Marvel Cinematic Universe

[Maf]

I’m not sure what I think about the animation and characters. It looks good sometimes and a bit weird other times.

 

It looks a lot better than their What If series which I never checked out purely because of how rubbish it looks. So that’s positive. 
 

The music is doing a lot here, though. That get me really excited alone. 
 

I wonder if they’ll have a Ms Marvel cameo now. That’s be cool 

[Maf]

Even as a huge fan of Spider-Man there is just too much Spider-Man stuff right now. Between movies, animated movies, games, Sony's spin-off movies that don't even have Spider-Man in, to now I just saw Nick Cage is in talks to do a Spider-Man Noir TV show and there's going to be a Silk movie/TV show as well. I loved Spider-Verse 1, I haven't even watched Spider-Verse 2 yet. It took me 3 months to get around to the last game. 

 

If you're exhausting me then 

 

This is the clearest sign to me that the comic book movie/TV shows are dying. Not only the constant flops and sequels to billion dollar movies being box office bombs, but now it's like companies are attacking Spider-Man like a crocodile death roll. Just grabbing on to it and tearing it apart for any kind of meat because it's the only thing left (Outside of Batman) that has a strong chance of working. 

 

And I dunno if you all saw the RT score for Madame Web but jeez 

 

Speaking of billion dollar movies. This is DC, but whatever it's all comics. I saw that the head of Warner Bros values DC alongside Harry Potter and Lord of the RIngs as a billion dollar franchise. 

 

https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/DC-Extended-Universe#tab=summary

 

I'm sorry. But exactly where is the idea DC is a billion dollar franchise coming from? lol. I think it's based on Marvel. 

 

Release Date	Title	Production Budget	Opening Weekend	Domestic Box Office	Worldwide Box Office
Dec 22, 2023	Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom	$205,000,000	$27,686,211	$122,735,802	$430,058,748
Aug 18, 2023	Blue Beetle	$120,000,000	$25,030,225	$72,541,501	$128,777,017
Jun 16, 2023	The Flash	$200,000,000	$55,043,679	$108,167,507	$266,550,332
Mar 17, 2023	Shazam! Fury of the Gods	$125,000,000	$30,111,158	$57,721,819	$132,276,175
Oct 21, 2022	Black Adam	$200,000,000	$67,004,323	$168,283,344	$390,455,088
Aug 5, 2021	The Suicide Squad	$185,000,000	$26,205,415	$55,817,425	$167,097,737
Dec 25, 2020	Wonder Woman 1984	$200,000,000	$16,701,957	$46,801,036	$166,360,232
Feb 7, 2020	Birds of Prey (And the Fant…	$82,000,000	$33,010,017	$84,158,461	$201,005,552
Apr 5, 2019	Shazam!	$85,000,000	$53,505,326	$140,371,656	$363,563,907
Dec 21, 2018	Aquaman	$160,000,000	$67,873,522	$335,061,807	$1,134,097,163
Nov 17, 2017	Justice League	$300,000,000	$93,842,239	$229,024,295	$655,945,209
Jun 2, 2017	Wonder Woman	$150,000,000	$103,251,471	$412,563,408	$817,691,766
Aug 5, 2016	Suicide Squad	$175,000,000	$133,682,248	$325,100,054	$745,744,980
Mar 25, 2016	Batman v Superman: Dawn of …	$263,000,000	$166,007,347	$330,360,194	$872,395,091
Jun 14, 2013	Man of Steel	$225,000,000	$116,619,362	$291,045,518	$667,999,518
Only Aquaman 1 made over a billion. And that's the same year Infinity War came out so my belief is it was riding that wave (Pun fully intended). The sequel made roughly 60% yes   They keep going on about the new DC 10 year cinematic universe by James Gunn. I'm excited for Superman Legacy and Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow. But they're 10 years too late if they think they can replicate Marvel and make this a billion dollar thing in anyway   It's still not quite done yet, but my belief is that comic book based things are on the way out and next up is video games. Which I think will be better. I love comics - but it's a genre that is particularly distinct and limited. People always complained about the MCU movies are all the same. I have a lot to say about that and don't agree, but they're superhero stories. I feel like they stretched it as far as they can go   Where as video games, yeah it's a lot of shooting, but there's a much wider pool of franchises and ideas to pull from overall

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't think that's so much a superhero thing as people are getting burned out on the 'franchisation' of every single bit of IP out there, and I don't think video games will turn the tide on that even if there will probably be a surge of success with it for a bit. 

 

The problem with the movie industry right now was actually articulated pretty well ages ago in an interview with Anthony Mackie, the current Captain America, who lamented that these franchises are creating stars out of their characters but not the actors playing them. The problem being that movie stars are what draw people towards stories that they otherwise would not consider, and if the pattern of how these stories are shown on screen starts to bore audiences then you're left with a vacuum if there's nothing or nobody to draw people back in. Even RDJ, the biggest 'star' in these films, I feel his career has been a bit spotty outside of the MCU stuff. His turn as Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer last year is maybe the first signal of breaking through and past the Tony Stark stuff but that feels more of an achievement of the makeup department for that character than anything else.

 

Maybe Zendaya is the biggest star to come out of these movies but I think that has more to do with HBO's Euphoria and its impact with younger audiences. You read about the Dune 2 premiere and there's people showing up to see her, the film coming second in priority.

 

But imo anyway, that's what happens when an industry is near engulfed by this stuff and it becomes the only show in town for lots of local theatres, you end up with an audience being fed a mono-diet, having their tastes managed by these massive conglomerates and if they get bored of that diet and the non-marvel audience are at home watching streaming, it's not very surprising that you get all these flops. That's why Oppy and Barbie were such a big deal, tho Barbie I think upended expectations by not being just a cynical adaptation of IP (but even so it springboarded a universe of exactly that)

[Maf]

It's a really well written post and more than likely correct. I don't have usual cinema tastes (well, I don't have one at all) and so movie stars has never been a thing that attracted me to watch a film.

 

The only film  I've been interested in lately is JoJo Rabbit. And not because it's got Marvel stars in it, just I think it looks ridiculous. But I still haven't seen it. 

 

Yeah, I think the franchise comments and people being fed one thing over and over again is correct and makes sense. But the movie star bit - well it's probably right but for me I'm not bothered by movies stars at all really. I can't think of a time where I've wanted to watch a movie because a certain actor is in it

[Maryokutai]

Somehow I feel as if there's pre-MCU and post-MCU as well. I can't imagine Hugh Jackman being the name he is now without X-Men and Tobey Maguire would always only have been an oddball indie actor without Spider-Man. And I think the reason RDJ sticks out a bit among the MCU cast is because the first Iron Man was still a bit of a rough first try at setting things up. He wasn't a household name before that, I think it's even widely reported that a lot of people involved in that project had doubts about casting him because of his troubled past. So it was actually Iron Man that made him a star, not the other way around.

 

But at some point this whole thing shifted and I find it difficult to put my finger on why. Maybe it's because all those actors were so tightly contractually bound to the whole Marvel thing that there was barely any opportunity to go out and do other stuff in-between. Or maybe it's because there wasn't much place for other stuff anyway because for a while the whole MCU really dominated the entire industry, not only in box office numbers but also consumer perception.

 

You are an absolute minority if you don't pick your movies by actors though, maf. I think theme/setting, director and actors are kind of equally split as the main draws people look for when seeing a movie. I think it's a good way of simultaneously getting what you're used to and broadening your horizon, which sounds contradictory but is actually true. I would never have watched La-La Land if Emma Stone wasn't in it but it's now one of my all-time favourite movies.

[Maf]

I actually watched La-La Land as well. I was trying to get in to movies a bit at the time and it won an oscar. It's a good film, but I wouldn't watch it again. 

 

There are things that appeal to me about film. But in all cases it wasn't the actors that made me want to watch them. It's just part of a series, franchise or a good trailer

 

The last 3 films I've tried to watch were Captain Marvel 2, Mario Bros and Bullet Train. I didn't finish any of them. 

 

As far back as I can remember people say things like "Oh, did you see this film, it has X in it". I've just never understood why that matters. 

 

But I accept I'm in a minority on that 

 

EDIT: Oh, I tried watching the first Knives Out as well but didn't finish it 

 

DOUBLE EDIT: Oh, and that multiverse film that won the Oscar. I didn't finish that either. It was so shit 

[one-armed dwarf]

The actors in a film aren't the most important thing for me, usually I'll look for recommendations or reviews or whatever. But if I like something then from there I'll try to find more. I watched The Third Man a while back and Orson Welles has a part in that, I liked that a whole lot and got some more films by/with him in it and also his co-star (Joseph Cotten). So it's an easy way to break past the whole 'top 100 whatever' list and curate your own tastes outside of the things people always talk about, even if you're leaning on familiarity to curate that taste in the first place. 

 

If you're watching other films though I think you need to give the film-makers benefit of the doubt, I've watched lots of stuff that had me scratching my head until a moment comes later which kinda just ties up a bunch of previous moments and recontextualises everything, making the whole thing much more rich and interesting. You don't get to see if that happens if you turn it off. That said, not watched any of the films being mentioned here so I dunno. I didn't like the episode of Breaking Bad that was directed by Rian Johnson, and I hated The Last Jedi, so similar to watching things by people you like I also give things a miss based on previous impressions and didnt watch Knives Out

 

Looper was pretty good though

 

edit on Hugh Jackman, Deadpool is probably going to be massive this year I feel like. But Jackman and Reynolds are probably two of the few people who could actually draw audiences based on star power, and it's probably not going to be the litmus test for the future of these films unless they use it to reconfigure their whole strategy here (fewer movies, less saturation in the industry but with a stronger star profile)

[HandsomeDead]

I've been thinking a lot about this kind of thing lately since Mackie put that take out there and I think he is right, and it's unfortunate.  These kinds of genre movies were very actor lead.  Like people would turn up for a Stallone or Shwarznegger movie no matter what the film actually was.  It meant you could carry original stories off the back of them and not rely so much on known IP.  It's why something like True Lies could be really successful.

 

Even the comic book movies didn't have that as their main appeal.  Men in Black was a Smith/Jones movie, I'd even say Blade was a Snipes movie.  The fact they were based on comic books was just a little factoid known by weirdos.

 

I do think the shift to think IP first has had a negative effect on movies.

 

 

Actually, there's something else as well.  I saw a tweet pointing out where all the 90s/00s hot, badass bitch movies are.  Like Underworld, Aeon Flux, Ultraviolet.  The Resident Evil movies are a successful version of this but I think comic book movies pretty much killed them due to Catwoman and it coming out around the Nolan Batman trilogy and drawing it into that world when it was never really a comic book movie, it was an actor lead, hot badass bitch movie.  And they were never critical darlings, they were just a fun thing to rent on a weekend.  Its the sort of thing that should do great on streaming but I dunno, some have been made but they still don't quite hit.  Maybe because so much production talent is in the MCU/DCEU but I'm speculating. 

 

I just think it has shrunk genre movies and made them less interesting.  I'm at the point I want to shove anyone into a locker who says 'faithful adaptation'.

[Nag]

6 minutes ago, HandsomeDead said:

I saw a tweet pointing out where all the 90s/00s hot, badass bitch movies are

 

We still get a few... Lucy, Jolt and Kate spring to mind, I get what they're saying though.

 

In terms of the Marvel films I haven't watched one since the last Spider-Man release simply because I'm not interested in most of the characters they're focusing on, that and not wanting to keep up with series on Disney.

[HandsomeDead]

Jolt is what I was thinking of when I mentioned more recent ones.  I was up for liking it but it was missing a certain something.  I never really put Lucy in that genre but I don't have a good argument for why it shouldn't be there.  I just see it as an odd movie I kind of love.

 

I'm just reminded of Madem Webb coming soon and it seems to be getting panned but in another timeline it could also have been one of these kinds of movies and been much better for it.

[one-armed dwarf]

I had to look up what those were. That's the other problem I think. Those movies Nag mentions could be cool but they're on streaming platforms like amazon prime, where they can get buried underneath the rest of the 'content library'. That's why I hate when people kinda shrug at this stuff and say streaming is the new arthouse, or the new place to see b-films or genre films or whatever. It may be true, but it's very hard to break through and make an impression there cause there's so much stuff and streaming tends to optimise towards certain palettes which will promote certain stuff in favor of others. I feel like if netflix shared the viewership of some of the films on there it wouldn't look so great. On the other hand, maybe they're so big that they're subsidising films that would struggle otherwise? Hard to say

 

Like you look at the deals Martin Scorsese makes with Netflix and Apple, to me it feels a bit of a Faustian bargain. He can do what he wants and make super long films about whatever he wants and catch an audience on those platforms cause he's Marty, but it may not necessarily be the best outlet for film-makers without his cachet. They haven't got a chance to develop one yet.

 

I think it can only get worse when all these mergers happen as the streaming bubble pops, and Netflix eats everything up. Cinema is in a rough spot. It's like an ever diminishing number of corpos are becoming gatekeepers and it fucking sucks

[Maf]

11 minutes ago, HandsomeDead said:

I'm just reminded of Madem Webb coming soon and it seems to be getting panned but in another timeline it could also have been one of these kinds of movies and been much better for it.

 

All the problems in cinema highlighted today are valid, but I don't think any of these larger issues is Madame Webb's problem. It's just a bad script which seems to have lead in to a bad everything else.

 

I saw this on Twitter. These are the films from the writers. 

 

 

I think the biggest problem here is why do these guys keep getting hired lol 

[Nag]

Oh, Gunpowder Milkshake was decent too.

[HandsomeDead]

1 hour ago, Maf said:

 

I saw this on Twitter. These are the films from the writers. 

 

 

I think the biggest problem here is why do these guys keep getting hired lol 

 

Holy shit haha

 

I'd guess they're quick and do as they're told.

[DANGERMAN]

7 hours ago, Nag said:

7 hours ago, HandsomeDead said:

I saw a tweet pointing out where all the 90s/00s hot, badass bitch movies are

 

We still get a few... Lucy, Jolt and Kate spring to mind, I get what they're saying though.

time for a Barbwire reboot. Genuinely, I enjoyed Gunpowder Milkshame, and Atomic Blonde. Salt was alight I suppose

 

Going back to the movie star question. The lad from Dune might be getting there because he keeps picking interesting films, if not because he necessarily stands out in them (he's a good actor, he just isn't instantly apparent). The ones we seem to have now, the heir apparent to the likes of Arnie and Tom Cruise, it's Jason Statham isn't it? You know what you're getting with him, and chances are it's going to be watchable, even in poor films he's a fun watch. Stupid films, but watchable. It could have been The Rock, but he just stars in dreadful films.

 

[Maf]

The image Marvel put out for the FF has clues in it that it will take place, in some way, in the 1960’s

 

 

The big one is the magazine that Ben is holding is apparently a cartoon version of a real magazine cover from 1963 a month after JFK was shot 

 

 

The other two clues are the retro future design of Herbie’s face, and the astronaut in the painting is an old school type of astronaut suit.
 

Nicely, actually, as the actors have all had their likeness drawn in the character’s except for Ben, the astronaut is Ben before he got turned in to The Thing, so I think that’s a cool way of showing you the Thing, while keeping the actor’s face in the image as well. 
 

I wonder if the FF will be like Cap where the movie is set in the past and then they go to the future, or maybe they go in to the past? Could be anything with the FF they’re superheroes but in the classic science fiction explorers kind of sense instead of action heroes like other characters, so it could be anything, really. 
 

Oh, man, I hope this works and the movie is good. I would love for the FF to get a bit of mainstream shine. They’re definitive Marvel

[Maf]

I was bored so watched half of The Marvels on D+ and that’s enough for me. I’m just going to put what I think I’m spoilers just in case anyone cares 

 

Spoiler

First Brie Larson is absolutely stunning to the point of distraction. She looks so good as Captain Marvel, it’s just a shame she’s not very good in the movie.

 

So the basic plot is all the Marvels characters (Captain Marvel, Ms Marvel and Rambeau) have had their powers “entangled” because they’ve all come in to contact with the Quantum Bands or it’s energy, so when they use their powers they switch places. Keeping with teleportation the bad guy’s home planet is dying so she is using the Quantum Bands to take planetary resources like water, air, etc, and supply her home world with them.

 

Problem one in terms of story is it’s messy as fuck, completely light weight, and even though I’ve seen the previous marvel films/shows that “lead” in to this one. I feel like I’m missing so much info. The film thinks so too, so about 30 minutes in it starts retconning in flash backs to explain why the bad guy hates Captain Marvel, and why Captain Marvel and Rambeau have a fractured relationship (for about 15 minutes before they fix it) because if you watched Captain Marvel 1 like I did you would be like hang on, Captain Marvel met Rambeau once when she was a child. And even though child of her best friend. Why are they this awkward when they’re not even really that close. So insert flashbacks to make that work

 

The absolute star of the show is Ms Marvel who even in a film with Brie Larson is carrying this fucking film. She is so good, funny, gets the humour, does the banter better than any of them, and is the best thing in every scene she’s in. Second best thing is Nick Fury. He just gets it as well and has some really great lines in the film too.

 

I saw two big action sequences. The first one where they’re all switching places was really fun. The second one where they’re trying to save the Skrulls from planetary collapse was rubbish. Just a bad CGI used for what I can only think to call flat chaos. It’s so unexciting.

 

Brie Larson really struggles in this movie. For the beginning she is on her own and having to act against green screens only and she’s really bad at it. When she meets up with the other characters she gets so much better and the banter between them is pretty fun. There’s a really nice montage style thing where they’re all learning to use their powers while switching places, and it was very fun and I liked it.

 

They then immediately go to a planet where every once sings and that was it for me. The ADR on Brie Larson’s singing bit was terrible lol.

 

The last thing is they all get the costumes on the planet, and they all step out and strike a pose as a team and they all look worse than when they got there

 

I dunno. I don’t think it’s awful, I just think it’s boring and really messy. You could argue that the messiness fits with the idea of the main characters switching places all the time. The film bounces around chaotically because the characters do also. But that doesn’t mean it makes for a good watch.

 

I feel sorry for Ms Marvel that this film bombed. If they can see past the flop they’d be smart to put her in the Young Avengers stuff they’ve been setting up forever. She’d make a good bit of glue for whatever they wanted because she’s just really good. 
 

But I couldn’t sit through this. It’s just too boring 

 

[OCH]

18 hours ago, Maf said:

The image Marvel put out for the FF has clues in it that it will take place, in some way, in the 1960’s

I really hope not. There's no real need to make it a period piece. Unless FF is going to be a one off film?

 

 

Meanwhile, more art is surfacing. Potentially indicating what the costumes will look like:

[OCH]

[OCH]