Is this why The Inhumans film didn't happen?

Film Despite its nearly eight million views, this is the first time I've seen the MCU's Phase Three announcement from back in 2014. At the time, I remember shuddering that the second Avengers film wasn't going to be released until I was in my mid-forties. Fortunately, I made it and now anticipate the upcoming Phase Four announcement.

It's worth noticing how dates and elements changed in the meantime.  The Sony deal led to everything moving down the schedule to make way for Spider-Man: Homecoming and the relative success of Ant-Man the insertion of a sequel.  But the big anomaly is The Inhumans film, which was quietly cancelled, to re-emerge as a frustratingly average television mini-series.

Why?  One of MARVEL's strengths has been to see what the audience responds to and monopolise on that, making course corrections when necessary.  Thor: Ragnarok was in part a result of the relatively poor critical reception for The Dark World (even if it still did well at the box office).  More Black Panther material was apparently filmed for Infinity War because it did quite well.

I think this video captures the moment The Inhumans as a film was cancelled.  As every other title card emerges on the screen, this audience, made up of comic book experts, go absolutely batshit crazy to the point that the mic on the camera phone sneakily recording it is completely blown out and unlistenable.

When The Inhumans is announced?  Crickets.  Well, not quite.  There's still some cheering but its markedly more muted than for the rest of the announcements and when Kevin Feige returns to the stage afterwards, he sounds slightly defensive as he attempts to justify the selection to a crowd which clearly hasn't reacted in the way he'd hoped.

Was this enough?  Did the reaction of fans at this event cause the hesitation?  Maybe?  As I've suggested elsewhere, reaction to franchises tend to be fan led, and if fandom wasn't in general that fussed about seeing The Inhumans at the cinema, then there was the potential for this to be a difficult sell which was justifiable considering the size of the budget.

But there's also the possibility that as pre-production began on the AIWE doulogy, the idea of having a large population of incredibly powerful beings, even at half strength post-click, was difficult to insert into an already busy couple of films.  Perhaps there's a version of Endgame floating around with Medusa or Nahrees joining the time travelers.

Instead we got the tv series which despite the budgetary input from IMAX couldn't afford to animate Medusa's hair in every episode so had it shaved off and left Lockjaw off-screen with about the same level of nuance as K9 in Season 18 of Doctor Who.  About the only good thing which came out of the series was cancellation because it meant Anson Mount was free to play Pike on Discovery.

On the new Spider-Man trailer.

Film Tom Holland is right. The new Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer is full of spoilers for Endgame as is this short commentary. Here's another video to give you a chance look up. Just in case.



You probably shouldn't watch that either.

Anyway, alternate realities. In the new MCU trailer, Nick Fury suggests that the Mysterio embodied by Jake Gyllenhaal isn't from the MCU Prime universe but some alternate reality, brought through a crack (or whatever) created when during the whole Thanos business.

Immediately this has been seized upon as being utter pig cleanser due to this being Mysterio, who's whole being is about misdirection and subterfuge and that it's all part of some plan or other. They might even argue that the Elementals are also in on the gag, assuming they even exist or an illusion.

Here's my counter argument.

This is Nick Fucking Fury.  Nick Fucking Fury does not simply work from information supplied by someone who says they're an interdimensional traveller.  For him to make that determination, he will have investigated it a bit more than that.

So what if this Mysterio is actually telling the truth?  What if he is indeed from another reality where he works benevolently, might even be the Iron Man of that universe?  That like certain other characters, MARVEL are not going for the obvious explanation?

Which means that this film is setting up the idea of this MCU being part of the multiverse, the very multiverse which Sony have just had great success with in animated form?  That the title "Far From Home" isn't just about Spidey taking a trip to Europe, but to a whole other universe?

Like, for example, the nascent Sony Spider-verse currently inhabited so far by Venom, thereby explaining the presence of the black suit in the trailer?  Could this be what Amy Pascal was talking about in this famous joint interview with Kevin Feige?

To take that further, could we have scenes in which Holland meets some of his counterparts in other realities?  He pitches up in animated form in the Miles Morales universe, or bumps into the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield versions in extraordinary cameos?

The latter was suggested for the Into The Spider-verse but was thought to be too much, which it would have been there, but could the other reason have been because the idea had already been snapped up by MARVEL/Sony for this adventure?

To take this to its obvious conclusion, MARVEL could also use this as an excuse to tie together all of the different version of their property there have been over the decades and even as a mechanism to justify having Deadpool interact with characters from the MCU?

Either that or Mysterio is being played true to form and MARVEL know that we know that they know that we know that they know.  Or something like that.