Movies Marvel Studios in Crisis - A Variety Article

[Loiosh]

Seemed to work ok for James Cameron.

And Captain Marvel made more than a billion.

 

[moreorless87]

And Captain Marvel made more than a billion.

I think that did arguebly benefit from people thinking it was linked to Infinity War but still the reality is most people care about quality, the cultural war fruit loops on this forum have totally lost touch with reality.

 

[SmilinDesperado]

the writing and planning suffers when you spread it out over so many projects. Your issues are a symptom of over saturation/too many productions.

outside of the avengers series no marvel project really demands prior viewing to understand the story. They will epilogue everything you need to know because otherwise it would limit audiences. Again an issue of over production because the stakes of these projects are kept low and dumbed down so they can churn out more and more. That’s what wrong with Guardians 3, not much of consequence happens. Star lord mopes about his girl like usual, she’s back from the dead cuz real deaths would limit making more projects so who cares, the villain is just whiny, you can have star lord space walk commando without consequence because we’re going to have to pump out more with him down the line. There’s no stakes to any battle or sacrifice or scene because you know they need that character back for more content later. The writing is handcuffed by the constantly churning out of projects,

The writing and planning suffers when you're doing too many unrelated, disjointed projects.
They make the same amount of movies a year they've been making for years. The TV shows haven't played a part in any of the current issues with the larger MCU.

The movies prior to Black Widow were all pretty much connected in some way and were leading to one story. The thing that happened in Thor 2, or Civil War had a direct effect on what happens in the next movies down the line. The number of movies wasn't an issue because they were all going in the same direction.
There is no direction now. These characters inhabit the same MCU, but they don't interact, and they aren't moving towards anything.
They've introduced new characters, retired others, and they're all from different walks of life that don't seem connected. They're all doing their own universe saving quests as if they don't live in the same universe.
Egyptian God, Chinese magic land, Multiverse and magic, Time travelling and Quantumverse, ancient Eternals and Deviants, She-Hulk that doesn't want to be a hero, Super Skrulls taking over the world, Space adventures with the Marvels, etc.... Vs. Earth and an Asgardian story that was connected to Earth still. (Guardians was the only thing that really strayed, but it was to further the overall story)
It's only too much because it's just a bunch of random projects that aren't going anywhere. The strength of the MCU is how they connect, and these things aren't connected.

Death is always going to be something that is going to be rare in a comic book movie, but that isn't the only available consequence. The easy way out would have just been to make Gamora fall in love with Star Lord again.
The consequence is that he lost the girl that he loved. It was actually a really mature way to handle and wrap that story up. He didn't just mope about her, he finally came to grips with the reality that his Gamora is dead.
The team is essentially disbanded, but there are no consequences? Star Lord has a longer shelf life than that, and there are more interesting stories with him in the comics that don't just have to deal with The Guardians/being in love with Gamora. He can be free to explore those in the future.

 

[SoberAwakening]

I think the whole "ThEY wEnT wOkE" talk is an oversimplification for a much bigger issue. That's part of it, and rather small part of it, but that's not the whole of it.

MCU is going through the same thing the UFC is going through. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. We didn't have UFC cards every single week back in the day. We had maybe one PPV a month, but it was stacked all the way up. People were willing to wait and pay because we knew we were getting stacked cards, top to bottom. That's one thing.

The other problem is that they built the MCU off the backs of main staple comic book characters like Iron Man and Cap, sprinkled in the lesser known characters such as the Guardians, and incorporated them in the same story lines making it easier for audiences to digest. Oh and there was quality to the stories back then as well. Now they're trying to build universes off of lesser known characters...what did they expect? Even some of us hardcore MCU fans are like, "phase 4 is utter crap, but just get us to phase 5." Phase 5 will start bringing back main characters from the comic book.

And yes, there is this push for DE&I and they pushed a little too hard, which turned off a lot of people. You gave those people a reason to abandon the MCU ship.

What what I do?
Scrap whatever they got going on right now. I wouldn't necessarily call up all the old characters, especially dead ones like Iron Man. However, I'd expedite the storylines of say the X-Men and keep Spiderman close by, even start getting live-action Miles ready to go. Get Deadpool in here and let him be Deadpool.

They can't expect people to hang on with B-list heroes, crappy storytelling, and this overindulgence of super hero movies/shows. Spend time on quality and less on quantity.

 

[shockaholic12]

The writing and planning suffers when you're doing too many unrelated, disjointed projects.
They make the same amount of movies a year they've been making for years. The TV shows haven't played a part in any of the current issues with the larger MCU.

The movies prior to Black Widow were all pretty much connected in some way and were leading to one story. The thing that happened in Thor 2, or Civil War had a direct effect on what happens in the next movies down the line. The number of movies wasn't an issue because they were all going in the same direction.
There is no direction now. These characters inhabit the same MCU, but they don't interact, and they aren't moving towards anything.
They've introduced new characters, retired others, and they're all from different walks of life that don't seem connected. They're all doing their own universe saving quests as if they don't live in the same universe.
Egyptian God, Chinese magic land, Multiverse and magic, Time travelling and Quantumverse, ancient Eternals and Deviants, She-Hulk that doesn't want to be a hero, Super Skrulls taking over the world, Space adventures with the Marvels, etc.... Vs. Earth and an Asgardian story that was connected to Earth still. (Guardians was the only thing that really strayed, but it was to further the overall story)
It's only too much because it's just a bunch of random projects that aren't going anywhere. The strength of the MCU is how they connect, and these things aren't connected.

Death is always going to be something that is going to be rare in a comic book movie, but that isn't the only available consequence. The easy way out would have just been to make Gamora fall in love with Star Lord again.
The consequence is that he lost the girl that he loved. It was actually a really mature way to handle and wrap that story up. He didn't just mope about her, he finally came to grips with the reality that his Gamora is dead.
The team is essentially disbanded, but there are no consequences? Star Lord has a longer shelf life than that, and there are more interesting stories with him in the comics that don't just have to deal with The Guardians/being in love with Gamora. He can be free to explore those in the future.

this shit is geared towards kids as much is it nostalgic adults. With this many projects and this target audience you’re never going to be able to connect all the scripts in any significant manner, it’s too much mandatory viewing and memory recall. So you get dumbed down inconsequential story-lines like guardians 3. Quantity watering down quality.

Gamora back from the dead is lazy ass writing because of this. I already watched star lord mourn losing her in other flicks, it’s played out then they trot her back in to dangle the possibility they could reconnect then make us watch the same story line unfold again. Oh no the band broke up just like gamora was gone for good? No one cares because they’ll bring them back like they do with everyone else when they have fill another production schedule to fill,

They had to pull on heart strings with cgi animal cruelty because there’s no emotional stakes to anything else going on with guardians.

 

[moreorless87]

The writing and planning suffers when you're doing too many unrelated, disjointed projects.
They make the same amount of movies a year they've been making for years. The TV shows haven't played a part in any of the current issues with the larger MCU.

The movies prior to Black Widow were all pretty much connected in some way and were leading to one story. The thing that happened in Thor 2, or Civil War had a direct effect on what happens in the next movies down the line. The number of movies wasn't an issue because they were all going in the same direction.
There is no direction now. These characters inhabit the same MCU, but they don't interact, and they aren't moving towards anything.
They've introduced new characters, retired others, and they're all from different walks of life that don't seem connected. They're all doing their own universe saving quests as if they don't live in the same universe.
Egyptian God, Chinese magic land, Multiverse and magic, Time travelling and Quantumverse, ancient Eternals and Deviants, She-Hulk that doesn't want to be a hero, Super Skrulls taking over the world, Space adventures with the Marvels, etc.... Vs. Earth and an Asgardian story that was connected to Earth still. (Guardians was the only thing that really strayed, but it was to further the overall story)
It's only too much because it's just a bunch of random projects that aren't going anywhere. The strength of the MCU is how they connect, and these things aren't connected.

Death is always going to be something that is going to be rare in a comic book movie, but that isn't the only available consequence. The easy way out would have just been to make Gamora fall in love with Star Lord again.
The consequence is that he lost the girl that he loved. It was actually a really mature way to handle and wrap that story up. He didn't just mope about her, he finally came to grips with the reality that his Gamora is dead.
The team is essentially disbanded, but there are no consequences? Star Lord has a longer shelf life than that, and there are more interesting stories with him in the comics that don't just have to deal with The Guardians/being in love with Gamora. He can be free to explore those in the future.

The earlier MCU I feel whilst it was telling a lot of different character stories most of them were quite small scale in terms of setting/drama with a tight focus on the lead characters which made it easy to see how they would link together. I think Wheadon perhaps gets rather too much credit for something which had been setup very well in the years prior to the first Avengers. I think at most you had the divison between the "Earthly" and "Cosmic" settings but more recently it feels like you now have many different "big" settings which will not be as easy to merge.

Again though I feel like really what made the MCU truely special was mostly down to the Russos and James Gunn, they really upped the level of the franchise in 2014 for me and I feel like all of their films would be in the top 10 MCU for me along with the original Ironman, Ragnarok and something else. Marvel have not really found directors at that level since IMHO.

 

[SmilinDesperado]

this shit is geared towards kids as much is it nostalgic adults. With this many projects and this target audience you’re never going to be able to connect all the scripts in any significant manner, it’s too much mandatory viewing and memory recall. So you get dumbed down inconsequential story-lines like guardians 3. Quantity watering down quality.

Gamora back from the dead is lazy ass writing because of this. I already watched star lord mourn losing her in other flicks, it’s played out then they trot her back in to dangle the possibility they could reconnect then make us watch the same story line unfold again. Oh no the band broke up just like gamora was gone for good? No one cares because they’ll bring them back like they do with everyone else when they have fill another production schedule to fill,

They had to pull on heart strings with cgi animal cruelty because there’s no emotional stakes to anything else going on with guardians.

This is a silly point that is often said by haters. It's geared towards kids? Because a child and an adult can both enjoy something doesn't mean that it is geared towards either. I can enjoy the Lion King as a child, and as an adult for reasons beyond nostalgia. Adult me and Child me don't enjoy the same aspects, grasp, or relate to the same concepts in films, which is why they can appeal to a wide audience.

You can't even dispute my point, which is why you are now just making a vapid "comic book movies are bad/lazy" argument. You don't like comic book movies. Cool story.
The facts don't change: the number of movies has not changed. They do about 3 movies a year. The connections between the movies have changed. It's as simple as that.

You can't have 20 movies take place in the same timeline, on the same planet, going to the same direction., And then do 10 more movies taking place in different times, dimensions, with characters that don't interact and expect to get a cohesive story that is going to get fans' interest.

 

[HereticBD]

The earlier MCU I feel whilst it was telling a lot of different character stories most of them were quite small scale in terms of setting/drama with a tight focus on the lead characters which made it easy to see how they would link together. I think Wheadon perhaps gets rather too much credit for something which had been setup very well in the years prior to the first Avengers.

Yes and no. It seems like a piece of piss right now, but making a movie such as "The Avengers" work, with all the screen time too divvy up between these huge characters and leave audiences satisfied, seemed like quite the tall order at the time. There really wasn't anything prior to it, with such a grand scope, to compare it to.

 

[SmilinDesperado]

The earlier MCU I feel whilst it was telling a lot of different character stories most of them were quite small scale in terms of setting/drama with a tight focus on the lead characters which made it easy to see how they would link together. I think Wheadon perhaps gets rather too much credit for something which had been setup very well in the years prior to the first Avengers. I think at most you had the divison between the "Earthly" and "Cosmic" settings but more recently it feels like you now have many different "big" settings which will not be as easy to merge.

Again though I feel like really what made the MCU truely special was mostly down to the Russos and James Gunn, they really upped the level of the franchise in 2014 for me and I feel like all of their films would be in the top 10 MCU for me along with the original Ironman, Ragnarok and something else. Marvel have not really found directors at that level since IMHO.

Yes, the early MCU pretty much all took place on Earth, or Earth was a major part of the storyline in someway. It was always grounded in that way. Those smaller, contained character stories were building up to a bigger, collaboration, even when the story took us to other galaxies.
Right now, there are too many settings over time and space that have no connections or familiarity with the rest of the world.

I agree that the Russos and Gunn really took the MCU to the next level, but I think a big part of that is that they STAYED to do a series of movies, so they had to really have a vision and plan for the bigger story and characters. The most successful projects are the ones that had pretty much the same writers and directors start and finish them---Captain America to End Game, Guardians, and Spiderman. (Black Panther to a degree) It's harder to keep a tighter story when the story and characters can change with every movie.

 

[aunshi189]

Agreed. They could have made a whole movie where it was just Magneto walking the earth and fucking up ex-Nazis, and I would have watched the shit out of it

And 'hespect to the actor playing the Nazi who gets his hand pinned to the table(twice!). His facial expressions really sold just how much pain he was in,

Eric, "Blood and Honour...which do you want to shed first?"

Nazi, "We were under orders!"

Eric, "Blood, then."

Urgh, I really hated how they felt the need to insert politics into their movie like that. I don't need these leftist soyboy ideas that Nazis are bad shoved down my throat when I just want to watch a film /s

 

[Contempt]

it’s hilarious how fucking obvious it is that @Contempt is literally just parroting internet echo chamber buzzwords w/o actually being able to recognize any of those things himself in these movies. the dude is clearly a lonely moron who thinks it’s cool to shit on the mcu/disney for perceived wokeness, even if he can’t articulate why he feels that way.

Sad!

You're not going to goad me into writing it all out or copy and pasting other easily available information that I already linked to any more than the other retard. Nice try though.

 

[shockaholic12]

This is a silly point that is often said by haters. It's geared towards kids? Because a child and an adult can both enjoy something doesn't mean that it is geared towards either. I can enjoy the Lion King as a child, and as an adult for reasons beyond nostalgia. Adult me and Child me don't enjoy the same aspects, grasp, or relate to the same concepts in films, which is why they can appeal to a wide audience.

You can't even dispute my point, which is why you are now just making a vapid "comic book movies are bad/lazy" argument. You don't like comic book movies. Cool story.
The facts don't change: the number of movies has not changed. They do about 3 movies a year. The connections between the movies have changed. It's as simple as that.

You can't have 20 movies take place in the same timeline, on the same planet, going to the same direction., And then do 10 more movies taking place in different times, dimensions, with characters that don't interact and expect to get a cohesive story that is going to get fans' interest.

marvel scripts are largely kid friendly so they aren’t going to make the storylines complicated webs with mandatory viewing of multiple other projects that span a decade to connect it all. They’ll make make them single serve friendly, and that will make the scripts suffer due to a quantity over quality approach. Liking lion king has nothing to do with that.

I don’t hate comic book flicks. You made that up. marvel just made too much content like all the other studios.

 

[Contempt]

I asked you what you examples you saw,
not what someone else on the internet saw. Since according to you it was so obviously “filled with woke political garbage”‘ you already somehow know what the sequel’s content is without seeing it there should be a handful of examples in your head yet you choked thinking of a single example on your own. Why can’t you be a big boy and explain it with your own words?

How’s it possible you have that strong of an opinion but can’t think of a single scene on your own to support it and are asking people to google other folks reactions to explain your opinion? Because The Marvels has triggered you with its casting of diverse female leads and that was obvious when you posted about it without seeing it and the following 8 posts have you been deflecting from that by screeching about feminism, google,
and short busses.

Oh I absolutely could write it out but it would be a complete waste of time when I linked you to DOZENS of people that have already done it, you just refuse to read it because it hurts your woke little snowflake feelings.

If you would have actually put in ANY effort to read the information you were inquiring about and asked for clarification afterwards, I would have been happy to elaborate but as you are refusing to even bother to read a single one of the MANY people that have already covered this, why the hell do you think I'm going to hold your hand you ridiculous dork?

You asked a question, I gave you the search string to many sources answering that exact question and you are refusing to read any of them. Not my problem snowflake.

 

[SmilinDesperado]

marvel scripts are largely kid friendly so they aren’t going to make the storylines complicated webs with mandatory viewing of multiple other projects that span a decade to connect it all. They’ll make make them single serve friendly, and that will make the scripts suffer due to a quantity over quality approach. Liking lion king has nothing to do with that.

I don’t hate comic book flicks. You made that up. marvel just made too much content like all the other studios.

Most movies that aren't rated R are "kid friendly". It's a dumb point to try and determine what is for kids and what is for adults, as if there is a clear line on that. Can't believe you can't understand the meaning of the Lion King example. It's an example.
I liked playing Mario when I was a kid, and I like playing it now as well. A child could like seeing Captain America fight Iron Man, or Spiderman flipping around; while an adult can appreciate that, and be drawn to the ideas of friendship and betrayal, or the idea of freedom of choice to do good vs. the government telling you who can do good. Enjoyment of things isn't determined solely by age or nostalgia.
And again, instead of addressing the central point I made, you go back to just shitting on the genre while claiming you don't dislike it.

 

[KnightTemplar]

Urgh, I really hated how they felt the need to insert politics into their movie like that. I don't need these leftist soyboy ideas that Nazis are bad shoved down my throat when I just want to watch a film /s

Yeah! How dare they use regime that committed the worst War Crimes in history as the Bad Guys!

#HydraLivesMatter

 

[owen_taggart]

You're not going to goad me into writing it all out or copy and pasting other easily available information that I already linked to any more than the other retard. Nice try though.

No one's asking you to write it ALL out; they just want ONE example.

Oh I absolutely could write it out but it would be a complete waste of time when I linked you to DOZENS of people that have already done it, you just refuse to read it because it hurts your woke little snowflake feelings.

If you would have actually put in ANY effort to read the information you were inquiring about and asked for clarification afterwards, I would have been happy to elaborate but as you are refusing to even bother to read a single one of the MANY people that have already covered this, why the hell do you think I'm going to hold your hand you ridiculous dork?

You asked a question, I gave you the search string to many sources answering that exact question question and you are refusing to read any of them. Not my problem snowflake.

They're inquiring about YOUR opinion. They're asking YOU to give YOUR OWN opinion. Giving them a search string to a whole bunch of other people's opinions doesn't tell them what YOURS is. It just implies you don't have one of your own.

 

[eddymotto]

I think that did arguebly benefit from people thinking it was linked to Infinity War but still the reality is most people care about quality, the cultural war fruit loops on this forum have totally lost touch with reality.

Captain Marvel was clever in that they took a well known actress (Brie Larson) but also made sure that all the trailers prominently showed Sam Jackson (both a well known actor AND a character that all the MCU fans were familiar with). The messaging was really on point - "this actress that you know and like is going to play a kick ass character and there is also this other character who you already know really well and he is going to be the co-lead".

For me, the movie was pretty average but the results don't lie. Critics liked it and fans liked it and it made over $1B.

Meanwhile, The Marvels looks like it will be Disney's first outright flop. For normal people the issue is that the trailers have been horrible (IMO), the timing is bad, the stars are not available to promote the film, and it apparently cost $275M (!!!) . I can't speak to its actually quality until I see it but based on the trailers and the delays, I suspect it is going to be Quantumania level quality.

For those who are interested, below is a summary of actual audience scores for the MCU movies. Ant Man 3 is not on the list. It got a B.

 

[method115]

I loved the way they slowly built up the tension in that scene. Eric starts of being polite and friendly, asking the two Nazis what their occupations are,

1st Nazi, "Pig farmer!"

2nd Nazi, "Tailor. Since I was a boy. My father made the finest suits in Dusseldorf".

Eric, "My parents were from Dusseldorf!"

2nd Nazi, "What was their name?"

Eric(toasts the Nazis with his beer glass)"They didn't have a name. it was taken away from them. By pig farmers. And tailors..."

The Nazis share a, WTF?! look while they and Eric drink their beers. Then Eric turns over his left forearm and we see his Auschwitz prisoner number tattoo...

He took that Magneto role and killed it every step of the way. He had great charisma but at the same time you could see the hate in his eyes when it was time to kill.

 

[shockaholic12]

Most movies that aren't rated R are "kid friendly". It's a dumb point to try and determine what is for kids and what is for adults, as if there is a clear line on that. Can't believe you can't understand the meaning of the Lion King example. It's an example.
I liked playing Mario when I was a kid, and I like playing it now as well. A child could like seeing Captain America fight Iron Man, or Spiderman flipping around; while an adult can appreciate that, and be drawn to the ideas of friendship and betrayal, or the idea of freedom of choice to do good vs. the government telling you who can do good. Enjoyment of things isn't determined solely by age or nostalgia.
And again, instead of addressing the central point I made, you go back to just shitting on the genre while claiming you don't dislike it.

Kids and adults being able to enjoy the smae flick isn’t something I’m arguing against. Like me hating comic flicks, that’s an argument you made up yourself. I have no idea what you’re on about here. I said comic book flicks are geared to be kid friendly story telling since that’s half the audience and that means they aren’t going to make the storylines connected to the dozens of other projects spanning a decade+ they are spitting out. They’ll make a majority of them able to stand alone because mandatory viewing of past flicks over years doesn’t align with telling stories kids grasp easily.

Lion king didn’t have a decade of interconnected flicks and tv series that tied into its script. It was a simple story. So using it as an example doesn’t do anything in this debate for you.

 

[shockaholic12]

Oh I absolutely could write it out but it would be a complete waste of time when I linked you to DOZENS of people that have already done it, you just refuse to read it because it hurts your woke little snowflake feelings.

If you would have actually put in ANY effort to read the information you were inquiring about and asked for clarification afterwards, I would have been happy to elaborate but as you are refusing to even bother to read a single one of the MANY people that have already covered this, why the hell do you think I'm going to hold your hand you ridiculous dork?

You asked a question, I gave you the search string to many sources answering that exact question and you are refusing to read any of them. Not my problem snowflake.

You replied to me like 8 times typing out paragraph after paragraph whining it would be a waste of time for you to type something out. All because you can’t form an opinion on a flick without googling someone else’s.

This is like watching a clown kick itself in the forehead.