7 Reasons Marvel's Movies And TV Shows Will NEVER Connect More

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is unlike anything we've ever seen in superhero movies and television. It is an expansive, interconnected universe of serialized stories across different mediums and it's set for further expansion.

The MCU is beyond what most fans would have dreamed of just a decade ago, but the call for Marvel to expand the idea that "It's all connected" grows louder by the day. And almost every press conference or interview with Marvel talent features a question about including Marvel TV characters in Marvel movies. Inevitably, the talent from Marvel shows - like Vincent D'Onofrio - have also expressed their desire to be part of the movies.

It's completely understandable for fans and the talent involved to want these things. And given the success of both formats, for a long time it seemed inevitable they'd meet.

But don't get your hopes up.

There are several practical and creative realities that ensure some of these desires will go unfulfilled. Simply put, Marvel movies and television will likely never be more connected than they already are.

This season, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. took its Inhumans storyline to a whole new level. After showing tons of contaminated fish oil in the season two finale, season three rapidly expanded the number of enhanced beings on Earth. It was a full blown epidemic and, from a purely creative standpoint, could have been addressed in Captain America: Civil War.

The problem is that Captain America: Civil War was already in production when that season two finale aired. And it was then done with production by the time that finale's ramifications were explored in season three. In other words, the plans for movies are laid out years in advance while television shows set their course within a few months, or just several weeks.

An episode of AOS is shot in eight days from a script that was written a few weeks prior. Movies shoot over the course of several months based on scripts that started being developed a year or more in advance. Marvel usually schedules additional photography for its films, but the purpose of that exercise is to make the main story of the film better, not to play catch-up to television.

The production timetables are simply too different to expect the movies to be at all responsive to television in anything other than a broad manner. Moments like Vision saying the number of enhanced individuals has "grown exponentially" in Civil War will have to suffice as references to AOS for those who want to believe they are.

The television shows, however, can be very responsive to the movies, which we have seen in every Marvel show so far.