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Jamie Lee Curtis offered a withering response when asked what phase the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in.
The MCU is currently in Phase 5, with next year’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps set to mark the start of Phase 6.
When MTV asked a number of stars at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con if they knew what phase the franchise was in, the 65-year-old Oscar-winner offered a pithy answer: “Bad.”
Curtis’s dig at Marvel caused hysterics among her co-stars in the upcoming action-adventure Borderlands.
Curtis wasn’t the only star unable to identify the current status of the MCU.
Rings of Power actor Ema Horvath guessed: “A transitional phase.”
While Speak No Evil star Mackenzie Davis responded: “Death.”
“Hey Marvel, she just terminated you,” joked her co-star James McAvoy.
Both McAvoy and Dexter: Original Sin’s Christian Slater were able to answer correctly.
Curtis has some history with Marvel. In 2022, she made a series of social media posts comparing her film Everything Everywhere All At Once to Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Both films deal with the concept of the multiverse.
In one post, Curtis accused Doctor Strange of mimicking artwork, writing: “Is it JUST me? Does it seem STRANGE that our tiny movie that could and did and continues to do ##1movieinamerica and is TRULY MARVELOUS, out marvels any Marvel movie they put out there @everythingeverywheremovie has a Marvel movie coming out with a copycat poster? Is this one of those Internet feuds?”
In another, she wrote of Everything Everywhere All At Once: “MARVELOUS! It has a deep BEATING heart and BRILLIANT visual treats, EXTRAORDINARY performances and FANTASTIC BEASTLY FIGHT SCENES...... AND it COST LESS than the ENTIRE craft service budget on Doctor Strange and/or any other Marvel movie.
She continued: “COMPETITIVE? F*** YES. I wasn’t head cheerleader in high school for nothing. And P.S. our movie has a dynamite dildo fight scene as well as a very erotic hotdog hand mating dance and rocks.”
Curtis went on to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Everything Everywhere All At Once, by directing duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.
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In a five-star review for The Independent, film critic Clarisse Loughrey wrote that the film presents “an ingenious, nuanced multiverse that leaves Marvel in the dust.”
“The multiverse is having a moment,” wrote Loughrey. “I’m undecided on whether the decision to chase up Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with Everything Everywhere All at Once – a film grounded in the same concept of parallel realities, yet made with a fraction of the budget – is foolhardy or ingenious.
“Either way, David has shown Goliath how it’s done. While Marvel executives huddle around conference tables, braiding together franchises in a grand show of corporate synergy, here’s a film that really understands what the infinite might look like.”
