Welcome back to The Collider Pop Culture Review, in which Collider’s weekend editor Vinnie Mancuso wakes up only slightly hungover on a Saturday to rate the week’s biggest stories in film and television on a scale from 1 to 10. (1 is soul-crushingly bad, 10 is mind-blowingly incredible.) This week: Netflix's MCU is imploding after Luke Cage gets cancelled, The Flash movie starring Ezra Miller is probably never going to happen, Spider-Man: Far From Home filming is donezo, and much more. 

'Luke Cage' Cancelled After Two Seasons

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Image via Netflix

Rating: 4, or "Heroes EXTREMELY For Hire" 

What in the name of Danny Rand's Shirley Temple-ass haircut is happening over there in the Netflix Marvel Universe? After the streaming service announced the unprecedented move of canceling a Defenders series—in this case, the baby karate step-child, Iron Fist—Netflix's Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos deleted the first draft of his statement, which was just that "This Is Fine" Dog meme, and decided to go with: “Those shows are for us to cancel and we’re super happy with their performance so far.”

The audacity of Sarandos' comment assumedly reached the ears of the Great Mighty Mouse, who stirred in the lair beneath that giant Epcot ball, rose from his bed crafted from out-of-print Star Wars EU novels, old Song of the South VHS tapes, and soiled pages ripped from the original Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 script, and promptly canceled Luke Cage after two seasons.

Now, okay, there isn't actually proof that this is a Netflix v. Disney Civil War-like debacle. But come on. What other explanation is there? Disney is gearing up its own streaming service to compete with Netflix, complete with standalone series following characters from the MCU. (Plus The Mandalorian, which George Lucas just showed up to so he could suggest the cast maybe act more like inanimate pieces of driftwood?) Disney doesn't like competition. Disney would straight up buy your grandmother's house and let her live on the street if they somehow thought it would affect the bottom line of Ant-Man & The Wasp.

And the situation kind of sucks, because Luke Cage was so, so filled with promise, much more so than Iron Fist, which was mostly filled with confetti and old wontons like the world's saddest pinata. Mike Colter couldn't have been a more accurate Luke Cage in both performance and appearance if John Romita Sr. drew him into existence. Sure, the show had pacing problems—and season one did end in a 15-minute-long World Star video because Oscar-winning charisma machine Mahershala Ali got tossed out a window in episode 6—but season 2 ended on such an intriguing note, with Luke inheriting Harlem's Paradise and facing a fork in the road as to what type of hero he wants to be, exactly.

Of course, this could all be a chance for Netflix to simply mix and match its characters and give us the Heroes For Hire (Danny and Luke) and Daughters of the Dragon (Colleen Wing and Misty Knight) limited series that it should have been doing [checks notes] the entire goddamn time.

'Jungle Cruise' Gets 2020 Release Date

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Image via Disney

Rating: 5, or "It Doesn't Matter What Your Release Date Is" 

Disney's Jungle Cruise—starring Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, and a hat Dwayne Johnson stole from George RR Martin—was originally slated to premiere on October 11, 2019, but has since been pushed significantly back to July 4, 2020.

I'm struggling to come up with a reason this would be negative for Jungle Cruise but the simple fact it stars The Rock means it's going to make upwards of a small country's national budget on opening day. Disney could airdrop copies Jungle Cruise out an old WWII plane in the dead of night and it would still make sixteen times the box office of First Man. Dwayne Johnson said "this beloved Robin Williams movie is a video game now" and audiences ate it up like Christmas dinner. Skyscraper was that man's least successful movie in years and it still almost tripled its budget. Dwayne Johnson's next movie could be titled "Disney Presents: Vinnie Mancuso Is a Fucking Chode" and I'd probably see it opening weekend.

The man makes money, is the point here, plus the fact that co-star Emily Blunt is usually worth the price of admission of whatever she's in by herself. Have you seen this on-set video? There's so much chemistry there it technically counts as a full Breaking Bad episode.

'The Flash' Movie Delayed Yet Again

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Image via Warner Bros.

Rating: 3, or "Fantastic Barry's and When To Film Them" 

In the complete opposite news as the last entry, Warner Bros. has once again delayed production on a standalone Flash movie starring Ezra Miller as Barry Allen, now eyeing a potential 2021 release date. The reason? The studio just doesn't seem to...care much about making a standalone Flash movie?

Seriously, the reported reason for the delays is that WB is kind of still tinkering around with a script but also remembered they have to make three more Fantastic Beasts because there are endless corners of the Harry Potter franchise that J.K. Rowling has not yet ruined. (Look out for Fantastic Beasts 3: Snape Was Three Kids in a Trench Coat The Whole Time premiering in 2020). Miller plays a pretty vital role in those movies, and Warner Bros. realized they couldn't possibly fix the script they have—which right now just says "Martha...Allen(??)"—before the actor returns to the Potter-verse.

I know most if not all of you think Marvel sends me a check made out to "Disney Shill Inc." twice a month—which is 100% true, in fairness—but I'm actually really rooting for the DCEU. Shazam! looks great. Aquaman looks like a blast. Wonder Woman 84 is going to rule. But it's stuff like this, and the Henry Cavill debacle, and the Joker movie's extremely disturbing treatment of extras, that makes the whole endeavor seems amateurish.

Just let me write the dang Flash movie, honestly. It will be a frame-for-frame adaptation of the 1959 Flash story "Menace of the Super-Gorilla", John Goodman will play Gorilla Grodd, and it will be terrible.

'Spider-Man: Far From Home' Wraps Production

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Image via ABC

Rating: 7, or "Duuuuuust In The Wind" 

Tom Holland, a precocious golden retriever puppy who scientists turned into a human boy for the express purpose of playing Peter Parker, recently showed up to Jimmy Kimmel Live! to give fans a glimpse of the new Spidey suit in the upcoming Spider-Man: Far From Home. This, after the actor confirmed the Spider-Man: Homecoming sequel had wrapped production ahead of its July 5, 2019 release date. Basically, the press run to Far From Home has officially begun, so expect Tom Holland to Instagram a tattoo he got explaining every plot point of the movie within the next few weeks.

Seriously, though, Far From Home lands in one of the more interesting spots in Marvel movie history as the first film after the massive, franchise-capping Avengers 4. Presumably, the Russo Brothers will spend a little time in that film explaining how Peter Parker went from getting sucked up into a Dyson vacuum to galavanting around Europe with Zendaya. But you have to assume the fall-out from Avengers 4 will hang heavy over Far From Home. Will Captain America even be alive? How will Peter be involved in taking down Thanos? Exactly how goddamn funny will Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal look with a Mysterio fishbowl stuck on his head?

'Legends of Tomorrow' Season 4 Gets a New Trailer

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Image via The CW

Rating: 9, or "All Hail Beebo the War God" 

I can't quite quantify the love and adoration I have for Legends of Tomorrow, the CW's Arrow-verse series that had one (1) terrible season and then two (2) incredible seasons written on LSD spiked with rainbows. Legends of Tomorrow takes itself the exact opposite amount of seriously as Oliver Queen and his mumble-grumble style of being a depressing trombone noise with legs. The new, extended trailer for Legends of Tomorrow season 4 is such a pure, un-cut hit of delightfulness that you could very well overdose on it. That is a medical fact backed by science.

A brief list of things in the Legends of Tomorrow trailer that I'm in love with, ranked from best to most best:

5) New series regular John Constantine (Matt Ryan) teasing the arrival of Swamp Thing, who will probably have less edgy tattoos than DC Universe's Swamp Thing.

4) The Legends getting highaf with hippies and watching a unicorn gore a human being to death.

3) That brief shot of Brandon Routh desperately fleeing something while holding a corgi in his arms.

2) Godzilla (??)

1) That brief shot of Brandon Routh desperately fleeing something while holding a corgi in his arms.