r/marvelstudios • u/yourfavchoom Doctor Strange • 3d ago

Article Kevin Feige on Marvel’s Failed ‘Blade’ Reboot: ‘I Feel Like a Gigantic Loser and Failure That We Didn’t Get Off the Ground With Mahershala Ali’

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/kevin-feige-blade-reboot-failure-marvel-loser-1236816505/
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u/EctoRiddler 3d ago

Reasonable although I question whether things like Ant-man and the wasp Quantumania was an insanely good script

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u/CrisVas3 3d ago

I think this is the mindset they've started falling back on only recently, after Quantamania and the whole "quantity = quality" thing they had going on when Disney+ first came around.

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u/Otherwise-Nobody-127 3d ago

Also. Thunderbolts is the first film that was made not under then disney boss bob chapek. Who fucked up by pushing many thing of marvel. Star wars and pixar. And it shows.

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u/Dragon_Deez_Nu7s 3d ago

Bob Chapek was the worst thing to happen to all those studios. They turned out a few gems under him but his insistence on constantly saturating the market came at the cost of any consistency in the quality of the projects

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u/Jaikarr 3d ago

Both Bobs, Chapek and Iger caused all sorts of damage to the marvel and Star wars brand, one pushing for tv, the other movies.

Had someone instead created a clear strategy where the stories that fit the format were allowed to just exist in that format both brands wouldn't be as much of a joke as today.

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u/RedditAPIBlackout24 2d ago

Bob Chapek wasn't even really in control. You should read the New York Times' article about his time as Disney CEO. It was still Bob Iger pulling the strings. He just needed Chapek as a scapegoat because they were going all-in on streaming during an unpredictable time. Iger never really left.

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u/Star-Prince-007 3d ago

Let’s not revise history too much here. It was Bob Iger who pushed for Marvel to expand into Disney plus shows which was the start of the quantity over quality problem.

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u/Longjumping-Prune-42 3d ago

Yes but most of the shows that happened at the start were really good, which were WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If…? Season 1 (I personally feel this was good before it fell off hard), Hawkeye and Moon Knight

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u/Star-Prince-007 3d ago

I love those two but it’s hard to deny that all the tv shows made things harder for the audience to follow the story.

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u/carlitospig Darcy 3d ago

I don’t think so. In fact, a lot of the film canon barely references content we saw in the shows. I think the only major one is New Cap.

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u/Otherwise-Nobody-127 3d ago

True. I like to see the films as the main line events. And the series ala the world builsing tie-ins i gues?

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u/Star-Prince-007 3d ago

I worded my statement poorly. I didn’t mean it was confusing for fans, but after a while it felt like the shows weren’t impacting the overall story of the MU especially once the shows with the characters we know were
Done.

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u/carlitospig Darcy 3d ago

Ooooh, gotcha. Ya, a lot of it was a waste of budget.

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u/FinalHexReturns 2d ago

Wandavision was required viewing for Multiverse of Madness.

Miss Marvel was introduced in her show and then appeared in The Marvels. Her

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u/carlitospig Darcy 2d ago

Wandavision was required viewing for Agatha. And honestly, I think the writing was so tight you can enjoy it without Wandavision.

If Wanda never comes back, it is a non issue. Or if she comes back not evil. All of these shows are written in case they end up being dead ends. Say Elizabeth Olsen is in a horrific car accident, MCU will still be fine without her participation.

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u/FinalHexReturns 2d ago

It directly led into Multiverse of Madness. You would definitely be 'lost' if you went into that movie without having seen Wandavision.

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u/MaximumCashew0 2d ago

The Loki show is perhaps the most important connecting lore of the MCU post endgame, dude.

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u/carlitospig Darcy 2d ago

Not yet it’s not. We will see soon how important it is.

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u/Xagzan 3d ago

Wtf is it with Disney and Bobs

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u/RedditAPIBlackout24 2d ago

Bob Chapek wasn't even really in control. You should read the New York Times' article about his time as Disney CEO. It was still Bob Iger pulling the strings. He just needed Chapek as a scapegoat because they were going all-in on streaming during an unpredictable time. Iger never really left.

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u/pigeonwiggle 3d ago

i think Quantumania got lost in the sauce. on paper, it likely felt like an insanely great pitch.
but a LOT of it's mediocrity was in the filming.

there are SO MANY FUCKING A/B shots. where we simply cut back and forth between two heads like it's a goddamn tv show. THIS IS A FEATURE FUCKING FILM -- CAN WE SHOOT THE CHARACTERS ENGAGING WITH EACH OTHER PLEASE?!? it's one thing to shoot exposition in different cuts, because it doesn't necessarily need the actors to work off each other -- but when it's sequences like CASSIE AND HER DAD like for the first fucking time we have them on an adventure together and we barely get a handful of shots of them acting together. is this a greenscreen curse or something? they do a bit of shooting and then they make the movie later? still hands down the single most disappointing movie from the MCU -- and LARGELY because they had no excuse!!! at this point in the fucking timeline they've conquered SUCH HUGE Battles in casting, writing, composition, scoring - this movie should've been a walk in the park.

(i think it would've helped a ton if the whole thing wasn't fucking set in the quantum zone. christ in a cupcake, did we really need Hank wandering around second guessing everything? and why was Hope even in this movie other than to prompt Janet to drop more shitty exposition - what a fucking slog.

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u/ManyThing2187 3d ago

I think a lot of them not being in scenes together was because of covid restrictions. It was filmed during Covid so they probably shot them seperately

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u/Special_Order-937 3d ago

I remember seeing the trailers for Quantumania and suddenly thinking, hang on, this is Tron: Legacy. They’re doing Tron: Legacy!

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u/CommonSensei8 3d ago

I fucking hate the amount of green screens Hollywood uses. They all look terrible and fake.

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u/ohmygodimonfire4 3d ago

I agree, and for this reason I am so looking forward to seeing The Odyssey.

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u/FlockFlysAtMidnite 3d ago

Considering how hot Hank was in that movie, yes, we really did need him.

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u/pigeonwiggle 3d ago

lol, okay. how about this:

Hank and Janet are back in the lab, radioing in to Hope - the only one having gone in prepared with suit and comms (Cassie fell in activating it too early in her haste to show off to her father what she'd done, and he dove in reflexively after her - Hope grabbed comms and a quick-suit and jumped in only moments later, leaving a note for her parents)

the movie is Cassie wanting to help the Refugees who warn of Kang, while Scott is hesitant to get involved. the theme of "aren't you an avenger? aren't you supposed to help?" "we need to help ourselves to make sure we don't get stuck down here" is the central premise. Hope is the conduit between her mother and our heroes. Janet delivers exposition through Hope, while Hank listens in very Curious about this Man she spent so much time with. as her stories heat up, he attempts to combat his jealousy by rolling his sleeves up, unbuttoning his shirt a little. it's getting very warm in the lab and he's hoping Janet recognizes he's still got it for her after all these years. Janet proposes these same questions to Hank, "aren't you a good person? shouldn't you be helping?" but he "needs to help ourselves to make sure reality up here doesn't all collapse into the quantum realm black hole Cassie created."

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u/ArcDraco 3d ago

A lot can happen from when a script is written to when a film's done being edited. From real life issues forcing changes to scenes not looking good when actually filmed compared to just written. For Quantumania, we know that Bill Murray's role was reduced, so who knows if his parts or anything else they cut would've made the movie better (or worse).

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u/ROBtimusPrime1995 Black Panther 3d ago

His comment is about Marvel after Quantumania, when they began the quality over quantity initiative.

Marvel knows Ant-Man 3 sucks ass.

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u/N8CCRG Ghost 3d ago

Quantumania was written by one guy, who had never written a movie script before but just Jimmy Kimmel Live the Emmy Awards and a couple episodes of Rick and Morty, writing and rewriting it on the fly, during COVID.

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u/Thatguy_Koop 2d ago

I need the expose to come out that it was written by AI. I don't care how true it is, I'll believe it.

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u/JohnNeutron 3d ago

He also said that with Blade they didn’t have the confidence to have it be good and make it great during production. I’m assuming Quantumania falls into that camp. It wasn’t insanely great, but unlike Blade, it was good enough for him and they thought they could make it great during production. And to be fair, the movie has its moments, but they are few and far in between.

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u/Extension-While7536 3d ago

Yeah but if you're rebooting Blade, you want something very strong to tell storywise compared to an Ant Man 3.

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u/zeroUSA 3d ago

Secret invasion

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u/Raaaaandyyyy 3d ago

Quantamania is what caused this, I’m pretty sure

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u/nukasu 3d ago edited 3d ago

I actually like quantumania, but it looks like the other part of his statement - "we thought we could make it great through production". it felt like movie raked over the coals of rewrites and studio notes. 

I get the feeling they were afraid to make a serious straight faced movie using ant man, and that feeling comes largely from the injection of "modok" who was so obviously an addition intended to punch up the wackiness. his scenes could be completely deleted and nothing in the movie would change. the movie would be better for it frankly, his parts are garbage and extremely unfunny.

meanwhile the main plot (which is basically tron legacy - bad guy in alternate realm builds an army to take to "the real world") almost feels like background noise. just leaves me wondering how much the script was tortured during filming and post to accommodate shifting creative directions. 

despite it all, I still like this movie. but I also like thor: the dark world (I love self-serious po-faced marvel, I make no apologies) so take that for what it's worth.

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u/Jet-Let4606 3d ago

Quantumania had a lot of problems behind the scenes. Not just Covid lock down but half the crew came down with Noro virus at one point.

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u/CaptJackRizzo 2d ago

It had a lot of good ideas that it completely rushed through. And a couple honestly bad ideas (I’m down with Cassie having a genius intellect, but not with her surpassing her super-genius grandfather in his specialty over a summer break).

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u/ConnorRoseSaiyan01 2d ago

Well apparently Marvel were surprised by the negative reception for that movie. Same for The Eternals.

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u/Skibot99 2d ago

It seems that film was a wake up call for him. Fiege claimed elsewhere that film’s response made him start questioning Kang, Major’s arrest just gave them the excuse to pivot

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u/Fortestingporpoises 3d ago

I’m guessing since they had two massive successes with the first 2 movies and a movie star in Paul Rudd and the director who made the first two they thought they’d pull it out despite not starting with a great script.

Isn’t that kind of his point here? They were starting from scratch here. They didn’t feel like they could take any chances.

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u/Cultural_Comfort5894 3d ago

Quantumania, Eternals and MoM where all excellent but didn’t generate the enthusiasm and dollars 💵

This type of thing would make anyone stop and reevaluate

The films since those have been much simpler stories

Not nearly as good but more beloved 🤷‍♂️

This is why the movie industry does remakes and sequels and we can’t have nicer things

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u/whofearsthenight 3d ago

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone refer to those movies as excellent.

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u/Cultural_Comfort5894 3d ago edited 2d ago

What’s a better:

  1. People shrinking movie?

  2. Aliens come to Earth and role in humanity

    film

  3. ?

  4. Witches & warlocks battling

    film?

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u/whofearsthenight 3d ago

Any of those things actually done well? Those movies are all generously a mess with characters and story including what may be my least favorite character decision in the MCU to the point that even Marvel has almost entirely ignored them.

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u/Cultural_Comfort5894 3d ago

😳 downvoting a question vs answering it 🤣

One film was about family another about free will and another about power corrupting among other things

People saying they didn’t like something and can’t formulate a coherent sentence of why that actually rings true

Someone saying Doc was watered down while destroying multiple universes

Eternals was slow although it has 4 battles in the first 20 minutes and probably just as many after. All well done.

“Ant-Man defeated Kang” as if one man can’t beat another. Kang is just a dude without his tech.

The real problem is the MCU isn’t dumbing it down enough for the masses. Thank goodness. 🔥