Previously-
So, I guess this is part 0.5.
Yep, before 2008's "Iron Man" Avi Arad was already trying to jury rig the 00's Marvel movies into a sorta-MCU.
The characters wouldn't necessarily directly cross, but we'd be cheekily aware this was all one world.
X-Men (2000)
Spider-Man (2002)
Fantastic Four (2005)
First, we got the first modern-era Stan Lee cameo (he'd been in "Trial Of The Incredible Hulk", but that was TV, and he'd been in "Mallrats" but that was indie comedy) in X-Men.
Then! There was supposed to be a scene where Stan's character in "Spider-Man" was selling sunglasses, and he's supposed to say "these are the same sunglasses from X-Men!" meaning the style Cyclops wears.
That was a Fox-to-Sony cross, so the lawyers stomped down on that, and it's not even a deleted scene on the DVD/Blu-Ray. Stan Lee described it in "Stan Lee's Mutants, Monsters, & Marvels".
I dunno, you can mention another company's movie as popular culture, and not get sued. That's fair use.
But, the lawyers wanted to be petty, and Marvel didn't want to pay the court costs to beat the rap, at least not over a teeny little split second scene in a movie that might get cut anyway.
So that got ruined.
Then, in "Fantastic Four" Reed Richards was supposed to use his stretchy powers to morph into Hugh Jackman Wolverine for a split second.
Implying FF was in the same world as X-Men.
It was a Fox-to-Fox cross, so I don't at all see what the legal problem was.
At least this scene is still a deleted scene on the DVD.
And oh yeah, Stan Lee was in both FFs.
Stan even joked that it flopped because he wasn't in it. 😂
So, the implication both with the Stan cameos, and little things like the Reed Richards morph, was that the Marvel movie world was all the same.
Lawyers (and probably directors) peed on this effort.
So, they had to spend the next 20 fucking years going the looooooong way around to the MCU being built out, then Disney cutting a deal with Sony, and buying out Fox, so they could multiverse that shit together.
So, thank our two-tiered expensive justice system, and corporate inertia for that shit.
If it had been a couple indie comic companies that wanted their characters to cross, no one would have given a fuck.
Three franchises from the same universe, but across 2 bigass studios "hey, whoa, wait a minute! Who makes the money!?".
America: follow your dreams, and if you fail, you die miserably like the creator of "Miss Fury". Succeed, and put up with Corporate Monster Chess.
And still die alone like Stan did.
*Sigh*
Was the Corporate Monster Chess worth it?
Deadpool 3 will go a long way to delivering the verdict.
I hope.
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