Marvel sounds pretty nervous about all that mess
A new report behind the scenes at Marvel Studios reveals issues with the latest Avengers saga
Aux News Ant-Man
Can Marvel survive its current struggles? Probably, but the situation is stressful enough that it reportedly has Kevin Feige sweating. A new report from Variety gives some insight into how Marvel Studios has reacted to the diminishing critical and commercial success of the latest output, characterizing a recent annual company retreat as “angst-ridden.”
If you’ve been paying attention to Marvel’s behind-the-scenes at all, the list of problems won’t come as a surprise. The major points are as follows:
Basing an entire Avengers “saga” around a character played by Jonathan Majors
Marvel may be keeping quiet over Jonathan Majors’ domestic violence legal battle, but it’s obviously throwing the whole 10-year plan into chaos. According to Variety, Disney execs were already side-eyeing the character after Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania underperformed, but that didn’t stop them from fully committing, and apparently the Loki second season finale sets up the whole “Kang Dynasty” storyline for the films. Allegedly, there’s been conversation of pivoting to another villain like Doctor Doom instead; recasting Kang the Conqueror is another option.
Convoluted interconnected plots
At this stage of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, every new movie requires multiple movies and television series worth of lore to understand what’s going on, which is clearly taxing the audience’s attention. This problem apparently came into play with the upcoming The Marvels, which “resulted in four weeks of reshoots to bring coherence to a tangled storyline,” per Variety, and director Nia DaCosta allegedly started working on a whole other movie during The Marvels’ post-production.
The constant churn
A related problem is that post-Endgame MCU has favored quantity over quality, and fans and critics alike have taken notice. This is most evident in the VFX sphere, as when audiences were puzzled by what looked like half-finished graphics in Quantumania. That was partially due to Ant-Man and The Marvels swapping release dates, radically altering Ant-Man’s production timeline. But relying on overworked, underpaid VFX artists is enough of a recurring issue that those workers recently voted to unionize.
Not to mention, the strategy is a total money pit—Variety reports that “a single episode of She-Hulk [cost] some $25 million, dwarfing the budget of a final-season episode of HBO’s Game Of Thrones, ” and She-Hulk obviously did not have anywhere near the cultural impact of Game Of Thrones.
Diminishing star power
Finally, the fact of the matter is that Marvel isn’t casting or creating stars like it used to. Quality of the films aside, none of the second-gen Marvel stars (e.g. Simu Liu or any of the Eternals) have really launched to stardom like the first generation did. This issue is bad enough that apparently the Marvel brass have actually discussed bringing back deceased characters like Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.). It seems an unlikely scenario, not just because those people would have to agree to do it but because they’d be very expensive if they did.
The solution may indeed be to invest in and revive characters that are already popular and beloved by audiences, and Variety says Kevin Feige is working on incorporating the X-Men into the greater MCU. But Blade starring Mahershala Ali has been in the works for a long while now and has endured a lot of trouble behind the scenes. Ali apparently had issues with where the script was going, and a source told Variety “the story at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons” in which “Blade was relegated to the fourth lead.” Apparently, Logan scribe Michael Green has been brought on board and the plan is to make a relatively low-budget $100 million version of the film.
344 Comments
I mean, convoluted is an understatement.I’ve dropped out of the funnel for Marvel. It was fun, but it became too much of a time commitment. Movies are too closely tied to TV shows. TV shows don’t do enough to justify existence. If you miss one or two, you’re behind, and it isn’t worth watching something new until you’ve caught up, but eventually you’re so far behind that catching up or keeping up feels like a chore.I don’t need entertainment to be a chore. I don’t need it to be all consuming. The comparison to GoT is made above. That required about 8 hours a year. Marvel wants to be something like 30 or 40. I just don’t have the time or energy anymore.
“If you miss one or two, you’re behind, and it isn’t worth watching something new until you’ve caught up, but eventually you’re so far behind that catching up or keeping up feels like a chore.”Don’t be silly. This isn’t complicated stuff. You can dig deeper if you want, but each one works just fine standalone. Oh no, you’ll miss a handful of references. Big deal.
i think that was the case 5-10 years ago but is absolutely not true anymore. they haven’t even released a non-sequel movie in over 2 years and don’t have one on the schedule for at least another 2.
Thunderbolts isn’t a sequel.
what on earth are you talking about, thunderbolts is a sequel to falcon & the winter soldier, black widow, the hawkeye tv show and like two other things.
So now you count every crossover as a “sequel”? Did you consider The Avengers a sequel?
of course. it works more or less fine on its own but it is definitely a sequel to 5 movies. that was the whole selling point of this entire experiment!
It’s just throwing me for a loop when I see complaints like this, which effectively amount to “too much connectivity”, at the same time as complaints from other people about the exact same content, which amount to “not enough connectivity”.
well it can be both things. personally i feel like things are both too interconnected (in the sense that, to best understand the marvels, you need to watch 3 tv shows, which is clearly a turn off) and not connected enough (despite consuming all this content, i still don’t feel like we’re building to anything or getting anywhere, at least at the same pace we used to)also i mean, some people can feel one way and other people can feel differently. what’s weird about that?
You don’t need to watch 3 TV shows to understand The Marvels. I’m pretty sure somebody, possibly even me, has already explained that to you in a different thread.And they’re building at a pretty similar pace to how they built before, chronologically; there’s just more than 1 thing going on.Also….
Without the interconnections, though, they’re just action comedies that run 150 minutes without a decent action scene.
I mean, The Marvels has an entire main character that has only appeared in Wandavision.
(and an entire main character that only appeared in ms marvel)
…Who?edit: oh you must mean Monica, but she was in Captain Marvel.
Wasn’t she a child in Captain Marvel?
Yeah, but ..so? The character still appeared. No one says Anakin wasn’t in The Phantom Menace.
Yeah, but it’s not obvious from the ad campaigns, posters, etc. that this character is the grown-up version of the one from the first Captain Marvel movie. So someone who saw that movie and didn’t watch WandaVision wouldn’t naturally assume the two are linked.
the ad campaigns are really generic for this one. i actually forgot that monica was the kid in the first movie, and only remembered her from wandavision. that might have been nice to put in the ads. might have been nice to make individual trailers for each characters even! they do character posters, why not trailers.
New promo clip directly references that.
Yeah, because that movie was set in 1995. I assure you, most people can process the concept of a character growing up over 30 years.
Yeah but it remains to be seen if they explain that in the movie.
And I bet Nick Fury drops two lines that explains to everyone who hasn’t scene who she is and what she does.
I saw a comment on here about needing to watch Rebels before Ahsoka. It said that while you technically didn’t need to watch the show to follow what is happening in the story, the emotional beats don’t land if you don’t have the same background.
The same can be applied to Marvel. I can technically watch each movie with it’s own stand alone story and follow it, but it doesn’t give a complete experience by itself.
I think that’s the thing that people don’t get when they make comments like that. You don’t really need to understand every single detail. I used to read a lot of Spider-Man and X-Men comics, and one of the things I figured out very quickly was that these characters were part of a larger world and I wasn’t going to necessarily know everything about it, and that’s OK. When Captain America dropped in and referenced an adventure he and Spidey had previously had together and there was a footnote saying “See Captain America Annual #9”, I just… didn’t.Honestly, it’s much easier these days than it was when I was a comics reading teen, since if I really am curious, there are multitudes of explainer articles and wikis out there to give me the Cliff Notes version, all just a Google away.
Maybe if you’re comfortable being led by the nose and just accepting what’s in front of you, it doesn’t matter; but if you prefer to “understand” and be able to make connections and put the whole picture together yourself, it is very easy to fall behind; and catching up becomes tedious and definitely not worth it.
I feel like people feel like they need to follow it all for it to “make sense” when, in fact, they are at the core silly action movies that don’t need that much thought
It’s a catch 22 – as action movies they’re formulaic, bland, and way too long. Their personality comes from the longer continuity, but that personality is exhausting.
I’d bet you know exactly when and where that thing happened to that one guy.
I suppose anyone could write what you did and walk away feeling ok about it, but why would you?
The only movie I can think of that came out recently that is really connected to a TV show was the newest Dr Strange one and you basically get all the background you need in the movie anyhow. The new Ant Man is the third one, so it would have been good to watch the first two, but no TV viewing was required. Sure, Kang was connected to Loki, but you didn’t need to watch Loki to know what was happening in the movie. The new GotG movie didn’t require any TV viewing nor did the new Spider-Verse movie. I imagine the reshoots on The Marvels was to make sure no TV viewing is required too.Am I missing something?
IMO gotg3 absolutely required watching the holiday special to explain the quill/mantis relationship. that would have confused me.
I guess, that’s not really a main part of the plot though, you don’t need to know why they are brother and sister to understand what’s going on in the movie. You need to understand Quill’s relationship with the ‘new’ Gamora and why it’s different than it was in GotG2, but they go over that well enough in the dialog.
I can assure you that parts of Wandavision and to lesser extent the second Spider-Man were meaningless without seeing the Thanos movies. It didn’t tank the stories (the third acts did), but it was useless bloat.
Right that’s true but what the OP was saying is that the TV shows are too closely tied to the movies and you can’t understand the movies without watching the shows. Which is not true.
ultimately i’ll say that, as someone who’s seen everything and never seen one of these movies or tv shows ‘on their own’, the only one i can say for sure works on its own is iron man.
No offense (but also I don’t care)… You’d have to be pretty dim to not “get” a Marvel movie because you didn’t see all the previous ones.
I don’t think it’s simplistic as “I don’t understand that the good guy is fighting to save the world.” It’s just, after you get out of the habit of watching this stuff (which I have), you start to feel disconnected not just from the plotting/new characters, but emotionally disconnected from what the hell is going on. Dropping in on an adventure of characters I half know in sequel number billion just isn’t very inviting when I could just watch something fresh or new.
I can think of at least 5 of them besides Iron Man that work entirely on their own. Granted, those are pretty much all Phase 1/2 movies, but saying the only one that works on its own is Iron Man is patently false.
my point was iron man was the first one, so it’s the only one i saw without seeing anything before it, so it’s the only one that i can say that without a shadow of a doubt.everything is soured by the fact that i…have seen everything so i can’t honestly and truly ever see something without seeing anything else…all i’m saying is that i’m willing to accept that, because i’ve never seen any of them ‘on their own’, i can never truly be a source of truth on that matter.
These movies are made for the lowest common denominator viewer. That’s why so much run time is always devoted to exposition.
I think I could’ve chalked that up to all the stronger inter-relationships between all the characters that happened off-screen. Nebula was quite friendly with everyone but especially Peter, Drax and Mantis had forged a very strong relationship, everyone was acting more familial and emotional regarding Rocket’s fate. I wasn’t confused by any of these developments that weren’t explicitly developed, so I think the Mantis-Quill one wouldn’t have seemed that weird if I had missed the Holiday Special.
yeah but you also saw it haha. sorry, but it’s never not funny to me that it’s always the people who have seen everything that are trying to argue that ‘no, actually that stuff all works on its own’. how do we know?! we’ve seen it all!i’ve never once seen a casual mcu fan* say ‘oh yeah i only check out a few here and there that i’m interested in and it all works and makes sense’*not even sure i’ve ever seen a ‘casual mcu fan’ at all now that i think about it.
I don’t see what’s confusing about the Mantis/Quill relationship though. The second movie established they’re siblings, the holiday special was just explicit about it. What would someone have missed if they didn’t watch the holiday special?
i don’t remember them being established as siblings in the sequel, but that’s also one of my least favorite mcu movies so i’ll take your word for it.
I suppose it’s left slightly as a matter of interpretation, but the logic of it is basically inescapable. Ego carries around the bones of all his offspring, because he collects them all and tries to bond with them, or whatever. He doesn’t go around collecting random children, because he’s got thousands of progeny, and I know this is an unavoidable comic reference, but his name is literally Ego. Mantis, for whatever reason, can’t play with his energy, but either didn’t die in the process or proves herself useful before he could kill her.
I seem to remember this was played as a bit of a surprise during the holiday special, but it was already my working assumption.
gotcha. well it never occurred to me at all before the special and WAS a surprise to me, but i’ve also never read a comic with ego or mantis (or the guardians at all) or ever really seen them in any other media.and isn’t this whole conversation emblematic of the whole thing we’re talking about here! i’m saying ‘hey yeah, i wouldn’t have understood something in guardians 3 if i hadn’t seen the special, felt like required viewing to me’ and you go ‘surely you had already theorized that!’like, obviously the basic plot would have made sense, but it would have confused me and made me feel like i missed something, which i would have because i didn’t have any working theories like you did.
There’s a Vol II deleted scene that makes it explicit.
Most of my friend’s would consider themselves casual fans. They just don’t care as much as the minutiae or the lore. They follow what’s going on, because really,even though the movies/shows don’t spell everything out, you can still follow the A/B plots without having seen the ground work laid for them elsewhere.
Like I’ve seen maybe half of the Fast and Furious movies, but I was still able to follow the most recent one.
have they been enjoying the recent output?
Anecdotally, my friends and their kids really enjoyed Doctor Strange 2 and Shang-Chi. I believe they skipped Eternals and haven’t gotten to Ant-Man 3 or GoTG3 yet. Another friend and his wife are still fully invested. He’s just kind of watching for the sake of watching, but his wife is still following along. His enjoyment is less than her’s at this point.
My wife is a casual fan. She has gradually lost interest over the last year or so – we used to always see MCU films in the theater, usually on opening weekend, now we usually wait for streaming. We have no plans on going to “The Marvels” which looks really boring to both of us.
Eh. I saw the first Avengers movie having skipped Thor and Captain America. I was fine. I saw Civil War before Ant-Man and Avengers Infinity War before seeing Doctor Strange. No big deals either time.I perhaps take for granted my ability to do this, having grown up in that long ago age before streaming and even DVRs, where if I wanted to start watching the new season of Farscape or Star Trek or ER or whatever, I just started watching on season 4 or 6 or whatever was on the TV and figured it out. You latch onto the main plot of the narrative in front of you, enjoy or wave off or accept the truncated explanation of any mystery of anything you don’t get, and get around to the old stuff later.
well like i said it was fine up until about 5 years ago.i don’t know how many people are gonna be like ‘ah yes, captain america 4 will be when i finally jump in fresh’
I haven’t seen What If, Ms. Marvel, She Hulk, or Secret Invasion, and have no plans to. I’ll let you know how The Marvels and the next Captain America movie turn out for me. Cheers!
well, at least i’ve finally located one casual mcu fan. do me a favor and never, ever watch secret invasion (ever)
I never will.It’s so crazy to me to be identified as a casual mcu fan, since I really love it. It’s just at some point I realized that when I was a kid I never bothered to read Marvel titles that I wasn’t interested in, so why should I do the same for the movies/shows?
for sure, i guess the issue for me is they aren’t putting out any titles i’m interested in. i still ‘like’ the mcu so i’m interested in checking them out, and have been trained to, but i haven’t really connected with any character or actor or plotline in a while.
The Marvels was great. I (and my family- two of whom hadn’t seen WandaVision) had no trouble keeping up, but we will be watching Ms. Marvel now because she was great in the film. Actually, the most momentarily confusing part was that Secret Invasion didn’t seem to be referenced at all. Like, it fit perfectly to just go from the first film to this one with how the Skrulls were handled, so I had to stop myself from wondering how that show fit into everything. Hope you enjoyed the film!
You have now. I watch the stuff that looks interesting. If it’s not I stop watching it and watch something else. Huge comic fan Marvel tattoos even but not every project that says Marvel has to be consumed. When something looks like I wouldn’t like it I don’t watch it. I know your comment is a lot of internet hyperbole but I know a ton of casual Marvel fans.
Missed the Holiday Special. Didn’t think anything was amiss with the Mantis-Stardouche relationship.
Exactly. Thank you.
I watched the special and didn’t remember this. But it made sense anyway as Ego spawned them both.
See, this. I haven’t seen either yet because I, too, have dropped out of the Marvel funnel. But I liked GotG enough that I’ll probably watch the third one day soon and…you know what? I just realized I did watch it. It was fine. It made no impact on me apparently.
Whether TV viewing is actually needed or not, the marketing has made it SEEM like it is, and that’s the impression people are carrying.I mean, all the reshoots in the world won’t change the fact that The Marvels is about Carol teaming up with two characters from the TV shows, who are apparently so important that they named the movie to reflect their presence (I bet this film would be getting much more audience hype if it were just called Captain Marvel 2.)
It *is* called Captain Marvel 2 – in China.
I don’t think it has, no marketing for GotG 3 made it seem like you needed to watch a TV show to understand it.No, reshoots won’t do that and I won’t claim that they will, but as long as the stuff from the show is explained it doesn’t really matter, does it?
there seems to be this thought here that’s like:‘well, if they take 3 lines to explain the tv series, you should enjoy this movie just as much as someone who’s seen the tv series’ and i just can’t follow that.the thing about feelings and vibes is you can’t really pin them down with facts and logic. if someone says ‘i don’t want to see the marvels because it looks complicated with all the stuff i need to watch before’ what they’re really doing is retroactively trying to explain their initial reaction, which was ‘this movie doesn’t look like something i want to watch’.and if your initial reaction is ‘i don’t want to see this’ no amount of ‘no trust me they’ll explain everything’ is gonna change that. and THAT’s the bigger problem here. the marketing doesn’t even have much of a hook beyond ‘here is a new marvel movie: in space!’ if the hook is ‘more marvel’ and you’re turned off of marvel…what’s the solution? i don’t think it’s captain america 4.
‘well, if they take 3 lines to explain the tv series, you should enjoy
this movie just as much as someone who’s seen the tv series’
See, there’s your problem. What they’re actually saying is: ‘If they take 3 lines to explain the things that happened in the TV series which have a bearing on this movie, you will be able to follow the plot of the movie without a problem.’ Nobody’s expecting you to enjoy it as much as someone who watched the TV series, that’s something you’re making up.
Oh god learn how to use capital letters, trying to read your writing is giving me a headache.
well and again, noone is saying they’ll have a problem following a plot, what they’re saying is they won’t like the movie.‘this movie that’s a sequel to 3+ things doesn’t interest me’‘don’t worry they’ll explain everything’‘yeah, but the movie doesn’t interest me.’that’s the issue here. it’s not someone going ‘oh no i’m scared i won’t be able to follow the plot of this movie for children’ they’re going ‘i don’t care about this’
That’s the argument they’re making though, that they won’t be able to follow the plot because it’s tied closely with the TV shows. I can’t say whether or not what you’re stating is correct, but I can argue the fact that the majority of the movies have not been tied closely to the TV shows, or at least not so closely that you can’t understand and enjoy the movies without having watched the shows.And again: Capitalization, learn how to use it!
when i’m fucking around on the internet i just type and let it fly. i can send you my rate if you want to pay me to use sentence case on here. i’ll give you a relatively good deal.i do agree that, yes of course, every mcu movie can be understood as a basic 3-act movie with a beginning, middle, end and understandable stakes. i also think that when people say ‘i won’t understand the plot’ they also mean they won’t care about what happens, not necessarily only ‘i will not be able to wrap my mind around what happens in this movie’. the other issue is it’s a feeling. perception is reality and if the public feels like they’re too complicated and that’s a turn off, then it’s the truth, whether you agree or not.
Ah ok: You’re gonna want to stop letting it ‘fly’ and use capital letters going forward. I’m not going to pay you anything to do what you should already be doing.
you can also just decide not be annoyed by it. it’s entirely in your hands!
Hyperbole: learn how to read it!
The thing about Doctor Strange 2 is that I went and saw Everything Everywhere All at Once the next day and I found it a vastly better multiverse story. Then I also realised I didn’t have to do the MCU at all anymore. So, I haven’t!
I wasn’t crazy about MoM but I didn’t enjoy “Everything” much either, and I was expecting I would. It felt like it went on forever, getting less and less interesting.
My problem has always been the emotional throughline. I sort of cared about the robo-billionaire’s death because I knew him as a character. But the fact that the background was filled with, to me, the drama of unfamiliar and interchangeable cartoon characters really blunted the impact.
Nah, you hit the nail on the head, just piling on for the sake of piling on, the only criticism that I have is over extending on some of these D+ shows, I know they were given a mandate from Chapek to utilize D+, but clearly they don’t have the infrastructure in place to really do it at the level that people expect from the MCU.
I’m rewatching Agents of SHIELD right now, I totally forgot how good of a show it is. Full 20+ episode seasons with TV length episodes and the show is honestly better than most of the D+ shows have been.Maybe Secret Invasion soured them a bit for me though, that was a real shitty show in pretty much all aspects.
I dropped out after secret invasion. I just couldn’t care anymore.
Everyone seems to agree Secret Invasion was terrible. They should have just shelved it.
the hack AI intro alone was enough for me to cancel my whole membership / subscription
If you stopped the first time you saw that, I envy you. Worst thing in the MCU.
Secret Invasion was balls. I stopped after the first episode, and everything I read about it tells me I made the right choice.Not going to stop with the MCU though. Just skipping that bit, like I did with the back half of The Eternals.
The movies are not remotely tied to the TV shows, stop with this obvious lie.
It’s funny watching the non-comic-reading MCU fans become frustrated as the movies increasingly resemble the comic books, while comic fans shrug.Not a value judgment, but this was inevitable.
I don’t entirely agree with this. I recently reread War of the Realms and there is a moment where Wolverine shows up, and someone asks “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” He basically responds “Doesn’t matter.”
To me, this is the strength of comic continutiy being a lot softer. In a movie, Wolverine showing up would be the next chapter in whatever story he’s going through at the moment, in the comics, it’s an appearance that doesn’t add to the indiviudal story for given charater.
I don’t remember this particular moment, but I’m not convinced this is an accurate representation of it. Even if it is, that is a weird anecdote that isn’t at all representative of how continuity works in the comics universe.It’s impossible to carry every single thread across 80 years of thousands and thousands of comics, but they mostly do a good job of keeping them connected, with the occasional housekeeping retcon.
Yes, but Disney’s audience isn’t just comic book readers. If it was, these wouldn’t have budgets in the hundreds of millions. Over 80% of Americans say they read comic books fewer than once a month. Disney isn’t making these films to appeal to less than 20% of Americans
What part of my comment made you think I didn’t understand this completely obvious point?
What part of any of this made you think anyone doesn’t think comic readers would have a difference perspective?
When did I imply that, dude? My point was that the things more casual film fans are starting to dislike are largely the fundamental aspects of long-term serialized, shared universe stories that comic book fans enjoy.Thanks for your insightful contribution though.
No offense, but are you over 30? Because if so then it’s totally reasonable not to have the time or energy for the MCU now.
The MCU is arguably at best intended as family entertainment, by which I mean the kids want to see it and bring their parents along who may or may not be entertained too.
If you’re not a kid, teen or even 20-something, then you’re arguably not the intended audience for the MCU. And that’s fine.
This is and has always been a bullshit excuse to dismiss criticism of popular art. If a movie is released wide in theaters, not an arthouse with a specific arthouse crowd, not an art gallery, but a movie theater with a movie theater’s intended audience of EVERYONE WHO CAN BUY A TICKET, then the “intended audience” is everyone who can buy a ticket. Granted, the rating system moderates this such that an R film is not “intended” for children. But as far as critical analysis of a film’s artistic merits go, the concept of an “intended audience” is moot. If the MCU wants to make fucking money from everyone and anyone then it has to be beholden to the standards and expectations of everyone and anyone.
It’s been three years since this new “saga” started and I still don’t know what the fuck it’s about. The original Thanos storyline was so simple and easy to follow: There’s seven magic rocks, whoever finds them all gets Phenomenal Cosmic Power. A bad guy wants them. Simple but compelling, and easy to follow across multiple otherwise unrelated films.
Meanwhile, the current thing with Kang is so goddamn convoluted that the first season finale of Loki is just Kang sitting in a chair explaining the plot directly to our faces for 20 minutes, and it STILL feels confusing afterward. It’s jumbled and boring and yet I’m supposed to be invested enough in this to sit through garbage like Secret Invasion? Fuck that. Call me when the Fantastic Four show up.
66 magic rocks.And a snazzy gauntlet to put them in.
The first “saga” wasn’t really about anything at first either though. like 4/23 movies used stones as the mcguffin. You only need to look at how liquid Thor 2’s “stone” is to realize they were sewing things together as they went on. Guardians of The Galaxy is what I’d tell someone they need to watch before Infinity War. But honestly, if I woke up with amnesia tomorrow and someone showed me Infinity War. Well I suspect I would want to see the rest. A lot.
You’re right that they were clearly making up most of the Thanos saga as they went along, but because the main idea is so simple, they could get away with it. As long as one of the stones showed up in a movie, it FELT like story progression, even if it wasn’t.
Welcome to adulthood and the joys of trying to consume content.
I have found that the shows are entirely dispensable. None of them are integral viewing (although I still watch all of them). The movies barely reference stuff from the shows.
Nia DaCosta started working on a whole other movie during post-production. Yeah, this is completely unheard of in Hollywood and must point to some huge problem with the movie.
I know Spielberg worked on Jurassic Park and Shindlers List at the same time. That must have been weird as hell.
And he was still producing other projects during both!
There’s a snapshot of him approving stuff for Animaniacs on the set of Schindler’s List and holy crap is there a major dissonance there.
“Come, we must prepare for tomorrow night.”
“Egads! What are we going to do tomorrow night, Schindler?”
“The same thing we do every night, Stern: Try to take over the wartime production line!”
Mr. DNA played Shindler for two weeks before Spielberg noticed Neeson was missing.
“Uh, Stephen? This scene where Oskar Schindler says ‘hold onto your butts’? The studio is worried it doesn’t fit the tone of the movie.”
It was a hell of a lot less offensive than the Raptors in the shower scene.
“A related problem is that post-Endgame MCU has favored quantity over quality, and fans and critics alike have taken notice.”In fact, so many people took notice that the guy responsible for that was thrown out and they went begging to Bob Iger to come back and fix it. So that shouldn’t be so much of an issue going forward.
Chapek wasn’t a good CEO by any means but Iger is the one who pushed for Disney+ which is really the root of all of the problems Disney has had lately. Marvel had to double their output because D+ needed original content.
iger even greenlit most of those shows and movies.
Yup, Disney+ is probably losing money despite being super popular. The overhead for all that og content. $150 million for friggin She-Hulk alone?!!!
The “Bob Iger swooped in to fix (the problems his regime seeded)” narrative needs to be put out of its misery.
This problem apparently came into play with the upcoming The Marvels, which “resulted in four weeks of reshoots to bring coherence to a tangled storyline…”Could it just be that test audiences are generally stupid and a bad idea? You hear stories about stuff like The Northman being compromised because the test audiences didn’t get it and then they change the movie and that just makes me sad. Like it seems more likely to me that the script for the marvels made sense, and they plucked some morons out of a mall who were texting “I’M WATCHING THE NEW WONDER WOMAN!!!” for half the movie and then changed it based on their complaints that it was confusing.
Kevin Smith has a great bit (I forget where – How Did This Get Made?, maybe) where he talks about screening a film to a test audience. The problem is that they see the movie, make suggestions, those changes are made… and then a completely different test group sees the re-cut film. So now the new group is confused about some plotline that got cut, or don’t like some of the stuff that was changed, or the updated tone or whatever. It is an exasperating moving target.
i think the bigger thing is this is the first time they’ve ever had a traditional test audience on an mcu movie. this is supposed to be the ‘general public’ that mcu movies are geared towards, and they responded poorly.now, sure, we can hypothesize about who was in that audience, and its entirely possible they got a group of duds, but overall these sample sizes are helpful metrics. if they felt they needed an entire 4 weeks of reshoots that leads me to believe that whatever internal screening methods they’ve been doing until then aren’t as dialed with the general public. it’s also quite possible that what they screened wasn’t very good. doesn’t mean what they came up with in 4 weeks is any better.
Oh sure, the movie could have been terrible from the start. I have more faith in a director and writer’s “vison” than opinions from randoms off the street.Especially when the complaints are “I don’t understand what’s happening.” It seems super unlikely anyone wrote approved an MCU script that was legitimately confusing. Many people are just shockingly dumb.
Not to mention that there’s plenty of room for “I don’t understand what’s happening… but I was still entertained.” Hell, my mom said just about exactly that about Loki S2!
That’s how I felt about Tenet.
i mean, if you screen a movie for 150 people and 50 people say they don’t know what’s going on, that’s worth exploring. we don’t have access to the actual responses.people are dumb but they’re also the only mammal that pays to see movies, so if a third of your audience doesn’t understand that’s a problem for a movie that’s supposed to appeal to everyone.
Yeah, you’re not wrong obviously it just sucks that thingd get lowest common denominatord. I’d love to see the original version of The Northman. Though who knows maybe it was bad.
One. Million. Percent. How many times can someone read a review on this website where the reviewer asks questions that strongly convey that they didn’t understand significant portions of what was happening? If the people who are supposedly getting paid to watch and understand something fail to understand plot points that are obvious to the commentariat, I’m not sure why I should expect higher media literacy from randos in a focus group.
I keep coming back to that Arrow episode where the reviewer forgot that Robert Queen had killed a guy in the first episode, so the whole article was just surreal as she kept acting like that was a ridiculous retcon.
For while here there was a running joke about a scene of ‘30 Rock’ Nathan Rabin hallucinated in which Jack drugs Tracey Jordan’s jellybeans.
Oh shit I’d totally forgotten about that.It could be worse, it could be Leonard Pierce writing a review of book which hadn’t come out yet and he hadn’t read.
I don’t know how many writers or directors you’ve met, but they too can be just shockingly dumb.
yeah they are also people, who can also be dumb.
My loyalties go back and forth between the artist and the audience in conversations like these. I do think that there’s something to be said for an artist having a vision and the audience misunderstanding or misinterpreting that vision out of ignorance. But I also think there’s something to be said for artists *failing* in their vision and putting some of the onus for the communication process of art on the artist rather than the audience. I have a somewhat tense relationship with Death of the Artist but I think it has a lot of merit. Ultimately art is a two-way street and BOTH artist and audience owe it to each other to be smarter and better than they sometimes can be. I get Bad Kuchi Kopi’s sentiment but I think it is based in some undue assumptions about the intelligence of artists and stupidity of the audience. It’s the Billy Wilder quote. “The audience is never wrong. Every single person out there is an idiot but collectively they’re a genius.”
definitely. i also think it’s fairly clear, in this specific MCU conversation, artists are NOT coming in with any vision or allowed to execute them.i’ve been getting at something similar with the numbers/test screening data too. if one guy says ‘this movie is dumb’, that’s an outlier, and maybe that guy is just dumb. if the majority of the audience is confused, that’s an actual problem, especially in these specific, crowd-pleasing, 4-quadrant movies. if noone is laughing, it’s not funny. and i doubt they did 4 weeks of reshoots because one dumb guy was confused.
Isn’t the four weeks of reshoots thing just how Marvel makes movies? I’m pretty sure all their movies have that budgeted in from the start. Maybe I’m wrong though and it’s only two or three weeks normally, but I’m quite sure they just make movies weird and always plan on reshoots.
Fair, but I suspect there are enough people at Marvel Studios reading this scripts to make sure they make sense before they start shooting. I think everyone understands the assignment and it’s unlikely they’re writing super complicated plots or anything.
While I hope this movie gets Nia DaCosta the clout to do some more stuff, the whole issue with the MCU for years has been its contempt for artistic vision beyond maybe some shots that reflect a director’s visual sensibility.
now, sure, we can hypothesize about who was in that audience, and its entirely possible they got a group of duds, but overall these sample sizes are helpful metrics.I would argue that Marvel’s entire problem is that the latter half of the MCU is built around what “tests well” and the million other metrics they’re collecting off these films. I say this as a huge Marvel fan, but, like The Falcon and The Winter Soldier seems like it’s designed entirely around trying to tell the story of a Black man becoming Captain America without saying anything at all about anything.
but it’s all been internal testing thusfar. this is the first one they’ve held a traditional test screening for (says the article, anyway)
Test audience reactions are literally one metric.
no argument they’re working off of bad data regardless, i just thought it was interesting this was the first one they’ve done that with.
They got shook because they really thought Quantumania was going to be a megahit. They panicked.
My favorite test screening story is from the Harrison Ford movie Clear and Present Danger. When the bad guy died, the audience began to cheer, but he died really fast so they didn’t get much of a chance to. This actually resulted in negative scores as viewers were upset they didn’t get to cheer. So they reshot his death scene to make it slow and painful, so viewers would have a chance to applaud his suffering.
OMG this is not that complicated. Is there some kind phenomenon going on
where you immediately start losing brain cells when you enter the
C-suite? 1) Just recast Kang. The world is not gonna end if another
person plays the character. 2) The Avengers aren’t at their peak? No
shit. People are gonna get burned out after 15 years of movies. You
should actually be thrilled it lasted that long. So let them chill for
awhile and focus on your other really popular IP like X-Men and see if
you can finally make a proper Fantastic 4.
Personally if they’re going to recast Kang I nominate Sterling K Brown and I don’t care that he’s already played a character in the MCU.
They did it with Gemma Chan (who was cast in Eternals in spite of having already played a different character in Captain Marvel).
Ditto Michelle Yeoh.
Casting the same person twice in different roles should be much less of a problem than a lot of people make it out to be. I think it’s less of a problem than outright recasting a character, something that also needn’t be considered sacrosanct. It’s a big world and sometimes people look similar. Especially in a big multiverse. I literally always forget Gemma Chan played two characters, and I just rewatched Captain Marvel last night and was a little surprised (again) to see her name in the credits. Some makeup and editing goes a long way towards making people less recognizable.
Some makeup and editing goes a long way towards making people less recognizable. And if all else fails, there’s always the last, desperate option — acting, and directing. David Milch was so impressed by Garrett Dillahunt’s work in a small (but visible) role from Deadwood’s first season that he brought him back as an entirely different character for 9 more episodes in the second season. Nobody ever confused the two, because the actor did his job and made both characters distinct, and distinctly different.
And then, possibly just for the fun of it, he cast Garrett Dillahunt as a third character in the Deadwood movie.Garrett Dillahunt is a great actor, so I approve this strategy in any case.
Exactly! And Simu Liu may not have become the next Robert Downey Jr. but he’s not going hungry either. His work in Kim’s Convenience proves he’s got comedy chops, and he managed to get cast in Barbie (which I haven’t seen yet, but it’s on my list!) which is surely bringing him to the attention of a whole new audience.The Eternals… well, I’ll be honest. That was the only one I didn’t catch in theaters, because I am a comics fan and I know what a skippable issue looks like. But I watched it later on D+ and it was fine.“There’s actually this whole other bunch of characters you ought to have been caring about this whole time” is a really tough sell even for die-hards, and when it didn’t work with The Inhumans Feige et al should have realized what they were setting themselves up for by trying it again.Anyway we were talking about Garrett Dillahunt, and yeah, he’s a great actor. And was already in the sorta-X-adjacent show The Gifted on FOX. Let’s get him in the MCU and see what happens!
I feel like the main reason Inhumans didn’t work was because it was terrible.
It might be confusing to movie viewers, but to fans of the comics if his existing character turned out to be a Kang variant it wouldn’t be out of line at all. Kang comes in many forms.
*Mahershala Ali nods in approval*
It’s such a fundamental aspect of modern capitalism that people refuse to believe things have a shelf life, and that no matter how popular or god forbid profitable something is, one day, even if everything goes perfectly to plan, that thing will stop being both. It’s happened in broad public view thousands of times over the past few decades, and still somehow people don’t understand. Somewhere, at some time, some coked out TV producer was crying into his pillow “How come the kids don’t like ALF anymore? He’s funny, he eats cats, he’s perfect!”
Are we even sure that is 100% of what happened here? Or is it possible that the world of media consumption is different in 2023 than it was when the MCU started, and we need to calibrate accordingly before we make sweeping assessments of anything except actual quality…
I don’t know how we test for “Superhero fatigue” when the quality of the actual products has changed from Phases 1 & 2. Eternals – which I enjoyed – was a swing and a miss because it was disjointed, and Quantumania was a swing and a miss because it wasn’t a good movie, and Dr. Strange was a swing and a miss because it seems to have been made by and for people who saw the first movie with a concussion. Thor: Love and Roses seemed like it was written and directed by someone with a concussion. Most of the rest of this era of MCU stuff requires some course correction and adjustment for COVIDflation, no? Black Panther 2 had to carry some CONSIDERABLE baggage that couldn’t be avoided, and tried to fix that with TOO MUCH MOVIE. Black Widow was a good enough action movie, but didn’t make sense where it was released. Shang-Chi had to introduce a totally different character in totally different circumstances that barely brushed the rest of the MCU. Guardians 3 was all over the place. Spiderman: No Way Home might still be making money.
Taking it out of the realm of the MCU, PLENTY of people that I know who would have crawled through broken glass to see something like Top Gun: Maverick five or ten years ago were surprised that I saw it in theaters… Plenty of my arthouse friends haven’t seen Oppenheimer, even though that one could not have been better consumed outside of a theater, and preferably an IMAX. Other than Barbie, I literally can’t name a movie recently that had early MCU-level/staggering box office, great word-of-mouth, and a long run in theaters. It just seems like people want to hold the MCU to a standard that almost nothing else is being held to…
super mario brothers.
Your point is valid, but also ALF is PERFECT.
The alien who eats cats?
To be fair, I also went through a phase of crying into a pillow about no one liking ALF. I was sadly not coked out at that time.
This, exactly. People always talk about Marvel being handicapped by having to start with these lesser-known heroes like Iron Man, Captain America, and such, but I always thought it helped them a lot. DC’s made nice piles of money off Batman movies through the years, getting box office returns from seven (non TV show) live-action solo Batman movies with four different actors playing Batman when they were trying to kick off Justice League with Affleck, and that’s a lot of success, but it starts getting bogged down with audience expectations. People come up with complaints about how it’s the wrong tone for Batman, or it’s not how they think Batman would act, instead of everyone just taking it for what it is.It’s like if Marvel re-casts Iron Man for another trilogy of movies and some appearances, then comes back with another new actor to take another swing at Tony Stark, audiences are less likely to eat it up and more likely to eat them alive. You can’t change too much, because that means messing with things people like, and the only reason you’re doing it again is because people liked it before, but people also aren’t going to keep lining up for the same thing over and over and over and over again. There’s a limit to the amount of money you can squeeze out of an IP. Bond is still around, but he’s gone through some real reinventions; different Bonds have little to do with each other. They’re really all just modern espionage action thrillers with some James Bondian tropes.
You fool, don’t you know Alf is back? In pog form?You’re completely right, though. The funny thing is, Marvel is still crazy successful in the grand scheme of things, but it’s no longer THE MOST SUCCESSFUL THING IN THE WORLD, and as far as the execs are concerned, that’s cause for panic.
one of the most mind-numbing aspects of capitalism is how bad it is at learning to do good business, ironically the one thing it promises to do well.
Who the fuck doesn’t like ALF?
Fucken kids, dude. If you ask me, this new generation always have their heads stuck in their phones, instead of watching ALF, like they should be.
My cats?
The most annoying part of current c-suites isn’t that something has to remain profitable, it’s that profits have to grow. There is a massive hive mind that if you’re not growing, you’re failing. You can’t just be steadily profitable anymore.
Maybe Terrence Howard is available.
That would be hilarious. It’d be a bigger role, so probably a bigger paycheck.
He’s Kang from the universe where 1 times 1 is 2
Yeah. And you only have to pay him with baby wipes.
Terrence is bust proving math is wrong.
Right, this is where it’s at. Make good Fantastic Four and X-Men films, and the MCU is back in business. If not, it’s probably over.
/See if you can make a proper X-Men trilogy. I guess there were four in the last try…Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sucker for timeline buggery, so I really enjoyed Days of Future Past. But I’m not sure anyone wants to remember either Apocalypse or Dark Phoenix.
Have they considered just fucking stopping for a year or two? Let a show run or something but I don’t need three marvel movies every year.
I don’t think the parent company that was eager to run Star Wars movies into the ground as fast as possible is interested in letting Marvel take a break.
I mean that same company did put Star Wars on a break though. There hasn’t been a new Star Wars movie in four years and it’s going to be another few years before we see one as none of the many rumored projects seem to have started filming (AFAIK at least).
They did put Star Wars on a break, but that was after they ran it into the ground. Marvel should have taken a break after Endgame, going out on a high note. Of course, there’s no way Disney would let that happen, because plutocrats gonna plutocrat.
Imagine if Marvel movies did indeed take a 4-5yr break after endgame? Audiences would be going nuts right now, anticipating its triumphant return. Instead where still slogging thru phase 4, with another overstuffed snorefest about to drop.
Did they though? Yeah, Rise of Skywalker was in 2019, but since then they put out The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, Ahsoka, and three seasons of The Mandalorian.
None of those are movies.
Right, but they look like the movies, they’re much longer than the movies, and three of them star characters from the movies, so in what meaningful way is Star Wars on a break?
they’re on a break from making money aside from merchandise.
The issue there wasn’t really “ack! too many Star Wars!” it was “wait, these movies are mostly bad and the big trilogy capper was exceptionally terrible.”
I agree, but I also think part of the reason those movies were so bad (I wasn’t a fan of Rogue One either, and Solo was fine but forgettable) was because Disney was trying to get new movies out the door as fast as possible.
Yeah. Specifically firing Trevorrow(?) and not delaying Episode IX. I’m no fan of J.J. Abrams but he probably could have done better with more time. Maybe more oversight that wasn’t just “and you’re sure you can get it done in time?”
MUST CONSUME PRODUCT, haha…
I’ve been a pretty big DC fan for all my life, but I ended up nop’ing out of monthly titles a couple years after they brought back and dove headfirst into the multiverse. I know that it was a staple of DC Comics for decades, and I think it’s okay as a storytelling tool if you don’t overuse it (which the Arrowverse definitely did), but it can easily get convoluted. It’s not that it’s hard for audiences to follow along, but it’s very easy to lose tension.So it’s mildly amusing to me that Feige and the MCU braintrust went all in on “The Multiverse Saga.” I’m sure they were patting themselves for introducing superhero multiverse stories to moviegoing audiences before DC Films had a chance to get their shit together.
I like multiverse stuff a lot better than a rehashed Infinity Gauntlet storyline with an idiot Thanos, personally. At least in the comics he was trying to woo the anthropomorphic personification of Death, that makes sense even if it is insane. And that fits his mo: He’s the Mad Titan, not the Dumbass Titan.
Could literally feel this comment tipping its fedora at me.
I don’t own a fedora, just ball caps, thanks for the insult though it’s really awesome of you to spread good feelings around like that!
ackshually he doesn’t own a fedora
Re-read those sentences and tell me if that storyline really “makes sense.”
Spoiler: It doesn’t. It’s dumb as a box of hammers, but it was in a decades-old comic book geared at thirteen year olds, so it was perfectly fine for the medium/audience.As the impetus behind billions of dollars worth of movie budgets? Hell no.
I attempted to explain to my wife what I knew of the comic book Thanos plotline and she thought I was joking.
I had the same reaction when someone tried to explain it to me the first time.
It absolutely does: In a universe where the concept of Death can take a physical form, wooing that form makes sense.
Killing half the universe to save the resources of the universe? That, friend, is pants on head.
Such a universe is idiot then.
Hey, a box of hammers is a smart investment. You never know when you’ll need more than one. For example… Well just because I can’t think of an instance where I would need more than one hammer doesn’t mean I wasn’t smart to buy this box of hammers. Or wait, did you mean the hammers themselves aren’t smart? Because in that case I have nothing to say to you.
Wooing the anthropomorphic personification of death makes sense? Maybe you had to be there.
It absolutely does: In a universe where the concept of Death can take a physical form, wooing that form makes sense.
Killing half the universe to save the resources of the universe? That’s dumb as hell.
it was a staple of DC Comics for decades, and I think it’s okay as a storytelling tool if you don’t overuse it (which the Arrowverse definitely did)It was fun when they first started playing with the multiverse on The Flash until it became a crutch. But it drove me crazy when Detective Lance spends, like, 3 seasons trying to turn Black Siren good even though she repeatedly straight up murders people week after week.
But, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the introduction of Kang as the latest reappearing bad dude the reason for the multiverse storyline? I’m not a Kang expert but I thought that was a big part of his character. It hasn’t bothered me, but Spider-Man 3 series 3 did manage to take whatever piss was left outta the Flash movie.
I know nothing about Kang. I thought he was just a goofy-looking Fantastic Four villain until the MCU introduced him. But that makes me wonder if they settled on him and that’s what prompted such a huge focus on the multiverse, or if they wanted to put the entire multiverse in danger to top the Infinity Gauntlet story, and that dictated what villain they set up.Either way, I agree about finding the multiverse fun until it starts being a crutch. I have barely watched anything Marvel since All of the Live-Action Spider-Men, so I can’t say that’s what’s happening there, but just from what I’ve seen, I’m already tired of it (and that’s probably more because of all the multiverse stories I’ve sat through on the CW).
I think they just wanted a villain who is on the same level as Thanos. After the displays of power from the Infinity Saga, it will be a lot harder to build tension the same way they did and having someone who can seemingly threaten the heroes. There are pretty few bad guys that can do that with a story worth telling. If anything, I hope they learn to use the multiverse to tell smaller stories in other places instead of trying to make every movie interdimensional, but I doubt it.
Time travel and multiverse movies are always in serious danger of having no stakes.
exactly. they can be fun for introducing variant characters but its a lot harder to care if they live or die. i think both spiderverse movies handled things well tho
This.Also, love the screenname.
Just curious: As a DC fan/someone having a laugh at Marvel’s expense… have you seen Joe Russo’s dog?
Yeah, the appeal of the multiverse in DC Comics from the 60s through Crisis was that 95% of the stories took place on Earth-1. Every once in awhile (once a year in Justice League, plus other occasional issues) you’d get a glimpse of what was going on on the other Earths, but that was it.
For sure. Admittedly I grew up reading comics in the Post-Crisis era and have never had an issue with the single-Earth version of the DCU but the DC Multiverse particularly could be confusing as absolute fuck and, having tried to explain it to people who don’t read comics, their eyes glaze over very quickly.Simplicity is often the best and easiest way to deal with it (also an issue faced in Post-Crisis by the various continuity fuck-ups around Hawkman, Wonder Woman etc)
I think the larger problem with the Arrowverse isn’t any single plot element, it’s just that over time they forgot what made it fun to watch. The multiverse to me felt more like one of the symptoms, but not even the first one.
I don’t think the multiverse was the largest problem with the Arrowverse; I was just citing it as an example of the multiverse being overused IMO. The worst offender was ironically not even technically part of the Arrowverse: Naomi. Again, the multiverse wasn’t the largest problem with that show, and at only 13 episodes before its cancellation it didn’t have time to overuse it, but it featured the least creative and least compelling way to use the multiverse that I’ve seen so far, and baked it into the premise of the show.
The tension is key, at least for me. Multiverses introduce the idea that there are no fucking stakes. Oh, did Tony Stark die in the mainline Avengers movie? That’s okay, he didn’t in an alternate universe. So we can always bring him back! The Earth is imperiled by Galactus! Well, THIS Earth is. There’s another one just a hop, skip, and jump away.Unless you have a King’s Dark Tower “constant” at play I just can’t find it in myself to give a shit about the fate of one universe in a panoply of universes.
All of this. I would also add that I’ve been underwhelmed with many of the attempts to add stakes to multiversal stories. There’s making the multiverse finite, which is what DC did in the mid-to-late 2000’s by claiming that only 52 Earths existed. I think that this is needlessly limiting, especially for a medium like comic books, but also for the idea of a multiverse at all. The idea that any character from any story ever created could meet is tantalizing, and worse, the audience is rarely convinced that the writer won’t change their minds and add more Earths as soon as they need them.There’s the idea of “canon events,” like in the Spider-Verse movies, which I guess sounds appealing to people into fate and destiny. As someone who believes in neither IRL, I don’t find it narratively appealing. It’s just not my cup of tea. Canon events also don’t make a lot of sense to me in the context of multiverse stories, because the appeal of a multiverse to me is the idea that every conceivable possibility exists in another reality. So why wouldn’t worlds exist where the canon events don’t happen?And then there’s the tried and true “the entire Multiverse is in danger!” I think it worked exactly once: Crisis on Infinite Earths (it’s probably worked more times than that, but I’m lazy and that’s all that’s coming to mind right now), because the idea was novel at the time. But the inherent problem with that is, how the fuck do you top that? And I think that for most people, “destroying reality” is the highest stakes that they can conceive. “Destroying all realities” sounds like children daring each other “times infinity.” It sounds silly.
I busted reading that variety piece. Kevin Feige’s bad superhero movies are no longer hot!
It’s good you busted there, because obviously, no one in real life would ever go within ten feet of you.
I disagree that it’s obvious!
does bustin make you feel good
She-Hulk cost $25m per episode?! That makes me feel kinda sick.
They spend all of that to get Megan thee Stallion. And what a waste of Jameela Jamil. She could get better script than a joke character.
In 1966 the creators of Star Trek figured out how to paint a woman green. Apparently this knowledge has not survived and so Marvel producers in 2022 had no choice but to spend $25 million an episode on a big CGI She-Hulk.
You say that like actors like spending hours in makeup.
???
Wow, a real “right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing” situation going on at Marvel these days.
That’s not where the money went.
To be fair, they did try the “just paint them green!” strategy before…
The budget of a typical 1 hour prime time drama is about $5M so it’s not all that surprising. But given how slight and silly and forgettable the show was, it does seem like a huge waste of resources.
They spent most of it on the She-Hulk Promotional Anti-Homeless Bench
If I am reading correctly, it was $25M for one episode, not per episode.
From the outside, at least, the solution does seem pretty obvious:1. Have more of a plan and a defined, ahem, end-game for it all.2. Space things out more – I don’t think it’s necessarily superhero fatigue as it is familiarity breeding a sort of contempt… over-stuffing the release schedule makes each one feel like less of an event, not more, which is exacerbated by…3. The classic capitalist conundrum of “how to make a successful thing more successful” which has led to Marvel making things more generic and formulaic in an attempt to “widen their appeal”… in turn losing what made them special in the first place. So quit it with that, let each film (or series) find their own flavour, and develop their own audience.4. JUST MAKE GOOD FILMS! Hire some good directors, good actors, and good writers who actually care about making something good AND THEN give them the time they need (and definitely give the effects people the time they need) to build up the new characters in the same way you did the old ones.Optional 5. Give Benson & Moorhead the keys to the kingdom.
nah trying to have a plan is what put them in this mess. i think the mcu’s strength was their ability to pivot and zag and retroactively go ‘uhh, this is what that was. we always had a plan.’the problem is NOW they went ‘ah yes. this is all about multiverses and kang, let’s really plot this out’ and it turns out they’re kind of bad at it! both in luck and guessing peoples interests.
Number 1 and Number 4 are at odds, which is how they ended up in this mess (and Number 5 is arguably how you tank any long running collaboration).
The cylons had a plan, and we all know how that turned out.
A note on #3. It’s not just the desire to widen the appeal and bring in more success. That is the driving force, I totally agree, but other tentpoles and franchises aren’t experiencing the same level of existential angst. The MCU issue is tied intrinsically with their IP synergy bullshit. The material being generic and formulaic is heavily influenced by the fact that Marvel wants all of their products to tie together. Various artist have been able to mold their Marvel product into a shape that reflects their personal vision to *some* extent, but especially as it concerns the narratives it’s a lot of the same. And that’s heavily influenced by the need for their fucking continuity bullshit.
The MCU narrative is essentially done for me. It was right there in the title: End Game. Perfect ending to a great story. On to other things. OK fine, I stayed invested…. until Guardians 3. Because those characters were personal favorites of mine. I cared about them. But again – we have a great ending. They rode off into the sunset. No need to keep going, and certainly not with the most boring member of the Guardians, Quill. The X-Men might be able to suck me back in, but at this point I’d want them to essentially have a clean slate. Re-boot the whole universe and center it around the X-Men.
“The MCU narrative is essentially done for me. It was right there in the title: End Game. Perfect ending to a great story. On to other things.”
“OK fine, I stayed invested…. until Guardians 3.”
So, to recap, you stayed invested through an entire “phase” of Marvel, and another film in the next phase, all the way up to *checks notes* the most recent movie they released? But you’re definitely out now… unless they do the thing that they’re almost certainly doing anyway? Okay, thanks, Tim McCarver! Thanks for weighing in.
Agree about xmen. It wouldn’t make any sense to introduce mutants into the present MCU. Mutants are hated and feared, but super powered beings are worshipped by the public. If super-powered humans started appearing, why would the public have any reason to fear them? It just means more super heroes for everyone.
Was there anything new except some connected people adding some insider opinions?We knew all this.
The problem is that the last few movies were, you know, bad. Ant Man 3 was bad (and 2 wasn’t great). Spider Man 3 was silly. Multiverse of Madness was goofy fun in the way only a Raimi film can be, but it wasn’t a good movie per se, and it absolutely shat on the overall superior storytelling of Wandavision.If you ask me they just need to get really weird with it. Start making X-Men movies so they can introduce Boom-Boom, do a Machine Man movie, then bring in Photon from Marvels and Elsa Bloodstone from the Werewolf by Night TV movie and make a Nextwave! flick. Get someone real weird to make it, like Don Coscarelli or something. You think Thanos and Kang were scary? Wait until you meet Fin Fang Foom and his danger pants.
You conveniently skipped over Wakanda Forever and GotG 3.
Nothing lasts forever and this part of Marvel’s arc was inevitable. If you’re an artist or an athlete, it’s hard enough to quit while you’re on top. If you’re a business that exists only to make money, you keep fucking that chicken until it stops laying eggs (apologies to Ernie Anastos).The only way Marvel ever could end was with commercial failure.
Commercial failure? When?
Quantumania was a turd, and it made $476M on a 200M budget.
Guardians 3 (go away, Star-turd!) made $845M on a $250M budget.
Black Panther 2 made $859M on a $250M budget.
Thor: This Should Never Have Happened – a disjointed turd in a blender – made $760M on a $250M budget.
Why don’t you log off until the most successful thing you do is less of a failure than that.
Apparently you’re not aware that you were citing production budget only, which ignores marketing, which is usually an additional 50-100% of a film’s cost You also seem to be unaware that movie theaters are also businesses and get to keep about half of the “box office” you were trumpeting. FYI, the rule of thumb is that movies have to make about 2.5x of their production budget to break even. So, while the budget and box office of recent Marvel movies might be really impressive to snarky, ignorant morons, it’s actually not all that good.
One thing that I always wonder… if we include marketing as part of the movie’s budget, then should we not also include all the other revenue streams generated by the movie beyond it’s box office? Movie rentals, OST sales, the inescapable merchandising on everything from fast food to medical supplies. Perhaps the films film is a flop by the standards of cinematic sales, but the MCU and Star Wars and so many more of the modern blockbusters aren’t just movies. They’re advertisements for an enormous product range.
Nearly every movie on his list made more than 2.5x, and Far From Home made like 5x its budget.
also when your sequels start making less than the previous movies, when you’ve seen growth every other time, is troubling.
Who’s doing the bulk of the lifting in this reply? Apparently. Usually. Seem. About. I love how you focused on what you think I’m not aware of but didn’t provide any actual numbers. Let’s skip past apparently and usually and seem and about and go back to facts:
We don’t need to put box office in quotes; it means exactly what it means.
We don’t need to refer to ratios when we can actually do math.
You LITERALLY said that Marvel was ending in commercial failure. That’s what I challenged. That’s why I started with a question (that you failed to answer in your response). That’s why I provided the numbers I provided. If you want to quibble with the numbers, do that… with NUMBERS! But since we’re talking about snarky, ignorant morons, feel free to keep it really, really simple (for those of us who don’t understand things as well as brain-genius you) and return to your original assertion of commercial failure:
Did any of the movies I mentioned fail to break even? If so, which ones?
Yup. They’re burning tons of cash on these things, and experiencing diminishing returns. “Marvels” may flat-out bomb all together.
Are Marvel fanbois made of the most delicate element in the universe? You decide!
You know what I’ve decided? Just like”Hit dogs holler,” thirsty haters who have never done anything worthy of actually warranting “fanbois” always rush in and pile on. You’re obviously not a big substance guy, but let me try again… Same question to you as to the original commenter:
Which of the movies I mentioned was a commercial failure?
If you can’t answer that question, maybe shut the fuck up and go watch The Flash again.
Let’s see if you still have this energy when The Marvels’ numbers come out
Here’s a dirty little secret: I watch movies for entertainment. I don’t get paid to do so. My energy is not dictated by the successes or failures of others.
Meanwhile: Your response was all snark, with no substance whatsoever. I have little doubt that you’ll continue to have this same energy for the rest of your life. Good luck.
if your enjoyment doesn’t have anything to do with success or failure then why did you go out of your way to argue with this person about how they’re successes?
My enjoyment is contingent on my consumption. Full stop. If you have an argument against that position – as it relates to my enjoyment – please do offer it. That’s a separate question from the one I’ve already answered:
Someone was comfortable suggesting that Marvel’s inevitable end was commercial failure. I’m still waiting for the identification of the point at which Marvel became a commercial failure. If you don’t have an answer to that question, you’re focused more on the broad idea of what I choose to do with my time than the very specific question I posed in my very first post. That’s on you.
Marvels is probably gunna do worse than Antman3 and Eternals. This movie has like zero buzz
What we needed is an extended Oppenheimer universe. A movie about Feynman! Bethe! Teller! And Oppie’s right hand woman, Priscilla Duffield.
No joke, I would absolutely love to see a Feynman movie with Jack Quaid playing the part. Especially if they do some bananas shit like have him fight aliens from another dimension, with the power of physics. Or maybe he just talks at them and convinces them to be peaceful, because Feynman was insanely charismatic.
Especially if they do some bananas shit like have him fight aliens from another dimension,
If you’d like to see something like that right now, check out The Manhattan Projects by Jonathan Hickman.
And then when those aliens let their guard down, he brains them with his bongos.
Settle down, Jack.
*nervous laughter**Boimler shriek*
Or adapt Jonathan Hickman’s The Manhattan Projects (or for the first four trade paperbacks, at least, then pay him to write a proper ending).
That’s one of my top “This comic series will never get adapted” wants. Right behind Morrison’s We3.
I think you’re sadly right, and there’s a whole bunch of Morrison’s work which will never be adapted.
I really enjoyed the first few issues/trades of that one, but lost interest. Frankly, the whole thing should have been a cracked/sci-fi infused alt-universe WW2. Once they moved past it, it got much less interesting.
I agree, and the ending to the sixth volume was so bad that even though I enjoyed the first three trades enormously I’ve put all of them up on Ebay as there’s no way I’ll ever reread them.
It’s kind of weird that the half of the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon I’d like to see a sequel to is ‘Oppenheimer’. ‘Barbie’ was so nicely done and such a complete story that I’m dreading a part 2 ever coming out, which after the original made a billion dollars seems inevitable. But another film looking at how science changed forever after the Manhattan Project actually sounds intriguing.
Stereotypical Barbie’s story felt complete, though I’m dreading the possibility that they’ll concoct some way for her to return to save Barbieland from some kind of threat. Now what *could* work is if they did a sequel that involved Weird Barbie. Honestly, she was the most brilliant idea to come out of that movie, the idea of a Barbie altered physically and mentally by being played with too much. You might be able to come up with a premise around her.
Have said it on every Marvel article – the MCU should have retained its formula for Phases. Have three-year phase with a handful of solo movies or smaller team-ups that lead to an event movie that pays off at least a handful of the post-credit hints and setups. I know there was some things out of Marvel’s control with Phase 4 (the pandemic and Boseman passing away chief among them) but fact is they never really bothered to plan out a real phase of their cinematic universe. Instead they jumped right ahead to planning the next Endgame event.Maybe it’s overly simplistic to think but I just don’t get why they messed with a winning formula.
I generally agree. Even though Thanos was in the cards from pretty early on, and they had Infinity Stones showing up even earlier than Thanos, there was very little in the first 5-6 years of the MCU that directly pointed at him. It was all just standalone (or tangentially-connected) stories that were focused on being good movies. (Not that they always succeeded. Lookin’ at you, The Dark World.)
They killed off their most popular characters, and they don’t really have a new slate to build their solo movies around. Instead they’re trying to do team ups (and incorporate Samuel L Jackson into as many movies as they can), but it’s just doubling down on the fact that they don’t have a core group of Avengers to, um, assemble for the main event.
I agree. Sometimes I think they made that random announcement that Phase 4 had ended and they were moving onto Phase 5 to do some damage control, since the threads weren’t coming together because of the pandemic and it was taking so long. It seems like the natural event movie to end Phase 4 should’ve been Thunderbolts, with Fontaine doing her Phase 1 Fury imitation to create her own team.
Anti-wokies in shambles that there’s not a single mention about them being concerned about “wokey brokey” shit
Of course, you have to remember that the “anti-woke” are never happy, just varying degrees of impotently furious.
Emphasis on “impotent.”
If you think Marvel is “too woke” you’re retarded.And you can tell I’m not woke, because of how I worded that.
Just let it die.
“Kevin Feige has been working on incorporating the X-Men in the MCU” At this point, it rather feels like saying “Valve is coming out with Half-Life 3 any day now.”
Genuinely surprised they haven’t gone all in on X Men yet. Probably of a piece of this phase being overly-plotted out but it feels like this may come after audiences are thoroughly exhausted with superheroes.
It feels like he wants to milk the Fox version of the characters (like Patrick Stewart’s cameo in Multiverse and Hugh Jackman coming up in Deadpool 3) before moving on to new versions.
For all the X-Men movies’ problems, the core cast was iconic. First Class just highlighted how Stewart, McKellen, and even Rebecca Romijn owned those roles. Also, Marvel has been striking out with standalone movies for the last few years. The whole corporate engine is kind of a shitshow.
George has been working on Winds of Winter
Except there’s documented proof they actually have started incorporating the mutant license into the MCU: WandaVision, Multiverse of Madness, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Wakanda Forever, & Deadpool 3.
You’re kind of making AmaltheaElanor’s point – that’s a whole lot of setup for zero appearances.
If that’s their point, then their analogy was bad, ‘cause Half-Life 3 straight-up isn’t being worked on at all.
But those are all easter eggs with no specific purpose. Until we actually see well-known X-Men characters on-screen with a clear indication of what what role they’ll play in the MCU, all of that is ultimately meaningless.
Specific purpose: Planting the seeds of mutants’ emergence (Namor, Mr. Immortal, Kamala), including the corresponding anti-mutant prejudice (Deever), & establishing the well-known characters already exist in this multiverse (Quicksilver, Xavier, Wolverine, Deadpool) or even in this universe (Wolverine again as referenced in She-Hulk, soon to be Deadpool also).
The answer to this is so ridiculously obvious and simple that it amazes me that Feige hasn’t realised it. And it can be summed up in four words:
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl-Verse.
So a run of films starring Doreen and Nancy, then Chipmunk-Hunk, Koi-Boy, and Brain Drain films, before a the major event revolve around The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe graphic novel.
They should release the New Warriors pilot as a what-if special.
Huh, when I go to notifications it says I don’t exist. So I just want to do a quick test by posting here.
Also, I forgot about the Tippytoes movie. I am a monster.
“It seems an unlikely scenario, not just because those people would have to agree to do it but because they’d be very expensive if they did.”I am 100% sure there have been plans to bring them back some time in the future, I think the issues are just accelerating their return
they’re gonna spend 800 million dollars on salaries to generate 1.2 billion in box office.
Nah. I mean I wouldn’t be surprised if RDJ came back for a Ironman lega-sequel decades from now, like Harrison Ford putting on the Indiana Jones hat on more time in his 80s. But I don’t see him rejoining the MCU anytime soon.
its not that its too convoluted, its just that most of it hasn’t been very good post Endgame and the audience has higher expectations
I would not fault anyone for taking the money and joining/rejoining the MCU – that said, the churn and burn of these shows/movies must be exhausting to everyone involved.
You forgot one major problem, the MCU started focusing on identity instead of character.
GO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKEGO WOKE GO BROKE GO WOKE GO BROKE
OK first of all…$25 million for an episode of She-Hulk?! I liked She-Hulk, but that’s ridiculous.
I’m not gonna pretend I’m an expert or anything, but some general suggestions…
– Re-cast Kang. In fact, cut the entire Kang plotline short. Even without Jonathan Majors’ allegations, the whole “multi-verse” thing has a very “been there, done that” kind of feel now. People are into it for Spiderman, but not much else. Wrap it up by the end of Phase Five instead of Six.
– No better time to introduce the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. That’d open up huge new possibilities for characters and stories. And realizing Doctor Doom to his full potential would be a great tonic after Kang.
– Reduce the budget and scale. Not every film has to be $200 million and be about the stake of all universes. $100 million for Blade is actually perfect. They’ve made great Blade films for less.
– Don’t get rid of the cameos and introductions, but they also don’t need such emphasis. I remember my dad was genuinely confused about Namor in Wakanda Forever (“Who is this guy and why should I care?”).
Every time somebody suggests “throw everything you’re currently working on into the fire & rush out something you haven’t started on yet”, I just shake my head in disbelief.They’re already reducing budget & scale, but they’re still gonna release the stuff they already made before that decision was announced.
They literally explained who that guy was & why you should care in the movie.
“They literally explained who that guy was & why you should care in the movie.”They did it poorly. And if you have to literally explain to audience why they should care about a character, then you’ve failed as a storyteller.
“Did it poorly” is subjective, so I won’t argue it even though I disagree.But the other guy was implying they didn’t do it at all, which is objectively false.
I think a lot of people shared your Dad’s confusion about Namor. Goddam that movie was exhausting.
I remember saying to him, “Dad, the back story has back story on that one.”
Yeah, this is pretty much why im fatigued and have missed titles im not as into. I will catch the Marvels and finish Loki as those have been at least interesting. Its funny, because even though there’s a LOT of mediocrity and too many titles in the MCU, its STILL better than DCU- and i watched the Flash (Dear lord why) and Shazam 2 (so much wasted potential).
Dr. Doom.
Dr. Phil.
There was decades of pent-up desire and emotion around seeing your favourite marvel heroes on the big screen. Now we saw them. So that’s it, Marvel is over now. The thing that really gave it juice has worn off. Sorry nerds!
That scrapped Blade storyline sounds fine, except for the part about it being the plot of a Blade movie. Surely it’s not that hard to make a movie about the fucking daywalker fighting other vampires.We’ve already done that three times and it was awesome two of those times (the less said about Trinity the better).
I think Trinity is the reason why Ryan Reynolds is going to have to work his entire life just to get back to zero with me, no matter how many English soccer teams he tries to sell artisanal tequila to.(Some of the details of what he’s been up to lately may have escaped me.)I don’t think his character in Trinity had a single line of dialogue that wasn’t sarcastic — and then they gave him a bunch of scenes with Vampire Parker Posey, who is basically the same persona in the body of a brunette lady.
I remember seeing it in cinemas after being so excited for it to come out and feeling utterly deflated.
If it makes you feel any better, my brother unintentionally insulted Ryan Reynolds during part of the promotional tour for Blade 3 in a Western Sydney Westfield.
I bet Reynolds loved that trip to Western Sydney.Then again, a visit to Mt Druitt is preferable to fucking Blade Trinity.
Hey. Blade 3 was a lot less offensive than Struggle Street.
Hahahaha oh fuck I’d totally forgotten about Struggle Street. That just made me burst out laughing in my office. Brilliant.
…speaking of which, don’t forget that Struggle Street: Look At Those Pitiful Rednecks Edition, Don’t You Feel Better About Yourself Now As You Ubereats-Up Yourself An Authentic Pulled Bulgogi Vegan Beef Taco For Dinner, Gosh, They Probably Don’t Even Know What An Authentic Pulled Bulgogi Vegan Beef Taco Is- er, Meet The Neighbours started last night!As a born and bred rural Asian-Australia who literally investigates and reports on issues in this space, everything about this show shits me already. It must’ve taken ‘em ages to:a) Find a large (Maryborough’s not “small”) enough town that the production crew from Melbourne could travel to and fro from in a day and could still do a passable Flat White, and wasn’t small enough to be mainly filled with farmers, who, unfortunately, tend to disprove a lot of these marketable notions about anywhere more than fifteen minutes out of a capital city’s CBD.b) Didn’t have an Indian restaurant (seriously, they mention this on the show’s promo page – “Navdeep is an aspiring caterer in a town with no Indian restaurant” – THE HORROR. THE HORROR. Just…just don’t show footage of the inevitable Chinese and Thai restaurants.)
c) Had enough of a white-majority population to justify this, or at least enough white people to film so you didn’t accidentally disprove your thesis by panning over a non-white occasionally. You wanna see white? Have the balls to go to the Sutherland Shire and do a “Oh, it’s terrible!” doco there – wait. Shit. That’d be punching up. Those happy-clapper Napisanners have lawyers. And they’d know people who control SBS’s funding. d) Was actually game enough to go along with this Urban Saviour Fantasy Bullshit – “Oh, they just need people who know what a Tesla is! That’ll fix ‘em!”Sigh. I suppose at least they’re not praising child labour in a jam factory like the ABC did.
I am curious how the “life lessons” angle works in a ‘Blade’ film.“It turns out the real blood-sucking monster I needed to slay … was peer pressure.”
It sound absurd.Should there be more female-led movies? Fuck yes. Should a Blade movie be that, along with life lessons? No fucking way. If you want to make a movie with those things, don’t make it a Blade movie.
“Look man, I specialize in killing black vampires. I don’t know what the PC term for that is.”
I believe there’s two main problems: one the novelty has worn off and two the stuff just isn’t as hood/interesting anymore. Oh wait there’s probably three Feige is doing too much.The novelty issue is kinda the flip side of superhero fatigue. I don’t believe in the fatigue part completely because it’s not really beholden to a genre. The novelty side is that these characters hadn’t been done well until Marvel Studios.The good/interesting part is pretty self-explanatory
i think mileage on superhero fatigue may vary, but mcu fatigue appears to be very real.
So Scorsese was RIGHT all along! Suck on that AV Club
“Finally, the fact of the matter is that Marvel isn’t casting or creating stars like it used to. Quality of the films aside, none of the second-gen Marvel stars (e.g. Simu Liu or any of the Eternals) have really launched to stardom like the first generation did.”
I am shocked that C-tier characters like the Eternals, cast by actors that (no knocks against them) aren’t nearly as famous as Robert Downey Jr. or Scarlett Johansen haven’t been nearly as popular as big names like Thor or Iron Man.
I mean, Angelina Jolie & Salma Hayek are really freakin’ famous.
They were at one point – but both were a decade or more past their AAA status by the time Eternals came out.
It hinged too much on Richard Madden, who is charismatic and handsome, but whose post-GOT career has mostly occurred outside of US awareness.
I am shocked that C-tier characters like the Eternals, cast by actors that (no knocks against them) aren’t nearly as famous as Robert Downey Jr. or Scarlett Johansen haven’t been nearly as popular as big names like Thor or Iron Man.To be fair, people forget that when Iron Man was first announced, there were a lot of comics fans concerned that Marvel’s first movie wasn’t Hulk or someone like Captain America, non-Spider-Man/X-Men characters who had made it into the collective consciousness. Most people knew RDJ, but non-comics fans didn’t really know Iron Man at all (or Thor, for that matter, beyond broad strokes from Norse mythology). You even saw a similar reaction when the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie was announced. None of those characters were A-list or known outside of the comics before that movie came out, and it was considered a big gamble.So in that regard, it makes sense why Marvel would swing for the fences in Phase 4 with other lesser known characters like the Eternals, Shang-Chi, etc. Unfortunately, in those cases, it didn’t pay off with similar financial and/or star-launching dividends.
So in that regard, it makes sense why Marvel would swing for the fences in Phase 4 with other lesser known characters like the Eternals, Shang-Chi, etc. Unfortunately, in those cases, it didn’t pay off with similar financial and/or star-launching dividends.Marvel focused on those characters for diversity. There is a better batch of B characters that would have made for some better stories and made better Avengers. But they didn’t fit the focus of diversity that has been the MCU since Endgame. When that is the criteria, you aren’t getting characters the directors or fans are passionate about, and writing tends to suffer. Marvel hasn’t made us care about characters in the recent phase.
noone under 30 knew who robert downey jr was in 2008 aside from a drug abuse punchline.
I think Marvel could get a lot of people excited just by releasing a still of someone in a comic-accurate Doctor Doom costume. It helps that they’ve laid the groundwork for all the elements that Doom needs already. Other nations developing power armour to compete with Stark tech? Done. Magic? Done. Cosmic energies? Done. They just need a Fantastic Four for him to fight.
Doom isn’t just the FF’s primary foe. He’s got tons of history being an overall Avenger’s villain too. I love to see MCU make a good FF movie and then onleash Doom on everyone afterwords.
Bad news sir, it looks like the next movie won’t make a billion at the box office.
I don’t get it. People liked the coupon they should like the movie.
none of them have made a billion dollars in years except spider-man, where sony got to keep it.
Surprising no one paid any attention to the rape apologist idiots who write for The Root as they tried to help Majors get away with rape. I guess no one listens to the black simpletons who The Root hires. lol
Crash and burn. Let this ridiculously oversaturated superhero thing die already.
We will watch what the investor class allows us to watch, and nothing more. At least according to studio execs.
I’m not saying I’m swearing off the MCU for good. I’ll still keep a relatively open mind to the possibility that something might catch my interest.
But the output in the past two years has been mostly pure crap and I can’t imagine what would actually get my interest again.
I think the issue is much simpler:Iron Man 1-to-Endgame was all headed to the latter’s conclusion. The storyline built on itself with each subsequent new film, allowing for solo stories but ultimately building to something. This current iteration of the MCU hasn’t done that. There’s no tension, just a lotta Huh?
Why can’t they just recast Jonathan Majors? Reimagining an entire phase of the movies midway through their run seems like so much more a pain than letting a single actor go.
The fact that the same “best” comic stories are the ones that get rehashed over and over says something about just how shitty decades and decades of comics were. Expecting anything simply more “because it’s film and TV!” is nonsensical.
I still say these issues were always bubbling under the surface and COVID just sorta pushed it all out in the open.The MCU always operated on momentum. They could survive a hiccup because people were always looking forward to the next thing and then Endgame put a cap on that.But then COVID hit and people had a chance to sit without the MCU for a little bit. That killed momentum, and it hasn’t recovered.
Recasting Kang shouldn’t be that difficult from a narrative perspective. If you’re dealing with the multiverse, just have a variant pop up that sort of looks like Jonathan Majors and say “oh I might look different now, who cares, anyway onto the rest of the plot”Also: “Ali apparently had issues with where the script was going, and a source told Variety “the story at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons”WHAT THE FUCK. IT’S BLADE. MAKE IT ABOUT KILLING VAMPIRES, HOLY SHIT THIS IS NOT DIFFICULT.
It’s like they learned from the comics until they stopped learning. There is a reason that for 60 years, when Marvel is thinking about what the issues they are putting to the rack on a Wednesday, there is mix of A,B,C listers. Who is an A,B,C lister is changes over time, but there isn’t a week where the rack is full of on B and C listers. The MCU rack is full of B and C listers right now.
really, really good point.they also aren’t waiting to see what connects before barrelling forward. was anyone clamoring for riri williams (a character that is less than 10 years old) to appear in wakanda forever? doesn’t matter because we’ve greenlit the series. they start filming echo before hawkeye even comes out, but it takes 5 years to do an agatha spinoff. they’ve gotten worse at this stuff as time has gone on. or maybe it’s the same trick spread too thin.
B and C Listers can become A Listers, we’ve seen that with Iron Man and Guardians, but every B and C lister recently has stayed that way.
right. once you re-introduce spider-man it kind of skews everything.
Oh yeah, forgot about that. No Way Home, and Guardians 3 really stand out as head and shoulders above everything else released since Endgame, as starring a comics A lister and then a team that the early MCU made a A listers. I can’t really explain Thor, he’s a A lister, but that movie was a disappointment.
Oh no, they only made a kabajillion dollars and have some of the highest grossing films of all time, but they might not be able to do that AGAIN! My heart breaks for them.
Nothing is going to make me interested in the MCU again, but actually using one of your two best villains might get close. I know Doom has been fucked up multiple times before, but come on.
They should put gorillas on all the posters.
Here’s an idea Disney and their ilk will never take. STOP! Just stop making every damn movie into a sociopolitical commentary. Stop with the virtue signaling and SJW spin on everything. Need an example? When Thor: Love and thunder came out my wife and I (yea, Disney doesn’t support traditional families but it still happens) had a Thor based slumber party at our place for a dozen or so 8-10 year olds because they all loved the first Thor movie. My 10yo daughter was the first to walk out of the movie. Why? She said he (Thor) was a whiny wimp and the movie sucked. By the time it was over I think only 2 or 3 kids watched the whole movie and when my wife asked why they stuck it out they responded “We were hoping it would get better.” These are kids from diverse backgrounds and home lives and yet not one liked the movie. Also, stop thinking that changing the race of an already established character (or the entire storyline, ie. Snow White) counts as new or original content. Similarly turning ultra masculine characters like Thor (who literally has a thousands of years worth of lore and stories establishing who he is and how he behaves) into simpering weaklings is not going to endear a vast majority of your audience base. Want a simpering wimp for a character? I can’t imagine why, but make a new character (Flash as an autistic crybaby kinda worked), but don’t turn established characters into something they’ve never been. Likewise with race swapping. Everybody loved Black Panther but even my daughters black friend didn’t really like the new Little Mermaid. Super heros are supposed to be exactly that, SUPER. They are supposed to be stronger, braver, better looking, and without fear or political motives. GOOD vs. EVIL. That’s all. Clear evil BTW. Global domination or killing off large groups of people. Not evil as in ‘toxic masculinity’ or lack of racial diversity. Nobody wants to see their hero get in touch with their feelings. As I told my older brother (who works for the entertainment corporation in question)….Go woke. Go broke.