Kevin Feige Speech Honoring ‘Superman’ Director Richard Donner Shows Just How Far Marvel Studios Has Fallen In Half A Decade

John F. Trent |

Sep 7, 2022

Producer Kevin Feige attends the Love and Thunder World Premiere at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, CA on Thursday, June 23, 2022.

A speech from Kevin Feige honoring Superman director Richard Donner from 2017 shows just how far Marvel Studios has fallen and completely changed it’s original underlying vision for comic book movies.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 23: (L-R) Taika Waititi and Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios attend the Thor: Love and Thunder World Premiere at the El Capitan Theatre in [Hollywood], California on June 23, 2022. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)

Feige appeared alongside Geoff Johns where he said, “The film’s Dick made inspired me to even want to go down that track. And, of course, in particular Superman the movie is still to this day the archetype of the perfect superhero film origin story. And we watch it before we make almost any one of our films and that’s been the case for the past 17 years since I left the fold to go work for Marvel.”

Feige continued, “There was word — Dick has a very good vocabulary — and there was a word that I was never able to pronounce, but I always understood, which was verisimilitude. And he used that word while making Superman I.”

He continued, “And I first learned that not because it’s hanging above Dick’s office, which it was for many years, but because I saw him talking about it in the ABC “Making of Superman Special” when I was a kid. And it basically means be truthful, honor the source material, believe in it, take it seriously, and that is what we strive to do.”

“And Jon Favreau on the very first Marvel Studios production copied that and put it above his doorway,” he asserted.

Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark in Iron Man

That was then and there’s now a completely new vision at Marvel Studios. No longer do they care about honoring the source material and taking it seriously. Instead the vision is all about diversity and inclusion as detailed by Marvel Studios President Victoria Alonso back in November 2021.

She explained, “Diversity and inclusion is not a political game for us. It is 100 percent a responsibility because you don’t get to have the global success that we have given the Walt Disney Company without the support of people around the world of every kind of human there is.”

(L-R): Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Karun (Harish Patel), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Sprite (Lia McHugh), and Sersi (Gemma Chan) in Marvel Studios’ ETERNALS. Photo by Sophie Mutevelian. © 2021 Marvel Studios. All Rights Reserved.

And this is clearly a vision that Feige has adopted as well. Back in June 2021 Feige made it very clear he cut Doctor Strange from WandaVision.

He explained the decision, “Some people might say, ‘Oh, it would’ve been so cool to see Doctor Strange.’ But it would have taken away from Wanda.

“We didn’t want the end of the show to be commoditized to go to the next – here’s the white guy, ‘Let me show you how power works,'” he elaborated.

In July 2021 he detailed to Rotten Tomatoes, “Representation is important across the board. And the comics has charted…charts the path in almost all ways for what we do in the MCU and in the comics there are many LGBTQ characters and we want to showcase that on the screen as well. We want to bring those characters to life on the screen.”

“We also, as Stan Lee used to say, Marvel represents the world outside your window. And outside of our window, there are all different types of people in all different types of places with all different types of preferences and we want that reflect in the MCU and in our fictional world as it is in our real world,” he continued.

Feige then stated, “So it is of utmost importance that when people go in and see one of our films or log on to Disney+ and watch one of our series that it represents the true world outside their window when it comes to the types of people portraying the heroes and the characters.”

Feige also began throwing shade at his own films. In July 2020 he lamented Emily VanCamp’s role as Sharon Carter in Captain America: Civil War.

In an interview on the D23 Inside Disney podcast, Feige said, “She got the short end of the stick when it came to the events of Civil War. And was sort of left out in the cold. And it’s interesting what she did with that.”

Anyone who watched Captain America: Civil War knows that is a load of crap. If you recall, VanCamp’s Sharon Carter actually played a pivotal role. She provided moral guidance for Captain America at Peggy Carter’s funeral, reinforcing his skepticism of the Sokovia Accords.

And while the Sokovia Accords plotline was eventually pushed to the background of the film in favor of hunting down Zemo, Carter also played a pivotal role in helping Captain America, The Winter Soldier, and Falcon evade Ross’ United Nations authorities. Not only that, but she eventually provides them with their gear so they can fight back against Ross and the Stark-led Avengers.

Aside from the obvious diversity and inclusion agenda that Marvel Studios and its parent company Disney are enacting, the company isn’t even staying true to characters that were created in the comics purely as part of that diversity and inclusion agenda.

Feige explained why Kamala Khan was changed for the Disney+ Ms. Marvel series saying, “[Kamala] came about in a very specific time within the comic-book continuity. She is now coming into a very specific time within the MCU continuity. And those two things didn’t match.”

It seems pretty clear why the quality of Marvel Studios productions has significantly declined over recent years. They’ve clearly strayed from the vision the studio originally had. They no longer follow the motto of verisimilitude. They don’t honor the source material and they don’t take it seriously.

One needs only to look at She-Hulk twerking alongside Megan Thee Stallion or the complete and utter change to Namor in the upcoming Black Panther: Wakanda Forever film.

What do you make of Feige’s past comments about Marvel Studios and its original vision?

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