What stuck with me from that film were the weird fades from scene to scene.
Well the film was called “Topless Female Car Chase” so I guess that checks out.
Isn’t that the reboot line-up 2023?
I like “Jacky Brown” the best.
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Yeah, well, Pam Grier in a story by Elmore Leonard. No way this wouldn’t be good.
(It’s Jackie Brown, though.)
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I think it’s more stating the obvious, that movie studios go through cycles:
- The creative types get to throw anything at the wall, and see what sticks. They get to let their passions run free. Some movies flop, others are runaway successes.
- The studios look for patterns to figure out what makes a movie profitable, and develops a formula around their analysis. The audiences reward the studios… initially.
- The audiences become jaded, and stop going to see yet another retread of the same old idea hashed over again.
- The studios, not knowing what to do, let directors start throwing anything against the wall in their little indie studios, to see what sticks.
The thing about Disney/Marvel is that they rarely leave step 2. To them, movie making is not a creative process as much as it is an algorithm for extracting profit out of entertainment. And Tarantino is the sort of director who only feels comfortable at the “throw against the wall and see what sticks” phase, not a “follow the formula to ensure profit” director.
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That is correct. 
I just don’t find the IPs interesting and the writing has always seemed really weak in the ones I have seen. All the problems are magical and the solutions are Deus Ex Magic which makes the stakes pointless. Just my personal taste, nothing more. I didn’t mean to start a whole thing here, I will simply be glad when the superhero trend winds down so I can go to movies again.
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So sad, but true.
Oh you didn’t other than discussion pop culture, which I love to do!
But yeah, superheros can have that problem, it’s true. I think that’s what made the shift to Marvel under Stan Lee so interesting is that he made his superheros much more human and flawed. It’s hard to be flawed when you’re an alien with superhuman powers, but much more relatable if you’re a kid from NYC who gets these powers and then doesn’t know what to do with them…
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Yah, that definitely works for me in many cases. I do tend to like the Batman movies, and I quite liked the Daredevil TV show, as well as Jessica Jones (lurrrrve). These all have what you describe in common. There’s some magic, but it is well-contained within rules of the universe and it honestly causes as much pain for the characters as it does help anyone. They also aren’t saving the whole universe all the time. They can barely save themselves from themselves. If you’re gonna do superpowers, I think it needs to be written that way for me to be on board (not that anyone should be overly concerned with what I like 
)
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I don’t think that problem is solely down to superheroes. Sherlock Holmes ended up just like that. I recall people criticising the recent Holmes because it was just a magic person who could do anything. Episodes where that was said often actually followed one of the books.
That said I don’t like superhero comics, o have been bored by most superhero movies and refuse to go any more. If I was around in the middle of the last century I’d probably be complaining about everything being Westerns (which I’m also not a fan of).
I enjoyed the hell out of Agent Carter though. Don’t think I can say the same about any Marvel movie.
Wish they made more.
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I may be going a little off on a tangent here, but what you just wrote resonates with the kid I was back in the Seventies, why I would rather buy Detective Comics and Batman than any of the Marvel offerings: even though Bruce Wayne was also an underwear pervert, he supposedly didn’t have any superhuman powers, he was just richer than Croesus and dedicated to staying fit. He was fallible. He was human, and the stories of the time were often fighting criminals that didn’t dress up in costumes.
Okay, I admit it, the main reason why I didn’t buy Marvel comics was because they always seemed to end on cliffhangers and left me feeling like I was coming in too late to the story. Like it was Part 5 of an 8 part story. DC was more attractive in that regard that I could just get the issue and not worry about what happened two issues before, since the drug store where I got them didn’t keep back issues on stock.
You know, I really think the reason why Marvel is such a hit is because over the hill guys like myself have enough disposable income and are not ashamed to admit we read comics. Except I was more into the indie comic scene once I hit college. But look at the curve, starting with the collectable covers that took off in the Nineties and better printing.
No, when it comes to comics, the comics I like that are being turned into live action are Sandman, The Tick, and stuff like that. Comics to me are things like Persepolis and Maus more than Spider Man, though I did love J.M DeMattheis’ watercolors in Doctor Strange: Shamballa.
I do not really like Marvel movies for the same reason I didn’t like Michael Jackson back in the 1980s: it’s all too fine-tuned, all too polished and tweaked to appeal to the masses. Which may seem strange, considering how I like AppleTV+ creations which are also polished, but they have surprising little edges and feel polished because it fits the art, not because the rough edges were sanded down to meet market expectations.
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Vulture has a article on Marvel’s Phase 4
There’s a promise of things getting weird and experimental, but on the other hand it’s just one megacorporation filling up every theater with the things that aren’t cinema
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Yep. As a mere dabbler in comics in my youth, I found it easier to follow DC because the stories tended to be self contained.
ETA: Also, I used to get the relatively economical Archie-sized digests.
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Scorsese’s comment about the Marvel movies being more like amusement park rides than cinema is not incorrect. They are fun to watch, but I don’t find repeated viewings will bring out hidden depth and meaning that I didn’t notice the first time. Whereas Scorsese’s “King of Comedy” was kind of a flop at the time but has held up, even predicting where our culture was heading before we knew it.
I tried to explain the plot of an Avengers movie to someone, and it was like “well, I kind of lost track of all the stuff that happens, but basically it’s a bunch of giant over-the-top fistfights between I guess ‘demigods’ or ‘monsters’, and in between they put in plot devices to move the story along.”
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I haven’t been watching all the films, but is the Vulture out of jail now?
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That is an excellent summary. 
. When I watch them, I never feel any tension in the action sequences because every problem will be solved in some silly way that can’t be anticipated anyway. Like, oh Wolverine is falling from a building and could die, but then Iron Man (who was in another city) is suddenly there and catches him while quipping, “I came back early” or whatever. Magical solutions to every problem. Drives me crazy.
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I mean, he wrote Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and the other book he’s touring for in this article.
That was his ninth film. He counts Kill Bill as one film.
Yeah, I meant the novel. He’s writing books now.
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