Do You Wish Marvel Had The Rights To All Their Characters From The Start?

[Detective Conan]

Let’s play this game: if you had an Infinity Guantlet and you had the power to alter history so Marvel had the rights to characters like FF and X-Men at the start of the MCU in 2008. Would you? Do you wish the MCU had the rights to its characters from the beginning or are you happy that things worked out the way they did? For me there is a side of me that wishes Marvel had the rights to Fantastic Four and X-Men sooner so I could see stuff Reed Richards and Tony Stark teaming up, or The Thing fighting savage Hulk, but at the same time the MCU arguably benefited from not having access to its A-list characters to rely on. Allowing them to elevate characters like Iron Man Captain America and Guardians Of The Galaxy. We never would’ve had movies like GOTG and Avengers if Marvel had access to characters like Wolverine from the start.

What’s your stance?

 

[psylockolussus]

No. Marvel ComiXs would have been bankrupt. Also personally, the 2000s cbms good or bad are reminders of those years especially X2. Dofp was a highlight for me in 2014 as well.

If I had the Infinity Gauntlet, I would just let the movie rights for all Spider-Man characters, Hulk and Namor revert to Marvel in 2014. And I would probably remove all Fox-Men movies after Days of Future Past in eXistence and replace them with X-Men 5 and 6 with the ot cast.

 

[Frodo]

Let’s play this game: if you had an infinity Guantlet and you had the power to alter history so Marvel had the rights to characters like FF and X-Men sooner. Would you? Do you wish Marvel had the rights to its characters from the beginning or are you happy that things worked out the way they did? For me there is a side of me that wishes Marvel had the rights to Fantastic Four and X-Men sooner so I could see stuff like a Reed Richards and Tony Stark interaction but at the same time the MCU arguably benefited from not having access to its A-list characters to rely on. Allowing them to elevate characters like Guardians Of The Galaxy.

What say you guys?

Interesting topic . As someone who's old enough to remember a world before The MCU , meaning the 80s and 90s, when Marvel based films left little to be desired , it's tough to say.

I guess it would depend on when you would start the clock in terms of beginning an MCU.

In alot of ways, The MCU benefitted from starting in the late 00's.

By 2008, the technology was more than sufficient to create the types of films they wanted to create.

By the 2010s, The GA and critics were open to characters that weren't named Batman, Superman, Spiderman, or the X Men, and were willing to go with smaller named characters ( to the GA mind you), like Iron Man, Thor, GOTG, etc.

The MCU also needed to arrive in a time when cbm were truly taken seriously as opposed to the dismissive attitude towards the majority of them in the 80s and 90s among the studio system, let alone the critics. In other words, they needed to come out in an era in which Superman 1 and 2, and Batman 89, weren't the only outliers.

Ultimately, timing played a huge role in helping the MCU be what it is. I think if they had attempted it in the 90s, or even early 2000s, it probably wouldn't have worked.

I'm not sure the ground would have been fertile for something that sprawling, expansive ,and ambitious, back then.

I mean, I would have preferred to see Feige and co handle F4 first, but then again, depending on when the MCU starts, they may not have been there to handle it, and a F4 may have still been underwhelming or bad like the 90s films and the two Tim Story films.

Again, having been around , I think things worked out for the best overall ,even if it meant we didn't those moments that we all would have loved to have seen.

I waited a long time to see the genre be what it is now, (Since the early 90s) but it was well worth the wait.

 

[SPO2 Dalisay]

The teams of B characters only came about because the A list was unavailable. Have Spider-Man from the start they would have settled for those billions

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Marvel Studios focused on their cinematic universe because all they really owned were the Avenger characters and GotG.

So building up phase 1 to 3 was a top priority. Without that narrow vision/goal I see things falling apart like Justice League.

 

[JeanGreyFan318]

In retrospect, no. It pushed the studio to really hunker down and dedicate themselves to producing quality projects with a B-List and C-List group of heroes. I’m sure it was frustrating not having access to the FF, Spidey, and mutants at first but look at what they were able to establish without them. It’s actually quite remarkable. Now that they’re all home (kinda) it’s just a giant gift to us all with a cherry on top.

 

[Fincher]

No, because I like the X-Men movies/television, and I don't care about them teaming up with the other Marvel characters.

 

[Iceman]

All’s well that ends well. Back then I would have preferred all the rights in one place but at least Marvel have them now and it’s not like we didn’t get some good films out of it.

 

[Venom 1988]

Yea Im gonna go with no on this as well. The MCU would have looked radically different and potentially not as good. Lesser known characters may have not gotten a chance to shine if they had the big guns from the start.

 

[ADollarADay]

Yes and no. But no is the correct answer.

Yes if Kevin Feige was in control at Marvel Studios in 2007 and had carte blanche to do what he wanted. Since that was not the case and Perlmutter was in charge then no is the correct answer. Marvel still doesn't have all of its rights back, but it really worked out for the best in the long haul.

 

[Darkprime]

The only characters I really wish they had access to at the start were Spider-Man and F4. Even when the first Avengers movie came out you could feel Spider-Man's absence in the movie. I kept imagining scenes with him fighting along side the Avengers. Same with F4. However I wouldn't say no to the X-Men if they had access to them or at least partial access back then. If I could have had one X-Men character appear in the Avengers it would have been Jackman's Wolverine. My one concern with the X-Men joining the MCU is its going to make the universe feel overly crowded. Because the X-Men is basically so big its a cinematic universe on its own. Like they wont be able to go one MCU movie without having an X-Men show up because it would be weird if they didn't. I'm not complaining that we are finally going to see the X-Men done right but i'm curious to see how Feige handles these kind of problems. Without it feeling like the X-Men are constantly being put into other characters movies just to remind us oh yea they're in the MCU now.

 

[PsylockeBlackWidow]

I def wanted Blade to join in all the fun too.

 

[Herofan]

On the one hand I do like the idea of Tony Stark maybe not having been so prominent and glorified, on the other the previous Marvel films having Marvel Studios-like tone and focus on crossover-ing is much more offputting.

To compromise or cheat, I would have been willing to give X-Men, Fantastic Four, maybe Spider-Man to Marvel Studios circa 2010 so we would be spared the intermediate other-studio-reboot (or quasi-reboot) versions.

 

[Lucky woman]

The main thing is that now the Marvels have all the rights to the heroes. And now we will only have to watch how they can develop the universe further ...

I def wanted Blade to join in all the fun too.

Has he joined yet?

 

[LivingBrocholy]

Yes as long it follows Kevin Feige vision


Some people here said that not having their A tier characters forced Marvel to do quality projects but Iron Man 1 was top notch and it was intended to merge it with Foxmen and Raimiverse.

 

[Docker2.0]

No, because I like the X-Men movies/television, and I don't care about them teaming up with the other Marvel characters.

 

[Chris B]

Personally, the Fantastic Four is really the only property I wish they had had from the beginning or at least had gotten back sooner.

I pretty much agree with the sentiment that them having access to the likes of Spider-Man and the X-Men from the beginning would've come at the expense of something like GOTG. I also can't help to think that the likes of the Avengers and Black Panther would've become lesser priorities.

 

[Spider-Fan83]

the main downside to not having rights to X-men from the beginning is that they weren't able to even establish the concept of Mutants earlier on (even if we didn't get a X-men movie in earlier phases, or any solo characters) trying to integrate them now into an already vastly developed world, seems like it might be kinda jarring

 

[Frodo]

Personally, the Fantastic Four is really the only property I wish they had had from the beginning or at least had gotten back sooner.

I pretty much agree with the sentiment that them having access to the likes of Spider-Man and the X-Men from the beginning would've come at the expense of something like GOTG. I also can't help to think that the likes of the Avengers and Black Panther would've become lesser priorities.

That's the thing.

When thinking about a "what if" type of scenario, you've got to look at things in the context of the times that they would have happened, not in the context of a world we wished existed.

Put another way, would a Marvel studios, in early 2000s really see GOTG, The Infinity saga, Black Panther, or even building to an Avengers team as a top priority?

It's easy to " yes" in the context of 2022, but you have to look at the world the way it was in 2000, and what execs and producers in 2000 would have felt should be top priorities.

More likely then not, they would have led with Spiderman, X Men, F4, Hulk , and perhaps Captain America, since those were the most popular characters then , which, wouldn't have been done yet, under this scenario.

Characters like Iron Man, Thor, GOTG, Black Panther, Antman, Doctor Strange etc., would probably be lower on their priority list or would likely come later than we got them.

 

[Batgirl0202]

That's the thing.

When thinking about a "what if" type of scenario, you've got to look at things in the context of the times that they would have happened, not in the context of a world we wished existed.

Put another way, would a Marvel studios, in early 2000s really see GOTG, The Infinity saga, Black Panther, or even building to an Avengers team as a top priority?

It's easy to " yes" in the context of 2022, but you have to look at the world the way it was in 2000, and what execs and producers in 2000 would have felt should be top priorities.

More likely then not, they would have led with Spiderman, X Men, F4, Hulk , and perhaps Captain America, since those were the most popular characters then , which, wouldn't have been done yet, under this scenario.

Characters like Iron Man, Thor, GOTG, Black Panther, Antman, Doctor Strange etc., would probably be lower on their priority list or would likely come later than we got them.

Agreed. Am I glad Marvel didn't have access to all their properties back in 2000? Pretty much.

However, do I wish Marvel/Disney had access to everything (including Spider-Man) today? Hell Ya!

 

[Frodo]

There's also the consideration of who would have been cast, directed, and written these films in the early 00s, in addition to what approach would have been taken with these films.

If you change the time frame for when these characters are all under one studio, that means those stories and casts also change. It's not like you get CATWS in 2004.

The films would have been different, and perhaps, not as good as what would come in the 2010s .
Without the same creative teams and minds together that produced the MCU we know, it might not work as well .

Even Putting aside what films would have been at the head of the queue, we would have gotten very different casts had Marvel "always had all the characters" in the early 00s.

There certainly wouldn't have been RDJ , and No evans as Cap etc.
Everyone would have been different.

Alot of the MCU success came from timing, everything coming together over the past decade, and for the ground to be fertile enough for a number of pieces to come together.

The conditions of the early 2000s don't give you the fertile ground to create the type of MCU that most fans today would have wanted.

 

[NeverReadComics]

I think the first three phases are so perfect that I wouldn't change a thing.

The issue is that with these characters arriving this late, with all that has gone before and with the powers that we have seen in the universe including the infinity stones, it's hard to see how the A stars can keep up.

This is why I have been saying in other posts that the multiverse allows them to go back in time, to go to another universe where the X Men and the Fantastic Four are the biggest superheroes, where the events of Phases 1-3 never happened, there's no Thanos to live up to, all our expectations are back to zero.

Then once these characters are established away from the pressures of the MCU we know, the universes could come crashing together. The biggest shame with this would be that the original crew are not there for finale but they've' had their moment.

 

[metaphysician]

Why, exactly, do the X-men have to be "the biggest superhero"? Why does a character have to be the Center of the Universe in order to have good stories told about them?

 

[NeverReadComics]

They don’t have to be the biggest but they do have to be vaguely impactful and, more importantly, given room to breath and grow.

Compare how empty the MCU when Iron Man was released to now.

 

[VictusMortuus]

Yes, but only if Feige was in complete control from the beginning.