Douban 9.0, has Marvel’s first hit this year?

Unconsciously, it has been more than a year since "Avengers 4: Endgame" was released.

After that, all Marvel's works fell into silence. But it can be said that as low-key Marvel is in 2020, it will be high-key in 2021.

This year, the works that Marvel has been hoarding for a year will be broadcast in a blowout, and the fourth stage of Marvel movies will officially open. Marvel Pictures will begin to produce its own TV series, opening up Marvel's "new era of television."

And the first shot on this new battlefield is "Wanda Vision".

Last weekend, "Wanda Vision" was officially launched. As soon as it was released, it scored a high score of 9.1 on Douban, with an IMDb score of 9 and the freshness of rotten tomatoes was as high as 94%.

It seems that the Marvel world is about to set off a new wave of enthusiasm.

The most “weird'' Marvel work in history is here

If you are not familiar with the two protagonists, Wanda and Vision, Wanda is also called the Scarlet Witch, with powerful superpowers of telepathy and energy manipulation. Vision is made by AI Butler, Ultron and Mind Gems. Mechanical organism.

Anyone who has watched "Avengers 4" knows that Vision is dead.

This drama tells the story after "Avengers 4".

Just because it is so different from the usual style of Marvel's works, it once made the audience full of question marks.

When "Vision" actor Paul Bettany mentioned the play, he also said that it is "the weirdest work in Marvel's history."

——The following content involves spoilers, you can choose to skip to the second part——

When you are looking forward to a "cosmic blockbuster" aura created with a lot of money, then you are likely to be disappointed.

The plot just started, like an old-fashioned black-and-white sitcom from the 1950s and 1960s. It talked about the wonderful family life of Wanda and Vision after marriage, mixed with some daily humorous paragraphs, and the special effects can be said to be superficial.

Yes, Vision is "alive" again, but he just lives in a huge dream created by Wanda.

In a small suburban town called Westview, Wanda is a hard-working housewife, and Vision is an office worker who returns home at sunrise and night. The two are quarreling and living an active life. In order to integrate into the community, they have to work hard. Pretend to be an ordinary human.

Their married life seems sweet and quiet, but everything can't be faked anymore.

Behind this illusory world, weird and sinister reality signals will pop up from time to time——

A "Stark toaster" appeared, and the sound of completion was like a countdown to a bomb: it came from Marvel's villain maker "Stark Industries".

A watch in a TV commercial shows the Hydra logo: The Unkillable Super Villain is here again.

A colorful helicopter fell into the garden, and a beekeeper crawled out of the manhole cover on the road in front of his house: the signs on the back of them had revealed the existence of the agents of the Heavenly Sword Bureau.

The Sword Bureau (SWORD) is an organization that is composed of people and aliens on Earth to resolve interstellar disputes. It can also be seen that Marvel is already trying to expand the story of the universe.

In addition, in each episode, the voice of the fourth wall enters this illusory world: the wife of the boss of Vision keeps saying "stop it", someone on the radio keeps calling Wanda by radio, and the people from the Heavenly Sword Bureau are still on the screen. Watch the life of Wanda Vision…

This may also be a signal that "Wanda Vision" is about to connect to "Doctor Strange 2". After all, the subtitle of "Doctor Strange 2" is called "Crazy Multiverse".

Presumably in later episodes, Tianjian Bureau will try to bring Wanda back to reality in more ways, awaken the sleeping heroes, and save the real world.

Given that each episode is only half an hour, and only one episode will be updated every week, it is extremely short to make people extremely suspicious that it is a Marvel movie leader.

However, according to Marvel Pictures CEO Kevin Fitch, the show will be divided into three obvious parts. Sitcoms and chaotic reality are the first two stages, and the last stage will be comparable to epic Marvel movies.

In the end, how well the show performs, we have to continue to wait and see, but as the first TV series independently created by Marvel, this is already an ambitious attempt.

It breaks the traditional TV series model, and not only makes the style of "old-fashioned comedy + modern science fiction", the whole series is still the structure of the drama, and the timeline of each episode will also change, from the first episode of the 50s, In the second episode of the 60s, to the later 70s, 80s, and 90s… the performance of the actors will also continue to change.

"Wanda Vision" uses a seemingly outdated style, constantly challenging the audience's preferences and patience. Two episodes have been broadcast. The plot has not yet entered the right track, which may also dissuade a large part of the new audience. .

However, because Marvel has a huge fan base, perhaps it dares to boldly make some diversified attempts.

The biggest highlight this time is: Marvel began to open up movies and TV series, so that the story of the Marvel world develops on a line .

"Wanda Vision" will not only be associated with "Doctor Strange 2", but will also be associated with the storyline of "Spider-Man 3". Netizens believe that Wanda will become one of the core characters in opening a new universe.

Next, Marvel has a real "big drama" about to be staged.

What "big thing" is Marvel going to do this year?

Before, Marvel movies and Marvel TV series were actually performed completely separately.

The TV series produced by Marvel were originally from the independent TV department of Marvel Entertainment, but as Marvel’s film performance has repeatedly reached peaks, the TV series department has become less and less existent.

In December 2019, the Marvel TV department officially closed.

Now that the Marvel TV department has been merged into Marvel Pictures, Marvel is about to start "dramatic changes."

So far, Marvel has announced 10 new works, including 5 movies and 5 drama series, and 7 have been finalized.

Most of Marvel's TV works will be opened by the "second-level core" characters in the Marvel movie universe.

Only two weeks after the end of "Wanda Vision", "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" is here.

The show was broadcast on March 19, and the story is also after "Avengers 4: Endgame", the Falcon and the Winter Soldier will work together to deal with the anarchist flag smasher.

Compared with "Wanda Vision", it has more battle explosion scenes.

It is said that "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" has become the most expensive American drama in film history. Each episode costs 25 million US dollars, which is almost double the amount of "Game of Thrones" alone.

In May, "Rocky" will be broadcast.

If you still have an impression of the plot of "Avengers 4", "God of Prank" Loki ran away in the timeline back to the past with the Cube of the Universe.

Next, he will continue to play "the most fascinating villain in the universe" in the multiverse, and will also interact with "Doctor Strange 2".

The pace of the new drama broadcast is so fast that Marvel has a new drama released almost every two months.

July "If…? "Released, this is an animated series. Each episode tells a superhero story with an open mind and opens various explorations of the Marvel parallel universe. The style is reminiscent of the previously popular "Love, Death and Robots" ".

There are a bunch of subsequent episodes that have not been finalized, including "Eagle Eye", "Female Hulk", "Moonlight Knight", "Ms. Marvel" and so on.

At the same time, Marvel movies have not fallen behind, with 4 released this year alone.

They are "Black Widow" released in May, "Shangqi" released in July, "Eternal Race" released in November, and "Spider-Man: Homecoming 3" released in December.

"Black Widow" will officially start the story of the fourth stage of the Marvel movie. "Spider-Man: Homecoming 3" finally settled in the Marvel universe after various pulls from Sony and Disney.

The middle two works will surely attract great attention. After all, "The Eternal Race" is directed by Chinese director Zhao Ting, who has just won multiple awards, and "Shang Qi" is the first Chinese superhero movie, and Tony Leung starred. Villain.

Looking back at the early days, Marvel’s superhero movies were ridiculously vulgar culture, and "Iron Man", released in 2008, pulled Marvel out of the precarious situation.

The Avengers, released in 2012, generated $1.5 billion in the box office for Marvel, when the concept of the Marvel universe was truly born.

The year before last, "Avengers 4: Endgame" broke the box office record in movie history in one fell swoop.

After the release of 23 Marvel universe movies, Marvel has now become a force that cannot be ignored in the market and a leader in the new generation of popular culture.

Now that Iron Man is offline, Captain America has also retired, the fourth phase of Marvel's film plan has officially started, and new superheroes are emerging.

Marvel Pictures, which belongs to Disney, needs new works to attract new fans, and it also needs to help Disney retain subscribers.

A former Disney executive once said to The Verge :

Audiences do not originally need to watch every movie or all TV series, but when the movie and TV series are linked together, fans will worry about which part of the plot is missing. They will watch each work just to "master the overall situation."

From this point of view, the "dramatic changes" of Marvel Studios can be regarded as a two-pronged strategy.

Disney starts a new streaming battle

In 2021, on Disney+, Disney's streaming media platform, Marvel is ready to make a big splash.

Under the epidemic, Disney's parks, theaters and other businesses have suffered heavy losses.

In fiscal year 2020, Disney's annual revenue was 65.388 billion U.S. dollars and a net loss of 2.832 billion U.S. dollars, ushering in the first loss-making fiscal year in 10 years. Compared with last year, Disney's net profit in the same period reached 11.054 billion US dollars.

However, Disney's media network services performed strongly , with revenue totaling US$7.2 billion, an increase of 11% year-on-year. As of December 2, 2020, Disney+ had 86.8 million subscribers, which became a new flashpoint for Disney.

Next, in addition to 10 Marvel dramas, Disney+ will also have 10 Star Wars dramas, 15 Pixar animations and other major IP works.

In addition to Marvel, other film and television content should not be underestimated.

Pixar Animation has always been Disney's flagship content. Last year's "Star Wars IP" spin-off drama "The Mandalorian" also brought a wave of subscription craze for Disney+.

Disney's abundance of IP, funds, and talents is unmatched by most streaming media platforms.

Morgan Stanley stock analysts predict that Disney's streaming media subscribers will reach 230 million by the end of 2025, and streaming revenue will reach 30 billion U.S. dollars, and the overall scale will exceed Netflix.

No one thought that Disney+, launched in November 2019, would become the core force in the streaming media track with such a thunderous momentum.

As the king of streaming media, Netflix is ​​naturally not to be outdone. This year, they have made a comprehensive plan to attract new users.

Netflix said that more than 500 original content is currently being produced, and in 2021, a new original movie will be launched every week.

The news of the shooting of "Three-body" and "Water Margin" has been reported recently, which makes viewers look forward to Netflix.

Yesterday, Netflix also announced that its subscribers exceeded the 200 million mark. They still occupy an absolute leading position in the entire subscription market.

Not only Netflix and Disney, but also in the Red Sea market of streaming media, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Comcast and many other platforms are also competing fiercely.

In order to increase users, HBO Max even decided to release all the 17 movies produced in 2021 online and offline at the same time, without charging online on-demand fees, including a series of Hollywood blockbusters such as "The Matrix 4" and "Dune".

This action sounds very exciting, but regardless of the interests of creators and partners, the behavior of completely disrupting the theater window period has been subjected to a lot of verbal criticism, and waiting for them is likely to be impulsive punishment.

Although other streaming media platforms have taken action this year, in terms of future development potential, they are still not in the same order of magnitude as Netflix and Disney.

However, for users, there are more choices, content and price will become the most attractive key, and content is the most important thing in the streaming media era.

Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings once on the rapid growth of Disney + commented :

Their achievements are impressive, indicating that users are willing to pay more for more content, because they are always hungry for good stories, and Disney has done a good job.

From this point of view, the entry of many streaming media platforms may not cause "you die and I hurt."

In the fierce competition, they will also use more differentiated and diversified high-quality content to prop up the new prosperity of the entire streaming media market.

These results will be left for the 2021 audience to review one by one.

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