Whoever made the decision to go with NH/SS need to be called out so that they don't do the same in other franchises.
Since the ending, it is very obvious more than ever that Hinata and NH just doesn't sell. So, there's really no strong justification to make it canon other than appeasing minor fans and minor voices in the production department. It purely is, a bad business decision.
The story is not structured to support NH/SS until the last minute pivot. People complained the lack of development to make it canon and the foundation for its subsequent Buruto continuation. To build a continuation series, you'd need a strong foundation. The elements that support strong foundation is a good storytelling and a loyal fanbase. Both of which, Kishimoto removed --by all means, NS is just a side effect of a good storytelling about growth, sacrifice and achievements. It has the solid foundation that even if the series is to continue, it will at least be in a better position.
Someone made online recap on Boruto sales. It's not doing great (roughly 10% per volume of what Naruto used to sold in the past, even during its non-peak).
Numbers like these baffle me on why SJ is continuing to publish this series. Again, it may be okay by a monthly manga series standard, but this is absolutely abysmal to what Naruto used to be, a series that sold in the MILLIONS
You mean like how MCU rushed Captain Marvel into the MCU and then made a claim that she was going to be the new leader of the Avengers in Phase 4 despite not even interacting with any of the other characters, having no history with any of them save for Fury, and so much more all for the sake of having a "female superhero?" Pushing the agenda that "girls can be superheroes too" while completely ignoring some of the other female stars in the series. Yes, because Black Widow was not important enough right? No, MCU had to have a strong female superhero and give her hax powers that not even she herself can understand all because "we wanted to compete with the boys." A point that the Russo's made when they said "She wasn't originally in Endgame" and she was shoehorned in. Makes sense why she was only in it for about 15 minutes.
Knock Knock.
Who's there?
Captain Marvel.
Where have you been for the past 10-20 years? I guess Thanos was only a threat AFTER he snapped his fingers huh? I doubt some of the other planets were that much in dire when the entire universe was at stake. Beep beep.
How about Agents of Shield, Agent Carter, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, and so many other TV series that exist in the MCU canon, but make no mentions or anything in the actual MCU movies themselves? You'd think Ghost Rider would have helped in Endgame. I guess when their Netflix series basically tanks and most of their series go town the toilet, you kind of abandoned ship. This is especially true when you realize that Luke Cage played a significant part in Civil War in the comics, but...
Should I mention the Fantastic Four movies?
Sometimes Marvel wasn't serious enough and actually ruined some of their own canon....does The Mandarin ring any bells? I wonder who was a worse villain...The Mandarin or Lex Luthor?
Hey guys what happened to Sif? You know, Thor's friend? How about Jane Foster? How about several other characters that were originally very important, but then kind of were written out of existence because "we didn't think too far in the future." "They broke up." I guess that's a good enough answer.
Hulk and Black Widow? Who What when where why and how?
I found and interesting letter here. "If Doctor Strange takes place even one year after 2014, why is the surgeon named as a person of interest in The Winter Soldier, which is also said to take place in 2014?"
Hey Spider-Man, how ya swinging? What's Mary Jane doing? "Who is Mary Jane?" You know "MJ?" "Oh, you mean Michelle Jones?" By the way, 8 years since the first Avenger movies? Kind of a huge oversight, huh?
Winter Soldier, good to see you. How are things? What? Captain America needs to insert chips into three ships to disable them? Why not just call Hulk? Unavailable? Why?
Hey Thor, you remember how you took the Tesseract in The first Avengers movie? Why didn't you take the staff too? You went along with Tony doing stuff with it? You knew that kind of power is dangerous so why didn't you take the scepter as well? If you did, Tony wouldn't have made Ultron.Endgame kind of blows an even bigger hole in all of this, but that is a spoiler.
And don't even get me started on all of the "It is okay if I do it, but if anyone else does it...it is bad" kind of logic that many of the characters possess including, but not limited to: Tony Stark, Black Panther, our own US government, and several other characters where..let's be honest...most of the problems in MCU can be summed up in 3 words: "Tony did it."
The Marvel universe is not as air tight as you might think and there are plenty of times where characters had wasted potential, wiped from existence, and just downright never talked about again. The Incredible Hulk movie really was glossed over and only one character makes a return with the others basically being just hand waved from existence.
I shall say it again....why does Marvel get a pass, but DC is run through with a fine tooth comb to the point that if Superman's suit color is off they say "this is wrong?" DC cannot win here because if they did their own thing...people hate it, but if they tried to do what Marvel is doing with the same tone...you all would complain that they are just poorly mimicking Marvel.
Shazam took a lighter tone....and guess what? NOW they say it is too light and needs to be darker. A movie about a kid turning into a superhero is not dark enough.
Here is the thing though...even if that were true...they are all Divas. Monica Rial always hates dealing with fans and thinks being a fan is an insult. Same with Chris Sabat. Sean Schemmel thinks he is the one and only Goku and bashes on Team Four Star constantly. Jamie Marchi is just...she is everything wrong with society. Krillian's Voice actor and Sean did a video about Vic saying how he likes to touch 12 year old boys while mocking his voice.
Rey Ayanami's voice actor Amanda Win-Lee did something at con in 1999 and footage of it of her stripping down to her bra and dry humping a mascot of Pen-Pen in front of everyone AND told a girl that she deserved to be raped. All of this in front of kids and even I think Anno while he was there.
Did she get fired? No. Was she accused of anything? No. Yes, this was back in 1999, but really? Some of these "victims" are accusing him of stuff from 2006. Why does Amanda Win-Lee get a pass?
The whole gang says they are ready and willing to go to court, but when Vic finally does it. When they receive those papers, they are now cowering in fear including Monica Rial who is trying to subpoena Vic back and makes claims about privacy and Jamie Marchi PURPOSELY is avoiding getting handed the papers to the point that she is hermiting herself in her home on record with photos of her cowering.
These people are not your friends and they hate you. They just love your money.
As for the whole "Vic is a diva at cons," the problem I have with this is is that there is no incidents that support this. They looked into some of the cons he has been in the past several years and they all say "No, Vic was awesome and we had no incidents to report." So this whole idea of Vic is a diva at every con is either a hyperbole or it was earlier in his career when he first started out and he let it get to his head as and then mellowed out with age.
Nothing for nothing...we are all divas now and then. We all have bad days and we all act better than we think we are, but it takes experience to bring us down to a better level.
However, if Vic was a diva then....these people are divas NOW with their twitter profiles blowing up whining that Vic was mean to them or the fanbase is harassing them. You know you're a diva when you threaten a fan to the FBI because they asked you "Can I see proof of what you are claiming?" When you use lines like "you're not privileged to that information." You're a diva. When you act like a victim when you are not...you're a diva and that is the truth.
I met Vic in person. I talked to him several times and talked to people who also met him and hanged with him. Not one time was Vic a diva. Not one time. In fact, Vic was very humble and greatful. Even to me. So when people say this stuff I have to ask...what was the context? Was he having a bad day? Was he tired? Anything could have been the case.
Heck, Vic once spent 9 hours without a break to be there for the fans. Some of these VAs couldn't even spend 2 minutes with you without an hour break. That is how good a man Vic is. He is not perfect, but by hell he is A LOT better than most of the other VAs people praise.
People all think Vic is hiding something, but what is the rest of the people hiding? Imagine the skeletons in their closets.
Honestly, this is all off-topic and I am actually sorry I made this post. I won't talk about this anymore here at least. If you want to talk more, KClaws we can take it to PM or go to the endgame thread.
I probably should take these points elsewhere, but I'll try to knock them out fast as I can here. Take them as you will:
1) Captain Marvel was essentially Fury's silver bullet. While having her responsibilities in the cosmos, Fury wanted to keep in touch with her and create an Earth-based team of heroes first before waiting maybe two weeks for her to show up. We're getting a completely different team of Avengers in the future, so we'll see how that goes as far as her being the focus.
2) I don't see any of those other characters doing much good in the final battle against Thanos, and it's not like the Avengers themselves were aware they existed to begin with. The past TV shows and movies, while existing in the same universe, didn't intersect (probably because of rights issues and scheduling conflicts).
3) The Fantastic Four movies are not part of the MCU
4) I don't think even Marvel comics liked the Mandarin in all honesty. His abilities were so out there it wouldn't surprise me that Marvel Studios didn't know what to do with him (but Feige says they want to reveal the "Real Mandarin" soon)
5) On this I agree. With Sif, I think Jamie Alexander just didn't like her role and wasn't interested in returning. Jane Foster wasn't my favorite character, nor my favorite ship, but I think having a scene in AoU would have helped. My headcanon is that Thor contacted Jane before going on his journey, she gets frustrated and they brake up. I think it would have been powerful to show that in the movie and would have only taken 5 minutes.
On another note, Thor: Ragnarok was the only MCU movie I'm not really fond of.
6) Yeah, wasn't into that idea either. At least we didn't get a "The Last Hulk movie"
7) Hydra was targeting millions of people, super or not. I believe they wanted to wipe out people who were "too smart for their own good" or very opinionated, which Doctor Strange was, even as a surgeon
8) The 8 years was definitely a mistake, no defending that, but it's something that's easy to overlook as a typo. As for Spider-Man's friends, there were probably a lot of rights issues between Marvel and Sony, which again led to changes. But the traditional friends weren't going to work when it's been done twice already.
9) For the same reasons other comic book heroes are not available in canon? Not to mention when you're dealing with a shadow government, you need to be very careful about who and HOW you contact them, lest the bad guys find you with your pants down and snuff you.
Plus having Hulk run through Washington DC uncontrolled isn't what I would call a good idea. At least in Avengers, New York was already under a full scale invasion and at that point Hulk was more or less a necessary risk
10) Thor probably didn't know it was an Infinity Stone to begin with, just technology that Asgard didn't need to think much of. Plus as they explained, none of them knew Hydra was in Shield to begin with.
Yes, the MCU isn't perfect, but as far as getting people to enjoy your movies and keep coming back, make several spin-off tv shows in their universe, is a model for success. The DCEU isn't overseen by someone like Feige, they got Snyder who thinks Watchmen is what all superheroes should be like and wanted to push boundaries where he shouldn't have. Plus, once they let him go, WB just wants to go with whatever works for them instead of building a universe. There's more detail in that, but I'll save it for another time.
Also, Shazam was well-received. It may have under performed in the long run because it came out the same month as friggn' Endgame, but most people that I know who saw it liked the movie so it should be counted as a win for them.
But you get a hug, so you don't have a conniption, even if I'm pretty damn close myself.
