- Joined
- Dec 16, 2017
The funny part part about Natalie Portman replacing Hemsworth is that she is older than him and ScarJo. My theory about why Disney is so eager to replace its core heroes is two-fold. First is that they want to avoid potential audience backlash or fracturing from replacing the actors. In the case of Iron Man, the character had never been portrayed in live action before so RDJ had the blank slate to inject his trademark snark and flippancy to the point where it became engrained into character. Placing someone in the iron boots would likely spark some sort of revolt from the fans. Similarly, Chris Evans' portrayal of Captain America was enough to make even the most knowledgeable fans forget that Reb Brown and Matt Salinger took up the shield before him, though their films where burning sacks of garbage.Where I disagree with Diabeeto is audience reactions. He believes that Disney is trying to get people acclimated to the idea of having their favorite characters replaced with (potentially inferior) other actors for this reason, but he seems to think that people won't generally be opposed to it. In a post-Endgame world, the MCU has lost two of its most bankable stars in Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans, and Black Widow is the swan song for ScarJo. Thor has been turned into a walking punchline and is already set to be replaced by Natalie Portman, so Chris Hemsworth fans are fucked for the foreseeable future as well.
The second is pure corporate greed. Merchandising makes up much of value of Marvel IPs and replacing core heroes means they can push new product--essentially, "Buy product. Get excited for next product." By phasing out Iron Man/Cap/Thor and replacing them with Ironheart/Captain Falcon/She-Thor, they assume that it opens up new revenue streams and draws in new "diverse" fans. Except it didn't work for Star Trek and Star Wars. Kelvin Trek merchandise sold poorly compared to Prime Trek until fans stopped buying merchandise altogether thanks to Alex Kurtzman's mismanagement of the franchise. Similarly, sequel trilogy merchandise sold poorly to the point where Hasbro only produces original and even prequel trilogy toys because they know it sells.
Of course, Bob is too smooth-brained to acknowledge that.