The biggest trend going on in Hollywood today is teasing future films before a first film ever comes out. While this has shown to be very successful at hyping up the future of a potential franchise, that hype is pretty worthless if the franchise itself doesn’t actually continue. Other times, the tease justdoesn’t quite landwith audiences. It either has a distracting casting choice,a strange creative decision, or is just poorly directed.
Of course, there are also the teases that are just plain embarrassing. They are all the problems mixed together in a smoothie of mediocrity. These are the special teases that hint at not only another movie, but another entire universe of films only to trip over its feet on the first attempt,destroying several franchisesall at once.
There have been many teases in the last few years that either fell flat, teased films that didn’t happen, or were just embarrassingly bad. Here are ten examples of future film teases that didn’t quite hit the mark.
The marketing campaign forMorbiuseventually made the call to focus less on the film itself and more on the MCU crossover it would have with Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes. AfterSpider-Man: No Way Home,it seemed like Sony had a big plan to merge all their storylines together. Once the film was released, it was clear that there wasn’t much of a plan at all. Toomes was thrown into theVenomSony universe thatMorbiustook place in for reasons that remain unclear. Then, Toomes miraculously reacquired his famous Vulture suit despite the fact thatSpider-Man: Homecomingmade it clear that the suit was made almost entirely of stolen Stark Tech, Chitauri weapons, and other pilfered items specifically from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How he got those items in the Sonyverse also remains unclear.
Perhaps the most baffling part of all this came when Toomes actually met Morbius. The Vulture tracks down Morbius to help him take down Spider-Man and Morbius agrees despite the fact that he would have no logical reason to. Nor would there really be any reason for Toomes to associate Morbius with Spider-Man, who he has never met. The two actors didn’t even appear to be in the same room together. Hopefully, when Sony does attempt to put all of this together, they do a better job.
Related:#MorbinTime: Twitter is Memeing a Morbius Sequel Into Existence
9The Mummy
No MCU-style shared universe was faster to throw itself a victory party faster than Universal’s monster mashup that they titled Dark Universe. It was all set to feature Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Sofia Boutella, and Russell Crowe as the Nick Fury who would bring them all together in his own take on SHIELD with the Prodigium. The company even announced all the casting choices with a big cast photo before the first movie had even been released.
OnceThe Mummycame out, it had a lot of hints about the rest of the Dark Universe and the Prodigium, but not much else. It wasn’t quite theIron Manthey hoped it would be, and the Dark Universe died before it really started. Unlike the Universal monsters from the universe, this one is unlikely to be resurrected.
8Zack Snyder’s Justice League
Most teasers that don’t end up paying off do so because the intended sequel that the film was referencing doesn’t actually happen. That was the case with the original, Joss Whedon cut ofJustice League.It bombed so hard that all potential sequels were decimated harder than Steppenwolf. So the teases for Ben Affleck’s version ofThe Batmanthat would’ve featured Deathstroke andJustice League Part IIthat would’ve wrapped up the Knightmare storyline were never to be.
WhenZack Snyder’s Justice Leaguewas finally released, fans hoped that they would have either closure to those storylines or hope for them to continue. Instead, the film doubled down and teased several films that were already canceled. It’s unlikely that anyone will ever see how Batman prevents Superman from causing the apocalypse by teaming up with the Joker.
7X-Men: The Last Stand
Arguably no shared universe franchise has been worse about teasing things and then forgetting about them than 20th Century Fox’sX-Menfranchise. Characters are often introduced, then recast entirely in prequels or sequels that ignored the other versions altogether. The most confusing teases all involve Patrick Stewart’s Professor X. He infamously perished at the hands of Dark Phoenix inX-Men: The Last Stand.In the post-credits sequence of that movie, it seemed as though Xavier had transferred his mind to a different body.
Then, in the post-credits sequence ofThe Wolverine,Professor X meets up with Logan in his original body. OnceX-Men: Days of Future Pastreleased, no answer is given as to how Xavier managed to surviveThe Last Stand.
6Robin Hood
It’s only natural that films would take inspiration from each other. Does it really matter thatThe Magnificent Sevensteals the plot fromSeven Samuraiif both films are classics? That was clearly the philosophy behind 2018’sRobin Hoodwhich was basically a copy of Christopher Nolan’sDark Knight Trilogy.The biggest tip of the hat to this came when Robin Hood’s friend Will did a full Harvey Dent and became the new Sheriff of Nottingham after his face is scarred by a Molotov cocktail. The film ends with a tease that the sequel will see Will and Robin going head-to-head. This sequel had no chance of coming to be after the film failed.
Which is a shame because now no one will see how they were inevitably going to turn Friar Tuck into Tom Hardy’s Bane…
5The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Back in the days before bigSpider-Man: No Way Homestyle crossovers, Sony was looking to spinThe Amazing Spider-Man 2into their own Marvel Cinematic Universe. The primary way they were planning on making this work was by fast-tracking a Sinister Six movie using Dane DeHaan’s Green Goblin and a mysterious character in a hat. All of these teases fell apart and Sony ended up recasting Spidey again for the MCU.
Now Sony looks to be trying again with the likes of Kraven, Venom, Morbius, Vulture, and the soon-to-be-introduced Kraven the Hunter.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the king when it comes to sequel teases. The studio changed the game when Nick Fuy teasedThe Avengerswhich would make film history several years later. The constant teases of Thanos paid off whenAvengers: Infinity Warfinally arrived. By Phase Four though, their teases began to weaken. This was never more apparent than inEternalswhich featured two of the strangest teases the studio has ever attempted. The first sees the introduction of Thanos' previously unmentioned brother, Eros. Audiences didn’t even have time to stop scratching their heads before Harry Styles from One Direction came on screen. Comic readers may have been excited, but most other audience members were confused about why Harry Styles wasn’t purple.
Then, before audiences had time to recover, the second stinger showed that the film’s underused co-star Kit Harrington would become the Black Knight in a future film. Then the voice, but not the face, of Mahershala Ali’s Blade introduces himself to Harrington before the scene comes to an abrupt end. For a studio that perfected the art of the tease, this was surprisingly sloppy work.
3Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
TheFantastic Beastsfranchise always felt like each film was simply setting up the next one with no real pay-off. That inevitable climax seemed to be a Wizarding War that would coincide with the actual World War II. According to theWizarding Worldlore, this conflict ends with a legendary battle between Dumbledore and Grindelwald.
The last film in the series to be released,Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, continues to hint at these conflicts to come while making good on none of them. The film flopped so hard that plans for a fourth and possibly even fifth film were actually abandoned by Warner Bros.
Related:Why Fantastic Beasts Would’ve Worked Better as a TV Series
2Dragonball Evolution
Dragonball Evolution’s poor reception was enough to kill any momentum for a live action Dragon Ball franchise, essentially forever. Ridiculed by fans and critics, butchered at the box office, and largely considered to be one of the worst films ever made, talks of a sequel certainly didn’t last long after the film’s initial release.
Despite all this, the film features a mid-credits scene which shows Piccolo, the film’s villain (played by James Marsters ofBuffy the Vampire Slayerfame), alive and being nursed back to health after seemingly being destroyed.
When Disney took over theStar Warsfranchise it was only a matter of time before they broke out the old Marvel Cinematic Universe playbook. That means franchise movies based around one iconic character, introductions to new characters who will get a movie franchise next, big bad villains teased at the end of films, and a lot of retconning to make it all work. So far, the only movie to use that playbook wasSolo,and from the way Disney abandoned the film’s future, it might be the onlyStar Warsfilm to try to build an MCU.Solotried to build a franchise around Han himself, and it introduced Donald Glover as Lando to give him a spin-off franchise. The biggest tease came when Darth Maul had a surprise cameo as the secret leader of Crimson Dawn.
This seemed to be teasing him as a Thanos-style big bad of theSoloextended franchise. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen any hint of the live action Darth Maul from either the films or the tv shows. Chances are we will never see how Maul got from the leader of his own criminal organization to the sorry state we see him in when he appears inStar Wars: Rebels.
