It's been more or less a week since the bombshell dropped that Sony Pictures Entertainment and Walt Disney Pictures have had a major falling out over their contract negotiations for the continued shared use of Spider-Man, the result of which is that Spider-Man will no longer be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and enough has been written about the controversy to fill yet another 23-film saga. In short, pretty much everyone's weighed in by now, and I wouldn't be inclined to write about it at all but for one thing: apparently, the failure of last June's X-Men: Dark Phoenix to make any sort of impression on the global box-office is being blamed for Marvel's decision to pull out of the Sony deal and focus on their newly-acquired Fox properties instead. To put it differently; Marvel would rather have Kevin Feige revive the now-moribund X-Men franchise than keep the once-moribund, now-vibrant Spider-Man live-action franchise going.
To me, the fate of X-Men: Dark Phoenix is precisely one of the reasons why Marvel should have stayed (or should stay, depending on what reports one believes) at the negotiating table with Sony until something mutually acceptable is worked out between them.
In the 21 years that have passed since Blade first showed franchise-hungry Hollywood that movies based on Marvel Comics characters are viable investments, we have seen the stumbling or utter failure of a number of film franchises based on Marvel characters, some of them even before Kevin Feige ever set foot in the offices of the Walt Disney Company. For one, the Blade franchise itself, after two commercial successes, flopped in ignominious fashion with its third movie, stopping the series dead in its tracks all the way back in 2004. More prominently, though, pre-Disney 20th Century Fox produced three Fantastic Four movies, all of which were critically thrashed, and the last of which did so badly at the box office that the property's rehabilitation at Marvel is yet another priority for Kevin Feige. Finally, Sony itself has nearly killed the Spider-Man franchise on two separate occasions, without any help or interference from anyone, once with the awful Spider-Man 3 and again, less than a decade later, with the even worse Amazing Spider-Man 2.
And that's just the stuff that got off the ground. Examples of would-be franchises that stalled after one or two installments abound, like the 2003 failures Daredevil and Hulk, Sony's Ghost Rider franchise, which tanked after two movies, and the three separate attempts by two small-time studios, New World and Lionsgate, to get a Punisher film franchise off the ground, one in 1989, one in 2004 and one in 2008, the last attempt crashing and burning the very same year that Iron Man launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And let's not forget that not even George Lucas, arguably still riding on his Star Wars fame three years after the release of Return of the Jedi could sell Howard the Duck.
The bottom line is that coming up with a sustainable franchise, contrary to popular belief, is nowhere near as simple as slapping the word "Marvel" on the title card and waiting for the money to come pouring in, as all of the aforementioned failures, whether right out of the gate or after "x" number of installments, amply demonstrate. The X-Men film series showed that even a creative team with bona fide success under their belt, like the first two Bryan Singer movies, 2011's X-Men: First Class and 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past, can still fall by the wayside.
That's basically what can happen to Sony's Spider-Man series once Kevin Feige's gone; it's happened not just once but twice before. Heck, Spider-Man 3 was the follow-up to what is still regarded as one of the greatest comic-book-based movies of all time, and it still managed to sink that iteration of the franchise.
In terms of sustainability, Marvel Studios really ripped up the form book in terms of what a studio can accomplish with film franchises over an extended period of time. Sure, they've had their misfires over the years, but they've shown they can bounce back from them (e.g. from Thor: The Dark World to Thor: Ragnarok). They've shown that whatever tropes they may lean on from time to time, they're not afraid of pushing boundaries here and there, or changing formulas to ensure a better product. For example, who would have imagined that taking Peter Parker out of not only his beloved New York but out of the United States altogether would result in his highest grossing movie of all time? That's not a gambit Sony Pictures would have taken on their own. Things like this are why Marvel is justified in not only wanting to work on more Spider-Man movies, but also to have a measure of creative control over the rest of Sony's Marvel-related slate as well.
Sure, Spider-Man movies without the Marvel Studios banner will make money for Sony. I mean, the aggressively average Jumanji sequel came within a hair's breadth of a billion dollars two years ago. History has shown, however, that even when Sony (and other studios for that matter) have Marvel's crown jewels fronting their films, they simply cannot maintain a consistent standard of quality for very long. Only Marvel and their brain trust headed by Kevin Feige, Victoria Alonso, Louie D'Esposito and Nate Moore have shown that they are capable of that.
And personally, I hope that both executives at Sony and Disney look past the bottom line and realize this.
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Lose-Lose-Lose: Some Thoughts on the Marvel/Sony Split Over Spider-Man
As of writing, Disney, the parent company of Marvel Studios, and Sony Pictures, who currently hold the exclusive rights to produce feature films starring Spider-Man, have failed to reach terms of agreement on the production of future Spider-Man movies, after the expiration of their original, 2015 deal earlier this year with the release of Spider-Man: Far From Home. Long story short, as of right now, Spider-Man is no longer part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
There's a cynic in me saying that this is all part of some high-stakes game, in which both parties are playing hardball with one another, tossing their unresolved dispute into the court of public opinion, also known as the internet and waiting to see who comes off worst. It's no secret that money is at the heart of the dispute, serving as a sobering reality check to us fans that at the end of the day, it's the main reason why these films are made. Sure, folks like Kevin Feige and many, if not most of the filmmakers he shepherds may be sincere in their artistic intentions, but he's not the one who signs the checks.
Either way, whatever I think, there really isn't much for me to say, is there? I mean, whoever is at fault, and considering there's no contract yet to speak of, it's hard to put the blame on any one person, the net result is still the same: Sony suffers because the creative force behind the last two live-action Spider-Man movies, including the first-ever Spidey film to gross a billion dollars worldwide (notably, in a crowded superhero movie marketplace), is gone, Marvel suffers because, following the retirement of two of its top characters from the MCU at the end of Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man should have been an important cog in its narrative moving forward, and ultimately, the fans lose for obvious reasons. So nobody wins. Nobody.
What hurts about this is how it comes on the heels of a banner year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in which Marvel's record-breaking success was basically a direct result of its love for the fans. All of us fans pushed Avengers: Endgame past Avatar at the global box-office, and Spider-Man: Far From Home past Skyfall because Marvel and Sony (with a huge helping hand from Marvel), made these films that we loved. Period. I wish I had something cleverer to say, some kind of in-depth analysis to offer, but really, I just feel angry at both Disney and Sony for pulling this crap.
With Avengers: Endgame, I basically felt that all sense of urgency in following the MCU was gone, and that I could take or leave any of the films to come. With the insane cliffhanger provided by Spider-Man: Far From Home, that changed, at least for Spider-Man's story, but now, well, maybe I can really and truly walk away. Maybe I should thank both Disney and Sony for making it easy.
There's a cynic in me saying that this is all part of some high-stakes game, in which both parties are playing hardball with one another, tossing their unresolved dispute into the court of public opinion, also known as the internet and waiting to see who comes off worst. It's no secret that money is at the heart of the dispute, serving as a sobering reality check to us fans that at the end of the day, it's the main reason why these films are made. Sure, folks like Kevin Feige and many, if not most of the filmmakers he shepherds may be sincere in their artistic intentions, but he's not the one who signs the checks.
Either way, whatever I think, there really isn't much for me to say, is there? I mean, whoever is at fault, and considering there's no contract yet to speak of, it's hard to put the blame on any one person, the net result is still the same: Sony suffers because the creative force behind the last two live-action Spider-Man movies, including the first-ever Spidey film to gross a billion dollars worldwide (notably, in a crowded superhero movie marketplace), is gone, Marvel suffers because, following the retirement of two of its top characters from the MCU at the end of Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man should have been an important cog in its narrative moving forward, and ultimately, the fans lose for obvious reasons. So nobody wins. Nobody.
What hurts about this is how it comes on the heels of a banner year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in which Marvel's record-breaking success was basically a direct result of its love for the fans. All of us fans pushed Avengers: Endgame past Avatar at the global box-office, and Spider-Man: Far From Home past Skyfall because Marvel and Sony (with a huge helping hand from Marvel), made these films that we loved. Period. I wish I had something cleverer to say, some kind of in-depth analysis to offer, but really, I just feel angry at both Disney and Sony for pulling this crap.
With Avengers: Endgame, I basically felt that all sense of urgency in following the MCU was gone, and that I could take or leave any of the films to come. With the insane cliffhanger provided by Spider-Man: Far From Home, that changed, at least for Spider-Man's story, but now, well, maybe I can really and truly walk away. Maybe I should thank both Disney and Sony for making it easy.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
A Different Kind of Fantasy: A Review of "Yesterday"
directed by Danny Boyle
written by Richard Curtis, Jack Barth and Mackenzie Crook
Contrary to popular belief, even amid the bombastic superhero blockbusters of the North American summer season and the dead-serious, self-important awards fare of the end of year, there is room for other movies that aren't out to make all the money or win all the Oscars to carve out their own little niche. Their success or failure rate can vary, but sometimes, just sometimes they can really hit the sweet spot with just the right audience. One such example is the charming "what if?" romantic comedy, Yesterday.
Yesterday is the story of Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) a struggling twentysomething musician living in Suffolk, England who works part-time and sings anywhere from empty pubs to sidewalks to try to find his audience. About his only fan is his manager and childhood friend Ellie Appleton (Lily James), and after Jack plays at a virtually empty tent at a music festival he decides to finally throw in the towel. On the very night he does so, however, something strange happens: all around the world, for twelve seconds, everyone loses electricity, and as result, Jack, while riding his bike, is unable to see the bus that then clobbers him.
When Jack wakes up, he learns that apparently the Beatles have been erased from everyone else's memory but his own, to the extent that not even a Google search can turn them up (which, weirdly enough, is the case for a seemingly random assortment of other bits of popular culture like Coca-Cola and cigarettes, among other things) and as can be expected, once Jack realizes what has happened, he decides to cash in on this amazing gift. It takes a while for people to catch on, but when pop superstar Ed Sheeran (played by, well, Ed Sheeran) catches wind of Jack's--phenomenal "songwriting talent," he takes Jack under his wing, introducing to a life Jack had only dreamed of, and to his cutthroat manager Debra (Kate McKinnon) who plans to milk Jack for everything the Beatles' songs are worth. It's all coming true at last for this struggling musician, but will he be able to handle the fame, fortune and all of the trappings that will inevitably come with claiming to have authored some of the greatest rock songs in history? And, will he be able to live with the fact that he's only getting all of this because of someone else's work?
The movie is a ton of feel good, goofy fun, even though its premise has almost as many holes as a time-travel movie. Patel is genuinely charming as the down-on-his-luck Jack, and he does a wonderful job covering the Beatles if I'm honest. It's not mimicry but loving homage, and for my part I can see why he got the job. It's gratifying that the character appears not to have been written as Indian, as a result of which there isn't any gaudy treatise on Indian culture or some self-conscious discussion on the inevitable interracial romance between Jack and Ellie, whose adoration for Jack is fairly obvious from the very first scene they share. This is diversity at work: when a person of color slips effortlessly into any given role without the script having to trumpet the issue of his race every chance it gets.
Patel and James carry the movie almost effortlessly, even when the script blunders into "unfortunate cliche" territory. Also adding to the fun is Joel Fry as Rocky, Jack's boisterous roadie, a self-deprecating Ed Sheeran as himself, and Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal as Jack's loving, wonderfully comic parents. Kate McKinnon gets the short end of the stick playing an oily, one-dimensional bad-guy and what makes it worse is that she doesn't even seem to care.
Still, there's enough to like about this movie to sit through it and its fantastical, if sometimes clumsily handled premise. I know that quite a few reviewers were expecting more from this film than a feel-good romance, but given that this was the writer who gave us such unabashedly maudlin fare as Notting Hill and Love Actually I'm not really sure why. Well, I liked it, anyway.
7/10
written by Richard Curtis, Jack Barth and Mackenzie Crook
Contrary to popular belief, even amid the bombastic superhero blockbusters of the North American summer season and the dead-serious, self-important awards fare of the end of year, there is room for other movies that aren't out to make all the money or win all the Oscars to carve out their own little niche. Their success or failure rate can vary, but sometimes, just sometimes they can really hit the sweet spot with just the right audience. One such example is the charming "what if?" romantic comedy, Yesterday.
Yesterday is the story of Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) a struggling twentysomething musician living in Suffolk, England who works part-time and sings anywhere from empty pubs to sidewalks to try to find his audience. About his only fan is his manager and childhood friend Ellie Appleton (Lily James), and after Jack plays at a virtually empty tent at a music festival he decides to finally throw in the towel. On the very night he does so, however, something strange happens: all around the world, for twelve seconds, everyone loses electricity, and as result, Jack, while riding his bike, is unable to see the bus that then clobbers him.
When Jack wakes up, he learns that apparently the Beatles have been erased from everyone else's memory but his own, to the extent that not even a Google search can turn them up (which, weirdly enough, is the case for a seemingly random assortment of other bits of popular culture like Coca-Cola and cigarettes, among other things) and as can be expected, once Jack realizes what has happened, he decides to cash in on this amazing gift. It takes a while for people to catch on, but when pop superstar Ed Sheeran (played by, well, Ed Sheeran) catches wind of Jack's--phenomenal "songwriting talent," he takes Jack under his wing, introducing to a life Jack had only dreamed of, and to his cutthroat manager Debra (Kate McKinnon) who plans to milk Jack for everything the Beatles' songs are worth. It's all coming true at last for this struggling musician, but will he be able to handle the fame, fortune and all of the trappings that will inevitably come with claiming to have authored some of the greatest rock songs in history? And, will he be able to live with the fact that he's only getting all of this because of someone else's work?
The movie is a ton of feel good, goofy fun, even though its premise has almost as many holes as a time-travel movie. Patel is genuinely charming as the down-on-his-luck Jack, and he does a wonderful job covering the Beatles if I'm honest. It's not mimicry but loving homage, and for my part I can see why he got the job. It's gratifying that the character appears not to have been written as Indian, as a result of which there isn't any gaudy treatise on Indian culture or some self-conscious discussion on the inevitable interracial romance between Jack and Ellie, whose adoration for Jack is fairly obvious from the very first scene they share. This is diversity at work: when a person of color slips effortlessly into any given role without the script having to trumpet the issue of his race every chance it gets.
Patel and James carry the movie almost effortlessly, even when the script blunders into "unfortunate cliche" territory. Also adding to the fun is Joel Fry as Rocky, Jack's boisterous roadie, a self-deprecating Ed Sheeran as himself, and Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal as Jack's loving, wonderfully comic parents. Kate McKinnon gets the short end of the stick playing an oily, one-dimensional bad-guy and what makes it worse is that she doesn't even seem to care.
Still, there's enough to like about this movie to sit through it and its fantastical, if sometimes clumsily handled premise. I know that quite a few reviewers were expecting more from this film than a feel-good romance, but given that this was the writer who gave us such unabashedly maudlin fare as Notting Hill and Love Actually I'm not really sure why. Well, I liked it, anyway.
7/10
Monday, August 5, 2019
Ruminations on Marvel Studios' 5 Billion Dollar Year and on Phase 4
As I write this, three of the top five movies at the global box office are films based on Marvel Comic books, two out of the three of them produced and released by Disney's Marvel Studios, with the third, the sequel Spider-Man: Far From Home, being produced by Marvel Studios through a deal with Sony Pictures. Sony may have taken the lion's share of the money for Far From Home, but there's little doubt as to whose input was responsible for generating that money in the first place.
If I were to step back in time to 1989, when Tim Burton's Batman ruled the box office while the best Marvel could come up with at the time was Howard the Duck, and direct-to-video movies featuring Dolph Lundgren as the Punisher and J.D. Salinger's son wearing rubber ears as Captain America, and tell my despondent 14-year-old self of what the future held, I would definitely not have believed myself. I especially would not have believed the yarn that with only three movies, Marvel Studios have made FIVE BILLION DOLLARS in a single year. Of course, in real terms, their success is as beneficial to me as the construction of a Trump Tower would be, but as shallow as this sounds, there really is something gratifying somehow about knowing that I loved Spider-Man and all of those other characters "before it was cool" as the cliche goes.
I mean, I laughed out loud when retired tennis star Andy Murray's mother described him and his brother as "tennis geeks" basically appropriating a word that had once described people on the fringe to describe a couple of out-and-out jocks, who in general are the OPPOSITE of what geeks are in terms of societal integration. Such is the degree to which geekdom is the new normal, and how Marvel superheroes have pretty much captured the cultural zeitgeist.
Such is the stranglehold Marvel has on culture that critics of their approach to filmmaking just sound ridiculous as they shout themselves hoarse. There's something hilarious and hypocritical about how more "old school" fans of film decry superhero films (often targeting Marvel films in particular, seeing as how they're at the forefront of this wave) as bad for cinema in general while pining for such the return of old chestnuts like Westerns, which are not only often culturally-stunted but which could be every bit as vapid and formulaic as the very worst that the superhero genre has to offer. It's even funnier how many of these detractors have been trying for years now to predict the demise of superhero films and a return to the "good old days," whatever the hell those were. Before Marvel exploded, the movie landscape was dominated by overpaid movie stars, formulaic action movies and insipid romantic comedies. Having grown up with movies of the 80s, 90s and 00s, I can recall quite clearly that the cineplexes weren't exactly some utopia full of life-changing thinkpieces and indie gems. Heck, a brain-dead comedy like Home Alone and its virtually identical sequel managed to make a killing at the box-office back in 1990 and 1992, and for years during those decades, people like Meg Ryan made a killing playing the same person over and over again. And don't even get me started on the turkeys for which the likes of Demi Moore and Brad Pitt were inexplicably paid eight-figure salaries.
If nothing else, Marvel and other franchise movies have done the filmgoing community a favor by pretty much killing the star-driven way of making movies, and for that alone, I am immensely grateful to them.
My cup has run over several times. That said, and while I do look forward to their future films, I really hope to see them exploring different ways to tell their stories.
I honestly don't think Marvel have a problem of variety when it comes to their approach to scripts and stories. I absolutely loved Black Panther's approach to realpolitik as well as the glorious 70's-paranoia feel pervading Captain America: The Winter Soldier, for one thing. They know they can't just get by doing exactly the same thing over and over again, but there are some tropes that they tend to lean on a little too heavily, like computer-generated imagery and their almost ubiquitous humor.
As much as I defended The Winter Soldier's massive CGI climax featuring three Helicarriers crashing into the Potomac River (which I still think made sense in the context of the story) the more I think about it the more I would have appreciated a climax more in keeping with the movie's nicely grounded and gritty approach to storytelling. Not every climax has to be the epic battle we saw in Avengers: Endgame. In fact, moments like Endgame's battle become all the more special when the CGI is used sparingly.
To perhaps cite a better (or worse) example of why Marvel should probably scale back on CGI use, Black Panther had some really exceptional production value, including a solid script, vibrant cinematography, art direction and costume design, and a catchy, involving music score, only to have it compromised on many occasions, including during the climactic battle, by some truly awful CGI. Of course, some of their more fantastical movies will continue to need CGI, but I sincerely hope that as Marvel Studios enters this exciting new phase of their existence, they scale back a bit, the way they did with the first Iron Man film, and learn to use CGI a bit more judiciously. Not every film will need it in abundance.
Case in point; over the next two years Marvel will launch two movies featuring main characters without superhuman abilities. Black Widow and Shang-Chi, while sublimely skilled in martial arts, don't fly, wear high-tech suits of armor or even have serum-enhanced strength. In short, opportunities abound to go with purely practical effects, or to at least to use CGI in more subtle ways, like the makers of Logan did. This is the chance for Marvel to use CGI to enhance the viewer's experience, as they've done in the very best of their movies.
Also, perhaps Marvel can be a bit more deliberate with the humor. It works most of the time, but there are films in which it feels a tad overdone. I submit that Avengers: Age of Ultron was guilty of this as was, to a lesser extent, Avengers: Infinity War. Most of the time, humor works in advancing the story, but I do hope Marvel remembers that a film can survive without too much of it. Among the best examples of this, for me, are, again, The Winter Soldier and Black Panther, which, while managing to sneak some of the studio's trademark laughs into the script, manage to maintain a tone befitting the serious themes of their respective scripts. Not every Marvel movie has to be like Ant Man and its sequel or the MCU Spider-Man movies, after all, and one thing that really works for Endgame, a film that admittedly went for a fair share of laughs, is how dead serious it is about treating the effects of Thanos' snap, with extremely somber scenes like the memorial onto which Scott Lang stumbled upon returning from the Quantum Realm. Have Marvel flubbed it with the non-stop quippiness? Sure; Captain Marvel's constant snark in her debut movie just feels weird and borderline obnoxious at times, and when it's pointed out that much of Tony Stark's humor consists of him identifying characters in the films by pop-culture references (e.g. Squidward, Legolas, Reindeer Games, etc.) it's kind of hard to "unnotice" it. Adam Sandler tried doing the same thing in Pixels in what appears to be some kind of parody of it.
In truth, these ideas really feel like meaningless nitpicking considering that Marvel has gotten the art of blockbuster filmmaking virtually down to a science, and even managed to break their Oscar duck earlier this year with the multiple-award-winning Black Panther. I mean, who am I, who basically was just twiddling my thumbs and silently weeping back in the 1980s, to tell them how to do what they do? And truth be told, no matter how many risks Kevin Feige and co. take or now matter how many glass ceilings they try to break, there will always be critics.
But really, some suggestions are worth heeding. As recently as two years ago the internet was full of commentaries and Youtube videos, mostly from armchair experts, decrying the music that featured in Marvel films as "generic" or "forgettable" and propounding a number of reasons for this ranging from a general lack of quality to poor marketing strategy. Well, three years later, Marvel now has the distinction of having the first (and so far, only) superhero movie ever to have won an Academy Award for its original music score. Alan Silvestri's "Portals" from Avengers Endgame is a piece of film music that is almost as indelibly printed on the moviegoing consciousness as the Imperial March or Hedwig's Theme. I'll tell you this: ask any latter-day millennial or gen-i kid who isn't a movie buff to identify the themes of both Back to the Future and The Avengers, and I'm almost willing to bet I know which theme the majority of respondents would be able to recognize in a heartbeat. In short, Marvel paid attention, no matter how insignificant that segment of fandom seemed.
With very few exceptions in its 23-film catalog, Marvel's output has consistently entertained audiences and critics alike, but now, with a whole new generation of obscure heroes like Shang-Chi and the Eternals (as well as a whole bunch we don't yet know about) set to be unveiled, the temptation to lean on their formula will no doubt be overwhelming. I just hope, whether or not they respond to any fan input, that Marvel remembers that one of the main reasons they were able to succeed in the first place was by their willingness to try things that no one had ever seen before, and that, in all likelihood, this very same sense of daring will keep them at the forefront.
If I were to step back in time to 1989, when Tim Burton's Batman ruled the box office while the best Marvel could come up with at the time was Howard the Duck, and direct-to-video movies featuring Dolph Lundgren as the Punisher and J.D. Salinger's son wearing rubber ears as Captain America, and tell my despondent 14-year-old self of what the future held, I would definitely not have believed myself. I especially would not have believed the yarn that with only three movies, Marvel Studios have made FIVE BILLION DOLLARS in a single year. Of course, in real terms, their success is as beneficial to me as the construction of a Trump Tower would be, but as shallow as this sounds, there really is something gratifying somehow about knowing that I loved Spider-Man and all of those other characters "before it was cool" as the cliche goes.
I mean, I laughed out loud when retired tennis star Andy Murray's mother described him and his brother as "tennis geeks" basically appropriating a word that had once described people on the fringe to describe a couple of out-and-out jocks, who in general are the OPPOSITE of what geeks are in terms of societal integration. Such is the degree to which geekdom is the new normal, and how Marvel superheroes have pretty much captured the cultural zeitgeist.
Such is the stranglehold Marvel has on culture that critics of their approach to filmmaking just sound ridiculous as they shout themselves hoarse. There's something hilarious and hypocritical about how more "old school" fans of film decry superhero films (often targeting Marvel films in particular, seeing as how they're at the forefront of this wave) as bad for cinema in general while pining for such the return of old chestnuts like Westerns, which are not only often culturally-stunted but which could be every bit as vapid and formulaic as the very worst that the superhero genre has to offer. It's even funnier how many of these detractors have been trying for years now to predict the demise of superhero films and a return to the "good old days," whatever the hell those were. Before Marvel exploded, the movie landscape was dominated by overpaid movie stars, formulaic action movies and insipid romantic comedies. Having grown up with movies of the 80s, 90s and 00s, I can recall quite clearly that the cineplexes weren't exactly some utopia full of life-changing thinkpieces and indie gems. Heck, a brain-dead comedy like Home Alone and its virtually identical sequel managed to make a killing at the box-office back in 1990 and 1992, and for years during those decades, people like Meg Ryan made a killing playing the same person over and over again. And don't even get me started on the turkeys for which the likes of Demi Moore and Brad Pitt were inexplicably paid eight-figure salaries.
If nothing else, Marvel and other franchise movies have done the filmgoing community a favor by pretty much killing the star-driven way of making movies, and for that alone, I am immensely grateful to them.
My cup has run over several times. That said, and while I do look forward to their future films, I really hope to see them exploring different ways to tell their stories.
I honestly don't think Marvel have a problem of variety when it comes to their approach to scripts and stories. I absolutely loved Black Panther's approach to realpolitik as well as the glorious 70's-paranoia feel pervading Captain America: The Winter Soldier, for one thing. They know they can't just get by doing exactly the same thing over and over again, but there are some tropes that they tend to lean on a little too heavily, like computer-generated imagery and their almost ubiquitous humor.
As much as I defended The Winter Soldier's massive CGI climax featuring three Helicarriers crashing into the Potomac River (which I still think made sense in the context of the story) the more I think about it the more I would have appreciated a climax more in keeping with the movie's nicely grounded and gritty approach to storytelling. Not every climax has to be the epic battle we saw in Avengers: Endgame. In fact, moments like Endgame's battle become all the more special when the CGI is used sparingly.
To perhaps cite a better (or worse) example of why Marvel should probably scale back on CGI use, Black Panther had some really exceptional production value, including a solid script, vibrant cinematography, art direction and costume design, and a catchy, involving music score, only to have it compromised on many occasions, including during the climactic battle, by some truly awful CGI. Of course, some of their more fantastical movies will continue to need CGI, but I sincerely hope that as Marvel Studios enters this exciting new phase of their existence, they scale back a bit, the way they did with the first Iron Man film, and learn to use CGI a bit more judiciously. Not every film will need it in abundance.
Case in point; over the next two years Marvel will launch two movies featuring main characters without superhuman abilities. Black Widow and Shang-Chi, while sublimely skilled in martial arts, don't fly, wear high-tech suits of armor or even have serum-enhanced strength. In short, opportunities abound to go with purely practical effects, or to at least to use CGI in more subtle ways, like the makers of Logan did. This is the chance for Marvel to use CGI to enhance the viewer's experience, as they've done in the very best of their movies.
Also, perhaps Marvel can be a bit more deliberate with the humor. It works most of the time, but there are films in which it feels a tad overdone. I submit that Avengers: Age of Ultron was guilty of this as was, to a lesser extent, Avengers: Infinity War. Most of the time, humor works in advancing the story, but I do hope Marvel remembers that a film can survive without too much of it. Among the best examples of this, for me, are, again, The Winter Soldier and Black Panther, which, while managing to sneak some of the studio's trademark laughs into the script, manage to maintain a tone befitting the serious themes of their respective scripts. Not every Marvel movie has to be like Ant Man and its sequel or the MCU Spider-Man movies, after all, and one thing that really works for Endgame, a film that admittedly went for a fair share of laughs, is how dead serious it is about treating the effects of Thanos' snap, with extremely somber scenes like the memorial onto which Scott Lang stumbled upon returning from the Quantum Realm. Have Marvel flubbed it with the non-stop quippiness? Sure; Captain Marvel's constant snark in her debut movie just feels weird and borderline obnoxious at times, and when it's pointed out that much of Tony Stark's humor consists of him identifying characters in the films by pop-culture references (e.g. Squidward, Legolas, Reindeer Games, etc.) it's kind of hard to "unnotice" it. Adam Sandler tried doing the same thing in Pixels in what appears to be some kind of parody of it.
In truth, these ideas really feel like meaningless nitpicking considering that Marvel has gotten the art of blockbuster filmmaking virtually down to a science, and even managed to break their Oscar duck earlier this year with the multiple-award-winning Black Panther. I mean, who am I, who basically was just twiddling my thumbs and silently weeping back in the 1980s, to tell them how to do what they do? And truth be told, no matter how many risks Kevin Feige and co. take or now matter how many glass ceilings they try to break, there will always be critics.
But really, some suggestions are worth heeding. As recently as two years ago the internet was full of commentaries and Youtube videos, mostly from armchair experts, decrying the music that featured in Marvel films as "generic" or "forgettable" and propounding a number of reasons for this ranging from a general lack of quality to poor marketing strategy. Well, three years later, Marvel now has the distinction of having the first (and so far, only) superhero movie ever to have won an Academy Award for its original music score. Alan Silvestri's "Portals" from Avengers Endgame is a piece of film music that is almost as indelibly printed on the moviegoing consciousness as the Imperial March or Hedwig's Theme. I'll tell you this: ask any latter-day millennial or gen-i kid who isn't a movie buff to identify the themes of both Back to the Future and The Avengers, and I'm almost willing to bet I know which theme the majority of respondents would be able to recognize in a heartbeat. In short, Marvel paid attention, no matter how insignificant that segment of fandom seemed.
With very few exceptions in its 23-film catalog, Marvel's output has consistently entertained audiences and critics alike, but now, with a whole new generation of obscure heroes like Shang-Chi and the Eternals (as well as a whole bunch we don't yet know about) set to be unveiled, the temptation to lean on their formula will no doubt be overwhelming. I just hope, whether or not they respond to any fan input, that Marvel remembers that one of the main reasons they were able to succeed in the first place was by their willingness to try things that no one had ever seen before, and that, in all likelihood, this very same sense of daring will keep them at the forefront.
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