After Wanda/Vision and MoM? Wanda took a way bigger hit than he did. At least he bounced back and had a well received showing in GotG3, Wanda went from everyone hating them turning her into a mindrape central to everyone hating that she's now just a cliche villain. They worked hard to make you not like Wanda.
They tried so hard to make people hate her, but people started to nope out of the MCU instead.
The people who hate her and are still seething about what she did tend to be the people who always hated her anyway.
>Spider-Man - Took three movies to get him to a vaguely Spider-Man place and in turn they have used up loads of his villains on multiverse shenanigans. The actor seems desperate to be taken seriously now but a series of his non-MCU work has failed. Sony are still trying to build their Spider-adjacent shit too. >Scarlet Witch - Did a lite House of M evil Wanda wankery since social media bubbles and clickbait stuff make it seem like everyone wants that. Repeated WandaVision plot lines albeit in a movie. They are talking about doing a movie for her but who cares? They'll tread over similar ground for desperate attempts at being shocking. >Dr Strange - Completely ignored his first movie and any set up, which is a pattern what a lot of these films do; they make you wait years for a sequel and then it feels like it ignores what happened previously, so why get invested? Multiverse shenanigans have been wasted. The theme of magic frickery and corruption, which could have been good, has been used in a kind of eh way.
And the sad thing is that ultimately I think OP is kinda right. Although the GotG still has some popularity and is perhaps up there, albeit more collectively.
>Scarlet Witch - Did a lite House of M evil Wanda wankery since social media bubbles and clickbait stuff make it seem like everyone wants that. Repeated WandaVision plot lines albeit in a movie.
If nothing else, this should have been a long overdue wake up call to them to stop paying attention to loud voices on comics social media, those people have consistently awful opinions and always want the absolute worst stories adapted into the MCU. For the love of God stop listening to those people and stop adapting any more event stories from this century.
>They are talking about doing a movie for her but who cares? They'll tread over similar ground for desperate attempts at being shocking.
It doesn't have to be a solo movie, but the longer they leave it to do any kind of damage control and work to fix her, the more anything they do will be too little, too late. They should have apologized for their mistake as soon as possible and announced something that would put things right, the more years go by the more people they lost because of this or any of their later screw ups are never coming back whatever happens, they've moved on with their lives. But because MoM made money they're happy with it, and there's not even so much as an admission of wrongdoing.
>If nothing else, this should have been a long overdue wake up call to them to stop paying attention to loud voices on comics social media, those people have consistently awful opinions and always want the absolute worst stories adapted into the MCU. For the love of God stop listening to those people and stop adapting any more event stories from this century.
I swear this shit. Go on any general nerd site and see their "recommended" comics lists and they'll mention some modern thing that was awful just because it was shocking, pissed off fans for the sake of it and therefore they decide it constitutes part of the important character history. I think there is a whole class of social media homosexuals who just enjoy repeating stuff like "did you know in House of M she did.." ad infinitum, until the literal heat death of the Universe. Sharing the same couple panels, as if this knowledge they know is some secret thing that makes them clever. It is the equivalent of someone reading the book before a movie adaptation so they can repeat ad nauseam to their friends, "this isn't like the book!" >but the longer they leave it to do any kind of damage control and work to fix her, >they've moved on with their lives
The MCU is fricking terrible at this because even if you like something they'll take fricking forever to follow up on it or ignore it because of their concrete plans and schedules. The fact that Black Panther did very well at the box office but they waited forever to try and follow it up, is just evidence of their infelixbility and inability to capitalise on anything. Why get invested at all.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>I swear this shit. Go on any general nerd site and see their "recommended" comics lists and they'll mention some modern thing that was awful just because it was shocking, pissed off fans for the sake of it and therefore they decide it constitutes part of the important character history.
The thing is, who even are these people? Go on any dedicated comic forum and stories like that are widely hated unless they're from the 80s or earlier and were cape comics' early, formative attempts at big shocking stories where someone dies or turns evil. Who are these people passing themselves off as hardcore super-fans but all they do is just talk into their social media echo chambers about how "important" a load of awful event books are because of how much damage they did.
>The MCU is fricking terrible at this because even if you like something they'll take fricking forever to follow up on it or ignore it because of their concrete plans and schedules. The fact that Black Panther did very well at the box office but they waited forever to try and follow it up, is just evidence of their infelixbility and inability to capitalise on anything. Why get invested at all.
Ant-Man 2 getting greenlit and made as fast as it did is maybe the one and only exception to this.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>The thing is, who even are these people?
Tumblr. Literally that is who it is. Tumblr. The overlap is uncanny. The whole 2010s diversity push was aimed at this audience and it partly tricked the Big 2 into thinking they were making head way because if you searched on tumblr you'd find people taking out of context panels and dissecting them. People on tumblr would take one random thing as justification for their gay ship or weird fanfic.
If you want to talk about who they are more deeply, they are part of the modern day identity crisis (no not the comic event) that is taking place. There is a desperate attempt to shackle who you are on the stuff you consume and online forums enable people to fight for fleeting dominance. Knowing x comic fact, even if gleamed from random panel, Youtube or wiki is like currency in this fleeting dominance over one another. Everyone wants to appear more intelligent than the other but really it is people taking specific interpretations from others specific interpretations.
The problem overall with this for comic books is that fans drink from a smaller and smaller pool. No one goes off the beaten track to read all the different runs in a character's history, they read the recommended list and all come away with the same ideas. Wanda = House of M. It is inescapable. We have all this content but no one wants to read it beyond noticing it as a footnote on a fan wiki. For all they know it could be made up. People don't want to experience reading or watching something, they have outsourced that to Youtubers. We have too much content now and too much of it is shit, and people feel constant FOMO too. It is a mess. I could go on ranting.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>Tumblr. Literally that is who it is. Tumblr.
They've ruined everything, haven't they?
>People don't want to experience reading or watching something, they have outsourced that to Youtubers.
This is so true, and so desperately sad. We have to go back.
>It is a mess. I could go on ranting.
Keep going, you're articulating this a lot better than I've seen done anywhere before.
4 months ago
Anonymous
Social media as a whole has been detrimental to people. We aren't built for it psychologically. The power of likes or how it changes how we communicate inevitably leads to the same outcomes, same conflicts etc. It also completely wrecks our attention spans. All this has changed our behaviours. People on tumblr would act like a Joss Whedon movie. Every thing had to be undercut with a joke or a quip or that sort of clever retort. Everything is a shifting identity we can slip on and off.
We are no longer in a state of this movie vs that movie but a battle for attention spans. Why read a comic when you can play vidya or watch streaming shows or Youtube? Youtube has taken over friends talking about stuff. Youtubers rely on parasocial relationships with their viewers and supposed authencity. Youtubers with fake emotions (like overreacting to a horror video game) seem more real to people. But Youtube is all heightened reality and people then copy this fakeness. It is really desperate how people need someone else reading a wiki or a singular comic book and regurgitating that information back at them. General life has made people numb where by their opinions are either it is cool with no descriptive reason or alternatively endlessly criticism as given to them by a Youtuber.
Emotional dysregulation born from all this means people either overreact or become desensitized. People cling onto these interests, cling onto them like a raft while adrift in a storm, all while being able, via the Internet, to put no effort into them. You don't have to go to shop to get a comic. You don't have to experience anything. You sit at home and get all the perceived benefits of things without actually doing them. Same as taking a photo and using filters to change it. And then the creators all exist in these social media bubbles and only ever see or react to things with strong emotions. They want to drive FOMO or piss people off even when these things end up biting them back.
4 months ago
Anonymous
It's funny because it's getting pretty clear that what Brevoort said isn't working anymore
Secret Empire was one of their worst-performing events
4 months ago
Anonymous
What I find amazing is they steadily began to say they weren't doing that anymore and Tom claimed that he regreted ever saying these comments. One of the reasons for this was a meeting with retailers (comic shop owners) where they just laid into the slump they were feeling. They said they would be rolling back to the original characters again. David Gabriel, a Marvel executive, openly said the diversity push may have gone too far: >https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/03/marvel-executive-says-emphasis-on-diversity-may-have-alienated-readers
Did they learn their lesson? Nope. Because then he backtracked his comments. And then boom, you get some shit like the New Warriors annoucement with Snowflake and Safespace years later. How the frick people can't learn their lesson even after retailers telling them in person it was bad.
Back in college, me and my best buds would play Tabletop games in person, but now in adulthood I can only socialize with some over Tabletop Simulator, random phonecalls, etc. because I was the only one to get a great, flexible, WFH hybrid job. My work colleagues are nice, but it feels different. I went to a local tabletop/comic book store and made some new friends, but scheduling is a pain in the ass. I miss having friends with similar interests that lived a few doors down.
>I miss having friends with similar interests that lived a few doors down.
Yeah man this modern alienation is something that we all have to fight against. I really feel as if all these battles over pop culture are ultimately connected to this feeling we have. It almost boils down to everyone being constantly misunderstood and screaming in to the void.
4 months ago
Anonymous
I think what happened was they thought they could pull a fast one but they didn't expect COVID, Angry Youtubers, and all the other shit that happened
Like Brevoort was claiming people still buy Amazing Spider-Man despite hating it, but it's not a provable statement since we don't know how many were buying it, or if they bought it for the Disney variants or whatever
He was saying people bought Avengers in spite of people hating it but you can actually see a decline in Bendis' Avengers by the 2010s and it still continued with subsequent runs, even though this was when the MCU was at its height
4 months ago
Anonymous
Back in college, me and my best buds would play Tabletop games in person, but now in adulthood I can only socialize with some over Tabletop Simulator, random phonecalls, etc. because I was the only one to get a great, flexible, WFH hybrid job. My work colleagues are nice, but it feels different. I went to a local tabletop/comic book store and made some new friends, but scheduling is a pain in the ass. I miss having friends with similar interests that lived a few doors down.
It's weird to think how they fumbled the bag so easily whan they had a clear lineup for a post-Endgame era Avengers. T'Challa, Strange, Wanda, Spider-Man, Capt. Marvel, or a similar variation could have given them core characters for the audience to follow but multiple factors came and fricked them over. Altough Strange, Wanda and Carol were just straight bad writing so idk.
Carol was never going to be a thing and it's time to stop pretending. Not because of wokeism or even because she's an inherently boring character with no stories or gimmicks beyond having an alien cat, but rather for the same reasons as Eternals not catching on.
It's just a much harder sell to say "this really powerful hero could've solved half the universe but they were off camera and not able to intervene because reasons"
>an inherently boring character
I legitimately don't understand what direction Brie Larson got. It is like they wanted her to be both Captain America and Iron Man in one. They want her to have a cool, calm confidence but she can't exude that. While they also wanted her to be like Iron Man because she is a fighter pilot ala Top Gun and she needs to be a kinda douche too. It misunderstands what people liked about either of those characters. They always mistake being a badass with being an overcompensating douche. And really she should have been like one of them fully instead of a bipolar mix. I actually think this is a symptom of wider society where so many of the social media c**ts that people like aren't "confident badasses" but overcompensating douches, so people mistake what being a bad ass is.
Spiderman is probably up there. Strange's last movie and the direction his story is going was fricking terrible. No one's ever given a shit about Wanda as a character, her actress is just hot. Her story is some of the worst shit going on in the MCU.
I'd say all the Guardians are probably in the top spots. Hard to think of anyone else most don't have complaints about.
This is the OP question: >Are these the most popular characters of the current MCU?
The problem with threads like these is people get really semantic over the word popular. Popular ultimately has a component of money, merchandising and other things. People like Paul Rudd. But Ant Man isn't as popular. So I don't know how this is a seperate discussion.
>The problem with threads like these is people get really semantic over the word popular.
This reminds me of all the threads that conflate what's going on with the comics with overall popularity when they are pratically always separate.
>The problem with threads like these is people get really semantic over the word popular.
This reminds me of all the threads that conflate what's going on with the comics with overall popularity when they are pratically always separate.
also i don't trust anyone who spends free time here to know what the normal popular opinion is
>also i don't trust anyone who spends free time here to know what the normal popular opinion is
Even someone outside of this place might have a difficulty because of social media bubbles not being a good indicator of anything. Given that X-Men and Spider-Man used to be the big hitters at Marvel but the MCU didn't have access to them and made Iron Man the new biggest, shows you that really a lot of this stuff is up in the air. I think a lot of the "who is the most popular" relies on stuff like "who has loads of extra adaptations/cartoons" etc, but this is a self-fulfilling thing where those with the most cartoons will get more exposure and in turn probably cause more adaptations down the line. And all it really takes is someone to vaguely give a shit, hire some actors people like to make a series popular. Hence why GotG 3 actually did alright compared to their other recent movies.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>Even someone outside of this place might have a difficulty because of social media bubbles not being a good indicator of anything. Given that X-Men and Spider-Man used to be the big hitters at Marvel
You can tell how few people here spend any time talking to anyone about this stuff outside of comics forums and comics corners of social media by the way so many anons are insistent that the X-Men are STILL Marvel's other big gun alongside Spider-Man, and still bigger than any of the MCU characters.
4 months ago
Anonymous
X-Men has been in decline for so many years even without the Perlmutter Inhuman push. (And I am an X-Men fan.) We are getting X-Men '97 this year (was meant to come out last year but was pushed back) so that'll be a real litmus test on whether more general audiences still care. Sure it has nostalgia on its side being a sequel to the '90s series but obviously it has been *updated*. They have already greenlit a season 2 so it seems like they are banking on it being a success. We also have Insomniac doing the Wolverine game and then they have planned multiple X-Men games. The comics will soon be in a post-Krakoa situation. And then their eventually addition to the MCU. The X push is coming, whether or not it'll be good or work, who knows.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>We are getting X-Men '97 this year (was meant to come out last year but was pushed back) so that'll be a real litmus test on whether more general audiences still care.
It's a cartoon, and not an "adult cartoon". It's probably not going to get adult audiences other than nostalgic 90s kids. It'll be a test of whether kids care, but how much are kids even watching old Marvel action cartoons on Disney+ compared with more modern cartoons on there?
4 months ago
Anonymous
When I said "more general audiences", emphasis on the more, it was in the context of the post I was replying to saying that some anons insist X-Men are still big. The "more general" part here was audiences outside of this place. I wasn't trying to suggest it was a cartoon for general audiences overall. >It's a cartoon, and not an "adult cartoon".
Really depends if they get the tone right. Even the '90s series, in following some arcs, felt more "adult" while still being a kids cartoon. >It's probably not going to get adult audiences other than nostalgic 90s kids.
Indeed. >It'll be a test of whether kids care, but how much are kids even watching old Marvel action cartoons on Disney+ compared with more modern cartoons on there?
I mean, considering what you just said prior about it mostly getting the '90s kids audience, not sure how this is relevant. I agree it probably isn't going to get kids watching unless it also has a decent jumping on point.
But like I was saying, that show is really a spearhead of the coming X push. It is a litmus test in terms of if they know what the Hell they are doing with the X-Men. And given their recent track record, it isn't something to get your hopes up about.
Behind of those 3 but still solid, even if Quantumania flopped. Scott has charisma and a good chunk of past moments on his side, he's always a highlight in Avengers movies so he just needs one good showing for people to go and say "Ant-Man is cool again" even though he was never the problem in Quantumania.
The daughter really dragged the film down. But it's nothing that couldn't have been solved with some better writing, make her realize that she's kind of a shit and should be more appreciative of her father while also coming to a mutual understanding with him that she just wants to be the hero she's always seen him as. The execution was very lacking, and I can't help but feel it's a core writing/narrative problem with the MCU as a whole.
Jesus Christ, she complained about him once and immediately apologized, and they were in good terms for the rest of the movie. Cinemaphile makes it sound like she was nagging him for her entire screen time.
>Spider-Man - Took three movies to get him to a vaguely Spider-Man place and in turn they have used up loads of his villains on multiverse shenanigans. The actor seems desperate to be taken seriously now but a series of his non-MCU work has failed. Sony are still trying to build their Spider-adjacent shit too. >Scarlet Witch - Did a lite House of M evil Wanda wankery since social media bubbles and clickbait stuff make it seem like everyone wants that. Repeated WandaVision plot lines albeit in a movie. They are talking about doing a movie for her but who cares? They'll tread over similar ground for desperate attempts at being shocking. >Dr Strange - Completely ignored his first movie and any set up, which is a pattern what a lot of these films do; they make you wait years for a sequel and then it feels like it ignores what happened previously, so why get invested? Multiverse shenanigans have been wasted. The theme of magic frickery and corruption, which could have been good, has been used in a kind of eh way.
And the sad thing is that ultimately I think OP is kinda right. Although the GotG still has some popularity and is perhaps up there, albeit more collectively.
Spidey will always be popular. All the Sony Spider-Man movies will continue to print money.
Even the Garfield Spidey movies made more money than most of the solo MCU movies, when you adjust them for inflation to today's dollars, over even inflation adjusted everything else save for the Manletman triology and even the most popular of the Thor movies. civil war doesn't count as a solo Cap outing, since it's essentially Avengers 2.5.
>the most popular characters of the current MCU
Wanda had a popular tv show; she didn't help Strange's box office the same way the Sony verse spiderman helped the last Holland movie, so no.
Strange is probably better known to normies but 'most popular' meaning they really like him? I don't think so.
Trying to build a film franchise around big crossover events when you're basing it off a comic property that has had almost universally hated big crossover events outside of the one you already adapted and also you still haven't introduced the Fantastic Four who are like the catalyst for most of these just seems like you're asking for audiences to lose interest.
I would argue Star Lord is more popular than Wanda
Not after Infinity War he isn't.
After Wanda/Vision and MoM? Wanda took a way bigger hit than he did. At least he bounced back and had a well received showing in GotG3, Wanda went from everyone hating them turning her into a mindrape central to everyone hating that she's now just a cliche villain. They worked hard to make you not like Wanda.
And yet people still like her.
Because her pain stems from her desire for family, and her children. Which is a more universal drive than feminists screeching about inequality.
They tried so hard to make people hate her, but people started to nope out of the MCU instead.
The people who hate her and are still seething about what she did tend to be the people who always hated her anyway.
>Scarlet Witch - Did a lite House of M evil Wanda wankery since social media bubbles and clickbait stuff make it seem like everyone wants that. Repeated WandaVision plot lines albeit in a movie.
If nothing else, this should have been a long overdue wake up call to them to stop paying attention to loud voices on comics social media, those people have consistently awful opinions and always want the absolute worst stories adapted into the MCU. For the love of God stop listening to those people and stop adapting any more event stories from this century.
>They are talking about doing a movie for her but who cares? They'll tread over similar ground for desperate attempts at being shocking.
It doesn't have to be a solo movie, but the longer they leave it to do any kind of damage control and work to fix her, the more anything they do will be too little, too late. They should have apologized for their mistake as soon as possible and announced something that would put things right, the more years go by the more people they lost because of this or any of their later screw ups are never coming back whatever happens, they've moved on with their lives. But because MoM made money they're happy with it, and there's not even so much as an admission of wrongdoing.
>If nothing else, this should have been a long overdue wake up call to them to stop paying attention to loud voices on comics social media, those people have consistently awful opinions and always want the absolute worst stories adapted into the MCU. For the love of God stop listening to those people and stop adapting any more event stories from this century.
I swear this shit. Go on any general nerd site and see their "recommended" comics lists and they'll mention some modern thing that was awful just because it was shocking, pissed off fans for the sake of it and therefore they decide it constitutes part of the important character history. I think there is a whole class of social media homosexuals who just enjoy repeating stuff like "did you know in House of M she did.." ad infinitum, until the literal heat death of the Universe. Sharing the same couple panels, as if this knowledge they know is some secret thing that makes them clever. It is the equivalent of someone reading the book before a movie adaptation so they can repeat ad nauseam to their friends, "this isn't like the book!"
>but the longer they leave it to do any kind of damage control and work to fix her,
>they've moved on with their lives
The MCU is fricking terrible at this because even if you like something they'll take fricking forever to follow up on it or ignore it because of their concrete plans and schedules. The fact that Black Panther did very well at the box office but they waited forever to try and follow it up, is just evidence of their infelixbility and inability to capitalise on anything. Why get invested at all.
>I swear this shit. Go on any general nerd site and see their "recommended" comics lists and they'll mention some modern thing that was awful just because it was shocking, pissed off fans for the sake of it and therefore they decide it constitutes part of the important character history.
The thing is, who even are these people? Go on any dedicated comic forum and stories like that are widely hated unless they're from the 80s or earlier and were cape comics' early, formative attempts at big shocking stories where someone dies or turns evil. Who are these people passing themselves off as hardcore super-fans but all they do is just talk into their social media echo chambers about how "important" a load of awful event books are because of how much damage they did.
>The MCU is fricking terrible at this because even if you like something they'll take fricking forever to follow up on it or ignore it because of their concrete plans and schedules. The fact that Black Panther did very well at the box office but they waited forever to try and follow it up, is just evidence of their infelixbility and inability to capitalise on anything. Why get invested at all.
Ant-Man 2 getting greenlit and made as fast as it did is maybe the one and only exception to this.
>The thing is, who even are these people?
Tumblr. Literally that is who it is. Tumblr. The overlap is uncanny. The whole 2010s diversity push was aimed at this audience and it partly tricked the Big 2 into thinking they were making head way because if you searched on tumblr you'd find people taking out of context panels and dissecting them. People on tumblr would take one random thing as justification for their gay ship or weird fanfic.
If you want to talk about who they are more deeply, they are part of the modern day identity crisis (no not the comic event) that is taking place. There is a desperate attempt to shackle who you are on the stuff you consume and online forums enable people to fight for fleeting dominance. Knowing x comic fact, even if gleamed from random panel, Youtube or wiki is like currency in this fleeting dominance over one another. Everyone wants to appear more intelligent than the other but really it is people taking specific interpretations from others specific interpretations.
The problem overall with this for comic books is that fans drink from a smaller and smaller pool. No one goes off the beaten track to read all the different runs in a character's history, they read the recommended list and all come away with the same ideas. Wanda = House of M. It is inescapable. We have all this content but no one wants to read it beyond noticing it as a footnote on a fan wiki. For all they know it could be made up. People don't want to experience reading or watching something, they have outsourced that to Youtubers. We have too much content now and too much of it is shit, and people feel constant FOMO too. It is a mess. I could go on ranting.
>Tumblr. Literally that is who it is. Tumblr.
They've ruined everything, haven't they?
>People don't want to experience reading or watching something, they have outsourced that to Youtubers.
This is so true, and so desperately sad. We have to go back.
>It is a mess. I could go on ranting.
Keep going, you're articulating this a lot better than I've seen done anywhere before.
Social media as a whole has been detrimental to people. We aren't built for it psychologically. The power of likes or how it changes how we communicate inevitably leads to the same outcomes, same conflicts etc. It also completely wrecks our attention spans. All this has changed our behaviours. People on tumblr would act like a Joss Whedon movie. Every thing had to be undercut with a joke or a quip or that sort of clever retort. Everything is a shifting identity we can slip on and off.
We are no longer in a state of this movie vs that movie but a battle for attention spans. Why read a comic when you can play vidya or watch streaming shows or Youtube? Youtube has taken over friends talking about stuff. Youtubers rely on parasocial relationships with their viewers and supposed authencity. Youtubers with fake emotions (like overreacting to a horror video game) seem more real to people. But Youtube is all heightened reality and people then copy this fakeness. It is really desperate how people need someone else reading a wiki or a singular comic book and regurgitating that information back at them. General life has made people numb where by their opinions are either it is cool with no descriptive reason or alternatively endlessly criticism as given to them by a Youtuber.
Emotional dysregulation born from all this means people either overreact or become desensitized. People cling onto these interests, cling onto them like a raft while adrift in a storm, all while being able, via the Internet, to put no effort into them. You don't have to go to shop to get a comic. You don't have to experience anything. You sit at home and get all the perceived benefits of things without actually doing them. Same as taking a photo and using filters to change it. And then the creators all exist in these social media bubbles and only ever see or react to things with strong emotions. They want to drive FOMO or piss people off even when these things end up biting them back.
It's funny because it's getting pretty clear that what Brevoort said isn't working anymore
Secret Empire was one of their worst-performing events
What I find amazing is they steadily began to say they weren't doing that anymore and Tom claimed that he regreted ever saying these comments. One of the reasons for this was a meeting with retailers (comic shop owners) where they just laid into the slump they were feeling. They said they would be rolling back to the original characters again. David Gabriel, a Marvel executive, openly said the diversity push may have gone too far:
>https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/03/marvel-executive-says-emphasis-on-diversity-may-have-alienated-readers
Did they learn their lesson? Nope. Because then he backtracked his comments. And then boom, you get some shit like the New Warriors annoucement with Snowflake and Safespace years later. How the frick people can't learn their lesson even after retailers telling them in person it was bad.
>I miss having friends with similar interests that lived a few doors down.
Yeah man this modern alienation is something that we all have to fight against. I really feel as if all these battles over pop culture are ultimately connected to this feeling we have. It almost boils down to everyone being constantly misunderstood and screaming in to the void.
I think what happened was they thought they could pull a fast one but they didn't expect COVID, Angry Youtubers, and all the other shit that happened
Like Brevoort was claiming people still buy Amazing Spider-Man despite hating it, but it's not a provable statement since we don't know how many were buying it, or if they bought it for the Disney variants or whatever
He was saying people bought Avengers in spite of people hating it but you can actually see a decline in Bendis' Avengers by the 2010s and it still continued with subsequent runs, even though this was when the MCU was at its height
Back in college, me and my best buds would play Tabletop games in person, but now in adulthood I can only socialize with some over Tabletop Simulator, random phonecalls, etc. because I was the only one to get a great, flexible, WFH hybrid job. My work colleagues are nice, but it feels different. I went to a local tabletop/comic book store and made some new friends, but scheduling is a pain in the ass. I miss having friends with similar interests that lived a few doors down.
The hell gave you that idea?
GOTG3 making $850M
Star Lord isn't even the most popular character in his own series so that's a terrible conclusion to make.
No one said he's the most popular character ever, he said he's more popular than Wanda.
I don't think Strange is that popular, the Guardians or Thor maybe
>I don't think Strange is that popular
He has the highest grossing non-Spiderman post-Endgame film.
If you need more than one qualifier that speaks for itself.
Sounds like cope.
It's weird to think how they fumbled the bag so easily whan they had a clear lineup for a post-Endgame era Avengers. T'Challa, Strange, Wanda, Spider-Man, Capt. Marvel, or a similar variation could have given them core characters for the audience to follow but multiple factors came and fricked them over. Altough Strange, Wanda and Carol were just straight bad writing so idk.
Carol was never going to be a thing and it's time to stop pretending. Not because of wokeism or even because she's an inherently boring character with no stories or gimmicks beyond having an alien cat, but rather for the same reasons as Eternals not catching on.
It's just a much harder sell to say "this really powerful hero could've solved half the universe but they were off camera and not able to intervene because reasons"
Tell that to
I don't respond to the obvious and low effort bait that is Carolgays.
>an inherently boring character
I legitimately don't understand what direction Brie Larson got. It is like they wanted her to be both Captain America and Iron Man in one. They want her to have a cool, calm confidence but she can't exude that. While they also wanted her to be like Iron Man because she is a fighter pilot ala Top Gun and she needs to be a kinda douche too. It misunderstands what people liked about either of those characters. They always mistake being a badass with being an overcompensating douche. And really she should have been like one of them fully instead of a bipolar mix. I actually think this is a symptom of wider society where so many of the social media c**ts that people like aren't "confident badasses" but overcompensating douches, so people mistake what being a bad ass is.
Fricking, hell I always envisioned Black Panther (still T'challa), Dr Strange and Captain Marvel to be the new Big 3 after Iron Man, Cap and Thor.
Something like that was their plan, it all went down by several factors.
>T'challa
Boseman died
>Carol
Fricked right away by a lame first film
>Spidey
Disney acted in a way so moronic that now they can't even mention him hithout paying Pascal
>Strange
Honestly just sheer incompetence and bad writing, same as Wanda.
Strange could carry if they weren't moronic.
Carol is
Spiderman is probably up there. Strange's last movie and the direction his story is going was fricking terrible. No one's ever given a shit about Wanda as a character, her actress is just hot. Her story is some of the worst shit going on in the MCU.
I'd say all the Guardians are probably in the top spots. Hard to think of anyone else most don't have complaints about.
>Wanda
Not even the most popular female hero of the MCU.
If you say it's Carol we're all going to laugh at you.
What about Ant-Man?
Quantumania flopped.
That's a separate discussion/issue. People still like Scott
This is the OP question:
>Are these the most popular characters of the current MCU?
The problem with threads like these is people get really semantic over the word popular. Popular ultimately has a component of money, merchandising and other things. People like Paul Rudd. But Ant Man isn't as popular. So I don't know how this is a seperate discussion.
>The problem with threads like these is people get really semantic over the word popular.
This reminds me of all the threads that conflate what's going on with the comics with overall popularity when they are pratically always separate.
also i don't trust anyone who spends free time here to know what the normal popular opinion is
>also i don't trust anyone who spends free time here to know what the normal popular opinion is
Even someone outside of this place might have a difficulty because of social media bubbles not being a good indicator of anything. Given that X-Men and Spider-Man used to be the big hitters at Marvel but the MCU didn't have access to them and made Iron Man the new biggest, shows you that really a lot of this stuff is up in the air. I think a lot of the "who is the most popular" relies on stuff like "who has loads of extra adaptations/cartoons" etc, but this is a self-fulfilling thing where those with the most cartoons will get more exposure and in turn probably cause more adaptations down the line. And all it really takes is someone to vaguely give a shit, hire some actors people like to make a series popular. Hence why GotG 3 actually did alright compared to their other recent movies.
>Even someone outside of this place might have a difficulty because of social media bubbles not being a good indicator of anything. Given that X-Men and Spider-Man used to be the big hitters at Marvel
You can tell how few people here spend any time talking to anyone about this stuff outside of comics forums and comics corners of social media by the way so many anons are insistent that the X-Men are STILL Marvel's other big gun alongside Spider-Man, and still bigger than any of the MCU characters.
X-Men has been in decline for so many years even without the Perlmutter Inhuman push. (And I am an X-Men fan.) We are getting X-Men '97 this year (was meant to come out last year but was pushed back) so that'll be a real litmus test on whether more general audiences still care. Sure it has nostalgia on its side being a sequel to the '90s series but obviously it has been *updated*. They have already greenlit a season 2 so it seems like they are banking on it being a success. We also have Insomniac doing the Wolverine game and then they have planned multiple X-Men games. The comics will soon be in a post-Krakoa situation. And then their eventually addition to the MCU. The X push is coming, whether or not it'll be good or work, who knows.
>We are getting X-Men '97 this year (was meant to come out last year but was pushed back) so that'll be a real litmus test on whether more general audiences still care.
It's a cartoon, and not an "adult cartoon". It's probably not going to get adult audiences other than nostalgic 90s kids. It'll be a test of whether kids care, but how much are kids even watching old Marvel action cartoons on Disney+ compared with more modern cartoons on there?
When I said "more general audiences", emphasis on the more, it was in the context of the post I was replying to saying that some anons insist X-Men are still big. The "more general" part here was audiences outside of this place. I wasn't trying to suggest it was a cartoon for general audiences overall.
>It's a cartoon, and not an "adult cartoon".
Really depends if they get the tone right. Even the '90s series, in following some arcs, felt more "adult" while still being a kids cartoon.
>It's probably not going to get adult audiences other than nostalgic 90s kids.
Indeed.
>It'll be a test of whether kids care, but how much are kids even watching old Marvel action cartoons on Disney+ compared with more modern cartoons on there?
I mean, considering what you just said prior about it mostly getting the '90s kids audience, not sure how this is relevant. I agree it probably isn't going to get kids watching unless it also has a decent jumping on point.
But like I was saying, that show is really a spearhead of the coming X push. It is a litmus test in terms of if they know what the Hell they are doing with the X-Men. And given their recent track record, it isn't something to get your hopes up about.
Behind of those 3 but still solid, even if Quantumania flopped. Scott has charisma and a good chunk of past moments on his side, he's always a highlight in Avengers movies so he just needs one good showing for people to go and say "Ant-Man is cool again" even though he was never the problem in Quantumania.
Scott was, and still is cool. In fact he's one of the biggest heroes of the entire series given his actions/role
The daughter really dragged the film down. But it's nothing that couldn't have been solved with some better writing, make her realize that she's kind of a shit and should be more appreciative of her father while also coming to a mutual understanding with him that she just wants to be the hero she's always seen him as. The execution was very lacking, and I can't help but feel it's a core writing/narrative problem with the MCU as a whole.
>make her realize that she's kind of a shit
Jesus Christ, she complained about him once and immediately apologized, and they were in good terms for the rest of the movie. Cinemaphile makes it sound like she was nagging him for her entire screen time.
Rocket
Spider-Man
Thor
In that order.
Unfortunately yes,Marvel turned to shit after Far From Home,these are the only mildly interesting characters left.
>Spider-Man - Took three movies to get him to a vaguely Spider-Man place and in turn they have used up loads of his villains on multiverse shenanigans. The actor seems desperate to be taken seriously now but a series of his non-MCU work has failed. Sony are still trying to build their Spider-adjacent shit too.
>Scarlet Witch - Did a lite House of M evil Wanda wankery since social media bubbles and clickbait stuff make it seem like everyone wants that. Repeated WandaVision plot lines albeit in a movie. They are talking about doing a movie for her but who cares? They'll tread over similar ground for desperate attempts at being shocking.
>Dr Strange - Completely ignored his first movie and any set up, which is a pattern what a lot of these films do; they make you wait years for a sequel and then it feels like it ignores what happened previously, so why get invested? Multiverse shenanigans have been wasted. The theme of magic frickery and corruption, which could have been good, has been used in a kind of eh way.
And the sad thing is that ultimately I think OP is kinda right. Although the GotG still has some popularity and is perhaps up there, albeit more collectively.
Spidey will always be popular. All the Sony Spider-Man movies will continue to print money.
Even the Garfield Spidey movies made more money than most of the solo MCU movies, when you adjust them for inflation to today's dollars, over even inflation adjusted everything else save for the Manletman triology and even the most popular of the Thor movies. civil war doesn't count as a solo Cap outing, since it's essentially Avengers 2.5.
>the most popular characters of the current MCU
Wanda had a popular tv show; she didn't help Strange's box office the same way the Sony verse spiderman helped the last Holland movie, so no.
Strange is probably better known to normies but 'most popular' meaning they really like him? I don't think so.
Thor is still really popular thanks to Hemsworth. Ladies love his bod and guys love Extraction 2.
Peter, Rocket, Daredevil
>Wanda
Not after they went out their way to sabotage her, no.
not idea what is strange doing there, but peter is only liked by self-inserters and yeah wanda is the one with more waifugays
Trying to build a film franchise around big crossover events when you're basing it off a comic property that has had almost universally hated big crossover events outside of the one you already adapted and also you still haven't introduced the Fantastic Four who are like the catalyst for most of these just seems like you're asking for audiences to lose interest.