I basically thought I'd already said my piece on the whole "what constitutes real cinema" debate kicked off by Martin Scorsese about two months back when he took a cheap shot at the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As much of a fanboy as I admittedly am, I really had no interest in joining that particular fray because, well, one: there are other things to do, two: nobody's exactly paying me to launch some spirited online defense and, three: with 22 billion in the bank, a brace of Oscars and an arguably bright future ahead, Marvel certainly doesn't need anyone to stand up for them.
The thing is, it irks me that Scorsese has used this initial comment for some pretty shameless self-promotion in the weeks that have followed, basically rehashing it over and over again, and even launching a faux "advocacy" against the supposed "death of cinema," claiming that movie theaters should "rebel" against showing Marvel films. In short, while I was never particularly bothered about what ol' Marty thought of Marvel movies, it started to get on my nerves that, outwardly at least, he was appearing to launch some kind of campaign against them.
I had to admit, though, that given the glut of franchise films in the marketplace in 2019 alone, though, it was hard to argue with the impression that they really were muscling other non-franchise, risk-laden properties out of silver screen real estate. Had people forgotten what it was like to consume movies that aren't just part of some mass-marketed product line?
Then, two weeks after burgeoning franchise launcher Joker dominated the box-office, Maleficient: Mistress of Evil, a perfunctory sequel to 2014's surprise hit Maleficent opened to surprisingly limp numbers at the U.S. box office. It was enough to get the movie to number one, but not enough to even bring the film to half the opening weekend of the original. The movie now stands to finish its global box-office run with less than two-thirds of the surprisingly muscular box office of its predecessor. So basically, a significant portion of the first film's audience rejected the filmmakers' attempts to get a franchise going.
Things didn't end there; weeks later, Paramount attempted to launch Terminator: Dark Fate, its second reboot of the once-popular Terminator film franchise, following the disastrous Terminator: Genisys back in 2015, this time managing to attach James Cameron's name to the project as one of its screenwriters and producers. This was a sequel/reboot that next to nobody asked for, and the numbers reflected this reality as the film's #1 debut was overshadowed by the paltry amount it took in (USD29 million) next to its gargantuan budget (USD185 million). Audiences had now said "no" to two franchises in a row.
A week later, Doctor Sleep, a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of a Stephen King novel, The Shining, tanked at the box office in spite of decent tracking, showing that goodwill from the cult status of The Shining wasn't going to be enough to sell a new movie. Another franchise lost, this time to Midway, a World War II movie by disaster-porn meister Roland Emmerich. That's three in a row.
But the best was yet to come.
Last weekend, Ford v Ferrari, a new film based on the remarkable true story of the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans and the events leading up to it, opened against a reboot of Charlie's Angels, a franchise last seen in theaters way back in 2003, which, if I'm honest, absolutely nobody was asking for. Ford v Ferrari was tracking to do well thanks to the combined star power of proven box-office draw Matt Damon and former Batman Christian Bale, and was predicted to open well above Charlie's Angels. What happened? FvF ended up exceeding expectations, grossing USD31.5 million versus 20+ million predictions, while CA made USD8.8 milion versus predictions of USD13 million.
-SPOILER ALERT-
Ford v Ferrari, it should be pointed out, is not a typical underdog story in that it's not about the hero winning in the end or even about a "Rocky" finish in which the hero loses the fight but "wins" the crowd. The hero, Ken Miles DOESN'T actually win the 24 Hours of Le Mans despite being the best driver of the race, nor does he lose to Ferrari and get a standing ovation. Rather, what happens is that, on Henry Ford II's orders, he slows down his race-leading car so that the three Ford GT40s can come home in a dead heat and make a sensational photo op for the company. Unfortunately, by doing so he has exposed himself to a technicality that means that the driver who started farther back from him then wins the race as he has driven a longer distance. It's one of the most farcical endings to a race in motorsport history, and full kudos to James Mangold and his crew for not sugarcoating it in any way. And THEN, in a cruel twist which also reflects what really happened, scarcely a month after NOT winning at Le Mans and while he is busy at work developing next year's car, Miles crashes and dies. Holy cow. Having read about this race in a book, I knew these things were going to happen, but seeing them unfold on the big screen I was struck at the filmmakers' courage and candor. They may have fudged some of the details but they were truly honest when it really counted, and in doing so they delivered a gut-punch of an ending that is decidedly NOT franchise-friendly.
And yet, for all of that, audiences embraced this movie unequivocally, and continue to do so.
-END SPOILER ALERT-
That audiences have ignored several franchises in a row and have embraced a good, old-fashioned, emotionally authentic yarn about underdogs that doesn't feel in any way engineered or market-tested basically debunks Scorsese's assertion that franchise pics will gobble up the marketplace. Ford v Ferrari got made, didn't it? It got a wide release, didn't it? And perhaps most notably, it was CHAMPIONED, at festivals and in general marketing efforts, by the very studio whom Scorsese accuses of inundating the marketplace with "amusement park rides."
In short, there is no truth to the assertion that Marvel movies are "killing cinema" because several franchises in a row have JUST tanked, and audiences have JUST embraced a very genuine example of old-school filmmaking.
The bottom line is that audiences can embrace both a Marvel movie like Avengers: Endgame and a smaller, more intimate movie like Ford v Ferrari because both of them speak to them on a primal emotional level. They can reject franchise entries like Charlie's Angels, Terminator: Dark Fate and Maleficent 2 because those feel, by contrast, like by-the-numbers products injected with catchy marketing hooks and "updated" sensibilities. Scorsese can make claims about emotional connections all he wants, but I'm willing to bet nobody was hospitalized from crying uncontrollably after the death of a character in one of his movies, even the popular ones.
What people don't realize about Scorsese's assertions is that he isn't just insulting Marvel; he's insulting the audience that likes to watch their movies, basically claiming that we wouldn't know "cinema" if it hit us on the head, and that it's up to auteurs like him to save us from all of this commercialized claptrap.
Well, sorry to break it to you, Marty, but we DO know good movies when we see them, and we AREN'T just numb consumers who'll eat up anything the monolithic franchise-generating Hollywood throws at us.
If you couldn't get money for YOUR overblown passion project, maybe it's less a problem of Marvel movies and more about the fact that your last movie lost a bundle of money for the studio who bet on it, and that this new one, had it received a traditional theatrical release, probably would have done the same.
In short, if audiences can embrace a film like Ford v Ferrari, which by even your standard is definitely a sterling example of "cinema" but not YOUR work, then maybe you're the problem.
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Monday, November 18, 2019
Chasing Perfection: A Review of Ford v Ferrari
directed by James Mangold
written by Jez Butterworth, John Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller
After what feels like an eternity in development hell for those of us following this film, Ford v Ferrari finally hits theaters worldwide this weekend, and boy, does it hit hard.
The film begins with race car driver Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) winning the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans in an Aston Martin, only to be told in the very next scene during a doctor's visit that he can no longer race because of a serious heart condition. He then turns his attention to designing and selling cars in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) grandson of the late, great Henry Ford, is having trouble selling his stodgy old cars to the baby boomers now coming of age with lots of cash to spend. One of his junior execs, the energetic Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) comes up with a bold idea: make the name of Ford synonymous with international motorsport glory by buying up the company of Italian racing legend Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) who has apparently expressed interest in selling it. Ford greenlights the idea, and Iacocca makes the trip to Ferrari's factory headquarters in Modena, Italy, only to be shot down in spectacular fashion when Enzo turns down the offer, having used Ford's offer to purchase to leverage a higher price from Italian automaker Fiat, who had also been looking to purchase Ferrari's company.
Humiliated, Ford comes up with a different plan: he dispatches Iacocca to assemble a team of the best automotive engineers in the world so that he can build a car to beat Ferrari at the single most important motorsport event in the world: the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a race which Ferrari's cars have won for the last five years. This directive brings Iacocca to Shelby's doorstep, but Shelby will only agree if he gets to bring his team on board, including his irascible driver and mechanic Ken Miles (Christian Bale) a World War II vet who is not only a wizard behind the wheel but has an uncanny knack for understanding what makes a car go even faster. Miles is at first averse to the idea of working for a corporate slug like Ford, but with his LA garage being locked up by the Internal Revenue Service and a family in the form of wife Mollie (Catriona Balfe) and son Peter (Noah Jupe) to take care of, Miles accepts Shelby's offer. Unfortunately, as they begin their quest to build Ford's world-beating car, Shelby, Miles and crew are beset by the Ford's right-hand man, the slimy Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) whose main goal is to sell more cars. Unfortunately for Shelby and company, Miles doesn't quite fit into Beebe's image of a "Ford Man," i.e., a driver who can sell cars. Thus the true battle of the film begins: Shelby and his small crew of artisans find themselves in a pitched battle against the consummate capitalist Beebe and his own assembled crew for the right to bring glory to the Ford name.
I was drawn to this story upon reading A.J. Baime's thoroughly engrossing book "Go Like Hell," which narrated the events of this movie, albeit rather more expansively, and I was really looking forward to seeing this made into a movie. Though Ford v Ferrari is not based on Baime's narration of the events, and even though Mangold and his writers have excised a few key players from these events, like Ferrari driver John Surtees, they've preserved what really matters about this truly incredible story and, despite some inevitable creative flourishes, have crafted something that honors the legacy of everyone involved, especially the previously unheralded Ken Miles.
Damon and Bale are in top form as these two motorsport icons. While the latter is perhaps rightfully getting a bit more attention for his portrayal of the fiery ex-tank commander-turned race driver Ken Miles, in equal parts because of his steely performance and his somewhat shocking weight loss, Damon's turn is no less impressive given that it's a far more subtle role. He not only conveys Shelby's ability to navigate both the world of the corporate mogul and the pure racer, but also captures the barely-expressed but nonetheless visible anguish of a racer who has been forced out of the sport by events beyond his control. As he would take his pills for his heart condition I could almost feel him groaning.
It's together, though, that Damon and Bale truly deliver dynamite performances. Their onscreen chemistry is sensational, and really put me right in the moment, helping me feel the pressure that their real life counterparts must have felt knowing that they had a very tall order to deliver against considerable odds. Bale also has a great onscreen rapports with Catriona Balfe as Mollie, a strong and supportive wife who manages to elevate her somewhat minor role, and with Noah Jupe as Peter, whose hero worship of his father is tempered only by his wide-eyed fear that every time Ken climbs into a race car may be his last, but it's Miles' onscreen relationship with Carroll Shelby that defines this film.
Though Damon and Bale carry the film, the rest of the supporting cast make their presence felt as well. Letts shines as Henry Ford II, or "the Deuce" as he was popularly known in automotive circles, a mogul struggling to emerge from the long shadow cast by his late, pioneering grandfather, whose ruthlessness as a businessman is matched only by his personal insecurity and his pettiness. I'd argue that Ford was the biggest casualty of the inevitable trimming that the screenwriters had to do to cram this story into its surprisingly brisk two-and-a-half hour running time, as Baime's book expounded quite a bit on what was going on in his head, but Letts definitely makes the most out of the role and then some. I wouldn't be surprised if his name comes up when award nominations are announced in a few months' time. Bernthal turns in a nicely-nuanced performance as Iacocca, another eventual automotive icon in his own right, but who, back in those days, was just a suit with ambitions of being a rebel just like Shelby and Miles, ambitions that he unfortunately had to keep in check to please his boss. As his colleague Leo Beebe, whose sole ambition is to please his boss, Josh Lucas goes quite broad with the oiliness, and I might be inclined to critique him for it, but he's so effective as what is effectively the film's bad guy that it's hard to begrudge him his approach. There were other actors in smaller parts who left quite a nice impression on me as well, like Ray McKinnon as Shelby's crew chief Phil Remington, and even Remo Girone in his brief turn as the legendary Enzo Ferrari.
While Mangold smartly focuses on the human element of this story, when the action hits the racetrack he also definitely delivers the goods as well. Personally, I have seen a fair number of racing movies, both in theaters and on home video, including classics like John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix, adrenaline rushes like Tony Scott's Days of Thunder and Ron Howard's Rush and even parodies like Adam McKay's Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and I have to say, as far as recreating thrilling racing sequences goes, Ford v Ferrari is right up there with the best of them. According to the filmmakers, the use of computer-generated imagery was kept to a minimum, which means a lot of the high-octane sequences were as close to the real thing as it can get. The film teases the on-track action early on with snippets of Shelby's win at the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans and, a little later a gripping race at Willow Springs which Miles wins by the skin of his teeth. Apparently one of the film's few embellishments was that several of the victories Miles claimed in his career were nowhere near as close as the movie made them out to be, i.e. he won them by (ahem) miles. This was perhaps one of the movie's foibles; several of the otherwise gripping races were decided by late lunges or last-lap gasps by Miles, an occurrence that most racing fans can attest is not all that common in one's entire racing career, let alone in one season. Ron Howard's Rush was a little more faithful to history in this respect. Still, given the fantastic cinematography and choreographed driving at work, and the overall panache with which the on-track action was presented, it's really hard to hold this bit of creative license against the filmmakers. And as someone who pored over Baimes' book and Youtube videos on the subject, I can attest that the extraordinary ending is quite accurately depicted. As a fan of film soundtracks I also greatly appreciated Marco Beltrami's and Buck Sanders' jazzy, dynamic, era-appropriate soundtrack.
This movie is a must-see for gearheads, sports fans and fans of underdog stories in general. Anyone not familiar with the events depicted should steer clear of Wikipedia or other internet articles talking about them to maximize their enjoyment. I may have known exactly what was going to happen, but I still had a marvelous time.
9.5/10
written by Jez Butterworth, John Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller
After what feels like an eternity in development hell for those of us following this film, Ford v Ferrari finally hits theaters worldwide this weekend, and boy, does it hit hard.
The film begins with race car driver Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) winning the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans in an Aston Martin, only to be told in the very next scene during a doctor's visit that he can no longer race because of a serious heart condition. He then turns his attention to designing and selling cars in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) grandson of the late, great Henry Ford, is having trouble selling his stodgy old cars to the baby boomers now coming of age with lots of cash to spend. One of his junior execs, the energetic Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) comes up with a bold idea: make the name of Ford synonymous with international motorsport glory by buying up the company of Italian racing legend Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) who has apparently expressed interest in selling it. Ford greenlights the idea, and Iacocca makes the trip to Ferrari's factory headquarters in Modena, Italy, only to be shot down in spectacular fashion when Enzo turns down the offer, having used Ford's offer to purchase to leverage a higher price from Italian automaker Fiat, who had also been looking to purchase Ferrari's company.
Humiliated, Ford comes up with a different plan: he dispatches Iacocca to assemble a team of the best automotive engineers in the world so that he can build a car to beat Ferrari at the single most important motorsport event in the world: the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a race which Ferrari's cars have won for the last five years. This directive brings Iacocca to Shelby's doorstep, but Shelby will only agree if he gets to bring his team on board, including his irascible driver and mechanic Ken Miles (Christian Bale) a World War II vet who is not only a wizard behind the wheel but has an uncanny knack for understanding what makes a car go even faster. Miles is at first averse to the idea of working for a corporate slug like Ford, but with his LA garage being locked up by the Internal Revenue Service and a family in the form of wife Mollie (Catriona Balfe) and son Peter (Noah Jupe) to take care of, Miles accepts Shelby's offer. Unfortunately, as they begin their quest to build Ford's world-beating car, Shelby, Miles and crew are beset by the Ford's right-hand man, the slimy Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) whose main goal is to sell more cars. Unfortunately for Shelby and company, Miles doesn't quite fit into Beebe's image of a "Ford Man," i.e., a driver who can sell cars. Thus the true battle of the film begins: Shelby and his small crew of artisans find themselves in a pitched battle against the consummate capitalist Beebe and his own assembled crew for the right to bring glory to the Ford name.
I was drawn to this story upon reading A.J. Baime's thoroughly engrossing book "Go Like Hell," which narrated the events of this movie, albeit rather more expansively, and I was really looking forward to seeing this made into a movie. Though Ford v Ferrari is not based on Baime's narration of the events, and even though Mangold and his writers have excised a few key players from these events, like Ferrari driver John Surtees, they've preserved what really matters about this truly incredible story and, despite some inevitable creative flourishes, have crafted something that honors the legacy of everyone involved, especially the previously unheralded Ken Miles.
Damon and Bale are in top form as these two motorsport icons. While the latter is perhaps rightfully getting a bit more attention for his portrayal of the fiery ex-tank commander-turned race driver Ken Miles, in equal parts because of his steely performance and his somewhat shocking weight loss, Damon's turn is no less impressive given that it's a far more subtle role. He not only conveys Shelby's ability to navigate both the world of the corporate mogul and the pure racer, but also captures the barely-expressed but nonetheless visible anguish of a racer who has been forced out of the sport by events beyond his control. As he would take his pills for his heart condition I could almost feel him groaning.
It's together, though, that Damon and Bale truly deliver dynamite performances. Their onscreen chemistry is sensational, and really put me right in the moment, helping me feel the pressure that their real life counterparts must have felt knowing that they had a very tall order to deliver against considerable odds. Bale also has a great onscreen rapports with Catriona Balfe as Mollie, a strong and supportive wife who manages to elevate her somewhat minor role, and with Noah Jupe as Peter, whose hero worship of his father is tempered only by his wide-eyed fear that every time Ken climbs into a race car may be his last, but it's Miles' onscreen relationship with Carroll Shelby that defines this film.
Though Damon and Bale carry the film, the rest of the supporting cast make their presence felt as well. Letts shines as Henry Ford II, or "the Deuce" as he was popularly known in automotive circles, a mogul struggling to emerge from the long shadow cast by his late, pioneering grandfather, whose ruthlessness as a businessman is matched only by his personal insecurity and his pettiness. I'd argue that Ford was the biggest casualty of the inevitable trimming that the screenwriters had to do to cram this story into its surprisingly brisk two-and-a-half hour running time, as Baime's book expounded quite a bit on what was going on in his head, but Letts definitely makes the most out of the role and then some. I wouldn't be surprised if his name comes up when award nominations are announced in a few months' time. Bernthal turns in a nicely-nuanced performance as Iacocca, another eventual automotive icon in his own right, but who, back in those days, was just a suit with ambitions of being a rebel just like Shelby and Miles, ambitions that he unfortunately had to keep in check to please his boss. As his colleague Leo Beebe, whose sole ambition is to please his boss, Josh Lucas goes quite broad with the oiliness, and I might be inclined to critique him for it, but he's so effective as what is effectively the film's bad guy that it's hard to begrudge him his approach. There were other actors in smaller parts who left quite a nice impression on me as well, like Ray McKinnon as Shelby's crew chief Phil Remington, and even Remo Girone in his brief turn as the legendary Enzo Ferrari.
While Mangold smartly focuses on the human element of this story, when the action hits the racetrack he also definitely delivers the goods as well. Personally, I have seen a fair number of racing movies, both in theaters and on home video, including classics like John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix, adrenaline rushes like Tony Scott's Days of Thunder and Ron Howard's Rush and even parodies like Adam McKay's Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and I have to say, as far as recreating thrilling racing sequences goes, Ford v Ferrari is right up there with the best of them. According to the filmmakers, the use of computer-generated imagery was kept to a minimum, which means a lot of the high-octane sequences were as close to the real thing as it can get. The film teases the on-track action early on with snippets of Shelby's win at the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans and, a little later a gripping race at Willow Springs which Miles wins by the skin of his teeth. Apparently one of the film's few embellishments was that several of the victories Miles claimed in his career were nowhere near as close as the movie made them out to be, i.e. he won them by (ahem) miles. This was perhaps one of the movie's foibles; several of the otherwise gripping races were decided by late lunges or last-lap gasps by Miles, an occurrence that most racing fans can attest is not all that common in one's entire racing career, let alone in one season. Ron Howard's Rush was a little more faithful to history in this respect. Still, given the fantastic cinematography and choreographed driving at work, and the overall panache with which the on-track action was presented, it's really hard to hold this bit of creative license against the filmmakers. And as someone who pored over Baimes' book and Youtube videos on the subject, I can attest that the extraordinary ending is quite accurately depicted. As a fan of film soundtracks I also greatly appreciated Marco Beltrami's and Buck Sanders' jazzy, dynamic, era-appropriate soundtrack.
This movie is a must-see for gearheads, sports fans and fans of underdog stories in general. Anyone not familiar with the events depicted should steer clear of Wikipedia or other internet articles talking about them to maximize their enjoyment. I may have known exactly what was going to happen, but I still had a marvelous time.
9.5/10
Saturday, November 9, 2019
The Acting Dead
So, according to a story that first ran in The Hollywood Reporter, actor James Dean, who died in a car crash in 1955 after making only three films, will be resurrected digitally by a new film company in order to star in a new feature film, one set in the Vietnam War, which began a full ten years after his death.
This is apparently legal, given that the fledgling filmmakers have already approached Dean's estate and secured its permission, most likely with a big wad of cash. That said, however, there is something distinctly repugnant about these people's declaration that they have "cast James Dean" in a role when it won't be James Dean actually playing the role, but rather a digital avatar bearing his likeness. It won't be James Dean reciting lines, or emoting, or doing pretty much anything onscreen, but rather a combination of computer-generated imagery, possibly someone in a motion-capture suit and a voice actor. So, however lawful this planned project it may be, it feels all kinds of wrong.
The sad part is that Hollywood has only itself to blame for creating an atmosphere in which people could even begin to think that this was okay. They've been resurrecting dead recording artists to star alongside living ones in commercials since the 1990s. Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire and Nat King Cole have all done television commercials well after their death, and in feature films the line was crossed quite some time ago when Laurence Olivier appeared in 2004's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a movie filmed approximately 14 years after his death. Disney basically sealed the deal when they grafted the late Peter Cushing's digital face onto a double in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story three years ago.
But Olivier's appearance, while off-putting, amounted to little more than a cameo in a movie that almost no one saw, a bit of an oddity designed to show off how digital technology could pay homage to the pulpy movies of old, and Cushing's "reprising" his role as Grand Moff Tarkin, while arguably even more off-putting, served a greater narrative purpose.
In the great scheme, this planned film with its digital star would probably be ignored were it not for the gimmick of casting someone who's been dead for over sixty-four years. In fact, even with the press it's been getting over the last couple of days, there's still no guarantee it'll be any more than a blip at the box office. James Dean has been dead for so long that only the oldest of baby boomers would even remember watching him in any original theatrical release. He's only relevant to film buffs and hipsters, which means this movie, even with this gimmick, is far from a sure sell. One might argue that the filmmakers aren't even doing this to make an easy buck considering that most moviegoing audiences these days don't even know who James Dean was. Maybe they're sincere "Deanphiles," motivated by a sincere albeit misguided desire to do him some form of homage. The scary thing, however, is the gates this movie, even if it's only moderately successful, could kick wide open.
The people representing Dean's estate already offered a somewhat chilling preview of what the success of this movie could portend, as they basically referred to their entire portfolio of dead actors and actresses whose likenesses could be plundered for future films. And surely, the big boys like Disney and Warner Brothers are now paying attention to how this will play out as well, even if the stars of their movies are voicing their disagreement. Disney, for one thing, has already borrowed a dead actor's face.
Considering how amoral the likes of Hollywood producers are, I could see them justifying this practice in a heartbeat. Why bother looking for Daniel Craig's replacement as James Bond when you could just pay Sean Connery for his likeness, or Roger Moore's estate for his? Why wrangle out contracts with Henry Cavill when you could just put "Christopher Reeve," the actor best remembered by most people in the role, in all future Superman movies? Why put up with Joaquin Phoenix's eccentricities when you could have Heath Ledger "play" the Joker forever? And then there's the question of how the folks at Marvel, who doubtlessly have terrabytes of digital footage of Avengers stars like Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth and many more, may use this data in the future, when Kevin Feige has retired and been replaced by an exec who's less interested in telling stories and more keen on cashing in on nostalgia. The possibilities for exploitation and really terrible creative decisions are quite numerous.
Frankly, I don't really care if things like this mean that actors can no longer demand eight-figure salaries. One of the reasons I love superhero movies apart from the fact that they bring to life the comics I grew up with is that they effectively killed the superstar system that was so en vogue in the 80s and 90s, where films were star-driven rather than story-driven and during which we got some pretty shlocky stuff. But I do sympathize with the struggling actors and actresses who won't be able to get decent work because some asshole in a suit would rather pay some long dead actor's estate than help a living one put food on the table. It's dehumanizing, if I'm honest, and justifying this practice by saying crap like "the family approves" doesn't really help matters any. I'm sure the relatives of James Dean, many of whom have probably never even met him, are thrilled to get a big bag of cash that they didn't lift a finger to earn beyond signing on the dotted line. In short, their motives are somewhat suspect as well.
As a moviegoer, though, I'd have to say, again, that this utter dehumanizing of movie performances is something that could doom cinema in a way that Martin Scorsese, in his anti-Marvel rants, never imagined possible. One reason I have loved movies since childhood, whether these are live-action or animated, is the fact that, however fantastical many of the movies I enjoy may be, there is still a very human element in all of them. Whatever the snobs may say, even these movies convey emotional truths that are at the very core of our humanity, even through the art of make-believe.
But there is a world of difference between the humanity conveyed by a character in an animated film like Coco and the inhuman monstrosity that James Dean's prospective grave robbers will soon unleash upon whoever pays to see their movie. One is the work of loving creators who work from scratch to craft something authentic, while the other is distinctly inauthentic, with its purveyors appropriating something they didn't create in the hope of evoking emotions in the audience that the likeness of the living person might have done had he been alive. Of course, to even attempt to compare the digital avatar to an actual, human actor, which is something the sorry excuses for filmmakers have attempted to do, isn't something that anyone with even a vague sense of human decency should do.
This is one of those times in which we, as the audience, have infinitely more power than the high-powered Hollywood producers and their ilk. Whether it's a stunt being pulled by some two-bit, unknown filmmakers like these guys, or whether it's the big players like Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony or anyone else trying to sell us movies with resurrected stars, we have to reject this affront to storytelling. The art of movies is part of what makes us human, and there is quite honestly nothing human about what could follow if this becomes, to paraphrase Elijah Wood, "a thing."
This is apparently legal, given that the fledgling filmmakers have already approached Dean's estate and secured its permission, most likely with a big wad of cash. That said, however, there is something distinctly repugnant about these people's declaration that they have "cast James Dean" in a role when it won't be James Dean actually playing the role, but rather a digital avatar bearing his likeness. It won't be James Dean reciting lines, or emoting, or doing pretty much anything onscreen, but rather a combination of computer-generated imagery, possibly someone in a motion-capture suit and a voice actor. So, however lawful this planned project it may be, it feels all kinds of wrong.
The sad part is that Hollywood has only itself to blame for creating an atmosphere in which people could even begin to think that this was okay. They've been resurrecting dead recording artists to star alongside living ones in commercials since the 1990s. Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire and Nat King Cole have all done television commercials well after their death, and in feature films the line was crossed quite some time ago when Laurence Olivier appeared in 2004's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a movie filmed approximately 14 years after his death. Disney basically sealed the deal when they grafted the late Peter Cushing's digital face onto a double in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story three years ago.
But Olivier's appearance, while off-putting, amounted to little more than a cameo in a movie that almost no one saw, a bit of an oddity designed to show off how digital technology could pay homage to the pulpy movies of old, and Cushing's "reprising" his role as Grand Moff Tarkin, while arguably even more off-putting, served a greater narrative purpose.
In the great scheme, this planned film with its digital star would probably be ignored were it not for the gimmick of casting someone who's been dead for over sixty-four years. In fact, even with the press it's been getting over the last couple of days, there's still no guarantee it'll be any more than a blip at the box office. James Dean has been dead for so long that only the oldest of baby boomers would even remember watching him in any original theatrical release. He's only relevant to film buffs and hipsters, which means this movie, even with this gimmick, is far from a sure sell. One might argue that the filmmakers aren't even doing this to make an easy buck considering that most moviegoing audiences these days don't even know who James Dean was. Maybe they're sincere "Deanphiles," motivated by a sincere albeit misguided desire to do him some form of homage. The scary thing, however, is the gates this movie, even if it's only moderately successful, could kick wide open.
The people representing Dean's estate already offered a somewhat chilling preview of what the success of this movie could portend, as they basically referred to their entire portfolio of dead actors and actresses whose likenesses could be plundered for future films. And surely, the big boys like Disney and Warner Brothers are now paying attention to how this will play out as well, even if the stars of their movies are voicing their disagreement. Disney, for one thing, has already borrowed a dead actor's face.
Considering how amoral the likes of Hollywood producers are, I could see them justifying this practice in a heartbeat. Why bother looking for Daniel Craig's replacement as James Bond when you could just pay Sean Connery for his likeness, or Roger Moore's estate for his? Why wrangle out contracts with Henry Cavill when you could just put "Christopher Reeve," the actor best remembered by most people in the role, in all future Superman movies? Why put up with Joaquin Phoenix's eccentricities when you could have Heath Ledger "play" the Joker forever? And then there's the question of how the folks at Marvel, who doubtlessly have terrabytes of digital footage of Avengers stars like Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth and many more, may use this data in the future, when Kevin Feige has retired and been replaced by an exec who's less interested in telling stories and more keen on cashing in on nostalgia. The possibilities for exploitation and really terrible creative decisions are quite numerous.
Frankly, I don't really care if things like this mean that actors can no longer demand eight-figure salaries. One of the reasons I love superhero movies apart from the fact that they bring to life the comics I grew up with is that they effectively killed the superstar system that was so en vogue in the 80s and 90s, where films were star-driven rather than story-driven and during which we got some pretty shlocky stuff. But I do sympathize with the struggling actors and actresses who won't be able to get decent work because some asshole in a suit would rather pay some long dead actor's estate than help a living one put food on the table. It's dehumanizing, if I'm honest, and justifying this practice by saying crap like "the family approves" doesn't really help matters any. I'm sure the relatives of James Dean, many of whom have probably never even met him, are thrilled to get a big bag of cash that they didn't lift a finger to earn beyond signing on the dotted line. In short, their motives are somewhat suspect as well.
As a moviegoer, though, I'd have to say, again, that this utter dehumanizing of movie performances is something that could doom cinema in a way that Martin Scorsese, in his anti-Marvel rants, never imagined possible. One reason I have loved movies since childhood, whether these are live-action or animated, is the fact that, however fantastical many of the movies I enjoy may be, there is still a very human element in all of them. Whatever the snobs may say, even these movies convey emotional truths that are at the very core of our humanity, even through the art of make-believe.
But there is a world of difference between the humanity conveyed by a character in an animated film like Coco and the inhuman monstrosity that James Dean's prospective grave robbers will soon unleash upon whoever pays to see their movie. One is the work of loving creators who work from scratch to craft something authentic, while the other is distinctly inauthentic, with its purveyors appropriating something they didn't create in the hope of evoking emotions in the audience that the likeness of the living person might have done had he been alive. Of course, to even attempt to compare the digital avatar to an actual, human actor, which is something the sorry excuses for filmmakers have attempted to do, isn't something that anyone with even a vague sense of human decency should do.
This is one of those times in which we, as the audience, have infinitely more power than the high-powered Hollywood producers and their ilk. Whether it's a stunt being pulled by some two-bit, unknown filmmakers like these guys, or whether it's the big players like Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony or anyone else trying to sell us movies with resurrected stars, we have to reject this affront to storytelling. The art of movies is part of what makes us human, and there is quite honestly nothing human about what could follow if this becomes, to paraphrase Elijah Wood, "a thing."
Monday, October 14, 2019
Staying in the Conversation Without Even Trying
Not having seen a movie since Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I haven't really had much to write about. I may go to see Joker eventually, but given all that's been written about it, even if I do see it I probably won't weigh in beyond a paragraph or two. Overall, then, I've been content to let this blog go quiet, though I briefly had contemplated writing a piece about how I could, theoretically, just walk away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (with the possible exception of the Spider-Man series) given how satisfyingly Avengers: Endgame tied up just about everything. It was a silly post, with even more fanboygasming than usual, and I eventually abandoned it.
But then, THEN, legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese, while promoting his new Netflix movie The Irishman makes an off-the-cuff comment about Marvel films not being "cinema" and THEN, after a brief surge of outrage from Marvel fandom which dies down in almost no time at all, doubles down and says that theaters should resist the urge to put Marvel movies in theaters and put "narrative" films in there instead. This is the stuff of blogger gold, but maybe not for the reasons one would think.
I have no interest in defending Marvel movies against "attacks" by anyone, even someone as esteemed as Scorsese. They've kept me thoroughly entertained over the last ten years and have taken plenty of my money in the bargain. I don't really owe them anything.
What interests me, though, is the notion of Marvel being such a force in the film industry that, even with its latest movie still seven months away, even without a single trailer for any of its films scheduled to drop in the near future, even without Disney lifting any of the considerable marketing muscle it can bring to bear, it can still manage to remain a dominant part of the pop culture conversation. This, to me, is astonishing and, I will argue, unprecedented. We never saw this happen to franchises like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or even James Bond.
It's even more amazing when one considers where Marvel were as a company a little over twenty years ago; teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, they sold off their characters to two-bit filmmakers like Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (among others) and were just happy to keep their doors open. Now, if one is to believe Scorsese, they're like some kind of all-conquering overlords that theater owners need to "resist." Who'd have thought they'd come this far in so short a time?
All that said, while I do sympathize with Scorsese, who had a hard time finding funding for The Irishman, and whose last theatrical release, Silence was ignored at both the box office and the Oscars, I have to say his doom and gloom scenario is basically wrong. Setting any discussion of artistic merit aside, Marvel movies only come out at specific times in the year, make most of their money in their first two weeks or so (with very few exceptions), after which they leave, leaving plenty of room for the "narrative films" Scorsese is championing to breathe. Look at the success of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Movies in general are going to be just fine, even with Marvel all over the landscape. Heck, Downton Abbey opened at number one at the U.S. box office just a few weeks ago, so clearly there's enough moviegoers' money to go around.
Secondly, even before Marvel movies started dominating the scene, there were plenty of other populist films making "all" the money, whether it was Jerry Bruckheimer films, or any number of movies from the "movie star era" like franchise entries starring Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, Eddie Murphy or Will Smith. If and when the "Marvel era" comes to an end, someone else is simply going to step in and fill the vacuum and I honestly would hate for it to be overpaid movie stars again. I can pretty much guarantee that even if Marvel stopped releasing movies tomorrow, the likes of the aforementioned Downton Abbey, or any of Scorsese's movies for that matter, would not suddenly start making a billion dollars around the world.
Still, my net takeaway from all of this is a positive one. I'm old enough to remember a time when I could never have imagined that movies based on Marvel Comics would have achieved anything even approaching the level of success they have enjoyed. There's nothing that declares one has arrived quite like taking a few snipes from the titans of the industry. Heck, when I was growing up, had an interviewer asked one of the important directors of the time (except maybe for pulp lovers like Steven Spielberg) about Marvel products, the most likely response would have been "what's Marvel?" To go from not even being in the conversation, to dominating the conversation without even trying, is really something.
Sure, the "Marvel era" will come an end one day, just as Pixar's hegemonic stranglehold on the animated feature-film genre eventually came to an end, but in my humble opinion, that day isn't coming any time soon.
But then, THEN, legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese, while promoting his new Netflix movie The Irishman makes an off-the-cuff comment about Marvel films not being "cinema" and THEN, after a brief surge of outrage from Marvel fandom which dies down in almost no time at all, doubles down and says that theaters should resist the urge to put Marvel movies in theaters and put "narrative" films in there instead. This is the stuff of blogger gold, but maybe not for the reasons one would think.
I have no interest in defending Marvel movies against "attacks" by anyone, even someone as esteemed as Scorsese. They've kept me thoroughly entertained over the last ten years and have taken plenty of my money in the bargain. I don't really owe them anything.
What interests me, though, is the notion of Marvel being such a force in the film industry that, even with its latest movie still seven months away, even without a single trailer for any of its films scheduled to drop in the near future, even without Disney lifting any of the considerable marketing muscle it can bring to bear, it can still manage to remain a dominant part of the pop culture conversation. This, to me, is astonishing and, I will argue, unprecedented. We never saw this happen to franchises like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or even James Bond.
It's even more amazing when one considers where Marvel were as a company a little over twenty years ago; teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, they sold off their characters to two-bit filmmakers like Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (among others) and were just happy to keep their doors open. Now, if one is to believe Scorsese, they're like some kind of all-conquering overlords that theater owners need to "resist." Who'd have thought they'd come this far in so short a time?
All that said, while I do sympathize with Scorsese, who had a hard time finding funding for The Irishman, and whose last theatrical release, Silence was ignored at both the box office and the Oscars, I have to say his doom and gloom scenario is basically wrong. Setting any discussion of artistic merit aside, Marvel movies only come out at specific times in the year, make most of their money in their first two weeks or so (with very few exceptions), after which they leave, leaving plenty of room for the "narrative films" Scorsese is championing to breathe. Look at the success of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Movies in general are going to be just fine, even with Marvel all over the landscape. Heck, Downton Abbey opened at number one at the U.S. box office just a few weeks ago, so clearly there's enough moviegoers' money to go around.
Secondly, even before Marvel movies started dominating the scene, there were plenty of other populist films making "all" the money, whether it was Jerry Bruckheimer films, or any number of movies from the "movie star era" like franchise entries starring Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, Eddie Murphy or Will Smith. If and when the "Marvel era" comes to an end, someone else is simply going to step in and fill the vacuum and I honestly would hate for it to be overpaid movie stars again. I can pretty much guarantee that even if Marvel stopped releasing movies tomorrow, the likes of the aforementioned Downton Abbey, or any of Scorsese's movies for that matter, would not suddenly start making a billion dollars around the world.
Still, my net takeaway from all of this is a positive one. I'm old enough to remember a time when I could never have imagined that movies based on Marvel Comics would have achieved anything even approaching the level of success they have enjoyed. There's nothing that declares one has arrived quite like taking a few snipes from the titans of the industry. Heck, when I was growing up, had an interviewer asked one of the important directors of the time (except maybe for pulp lovers like Steven Spielberg) about Marvel products, the most likely response would have been "what's Marvel?" To go from not even being in the conversation, to dominating the conversation without even trying, is really something.
Sure, the "Marvel era" will come an end one day, just as Pixar's hegemonic stranglehold on the animated feature-film genre eventually came to an end, but in my humble opinion, that day isn't coming any time soon.
Monday, September 2, 2019
(SPOILER ALERT) On Fifties' TV Stars and Foot Fetishes: A Review of Quentin Tarantino's Curious Historical Fantasy Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (SPOILER ALERT)S)
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino
For the third time in the last four movies, auteur Quentin Tarantino rewrites a specific period in history, giving it his signature quirky twist. Having tackled the Antebellum South and the middle of the Second World War, Tarantino trains his lens on a slightly more esoteric place and time in history: Hollywood in 1969, and even more specifically, the murder of actress Sharon Tate and several of her friends in a horrific incident that has since been dubbed the Manson family murders.
Here, Tate is played by Margot Robbie, who, if I'm honest, does little with the character other than show how carefree and whimsical a 60's ingenue could be, as well as show off her filthy feet in a movie theater. Here, as she was in real life, she is married to Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), she hangs out with her ex, Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), and lives in the house where, in real life, she was eventually murdered.
In this film though, she is next-door neighbors with fictional washed-up actor Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who, together with his stunt double and man Friday Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), has moved out to Hollywood to live out his career playing bad guys on television shows. The bulk of the movie basically follows Dalton's spiraling descent into depression over his own impending obsolescence while at the same offering foreshadowing of the brutal fate that, to our knowledge at least, is supposed to befall Tate as Booth encounters the commune of hippies from which three people, later known as the Manson family, will come to murder Tate. The film spends nearly two and a half hours doing this, all the while showing off various pairs of feet, including more than one pair of dirty feet shoved right into the camera.
Critics of this film have used the phrase "self-indulgent" so often in describing this movie that I don't want to repeat it, even though I wholeheartedly agree with them. Given that this is the third time that Tarantino dips into the alternate history well, I really cannot help but ask why he has fixated on this specific incident, especially since he basically does nothing to make us feel any connection to Robbie's Tate, or DiCaprio's self-absorbed Dalton, or even Pitt's blank-slate Booth, whose much-reviled fight scene with Bruce Lee (played here by Mike Moh), is every bit as ridiculous as the worst brickbats hurled at this film have described it to be. Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained worked as "reimaginings" of history because there was something utterly cathartic about how Tarantino empowered the previously powerless, putting in a Jew's hands the the machine gun that killed Adolf Hitler and letting a black man go on a relentless killing spree in the deep, deep pre-Civil War South. The coupling of the righting of historical wrongs with fantastically violent wishful thinking was a powerful narrative tonic that helped people overlook just how silly both movies inherently were.
Here, the fate of Sharon Tate and her doomed friends hinges on the actions of two men who were never even there, and she ends the movie blissfully unaware of the horror that very nearly befell her, not in any way empowered or, for that matter, any different than when she started the movie as a whimsical airhead. Sure, Robbie brings her ethereal charm to the role, but given that Tarantino gives her little to do but laugh and show off her dirty feet, not even that counts for much. I mean, what makes Sharon Tate so important that she and her friends deserved to be "saved" from atrocity any more than millions of other people? This cuts to the thematic essence of the film, which, as many have observed, feels like a love letter to that era of Hollywood, an age of innocence when "men were men" as demonstrated by Pitt's ubermensch of a stuntman who can basically kick Bruce Lee's ass, notwithstanding the film's diplomatic stalemate, and DiCaprio's flame-thrower-wielding has-been. Clearly, Tarantino feels something significant died along with Tate and her friends that fateful August day in 1969, and wants to set things right, even in his own fictional world. Tarantino even directs a fake cigarette commercial as a mid-credits Easter Egg of sorts, though to be fair Dalton spends a fair amount of time in the film coughing his lungs up. Still, a fake cigarette commercial these days feels like an excess in a film that is already chock full of them.
What makes this even sadder is that this film is full of Tarantino's trademarks, like biting wit in the dialogue, amped-up songs of the era in lieu of a music score, plenty of morbid humor and, of course, extreme violence, though in this case it's reserved mainly for the very end of the movie. DiCaprio and Pitt have an easygoing chemistry, and the various other actors who pop up throughout the movie are fun to watch, like Tarantino regular Kurt Russell, who doubles as a stunt coordinator who fires Booth after he fights with Bruce Lee and the film's Narrator, and even former television Spider-Man Nicholas Hammond as actor-turned-director Sam Wanamaker. I especially liked the performance of the precocious Julia Butters, who plays a child star acting opposite Dalton's bad guy. That kid's got quite a career ahead of her, perhaps even in more Tarantino movies, which, I genuinely hope, are better than this one.
It just disappoints that Tarantino's considerable talent is brought to bear on a story that doesn't particularly feel like it was worth telling.
6/10
For the third time in the last four movies, auteur Quentin Tarantino rewrites a specific period in history, giving it his signature quirky twist. Having tackled the Antebellum South and the middle of the Second World War, Tarantino trains his lens on a slightly more esoteric place and time in history: Hollywood in 1969, and even more specifically, the murder of actress Sharon Tate and several of her friends in a horrific incident that has since been dubbed the Manson family murders.
Here, Tate is played by Margot Robbie, who, if I'm honest, does little with the character other than show how carefree and whimsical a 60's ingenue could be, as well as show off her filthy feet in a movie theater. Here, as she was in real life, she is married to Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), she hangs out with her ex, Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), and lives in the house where, in real life, she was eventually murdered.
In this film though, she is next-door neighbors with fictional washed-up actor Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who, together with his stunt double and man Friday Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), has moved out to Hollywood to live out his career playing bad guys on television shows. The bulk of the movie basically follows Dalton's spiraling descent into depression over his own impending obsolescence while at the same offering foreshadowing of the brutal fate that, to our knowledge at least, is supposed to befall Tate as Booth encounters the commune of hippies from which three people, later known as the Manson family, will come to murder Tate. The film spends nearly two and a half hours doing this, all the while showing off various pairs of feet, including more than one pair of dirty feet shoved right into the camera.
Critics of this film have used the phrase "self-indulgent" so often in describing this movie that I don't want to repeat it, even though I wholeheartedly agree with them. Given that this is the third time that Tarantino dips into the alternate history well, I really cannot help but ask why he has fixated on this specific incident, especially since he basically does nothing to make us feel any connection to Robbie's Tate, or DiCaprio's self-absorbed Dalton, or even Pitt's blank-slate Booth, whose much-reviled fight scene with Bruce Lee (played here by Mike Moh), is every bit as ridiculous as the worst brickbats hurled at this film have described it to be. Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained worked as "reimaginings" of history because there was something utterly cathartic about how Tarantino empowered the previously powerless, putting in a Jew's hands the the machine gun that killed Adolf Hitler and letting a black man go on a relentless killing spree in the deep, deep pre-Civil War South. The coupling of the righting of historical wrongs with fantastically violent wishful thinking was a powerful narrative tonic that helped people overlook just how silly both movies inherently were.
Here, the fate of Sharon Tate and her doomed friends hinges on the actions of two men who were never even there, and she ends the movie blissfully unaware of the horror that very nearly befell her, not in any way empowered or, for that matter, any different than when she started the movie as a whimsical airhead. Sure, Robbie brings her ethereal charm to the role, but given that Tarantino gives her little to do but laugh and show off her dirty feet, not even that counts for much. I mean, what makes Sharon Tate so important that she and her friends deserved to be "saved" from atrocity any more than millions of other people? This cuts to the thematic essence of the film, which, as many have observed, feels like a love letter to that era of Hollywood, an age of innocence when "men were men" as demonstrated by Pitt's ubermensch of a stuntman who can basically kick Bruce Lee's ass, notwithstanding the film's diplomatic stalemate, and DiCaprio's flame-thrower-wielding has-been. Clearly, Tarantino feels something significant died along with Tate and her friends that fateful August day in 1969, and wants to set things right, even in his own fictional world. Tarantino even directs a fake cigarette commercial as a mid-credits Easter Egg of sorts, though to be fair Dalton spends a fair amount of time in the film coughing his lungs up. Still, a fake cigarette commercial these days feels like an excess in a film that is already chock full of them.
What makes this even sadder is that this film is full of Tarantino's trademarks, like biting wit in the dialogue, amped-up songs of the era in lieu of a music score, plenty of morbid humor and, of course, extreme violence, though in this case it's reserved mainly for the very end of the movie. DiCaprio and Pitt have an easygoing chemistry, and the various other actors who pop up throughout the movie are fun to watch, like Tarantino regular Kurt Russell, who doubles as a stunt coordinator who fires Booth after he fights with Bruce Lee and the film's Narrator, and even former television Spider-Man Nicholas Hammond as actor-turned-director Sam Wanamaker. I especially liked the performance of the precocious Julia Butters, who plays a child star acting opposite Dalton's bad guy. That kid's got quite a career ahead of her, perhaps even in more Tarantino movies, which, I genuinely hope, are better than this one.
It just disappoints that Tarantino's considerable talent is brought to bear on a story that doesn't particularly feel like it was worth telling.
6/10
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
One of the Alleged Reasons for the Sony/Marvel Rift Over Spider-Man...is Actually the Main Reason They Need to Mend the Rift
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)