Joss Whedon: So Cancelled His Thread Got a Sequel

[Ran]

8 hours ago, sifth said:

I honestly think the Dawn of the Dead remake is the only Zack Snyder film, I can honestly say I enjoyed.

Yeah. Fun film. I can say I enjoyed 300 as well, but mostly the fact that he was able to convey the aesthetic of Miller's and Varley's artwork in the comics and translate it to the screen so well. Snyder and Miller really work well together. Surprised he hasn't joined up with Robert Rodriguez to do another Sin City, or maybe go ahead and tackle Martha Washington Goes to War or something.

There are parts of Watchmen which are terrific -- the opening, the Watchmaker sequence -- and some of the casting is fantastic, but ... he just doesn't understand the point of them. It's all surface.

8 hours ago, sifth said:

I mean I know it was written by James Gunn, so I'm sure that helped make it less miserable and nihilistic

For sure.

I was looking at IMDB and saw he had a short film I'd never seen before. Check this out:

 

 

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Snyder and Miller really work well together.

They certainly seem to be philosophically compatible.

[Gorn]

Re: Snyder, I liked Dawn of the Dead and Watchmen (don't get the Watchmen hate btw, and I say this as someone who loved the comic), disliked 300 and Sucker Punch, skipped Man of Steel and B v. S.

Since I Iiterally fell asleep watching Whedon's much shorter Justice League cut, I have no desire whatsoever to watch a four hour version of it. Life's too short for that.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

On 4/8/2021 at 5:08 PM, Werthead said:

The Avengers was the sixth film in the series. It's true Whedon didn't have a huge amount of feature experience, but he did have an absolute ton of writing and directing experience in television, much of it highly acclaimed (at that point, anyway). They did take a bit of a punt on it (the pre-Avengers box office for the series had been reasonably solid but not fantastic) but it panned out.

That doesn't exactly line up with your "You can maybe push that to 2 hour 30 if you're a prestige film-maker like Nolan" comment.

The solo MCU films had quite good box office for their time. Iron Man was the break out. Incredible Hulk probably lost money. Man of Steel beat all of them, despite the Rotten tomatoes consensus. 

Man of Steel also had the benefit of a strong producer in Chris Nolan, who largely kept the suits away from the production and out of the editing room. Man of Steel coincidentally violates the 2 hour rule buy an additional 28 minutes. How very dare they. Too bad he wasn't around when BvS was being made.

On 4/8/2021 at 5:08 PM, Werthead said:

Not sure what you mean by "no character development." It didn't have to introduce characters because they'd had five films previously to do that. In terms of character development in the film, there was tons for Hulk, Black Widow, Tony, Cap, even Hawkeye, whom no-one gave a shit about. None of it is particularly original but in terms of basic arcs it was all reasonably effective, and it resulted in a critically-acclaimed, very high-grossing film.

I wasn't criticizing the film for lack of character development. I'm stating a fact, "there was no character development". I never said it wasn't a good movie. I never said I didn't like it. I was drawing a comparison and questioning the logic of limiting a superhero tentpole to 120 minutes when it requires character development, when a comparable superhero film that's all plot and punching gets to go another 21 minutes. To maximize box office? How'd that work out? 

And no one knew how hard Avengers was going to hit before it was released. It could have been "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" for all they knew.  It could have done Iron Man money, which would have been successful but it wouldn't have put $50 mil in RDJ's bank account. And yet the studio had no problem violating the "Iron-Rule of 2 hour film run time" that people seem to be arguing for. And I'm telling you, for a film like JL,  it's nonsense. I've shown you examples of why it's nonsense.

Plus, if the thing is limited to 120 minutes, why screw around with the idiot Russian family, or the fan service post credit scenes, or the useless prologues? To transform it into a second rate marvel movie? No thanks.

On 4/8/2021 at 5:08 PM, Werthead said:

The Russo Brothers had enormous experience in television, and were hugely respected for their work on Arrested Development, LAX and Community before they transferred to the MCU. Also, The Winter Soldier was their fourth feature film so no idea what you're on about there (Pieces was very obscure, but Welcome to Collinwood created some noise and You, Me and Dupree a lot more).

The Russo Brothers just released Cherry Starring Tom Holland. It's sitting at 36% according to the mighty tomato meter. Is their "121+ min hall-pass" in jeopardy? At all? how about Patti Jenkins post WW84? Anyone who thinks that movie would have done a $billion without Covid has their head up their ass.

On 4/8/2021 at 5:08 PM, Werthead said:

Snyder had directed five films before Man of Steel, two of the last three of which had bombed at the box office (Sucker Punch and Watchmen) and the third (Legend of the Guardians) had only just broken even, so he was trading a lot on the huge success of Dawn of the Dead and 300.

And at the time of release, Man of Steel was the 3rd highest grossing superhero origin film, behind Spider-Man (2002) and Amazing Spider-Man (2012). It out-grossed every X-men and solo-MCU film that had been released up to that point, did considerably better than DC films' previous origin stories (Batman Begins, Green Lantern), and demolished Superman Returns. I showed up for that one in 2006. For some reason the "Donner nostalgia" folks didn't.  

There wasn't much of a proven market for R-rated superhero films prior to Deadpool and Logan. The highest grossing R-rated CBM before that was Constantine with $230 mil, followed by Watchmen, V for Vendetta, the Blade films, and From Hell, in that order. Although Constantine probably had more to do with Keannu Reeves star power than the then-obscure comic book character. Watchmen also hit theaters at the bottom of the 2009 global financial crisis. It turns out that when people are losing their homes, unemployment is crossing 10% and the world is ending, the normies don't want to see a CBM with characters they don't recognize about the world ending. Watchmen likely became profitable on Home Video.

You mention 300. Not only was that film successful in theaters, according to the-numbers.com, its estimated domestic home video sales actually exceeded its domestic box office, ($270 mil vs. $210 mil) Normally its about 20%-30% for a block buster. If that ratio holds for the international sales, 300 may have been a billion dollar movie. Suddenly the comments made in the Variety "studio executives roundtable" by Jim Gianopulos make a lot more sense.

And I don't care what anyone says, I like Legend of the Guardians. So did my (at the time) quirky 8 year old niece who saw it in the theater. She enjoyed it so much she asked her mom to buy her the book and the kid read it. Any film that spurs a kid with my last name to pick up a book and read for pleasure is fine by me; regardless of the consensus. There are certainly animated films that made a lot more money that aren't nearly as interesting.

Sucker Punch has its critics and its admirers. I don't really fall in either camp. Although I find some of the more thoughtful discussion about it interesting.

And yes, it failed at the box office, but tell me, how any other female-centric action fantasy films have been produced since then, outside of an established IP or CBM? Not just a story with a strong female character, an original story where most or all the protagonists are women. I suspect they exist but I'm drawing a blank.

[Fez]

45 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

And yes, it failed at the box office, but tell me, how any other female-centric action fantasy films have been produced since then, outside of an established IP or CBM? Not just a story with a strong female character, an original story where most or all the protagonists are women. I suspect they exist but I'm drawing a blank.

I mean, almost no truly original concept movies get made anymore (outside of Oscar bait), even less than there were 2011, so that's not really a fair metric. But if you're willing to accept female-centric action/fantasy/science fiction films since then, either original or based on obscure IP, then off the top of my head since 2011 there's: Atomic Blonde, Gravity, Edge of Tomorrow (Emily Blunt was definitely a co-lead), The Heat, and Hanna. All of which I'm pretty sure at least made a profit at the box office. And Gravity, which was by far the biggest hit, was an original story.

But box office is of course irrelevant to movie quality. Sucker Punch failed at the box office, but, more importantly, it was a a bad movie.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

15 minutes ago, Fez said:

I mean, almost no truly original concept movies get made anymore (outside of Oscar bait), even less than there were 2011, so that's not really a fair metric. But if you're willing to accept female-centric action/fantasy/science fiction films since then, either original or based on obscure IP, then off the top of my head since 2011 there's: Atomic Blonde, Gravity, Edge of Tomorrow (Emily Blunt was definitely a co-lead), The Heat, and Hanna. All of which I'm pretty sure at least made a profit at the box office. And Gravity, which was by far the biggest hit, was an original story.

But box office is of course irrelevant to movie quality. Sucker Punch failed at the box office, but, more importantly, it was a a bad movie.

Be that as it may, I was responding to a point about box office.

I was actually going to say Birds of Prey comes closest of anything I can recall. Even with a popular character and Margot Robbie's star power it didn't exactly light the world on fire. Covid likely took 20% of the box office. Mad Max: Fury Road? 

I'm not sure I'm with you on Atomic Blonde. More of a spy thriller. That movie had an A list star and better reviews and didn't do much better than Sucker Punch at the box office ($100 mil vs $90 mil). It probably made money depending on the marketing budget.

 Gravity is more of a hard sci-fi film with a somewhat spiritual element. Also considerable star power. Also amazing. I'm glad that film did so well. 

Edge of tomorrow may have had Emily Blunt as co-lead but it was definitely marketed as a Tom Cruise Movie. Also a fantastic film that didn't do nearly as well as it should have. It's in the range where it may have lost money but I think it got a second life on home video.

The heat is a buddy cop action comedy. Also starring an Oscar nominee and an Oscar winner. I totally forgot Hanna existed.

 

This thread is waaaaay off topic.

[polishgenius]

5 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I'm not sure I'm with you on Atomic Blonde. More of a spy thriller.

 

Atomic Blonde was also a spy thriller but it was definitely an action film too. Directed by David Leitch and quite a lot was made of it being a woman-led answer to John Wick. Not entirely fair- it wasn't really going for the same kind of action- but it had that vibe and plenty of fisticuffs and things.

Whether it's an action fantasy I suppose depends on whether for you films need actual SF/fantasy elements to class as action fantasy or of even the more grounded Bond/Mission Impossible offerings count.

[Heartofice]

7 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

at the box office, but tell me, how any other female-centric action fantasy films have been produced since then, outside of an established IP or CBM? Not just a story with a strong female character, an original story where most or all the protagonists are women. I suspect they exist but I'm drawing a blank.

Is this a serious question? If we just look at your odd restriction on 'new IP, which is bizarre given any new IP is basically an extreme rarity in any genre you have:

Atomic Blonde (you can call it a spy thriller but its really just John Wick with fancier direction)
Red Sparrow
Haywire
Widows
Salt
In the blood
Lucy
Hanna (movie and tv series)
Old Guard
Annihilation

Those are just ones off the top of my head

Then if you also want to accept the reality that original stories don't get told any more, for anyone, you can spend forever listing out all the female led action movies, from franchises like Star Wars (sequel trilogy, Rogue One), Hunger games, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Black Widow, Charlies  Angels, New Terminator movies, Ghost in the Shell, Underworld movies, Lara Croft, Resident evil movies, Aliens + all recent crap remakes.. even Mad Max is really a female led action movie. 

The more pertinent question is when ISN'T there a female led action movie being made.

 

[sifth]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

The more pertinent question is when ISN'T there a female led action movie being made.

 

Not sure if you ever watched the show Barry, but season 2 had a really great joke about this concept. One of the main characters is a lady who's trying to get serious acting roles, but is constantly being offered movies like the ones you described instead.

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, sifth said:

Not sure if you ever watched the show Barry, but season 2 had a really great joke about this concept. One of the main characters is a lady who's trying to get serious acting roles, but is constantly being offered movies like the ones you described instead.

I haven’t seen it, though it’s on my list. Does make you wonder if the likes of Jennifer Aniston and Meg Ryan are thinking they will have learn karate if they ever want to work in movies again!

[Werthead]

17 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

That doesn't exactly line up with your "You can maybe push that to 2 hour 30 if you're a prestige film-maker like Nolan" comment.

It does, however, line up with my comment that as franchises continue, they can start ramping up the run time of their films. The Avengers was the sixth MCU film and the film they banked the farm on going huge, so obviously it was going to get more leeway. The five previous films had all varied between 114 and 126 minutes.

Quote

The solo MCU films had quite good box office for their time. Iron Man was the break out. Incredible Hulk probably lost money. Man of Steel beat all of them, despite the Rotten tomatoes consensus. 

In overall terms, yes, but not in terms of profitability, where Iron Man (which grossed almost as much on almost $100 million less money and less marketing) handed it its arse. Man of Steel underperformed and barely squeaked a $40 million profit, which is why it never got a sequel.

That's actually been a common problem with the DCEU films: they tend to have ridiculously over-inflated budgets so even when they make solid bank (as a lot of them have), they're actually barely squeaking a profit. Batman v Superman is still to turn a profit, despite a very healthy box office, because they poured an absurd amount of money in its production and the marketing.

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Man of Steel also had the benefit of a strong producer in Chris Nolan, who largely kept the suits away from the production and out of the editing room. Man of Steel coincidentally violates the 2 hour rule buy an additional 28 minutes. How very dare they. Too bad he wasn't around when BvS was being made.

Man of Steel also barely broke even and was not a major success, so thank you for proving my point for me. When people hear a movie is 2-and-a-half hours, they start to ponder if they're going to wait to watch it at home instead and cinemas get annoyed because they can't put on as many showings, and then of course the reviews started coming in as "mixed" (being charitable) and that ended any chances of the film hitting a billion, which is what WB were aiming for.

Quote

I wasn't criticizing the film for lack of character development. I'm stating a fact, "there was no character development". I never said it wasn't a good movie. I never said I didn't like it. I was drawing a comparison and questioning the logic of limiting a superhero tentpole to 120 minutes when it requires character development, when a comparable superhero film that's all plot and punching gets to go another 21 minutes. To maximize box office? How'd that work out? 

The Avengers had five films setting it up though, so it did not need to introduce the characters.

The "fact" that "there is no character development" is incorrect. There is plenty of character development in the film. Most of the characters end the film in a somewhat different place to where they begin, from Loki on down. It's not original and some it is fairly rote, but it is there.

Quote

And no one knew how hard Avengers was going to hit before it was released. It could have been "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" for all they knew.  It could have done Iron Man money, which would have been successful but it wouldn't have put $50 mil in RDJ's bank account. And yet the studio had no problem violating the "Iron-Rule of 2 hour film run time" that people seem to be arguing for. And I'm telling you, for a film like JL,  it's nonsense. I've shown you examples of why it's nonsense.

They pushed The Avengers quite hard in marketing and they had a much reduced fear of failure (as the Disney deal had happened), so they knew it was going to do well. They had no idea how well, but I think they thought $1 billion was doable for the film based on pre-release testing. It smashing that by 100% and the subsequent elevating of most of the subsequent MCU movies was what was unexpected.

I also pointed out that Justice League, seen as an Avengers-style team-up project, was going to get some leeway and 2 hours forty minutes (actually twenty minutes longer than Avengers 1) was fairly reasonable. It was not going to get much more than that though, certainly not based on the DCEU's underperformance to that point.

Quote

The Russo Brothers just released Cherry Starring Tom Holland. It's sitting at 36% according to the mighty tomato meter. Is their "121+ min hall-pass" in jeopardy? At all? how about Patti Jenkins post WW84? Anyone who thinks that movie would have done a $billion without Covid has their head up their ass.

Not sure what the Russo Brothers' latest movie's success has got to do with the fact that you were incorrect when you said that The Winter Soldier was their first film.

Quote

And at the time of release, Man of Steel was the 3rd highest grossing superhero origin film, behind Spider-Man (2002) and Amazing Spider-Man (2012). It out-grossed every X-men and solo-MCU film that had been released up to that point, did considerably better than DC films' previous origin stories (Batman Begins, Green Lantern), and demolished Superman Returns. I showed up for that one in 2006. For some reason the "Donner nostalgia" folks didn't.  

Being high-grossing is irrelevant when you spent so much money on the budget and then on the marketing that you barely break even and can't get a sequel made.

If WB had lowered the budget for their subsequent movies (and I have no idea why these films have such high budgets, they certainly don't look any better and frequently far worse than Marvel movies with $50-100 million lower budgets) and maintained that gross, that would have resulted in much greater profits. But since they didn't do that, the core DCEU line became a financial, as well as critical, failure, despite some of the side-films doing much better.

[polishgenius]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

If WB had lowered the budget for their subsequent movies (and I have no idea why these films have such high budgets, they certainly don't look any better and frequently far worse than Marvel movies with $50-100 million lower budgets) and maintained that gross, that would have resulted in much greater profits. But since they didn't do that, the core DCEU line became a financial, as well as critical, failure, despite some of the side-films doing much better.

 

 

They also shot themselves in the foot for later because the budget became part of the marketing and thus the fanspeak around the films, and so Shazam! is often painted by DC detractors as a failure even though it made three times its budget and a sequel was put into production immediately. And with Birds of Prey it undershot expectations and is therefore seen as a failure even though I'm pretty sure it did actually turn a profit despite a dreadful marketing campaign and a conflict between the r rating and a fair proportion of Harley's target audience as a comic character.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

snip

Russo Filmography:

You're right that I missed those. I wasn't intentionally ignoring it. Didn't go down far enough on the IMDB page. Just reading really fast. My questions still stands.

Regarding the Man of Steel Profit:

1. One of the reasons the superman films cost so much is because they spend so much time in development. From an accounting point of view movie projects never really die; they just get folded into other projects. Why did Superman Returns have roughly the same production budget as Avatar? Because a portion of that number accounts for the unrealized projects that came before it (Superman Lives, Flyby, etc.) Man of Steel likely has some of that as well. Somewhere buried in the Mos, BvS, JL costs is pre-production on JL: Mortal, which was a week away from shooting when it was cancelled.

2. The $40 million number people refer to comes from the breakdown from deadline (actually $42.7 mil). They never bother to look at the rest of the profit sheet. MoS paid out $85.2 mil in participations and residuals and had overhead of $38.7 mil, for a sub-total of $123.9 million. Compare this to Iron Man 3, released the same year: Participations ($72.5 mil), Residuals ($34.6 mil), Overhead (nil): $107.1 million; on a movie that grossed $1 billion dollars.

In short, WB was generous in making deals to get their franchise going and overhead costs charged against the film ate into their profit. 

https://issuu.com/pmcderek/docs/2013_most_valuable_blockbuster_tour

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

They also shot themselves in the foot for later because the budget became part of the marketing and thus the fanspeak around the films, and so Shazam! is often painted by DC detractors as a failure even though it made three times its budget and a sequel was put into production immediately. And with Birds of Prey it undershot expectations and is therefore seen as a failure even though I'm pretty sure it did actually turn a profit despite a dreadful marketing campaign and a conflict between the r rating and a fair proportion of Harley's target audience as a comic character.

I thought it took about 6 months for the sequel to be announced. They only announced the start of production last fall didn't they? Anyways, DC doesn't have the best track record when it comes to announcing projects. 

If there's reluctance with Shazam! isn't whether or not it was profitable, it was whether or not it put asses in seats. Asses in seats is going to correlate with merchandise sales which, as the chosen one George Lucas taught us, is ultimately where the money gets made with these franchise films. This is why Marvel studios is willing to do a deal with Sony to take no profit from the Tom Holland Spider-Man films; because Disney gets all the merchandising. 

So how did Shazam! do? The box office was approximately $100 mil lower than Bumblebee and $150 mil lower than the first Ant-Man movie, which I would think are comparable films from a target demographic POV. Despite the positive buzz, critical acclaim, and family-friendly* vibe, not a lot of people went to see it. And I don't know about you but I'm not seeing a lot of Shazam! merchandise out there. In fairness, the studio messed up with the release date. The first half of 2019 was so MCU heavy it probably got swamped. They should have pushed the film out to late summer.

*I would argue there was stuff in that film that wasn't so family friendly. The board room scene, while well done, was a bit strong. I also can't imagine a parent being very impressed with the strip club or the scene where Shazam! tests his powers by using his school text books for target practice. 

I'm pretty sure BoP lost money. According to Variety it needed $250-$300 mil to break even. It -might- have achieved that if not for Covid. 

[Lord Varys]

To get this back on track (this isn't a thread about the DC movies or Snyder, guys!):

I've rewatched The Avengers now, and it just isn't a good movie.

The core theme is completely conventional, boring even - evil aliens attack the planet, what an original idea! - and the plot is slow and completely unsurprising using ridiculous props like that stupid floating fortress or clichéd plot devices like the villain allowing the good guys to capture him for some nefarious reason. And then that plot is even slowed down by having the good guys fight over the villain when Thor suddenly reappears ... at which point it should have been completely obvious to everybody that Loki wanted to be caught.

But the worst part is the fake tension revolving around the creation of the Avengers as a group of heroes. What a waste of time to hint at the creation of this group during the movies leading up to that one ... and then try to create suspense by pretending they might not be able to work together.

The one redeeming quality the movie has is some good dialogue, especially when the characters banter, but that doesn't change the fact that it isn't a good movie.

And the worst part is the villains - Loki doesn't work as a guy who wants to work for some hidden super villain nor does anybody care for or understand the alien invaders and their motivation. The absence of an antogonist/threat that's more than an army of faceless monsters directed by a not exactly very impressing trickster harms the entire premise of that movie - which is about a group of super heroes teaming up to defeat an enemy they couldn't defeat on their own ... which is definitely wrong for Loki as earlier and future movies in this series did prove.

Also, if you look at the character of Loki then his entire motivation to conquer earth and ally with some weirdo transdimensional/space aliens makes little to no sense considering where we left the character in the first Thor movie. Loki does have a dark side, but what he wanted in Thor - and what he should still crave at this point - is the recognition/respect (or even love) of his foster father Odin, and his Asgardian peers, Thor included. After all, in Thor he didn't turn against Asgard, he wanted to protect his home and destroy the frost giants for good.

If he teams up with some space aliens it wouldn't be to conquer earth or attack the humans but rather to stab back at Thor and his father specifically, to endanger Asgard so he could again sweep in and rescue everybody (without them realizing that he was behind it). That sort of thing ... him targeting earth comes completely out of the left field.

As does Thor's sudden return to earth ... which was supposed to be something that wouldn't be that easy nor would saving the humans be the top priority of the Asgardians.

Even with the silly 'space aliens attack earth' plot unchanged, considerable changes to the motivations of Thor and Loki could have made the movie much better. A good way may have been to have a direct thug of Thanos' lead the space aliens (so the good guys have a visible and impressive big bad to fight rather than Loki who is a joke in that department), while Loki had his own plans for the Tesseract thingy.

Thus I don't think one can really praise Joss Whedon for that movie.

[polishgenius]

20 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I thought it took about 6 months for the sequel to be announced. They only announced the start of production last fall didn't they? Anyways, DC doesn't have the best track record when it comes to announcing projects. 

They started writing the sequel in April 2019, so a month after it came out. It's been delayed coz of Covid but the response was immediate, there doesn't appear to have been a time they considered not making one.

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

To get this back on track (this isn't a thread about the DC movies or Snyder, guys!):

I've rewatched The Avengers now, and it just isn't a good movie.

All valid complaints, IMO. The problem is, they're true of most of the MCU movies; and, in fact, most MCU movies have even larger problems. Loki at least is a bit memorable as a villain, usually the MCU villains don't even get decent dialog to go along with their nonsense plans. And at least "giant sky battle against faceless enemies" was still a relatively new idea to the MCU when The Avengers came out. Plus, while the plot is conventional, at least it does have a logical flow to it. And it did all that without having such the well defined template of what these team-up movies should like yet (and, I think, without the factory-like efficiency that the Marvel production facilities in Atlanta now have).

I don't follow the inner workings of Marvel, so I have no idea how much credit Whedon should get for it, but I think Avengers is clearly in the upper tier of Marvel movies, and, due to coming earlier, faced a higher degree of difficulty than the more recent movies.

Now, Age of Ultron, that was pretty bad (and a waste of James Spader).

[Lord Varys]

7 minutes ago, Fez said:

All valid complaints, IMO. The problem is, they're true of most of the MCU movies; and, in fact, most MCU movies have even larger problems. Loki at least is a bit memorable as a villain, usually the MCU villains don't even get decent dialog to go along with their nonsense plans. And at least "giant sky battle against faceless enemies" was still a relatively new idea to the MCU when The Avengers came out. Plus, while the plot is conventional, at least it does have a logical flow to it. And it did all that without having such the well defined template of what these team-up movies should like yet (and, I think, without the factory-like efficiency that the Marvel production facilities in Atlanta now have).

I don't follow the inner workings of Marvel, so I have no idea how much credit Whedon should get for it, but I think Avengers is clearly in the upper tier of Marvel movies, and, due to coming earlier, faced a higher degree of difficulty than the more recent movies.

Now, Age of Ultron, that was pretty bad (and a waste of James Spader).

I'm (re-)watching them chronologically, and I must say that Loki in Thor was a pretty good villain - just as that one is also a pretty good movie, even the kind of movie one could see being made about Nordic gods in general, aside from comic book adaptations (insofar as the motivations of the deities are concerned). There is a lot of great characterization there.

I also like the characterization of Steve Rogers in Captain America as well as the first Iron Man movie. The bad guy in the former wasn't that impressive (evil Nazi scientist are rarely complex characters) but Tony's fatherly friend and mentor was a pretty good villain in the first Iron Man.

So far I'd say the worst of the first six movies was the Hulk thing, but I'd rate The Avengers as the second worst installment together with the second Iron Man - which basically lacked a plot but had great acting from Robert Downey, Jr. and a compelling personal crisis plot for Tony Stark. It was fun to watch. The Avengers is fun to watch, too, when there is good dialogue, but when it gets into space alien invasion territory it is pretty boring.

But you may have a point that the villains are rarely particularly complex or convincing in that movie franchise. I have to look for that. I don't think Thanos is in any way a believable or functioning character - nobody would come up with as ridiculous a plan as this guy.

The issue I've with The Avengers is that an army of invaders should have some kind of visible leader ... or at least a visible mastermind/leader that's impressive. And Loki just isn't that guy. He is the guy opening the gate, the guy having great dreams about ruling earth, etc. ... but nobody believes for a moment he could stand against Thor alone, much less the entire Avengers team. Even less so after he allows himself to be captured, etc.

With all the introductions of the heroes being done in the earlier films, The Avengers technically had the time to focus on the threat at hand, but it actually wastes a lot of time with stuff that isn't even exposition. Like that stupid floating fortress and fake tension. It almost feels like Whedon ripped off the RotK scene where Frodo sends Sam back home...

Speaking from memory I don't think Age of Ultron wasn't particularly impressive but better than The Avengers ... although I know that a lot of people dislike that movie.

In any case, The Avengers definitely isn't the kind of thing you expect from a great director screenwriter ... and that's hardly surprising considering Joss is also the guy who wrote Alien Resurrection - which is, to put it mildly, just garbage, story-wise.

[sifth]

I'm probably in the minority, but I really liked Ego as a villain. Just the concept of a living planet was pretty cool and I'm honestly surprised it was never used in Star Trek before.

The problem with a lot of MCU villains is they're basically just evil clones of the hero, with usually the exact same powers or very similar ones. Ant Man fought evil Ant Man, Doctor Strange fights an evil wizard, heck even Killmonger devolves into evil Black Panther by the end of his film.

They should really try to keep the villains as their own unique character.

[Fez]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

In any case, The Avengers definitely isn't the kind of thing you expect from a great director screenwriter ... and that's hardly surprising considering Joss is also the guy who wrote Alien Resurrection - which is, to put it mildly, just garbage, story-wise.

Oh it's certainly not that well-written, except for having a lot of solid one-liners. But I think most of the MCU is not that well-written, and Whedon's most acclaimed writing has never been about plot (e.g., if you think about it, the gypsy curse on Angel is one of the stupidest curses ever). It was always about either feelings or humor; and Avengers has plenty of the later. So much so that the MCU has pretty much locked in that snarky, lightheartedness into the first page of its style book. Before Avengers, the MCU had the ability to be more diverse in style (e.g. the first Thor and Captain America movies were straight up earnest IMO, which is now the cardinal sin of the MCU). This change never would've happened if not for how enormously successful Avengers was, and what Feige apparently thought was one of the cornerstones of that success.

 

2 hours ago, sifth said:

I'm probably in the minority, but I really liked Ego as a villain. Just the concept of a living planet was pretty cool and I'm honestly surprised it was never used in Star Trek before.

The problem with a lot of MCU villains is they're basically just evil clones of the hero, with usually the exact same powers or very similar ones. Ant Man fought evil Ant Man, Doctor Strange fights an evil wizard, heck even Killmonger devolves into evil Black Panther by the end of his film.

They should really try to keep the villains as their own unique character.

I don't know if Ego was a good villain or just had the benefit of being Kurt Russell, but I enjoyed him too. At least, up until the moment he revealed his evil plan and got all generic. There have been a tiny handful of enjoyable MCU villains, but in all cases they were only fun in the first 2/3rds of their movies, before you realized they were villains/before they confronted the heroes; Jeff Bridges in the first Iron Man is another good example. He was great, until he stupidly revealed that he was evil and got in a metal suit of his own.

The one exception to this is Jeff Goldbulm, who was great all the way through. But he wasn't the primary villain, and also was basically just being himself in some fancy clothes.