DC Cinematic Universe: Let the Blames Begin

[Heartofice]

I guess there are some issues going on behind the scenes at major studios, because so many of these large scale movies just seem to be chaotic messes. Maybe everything is so big now, with so many interests involved in making a movie that it’s almost impossible to get a coherent vision through.
 

Most comic book movies these days feel like a mish mash of ideas put into a blender and vomited out onto a plate. There might be a few interesting elements but nothing ever feels planned or structured, it’s like the same problem over and over again. From the sounds of it, The Flash is riddled with this problem, and understandably so.

Doctor Strange 2 being a good example, obviously changed directors which never helps, but it has some great Raimi moments but never feels like a Raimi movie. It has no real coherent plot or point, it feels totally unfocused. It introduces that girl who is the ‘key to everything’ but barely fleshes her out and she is just a mcguffin really. Scarlet Witch feels thrown in there as a way of making Wandavision more complete. It’s all a train wreck.

Its no wonder movie goers are less enthused to go the theatre when they are continuously leaving unsatisfied.

Edited June 21, 2023 by Heartofice

[IlyaP]

Also, apologies for writing an essay. I was having a quiet morning and apparently I Had Thoughts. 

On this same topic, Dark Horizons has a piece up on The Hulk, which is somehow 20 years old today (Jeezus Murphy I feel old suddenly). It has some interesting observations around the freedom to experiment in a way that is a challenge these days:

https://www.darkhorizons.com/ang-lees-unconventional-hulk-turns-20/

[IlyaP]

9 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

From the sounds of it, The Flash is riddled with this problem, and understandably so.

I'm hoping to find time to see this tomorrow, so as to not have to subject the wife to this, as she's not nearly as into comics as I am. 

[sifth]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I guess there are some issues going on behind the scenes at major studios, because so many of these large scale movies just seem to be chaotic messes. Maybe everything is so big now, with so many interests involved in making a movie that it’s almost impossible to get a coherent vision through.
 

Most comic book movies these days feel like a mish mash of ideas put into a blender and vomited out onto a plate. There might be a few interesting elements but nothing ever feels planned or structured, it’s like the same problem over and over again. From the sounds of it, The Flash is riddled with this problem, and understandably so.

Doctor Strange 2 being a good example, obviously changed directors which never helps, but it has some great Raimi moments but never feels like a Raimi movie. It has no real coherent plot or point, it feels totally unfocused. It introduces that girl who is the ‘key to everything’ but barely fleshes her out and she is just a mcguffin really. Scarlet Witch feels thrown in there as a way of making Wandavision more complete. It’s all a train wreck.

Its no wonder movie goers are less enthused to go the theatre when they are continuously leaving unsatisfied.

It's because big studios are trusting committees, over one person with a vision. When you have committees making a film you get Ant Man 3, when you let one person with a vision make a film, you get GotG vol 3. Now there are other factors at play as well, like that person with a vision needs to be competent and know what he/she is doing. 

[Heartofice]

16 minutes ago, sifth said:

It's because big studios are trusting committees, over one person with a vision. When you have committees making a film you get Ant Man 3, when you let one person with a vision make a film, you get GotG vol 3. Now there are other factors at play as well, like that person with a vision needs to be competent and know what he/she is doing. 

Yeah the risk of a high profile movie is enormous, the amount on money being poured in. I'm sure it's partly about spreading the risk and the blame as well, can't put it all on one person's shoulders.

Outside of that it's obvious that most modern movies are not purely a movie on their own. They are marketing opportunities, tools to sell toys and products, they are there to promote other movies as well. There are so many inputs that tying it all together and making something coherent seems almost impossible. 

Plus these things are so big with so many moving parts it must be a huge task to organise it all. Just look at the chaos of most effects houses struggling to make things look halfway decent in 2023 and its obvious that planning is poorly done.

[sifth]

7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Plus these things are so big with so many moving parts it must be a huge task to organise it all. Just look at the chaos of most effects houses struggling to make things look halfway decent in 2023 and its obvious that planning is poorly done.

Part of me blames test audiences for that. Them not understanding something, usually leads to reshoots, and reshoots can lead to changes with the CGI, which forces some of these studios to use really rushed and unfinished CGI. Not to sound like a broken record mocking Ant Man 3, but the ending was filmed about a month before the movies release, that's not a whole lot of time for the VFX artists to get anything even remotely decent finished.

Edited June 21, 2023 by sifth

[Heartofice]

10 minutes ago, sifth said:

Part of me blames test audiences for that. Them not understanding something, usually leads to reshoots, and reshoots can lead to changes with the CGI, which forces some of these studios to use really rushed and unfinished CGI. Not to sound like a broken record mocking Ant Man 3, but the ending was filmed about a month before the movies release, that's not a whole lot of time for the VFX artists to get anything even remotely decent finished.

Yeah and this also smacks of lack of trust in the original script, or lack of planning. I have heard that modern movies are often not as tightly planned as before because there are so many changes made later in edit and post, maybe because the can make those changes. Then they just end up filming a load of stuff just in case. Plus you also have the trend of just improv'ing many of the scenes.

So you just end up with a bit of a mess that they try and pull something together at the end. 

[Corvinus85]

7 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Idk, the second one was kind of meh and I believe oversaturation and a trending diminishing quality of the films will turn people off even if the films usually make money. Some will still be good, maybe even great, but the golden era of good comic book films has possibly run its course. 

Or just make a live action Batman Beyond and I'll change my mind.

The 3rd one will have Hugh Jackman as Wolverine so yeah I think so.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

The 3rd one will have Hugh Jackman as Wolverine so yeah I think so.

Do people really want this? 

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Do people really want this? 

Considering the internet "feud" Reynolds and Jackman started years ago, my answer is a resounding yes. They have been teasing this for a long time, and when it was announced last year I think, there were a lot of happy reactions.

[Liffguard]

8 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

Possibly fair, but I think it's worth considering that the scheduling of those two movies was let's say flexible- to the point the reason Ned is doing the portal stuff is they wrote it for America Chavez but had to take her out when they switched the order. So there may have been instructions not to do anything in Strange that'd fuck with Strange's role in Spidey when they were developing them simultaneously but thought MoM would be first. 

This is a major part of the overall problem though. Storytelling takes a back seat to franchise building.

[JGP]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Plus these things are so big with so many moving parts it must be a huge task to organise it all. Just look at the chaos of most effects houses struggling to make things look halfway decent in 2023 and its obvious that planning is poorly done.

Translation from a green lit script to screen can suffer for a variety of reasons.

Animation, no matter which medium, is talent and time intensive. When execs, whether producers or further up the chain, get nervous after a wrap watch or test screen result and decide to make some changes but aren’t willing to extend deadlines, it can really fuck with your FX vendors. Then you get cut corners, and you can’t do that with animation. You just can’t. But the value of these relationships and contracts, some FX houses [most, maybe all even] won’t say no, and there you go.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

4 hours ago, sifth said:

Part of me blames test audiences for that. Them not understanding something, usually leads to reshoots, and reshoots can lead to changes with the CGI, which forces some of these studios to use really rushed and unfinished CGI. Not to sound like a broken record mocking Ant Man 3, but the ending was filmed about a month before the movies release, that's not a whole lot of time for the VFX artists to get anything even remotely decent finished.

On Spider-Man: NWH, VFX shots were being completed right up to the week of its release. Stranger Things’ last season had them completed after the season premiered.

-

In related news, Aquaman 2 appears to be getting yet another round of reshoots. 

[sifth]

7 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

On Spider-Man: NWH, VFX shots were being completed right up to the week of its release. Stranger Things’ last season had them completed after the season premiered.

-

In related news, Aquaman 2 appears to be getting yet another round of reshoots. 

I wonder if a certain someone is being removed from the film. 
 

So what was changed in Stranger Things?

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

7 minutes ago, sifth said:

I wonder if a certain someone is being removed from the film. 
 

So what was changed in Stranger Things?

Nothing changed to my knowledge. Just additional rendering time on existing scenes.

I vaguely recall a story about how season 4 episodes got re-uploaded to Netflix servers because of this. This was weeks after the release. So if you binged the series when it premiered, you haven’t seen the corrected versions.

in a similar vein, Thor: L&T had some VFX work done before the D+ release. They tweaked the floating head on account of it got mocked by people who saw it in theatres. Although, on balance I’d say Thor 4’s visuals were pretty good. The rest of though…

[RumHam]

I thought Thor 4 was fairly amusing, but it reminds me of another problem with modern movies especially comic book ones. Apparently he had like a four hour cut. Like what the hell. Many high profile actos had their parts totally cut out. 

You know they're not gonna let you release a three and a half hour Thor movie. Why are you writing a story that takes that long and then cutting it down to arguably less than the bear minimum it needs to be coherant? 

[Myrddin]

(Quote fail. Move on)

Edited June 21, 2023 by Myrddin

[Myrddin]

33 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

In related news, Aquaman 2 appears to be getting yet another round of reshoots. 

How dare you bring this thread back to DC??

[Heartofice]

9 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I thought Thor 4 was fairly amusing, but it reminds me of another problem with modern movies especially comic book ones. Apparently he had like a four hour cut. Like what the hell. Many high profile actos had their parts totally cut out. 

You know they're not gonna let you release a three and a half hour Thor movie. Why are you writing a story that takes that long and then cutting it down to arguably less than the bear minimum it needs to be coherant? 

I think this was what I was getting at, they don’t really know what the final movie is gonna look like so they just throw shit at a wall and hope to find a way to cut it together at the end. Multiple plot lines which need to be whittled down and still have relevance. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

16 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I thought Thor 4 was fairly amusing, but it reminds me of another problem with modern movies especially comic book ones. Apparently he had like a four hour cut. Like what the hell. Many high profile actos had their parts totally cut out. 

You know they're not gonna let you release a three and a half hour Thor movie. Why are you writing a story that takes that long and then cutting it down to arguably less than the bear minimum it needs to be coherant? 

It’s not unusual. They shoot way more than they need and find the final film in the edit. Cameron apparently has a 5 hour cut of Avatar 3. He’s happy with it. Now he needs to trim.

Thing is, it’s still 1.5 (now 2.5) years before the films release. Cameron knows how to shoot a vfx heavy film. Hell, he helped pioneer this stuff. And he has the sheer awesome Powah to reject notes from studio executives.

If the visuals in that film come out looking janky, it won’t be for lack of time and preparation.