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

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

for the record i LOVED Superman 2, aged five

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

Agent Carter was actually quite good and different from the movies it was spun off (focusing more on character interaction, police work, gender roles in the 1940s, etc), but it wasn't really a "superhero story" in any meaningful way, it had only one supporting character who could be labeled as a "supervillain", and no supeheroes at all. Similarly, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has become a pretty thrilling series by ditching a lot of the superhero tropes and embracing the paranoid spy thriller vibe seeded by Winter Soldier. The effect and implications of superpowered beings on the world is still a major part of the show, but the plot is driven more by the paranoia/spy themes, which I think works nicely.

And of course a lot of diversity comes from Marvel and DC comics themselves: you have books like Superman or Spider-Man that still focus on straightforward superheroics, but also books like Gotham Central or Guardians of the Galaxy, which still take place in the shared superhero universe, but the genre is something else (police procedural and space opera, respectively), I was glad that the GotG movie openly embraced the vibe of the Abnett/Lanning comics and didn't even try to be a superhero story instead of a space opera: it had way more in common with Fifth Element than with Spider-Man or Captain America. So I think the way superhero movies could/should diversify is by adapting all these lesser known comics that work in different genres, and GotG proved you can do that successfully, so hopefully the studios will take the hint.

and didn't even try to be a superhero story instead of a space opera

There weren't any capes, but this is the smallest difference imaginable compared with, say, Gotham Central.

SPIDER-MAN GETS ANIMATED AND DATED
WITH PHIL LORD & CHRISTOPHER MILLER AND SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT

LAS VEGAS, Nev., April 22, 2015 – On July 20, 2018, Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, the directors of The Lego Movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and 21 and 22 Jump Street, are taking Spider-Man back to his graphic roots with the first-of-its-kind animated Spider-Man feature, it was announced today at CinemaCon by Tom Rothman, chairman of the Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group. The film will exist independently of the projects in the live-action Spider-Man universe, all of which are continuing.

Lord & Miller are masterminding the project, writing the treatment and producing the film.

As previously announced, Spider-Man will next appear in a live-action Marvel film from Marvel’s Cinematic Universe (MCU). Sony Pictures will thereafter release the next installment of its $4 billion Spider-Man franchise, on July 28, 2017, a live-action film being produced by Kevin Feige at Marvel and Amy Pascal, who oversaw the franchise launch for the studio 13 years ago. The animated film from Lord & Miller, dated July 20, 2018, has Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach, and Pascal also serving as producers.

four different big-screen interpretations of spider-man in 16 years seems like a record that will be hard to top

cloudy with a chance of meatballs is a straight-up masterpiece tho so i guess i'lll give them the benefit fo the doubt for now

Sony Pictures will thereafter release the next installment of its $4 billion Spider-Man franchise, on July 28, 2017

What does this mean? Are they still going to have part 3 of the shitty reboot with Andrew Garfield? I thought that had been put out of its misery.

rebooting again, iirc

Has anyone made a movie about how Spider-man got his powers yet?

Still the best Spider-Man movie:

http://media.giphy.com/media/7isbcNAx367qU/giphy.gif

xp So that'll be 5 in 16 years?

i think the spidey in the 2017 live-action movie will be making his debut in an mcu movie, so still 'just' four in 16 years

Huh, that strikes me as something that would require a million lawyers - but I suppose both sides might have a half-million to spare.

iirc the leaked sony emails suggested the studio hadn't got a clue what to do next with the spidey licence and were willing to work more closely with marvel to something out

to work something out

They need to treat him more like James Bond, just do a new, unrelated adventure every couple of years and stop giving a shit about continuity.

but how will we know his origin?!?

so if dc and marvel get their wish, we'll have two batman and two spider-man franchises in theaters for the 2020s

can't wait for http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cd/SupermanvsSpider-Man1976.jpg/250px-SupermanvsSpider-Man1976.jpg

i'm curious just what marvel has planned after AVENGERS GUARDIANS COSMIC KABOOM TIME but if they get to there without fucking up it doesn't matter if the next movie is ANT-MAN VS DOCTOR STRANGE: WORLD DESTRUCTION they've won hollywood

they'll reboot, we'll get all-new origin stories and they'll start the slog to COSMIC KABOOM TIME all over again

assuming X-MEN: APOCALYPSE does well, there will even be precedent for launching your reboot inside the previous ensemble's last dance

while there's slight precedents like Bond (which really doesn't come up enough when people write about hollywood churning out globally minded bombast) i feel like marvel's actually heading towards an unprecedented place in hollywood where the quality level has been consistent, the cast hasn't changed, and people are just starting to experience fatigue

obv the hope is that for every 40+ who says "fuck it, i'm out" a new 10+ says "this shit is AMAZING!" and also buys the toys

xxp Well, that launched entirely separately, in fairness - more like Star Trek Generations in a baton-handing exercise.