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MCUniverse: The Town Hall Meeting of the Post-Blippers *mild spoilers*


Jeor

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Yeah. There’s maybe 3 mcu films a year. It’s hardly superhero films 365 days a year.

The cinema is expensive; if people are going to spend money to go to it, it’s to see a film that benefits from the big screen, not something I’d rather watch at home with a takeaway and beer/wine

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Scorsese is fighting against the tide here unfortunately. I agree with his sentiment but ultimately with the advent of streaming and over priced cinema tickets, audiences are going to be far pickier about what they watch. 

Studios know this all too well, so their only option is to create movies that reduce risk and create tent pole events. Disney are the kings of this and every movie is something we should apparently be excited about.

Its not going to change any time soon, there is little incentive for people to take a risk on a little known movie when they have to pay over the nose and leave the house. Most people are happy to wait till it hits Netflix.

 

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18 minutes ago, mormont said:

The fact is, franchise films aren't crowding out the type of films Scorcese wants to see more of on the big screen: if Marvel never made another film, audiences would not be rushing to see The Irishman instead. They'd be at home. 

I don't see how you know that.  Scorsese is not bemoaning franchise films crowding out indie films that never get a wide release.  After the glory days of Mean Streets/Taxi Driver, Scorsese's films have generally been fairly big budget (for the time) themselves.  His point is now the success of big budget films is primarily contingent on the popularity of the IP rather than the quality of the film. 

"Terminator looks like a lost cause at this point, but John Wick is looking up.  Joker might have helped WB with DC's brand - especially after The Batman debacle - but we still gotta worry about the next Suicide Squad.  How to insert the problematic finishing of the X-Men franchise into the MCU?" 

The MCU is certainly a symptom, per se, and not the cause.  But it and Star Wars are like coughing being a symptom of whooping cough - and that's coming from someone who generally enjoys and looks forward to both franchises' outputs.  I don't think Scorsese's point should be dismissed so easily, but meh, I suppose it's the internet.

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I'm glad Scorsese is leaning into this conversation as opposed to brushing it off - it's a worthy one to have and talk about given the ubiquitous nature of franchise movies, including comic-book movies.  I mostly think he's quite spot on in a lot of things in that article, especially the bit about modern film franchises ( we're not even talking about just comic-book movies here).

It's just strange to see such an intense reaction from people about an article & comments that I think make some valid points! Though not calling MCU movies 'cinema' is bound to make people mad, so I suppose I do understand that ( I suppose I've answered my own question here) - and his bit about the marvel movies not having stakes/ emotion etc is entirely subjective, so I don't really buy that either ( even though I agree with it).

I used to live in the middle of nowhere in the midwest &, and that point about those movies being the only one you could watch at the cinema really stood out to me. It wasn't till I moved to a small college town with an independent theater that showed *something* other than franchise films. 

Edit: His argument about Risk is probably the thing I agree with the most in the piece - you only have to look at the last decade of top 10 grossing films domestically in the US, the trend of those films increasingly being franchise films is quite significant.

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The geeks always get up in arms when they think their geekdoms are being disparaged. MS is right about a lot of what he said, imho, but his words don't really change anything. We're stuck with endless IP until people get bored. And going to the cinema is a dying tradition, anyway. 

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Quote

“If you want to understand everything in future Marvel movies, he says, you’ll probably need a Disney+ subscription, because events from the new shows will factor into forthcoming films such as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The Scarlet Witch will be a key character in that movie, and Feige points out that the Loki series will tie in, too. “I’m not sure we’ve actually acknowledged that before.” “

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2019/11/07/kevin-feige-confirms-youll-need-to-watch-disney-plus-marvel-shows-to-keep-up-with-the-movie-mcu/amp/

So it really sounds like we're getting Loki back. Only the Loki who fucked off with the Tesseract. 

The article also mentions a show called Marvel's 6161 that I've never heard of and can't find any info on. 

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2 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Ugh, tying understanding of the films to subscription to their streaming service, pass, i’m out.

unsurprising, and no doubt it will work as a intended in driving up sales, but still disappointing

I would assume that they will work on two levels.  The average audience level and the geeked out must know everything audience.

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2 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Ugh, tying understanding of the films to subscription to their streaming service, pass, i’m out.

unsurprising, and no doubt it will work as a intended in driving up sales, but still disappointing

Yep, I'm out.  It's way too much effort.

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5 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Ugh, tying understanding of the films to subscription to their streaming service, pass, i’m out.


It's annoying, but I'm like 90% sure it'll work more the other way: you'll need to have seen Strange to understand the shows, but not necessarily the other way around.

 

They'll obviously be hoping the connection boosts their numbers but no way they're gonna hang the success of their proven money-making machine on an unproven (for them) format on an unproven channel.

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17 hours ago, Rhom said:

I would assume that they will work on two levels.  The average audience level and the geeked out must know everything audience.

Shakespeare used to do that.   One set of jokes for the commoners looking to see fools getting hit in the crotch with a baseball, and a second narrative for the more highbrow audience, all woven together into the same script.    So Strange 2 will make sense by itself for people who only see the movie, and at the same time will have deeper connections to the TV side to tantalize you as a reward for watching the shows.    Could work as a way of offering casual fans the Lite Beer option and giving obsessive fans some Sam Adams content non-essential to the plot.

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8 hours ago, Nictarion said:

I don’t know anyone could possibly disagree with him on this...

*please actually watch it and listen to what he says



See the problem isn't and never was that he's wrong about being concerned that big effects tentpoles have taken over to such an extent that meatier cinema has to live off budgetary scraps. He's not entirely wrong there.

The problem is that he's been so dismissive of superhero films as not being 'proper' cinema and as friendly as he was about it that interview just doubled down on my scorn for his take on this coz he dismissed them as being just 'animated pictures' which shows even less respect for, you know, animated pictures, many of which are genuinely masterful.

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1 hour ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Shakespeare used to do that.   One set of jokes for the commoners looking to see fools getting hit in the crotch with a baseball, and a second narrative for the more highbrow audience, all woven together into the same script.    So Strange 2 will make sense by itself for people who only see the movie, and at the same time will have deeper connections to the TV side to tantalize you as a reward for watching the shows.    Could work as a way of offering casual fans the Lite Beer option and giving obsessive fans some Sam Adams content non-essential to the plot.

I wonder if anyone has mentioned parallels to Shakespearean wit during Marvel writers' rooms.

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To be fair, the actual quote is “if you want to understand everything” ... as in, every last bit of it. I highly doubt they’ll abandon the tried and tested method of making the films entirely comprehensible and coherent by themselves. Plus, the way they announced them all at once made it sound overwhelming but they’re quite spaced out. 

Not to dredge up an old debate on Endgame, but the part that annoyed me was the Loki series; if Loki really is the one who escaped with the Tesseract and he’s wandering round the same universe, that fairly seriously undermines Endgame. It means the Avengers wantonly disrupted several parallel universes and left them much, much worse off to save their own universe. That’ll bug the crap out of me. I’m not even a big fan of the character, he was OK but I don’t think there’s much more to explore that hasn’t been done in the half dozen films he’s been in.

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