Quotes of Quotes (XXVI) – Markus and McFeely on “Agent Carter” within the MCU

How much of the bigger Marvel Universe are you weaving in?

[Screenwriter/Co-Creator Christopher] McFeely: We can’t help but weave in the Marvel Universe. We’ve been at this for a few years now. All of our reference points are within the universe. We need a scientist character. We didn’t go very far to come up with Anton Vanko, just as a very small part scientist character. If you know what he is, or what he goes on to be, that’s interesting. If not, he’s the Russian scientist.

[Screenwriter/Co-Creator Stephen] Markus: Also, working in the past where you already know the future — obviously, we saw ninety-something old Peggy — there are references being made, whether you do them on purpose or not. We know Hydra eventually took over S.H.I.E.L.D. When somebody says something hopeful about the future in Agent Carter, that is going to be tinged with the fact we know the future didn’t work out that well. There are plenty of little indicators of the future going forward, and the legacy of both the S.S.R. and Howard’s technology that will have ramifications later.

It’s almost like the M. Night Shyamalan curse, though. Viewers always expect some crazy twist in his movies. With Marvel, people anticipate all these tie-ins to other projects.

McFeely: I suppose it has the red box on the front. It’s a Marvel project, so they are going to expect something. But we’ve really tried to make the best show, about an interesting character in a world where there are some glowing objects and where a superhero has died.

Markus: We are also slightly freed up from that interconnection by the period. On “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Captain America and Iron Man and everybody are running around in that same world and same time period. They could theoretically show up at the door. There’s nobody around during “Agent Carter.” You can’t have an end-of-the-credits tag where Nick Fury shows up and talks to Peggy. He hasn’t been conceived yet. We’re a little cocooned.
– from an Interview at Comicbookresources.com

(vgl.)

MCU: Markus & McFeely über Arbeitsweisen, Quesada über die Netflix-Shows

Oh boy, oh boy! Spätestens seitdem der Plot von Captain America: The Winter Soldier Elemente enthielt, die sich auf das ganze Marvel Cinematic Universe (und insbesondere die Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.-Fernsehserie) durchschlägt und -schlagen wird, fangen auch andere Menschen, die sich nicht schon seit vier Jahren mit dem Thema beschäftigen, an, Fragen zu stellen.

Zum Beispiel Ben Blacker, der in seinem Nerdist Writers Panel letzte Woche die Drehbuchautoren Christopher Markus und Stephen McFeely zu Gast hatte. Marcus und McFeely gehören mit Kevin Feige und Joss Whedon sicherlich zu den wichtigsten Architekten des MCU. Sie haben die Drehbücher zu Captain America und Winter Soldier geschrieben und waren an beiden Thor-Drehbüchern beteiligt. Entsprechend konnten sie im Podcast einiges von Interesse darüber sagen, wie die Arbeit am MCU vor sich geht.

Etwa über die Arbeit an Captain America: The First Avenger im Gefüge des MCU:

What was nice is that, by nature of being period, we came before everybody else, whether or not we were coming out before everybody else. We didn’t have to accomodate anybody. We didn’t have to be: Oh, they’re doing that in Thor. We’re 50 years prior to that, who cares?

Über das Pflanzen von Samen für spätere Filme.

If I was writing a standalone movie, things would tie up neatly. You wouldn’t make reference to things that aren’t going to resonate anywhere else. You wouldn’t have Howard Stark if there wasn’t a Tony Stark in a whole different section of it. It’s this sort of opportunity to take things that you would have to do anyway for the movie, you would need a scientist, or a mentor … to kind of draw the threads that everything connects. For things like Winter Soldier, we knew it existed (…) so we did things to Bucky in the first movie …

Sie beschreiben außerdem, dass sie von den großen Planungen für das Universum wenig wissen und sich um ihren einzelnen Film kümmern und nur einzelne Vorgaben bekommen. Etwa, dass Kevin Feige sagt: “I think it’s okay to take down S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Über die Rolle des “Marvel Creative Committee”, in dem auch Joe Quesada sitzt, sagen sie unter anderem:

They get to weigh in and we (…) don’t talk to them particularly and (…) Kevin [Feige] will filter their notes down (…). In some ways, they are the keepers of the bottom line standards of the characters.

Der ganze Podcast ist äußerst hörenswert, weil die beiden auch sehr sympathisch sind. Es geht viel um Cap 2, aber zum Beispiel auch um die “Agent Carter”-Fernsehserie, die derzeit noch in der Entwicklung ist und für die das Team den Pilotfilm geschrieben hat.

Fat Men on Cap Men

Joe Quesada, der Chief Creative Officer von Marvel Comics hingegen, war in Kevin Smiths “Fat Man on Batman“-Podcast zu Gast. Der Podcast ist längst nicht so informativ wie der oben beschriebene – er besteht zu großen Teilen aus Kevin Smith, wie er Winter Soldier lobt – aber zwischendurch lässt Quesada ein paar dokumentierwürdige Sätze fallen.

Unter anderem beschreibt er, dass zum Start der S.H.I.E.L.D.-Fernsehserie logischerweise bereits feststand, dass die Organisation S.H.I.E.L.D. am Ende nicht mehr existieren würde. Die Schauspieler hingegen wurden im Dunkeln gelassen. Fies!

Schließlich geht es noch um die für 2015 geplanten Marvel-Serien für Netflix, “Luke Cage”, “Jessica Jones”, “Daredevil” und “Iron Fist” auf die dann ebenfalls eine Teamup-Serie, “Defenders” folgen soll. Die Seite “Comicbook.com” hat die interessantesten Zitate gut zusammengefasst.

Abgesehen davon, dass die Netflix-Serien ebenfalls Teil des MCU sein werden und es spannend zu sehen sein wird, ob auch hier Crossover-Potenzial zu den Filmen genutzt wird (Mein Tipp: Wahrscheinlich sehr sehr wenig), denke ich ist die interessanteste Entwicklung, über die man nachdenken muss, der Faktor der Synchronität. Wenn die Serien in Gänze erscheinen, aber miteinander korrespondieren und verbunden sind, fällt der zeitliche Faktor der Crossovers wie bei Comics oder linearen TV und Film-Releases weg.

Angenommen also, ein Ereignis tritt ein, das alle vier Serien beeinflusst. In welcher Reihenfolge gucke ich sie dann am besten? Erst Serie A komplett, dann Serie B, dann C, dann D? Oder jeweils eine Folge von A, B, C und D? Oder eine andere Reihenfolge, die jemand vorschlägt – ähnlich wie die Machete-Reihenfolge von Star Wars?

Es bleibt spannend im MCU.

Kevin Feige’s Masterplan

The most recent episode of Jeff Goldsmith’s excellent podcast series The Q&A featured a recording of Jeff’s Panel The Art of Adapting Comics to the Screen at Comic-Con. In it, he interviewed two screenwriting duos, who have written for films set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) – Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (Captain America) and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby (Iron Man). Among other things, Jeff asked them about Marvel Studios’ president of production Kevin Feige’s overall vision for the MCU. This is what they had to say:

Hawk Ostby: Kevin, first of all, is amazingly smart. He also loves these characters and he knows this universe so well, you’re not gonna put one over on him. It was just very clever, the way he planned – just sitting around, listening to how this all was going to gel with all the other storylines and planting things in the movie. It was fascinating. (…) The big idea was really when he said: “At the end of Iron Man, he’s gonna say ‘I am Iron Man.'” And we thought: “Wow, that’s crazy – then what happens?” And he says: “We’ll figure it out”. That was the really big one and we thought: “Wow, this is really cool.” Because nobody had done that.

Mark Fergus: He wore everybody down. Everyone kept saying: “We’ll come back to that, we’ll come back to that.” And by the end of the movie, he had everyone going “Yeah, that is awesome.” (…) [He said :] “Let’s paint ourselves into a corner and then next time figure out an awesome way out of it.” And this teaser at the end with Sam [Jackson]. Kevin did the greatest thing. He previewed the movie all over the place and left that out. And at the first day of theatrical, it was there. That [meant] that Iron Man was just the beginning of something bigger. (…) This was now going to branch off into all these other movies. (…) It was really just a punch in the face going: “Yeah, here we go. Marvel Universe!”

(…) Chris Markus: When we went into our first meeting, the bulletin boards all around the room were all Ryan Meinerding’s concept art and at least one of them had Red Skull, Cosmic Cube in his hand, and a picture of Asgard shooting out of it, so we were like, “Okay, Thor.” And then, they knew they wanted Howard Stark in it – it was amazing to walk into this thing that’s already interconnected with all these tentacles to all the other movies.

Listen to the whole Podcast on The Q&A.