Zontar said:
Uh, bob, I think you speculation that Quicksilver and Witch are Inhumans seems to ignore that Feige was explicit about the fact they were not Inhumans, and that the Inhumans would not stand in for mutants in the MCU.
I've had similar thoughts and remember this statement myself. One thing a lot of people tend to forget is that during the big X-things boom Mutants were so popular that there was an effort to pretty much retcon things so pretty much everyone was a mutant. Most so called "Altered Humans" were implied to simply be mutants whose powers developed in times of crisis, and tended to take on aspects of whatever the crisis was. Mutant eruptions being a well established theme at the time. Thus for example "The Hulk" was not a gamma irradiated monster, but rather Bruce Banner's mutation that allowed him to survive the Gamma Bomb. In his case I believe it was mentioned briefly that this explained "logically" why all the attempts at a "cure" failed, he was approaching things from the perspective of radiation being the key factor, and yeah while The Hulk was gamma infused, he was not created by the radiation, the issue was Bruce not radiation. The same logic applying to Spider Man (Peter Parker's mutation kicked in to survive the spider bite, and just happened to do so by absorbing the DNA), and others. The Inhumans were ALSO mutants with the Kree simply screwing around with the mutant potential that was already there and pretty much upping the evolution for them to the point they would all have powers, in a way proving what Charles Xavier says, they didn't need to destroy humanity, the simple passage of time would lead to regular humans dying out and everyone being a mutant. Indeed for those who follow such things you might be familiar with the old TSR "Marvel Super Heroes" RPG, the one based on the FASERIP system, the odd thing about that was that when it was created it was supposed to be an official product, and the original idea and contract was that RPG updates would be released at the same time as the comics, allowing Marvel fans to basically have an RPG campaign setting accurate up to the last couple of issues. This deal lasted for a bit, and indeed the old "Gamers Handbook To The Marvel Universe" could be considered fairly accurate. Marvel and TSR had a falling out though because Marvel did not want to give TSR information and storylines ahead of time in the long run and lock itself out from last minute changes. While there were some "current events" updates in Dragon Magazine once in a while it just didn't work and things died a horrible, screaming, death, and while fondly remembered the FASERIP system wound up in such a weird legal limbo it proved impossible to resurrect which is doubtlessly why it's more or less become public domain (or at least nobody claims the rights to object to it's circulation).
At any rate the point of the above is that the 1990s were so mutant-centric that in working with Marvel TSR listed The Inhumans in "The Ultimate Power Book" under the category of "Breed Mutants" which is to say you come from a sub race or community that is 100% mutant and everyone has powers, one of the origins possible in extended character generation.
As I've said before, it's quite possible that using "Inhumans" the way Bob suggests could actually hurt Disney/Marvel if someone did the homework, and the contracts are written where they can potentially include ANY character or concept that had been tied to mutants, which can in theory include almost everyone. At the very least weaker cases have been made and Disney could be locked out of a lot of it's IPs in court while Fox could go on making X-men movies as their right to do that wouldn't be under question.
If I have to guess they will probably reduce the "Inhumans" in scope like they do most things in The Marvel Universe. They will probably be more direct Human-Alien hybrids, and won't be popping up everywhere. In playing it safe I expect Marvel will be keeping things "old school" with heroes largely coming from tech and/or physical training, or being the result of specific freak accidents (and of course magic).
It's not that Bob's opinion is a bad one, it's just that he doesn't think like a paranoid lawyer. If Disney/Marvel was to try and skirt around this problem on a technicality and simply erase the term "mutant" and replace it with "inhuman" the spirit of the agreement between two companies that hate each other would lead to lawyers going over everything with a fine toothed comb, eventually someone would find crap from the time period I'm talking about, and next thing you know the lawyers are getting richer while we go without decent hero movies. With the mess that is comic book legality and the rights, obeying the spirit of the existing agreements is going to be a big deal. What's more with all the discussion of the "Inhumans" I'm personally kind of surprised they aren't held alongside The Fantastic Four rights.
I'll also be blunt about something else, Disney has been at this a long time and realizes that eventually every hot movie franchise dies out and becomes a joke, oftentimes losing money while the fat cats are in denial. I suspect this is part of why they didn't think far enough ahead to have some of these actors they are using under much longer contracts or didn't push for them when they saw how things were turning out. There is scads of money to be made from movies, but Disney also realizes a lot of it's bread and butter comes from it's parks. Despite claims to the contrary, apparently Disney is taking a bit of a beating (or perhaps more accurately not doing the business they want) due to Universal having the "Harry Potter" rights and having opened a huge two-location park in Orlando, with a new one planned for Hollywood in 2016. Universal ALSO holds the rights to Marvel as far as theme parks go, and of course the Marvel boom has brought people to Universal's gates and not theirs, though apparently Universal is about to see those rights expire in another couple of years (not sure when) and it's already thinking of what to replace that section of the ailing "Islands Of Adventure" with. Disney knows it can make reliable, long-term, money off of nostalgia with it's theme parks, compared to the short term, if massive, movie revenue. Basically for them the IP from movies can be a bigger deal than the movies themselves. I expect in the next couple of years Disney is going to re-focus it's efforts on it's resorts, it CAN focus on more than one thing, but I estimate in the next few years we'll see less of a push to make movies and instead billions of dollars spent on their resorts. I think Universal gave them a scare the last few years.
