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

someone's gearing up to release some pym particles, that's for sure xp

xpost Eleven of them superhero-related (with one of the Paul Blart joints filling out the roster).

best thing about that tweet is correctly categorising the last temptation of christ as a crime film

my main problem w/Marvel movies is they're not very kinetic or gripping in terms of the action scenes w/the arguable exception of Winter Soldier. and the visual style of the films is mostly very flat. the exceptions being Ragnarok and the GOTG films. and i've said elsewhere, so many of these films end with a large smoldering craft of some kind slowly crashing to the surface while people onboard fight to escape.

i think there's also the larger point remaining about how much talent behind and in front of the camera has spent a decent chunk of their peak years working on these films vs more interesting projects. i'm not gonna suggest they all needed a Cassavetes to give them a kick in the ass, or necessarily would be worth giving a talking-to (i'm not going to "what-if" myself thinking about missing all those Jon Favreau auteur projects) but it's certainly true that in today's Hollywood even moreso than the past that a lot of competent talent is lured with big paychecks so they can knock out tentpole product, and there's little room for anything else from a lot of them. So other filmmakers and actors giving a zing to that entire process is completely cool. i mean like i've also said i like the Marvel movies, for the most part, but more recently i've found their seeming omnipresence fairly wearying.

I fell asleep during one of the My First Mushroom Trip action scenes in Doctor Strange

these days when i see an action film done right i sit up and take immediate notice. honestly it's very rare and even the John Wick films (which i enjoy very much) kind of just feel like a pummeling after awhile, just this relentlessness which is impressive in its own right, taking place in this beautiful purple and blue and red world, but more exhausting in certain ways than they are completely thrilling. and they do remain impressive to me but i have to be honest about their shortcomings.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith is underrated as a modern action movie - like Bourne I (also Liman) and John Wick, the action is always visually coherent but it's dialed down even further than either of those.

discounting occasional outrage from sexist idiots online, there's nothing in any of the marvel films that really deviates from baseline mainstream american cultural mores

I feel compelled to watch and have some base level of enjoyment from watching these movies but there's no sense of risk in the scripts, shots, or acting. And after a while, without any risk there's no promise of a reward

I guess while I was typing this, omar said it better

i think there's also the larger point remaining about how much talent behind and in front of the camera has spent a decent chunk of their peak years working on these films vs more interesting projects.

I think about this a lot and am surprised its not brought up more often, the opportunity cost of whole careers getting sucked into the gravitational pull of these franchises

and whole audiences' hours of filmgoing life

so did you guys get this sorted yet

Just waiting on Soderbergh to weigh in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGGfnLBTLdY

(Soderbergh I'd be really interested in the views of, particularly since he helped the Russos get the gig)

All the lost Oscars for developmentally-challenged character roles. It's a tragedy! We'll always have Juliette Lewis, though.

i think there's also the larger point remaining about how much talent behind and in front of the camera has spent a decent chunk of their peak years working on these films vs more interesting projects.
I think about this a lot and am surprised its not brought up more often, the opportunity cost of whole careers getting sucked into the gravitational pull of these franchises

― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), 24. oktober 2019 18:11 (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I really don't get who this would be? Most of the people making these films would otherwise be making a different kind of shitty blockbuster? If anything, making a marvel meant that Hitler bunny comedy got made.

this is all theoretical of course but certainly many of the actors have previously shown a lot of talent for picking interesting films, playing characters who aren't wearing capes. keeping in mind that i generally think most of these actors have done good work on the cape-character front.

which is also why separately it's a little disappointing to see Pattinson signing on to play Batman after a period in which he really went all-in playing a wide array of interesting parts. now if he's just doing it to allow himself to continue to play more of these parts, i'm all for it. As long as he doesn't Robert Downey Jr himself and start working exclusively for DC Entertainment Corp

xxp the person i can think of who this might be referring to is Chloe Zhao but she's got her first film with them on the way and I can only hope that this can fund her next six projects. and eternals might even be interesting (nb it likely will not)

RDJr's hit rate would be considerably higher if he was exclusive to Marvel, in fairness.

If anything, making a marvel meant that Hitler bunny comedy got made.

*faye dunaway floating math equations.gif*

painting all superhero films with a broad Worthless Trash brush

There have been three superhero adaptation films that aren’t worthless trash, but some of the others are fun worthless trash


I thought everyone in tha biz calls him “Marty”??

Christopher Moltisanti is not technically “in tha biz”

Mr. & Mrs. Smith is underrated as a modern action movie - like Bourne I (also Liman)

Live. Die. Repeat. is a better Liman in this comparison, as it’s punching CGI monsters in a green-screen environment but the action is clear, coherent, and with a concept of physics behind it. The last 45 minutes of the recent Avengers was an interminable array of sprites floating nilly, if not willy, against a sea of pixels.

One that bums me out is Ryan Coogler - I thought Fruitvale Station was a great debut, and he immediately got ensconced in the Franchise Industrial Complex. His upcoming projects are Black Panther 2 and Space Jam 2. I realize that nobody put a gun to his head but still, by the time he gets to his next non-franchise project a decade will have passed.

First of all, it's a bullshit standard. But even going by those standards, all of them pass! All of the superhero films have scenes of 'human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.' And consistently, those are the worst scenes!

― Frederik B, Thursday, October 24, 2019 10:25 AM bookmarkflaglink

FWIW I think you are misreading Scorsese here - he's talking about movies which are acts of human beings trying to convey etc. etc. to the human beings in the audience. we could argue over whether the marvel movies do this (or which ones try/succeed/fail), but obviously he is not just trying to argue that the movies contain no dialogue scenes about emotional or psychological experiences.

It's good at least that Taika Waititi is using his newfound clout to make passion proj---oh no

Fred is off on his own thing here with this hyper-literalist “technically correct is the best form of correct, and we have NAILED Scorsese by determining that these are in fact motion pictures that play in theatres (I have never talked to a human btw)” crusade

xp weirdly the day the clown cried IS cinema unlike the mtpu

you guys know that uh not old white dude directors prob feel the same way about disney but can't say it unless they wanna wake up in their beds to bloody mickey mouse ears hanging off the edge of their beds and "you'll never work in this town" written in disney font on the wall

— chai goth, a hit 2000s reality show Survivor fan (@Abid_ism) October 23, 2019

One that bums me out is Ryan Coogler - I thought Fruitvale Station was a great debut, and he immediately got ensconced in the Franchise Industrial Complex. His upcoming projects are Black Panther 2 and Space Jam 2. I realize that nobody put a gun to his head but still, by the time he gets to his next non-franchise project a decade will have passed.

Yeah, but the impact of Black Panther was amazing. Put out a small indie movie or a blockbuster that elates and inspires? A movie that from that Feige/Perlmutter article above, Perlmutter didn't want to greenlight? Coogler can have it both ways, and do the small projects if he wants, but I'd guess it's not entirely the paycheck that drives him to do the sequel.

the oceans movies were widely seen as soderbergh’s “one for them” (nb he has disputed that, saying he genuinely loved making them) but these days they’re practically arthouse

Even the ppl who like these movies make them sound like fucking death tbh. An action movie but it’s 3 hours long and everyone agrees that the action scenes are bad? “Whedony dialogue”? That showrunner guy does an excellent job at diagramming out IP convergences and flattening out any attempts at individual style. Wow great, sounds like cinema... not haha

Even the one impressive “achievement” of building an arc across a bunch of films is like congratulations, you spent a trillion and invented tv

tbf they spent a trillion and made a bajillion so mission accomplished

hey you want cinema get a streaming account

Out Of Sight is Sodes' only "one for them" move imo ~ after his one hit was follwed by Kafka, King Of The Hill, The Underneath, Schizopolis and a Spalding Grey monologue ~ and it turned out to be ...maybe his best? After that he's just made whatever heist film, political exegesis, thriller, action flick, weird psychodrama or Spalding Grey doco he's felt like (and has given up on writing them).

whether it's relevant or not, Out of Sight is one of his best films

I just hate the way that everyone involved turns this into some sort of taking sides sport or something, like there can only be one side to land on. I'm a pretty big fan of the Marvel movies, I thought I was getting over them but now that my son is old enough to get stoked for seeing them it's been really fun to watch them as he discovers the wider comics world. At the same time, I 100% agree that there are far too many of these movies and I get bummed about what is not being made/screened/pitched because of them.

I don't think this Bilge Ebiri piece has been posted; i learned that Jodie Foster beat Scorsese to the "theme park" line by a few years.

Admittedly, action-adventures have rarely been known for their complexity. This was true in the Golden Age of Hollywood, it was true in the ’70s, and it’s true now. But the tentpolization of cinema in recent years has also been accompanied by a certain self-inflation — a belief, parroted by fans and filmmakers and corporate honchos alike, that superhero epics and space-war movies and adventure fantasies *matter* in ways they never quite mattered before. We hear it every year when we wonder if that year’s big superhero hit might get nominated for Best Picture. Indeed, self-importance lies at the heart of these movies’ complete takeover of the industry....

Action blockbusters have always been successful, and the industry’s more independent-minded artists have always struggled to get around the financial imperatives of what is, after all, a business. But the last 15 or so years have seen rapid monopolization across many industries, and these types of releases have become dominant in what is increasingly looking like a zero-sum game. While lots of other films get made — more, in fact, than have ever been produced before — all the oxygen in the room gets sucked out by the big ones, leaving the smaller ones to choke.

A treatment can become a dependency; a symptom can become a cause. And many of us who welcomed these movies with open arms may now find ourselves trapped in a tiresome world of absolutes — and not just cinematic ones. We might even be able to trace some of the intolerance of our disagreements in the real world, where opposing views become unacceptable and we live through constant, numbing cycles of hyperbole and constant accusation, to the fact that the stories we tell each other — the cultural products that are supposed to both shape and reflect our experiences — are mostly made up of simple narratives, simple quandaries, simple resolutions. To put it another way: People who are genuinely upset by Scorsese’s comments should ask themselves *why* they’re so upset by them, and whether their response, in its own way, proves his point.

https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/ok-fine-lets-talk-about-marvel-vs-martin-scorsese.html

I'm curious what even draws people to these movies if they have no affinity for (or, especially, if they harbor active disdain towards) the source material. Like I knew the goddamn Twilight movies weren't for me sight unseen and I...just didn't see them, or feel any need to comment upon their worthiness. I mean, I geddit if you want to criticize them in terms of their impact on Hollywood etc, but if you think they're stupid and/or bloated and/or an empty + artificial product produced by committee, why are you even engaging with them in the first place?

(I acknowledge that his may just be instance 815 of 'Old Lunch does not understand hate-watching'.)

There were four Twilight movies. Is all.

I have to have something to talk about around the water cooler

And when the heck to I have to have an affinity for source material to watch a movie that captures some zeitgeist? I think I read part of one Harry Potter book but had no real interest, but the movies are relatively harmless family-friendly stuff I can watch with kids. Kind of enjoyed the Hunger Games movies but I've never cracked any of those books.

(my friends' kids, I'm not abducting children to watch Harry Potter)

Because it's impossible not to? I haven't watched any of the Marvel movies after Doctor Strange but I would have to live in a hermitage in the mountains to not interact with them in some way.

If Émile goddamn Zola had just refrained from writing so many novels I might've been able to refrain from commenting on his corpus.

No one is saying you HAVE to have affinity for the source material, sheez. There just seems to be a lot of 'superheroes more like superstupid' sentiment underlying much of the criticism and I'm just like...yes, these superhero movies do indeed feature the exploits of superheroes. If you know that's not for you, why bother?

I guess if you avoid television commercials, trailers played before other movies, commercials using the characters to sell other products, places that play music from Black Panther, sketch comedy like SNL that references the movies, advertisements on the street, board game stores that double as comic book stores that are playing the movies in-store as you're shopping, costumed children and adults at halloween...

I guess it's all avoidable

wins otm, i've enjoyed a fair number of marvel films but as a set, they're decent big-screen TV serialization but not half so special as they're supposed to be. so i derive no enjoyment from the "love Marvel or hate 'em, you gotta admit... they pulled it off!" cheerleading. they pulled off... putting out a bunch of movies? that are mostly kinda the same except for some windowdressing sufficient only to convince fanboys who have never seen a paranoid espionage thriller or a romantic comedy that these genres are actually fully embodied herein? and they needed like twenty of them in order to get me to tear up at the end of the last one? most movies can manage that in one movie if they're trying to.

like even the much-ballyhooed storyline/tone/phase coordination isn't much to write home about. to name just one example, the Vision is massively built up Age of Ultron as an important new character, then never does anything besides hang around (and crippling Rhodes, which has no impact on anything), before dying in Infinity War... surely if these were the popcorn masterpieces they're supposed to be, with expertly staged "fuck yeah!" and "oh no!" moments, he would have at least the rudiments of an arc, a setup, a payoff....? i've bitched before about the characters' inability to remember anything that happened in previous movies, let alone have it inform their choices.... etc etc.

to be clear I adored marvel comics throughout my teens and at some other junctures later on - my beef is not with the existence of movies about superheroes!

There are plenty of culturally omnipresent things that I somehow manage to avoid (see: professional sports as a whole). I don't feel like blaming the siren song of the zeitgeist quite explains away my confusion.

Superhero action, comic: three pages, two minutes of reading time tops
Superhero action, MCU: thirty minutes, possibly seizure inducing

Halloween's become kinda fun tho.

"Who are you?"
(silence)
"He's Einherjar #4."
(silence)
"Get the fuck off my porch, kid."

xxp I was gonna say -- avoiding most the things listed by mh (with minimal effort) is actually pretty easy