BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER Writer And Director Address Claims Val Was "Shoehorned" Into The Sequel

@mastakilla39 - Coogler is a big fan of Ta-Nehisi Coates run, and the Midnight Angels were a bit part of his run, so just like a lot of elements his introduced from that run, they were always going to be introduced.

@TopBoy - Oh no... you know better than Coogler...

@MosquitoFarmer - 🤷‍♂️ Yeah, it's kinda' like me in most people's lives...!

@PlusUltra - Who is saying that there's no connectivity?!? It's just been bad.

@Tonic24k - Black Widow, Eternals, and Shang-Chi all made less money than the first Ant-Man film. The only MCU films that were BO hits were sequels, and if BO were a barometer for quality, then the Transformers and F&F films would be part of the Criterion Collection. Thor 4, Doctor Strange 2, and Eternals all got Mixed to Average reviews on Metacritic which is more than average for previous phases.

@Tonic24k - Not a bad argument since most COVID restrictions were lifted by mid-2021, the time those films came out. F9 came out before Black Widow and it made over 700m. And not really sure where you're drawing your conclusion on the reviews aspect, but even the most die-hard Marvel fans on this site and thoughout the internet have been vocal that Phase 4 has been the weakest even on RT, Metacritic, and IMDb.

https://www.mediaplaynews.com/study-phase-4-of-marvel-cinematic-universe-least-favorite/

https://www.top10films.co.uk/72170-study-reveals-marvels-phase-4-features-its-weakest-films-tv-shows/

@Tonic24k - And yet Godzilla vs Kong came out 3 months before Black Widow and made 100m more. No Time to Die came out a month before Eternals and made 300m more, so I'm still failing to see how it's a bad argument because clearly people were going out to the movies at this time.

A tv rating on RT is not the same as a movie rating on RT, for example Falcon and Winter Soldier has only 40 critic ratings whereas Black Widow has 452 critic ratings, so judging their scores the same when there is a mismatch in data is of course going to hyperinflate the overall RT score for Phase 4. If the chart was judging the same amount of data as Phase 1, 2, 3, of course it would be lower. Phase 1 & 2 have only 6 movies each and Phase 3 has only 11 compared to Phase 4's 18 movies and tv shows! You don't need to be a data scientist to see that the Phases are not being judged equally on that chart.

@Tonic24k - There were more critic reviews for the Phase 4 films than Phase 4 tv shows on Metacritic too. You're putting quantity sampling over quality sampling, not all the datasets (Phases 1-4) are being judged the same, so saying that Phase 4 is the second most successful Phase from a chart that's using stale and incomplete data isn't reflecting the reality of the situation.

Godzilla vs Kong was given a home release on HBO Max simultaneous to the theatrical release and it still broke several pandemic box office records.

@Tonic24k - How would you gauge it more accurately?
As I've already said, have the same number of critic reviews for each and every tv show and movie in Phase 4 for starters.

That $125M was not from streaming on Disney+ alone, that took digital downloads into account also, and it was released digitally on August 10.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/disney-makes-first-move-in-scarlett-johanssons-black-widow-suit-1235001093/

Godzilla vs Kong was watched by 5.8 million US households on HBO Max after 30 days compared to 2.8 million US households for Black Widow's first 30 days. So BW hardly crushed GvK domestically.

So take that huge communist market out of the equation for an even comparison and BW made more.
If you're so keen to remove data from the equation for an even comparison, remove all the Phase 4 tv shows with far fewer reviews from your chart and see if Phase 4 is still as great as you proport it to be.

@Tonic24k -
But I'm pretty sure this is an impossible task and we have no way to leverage such hypothetical data. This is to say, I don't necessarily disagree that the assessment of all phases are equal and fair.
Then you should at least concede that saying most of Phase 4 is excellent and the second best phase is a bit hyperbolic since the data reflecing this is incomplete and the general consensus online says otherwise. And I'll rip the band-aid off here, the only Phase 4 offerings I thought were above average were No Way Home, Loki and Werewolf By Night.

Because the point was pandemic era box office performances.
The point was that Black Widow just wasn't a very good film and that other films during the time that were released before it performed better.

Point being, the only thing that matters is we get all the same exact data for each film.
And I've shown that there were more eyeballs watching GvK on streaming than Black Widow if we're holding each film to the same standards, GvK was clearly the more popular film with more than double the viewership of BW. GvK even had a higher Home Market Performance than Black Widow with 36M in domestic video sales compared to BW's 23M.
https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Godzilla-vs-Kong-(2020)#tab=more
https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Black-Widow-(2021)#tab=summary

And again if you're so keen to have the same exact data for each film, you can see why I take issue with Phase 4 tv shows having less available review data and being held to the same standard as the Phase 4 films with more available data.

I obliged and found that critic scores decreased while audience scores increased.
All the critic scores decreased, the IMDb score remained the same, and Phase 4 was the lowest of all the phases except the RT audience score, and let's be honest audience reviews today aren't as trustworthy as they once were, as many people contend that IMDb is the least accurate of all the review platforms since it's made up entirely of audience reviews, users can create multiple accounts to rig scores, etc.

However, this just renders the data skewed because the shows are part of Phase 4 and the level of quality it brought to the table.
The level of data quality is ALREADY poor and imcomplete data DOES result in inaccurate data. For example, in medical studies if participants drop out of the study because they're feeling unwell, then the final dataset will include only the healthy individuals and the data will not a paint the full picture of the selected population.

@Tonic24k -And yes, BW out performed GvK market for market.

And I gave you two examples of markets where GvK outperformed BW, 5.8 million > 2.3 million on steaming and 36M > 23M domestic video sales. And bear in mind covid restrictions in the US were not as lax in late March/early April of 2021 as they were in July 2021, so a 83M lead over a film that came out 3 months prior and which is also responsible for getting people to return to theaters is hardly a massive victory for BW over GvK.

you seem to be trying to skew everything in your favor

The data in your chart is far more distorted in your favor. And I never said that RT audience scores were worthless, I said they were less trustworthy. Especially since they added the Verified Audience score in 2019 (the year Phase 3 ended) which is inferior to the previous audience ratings system since the dataset is different and the Verified Audience score is almost always higher than the original score, so the All Audience scores should have been used for the chart instead of the Verified Audience scores since they’re being compared to the All Audience scores in Phases 1-3 which don’t have Verified Audience scores prior to Far From Home. So, going by the RT All Audience Scores, which is the fair thing to do so the data won’t be skewed, Phase 4 drops down to 81%. So that average drops down from #1 to #3

Movie/TV Show - All Audience
WandaVision 88%
The Falcon and Winter Soldier 83%
Loki 93%
Black Widow 79%
What If…? 93%
Shang-Chi 93%
Eternals 73%
Hawkeye 89%
Spider-Man: No Way Home 96%
Moon Knight 89%
Doctor Strange: MoM 76%
Ms. Marvel 80%
I Am Groot 73%
Thor: Love and Thunder 61%
She-Hulk 33%
Werewolf by Night 90%
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 84%
Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special 80%
Average 81%

And if you really want to the most accurate data possible and love audience scores, then the Metacritic user score should’ve been included in the chart as well. This average drops Phase 4 to 4th place.

Phase 1: 7.3
Phase 2: 7.45
Phase 3: 7.2
Phase 4: 6.2

Also, the box office numbers weren’t adjusted for 2022 inflation (I adjusted the 2021 films to 2022 too). This drops Phase 4 to 3rd place and also remember Phase 1 had one less film than Phase 4 to generate revenue and one of Phase 4’s films had frickin’ Spider-Man. And even Phase 1’s average isn’t that far behind Phase 4’s at least not as much as Phase 4 is from 1 & 2.

Phase 1 Total: $5,081,957,032.56
Phase 1 Average: $846,992,838.76
Phase 2 Total: $6,661,795,268.60
Phase 2 Average: $1,110,299,211.43
Phase 3 Total: $16,122,112,218.09
Phase 3 Average: $1,465,646,565.28
Phase 4 Total: $5,987,219,678.61
Phase 4 Average: $855,317,096.94

@Toonstrack -