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"Pls blame Deli for this." - Everyone (kopi) wrote in rp_tutorials,
@ 2013-10-09 16:01:00

Entry tags:

question: help

Question/discussion: MCU
Lately many multi-fandom games have the term 'MCU' on their cast list and this is a great idea. For those that don't know, MCU stands for Marvel Cinematic Universe. So my question is which movies are considered MCU? All and every movie with Marvel characters? All movies under Marvel studios? Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D?

Right now, as far as I can tell from several cast pages that I've read, the term does not include the X-Men films, Daredevil (2003) and Elektra (2005), Spider-Man (2002) and the two sequels, Fantastic Four (2005) and the sequel. Should they? Are you a mod and do consider it MCU?

I'm assuming that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D will be included in the term since it's Whedon but if someone could confirm this, that would be great. The animated Marvelverse is under Disney but I'm going to assume that no one would consider this MCU, since it's technically MAU (Marvel Animated Universe) if it should be a RP term at all.

If I left anything out, please don't hesitate to point that out.

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nebari
2013-10-09 05:07 am UTC (link)

You're right about the movies not including Daredevil and etc, because they weren't made under Marvel (I think, please don't quote me on this) - I've heard that the right to those movies will eventually come back to Marvel though, which will result into a reboot (like the new Spiderman movie) of so said movie. So once those movies get remade, they'll be considered MCU. Otherwise, they're generally considered separate 'worlds'. Games I've been in have been pretty awesome about labeling those characters and worlds.

Animated Marvel is also not considered MCU, but I'm not sure how people label it. 'Animated' should suffice, maybe?

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	kopi 2013-10-09 06:38 am UTC (link)
	I know. They're under Fox, though Daredevil's rights reverted back to Disney/Marvel a few months back. In terms of rp though, I'm wondering if they should be 'called' MCU. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	nebari 2013-10-09 06:47 am UTC (link)
	Nope. The Captain America's, Avengers, Iron Mans and Incredible Hulks are MCU, the X-Mens and Daredevils, Elektras and what have you not, aren't MCU. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	kopi 2013-10-09 06:53 am UTC (link)
	Oops. Unclear comment in unclear. I meant the aimated verse in the last sentence. I was saying that the animated cartoons shouldn't br called MCU. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	nebari 2013-10-09 07:08 am UTC (link)
	In most the games I frequent, they're a separate category, mainly because of duplicate characters, extreme world differences, etc. (Reply to this) (Parent)

stomps
2013-10-09 05:13 am UTC (link)

Not a mod, but MCU doesn't include X-Men etc. because those franchises are owned by other production companies (Fox has X-Men, Columbia has Spider-Man). Scarlet Witch/Quicksilver in Avengers 2 legally can't, as far as I understand it, reference X-Men or mutants or anything (so how they'll get around that is...uh, we'll see, I guess). Those other films you mentioned might be Marvel characters, but they don't exist in the same shared universe--the Fantastic Four do not exist in Tony Stark's New York City, and so on, at least not until rights revert at some point, at which I expect they'll milk that cash cow, haha.

MCU films are Iron Man 1-3, Incredible Hulk (2008, not Ang Lee's Hulk), Thor 1-2, Captain America 1-2, Avengers 1-2, the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man. Marvel One-Shots and Agents of SHIELD also qualify (sidenote though that Joss Whedon isn't the showrunner for AoS; he directed and helped write the pilot episode, but the actual showrunners are Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen). I think you can debate the canonicity of AoS since it's a TV show involving side characters, but it's clearly meant to be part of the same fictional universe.

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	kopi 2013-10-09 06:43 am UTC (link)
	Good points! I am mainly wondering about the labeling in terms of RP as some multi-fandom games include characters from several of the non-MCU films. So far I've seen the mutants grouped into 'X-Men', and yet to see what they will come up with to call the others. Grouping the rest by film seems very messy. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

stomps
2013-10-09 07:47 am UTC (link)

Oh, I see. I still would never call those other films MCU and you won't see Marvel themselves doing so. MCU is a brand/franchise label that encompasses specific films.

afaik there's not a catch-all label to encompass the other Marvel films. I suppose if I were organizing a game, I'd just call them "Miscellaneous Marvel movies" or something. (But I'd also hazard a guess that a majority of players playing those characters would be using 616/comics continuity and not the films....)

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	stomps 2013-10-09 07:49 am UTC (link)
	* for Daredevil etc., anyway. Movie Reboot Spider-Man seems popular enough to warrant its own subheading around IJ, haha. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	kopi 2013-10-09 08:02 pm UTC (link)
	True enough though I have seen the odd ones out every one in awhile. I like to stalk around the cast pages of games that look interesting. I remember there being a number that represents movieverse continuity but I forgot what it was. It's never been used on a cast page so far from what I've seen. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	stomps 2013-10-09 08:14 pm UTC (link)
	MCU is 199999... which is why everyone calls it MCU. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	kopi 2013-10-09 08:18 pm UTC (link)
	Yep. Sounds about right re: what I remember reading somewhere. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	crazypanda 2013-10-09 04:55 pm UTC (link)
	Coming from a mod's POV, I do lump X-Men under Marvel. The way I see it is, if it's ~technically~ Marvel (be it MAU, MCU, or a combination), it's getting put under that general heading. I would also put Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in with the rest of the Marvel universe. Hoped that helped! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	kopi 2013-10-09 08:05 pm UTC (link)
	I guess it really depends on whether or not there are enough characters or conflicting ones, for example if someone played Columbia Spider-man vs. non-Columbia movie characters in the same place. :) (Reply to this) (Parent)

allthethings
2013-10-09 07:40 pm UTC (link)

As a mod, when I'm organizing my cast list, I have a few different designations for the marvel pups.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is actually it's own self-titled canon, something that's already been dealt with here in the comics.

When we've got movie versions of x-men, we call that "Movieverse" at my game.

This is because - as has been pointed out - these universes don't actually cohabitate. You will never hear talk of Wolverine in any Iron Man or Avenger's movie, nor can Spider man or the FF exist there. Because of this, lumping them all together doesn't seem consistent, but I think it widely depends on the kind of game you're running.

Mine is a lot based on the idea that these fictional universes actually exist and can be visited, so the designation is really important there.

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	allthethings 2013-10-09 07:41 pm UTC (link)
	Derp, and I meant 'something that's already been dealt with here in the comments', not comics. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	kopi 2013-10-09 08:09 pm UTC (link)
	I see. One problem with the X-Men movieverse is that it has its own minute irregularities and I'm OCD in case you can't tell. Heh. PS: Love the icons :D (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

allthethings
2013-10-09 08:14 pm UTC (link)

Hmm. I can understand that, I'm pretty OCD myself.

I do the coding at one panfandom game and run another. In both, we've got Marvel lumped together under one balloon on the cast list. At the game I run, I put further designations on the actual character entry.

For instance: "Canon: Movieverse" "Canon: MCU" "Canon: AU Comics" "Canon: Ultimates" etc. Does that help?

And I think you've got me confused with frakkinGcylon, the icon creator. Who I didn't know existed when I made this my CDJ, but man people confuse us all the time. XD;

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	kopi 2013-10-09 08:16 pm UTC (link)
	I think it does. ...haha oops. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	allthethings 2013-10-09 08:22 pm UTC (link)
	You can even organize different comics that way. Like... X-men from X-factor from Fantastic Four from Hulk, etc. I did that at my last game. The game I code for, we're actually thinking about splitting up the cast list soon between various subsets, since Marvel needs its own pages there. I'm not sure how we'll do that, though, for the very reasons you've mentioned. (Reply to this) (Parent)

thatsstupid
2013-10-13 04:17 am UTC (link)

TBH, as a former mod, I usually lump everything under Marvel with the exception of X-Men (just because it has such a HUGE group of characters and its own fairly large movie franchise separate from the MCU stuff). I don't bother with MCU at all, because then you have to have a separate category for stuff like the animated and comic book-specific stuff and I'm just...way too lazy lol

But, as I understand it, usually MCU is reserved for I think characters that were in The Avengers and the movies from whence they came [ie: Thor, Iron Man (1,2,3), The Incredible Hulk (2008), and Captain America].

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