Originally Posted by
Ultimate Captain America
That's why I said "regardless of its quality". They were not good comics, no. But they sold well, enough to allow Marvel to step out of bankruptcy, at least for the moment. RJ was saying that it was a failure and continued from that premise, but it was a wrong premise. Heroes Reborn did not continue beyond the year because Jim Lee did not want to continue with it in the proposed conditions. There are many examples like that. For example, Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy. Tobey did not want to take part in Spider-Man 4, so the character had to be recast and the franchise reboot; we can't say that it was a failure because it did not continue.
As for the cinematic plans, there's another thing. RJ made a big point that Marvel was sticking strongly to its continuity. But let's think for a moment that, as he says, the MCU had always been the endgame of the whole Ultimate Marvel experience. That it would be the starting point of a franchise that would take them from near bankruptcy to one of the highest grossing brands in popular culture. But if that was so, why not fully commit to the plan, and turn Ultimate marvel into standard Marvel? Why risk such a plan by keeping around the "outdated" comics? just because of nostagia? That sounds like a suicidal plan. And why change the name to "Ultimates", if the team in film would go back to the name "Avengers"? Name is a very important thing in brands.
No. This is the way things took place. Bendis started Ultimate Spider-Man, and Millar Ultimate X-Men and the Ultimates, as comics. Not as the testing grounds of anything for later: they were just comics. Those comics felt cinematic? They were simply trying new narrative styles: we can't stay milking the Jack Kirby style forever. Some years later, the guys who drafted the MCU took note of the properties they still had under control, and noticed that they had the Avengers, so they modeled Phase 1 around them. But which era or story of the Avengers? The Ultimates stand out from other Avengers stories because they are newcomer-friendly (unlike, say, "Avengers forever"), a relatively simple story (unlike, say, the Celestial Madonna) and a background that casual moviegoers can relate to (unlike, say, the Kree-Skrull War).