Odds of the MCU rebooting?
 

Alright, with the general recent failures and the decision to make the upcoming Spider-Man cartoon a standalone project instead on an MCU-adjacent project, what are the odds of a clean reboot here? And you know, let's not forget, the MCU itself is a reboot, or rather an umbrella containing reboots.

0%. We're nowhere near there yet. Worst case they still have the option of refocusing things on the actors/characters people want. A reboot is a gigantic gamble. If they screw that up then they have nothing.

nope they aren't gonna reboot anytime soon. They got their formula and they are gonna stick to it

I'd say give it at least another 10 years. They will obviously have to reboot eventually due to the aging actors and several of the big heroes already gone (like Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Black Panther, Hawkeye (retired), etc).

But they'll ride it out for another 10 years probably, due to Fantastic Four and X-men. But I think after that they'll do a reboot, or rather, they have to. You can't expect another 10-15 years when half the actors or characters are either too old or done with.

The MCU might have to reboot if they want to continue their pace because a lot their main Avenger cast members don't want to return.

Also, Black Panther 2, Wanda-Vision, She-Hulk, The Marvels. etc. sounded like they didn't do as good at the box office & Disney+ as they hoped they would.

They have to abandon their stupid idea of characters needing to age out with their actors. That just has to go, period. I think they'll figure this out more sooner than later, now that nobody cares about their diversity nobodies. But they've already got their hooks into saddling most of the mains with kids now.

None of the kids (and I use that loosely, most of them are in their 20's or older lol), can hold a movie like the original cast. They'll all be box office bombs. We're already seeing the outcome of that.

It'll be interesting to see the MCU reboot because Marvel have always prided themselves on not just doing what DC does in comics every five years and reboot.

The only time they've ever altered their timeline permanently was when they retconned Spider-Man's marriage, and even then they still have a few characters like Deadpool remember the original timeline just in case

I would imagine that the MCU would get rebooted at some point, All the multiversal stuff going on is probably going to cause a huge reset of the MCU.

This happens with the comics, the universes in the DC and Marvel get reset at some point.

The only thing is, comic characters don't age. Robert and all the Chrises aren't getting any younger.

Hence the need to be open to recasting. Feige's insistence on letting the characters age and grow old with their actors has got to go... and is also pretty dubious. Like, the plan had to be everyone will get hooked with the core Marvel superheroes... then start swapping in the diversity C-tier characters and hope nobody loses interest. It didn't work.

True the current approach isn’t working but maybe they just chose the wrong replacements. She-Hulk, Lady Thor, Cassie, Sam-Cap, Echo, Agatha…tf were they thinking?

X-Men, Ghost Rider, Doom, Silver Surfer, Blade. With all the re-shooting and rearranging they do, I’m inclined to believe they could have introduced the Fox characters sooner.

And then sure you recast eventually but there are ways to string out a solid continuity longer if you choose the right pieces. Then maybe we can just re-cast all at once for a new “universe” reboot. Probably less messy than constant recasts in a shared continuity. If you have RDJ in Iron Man 3 and then Tom Cruise plays him in Infinity War, it’s admittedly confusing.

As I said, Marvel have never properly 'reset' their universe except for the One More Day storyline. Their universe is full of retcons, sure, but there's never been a 'proper' line-wide reset, only for Spider-Man.

Replace RDJ with Tom Cruise? Why would they recast somebody with an older actor? No, what they need to do is adopt the "general comic" sensibility about time. It's worked for decades upon decades. Yes, time is passing, but not in real time. Months, not years. Days, not weeks. And yes, time is passing IRL with the actors, hence the recasting when they get too old or too expensive.

Which has always made sense in comics. Usually one comic is continued from one to the next. Which comes out a month later. Did a whole month pass in the story? No, not usually.

Best thing they can do is keep the illusion of time in a classic Bond-like universe. Yes, the times are changing and nothing is locked to specific years and occasionally actors are replaced, whether for age reasons or they become too expensive. It seems simple. I'm all about legacy characters, but those need to ebb into things organically... and they, too, may need to be recast as things go forward.

I think the chances the MCU will be rebooted is 100%, but I think it's been part of their plan for a while and it won't happen until after Secret Wars, and it'll have some sort of in-universe explanation, too.

See I disagree. The "sliding timescale" or whatever you want to call it from the comics where time is passing yet it's always somehow "modern day" isn't a necessary feature of a shared universe of movie characters. Yeah, they could just recast the actors every so often, but why? What is the point then of having a shared continuity? That's the kind of thing that comics can do well but movies not so much, so I feel their approach where the characters have grown, changed, aged has been working thus far.

normie audiences are fickle, they've already moved on from capeshit. the only people excited for these things are the social outcasts that were excited about them before normie audiences joined in the 2010s. You won't see "cinematic universes" of superheroes work like they did in the 2010s ever again for that reason, whatever shape they take will be very different. The easiest guess is standalone movies like in the 00s, no connections means normies might casually go.
Clearly the MCU will continue to underperform outside a few outliers, the actual real fans will blame that the quality isn't as good and that it'll get better as long as the writing gets better but that won't be it. I don't think we'll ever get a hard reboot but we'll definitely get a "soft reboot" after the next phase with X-Men/F4/Returning RDJ fail to bring back the golden years of the 2010s.

They tried the whole "it's the same James Bond but a different actor" and tried to maintain that continuity all the way till Daniel Craig, but it still didn't work. Sean Connery and Roger Moore played the character differently and as the decades went on as well as the following Bonds it didn't make sense to go from the 60's to the 70's and then 90's.

I would never say Pierce Brosnans Bond is suppose to be the same character as Sean Connery's for example, it doesn't work at all.

yeah agreed dude

I’m using an example, but doesn’t have to be Tom Cruise. It’s just a little confusing to have actors switching in and out when the movies are from different franchises and need to connect.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I also like the approach of waiting until they’re ready to do a general reboot, rather than re-cast one actor here and one actor there throughout the saga. At times they will have to do that I’m sure.

It seems they may be doing a reboot after Secret Wars but I’m expecting certain actors will stick around, such as Tom Holland, so it should be interesting to see what exactly they do reset.

I think Andrew's right - I don't mind some of the new characters or actors/actresses, but I would rather see the most popular characters permanently in the universe (other than deaths, but again like in comics that can be changed and characters can still be brought back with the multiverse etc) and recast, rather than them disappearing in the films because the actors got too old or didn't want to renew their contracts. Another possibility is telling stories from younger parts of life of 'older characters', such as happened with Professor X and Magneto in X Men: First Class. But I suppose there's limited scope there.

If people are saying that the characters should not be tied to their actors, I agree completely. I wouldn't even mind switching characters between films rather than between phases or sagas etc. If they found someone capable it wouldn't even have bothered me had they recast Kang after the Jonathan Majors fiasco.

I know it can be confusing for viewers and each person has their own take on a role they are playing, but I think it can be done - even in a shared universe setting rather than different universes.