Disney did the unforgivable in Quantumania: they tarnished the wholesome father and daughter relationship between Scott Lang and Cassie.

Immagine if they introduced Thanos in a television series where he gets defeated only to get reintroduced in an Ant man movie where he is defeated a second time.

Kang: "I have conquered timelines and killed many variants of Avengers!' Also Kang: "Oh God! Help me! The ants! They're everywhere! Get them off!"

How threatening can your villains be when they're consistently beaten by a punchline.

Kang was supposed to be hyped by MCU an Avengers-level threat since Thanos yet he was swiftly defeated by an ex-Baskin Robbins employee and his family who can shrink/grow and talk to ants.

If you want kang to be this evil almighty character MAYBE Don't treat him like a goofy reoccurring side villain

You are right about multiple versions of the same character diluting them. It's the inverse ninja rule: One ninja in a fight scene is a force to be reckoned with, but 100 ninjas will stand around in a circle waiting for the hero to punch them.

A much better ending for quantum-mania would have been Kang escaping and leaving Scott and Hope behind

The infinite universes issue is that it creates a paradox where the stakes are both infinitely raised and lowered making everything incomprehensible and pointless.

The way Everything Everywhere All At Once handled the Multiverse was FAR more interesting, presenting as a metaphor for the different paths we could have taken and opportunities we may have lost due to our decisions. That film had thought and effort put into it, unlike most everything post endgame, and it shows.

One thing that always bothered me with Antman 2 and now 3, was they went "sub-atomic". That means they're really really REALLY tiny. Smaller than an electron. How did they find anything that small, let alone a specific person like Pyms wife or Kang? Each electron would be like a planet. And there are how many atoms in anything? Quadrillions upon Quadrillions? That's why Pym never went looking for her. It's beyond impossible. Yet here we are with parts 2 and 3.

Owlman: Every decision we make is meaningless because somewhere, on a parallel Earth, we have already made the opposite choice. We're nothing. Less than nothing. Superwoman: How can you say that? We're rich. We're conquerors. Owlman: [pointing at alternate Earths] And here we're poor. We're slaves. And here, our parents never met, so we were never born. Here, the world ended in nuclear war. Here, no fish was brave enough to crawl up on land and humans never evolved. And so on, ad infinitum.

Felt the same way about Ultron. Back when there was only one Ultron and he was constantly improving himself, always on the look out for better and better materials and technology to build his next body you knew every time you saw Ultron he would be tougher than last time you saw him. But then he started making drones and then you have a ton of Ultron-looking minions that are easily smashed and beaten and it dilutes how scary Ultron is, since you seen dozens of his look-alikes easily beaten.

Problem with Kang is that eventually he will end up like Kenny from south park "oh my god you killed Kang you bastard" every movie and tv show just killing him over and over.

A simple fix would have been "they couldn't defeat me, so they sabotaged my ship and stranded me here" and then don't have him lose.

The Scarlet Witch as a "sympathetic" hero: just a misunderstood MoM who effortlessly wrecks everyone, including top tier characters with cosmic and Omega level power, takes no losses (ever) and ultimately can only be defeated by deleting herself. "They'll never know how much you sacrificed..." . Kang as a "sympathetic" villain: gets easily defeated multiple times (every time) so that "fans will root for him harder"? Soooo, Kang's actually a hero, and the Scarlet Witch is a villain...Got it! RIP MCU 👎

What's funny is that the argument that there are no consequences in a multiverse was the same position held by the daughter in Everything Everywhere All At Once. And that movie was all about showing her that individuals still matter. That what we do still matters. That's REALLY what the Marvel team need to steer toward. Focused stories so the audience sees things like the Mother and Father in EEAAO instead of becoming jaded like the daughter was.

Gamora in guardians 3 is an example of not caring about characters anymore. She was sacrificed for the soul stone in infinity war I think it was but now we have a new one from a different timeline in the next film. The reason the films up to end game worked is because like you guys said, you got to know, care and got invested in the characters. Bits and pieces of the overall arch of the story started appearing and you got hooked on what, where, who and why. Then time travel and multiverse happened with Kang at the end of Loki telling you exactly what's gonna happen.

Multiverse undermines any legitimate meaningful story. Thank you for covering this.

You're right Drinker. Outside of the political messaging, their biggest mistake was that they completely blew the stakes by introducing Kang this early...it would have been much more compelling if the surviving heroes struggled with their loss, sacrifices, and guilt while dealing with their own low level villains and personal stories, only to realize why they became heroes in the first place, and band together with old and new avengers when a world level threat comes -- like the original team. It would have been much better for the next big team up movie to be "The New Avengers".

I've never read the comics, I have no experience as a writer and I'm 35 years old, so that puts me on the same play field as the actual writers. So this is what I would do with Kang. So Kang is this Multiverse Entity that exists physically in a limbo, outside of time and space. In life Kang the Conqueror was also a scholar in pursue of enlightenment, the only way to acquire ultimate knowledge was to enslave entire civilizations. When he discovered the multiverse, it drove him mad, he wanted it all, an infinite source of knowledge at hand. Kang developed the ability to manifest himself on different universes, but this requires a lot of power, so his copies are weak, he can't fight at his full potential, but it is more than enough for most universes. When Tony Stark blipped Thanos and his army away, he sent waves across multiple universes, calling the attention of Kang. He has never felt such power, he immediately focuses all his efforts to look for the source. When he discovers the Infinite War and the existence of all these strange beings with exceptional powers he overflows with excitement. He wants to fight them and unravel the mystery of these exceptional creatures and the strange artifacts they possess. What could be more captivating for someone like Kang that powerful adversaries with fascinating secrets?. Kang sends his copies to fight our heroes, but they get destroyed one by one, in each universe. This makes Kang grow frustrated, but every lost battle is a valuable learning experience for him to ultimately defeat this fascinating creatures. Conquering this universe will be no easy task after all, so he starts thinking like a conqueror, he needs a plan, he needs allies, set up outposts, spies and secure routes for his armies. So that's what Phase 4,5 and 6 would be. Kang little by little gaining power and territory and our heroes discovering who Kang is, trying to figuring out his plan and meeting heroes from other universes like the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Illuminati and other version of themselves. Our heroes start suspecting something is wrong when they defeat Kang for the eleventh time and they don't seem to make any progress, each Kang is harder to beat than the last, every new Kang knows their weaknesses and limits. Every tried and tested way to kill him fails and they have to come up with new and more difficult methods to defeat him. This creates unrest amongst our heroes. Then, at the end of Phase 5, after a brutal battle, the Real Kang manifest himself and gives our heroes a little taste of his real power by annihilating the Illuminati, Kang lets Baron Mordo live and uses him as a messenger to tell the others to prepare, because he is coming.

The problem with the multiverse on a whole, is that there are no stakes what so ever. When people come back from the dead on a routine basis, nothing has weight and everything in turn is meaningless. This is story telling 101.

"Multiverse Theory's a b-itch." - Mr. Perfect Cell

introducing this version of Kang as a somewhat beatable villain gets no one intrigued or invested in his character unlike Thanos.

The problem is Marvel was stupid how they handled Phase 4. After Loki a different Kang should have appeared in each Multiverse movie. A version of Kang should have been in Spider man No Way Home they could have had it that he was the one that influenced Peter to make that wish and influencing the Goblin to destroy the box. And in Multiverse of Maddess he could have been the one that was influencing Wanda, taught her about the Multiverse and drove her into her insanity but no Kang is only in a show no one watched and a movie no one watched.

Awesome to see the rise of The Little Platoon. I knew he was destined for greater things.

They could've turned Kang into yet another thinking man's villain by giving him a rather philosophical/existential motivation along the lines of having blurred his individuality by spreading himself thin through variants, possibly as the result of an ambitious scientific experiment. He'd simply be in pursuit of his own true origin and therefore more than inclined to play fast and loose with the multiverse's cohesion and stability. So, why not have him be the one to whisper into Wenwu's ear to bring down the barrier between that other realm and our reality by exploiting love? Why not have him attempt to guide Gorr across the multiverse on his killing spree, thereby exploiting hate/vengeance (and treating us to Old Thor, Rune Thor, Beta Ray Bill and our universe's Thor vs. Gorr in the process)? Why not either assume the mantle of Nightmare or even feature on The Illuminati in Multiverse of Madness getting a front row seat to Strange's struggles? Why not set the Eternals on another Earth and end it with Tiamut's emergence as a reflection of Kang's frustration? Why not establish a clear and understandable link between Iron Lad and Kang already? Why not have Victor Timely pop up in flashbacks and tailor this reality to his liking (and have him cross paths with the likes of Wolverine and a Ghost Rider 'ancestor')? Why not have him "play dress-up" by rounding out the multiversal Sinister Six in No Way Home (okay, that one's a little less serious/necessary)? Why not interconnect Kang and Doom like the Larroca/Cantwell comics did? He'd barely ever lose, especially not to Wahmen Loki or highly evolved ants but literally play the long game just to get an unshakable sense of self. But as he's unclear on who he is he tends to disregard entire universes' right to exist growing callous to the sacrifice of trillions upon trillions. Some Kangs could be in cahoots with one another while others are actively foiling their variants' plans. So after a two-part CGI extravaganza we're all expecting and are preemptively tired of already, they could throw the audience a curveball by having Mr. Fantastic, Prof. X, Wanda, Strange, Black Panther and an Iron Man variant enter some kind of therapy session with Kang transporting him back to his origin mentally and thereby cleansing him off his genocidal truth seeking, either shutting him off from all his variants or effectively eliminating them all as he gains ultimate introspection.

“Sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads” dr evil

A good actor doesnt make a good villain. Good writing makes a good villain. Yes comic book villains have that background but not everyone reads comics. I had no idea who Kang was. I knew a little about Thanos. The people making the MCU thinks everyone knows about Kang and they can get this actor to play him and that's job done.

They could had played with Kang"s concept: he would hardly put up a fight in a first movie and be defeated but he'd keep showing up in subsequent movies in a seemingly jumbled-chronological way until we'd eventually find out that he is outside time, picking and choosing when to show up. The whole phase could had been a mixed up timeline that we could rearrange chronologically at the end of the phase. You'd need a big brain script but they can buy big brains.

*Clone Army of Kangs in marching formation* Prime Minister Lama-Su of Kamino: "Magnificent, aren't they?"

Sad thing is the writers didn't see where they failed but instead blamed the audience like the eternals and love and thunder

Kang having 10.000 variants who MOSTLY scream like monkeys in the post credit and only three of them being actual threats was the worst offender, actually

Aunt Man and the Wisp: We Wuz Kangs.

The thing with a villain like Kang is that his concept only really works in comic books, since they're continuous storytelling. Even taking into account the entirety of the MCU you only really have enough to fill maybe a year (two being generous) of comic book stories. By their nature they need to keep going. So of course you want returning villains. And having someone like Kang, who's always a potential menace in the background, is a good way to have something prepared for when you need an event. But movies are basically _all_ the equivalent of event comics. You can have a movie about Batman meeting and fighting the Riddler but you can't really make a movie about that time Batman fought the Riddler for the fifteenth time. You need to make it special, and this sort of thing works for regular characters whose story has a beginning and an end. It doesn't work for a character whose entire schtick is that he always comes back.

Somehow they avoided the "infinite Kangs" problem in Age of Ultron. Ultron is more of a formless entity rather than the shell he inhabits. Technically, even a kernel of him in the internet would create an undefeatable omnipresence. But it still seemed ridiculous having Cap punch his metal body on the truck on the freeway

For me with this Kang, the first to be introduced on the big screen, with him being defeated, I feel like we are left with all the knock offs

I think that you may be overlooking one issue: -- They want these to fail. They want your stories to break, so that you have no ideals upon which to model yourself. Give them "bread and circuses", and all that, but the problem is that these movies are our modern day circuses. If you take away that.....

The thing that catches my attention even more than the lack of a clear goal for Kang or the absence of consequence due to multiversal nonsense is that, in their heads, Kang is going to be the one you want to cheer for. The intention is right there when they say that they want Kang defeated so hard that when he comes back the audience will want to root for him. Throw heroic figures under the bus, that's yesterday's news, f*** aspirational characters. As clear and understandable Thanos' motivation was, when he talks about his goals before fighting Dr. Strange the line was clearly drawn where any noble intent was superseded by megalomania. Thanos had his movie, we was the protagonist, you were supposed to see from where he was coming from but he was never the hero. Now they want Kang, the next "big bad", to be the one who you want to see succeed.

This was my exact fear when they introduced the multiverse, the stakes have just become nonexistent.

Comics have had a bunch of problems stemming from these: Time Travel, Magic, Multiverses. Its lazy writer hell and anyone with half a brain knows you can't have that many "undo" buttons and keep your worldbuilding consistent and interesting. MCU huffs its own farts so much the writers there legit thought they'd be the ones to solve it.

It's funny because the meaninglessness of stakes in a multiverse, and the characters response to this, is a big reason why Rick and Morty works.

My favorite moment in the infinity wars was when Thanos was defeated by Iron Man’s butler. Really built up the tension.

I really feel they missed an opportunity with Quantumania to kill Scott and have a real shock ending like infinity war. Imagine Cassie and everyone escapes but Scott and he’s just beaten to death by Kang. Would have had a lot more impact.

It's strange they brought in Rick and Morty writers because that show often references how because Rick has infinite Mortys, and Summers and Beth's that none of the individuals truly matter. Exactly the problem the MCU is creating for itself.

I feel my IQ goes up whenever I listen to Drinker's Chasers. Highly enjoy these deep nerdy discussions! :) Thanks from Florida

Jet Li was a bigger multiverse threat than Kang

The Smith Neo fight scene was good I thought. Smith was out there, searching for Neo but was a two trick fighter,firing a gun and his right hand punch, which Neo showed he could defeat. That fight scene showed the real danger of Smith, which was his ability to take over others in the matrix and win by numbers.

I think the real problem is they have 100 writers so there's little consistent plot

I feel bad for all of them for trying to untangle this mess

To be fair…this conversation is why Kang is such a high-level threat in the Comics…there is an infinite number of Kangs which is why he is never defeated. I think the problem here is that the writer staff on the current Marvel movies are not up to the task of translating Kang believably into the movies…especially at a point where it seems the writing of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is declining. One could argue that even at its peak, the MCU might not have been able to adequately depict such a villain.

At this point we technically met the "best" kang..the one in loki that won his war. Also met the worst kang the one they all kangbanged. So i guess we are waiting for one of the midrange kangs?? Trash writing. ... Kang could have been cool and could have been worth waiting for.... But that isnt what we got in any iteration yet.

I think why Kang isn't ever gonna to be as effective is because he has already been killed twice. Once by female Loki, and again by a bunch of ants. So he is going to be more like a pest then a giant villain. Anytime he shows up he will just get killed. He's not a bear in your backyard. He's a colony of rabbits.

The real problem as highlighted in this video is the issue of scale. We talking multiple infinite universes and timelines. The human brain cannot just comprehend that. Hence the stakes and motivations get muddled in the process. I suppose they will use the incursions and a single battleworlr to simplify this, but if the aim is to simplify it why complicate it in the first place.

Kang identifies as Wile E Coyote

I wish someone in the production had consulted with any number of comics fans who would have advised them that the Council of Kangs was a bloody stupid idea when it first appeared in the comics back in the 80s. Also, Kang is yet another comics character who never takes his mask off (he's essentially Dr. Doom of the future), yet he's plastered all over the advertising for this movie with his mask off, except he's got weird scars to replicate the lines of his mask.

Multiverse conflicts can be really compelling...if the characters we follow are interesting and forced to face such an existential situation head-on. One of my favorite animes, Bokurano, involves the grand conflict of one universe being forced to prune away others in crazy mecha battles, but focuses on each character's confronting their mortality and the morality of killing-or-being-killed. How about Thor having to meet the Loki that is basically his brother, but without the growth that let Loki sacrifice himself for another? Or Janet in Antman 3 having actually accepted the deal ("my Hope is more meaningful to me than these countless others") and her not wanting her family to explore the quantum realm being that she doesn't want them to learn about her deal with the devil?

I just want to say, as somebody with an interest in both the Dyatlov pass incident and the Dark Harvest Commando group and their attempted use of anthrax, I’m glad he wrote his book and look forwards to reading it

All I head in head was Plinkett's voice going, "No one's ever REALLLY gone." LOL

Having a multiverse in the MCU was the biggest mistake anyone could make. It diminishes any and all lasting consequences of past, present and future MCU due to the infinite amount of everything, so a hero dying or a villain winning now doesn’t impact the audience, it just leaves them thinking “nah, it’ll be fine. Our heroes will just enlist the help of the same person from another universe, or go and defeat the same hero that hasn’t won in their universe yet.”

Gotta disagree about the matrix reloaded. Smith as a virus made him much more terrifying to me especially when he corrupted bane irl and in revolutions when he had all but corrupted the whole matrix. He was more than just one agent...he felt...inevitable.

"Mother! You're alive!" The MCU creates the world building for that line of dialogue to appear. Now we wait.

Kang is good in Secret Wars the comic . He is secondary to Dr Doom and doesn't try to take over all of the Beyonder's power . If Kang is made too powerful he's not effective as a member of a villain army which they should be setting up for Secret Wars.

I think Kang’s story should run very similar to how Jonathan Hickman wrote the Incursions but obv with differences being Kang is in it. This version of Nathaniel Richards finds out that the timelines are colliding causing both universes to be destroyed. He talks this over with the council of Kang’s but none of them believe him. The current movie universe is unknowingly about to collide with another universe and Kang sets out to destroy the MCU version. The Council get word of what is going to happen and defeats Kang and sends him to the quantum realm. This version has the mindset that the outcome justifies the means and will do whatever it takes to save as many universes as possible. This sets up a proper reason for Kang wanting to escape the quantum realm and would need to rely on Scott Lang and company to do so. Kang should be working with them the entire movie to defeat the evil villain MODOK and find a way to escape. Once they win and leave, Kang reveals his real plan and destroys the alternate universe and spares the MCU for now because of Scott helping him out. I think a very cool scene of Kang obliterating an entire universe would really set up how powerful he is. Now the plot moves forward and Scott has to assemble the Avengers to prepare for this threat. Edit: There are at first infinite timelines but due to the Incursions there it becomes finite and eventually leading down to a few left which is what leads up to the creation of Battleworld. I do wish y’all knew a bit more about the comic version of this stuff because you would understand the plot better.

I wonder if there are going to be a Council of Reeds (three Mr Fantastics that have their own Infinity Gauntlet) in the MCU.

The Kang in Quantumania should've obviously survived. Dominating everything in his path with Scott brutalized and battered, barely able to escape with his life; and limiting the Kang's to just 2 versions. A good (or anti hero ), the one remaining other version of the character and the ruthless villian Kang; With the Good Kang sacrificing himself in Kang Dynasty to help give the Avengers a fighting chance. As the film interpretation, this could work as opposed to having 100's of Kangs in an infinite multitude of Universes. It can be overwhelming as a concept to a casual audience and undermines the supposed threat Marvel was trying to build with Kang in Quantumania.

I want to see a super hero movie where the hero loses for a change.

I relate this Kang situation to what happen often in D&D and that's keeping villain tools out of reach of the heroes. If Kang showed up in 12 different films and the heroes had no understanding or better yet, no reason to suspect anything once they defeat him and no way to hop between dimensions, keep that purely as something the villain is able to do until you get to an Avengers movie where the heroes reminisce over their adventures until it dawn's on them they they all fought the same guy, and then realize it's not the same guy, but something more sinister as they all had different plots, goals, characteristics and that the Overlord or Kang Prime, whatever you wanna call him is sending Kang after Kang into our universe and the heroes have no way to traverse the dimensions to stop him. Then you have stakes because you don't have unlimited copies of the same hero running around, you have a centralized villain. Using the Matrix analogy, part of the problem wasn't necessarily that there were a million Agent Smiths, that's terrifying. It was Neo becoming a one-man army ragdolling them around. If Neo was kept to scale and could beat 1 *maybe* 2 Smiths with some help, but 3 or more would surely overwhelm him the stakes would still exist. You'd have more reason to hide, pick your battles, etc. If you establish that maybe each copy is weaker than it's predecessor or in this case, not all Kangs are created equal, then you still have a sense of dread with the master shows up. It's like the Children of Thanos were to the big man himself just that they all look alike. But again, the biggest issue is why do we care about these heroes or this universe. Unfortunately we have access to Tony's time portal, America Chavez, and who knows what other magical bullshit mcguffin they come up with. We've literally had 2 wishes in the form of the Book of the Vishanti and meeting Eternity in a single phase. Even if they're used one-offs it calls everything into question both past and future. Like shit, they could have brought the stones back from being atomized in the beginning of Endgame. That sounds pretty useful. But I digress. We need a reason to care. Even if it's, to steal a DC idea, that our universe is the literally the center of the multiverse and if it falls, then all others fall. Then we at least stakes for this universe. It still leaves the people within on the fence a bit, but it's at least a start for fixing this mess.

They need to unite all the Scarlet Witches and have them whisper: No more Multiverse…

There was more thought put into this discussion of the MCU in 12 minutes than anything Disney and Marvel have done in the last 5 or 6 years.

I never thought id be actively skipping superhero movies en masse, yet here we are

Kang was always going to be a hard character to do an introduce just by how complex and convoluted his character and history is.

Something that never gets mentioned with Thanos wiping out half of all living beings is that... Humans doubled our population in like 50 years. So his mass extermination resulted in... another 50 year delay. He can't even do it every x amount of time, as he destroyed the stones after doing it. Thanos was using the snap as an excuse.

End game distroyed any drama that could be gotten from a multiverse story. The return of Gamora saw to that.

The Final Boss Kang in the MCU should have been a version that the Council of Kang has been hunting for a while due to him messing with the multiverse. He should have been elusive, dipped in and out of these movies and finally have been caught after a series of movies with a coalition of MCU and inter dimensional heroes and villains

So, I don't think Kang is necessarily a bad antagonist and I very much liked Jonathan Majors' portrayal. That being said: here's three weird things we talked about when leaving the cinema: 1. 'Janet thinks she's in a French horror-movie' - Why is Janet not talking, like ... at all? Every of the 15 opportunities she has to protect and inform her family about Kang, she remains tight lipped. It grew to the point where we were wondering out loud in the cinema if she was luring her husband and son in law into trap deliberately, just to be able to run off with Bill Murray. (lol) 2. 'Kang, Kang, who the ... Kang' - Kang can be a cool character, just like MODOK. But to the average lay person he is no more than his powers and ambitions. Is he fighting for something, or just the universe's biggest narcissist? The only thing that makes us connect to him is Majors' great portrayal and acting skills, but other than that there's little to go by. (or did I miss that part?) More interaction between Janet and Kang would have been the best way to explain this, him 'opening up' because of being isolated for so long, or because of manipulating Janet into action. Missed opportunity there... 3. 'The Kang Bang': having all 'Kang's' band together in the first movie already .... Perhaps they were thinking primarily of how 'cool it would look' aesthetically, or that it would drive home what kind of being he is. But - If I remember correctly from the comics - all Kang variants hate eachother just as much (if not more) as they hate our protagonists. They would have been doing eachother in at the first chance. It would have been better if one got killed/beaten and another one appeared waiting in the wings to take advantage of the situation. He is an interesting character, and this idea of 'gaming the system' by having all these variants lurking around, looking to capitalize upon opportunities is really cool. But in a movie that - let's be honest - already was asking a lot of our imagination (let alone non-comic book readers), the Kang-Squad was a step too far. As for the ending: I would have left the Ant and Wasp in the Quantum-realm, leaving the matter unresolved. I had this brief moment where I thought: imagine Rudd becoming the new king of the realm, expanding it with his ant-armies. That would have been a fun start to a next movie, having to come down from the throne then.

You guys should do some sort of script. With the new unreal engine 5 coming out, you could def do something 90's level in effects. At least storyboard something. As a monthly or something. Get a plotline from the crowd. Do a vote. Aliens, zombies, whatever.

That's a good point. The stakes are so high its incomprehensible

I think the only CGI battles I've enjoyed are Avengers 1 and Infinity War. In Avengers the battle was cool because you get to see the heroes finally working together and it completes this sort of group arc for them. In infinity war it's interesting because there's this sense of impending doom and this question of "can they destroy the mind stone before Thanos shows up?"

It’s sad when the lego games have better villains. Lego kang built chronopolis, wielded Damocles like a sword in a giant battle, enlisted multiple villains including the red king, modok, alchemax, kingpin and friggin KORVAC. Even when the avengers beat korvac and counter kang’s chronomancy with the eye of agamotto, he still would have won if he didn’t have a sense of showmanship and demanded a giant battle with captain America.

Rule #1 of multiverses: nothing matters anymore

Really enjoyed this conversation, and you pointed out a big reason why this story of "infinite universes" (starting in earnest in phase 4) is not working for me and many others. I feel like the stakes are gone because there are infinite, albeit alternate versions, of all characters we know. No one is really gone, which is not as compelling as Marvel seems to think it is.

Love how MauLer says as the end, "It's not even close to well-written". Also love your summaries sirs, both of you.

This highlights the difference between someone(Drinker) who is an actual writer, and someone(Disparu) who just wants a good story. A good writer is tasked with creating identifiable protagonists and antagonists. They are required to constantly ask how & why? Why would a protagonist do this? How would the villain react? Why would the villain react that way? What would the consequences of those reactions be? And on, and on, and on.... Unless someone has actually taken the time and effort to write a coherent FICTIONAL story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, they will never understand what is truly involved.

This was a surprisingly interesting conversation about the structure and psychology of storytelling. I saw the title which said the video was about superhero stuff, which does not interest me, but I’m glad I gave this video a chance because I do care about improving my storytelling abilities! Thank you!

One random thought I had about kang, you could still have him be a multiversal being but a way to make him far more menacing is that you could make this kang the primary one who hunts his variants and absorbs them, show him doing this in the background becoming more and more powerful over the course of a few movies until only one remains. Kind of a stolen plot point from jet li's movie "the one" but it does solve the problem of a dilute villain, it also solved the lack of an end goal for the villain, and it also gives the heroes a clear thing to prevent

Kang is literally set to be like Team Rocket in the Pokemon anime.

Once the concept of a multiverse was introduced it instantly diluted the brand. I think this was intended to address actors aging out of roles.

We wuz literally Kangs?

MCU Phase 5 & 6: The Phase where Nothing Infinitely Happened. Well. That's never been truer than now...

All 4 of my favorite KZfaqrs in one place (:

It's honestly embarrassing that the CW handled their multiverse better than Marvel

The problem with Kang, the man that killed all the avengers throughout multiple universes is that he lost to ants... freaking ants... where were they when they were fighting Thanos? Infinity stones, my rear end, those ants can't be stopped...

I see this from the supply and demand kind of sight, you had a set of characters you came to know and care about, it came to a conclusion (though I am not a fan of the time traveling stuff) and so the demand goes down, instead with multiverses what we got was basically an unlimited supply, and that of stuff we don't care about.

I have always said that they should have used the snap to kill off all the "main" avengers that had completed their arcs or wanted to retire their roles, and continued on with the newer avengers that had more recently been introduced. It would even give them a better reason to introduce new characters. With a new group of "main avengers" Maybe Spiderman, Black Panther, Ant Man etc a completely new era of Marvel movies. Hopefully there's an alternate timeline where they did that.

7:00 Villains aren't defeated anymore. They just decide to stop being villains. Fun, isn't it?

As to an infinite number of universes diluting the stakes: even Joss Whedon knew that you can't care about an entire city being destroyed...but you can care about a waitress.

You wrong about agent Smith. He changed in 2nd Matrix. It was a personal thing in 1st film, and later he became a different threat. And the fight scene with tons of Smiths was to show that he became unstoppable. At this point Neo could bend reality of the Matrix and still had to run away. A new challenge for a hero

I've read comics for almost 20 years (it was time ago, tho). I only saw Kang once. It was at the Secret Wars. Dr Doom desintegrated him without any effort whatsoever in a small panel. Not even a splash page. That was Kang. Really terrifying stuff right there ¬ ¬' P.S.Or maybe Ultrón did it obeying Dr Doom, not sure (it's been literal decades). Victor won't even waste a second with his future relative. Hell, a proper Dr Doom would be as dangerous as Thanos (he even stole the power of the Beyonder in that story). Cheers!

Infinity War and Civil War are both still 10/10 MCU movies