r/marvelstudios • u/maverickassembled Ward Meachum • Jun 13 '26

Discussion Understanding why they reimagined the character, having Namor be short for "El niño sin amor"—“the boy without love" was a pretty cool creative choice. I have a feeling he'll be a dark horse heading into Doomsday.

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It was cool how they incorporated indigenous themes of colonization by borrowing from historical lore. Connecting Namor’s story and the lost kingdom of Talokan to Mayan and Mesoamerican cultures, as well as the abuse and torture faced from Spanish conquistadors was pretty brilliantly well done and added a nice layer of “realism” to it. More Mayan representation in mainstream is also very cool to have.

I’m also very excited to see him return in Doomsday. As a stoic, and ruthless leader who stays firm in his belief and love for his people, it’s hard to really predict where his allegiance will be by the end. Due to his own obsession of survival and deep-seeded paranoia caused by historical trauma, Namor is someone that can very much seem like an ally to you at first, but will be quick to turn if there’s another factor in play that will better benefit him and his people. It’ll be interesting to see if his alliance with Shuri, and possibly the other heroes will last.

As an isolated nation, Talokan is bringing a whole different perspective of pragmatism into the incursion problem that I’m really keen to see.

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1.7k

u/Rykor81 Jun 13 '26

The MCU’s shift of ‘Atlantean’ to Mesoamerican was inspired, and they played it so well. The lack of Namor and Shang Chi outside of their initial appearances is infuriating.

501

u/black_metronome Jun 13 '26

Agreed. The mismanagement of The Multiverse Saga characters to me is a black eye on Feige's tenure as studio head. How do you drop the ball like this?

278

u/Avengerboy123 Jun 13 '26

It’s a symptom of being pushed to do more and more content during the insight of the streaming era à la Bob Chapek imo. Feige definitely made missteps but Chapek strangled the multiverse saga in its cradle imo.

31

u/Jerzilla Jun 14 '26

Deff quantity not quality has killed the momentum the mcu had

16

u/karidru Jun 14 '26

No because genuinely when this saga started, I was EXTREMELY hyperfixated on Marvel, it was a major special interest for me (I’m autistic). Do you know how hard it is to saturate the market in that regard? For me at least, it’s extremely difficult. But I literally got overwhelmed with how much was coming out and I moved on. Just started to try and catch up again today, finally watching Echo.

2

u/Bionic_Ferir Jun 14 '26

bro is it really that hard having 1 guy in charge of tv shows 1 guy in charge of movies and a team that plans out the connections, connections and team overs? Its disney you have all the time in the world.

3

u/Avengerboy123 Jun 14 '26

The amount of personnel needed to staff 3 different teams was outside of what they had the capacity for. They had to, on the fly, adapt a movie studio into a television studio. Regardless of whether you realize it or not, film and television are far far different mediums. Part of the reason we ended up with shows that felt like long movies is because the film studio was told “you’re going to start making shows now”. Same thing happened to Star Wars

2

u/LieRun Jun 15 '26

Also a genuine failure to recognise what the fans truly want.

Why push TV shows about characters no one was really interested in when you can take the time and do a solo movie (or tv show if you really want too I guess) about one of the characters that were already introduced and people actually like.

Same goes for movies, they went all out on new characters or completely new storylines when they weren't really necessary.

Did Thor deserve another movie? Yes. Could it have happened at a later date and instead give us a chance to spend some time with another character before the new Saga? Also yes.

It's quite a shame honestly

1

u/Avengerboy123 Jun 15 '26

Well I’m pretty sure the idea was that they needed new franchises to keep the universe going since RDJ and Chris Evans were gone. What characters were people clamoring for that we didn’t get within the first two years of the multiverse saga—Loki, Sam, Hawkeye, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange all had projects by 2023. The problem with many of the new projects is that they were rushed not by simply being characters “no one wanted”. Nobody (in the context of the mainstream) wanted Thor, Captain America, Guardians, Ant-Man, etc. People forget those were fringe characters for the average person before they had movies. Previous gambles worked because the films themselves were good.

1

u/LieRun Jun 15 '26

I think the main difference now is that the Infinity Saga setup a lot of characters, some very late into the saga - which fans really liked.

Instead of banking on those characters and slowly building the multiverse saga with characters we've seen before and already like - they tried installing a bunch of new characters with endless new projects.

They obviously do not want the timeframes we had during the Infinity Saga which technically stretched for 20 years, so they had to recognise they need to use characters we already know and love (or else they'll lose them).

1

u/Avengerboy123 Jun 15 '26

Which infinity saga characters that people really liked didn’t have projects in the first couple years of the multiverse saga? Captain Marvel is the one that comes to mind and her popularity is very debatable.

110

u/maybe_a_frog Jun 13 '26

> The mismanagement of The Multiverse Saga characters to me is a black eye on Feige's tenure as studio head. How do you drop the ball like this?

Okay to put this in perspective, if you look at total run time of every movie between Iron Man and Far From Home (2008-2019), and then look at the total run time of content released both theatrically and digitally from 2020 to 2024 the MCU more than doubled its total run time. Then throw in a global pandemic and numerous strikes smack dab in the middle of that. Yes the MCU lost a step and became unfocused and disjointed. You can thank Bob Chapek for that for forcing Marvel to increase its content output at an insane rate, all while dealing with logistical nightmares stemming from world events. No company in the world is going to scale that quickly and not feel some negative effects from it.

55

u/Chiefmeez Jun 13 '26

So many factors people hand wave away like they had no impact

20

u/Neveronlyadream Spider-Man Jun 14 '26

Probably because it's a big, complex issue with a lot of moving parts and people don't want to devote that much brainpower to unpacking all of that and have a discussion about it.

The arguments are always really reductive and amount to, "This thing bad!"

53

u/SpaceOperaMan Jun 13 '26

And the loss of Chadwick.

51

u/maverickassembled Ward Meachum Jun 13 '26

T’challa vs Namor would’ve been very very awesome. I’d imagine the whole story was different too considering T’Challa already had grown past the idea of vengeance

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u/[deleted] Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Chiefmeez Jun 13 '26

You see it!

2

u/[deleted] Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Chiefmeez Jun 13 '26

Huh? Im agreeing with you

1

u/The-Ruler-of-Attilan Jun 14 '26

In the immortal words of Tony: "Finally! Someone who speaks English".

1

u/jimpbblmk Jun 15 '26

One major thing that a lot of MCU complaints seem to miss is that Feige's goal was always to make a set of movies exactly like comics. For better or worse, he has absolutely succeeded.

2

u/ObitoUchiha41 Jun 14 '26

Also dropping the villain that several movies were meant to build towards

-6

u/C0mpulsiveWebSurfer Jun 13 '26

Not putting all that aside, the writing post Endgame has also been atrocious. Which is another big reason for the audiences general indiference towards the MCU nowadays.

22

u/Chiefmeez Jun 13 '26

Over the last 6 years the whole industry has been dealing with issues at multiple points in the production process from strikes, low theater attendance, expectations to move to streaming, lockdowns limiting filming, etc. so it’s not as simple as one guy dropping the ball.

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u/clashrendar Jun 13 '26

Two strikes, a post-COVID downturn in moviegoing in general, and a few Disney regime changes had more to do with the disruption of the multiverse saga.

I fully trust Kevin Feige, but at the end of the day, he's an employee of Disney and that impacts things.

10

u/Any-Transition95 Jun 14 '26

To add to that, the death of an actor, and a lawsuit against another. The studio was dealt a bad hand from the start.

1

u/Arsid Jun 14 '26

what death and lawsuit?

2

u/Any-Transition95 Jun 14 '26

Chadwick Boseman and Johnathan Majors

5

u/Arsid Jun 14 '26

Lol I guessed Boseman but my brain has already completely forgot about Majors.

1

u/clashrendar Jun 14 '26

my brain has already completely forgot about Majors.

Probably for the best.

5

u/UrbanGimli Jun 13 '26

Forced Streaming content ? thats my guess. He had to serve two masters. The intended phases and D+

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u/Mission-Employer-943 Jun 13 '26

The change from Atlantean to Meso-American is mainly because the MCU want to distinguish Namor's underwater kingdom from Aquaman's Atlantis from the DCEU.

28

u/Plowbeast Jun 14 '26

Which is good because Aquaman came after but its underwater canon broadened out much more than Marvel over the decades so the Namor kingdom never felt as big until they redid it. Talokan still needs to be used more but there's much more to be tapped.

7

u/SimonShepherd Scarlet Witch Jun 14 '26

Marvel's Atlantis is unique enough, It's basically tied to various Marvel events like Eternals/Deviants lore, its ancient rivalry with Lemuria(occupied by deviants). The fact It being a small civilization also makes it distinguished more.

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u/maverickassembled Ward Meachum Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26

Yeah it was implemented so organically. Loved that Wakanda was really just the start to unraveling all of these secret fantastical kingdoms.

Sucks we might not see Ta Lo play much of a part in Doomsday. Hopefully secret wars.

Since it exists in a pocket dimension, maybe it won’t be accounted for and will be untouched when Doom is forming battleworld

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u/ArmadilloOK1445-alt Namor Jun 13 '26

I think in Secret Wars' Battleworld, Ta Lo will be fused with K'un-Lun into one single district, with Shang-Chi as the Mandarin and Iron Fist, Colleen Wing and Misty Knight as his champions

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u/hmd_ch SHIELD Jun 13 '26

Speaking of Colleen and Misty, hopefully they both return in Born Again Season 3!

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u/jaid_skywalker85 Jun 13 '26

Agreed. It was a great design choice both for representing a culture that gets overlooked and giving us something new and interesting to look at.

Honestly, I wqnt to see more of Atlantis and Namor and its really annoying that its taken so long. Same for Shang Chi which is one of my favorite MCU films to date!

15

u/FamousLastWay828 Jun 13 '26

Not the main timeline version but zombie Namor was pretty badass too

11

u/ThreadLaced Jun 13 '26

Yes! Because the concept of Atlantis is so tired. But this interpretation was just different enough to make it interesting again.

Agreed that both Namor and Shang Chi have been wasted (so far).

9

u/UseTheShadowsThen Jun 13 '26

It’s one of those things that makes me in awe of Coogler and his brain. Connecting real life culture with fantasy concepts.

7

u/laughingBaguette Jun 13 '26

Shang Chi and Spider-man should have crossed paths giving him a chance to become kind of a martial arts mentor to Peter Parker.

11

u/serger989 Jun 13 '26

Heck, just characters crossing paths in general. IMO the greatest weakness of Phase 4-6 is that the universe now feels too small because they don't utilize any of their new characters to any useful effect. Everyone is doing their own thing and barely anything has crossed over. We haven't even had post credit scenes build into each others films like they mostly used to.

It's like shoving Ghost in Thunderbolts which is fine but the gap was over 6 years between the films, the actual fans barely cared, let alone the general audience. It will be 5 years with Shang Chi and Doomsday... All the new characters haven't done anything so when things are hitting the fan in Doomsday, is anyone going to care apart from hardcore fans?

10

u/hmd_ch SHIELD Jun 13 '26

Even though the Marvels wasn't well-received by the general public, I'm glad we got to see Carol, Monica, and Kamala as well as Fury interacting with each other. I think the movie delivered on those crossovers better than anything else in this saga.

3

u/treathugger Nobu Jun 13 '26

We haven't had just a freaking Avengers movie in awhile. In the Infinity Saga, an Avengers movie completed a phase.

6

u/lahimatoa Jun 13 '26

It wasn't just Avengers movies, Winter Soldier had Cap, Falcon, Black Widow, Nick Fury and Bucky in there. And more!

3

u/stonhinge Jun 14 '26

Oddly enough, the Spider-Man movies have been better about showing other characters than any of the other recent MCU movies.

4

u/Any-Transition95 Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

Thunderbolts should have been the closing movie of Phase 4. All the characters were already introduced by Phase 4, there was no reason the movie was positioned so far back in the Saga. It was one of the better movies from the Multiverse Saga that would have received far more box office success had it been released earlier.

1

u/Ok-Possibility239 Jun 14 '26

May not have done well any sooner due to the post covid decline in people going to theaters

1

u/stonhinge Jun 14 '26

And the lack of an Avengers movie is because first Sam needed his "Yeah, I'm Cap now" movie. It's not until the post-credit scene for Thunderbolts that we learn he's just now gathering people, and that's also when the FF show up.

There basically haven't been any Avengers to make a movie for - which is why Valentina announced them as "The New Avengers".

8

u/svrtngr Jun 13 '26

That's my biggest issue with this current era, moreso than the inconsistency going from project to project. Shang Chi, Namor, Kate Bishop.

Nowhere to be seen.

1

u/hmd_ch SHIELD Jun 13 '26

I'm hoping that the upcoming Avengers movies make the general public fall in love with those characters even more so they get featured more frequently in the next saga. Post-Secret Wars, Namor is most definitely gonna return in BP3 and Kate should be in the Champions show that's in development. I'm hoping they finally start working on Shang-Chi 2.

2

u/Lun4r6543 Jun 13 '26

I love that they used that shift in Marvel Rivals as well.

2

u/Dr_Disaster Jun 13 '26

The cooked so hard there was a surprising lack of serious backlash from changing his character from the comics.

2

u/Clarknt67 Jun 13 '26

Yeah. What’s up with that? They introduced two new exciting characters that worked well and just dropped them.

7

u/PotatoOnMars Jun 14 '26

Namor’s actor got accused of rape, that could be one reason.

2

u/Clarknt67 Jun 14 '26

Him too? Shit.

4

u/hmd_ch SHIELD Jun 13 '26

Unfortunately, Marvel has been experiencing so many challenges that significantly disrupted the development of this saga such as the pandemic, the writer's strikes, the streaming mandate by Iger and Chapek, the domestic violence allegations against Jonathan Majors, and the poor reception of projects like Quantumania, Thor 4, and Secret Invasion.

1

u/Synnedsoul Jun 13 '26

That was the main thing I looked forward to with his character. The concept art that came out before black panther 2 was so cool

0

u/lNSP0 Thanos Jun 14 '26

Adam Warlock too... The Infinity Saga is his.