Yahoo News Why we'll never get a major MCU TV/movie crossover
Marvel has essentially revolutionised Hollywood with its joined-up storytelling, creating over ten years the grand web of connected movies known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
So, when it began branching out into television with Agents of SHIELD, the Netflix/Defenders shows and more, it seemed as though the world of the MCU was going to get even bigger, branching out into a grand unified story that would blur the boundaries between film and television.
Five years after Agents of SHIELD began, we're still waiting for the great MCU crossover, and it's becoming increasingly clear that we'll probably be waiting forever.
The disconnect keeps getting wider
Agents of SHIELD began with the promise of some major connections with the Avengers and other cinematic heroes. Clark Gregg's Agent Phil Coulson – who we originally met in 2008's inaugural MCU movie, Iron Man – was the star of the show, along with other cameos from the movies including Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson), Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and Sif (Jaimie Alexander).
The first season even tied into the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, revealing that some of its main characters were actually HYDRA sleeper agents. But the well-liked tie-in exposed an early problem with tying the show to the movies, as it was accused of treading water waiting for The Winter Soldier to come out.
Later tie-ins have become increasingly tangential, little more than references to other goings-on in the MCU like the "crazy stuff happening in New York" – a nod to Avengers: Infinity War – that have no impact on the events of the show. As the TV and movie stories grow far apart, a crossover surely grows equally unlikely.
Nor should we be fooled by Coulson's return in Captain Marvel – that film is set in the '90s, so is unlikely to tie his role in Agents of SHIELD back into the movies.
As for Daredevil, Jessica Jones and the rest, but for the attack on Manhattan in Avengers that turned Hell's Kitchen into the hive of scum and villainy we know from those shows, it is clear from the few, oblique references to movie heroes that those characters barely exist for the Defenders.
It's only going to get harder
As the complexity of these various properties increases, so too does the difficulty of bringing them together. Daredevil alone could have made the jump into the Avengers, but now he comes complete with a Defenders team and the shady organisation The Hand. Agents of SHIELD has the Inhumans and the Darkhold. Indeed, each island of MCU TV stories, confined to different networks, is building its own mythology that would need to be incorporated into a wider crossover.
The movie side of the MCU is also facing some seismic changes if the expected Disney/20th Century Fox merger goes ahead. That would bring back a lot of the Marvel film rights under one roof, including the X-Men and Fantastic Four. Marvel Studios will have their hands full incorporating those popular characters into the MCU without trying to devise a way for Daisy Johnson and The Punisher to join the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Marvel just isn't into it
Of course, none of these would be impossible obstacles if Marvel really wanted to bring its increasingly disparate properties together. But the will seems to be sorely lacking, with some of the folks at Marvel going so far as to hint – or say outright – that it's never going to happen.
Joss Whedon – director of two Avengers movies and co-creator of Agents of SHIELD – admitted that not only were the logistics too complicated, but that the TV shows would always have to follow the lead of the films and not the other way around.
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has kept a tight rein on the MCU movies, and certainly bears much of the responsibility for their success. But Feige has also maintained his films' separation from the TV shows (which he has no involvement with). Even his most 'positive' comments about the chance of a crossover amount to a lukewarm refusal to rule them out forever, just in case.
"At some point, there's going to be a crossover," he said in 2017. "Crossover, repetition or something." Finally, the crossover, repetition or something we've all been yearning for…
We'll leave it to the ever-charming Anthony Mackie to deliver a more blunt assessment.
"Different universes, different worlds, different companies, different designs," the Falcon actor said. "Kevin Feige is very specific about how he wants the Marvel Universe to be seen in the film world. It wouldn't work. It wouldn't work at all."
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