I put that in a different category because it was not part of the Feige-led group that has made all the MCU films and Disney+ tv series. The “Marvel method” that’s the subject of this post, to me, refers to Feige’s creations.
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Disney acquiring Marvel and milking the franchise for every dollar possible was a good business move. But in terms of quality, IMO they have been shoveling out a lot of dreck under that franchise. They actually do not have a big incentive to make it better, because practically every Marvel film has turned a hefty profit, including those panned by critics.
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Fun fact, Squirrel Girl’s co-creator, Will Murray, is the premier Shadow historian, having written more on the subject and actually interviewed Walter B. Gibson several times.
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Westerns dominated cinema longer than the historical period the genre glorifies even existed
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Kinda like how there were 11 seasons of M.A.S.H. but the Korean war only lasted 3 years.
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Absolutely 100%. Hollywood has never respected writers, and it shows. Without good writing (excellent dialog, tight plot, excellent dialog, compelling characters, excellent dialog, cogent themes, and excellent dialog) you don’t have a movie. Period. I’d argue the best Marvel movies are the ones with great scripts. Generally, if Marcus and McFeely had a hand in it, it was a good movie. Also, for all Joss Whedon has a monstrous side, the man can write dialog you want to hear coming out of characters’ mouths.
Any character can be great. Any movie can be great. But you have to start with an excellent script.
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Though the very first film in the MCU turned Jarvis from an off-brand Alfred the Butler into a sophisticated A.I. that ended up becoming Vision (a robot originally derived from Hank Pym’s tech, not Tony Stark’s). So they’ve been playing kind of fast and loose with a lot of the source material from the start.
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I will never not be impressed with that arc, though. Did they know from the start of Phase 1 that Jarvis would become Vision? Because Paul Bettany was perfect as Vision. Imagine if they hired any other British actors to voice the role. Stephen Fry for example. The transition doesn’t work. But Bettany not only worked as Jarvis, he captured all the nuances of Vision and his alien, robotic nature with perfection. Only Doug Jones could have possibly done it better.
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The cost to make a given genera movie also plays a big role. Westerns are cheap: go out to the outskirts of the nearest desert, get some horses from any of a number of sources, have a cattle call for the character actors who make up the vast majority of the cast, and try to find a pair of leading actors who will attract an audience but who don’t cost too much.
Superhero films are going to get there: the special effects a decent hobbyist setup can generate are about as good today as what could be done with an entire datacenter in 2006, more or less the year that Iron Man started rendering.
But when the budgets get to $250 million, mostly for renderings and takes we’ll never see because the directors/producters/executives want to see and test different versions of the story, there’s only so many stories that can be told. Costs for making this kind of movie aren’t dropping but increasing, now that Cameron has broken the billion-dollar production cost and still made a claimed profit I don’t see them dropping anytime soon – I’m guessing the money folk would rather bet the bank on “a sure thing” than “this one doesn’t cost much, but we’re not sure if it’ll sell.”
I wonder what the future holds – will some multi-hundred million dollar flop stop the big productions in favor of more numerous, more humble productions, or will some unexpected new genera catch the viewing public’s eyeballs and shift production to the new shiny object, or will the superhero genera catch its second wind and make all the previous entries seem like cheap trash.
In the 1930s, the primary genera of film was . . . the antics of inner city kids and young adults – the “Dead End Kids” troupe and their spin offs (The Bowery Boys, East End Kids, Tough Little Guys) alone made over a hundred movies, admittedly mostly shorts, but they dominated the industry, yet this genera is, from a cursory glance at what’s playing, if not dead today is certainly underrepresented on the marquee.
(edit: spelling)
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The giant, interconnected storylines with shoutouts to all the previous movies are popular with super fans, but the appeal to casual moviegoers is declining. Many people don’t want to told that they have to watch the previous 8 movies to understand this one. As somebody that watches only some of the Marvel oeuvre is is a little off-putting when there is some scene that is obviously supposed to be emotional and meaningful but you’re clueless as to why because there is some reference to a previous movie. Over time, more and more people have not seen enough of the previous installments to be interested in the latest one.
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It’s worse than that. These days you also have to watch an awful lot of TV shows to get all the references. For example the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. references in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
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Basically the same problem that the comic books themselves have been facing for decades: trying to strike a balance between how much any given issue or storyline should stand on its own vs. how much it should reference from the established canon.
Complicated by the fact that all the movies, like the comics, also have to function as ads for the other installments.
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I am reminded a bit of pre-VCR television, when outside of daytime soaps there was little to nothing in the way of story arcs and every episode stood alone, and at the end of an episode, all the characters were in the same condition that they were at the beginning of the episode. Indeed sometimes the episodes were shown in a different order than they were shot in because it just didn’t matter.
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A serious problem I have with bringing in new superheroes, at least high-powered ones, is: where were they when the Chitauri invaded?
There’s plenty of room with low-powered ones, e.g. Jessica Jones.
I can’t say I agree with the principle of trusting the source material. Basically, ever. I’ve seen plenty of attempts to mimic an artwork in a new medium that failed because of slavish devotion to the original, and others that succeeded exactly because they knew where the new medium was directing them to diverge.
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I never suggested slavish devotion to the source material. Only trust of it. You can, and often should, make changes,
This is a good example. The essence of the source material is still there, they just moved it to the Stark family instead of the Pym family, probably because they knew that they planned for Hank Pym to already be an old man and for Scott Lang to be the MCU’s primary Ant-Man.
A good example of not trusting the source material in the way I mean is the DCEU’s Superman. They changed the essence of his character to someone dark, brooding, conflicted, and dangerous. And that’s just never been Superman. That’s Batman. It’s why the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie works so well in spite of how cornball it is. I mean…it’s Superman. He’s kinda supposed to be a little corny.
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In all fairness the Chitauri invasion was over in a matter of hours at most, so most superheroes who hadn’t already been recruited into the Avengers wouldn’t have made it in time to join in unless they were already in the NYC metro area.
The Ancient One was an exception since she could just teleport there but they did retcon her in with Endgame.
The Eternals don’t really have any excuse though. “We vow not to interfere with humanity except during all those times we shaped all of human history…” WTF is that all about?
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You think Captain Marvel got paged by Fury, with a follow-up pager message a couple hours later saying “never mind!” when she was hauling ass past Jupiter?
Wonder what the Skrull were up to during that whole invasion. They had lasers and stuff, right?
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I’d argue that the first Ant-man was big stakes. Yellowjacket selling Pym particles to who he saw fit would have been an Avengers level problem.
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This. I’m pretty sure the reason we didn’t see our Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman beating up the Chitauri was because of rights/use conflicts (I could easily imagine a big Spidey-web snagging a dozen of those flying Chitauri go-cycles.) For every Avengers-level fight, the lower level heroes probably took care of a dozen minor incursions (Punisher, Power Man, and Daredevil covering the Hell’s Kitchen to Harlem area, with Punisher on one of Horn-head’s rooftop water cisterns doing recon by fire.)
