCEU, however, has only one good movie to its name and a few droppings of brilliance in an otherwise mediocre DC universe.

Wow, I got really emotional there. I’m sorry for that. It just annoys me when people generalize stuff. I don’t know what the next topic of Hub’s Kitchen will be on, but I can tell you all this: It’s gonna be a hell of a lot shorter than this, that’s for sure. My name’s Hub, and thank you for reading. *Checks Google Drive word count* Over 5,000 words. What the fu-

[aenariasbookshelf]

Stream of consciousness babble re: Thor Ragnarok

So.  Thor: Ragnarok.  I have feels.  Let me tell you them.

First off...and I feel bad saying this considering my great love for Darcy Lewis and Jane Foster...but out of the three Thor films, this one is kind of the best of them.  It also provides a cap on a satisfying and full character arc for Thor over all three movies (more so than what we saw in CA:CW, but don’t get me started on that because I am still bitter over Avengers 2.5 or Iron Man 4, take your pick of description - imho, of course.  If you feel differently that’s cool too).  Needless to say, I enjoyed the movie immensely and do recommend it.

Okay, more spoilery thoughts after the cut…

If we want to go Shakespearean with it, I almost feel like I have to compare Thor’s character arc to Prince Hal, from the do-nothing Prince to King Henry V, who comes into his own and leads his people.  And by the end of the movie, Thor is the leader of Asgard, though the definition of Asgard is...interesting at that point.  Thor also loses his safety blanket of Mjolnir, but the twist of Mjolnir being just a tool and not the ultimate source of the God of Thunder’s power is a nice one.  There’s also kind of the idea that you can’t go home again, that sometimes you have to sacrifice the land of that home to create a new home somewhere else.  In any case, I actually like that they pretty much blew Asgard to dust at the end of the movie.  

Hela.  Marvel has finally given us our female villain and holy hell, she is impressive.  She also seems like one of the most powerful that they’ve given us thus far, which makes her worth it to me.  It’s interesting that they make a point of constantly referring to her as the Goddess of Death, if only because of what that means for Thanos.  In the comics, Thanos is very in love with the personification of Death and is trying to court her by bringing the universe to her feet, if I recall correctly.  Of course, if I also recall correctly his main rival for her affections is Deadpool, so do with that what you will.  That said, I do feel like they kind of rushed things with Hela a bit - I have so many questions about her background and her history with Odin and Asgard (i.e. is Frigga her mother?  What sort of magic did Odin do to bind her away?  If Asgardians are as old as they say they are, why does no one else remember Hela and has ever mentioned to Thor and Loki that oops, yeah, Odin had another child and she’s bugfuck crazy, which is why we don’t talk about her any more).  I want the answers to these questions and I didn’t quite get them, which kind of lends to the rushed feeling of the movie.

Bruce.  THE DURAN DURAN T-SHIRT IS TONY’S BRB LAUGHING FOREVER AT THAT.  And I mean that with all the affection possible - I love Duran Duran.  Poor Bruce needs therapy after this incident, I think, considering that he spent over two years as the Hulk and didn’t remember a bit of it.  That’s...not a good sign.  That said I now need all the fics of Bruce and Thor being intergalactic best buds, because reasons.  Mark Ruffalo is always awesome as Bruce, so really, his presence here was well needed, especially considering how they treated many of the other recurring characters in this movie.

Which definitely falls under the category of a giant, stinking CON for this movie - they did their recurring characters dirty.  The Warriors Three were sent out in rather undignified fashions mostly (Hogun tried, but Hela’s beating everyone’s ass in at that point) after being on screen for maybe 30 seconds a piece, Sif didn’t even get a mention that I heard (If they mentioned something please tell me, I probably missed it), and Jane dumped Thor’s ass in between movies.  At least Jane threw him over, which is probably the right move if your boyfriend’s been on an interplanetary business trip for the past two years with barely any contact in between.  At least they left her alive.  I can do good things to her in fic instead.  No mention of Darcy either, which is probably a blessing because again, fic.  

Okay, back to some positives - Valkyrie.  She is awesome and I will not hear anyone say otherwise.  Her first scene is impressive, and from one fellow lush to another I raise my glass to her.  There’s the question of her age though, which is looped in with Hela’s sparse background story - how old exactly is she if she was the only survivor of Hela’s first attempt at taking over the universe that neither Loki nor Thor ever heard of??  Are all Asgardians that long lived?  Or was there a collective memory wipe, or something like that.  I will say that the Asgardians, even the civilians, are damn badass, which I love.  Especially Heimdall, who is really the heart and soul of Asgard.

Loki - who the hell did your makeup for this movie?  Because damn, I could see the pancake makeup clear through the screen.  Okay, more seriously, Loki definitely comes off as more of the Trickster God here rather than the evil bastard of his first two appearances, even though it was his actions of banishing Odin to earth that pretty much kicked off the twilight of the gods.  And I find it interesting that they do almost seem to be heading to a Loki redemption tale, as he really was ultimately on the side of the heroes here instead of the villains, and mostly acted for the betterment of the Asgardians at the end.  Mostly.  Look, we all know that fucker swiped the Tesseract after that glance he gave it in the last scene when he went to wake Surtur up, and dollars to donuts that’s going to be one of the things that draws Thanos’ attention straight to earth.  But I do have to say, I like Trickster!Loki a hell of a lot more than Villain!Loki.

Also, Loki and Valkyrie.  I kinda ship them.  If feels a bit wrong, but it could be oh-so-good.

Finally, I have to mention the music.

*turns up the Zeppelin and howls along*  Ahhhhhh-Ah-ahhhhhhhh-AH!

*clears throat*  Anyway.  Look, Thor and his crew kicking ass to Immigrant Song is one of the highlights of the entire MCU up until this point.  And while it almost seems like an obvious choice, I have to give Taika Waititi credit for actually bringing it to life.  I think he’s got a talent for matching up music to scenes and making it relevant to what’s on the screen (for further proof, see his movie Boy, which uses the music of Michael Jackson to great effect in there also) and you can’t get better than ‘I come from the land of the ice and snow...’.  Between the music choices (they got one of the guys from Devo to compose the other music, which impressed me) and the candy-colored 80s backgrounds, this movie actually visually felt like a comic book also, which was thrilling.  Well, it felt like that for me at least, especially as I’m a fan of Jack Kirby’s kind of insane multicolored panels from back in the day.  Look, while I love the Cap movies more than anything else, I’ll admit that they’re kind of visually grim.  And then here comes Thor with neon and rainbow bifrosts and sparkles and just...YES.

TL:DR, in conclusion, while Thor: Ragnarok isn’t a perfect movie, it is an entertaining one and a good one, and a worthy conclusion to Thor’s trilogy of movies.

[wallpaperpainter]

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[itkmoonknight]

ITK Newsletter, no. XCII: No Show??? + FCL for June, Week 1!!

Welcome Dear Loonies!

Well, my golly golly gosh! What a week it has been!

As some of you are well aware, we released our 100th episode on ITK and revealed all our little surprises for all our listeners.

I'll be taking a break from recording this week, to rejuvenate after such an epic episode, but I'll be using that time wisely - I'm hoping to write more on our newly featured serial, and I may be dropping a line to some friends of the show to see if we can tee up an appearance on a LUNAR-PICK, ISLA RA or SPOTLIGHT in the phases of the Moon to come!

In my absence, the other two High Priests Connorshu and Rebecca MAY drop something for this week, so I can't tell you what it will be on, but whatever it is, I'm sure it will be entertaining!

(As heard on our previous episode - the fact that Khonshu has lost his Sceptre, has interefered with our show's scheduling and format...so anything goes!)

So there could well be an episode this weekend - or there could well not...please just keep an eye out on your podcatcher for any updates to your ITK subscription!

Anyhoo!! -

I thought I'd take this opportunity as well to reflect a bit on our 100th episode and give you a bit more insight into how it all got put together. Needless to say, I'm as proud as can be in the 100th episode - it's certainly the most ambitious one yet and it's length also reflects the desire we had to try and give you as memorable episode as we possibly could!

First and foremost, want to say how much of an honour it was to be able to chat to Doug Moench, Greg Smallwood and JM DeMatteis!

I can't believe that the expectations we set ourselves for the 100th episode was not only met but exceeded! I had thrown a wide net out there to many of the Moon Knight Alumni, and am forever grateful that Doug, Greg and JM were so gracious as to respond and give their time for our humble little show.

The interview with JM was the last one we conducted and I again was blessed to have had Anthony from Capes on the Couch join me in chatting with JM. Anthony (as previously mentioned is an Omega Level Loony) is a HUGE JM fam and his favourite run of Moon Knight is the Scarlet Redemption. Having missed out on our review of the arc, I thought it only fair that he join me in chatting with Mr. DeMatteis and we all had a really good time!

I seriously could have chatted with JM and Anthony for another hour or so, but you can most likely hear in the background, my own little Loony, Finn, crying...! Both JM and Anthony were very accommodating with this and they professionally carried on, which I totally admire. If you've heard the interview, I strongly recommend picking up JM DeMatteis' 'Moonshadow - Definitive Edition'...it looks bloody good! Also, if you are in the area, consider JM DeMatteis' writing workshop or consultation from Imagination 101 or Creative point...

The interview with Greg Smallwood was the first interview I got on tape, and it was actually during the move we made from one apartment to another in the same building. I recorded it in the empty living room of our old apartment (you can kinda hear the echo) and as a little behind-the-scenes, both Greg and I had MASSIVE gremlins in our Skype! The interview itself is made up of at least 4-5 separate recordings, and a fair bit of editing, as we'd have to stop the chat, and pick up again once Skype reconnected..thankfully I'm glad it didn't effect the final result and the chat was very relaxed and so much fun to do. Greg is most certainly a night owl, so this time it was the wee hours of the night for him and around mid-morning for me....

In stark contrast, the chat I had with Doug had me in all sorts! Although Doug was very apologetic for the time I had to wake up for the chat (4am!), I reassured him that it was only a small bit of effort to be able to get to chat with such a huge creator, so in reality it was no problem at all. To add to that, I also had a vicious cold and was coming off a week of being beaten down with a virus, so it is a very scratchy voice you can hear during the chat, but again after warming up to it, it was such an entertaining talk with THE guy that created THE character that we all know and love. I guess I didn't really know what to expect with Doug Moench. I didn't know what type of person he was and I'd listened to some of his interviews on other podcasts and read some articles in which he featured, but I got to say the only word I can describe Doug is, 'funky'. He has such a vibrant personality it's hard not to be affected by it, and so when he started telling me about his early days in the Marvel office, and his early jobs where he got to write at the dead of night...or when we got to hang around with The Who and Jimi Hendrix....well, ...that stuff is just gold!

Another MAJOR factor that made this show so special was the selfless contribution made by good mate, Wayne Hunt. Wayne isn't only one of the coolest and kindest blokes I know, but he's also generous to a fault. It's because of Wayne that we managed to not only elevate our 50th episode, by giving us great art (who can forget Conquer Lord giving Moon Knight a suplex??), but we also managed to make our 100th episode extra special by providing not one, but two original artworks! Wayne messaged me and said he felt inspired to creat something for our episode, ...and who am I to stop him? :)

It wasn't long before he sent over the drafts and I was just in awe at the beauty (the first artwork) and the pop comedic aspects (the second one) of his work - 

So a huge thank you Wayne for being our 'face' of the episode!

Not only that, but Wayne also messaged me with a surprise that rivalled his artwork - he said that he bought some comics that could be used a prize giveaways for the show! Again, I was gob-smacked by this and it just seemed that all the pieces for the show were coming together...we'd never conducted a giveaway before, and so we had heaps of fun thinking of ways to make it a competition and to figure out whether it should be announced on the 100th, or whether the winners be announced on the 100th.

As a little side note, you'll kinda hear that in our ITK Serial - 'The Hunt for Khonshu's Golden Sceptre' - there are 'clues' dropped in the serial. The idea was to have them as clues for Loonies to pick up on, when the competition was ANNOUNCED on the 100th episode. In the end, I couldn't wait any longer, so decided to announce the competition beforehand, and have the WINNERS announced on the 100th...small detail, but yeah...just in case anyone picked that up...!:P

Segue-ing straight into the ITK Serial....

Ahem...yes, this is something we thought we'd test on the show and see what sort of a response we'd get. From our end, I'm speaking on behalf of everyone involved, but I thought we all had a blast doing it! It's all tongue in cheek, and I believe most of us are fans of that Wolverine 'Long Night' serial, so why not try our own?

I'm pretty excited to try and write this thing, but as mentioned on the show, it's also an open invitation to get more Loonies involved - do you write as well? Would you be keen to take 'The Hunt for Khonshu's Golden Sceptre' further? Or do you like to have a go at acting? Either way, it would be great to drop us a line and let us know what you would be keen to do...we can either write you into an episode, or discuss what you'd want to write for the serial, and where you want to take it...it's a huge sandbox, Loonies - and we want everyone (who's keen to) to play!

So a huge thank you to the High Priests Connor and Rebecca, The Power of Chad, Dustin 'Cold Case' Kurtz, Josh 'Geronimo' Johnson and Tommy 'The Man on the Streets' for indulging this madcap Loony to bring the serial to life...!

Let us know what you thought of the episode and the interviews, serial, competition, Dear Khonshus etc...if you liked them, or would like to see something else on the show...we're more than happy to respond! You can catch us on any of these platforms - 

Email: itkmoonknight@gmail.com

Podcast Page: http://intotheknight.libsyn.com

Facebook Page: Into the Knight - A Moon Knight Podcast

Facebook Group: Into the Knight - A Moon Knight Fan Base

Twitter: @ITKmoonknight

Discord ITK Server: ITK Server

Twitch: COMING SOON!

#ITKMoonKnight 2019 Fantasy Comic League - June, Week 1

The current season of #FantasyComicLeague continues on in the month of June, Loonies, and we've got an update on the new drafts that your team members (Connorshu, Dustin, Chad, Tommy and Rey) have chosen for the new month.

The first week has already come and gone, and the points have been scored for each of the characters. Below you can see the current scorecards for each of the team members. Still early days yet, and anything can happen again during the month - 

Tommy made a late charge and came in at second place, followed by me (Rey), 'Cold Case' Kurtz, and The Power of Chad rounding off the group - 

High Priest of Khonshu, Reynaldo Gesmundo

Due to the results in May, I've been allowed to retain two of my previous players and so I've chosen to stick with Deadpool and Captain America. Those guys seem to be rather consistent - I just hope I chose the right powers for them. I've gone for two other big names in Iron Man and the Hulk. They don't necessarily translate into big points, but after perusing this month's comics, they're in with a chance...

Dustin 'Cold Case' Kurtz

Dustin was allowed to retain up to three of his players, and he's made full use of that option by retaining the supernatural/mystical titans of Blade, Doctor Strange and Ghost Rider. Dustin's also picked up a MASSIVE draw with Wolverine this time - an opportunity which arose due to last month's winner, Connorshu, not allowed to retain any of his players...

Tommy 'The Man on the Streets' Kawel

Tommy starts off solid again with a pretty decent pack of characters. Retaining only Venom, Tommy has managed to pick up Punisher and Daredevil, both of whom performed very well last month. Let's see how they go this month, but expect Tommy to shoot up the ladder!

High Priest of Khonshu, Connorshu Stephens

Poor Connorshu has had it tough for the month following May - he's had to relinquish ALL his players (due to being top of the table last month), and a busy schedule has seen him miss out on the drafting deadline...giving him two auto-drafts in Silver Surfer and Doctor Voodoo! Still, I imagine Captain Marvel will give him many points, but the new Silver Surfer title (and the Guardians of the Galaxy) may give Connorshu the boost he needs to return to the top!

'The Power of' Chad Jernigan

Our maverick, Chad had the opportunity to change his whole team, but sticking with his favourite characters has confirmed an identical team to last month. You never know with this sort of thing - although Chad rounded off the ladder last month, this month his players may yield even more points - it only really depends on how they are written for the books this month...so there's the very possibility that Chad may surprise all the others and climb up that ladder!

Well, that about wraps it, Loonies for this newsletter - a bit of a long one, but a great chance to reflect on our milestone just past...as well as give you an update on our Fantasy Comic League progress!

Thanks once again for reading this newsletter and listening to our podcast! Spread the word of Khonshu and Moon Knight if you can...would be great to interact and hear from new fans (and old ones who've only just recently come across our community!)

Keep watching that night sky, and keep tuning in!!

May Khonshu Watch Over the Denizens of the (K)Night,

Rey

Proud Member of The Collective

  Check out this episode!

[glenmenlow]

Disney Cements Global Entertainment Powerhouse Status With Fox Deal

Shaking up the worlds of entertainment and media, the Mouse and the Fox are rewriting the playbook on deal-making as Disney is set to acquire the majority of 21st Century Fox. Acquiring the majority of 21st Century Fox gives Disney unparalleled clout as a programmer, distributor and media powerhouse, while creating the opportunity for a “New Fox” to emerge.

The proposed transaction, announced Thursday morning, is worth more than $52 billion in stock. The overall deal has a total value of approximately $66.1 billion, with Disney assuming $13.7 billion of Fox’s net debt.

The Walt Disney Company, whose CEO Bob Iger has agreed to stay on through the end of 2021 as part of the deal, will assume Fox’s movie studios, cable networks owned by National Geographic and FX, its Asian pay TV operator Star TV, as well as stakes in satellite broadcaster Sky, production company Endemol Shine Group and the Hulu streaming programmer, in addition to its 22 regional sports networks, which could enhance the struggling ESPN.

The pieces of 21st Century Fox not being sold to Disney will give Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch & Co. the opportunity to create what a press release describes as “The New Fox” from a portfolio that’s being slimmed down to Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Sports, Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox Television Stations Group, FS1 and FS2, Fox Deportes and Big Ten Network.

“The new Fox will draw upon the powerful live news and sports businesses of Fox, as well as the strength of our Broadcast Network,” Murdoch stated. “It is born out of an important lesson I’ve learned in my long career in media: namely, content and news relevant to viewers will always be valuable. We are excited by the possibilities of the new Fox, which is already a leader many times over.”

As for the newly pumped up Disney, its goal is to expand its portfolio of valuable brands, content libraries and clout as a global and local entertainment powerhouse. As it gets ready to launch new streaming services of its own to compete with Netflix and Amazon Prime, the expanded programming library will prove invaluable as it shifts away from traditional cable and broadcast TV to streaming services.

With once-mighty TV properties such as ESPN (which formerly ruled the roost in terms of fees from cable operators) in decline, Disney is looking to new standalone OTT (over the top) subscription broadband streaming services for growth: ESPN+ will launch in the first half of next year with more than 10,000 sporting events on offer, while a yet-to-be-named subscription entertainment service drawing from its Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar brands will roll out in 2019.

“The more desirable content they have, the better they will be able to compete in terms of trying to sell a subscription offering at a time there’s so much competition for subscription-based services,” eMarketer analyst Paul Verna told CNBC. “Both companies are so deep in terms of what they have. The decision to subscribe to a streaming service often comes down to: ‘Does the content match what I, as a consumer, am interested in?’”

Iger will be working with Fox CEO James Murdoch, son of Rupert, to will help with the transition and integration. “James and I will be talking over the next number of months. He’s going to be integral to the integration process, and he and I will be discussing whether there is a role for him or not at our company,” Iger told ABC’s Good Morning America (where wife Willow Bay, the Dean of USC Annenberg, once worked as a correspondent).

In a week where another Australian billionaire, Frank Lowy, sold his Westfield shopping center empire, Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, stated that he was pleased to have Disney take the reins of the company he built over many decades:

“We are extremely proud of all that we have built at 21st Century Fox, and I firmly believe that this combination with Disney will unlock even more value for shareholders as the new Disney continues to set the pace in what is an exciting and dynamic industry. Furthermore, I’m convinced that this combination, under Bob Iger’s leadership, will be one of the greatest companies in the world. I’m grateful and encouraged that Bob has agreed to stay on, and is committed to succeeding with a combined team that is second to none.” 

As it shifts its resources into providing content and new brands for streaming video, games and live sports and entertainment, Disney will start playing hardball (as it famously does with distributors) by pulling its movies from Netflix in 2019 as it launches standalone streaming services. Iger told analysts that the new company won’t reach Netflix scale ‘quickly’ but is on track to be a major rival.

The deal will also augment Disney’s business in terms of new intellectual properties for movies, licensing, merchandise and branded attractions at its theme parks by adding X-Men, the Alien franchise, Predator, The X-Files, Avatar, Planet of the Apes, Ice Age, Family Guy, Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Futurama, and The Simpsons to a family that already includes Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel properties—all rich with possibilities from an IP and creative perspective.

As Disney noted in its press release, the acquisition creates a content “opportunity to reunite the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Deadpool with the Marvel family under one roof and create richer, more complex worlds of inter-related characters and stories that audiences have shown they love. The addition of Avatar to its family of films also promises expanded opportunities for consumers to watch and experience storytelling within these extraordinary fantasy worlds.”

“Already, guests at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort can experience the magic of Pandora—The World of Avatar, a new land inspired by the Fox film franchise that opened earlier this year. And through the incredible storytelling of National Geographic—whose mission is to explore and protect our planet and inspire new generations through education initiatives and resources—Disney will be able to offer more ways than ever before to bring kids and families the world and all that is in it.”

Merging the Fox and Disney TV studio operations brings in-house some of the most valuable TV series on television today: This Is Us, American Horror Story, Empire, Modern Family, The Simpsons and Family Guy, and from Disney’s ABC Studios TGIT (Thank God It’s Thursday shows by Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland) dramas, comedy Black-ish, Netflix’s Marvel series and Showtime’s breakout SMILF.

As for next steps, Disney may try to buy out Hulu co-owner Comcast (which once tried to acquire it) and minority stakeholder Time Warner to assume full control. Disney is acquiring Fox’s 30% stake in Hulu, which gives it more than 50% of the service to assume controlling ownership.

And while Disney is already a global behemoth with major holdings in Europe and Asia (including the recently opened Shanghai Disney Resort), ingesting these pieces of 21st Century Fox will leverage a rich stable of international businesses set-up by Murdoch.

“That kind of reach is all the more important as international revenue increasingly becomes a sine qua non for Hollywood,” opined Variety. “Across the Atlantic, the marriage will create an entertainment giant that owns a raft of channels and premium content, plus a partial – and potentially full – stake in pan-European pay-TV service Sky. Across the Pacific, the new entity will no doubt seek to exploit the two companies’ complementary strengths – Disney in film and Fox in TV – and minimize the areas where they currently compete.”

As the New York Times notes, “Disney now has enough muscle to become a true competitor to Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook in the fast-growing realm of online video. At the same time, the agreement means that one of moviedom’s most celebrated studios, 20th Century Fox, will be downsized, with some operations folded into Walt Disney Studios or refocused to make films designed for online distribution.”

Disney and Fox, pioneers in the entertainment industry, are rewriting the rules and reordering the global entertainment universe as media conglomeration reaches historic and unprecedented proportion—provided, of course, the deal passes regulatory hurdles.

Some of the coverage this morning, including by Disney- and Fox-owned media outlets:

The post Disney Cements Global Entertainment Powerhouse Status With Fox Deal appeared first on brandchannel:.

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[markjsousa]

Disney Cements Global Entertainment Powerhouse Status With Fox Deal

Shaking up the worlds of entertainment and media, the Mouse and the Fox are rewriting the playbook on deal-making as Disney is set to acquire the majority of 21st Century Fox. Acquiring the majority of 21st Century Fox gives Disney unparalleled clout as a programmer, distributor and media powerhouse, while creating the opportunity for a “New Fox” to emerge.

The proposed transaction, announced Thursday morning, is worth more than $52 billion in stock. The overall deal has a total value of approximately $66.1 billion, with Disney assuming $13.7 billion of Fox’s net debt.

The Walt Disney Company, whose CEO Bob Iger has agreed to stay on through the end of 2021 as part of the deal, will assume Fox’s movie studios, cable networks owned by National Geographic and FX, its Asian pay TV operator Star TV, as well as stakes in satellite broadcaster Sky, production company Endemol Shine Group and the Hulu streaming programmer, in addition to its 22 regional sports networks, which could enhance the struggling ESPN.

The pieces of 21st Century Fox not being sold to Disney will give Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch & Co. the opportunity to create what a press release describes as “The New Fox” from a portfolio that’s being slimmed down to Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Sports, Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox Television Stations Group, FS1 and FS2, Fox Deportes and Big Ten Network.

“The new Fox will draw upon the powerful live news and sports businesses of Fox, as well as the strength of our Broadcast Network,” Murdoch stated. “It is born out of an important lesson I’ve learned in my long career in media: namely, content and news relevant to viewers will always be valuable. We are excited by the possibilities of the new Fox, which is already a leader many times over.”

As for the newly pumped up Disney, its goal is to expand its portfolio of valuable brands, content libraries and clout as a global and local entertainment powerhouse. As it gets ready to launch new streaming services of its own to compete with Netflix and Amazon Prime, the expanded programming library will prove invaluable as it shifts away from traditional cable and broadcast TV to streaming services.

With once-mighty TV properties such as ESPN (which formerly ruled the roost in terms of fees from cable operators) in decline, Disney is looking to new standalone OTT (over the top) subscription broadband streaming services for growth: ESPN+ will launch in the first half of next year with more than 10,000 sporting events on offer, while a yet-to-be-named subscription entertainment service drawing from its Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar brands will roll out in 2019.

“The more desirable content they have, the better they will be able to compete in terms of trying to sell a subscription offering at a time there’s so much competition for subscription-based services,” eMarketer analyst Paul Verna told CNBC. “Both companies are so deep in terms of what they have. The decision to subscribe to a streaming service often comes down to: ‘Does the content match what I, as a consumer, am interested in?'”

Iger will be working with Fox CEO James Murdoch, son of Rupert, to will help with the transition and integration. “James and I will be talking over the next number of months. He’s going to be integral to the integration process, and he and I will be discussing whether there is a role for him or not at our company,” Iger told ABC’s Good Morning America (where wife Willow Bay, the Dean of USC Annenberg, once worked as a correspondent).

In a week where another Australian billionaire, Frank Lowy, sold his Westfield shopping center empire, Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, stated that he was pleased to have Disney take the reins of the company he built over many decades:

“We are extremely proud of all that we have built at 21st Century Fox, and I firmly believe that this combination with Disney will unlock even more value for shareholders as the new Disney continues to set the pace in what is an exciting and dynamic industry. Furthermore, I’m convinced that this combination, under Bob Iger’s leadership, will be one of the greatest companies in the world. I’m grateful and encouraged that Bob has agreed to stay on, and is committed to succeeding with a combined team that is second to none.” 

As it shifts its resources into providing content and new brands for streaming video, games and live sports and entertainment, Disney will start playing hardball (as it famously does with distributors) by pulling its movies from Netflix in 2019 as it launches standalone streaming services. Iger told analysts that the new company won’t reach Netflix scale ‘quickly’ but is on track to be a major rival.

The deal will also augment Disney’s business in terms of new intellectual properties for movies, licensing, merchandise and branded attractions at its theme parks by adding X-Men, the Alien franchise, Predator, The X-Files, Avatar, Planet of the Apes, Ice Age, Family Guy, Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Futurama, and The Simpsons to a family that already includes Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel properties—all rich with possibilities from an IP and creative perspective.

As Disney noted in its press release, the acquisition creates a content “opportunity to reunite the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Deadpool with the Marvel family under one roof and create richer, more complex worlds of inter-related characters and stories that audiences have shown they love. The addition of Avatar to its family of films also promises expanded opportunities for consumers to watch and experience storytelling within these extraordinary fantasy worlds.”

“Already, guests at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort can experience the magic of Pandora—The World of Avatar, a new land inspired by the Fox film franchise that opened earlier this year. And through the incredible storytelling of National Geographic—whose mission is to explore and protect our planet and inspire new generations through education initiatives and resources—Disney will be able to offer more ways than ever before to bring kids and families the world and all that is in it.”

Merging the Fox and Disney TV studio operations brings in-house some of the most valuable TV series on television today: This Is Us, American Horror Story, Empire, Modern Family, The Simpsons and Family Guy, and from Disney’s ABC Studios TGIT (Thank God It’s Thursday shows by Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland) dramas, comedy Black-ish, Netflix’s Marvel series and Showtime’s breakout SMILF.

As for next steps, Disney may try to buy out Hulu co-owner Comcast (which once tried to acquire it) and minority stakeholder Time Warner to assume full control. Disney is acquiring Fox’s 30% stake in Hulu, which gives it more than 50% of the service to assume controlling ownership.

And while Disney is already a global behemoth with major holdings in Europe and Asia (including the recently opened Shanghai Disney Resort), ingesting these pieces of 21st Century Fox will leverage a rich stable of international businesses set-up by Murdoch.

“That kind of reach is all the more important as international revenue increasingly becomes a sine qua non for Hollywood,” opined Variety. “Across the Atlantic, the marriage will create an entertainment giant that owns a raft of channels and premium content, plus a partial – and potentially full – stake in pan-European pay-TV service Sky. Across the Pacific, the new entity will no doubt seek to exploit the two companies’ complementary strengths – Disney in film and Fox in TV – and minimize the areas where they currently compete.”

As the New York Times notes, “Disney now has enough muscle to become a true competitor to Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook in the fast-growing realm of online video. At the same time, the agreement means that one of moviedom’s most celebrated studios, 20th Century Fox, will be downsized, with some operations folded into Walt Disney Studios or refocused to make films designed for online distribution.”

Disney and Fox, pioneers in the entertainment industry, are rewriting the rules and reordering the global entertainment universe as media conglomeration reaches historic and unprecedented proportion—provided, of course, the deal passes regulatory hurdles.

Some of the coverage this morning, including by Disney- and Fox-owned media outlets:

The post Disney Cements Global Entertainment Powerhouse Status With Fox Deal appeared first on brandchannel:.

[joejstrickl]

Disney Cements Global Entertainment Powerhouse Status With Fox Deal

Shaking up the worlds of entertainment and media, the Mouse and the Fox are rewriting the playbook on deal-making as Disney is set to acquire the majority of 21st Century Fox. Acquiring the majority of 21st Century Fox gives Disney unparalleled clout as a programmer, distributor and media powerhouse, while creating the opportunity for a “New Fox” to emerge.

The proposed transaction, announced Thursday morning, is worth more than $52 billion in stock. The overall deal has a total value of approximately $66.1 billion, with Disney assuming $13.7 billion of Fox’s net debt.

The Walt Disney Company, whose CEO Bob Iger has agreed to stay on through the end of 2021 as part of the deal, will assume Fox’s movie studios, cable networks owned by National Geographic and FX, its Asian pay TV operator Star TV, as well as stakes in satellite broadcaster Sky, production company Endemol Shine Group and the Hulu streaming programmer, in addition to its 22 regional sports networks, which could enhance the struggling ESPN.

The pieces of 21st Century Fox not being sold to Disney will give Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch & Co. the opportunity to create what a press release describes as “The New Fox” from a portfolio that’s being slimmed down to Fox News, Fox Business, Fox Sports, Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox Television Stations Group, FS1 and FS2, Fox Deportes and Big Ten Network.

“The new Fox will draw upon the powerful live news and sports businesses of Fox, as well as the strength of our Broadcast Network,” Murdoch stated. “It is born out of an important lesson I’ve learned in my long career in media: namely, content and news relevant to viewers will always be valuable. We are excited by the possibilities of the new Fox, which is already a leader many times over.”

As for the newly pumped up Disney, its goal is to expand its portfolio of valuable brands, content libraries and clout as a global and local entertainment powerhouse. As it gets ready to launch new streaming services of its own to compete with Netflix and Amazon Prime, the expanded programming library will prove invaluable as it shifts away from traditional cable and broadcast TV to streaming services.

With once-mighty TV properties such as ESPN (which formerly ruled the roost in terms of fees from cable operators) in decline, Disney is looking to new standalone OTT (over the top) subscription broadband streaming services for growth: ESPN+ will launch in the first half of next year with more than 10,000 sporting events on offer, while a yet-to-be-named subscription entertainment service drawing from its Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar brands will roll out in 2019.

“The more desirable content they have, the better they will be able to compete in terms of trying to sell a subscription offering at a time there’s so much competition for subscription-based services,” eMarketer analyst Paul Verna told CNBC. “Both companies are so deep in terms of what they have. The decision to subscribe to a streaming service often comes down to: ‘Does the content match what I, as a consumer, am interested in?'”

Iger will be working with Fox CEO James Murdoch, son of Rupert, to will help with the transition and integration. “James and I will be talking over the next number of months. He’s going to be integral to the integration process, and he and I will be discussing whether there is a role for him or not at our company,” Iger told ABC’s Good Morning America (where wife Willow Bay, the Dean of USC Annenberg, once worked as a correspondent).

In a week where another Australian billionaire, Frank Lowy, sold his Westfield shopping center empire, Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, stated that he was pleased to have Disney take the reins of the company he built over many decades:

“We are extremely proud of all that we have built at 21st Century Fox, and I firmly believe that this combination with Disney will unlock even more value for shareholders as the new Disney continues to set the pace in what is an exciting and dynamic industry. Furthermore, I’m convinced that this combination, under Bob Iger’s leadership, will be one of the greatest companies in the world. I’m grateful and encouraged that Bob has agreed to stay on, and is committed to succeeding with a combined team that is second to none.” 

As it shifts its resources into providing content and new brands for streaming video, games and live sports and entertainment, Disney will start playing hardball (as it famously does with distributors) by pulling its movies from Netflix in 2019 as it launches standalone streaming services. Iger told analysts that the new company won’t reach Netflix scale ‘quickly’ but is on track to be a major rival.

The deal will also augment Disney’s business in terms of new intellectual properties for movies, licensing, merchandise and branded attractions at its theme parks by adding X-Men, the Alien franchise, Predator, The X-Files, Avatar, Planet of the Apes, Ice Age, Family Guy, Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Futurama, and The Simpsons to a family that already includes Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel properties—all rich with possibilities from an IP and creative perspective.

As Disney noted in its press release, the acquisition creates a content “opportunity to reunite the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Deadpool with the Marvel family under one roof and create richer, more complex worlds of inter-related characters and stories that audiences have shown they love. The addition of Avatar to its family of films also promises expanded opportunities for consumers to watch and experience storytelling within these extraordinary fantasy worlds.”

“Already, guests at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort can experience the magic of Pandora—The World of Avatar, a new land inspired by the Fox film franchise that opened earlier this year. And through the incredible storytelling of National Geographic—whose mission is to explore and protect our planet and inspire new generations through education initiatives and resources—Disney will be able to offer more ways than ever before to bring kids and families the world and all that is in it.”

Merging the Fox and Disney TV studio operations brings in-house some of the most valuable TV series on television today: This Is Us, American Horror Story, Empire, Modern Family, The Simpsons and Family Guy, and from Disney’s ABC Studios TGIT (Thank God It’s Thursday shows by Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland) dramas, comedy Black-ish, Netflix’s Marvel series and Showtime’s breakout SMILF.

As for next steps, Disney may try to buy out Hulu co-owner Comcast (which once tried to acquire it) and minority stakeholder Time Warner to assume full control. Disney is acquiring Fox’s 30% stake in Hulu, which gives it more than 50% of the service to assume controlling ownership.

And while Disney is already a global behemoth with major holdings in Europe and Asia (including the recently opened Shanghai Disney Resort), ingesting these pieces of 21st Century Fox will leverage a rich stable of international businesses set-up by Murdoch.

“That kind of reach is all the more important as international revenue increasingly becomes a sine qua non for Hollywood,” opined Variety. “Across the Atlantic, the marriage will create an entertainment giant that owns a raft of channels and premium content, plus a partial – and potentially full – stake in pan-European pay-TV service Sky. Across the Pacific, the new entity will no doubt seek to exploit the two companies’ complementary strengths – Disney in film and Fox in TV – and minimize the areas where they currently compete.”

As the New York Times notes, “Disney now has enough muscle to become a true competitor to Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook in the fast-growing realm of online video. At the same time, the agreement means that one of moviedom’s most celebrated studios, 20th Century Fox, will be downsized, with some operations folded into Walt Disney Studios or refocused to make films designed for online distribution.”

Disney and Fox, pioneers in the entertainment industry, are rewriting the rules and reordering the global entertainment universe as media conglomeration reaches historic and unprecedented proportion—provided, of course, the deal passes regulatory hurdles.

Some of the coverage this morning, including by Disney- and Fox-owned media outlets:

The post Disney Cements Global Entertainment Powerhouse Status With Fox Deal appeared first on brandchannel:.