The idea that the Marvel Studios productions are all connected has been an interesting point of their existence since Iron Man met with Nick Fury about the Avengers back in 2008. When Agents Of SHIELD took the universe to TV following the first Avengers film, many started to get a little excited about how these worlds were all going to connect and share the same space one day. Then it just never seemed to happen.
And while that’s fine to varying degrees, with something like Netflix’s Daredevil and The Defenders offering a more critically accepted product than Marvel’s Inhumans, there is one aspect of the shared universe concept that seems to be needlessly missing according to some fans. If Daredevil, Luke Cage, and the rest share the same world as Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, why doesn’t Stark tower or the implications of the world around them all get a mention? As Jeph Loeb explains in interview with Inverse, these characters do share the same world despite their stories never intersecting. With that it’s fair to never see them mentioned in other shows across other platforms or networks. It’s when he starts explaining why the other stuff is missing that things seem to get a little murky:
I think it’s much more that we look at it from the point of view of “where are we?” and having to establish that along the way. In many ways, being less specific helps the audience understand that this could be on any street corner. Where we’re sitting right now, I can see the Empire State Building, but if we were sitting 30 blocks that way, I wouldn’t be able to see the Empire State Building. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just means that we can’t see it from where we are.
As you can see below, that’s just not the case all the time. For Stark Tower, later Avengers Tower, it should at least be visible as part of the Manhattan skyline in some shots from Daredevil and Jessica Jones. And i09 adds in a few more details about why the absence of the tower is such a head scratcher, sometimes without even a hint that these characters are together.
Maybe they really aren’t connected in the end? That would be a little disappointing, but nothing compared to the actual shows and movies being terrible. We’ll take that over a missing building, even if there’s proof that it is easy to make everything seem contained in the same universe. You judge for yourself.
(Via i09 / Inverse)