Advertisements for this week’s episode of ‘Agents of SHIELD’ are heavily pushing some sort of tie-in to the wide release of ‘Avengers: Age Of Ultron’, with the implication that watching both will lead to a bigger story. Given the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s popularity, it seems like a pretty shrewd move ratings-wise, and one that makes me question Warner Brothers’ choice to have one version of The Flash on television and a separate Flash for their planned slate of movies. Given how cool the CW’s Flash program is, I’m not entirely sure I WANT another Barry Allen, but I might change my tune if the movie Flash is Wally West or another speedster, which leads us to today’s stereoscopic query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) found the ties to previous stories in the Marvel Universe to be really fun, even in ‘Daredevil’, where you wouldn’t immediately expect them to work, asking: In this age of shared universes and franchise-building, do you think it’s a mistake to have different live-action versions of the same character (especially iconic superheroes) concurrently?
9 Comments
I dont think we are getting in that situation very easily. Looks like both Marvel and DC are avoiding of using same characters in film and TV like plague. Thing is, no one knows if its good or not and thats why we’re not seeing it, its not like these companies are an epitome of wild, new ideas and risk taking in their businesses.
They have done it before, though. DC had “Smallville” and “Superman Returns” out at the same time (which also led to the “Superman Returns” costume being used in a few episodes of “Smallville”), and there is both an X-Men film franchise and MCU versions of Quicksilver.
I dont think 10 years ago applies today anymore, mindset in comic book properties has changed but I totally forgot Quicksilver though. *massive spoiler* Now I suspect that the reason why they killed him in the avengers movie is that hes been in X-Men movie franchise. Would fit right in the suspected spite moves they’ve been doing against X-Men and FF.
ATTENTION!! ^^^^ I forgot Avengers movie has not yet been released yet in U.S. Do not read if you are sensitive to spoilers. Moderator can also delete if needed, I had no intention to spoil anything for anyone, so apologies from that.
While I don’t mind the idea in general, it is a little disconcerting when they want us to invest in more than one version of the exact same character at the same time. Even almost similar versions (such as “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie” which had the same characters and cast of the TV series, but were otherwise unrelated to each other) is frustrating.
Oddly enough, I wouldn’t mind if there is a separate ANIMATED version at the same time as a live-action version, but otherwise the same feelings apply. I wouldn’t want two separate unrelated animated versions of The Flash running at the same time (pun intended).
I have no problem with it, so long as they are quite different. Welling and Routhe looked different enough I wasn’t bothered. If the two flashes look like the same guy I’d be dissatisfied at the least.
Although Star Trek the Next Generation television show ended before the first Next Gen film was released, there was an overlap since the movie was being produced while the television show was still on the air, and some of the characters carried over into other Star Trek television shows, which led to the situation of the Enterprise being destroyed in the movie continuity while it was still in existence in future as shown the The Best of Both Worlds, and with Worf being on the Enterprise as a crewmate at the same time he was stationed on Deep Space 9 or serving on the Klingon Homeworld as the chancellor’s aide, etc. I find this sort of poor coordination annoying, to be honest. I’d rather have the same continuity and characters in my movies and tv shows, if I had a choice.
Many of these things were actually explained when they happened, such as the Worf issue (he wasn’t part of the Enterprise crew, remember? He showed up to the battle on another ship which ended up destroyed, then stuck around to help out with the crisis at hand).
The future stuff, on the other hand, does bug me a bit, but I just chalk it up to “possible futures” and “parallel timelines” since Trek does use those quite often.
I prefer to have a single continuity across media platforms. It’s just easier for me. Plus the more I have to think about what back story I should be using for a particular platform, the less connected I feel to any of the stories. The only caveat is good planning for the release of each section of the universe. Agents of Shield stalled, and stalled….and stalled while waiting for Winter Soldier to come out. It got crappy for a while waiting for the bigger story to unfold.
Also, I have spent too much of my life already lamenting the discontinuity in the end of the Next Gen timeline. So tragically bad.