Rolling Marvel Cinematic Universe thread (+ a poll: Classic or Dud?)

well, there aren't many superhero comics which i'd call traditional literary masterpieces (although i value them tremendously as art in other ways) so i dunno if there's any reason to expect the movies to be evergreen classics of film history

although on the other hand it took time for westerns to evolve - maybe there will be an equivalent advance in superhero movies if they hang around for long enough

Actually I think superhero movies should go in the opposite direction and embrace the kids audience in (hand)animated films. I still think those Bruce Timm styled DC cartoons are the best screen versions of superheroes. Their version of Joker was just brilliant.

auteur takes on pulp genres

I wasn't really thinking of making a qualitative comparison fwiw

xxxp

Even if superhero movies evolve in an adult form (if the Nolan movies don't count), that still won't please people like Morbs. The style of Big Hollywood productions is anathema - they'd hate Rio Bravo and The Searchers if they were made in 2015 just because of what's involved to produce a film like that today.

wtf, who wants an "adult" superhero movie; do we also have to have "adult" animated films featuring CGI pandas?
there are a handful of comic book films that are made for adults and they are highly acclaimed: American Splendor, Ghost World, A History of Violence

The first Downey Iron Man was reasonanbly adult.

..as was Superman II (I can't imagine a ton of 9-year-olds being tickled by Gene Hackman's car dealer vibe).

ok I give up I don't know what you mean by "adult"

otoh i fucking hate those Nolan movies' adolescent idea of what's adult. DARK, WITH ATOMIZED FIGHT SEQUENCES.

There needs to be a superhero movie with a plot that makes sense or is in some way relatable to the common person. Even if movies are broadcasting DIRE CONSEQUENCES and THE END OF THE UNIVERSE they really haven't successfully portrayed that imo. There is no suffering, no consequence to the actions of anyone in the movies. The heroes may be killing as many people as the villains as they smash through skyscrapers, and nobody really cares. It's all detached and context-free. Westerns seem very tied to their landscapes and the places in which they take place, most comic book movies seem to sort of exist and are later transposed onto the real world.

I don't think a movie made 30 years ago is very relevant to modern superhero movies. It's closer in production to the aforementioned westerns than The Avengers.

It's all detached and context-free.

yeah this drives me crazy, really takes me out of the film(s)

There needs to be a superhero movie with a plot that makes sense or is in some way relatable to the common person.

Kick-Ass is attempting something like this, though it has its cake and eats it.

Why is being relatable to the common person important?

Don't forget Blue Is The Warmest Color, Forksclovetofu.

i'm sure there's a bunch of other movies for adults, French and Japanese stuff in particular, that qualifies as a comic book adaptation that I must be forgetting.
Art School Confidential, though that was pretty lame.

Jim Broadbent was great in that though. His character's paintings were great too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_comics

pre-marvel era, Blade and Hellboy (1 and 2 for both) are the gold standard imho

Yeah Hellboy II might be my favourite superhero film.

I mean relatable wrt consequences and things, like Iron Man having his Stark Tower blown up isn't quite so devastating cos we all know he is super rich and will just buy a new one.

I wonder if any 'pro-superhero/comic/movies based on comics that may or may not feature superheroes' argument has ever swayed anyone who thought that those things were crap.

I explicitly referenced superhero comics movies (not comics movies) for a reason. it's the superhero movies that have parallels to westerns

and I wasn't making some bid for "respectability" on the part of superhero movies (most of which I find to be well-made but ultimately empty and forgettable fan-service garbage) by comparing them to westerns, just wondering about the parallels in terms of their popularity, their ubiquity, the forces behind production of both etc.

to pacify Morbz I happily agree that I haven't seen any superhero movie that approaches the Searchers (or the Wild Bunch or [insert classic here]) - there have been some good ones, and the genre is fairly young but corporate (and the push for continuity, esp on Marvel's part) have inhibited any auteurs from really using the genre to push boundaries or do something really interesting. Nolan and Singer come closest and in both cases their trilogies have major flaws/regrettable entries.

"corporate goals" I meant to say there

I haven't seen any superhero movie that approaches the Searchers (or the Wild Bunch or [insert classic here])

Yeah but tbrr most westerns don't, either.

remember when m. night shyamalan tried to make a serious comic book-style film

he's really the expert at misfiring on all cylinders imo

Yeah but tbrr most westerns don't, either.

definitely! and there were way more westerns made than superhero movies (at this point). Expecting a "Searchers" level film to come out of a such a young genre with so much corporate and commercial pressure to do otherwise is not really realistic.

Looking through those film lists (grateful for the notation of live action and animated, especially for manga), missing a few like Blue Is The Warmest Color, Two Fat Slags and Dellamorte Dellamore (although the other Dylan Dog film is listed).

Anyone seen this film, Tokiwa?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117933/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_3
It's about the studio Tezuka and other manga pioneers worked in. It's supposed to very good but it hasn't been released outside east Asia.

remember when m. night shyamalan tried to make a serious comic book-style film

Do you mean Unbreakable? I genuinely think that is an interesting - and quite successful - attempt to tell a different kind of superhero film; in places it reminds me of a Steve Gerber comic.

Baffled by the love for Hellboy II, an unbreakably boring film.

I like things about the Hellboy films but I think they don't comfortably fit into the sort of film structure they're trying for.

it has moments but I really can't stand Shyamalan's filmmaking, full stop

Tokiwa is on Netflix streaming now.

xposts

Wow, that's odd. Wish I had American Netflix (the British version was inferior last time I checked)

xp It is? I don't see it.

Marvel superhero films end on an up note* but they can also have consequences - I know people with a lot of good things to say about Iron Man 3's presentation of Tony Stark's PSTD, which comes straight out of Avengers.

Hellboy love completely mystifying over here as well.

* there is a thing where "An entire city got levelled but we won in the end" is an upnote, but we should probably blame idunno Independence Day for that rather than anything superhero-specific.

That sort of unceremonious grand scale violence has been in superhero comics forever. I remember Juggernaut knocking down the twin towers and it barely having any sense of gravity and I doubt it was mentioned again. When he was standing next to crying Dr Doom after September11, maybe he was saying "didn't I knock these down 10 years ago?" (but again, Romita Jr said their presence was not to be taken literally)

Cities are trashed all the time in these comics and everything goes back to normal soon enough, but you might say that's a problem in shared universe stories where every creator is working with hundreds of others.

I remember reading someone in the 80s being horrified by the violence in Indiana Jones because it all seemed so inconsequential.
Watchmen movie in particular got flack for death of lots of people as empty spectacle.

I think in the comic plot of the upcoming marvel movie, the civil war, things get started by hulk killing 20+ people in a fight in vegas. wouldnt be surprised if hulk gets into some trouble at the end of the nu movie

it's true that the majority of Marvel/DC superhero comics do not concern themselves with the impact of superhero antics on non-superheroes (there are exceptions). And both companies' long-established business practices of alternately sustaining and then violently disrupting continuity also contribute to this feeling of nothing being at stake - don't worry, if anyone dies they'll just be resurrected or reincarnated or flown in from an alternate universe etc. This does carry over into the movies imo.

well not the way continuity is handled (at least, not yet) but the feeling that nothing is really at stake and so who cares

damage control and gotham central movies will happen eventually, don't doubt... gotham already is a television series with no batman
people love their meta

and they need to go to hell for that.

Unbreakable was a good film!

yes, obv there were a ton of bilge, no-budget, unimaginative westerns, but there were also a couple hundred that can stand up to serious analysis and evaluation.

The very FACT that these Marvel movies and their ilk all cost a few hundred million and are presold to a global audience weighs against them having the qualities that make for interesting cinema. Like I said, they're this year's model of smartphone. They can't afford to stray.

yes, obv there were a ton of bilge, no-budget, unimaginative westerns, but there were also a couple hundred that can stand up to serious analysis and evaluation.

― the increasing costive borborygmi (Dr Morbius),

I agree with this, but I think the hit/miss ratio is about the same for superheroes as for westerns. There have been thousands of westerns, right? -- if we go back to The Great Train Robbery.

The very FACT that these Marvel movies and their ilk all cost a few hundred million and are presold to a global audience weighs against them having the qualities that make for interesting cinema

totally agree w this - and they differ from westerns in this way (which were cheap to make afaict) and were not really "presold" in any meaningful way

Morbz likes Unbreakable! whaaat!?
(I love that movie btw, fuck the haters)

agree that superhero movies in general costing more money and gunning to be AAA blockbusters almost every time does limit their scope.
also that there were 100 being made each year with lower budgets there would be more interesting stuff - like say, the first 80% of Chronicle

it'll be interesting to see if marvel's netflix shows, which seem to be focusing more on street-level superheroics, will encourage them to explore different angles in the movies in the future or whether the big screen will be kept exclusively for megabudget spectacle