Film Theory: The R-Rated Avengers Are COMING!

pg-13 pg-13 pg-13 don't you ever wish that these characters could just let loose and i don't know get a bit gritty well i have a theory that that's exactly what's happening right now marvel is quietly setting up the dominoes that'll result in their version of an r-rated avengers a more mature cast of characters telling scarier sexier stories for the adult audience and it all begins here at the end of eternals adjust those parental settings now my friends the mc not for all of you is coming hello internet welcome to film theory the most r-rated family-friendly show that you can find online not even joking about that have you seen the stuff that we've talked about over the last decade murder but it's okay because it's being done by kooky animatronics illegal corporate embezzlement but don't worry he's a vigilante with a big heart cannibalism except everyone's a smoothie and it's happening off-screen look it's not just us either marvel has been getting away with this sleight of hand for the last decade too mass planetary genocide that is a lot of death but it's being done by a purple raisin man who snaps his fingers so no biggie child trafficking that is a serious topic but it's being done via montage during the opening credits so we good fam want to spend five minutes watching two people compete to end their own lives when you look at it literally that scene for the soul stone has some very disturbing connotations but you know it led to the highest grossing movie of all time so who are we to judge all i'm saying is that the mcu has found a lot of different ways to get r-rated content into pg-13 packages but now the times they are changing older more violent marvel projects like daredevil jessica jones luke cage and the show that shall not be named recently transitioned over to disney plus in a move that required everyone logging in to set age gates on their accounts the eternals featured the universe's first ever round of extremely passionate kissing and what an awkward tonal shift that one was and with deadpool now wearing mouse ears thanks to disney's acquisition of fox we have ourselves a definitive r-rated superhero movie coming down the pipeline but i don't think we're gonna have to wait that long i actually think the transition is happening now well in other theories i've been laser focused on the arrival of the young avengers and a rival faction of dark avengers over in disney plus land i think there's something else cooking a more mature breed of content it's a roll out that started with eternals but kicked into high gear last week with the arrival of moon knight ladies and gentlemen we're approaching the arrival of the r-rated avengers of course they're not going to be called that but i think i know what they will be called and in order to understand what dominoes are being set up we first have to talk about blade someone is always trying to ice skater bill wow that was that was a very different era for marvel movies now it might have slipped your mind since you know we've had other things to worry about over the past few years but back at the 2019 san diego comic-con marvel was taking its big post endgame victory lap by announcing they plan to keep taking victory laps rolling out literally dozens of celebrities on the stage while announcing a whole slew of new movies to assert their continued domination over the box office and then in the final minute mcu mastermind kevin feige pulled this one out but i want to leave you today with one more thing ladies and gentlemen two-time academy award winner mahershala ali [Music] a new incarnation of marvel's iconic vampire hunting superhero blade why would that be such a big deal well before iron man and thor became household names perhaps the biggest most beloved marvel superhero was blade in the late 90s this was the guy with his movie sitting in the top 10 highest grossing superhero movies of all time for a solid five years standing alongside batman and superman until he was eventually knocked out of the rankings by someone you might be familiar with sam raimi's spider-man gonna cry and let's just say that blade was a lot more um uncompromised than his contemporaries are you out of your damn mind these movies were instant cult classics standing out for being a unique mishmash of sci-fi horror and martial arts all rated r and all of them pushing the boundaries of what a superhero movie could be but the thing is showing up whenever marvel needs to push the envelope that's been blade's thing since the very beginning here's some old time comics trivia for you did you know back in the day you couldn't have vampires werewolves or zombies and comic books at all it's true in the 1950s there was a big moral outrage campaign against horror comics like the hugely popular tales from the crypt series this led to senate hearings deciding whether to ban him instead of leaving it in the government's hands the comics industry established the comics code authority a regulatory board that imposed strict rules on anything that was going to be published and i do mean strict under their guidance villains weren't allowed to be sympathetic or victorious cops weren't allowed to be incompetent and the words weird and terror weren't allowed in titles at all they would have had a field day with youtube titles anyway these guidelines were so intense that entire genres of imaginary monsters couldn't even be mentioned because they were too closely associated with no-no topics like satanism and the occult zombies gone vampires gone that's why spider-man's 1960's man who turns into a man-shaped wolf nemesis is called the man-wolf instead of you know the wolf man it's also why he gets his powers from a moon rock instead of the full moon because he is definitely absolutely not a werewolf that would be the occult but by the mid-1970s that comics code authority had gone bye-bye thanks in no small part to marvel themselves pushing for it when stan lee wanted to run a story about drug use in the amazing spider-man marvel publishing who'd already discovered the benefits of aiming books at a more mature or at least an older teenage audience very quickly jumped back into the horror comics game with grabby titles like son of satan werewolf by night and in 1973 tomb of dracula which introduced the world to none other than blade in all his gory blood-soaked beheading vampire glory so you see the pattern emerging here right it was one thing for the blade movies to be doing their thing back in the 90s when marvel characters were all at different studios and he could do his r-rated bloody vampire stuff away from everyone else but now that the marvel universe is in fact a universe a connected unified shared one it starts to look difficult to see where someone like blade or the punisher or ghost rider even the grittier netflix mcu fits in i mean urban violence and daredevil assault and abuse and jessica jones racism and police violence in luke cage that's a serious problem when the mcu umbrella has historically been known as general audience appropriate i mean sure a vampire show doesn't need to be adults only but the pg-13 blade movie is just inviting the thousand disney ruined blade videos here on youtube with clickbait thumbnails of wesley snipes his headshot and a big old anime tear rolling down his cheek it feels like disney needs a brand for this new breed of mature stuff a playlist header on the disney plus feed to indicate the adult-oriented content i mean right now when you log on and look under marvel you literally see everything so how do you delineate the ask your parents permission safe search off marvel stuff well what about the k word no no no i i meant knights knights silent k word get your mind out of the gutter you weirdo the marvel knights is a brand identity that marvel comics has used a number of times over the years to designate mature audience or high-end titles separate from its mainline publishing it's also been the branding for a line of animated motion comics the production banner for punisher and ghost rider movies and it's the book name of a short-lived unnamed team formed by daredevil to fight against the punisher consisting of himself shangshi black widow moon knight and luke cage in short the word knight has in the history of marvel tended to denote the content that involves its more edgy characters and look at who we've just been introduced to in marvel's most recent outing moon knight for history of moon knight he was like blade a horror comic character introduced back in the days of those banned series specifically werewolf by night issue number 32 chances are if you'd heard of moon knight at all before they started advertising the show it's probably based on a series of memes that re-edited the dialogue from old comic battles into jokes about his random collection of powers we're trying to shake down count dracula for money which is kind of a double meta joke considering that for a horror comic character moon knight actually didn't have anything to do with marvel's dracula which uh yes does in fact exist and is just count dracula the regular normal wears a cape sleeps in a coffin lives in a castle in transylvania turns into a bat and drinks blood dracula turns out he just uh exists in the worlds of marvel though i do gotta say it honestly wouldn't surprise me too much if dracula turned out to be ethan hawk's unnamed mystery role from this new show anyway this new series immediately starts off showing you that this isn't your child's superhero show showcasing disney's newest form of glass slipper literally glass in your shoe giving us probably the most extreme marvel produced moment to date he's punching werewolves he's dealing with dissociative identity disorder there is a reason the show got bumped up to a tv 16 plus rating over in the uk same as jessica jones and luke cage putting it higher than every other non-netflix series they've produced so far we also know that moon knight's old frenemy werewolf by night is getting his own halloween special this fall just saying between the vampires werewolves and guys dressed like mummies looks like by the time blade releases in 2023 the mcu will have created the dark universe that universal studios failed to get off the ground a few years ago now if we were just talking about these guys i'd be telling you more about the midnight suns a team of horror and supernatural based characters that handle monsters ghouls ghosts and were basically the avengers for scary horror movie stuff the original lineup consisted of blade morbius ghost rider mordred the mystic and eventually doctor strange with later versions having guys like moon knight show up as well to do whatever moon knight decided his gimmick was that week so there's a bunch of spooky horror themed characters rearing their heads in the mcu within the next two to three years we must be forming the suns except still doesn't explain why blade's voice landed a coveted teaser spot at the end of eternals sure you're ready for that mr whitman see this moment at the end of eternals was weird and not just because dean whitman here who goes on to become the black knight and dates a character named cersei is played by the same guy who was jon snow in game of thrones most slam dunk casting decision ever now the reason this teaser is weird from a canonical standpoint is that the black knight and his mysterious ebony blade isn't connected to vampire hunting blade at all he's not one of the midnight suns he didn't debut in marvel's 70s horror comics like moon night there is nothing that truly unites these two characters except their maturity ratings you see while moon night blade and werewolf by night are mature for dealing with scary monsters the black knight is kind of the opposite he's traditionally the modern day descendant of a renegade knight in arthurian england who inherits his ancestor's cursed sword the ebony blade he then uses it to redeem his family's name by fighting crime dressed as a knight riding a winged horse he's not really edgy and definitely not violence and gore scary kind of hard to do when you run around dressed like edward from enchanted no the reason he's r-rated is because his relationship with cersei wasn't the usual cute mcu thing where adult relationships are envisioned by children you owe me a dance i really like you i really like you too i want one no in the 90s dane whitman and cersei had less subtlety they definitely had more of a trashy romance novel for mom thing going on hot and heavy hard to miss big hair big biceps big personalities seriously though outside of introducing the world to a seventh infinity stone the ego stone this slightly more steamy for mommy and daddy reader's romance story is pretty much the reason that either these characters stayed popular enough through comics most profitable period amongst the likes of spider-man wolverine and the punisher in a universe where superhero relationships are typically all high school melodrama to realize you're waiting i would have joined you but uh they used up all the hot water i should have joined you dean and cersei came off more like grown-ups and today these two characters were introduced into the world of the mcu via eternals the art house mcu film i started with an image of a mackerel image of sand besides a william blake poem to see the world in the grain of sand and heaven and wildflower hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour so there you have it theorists marvel nights a mature line of content that'll encompass the mcu's grown-ups division it's a name marvel already has on file it's one they really like to reuse and it lines up in the literal sense with the names of both moon knight and black knight at least two of the guys that would seemingly fall under said heading it's one of the only ways to explain the blade black knight connection that started in eternals and the branding just kind of fits in a more abstract way with all the other characters who could possibly be looped in blades got himself a sword and deals with ancient enemies luke cage daredevil and punisher all love their respective protectors of the city gates metaphors so they could fall under the mantle too at this point when you're marvel there's only a certain amount of expansion that you can do nothing can be all things to all people all the time and there's certainly a die hard audience for darker different material just look at the fan base for the snyder cut this new initiative i suspect is their way of capturing that part of the market too honestly i gotta agree with kate bishop on this one your problem is branding and when you have such a strong umbrella brand already you need to differentiate you need something to communicate that these projects are going to be a little bit different and maybe not for everyone marvel knights but hey that's just a theory a film theory and cut [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 4,285,657

Keywords: moon knight, moon knight trailer, moon knight episode 1, moon knight episode 2, avengers, marvel, mcu, deadpool, dr strange, doctor strange, doctor strange in the multiverse of madness, wanda, scarlet witch, wandavision, multiverse of madness, multiverse of madness trailer, blade, eternals, enternals post credit, black knight, eternals black knight, mcu blade, marvel blade, disney, film theory, film theorists, matpat, film theory marvel, captain america, moon knight teaser

Id: eGz2Q-Mf4lA

Length: 13min 55sec (835 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 02 2022