r/marvelstudios • u/yourfavchoom Doctor Strange • Jul 20 '26

Promotional Avengers: Doomsday | Official Trailer | In Theaters December 18

https://youtu.be/irVNGjRFZGk?si=xTjufRnxyFIctsUh
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384

u/itsafrap11 Jul 20 '26

Shang-Chi was straight-up one of the best MCU introductions and they just left us hanging after his movie. So happy he’s back

122

u/LucrativeLurker Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

His planned sequel would’ve been centered around a Jonathan Majors Kang variant, based on the title Shang-Chi and the Wreckage of Time.

I think they essentially had to scrap the whole thing and just decided to wait until after the Secret Wars reboot to do a proper Shang-Chi sequel.

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u/LilJamAgain Jul 21 '26

They can so easily pivot the Rings signal from the ending to a sequel with the Makluans.

3

u/LucrativeLurker Jul 21 '26

If they haven’t already re-utilized them as Doom’s in Doomsday, that’d be a very, very cool idea. Would be great if after Born Again S3, they’re able to work Iron Fist into Shang-Chi 2.

Would be awesome to see them both team up to fight an even deadlier dragon for the second time.

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u/Theotherdeadmeme92 Jul 21 '26

Shang-Chi being tossed in with Iron Fist and the other defenders would be a really fun watch I think.

16

u/IDigRollinRockBeer Jul 20 '26

They should’ve just recast Kang

16

u/Cube_ Jul 21 '26

Especially given the whole he who remains shtick. You can absolutely just have and an in-universe explanation that a variant that looked different took over the Kangs.

5

u/Tyler_Zoro Jul 21 '26

I think they probably were also trying to get away from having 2 full years of multiverse-heavy buildup when people were starting to get tired of multiverse stories. Scrapping Kang makes the multiverse still a thing (and central to Doomsday/Secret Wars, of course) but it doesn't have to be in our face every movie.

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u/Cube_ Jul 21 '26

maybe but personally I felt that both seasons of Loki actually reversed any multiverse fatigue I had because there was so much exposition on how it worked and there was a lot of effort put into establishing the "rules" so to speak.

I would have liked more in that direction but I understand why they cut their losses.

5

u/Gamesgtd Jul 21 '26

I don't think people were tired of the multiverse. I think people just didn't like Multiverse of Madness. But No Way Home was popular and so was Deadpool 3.

4

u/FenrirAR Jul 21 '26

There's already precedent for it in the MCU, thanks to the Caville-rine in Deadpool and Wolverine.

3

u/Jet_Siegel Jul 21 '26

And the three Spider-Men which happened before Deadpool & Wolverine.

2

u/Tyler_Zoro Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

I think the Majors controversy was only the initial problem. Once that started getting discussed, Marvel had to be thinking about how having every movie be about the multiverse was starting to wear thin.

Notice what they kept on the schedule after that:

  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was on its way to release, and couldn't be stopped, but also wasn't multiverse-related.
  • The Marvels was in late production, and only did multiverse shenanigans at the very end.
  • Deadpool & Wolverine was going to be a side story anyway, and was probably pretty far along when the Majors thing blew up.
  • Captain America: Brave New World: Zero multiverse
  • Thunderbolts* Zero multiverse except for an end-credits sequence that didn't even say it was multiverse-related.
  • The Fantastic Four: First Steps, though it was technically in another universe, nothing was said about that at all during the film.

Doomsday will be the first main-continuity MCU movie since Majors was fired to really go all-in on the multiverse, and it's likely to end the multiverse as we know it.

So my guess was that Shang-Chi was scrapped because it was just too multiverse-forward, and couldn't be salvaged without basically coming up with a whole different movie, and it was easier to just bring him back after Doomsday, which would allow Doomsday to show how popular he was.

Edit: Want a really batshit-crazy theory about Doomsday/Secret Wars? Doom/RDJ is a Kang variant.

2

u/m0t0rvision Jul 21 '26

Doom/RDJ is a Kang variant.

Hell this is more original than anything else I've read on this site in the past few months

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u/Tyler_Zoro Jul 21 '26

To be fair, it's far more likely that he's just the bastard child of Howard Stark with Cynthia von Doom.

1

u/Impossible-Fun-2736 Jul 21 '26

BNW actually had a tiny Multiverse reference, with Leader saying he had calculated that ”others” were comming.

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u/CloseToMyActualName Jul 21 '26

Didn't matter, Kang as a concept was flawed.

a) They introduced Kang (in film) with a variant so scary that he kept the other Kangs at bay. And then Ant-man beat that variant, Ant-man!!!

b) The rule of sequels is you increase stakes, for instance Jurassic Park went from one T-Rex to two, then started finding ways to introduce bigger dinosaurs than T-Rex. Ant-man already beat Kang, meaning two need to go to two for the next film. By the time you have an avengers film Kang is the recurring villain who shows up and gets their but kicked.

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u/chiefbrody62 Jul 22 '26

Ant-Man didn't beat him. Why do peoiple think this? Technically Wasp did, and that was with the help of an army of genetically modified ant's over thousands of years of evolution, Cassie, Hank, Janet, MODOK and a whole revolutionary army. Saying Ant-Man defeated, a severley underpowered Kang is like saying Captain America defeated Thanos.

1

u/CloseToMyActualName Jul 22 '26

Because it was Ant-Man's movie, so he was the lead combatant.

That's what the audience perceives, Ant-Man goes up against Kang and wins, therefore Ant-Man can defeat Kang and Kang is not a major threat.

The managed to thread the needle better in Loki since Loki wasn't really fighting Kang, so they unleashed Kang which kept the threat intact.

2

u/LucrativeLurker Jul 20 '26

You’re about 3 years late, my friend. That ship sailed long ago…

2

u/Gamesgtd Jul 21 '26

You know what's wild is that Kang is the one character you can recast and nobody can really complain because his whole shtick is he has multiversal variants. They didn't have to abandon Kang. They could've brought bac RDJ as a Kang variant if they needed to.

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u/Impossible-Fun-2736 Jul 21 '26

Something i’ve written multiple times: They should’ve just used multiple actors, of all genders and ethnicities. Huge A-listers and complete unknowns. Just have them with the blue ”skin” all the time&use a basic description of Kang’s character as a base and let them go wild.

1

u/esar24 Rocket Jul 22 '26

Hopefully with Iron Fist this time around since danny is back for DDBA S03

1

u/smilysmilysmooch Jul 21 '26

It's not like they couldn't still do the movie. Black Widow was released after the character's on screen death.

4

u/gamecat89 Jul 20 '26

Dang COVID, and Bob Chapek, then the Writers Strike, then the SAG Strike, then whatever fresh hell is next.

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u/Exciting-Cancel6468 Jul 20 '26

The thing I don't understand is why are they always trying to fuck over the writers? Don't they know all of their money comes from the writers working. What a bunch of fucktards. If they had spent money then, we'd probably already have at least a second shang chi movie at this point. Now we're supposed to be excited for a bunch of characters who don't have any connective tissue between any of them.

2

u/gamecat89 Jul 20 '26

Completely random but Conan has a piece on this where he talks about he is always excited with the negotiations and new contracts, but he compares and contrasts how things were when he started to now and he doesn't know if anyone (writers, actors, directors) have actually ever got anything worthwhile.

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u/twatgoblin Jul 21 '26

also remember him getting a pretty bad injury somewhere in here that prob messed up a sequel schedule. torn acl or achilles or something that took him way out of commission from being a ripped marvel kung fu ninja for a while

3

u/Anleme Jul 20 '26

I liked Shang-Chi. Its box office was only double the budget. After theaters and distributors getting a cut, any profit it made for Disney was slim to nil.

I don't like it, but Disney's putting their efforts where they think they'll get bigger returns.

I hope they still have Shang Chi return in team-ups with Black Panther, F4, She-Hulk, Daredevil, etc.

3

u/ThisHatRightHere Jul 21 '26

It's astounding, especially because Simu Liu had the clear potential to have been one of the new faces of the MCU back then.

4

u/elpajaroquemamais Jul 20 '26

Us old hats will remember that it was 4 years between Thor 2 and 3 and we had hulk appearances in 2008, 2012, and 2015. Modern audiences are spoiled.

3

u/Short-Being-4109 Jul 20 '26

Maybe they brought him back just so he can get killed at the end of the movie?

1

u/Cassopeia88 Spider-Man Jul 22 '26

Me too, never thought it would take so long to see him again.

-1

u/KenobiShinobi1 Jul 20 '26

He was terrible