168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was a huge success as fans celebrated the emotional roller coaster of the group's final outing together. The MCU is back, baby! Although, if you think about it, was it ever really gone? Marvel has had its fair share of misses lately, but that's because it has been pumping out more content than ever before. It seems to have learned its lesson in that regard with far fewer projects on both the big and small screen releasing this year.
Guardians 3 has been lauded as the best MCU project since Endgame, and while that might be true, there have been plenty of other great Marvel films since Thanos was kicked to the curb. Shang-Chi was terrific, Wakanda Forever was fantastic, and No Way Home was a piece of cinematic superhero history. I'd say four hits on that scale in less than three years is a pretty good return, and I'm not even counting MCU TV shows that made waves like WandaVision and Loki.
Before I start sounding a little too much like an MCU apologist, there is something in this post-Endgame multiverse that has been annoying me about Marvel projects: villains. It's the quality of the baddies that have been introduced - I've loved a lot of the antagonists we've seen trying to fill The Mad Titan's shoes. What's annoying me is Marvel killing off so many of those villains before we've had much chance to see them in action.
That annoyance peaked when I went to see Guardians 3. Reviews shone a spotlight on just how good Chukwudi Iwuji was as The High Evolutionary, as Iwuji did a fantastic job of portraying a sadistic antagonist, unlike anything Marvel fans have seen in the MCU before. That's hard going considering the guy who came before killed trillions of people with a single snap of his fingers. Then, come the end of the movie, he was gone. Killed off by the Guardians on their way out of the MCU door.
Before The High Evolutionary, there was Gorr the God Butcher. A great performance by Christian Bale in a Thor movie that was otherwise critiqued by a lot of people who went to see it. While I can sort of understand The High Evolutionary not having a place in the MCU moving forward since his story and focus was built around Rocket, whose arc was closing with the end of the trilogy, Gorr's goal was to kill gods. Gods are presumably going to be a big part of the overarching story moving into phase five and beyond with Russell Crowe's Zeus still in play and Brett Goldstein as Hercules entering the fray. Gorr might have even had his goal tweaked, seeing anyone with superpowers as gods after tangling with Thor, who himself is a god.
I'm going to give some honorable mentions to Wanda and Kingpin/Wilson Fisk at this point. Honorable mentions because I'm fairly certain they'll be back - especially Fisk who kind of has to play a big part in Echo, and hopefully Daredevil Born Again too. That I feel the need to at least mention them should show you just how concerned I am, though. Marvel's willingness to throw aside a despicable villain played by an incredible actor has me lowkey worried that we might have seen the last of Wanda and Kingpin.
I get what Marvel is trying to do here. It's building the new Thanos as Kang starts to show up more frequently. That's probably about to become a very big problem, though. Jonathan Majors has been accused of some p♏retty heinous stꦜuff, and it's not looking good for the Kang actor. While there is clearly a plan for the MCU that extends beyond anything we have been told with Kang at its core (the next Avengers movie is called The Kang Dynasty, after all), perhaps if a few other big bads had been kept around for longer than a single movie, switching to a plan B would have been far simpler. Don't give me the “oh just make The High Evolutionary a Kang variant” solution, either. I've seen you talking about it on Twitter and I hope whatever Marvel's plan is should it cut ties with Majors is more inspired than that.
In fact, this feels like the right place to hope the multiverse isn't used as a crutch to turn someone else into Kang, or to bring back any of the above for that matter. There are a lot of fun things that can be done with a Marvel multiverse, like casting John Krasinski as Reed Richards so everyone finally stops asking for it. Lazily bringing people back with a “yeah this is just them from another universe” ain't it, though. That applies to Robery Downey Jnr. and Chris Evans as Iron Man and Captain America too. Let them rest. Whether there's a future for Majors' Kang in the MCU or not, I just hope that the next great villain introduced is more than just a one-movie distraction.