MCU - This Thread Wasn’t Made For You

[Slurktan]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

I could write a lengthy answer about how Ben embodies the best of Lee and Kirby in terms of their character tropes, but the shorter response is: as we all know, the whole reason the Avengers were the basis of the MCU was that Marvel had sold off the really popular properties' film rights. X-Men, Spider-Man, and yes, the Fantastic Four. The Avengers were the remnants that nobody wanted. They're now the leading IP, but for decades they were behind the FF in popularity (and the FF in turn were behind the X-Men and Spidey).

It wasn't Iron Man on all the lunch boxes and duvet covers in those days: it was Bashful Ben Grimm. Along with Spidey and the Hulk, he was the face of Marvel for years. 

So your answer for why he's good is because he was on some lunchboxes when you were a kid?  What a strong point.

 

Let me ask you something.... why does he wear tights?  Does he have a rock dick?  Does Thing fuck?

[IlyaP]

10 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

Let me ask you something.... why does he wear tights?  Does he have a rock dick?  Does Thing fuck?

That's...

 

A hard question.

 

 

...I'll...see myself out.

[sifth]

 

I see I'm not the only fan of Mallrats in here, lol

[Jaxom 1974]

Finally watched GOTG3 and it was absolutely, completely, utterly...mediocre. Why is Gunn considered a genius? Oh don't get me wrong, I'd sooner see him helm a film than JJ or Snyder...but his movies just do not do it for me. They're fine. That's the best I can say about them. And maybe it's simply the characters. But the banter and humor just feels forced at times...I've also never been a huge Chris Pratt fan and believe that Dave Bautista as Drax was played out midway before the first GOTG film...

But that's all my opinion and I'll just let it all go now...

[Heartofice]

3 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Finally watched GOTG3 and it was absolutely, completely, utterly...mediocre. Why is Gunn considered a genius? Oh don't get me wrong, I'd sooner see him helm a film than JJ or Snyder...but his movies just do not do it for me. They're fine. That's the best I can say about them. And maybe it's simply the characters. But the banter and humor just feels forced at times...I've also never been a huge Chris Pratt fan and believe that Dave Bautista as Drax was played out midway before the first GOTG film...

But that's all my opinion and I'll just let it all go now...

Wow do you even like anything??

Seriously though if GotG3 is mediocre then how bad does that make everything else the MCU has been doing recently in comparison. 

[sifth]

8 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Wow do you even like anything??

Seriously though if GotG3 is mediocre then how bad does that make everything else the MCU has been doing recently in comparison. 

If anything GotG vol 3, convinced me that James Gunn is about to give us the best Superman movie, ever. That movie made me cry over talking CGI animals.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, sifth said:

If anything GotG vol 3, convinced me that James Gunn is about to give us the best Superman movie, ever. That movie made me cry over talking CGI animals.

Well we can only hope that he makes a good Superman!

What I found most interesting is that I had basically given up on the MCU. I assumed the system and processes there were simply too much of an impediment to make anything even half good any more. The last 5 or 6 movies to come out the of the MCU have all suffered from the same issues: poor writing, bad pacing, too many attempts to tie in other movies, no real conclusions and terrible CGI in boring pointless 'splosion battles

Somehow Gunn has managed to bypass all those issues and create something decent. Even the CGI was good, somehow. I'm not even a fan of the first two GotG movies especially, but I really appreciated that GotG 3 was a return to form and I liked it far more because of that!

[sifth]

On 8/9/2023 at 10:17 AM, Heartofice said:

Well we can only hope that he makes a good Superman!

What I found most interesting is that I had basically given up on the MCU. I assumed the system and processes there were simply too much of an impediment to make anything even half good any more. The last 5 or 6 movies to come out the of the MCU have all suffered from the same issues: poor writing, bad pacing, too many attempts to tie in other movies, no real conclusions and terrible CGI in boring pointless 'splosion battles

Somehow Gunn has managed to bypass all those issues and create something decent. Even the CGI was good, somehow. I'm not even a fan of the first two GotG movies especially, but I really appreciated that GotG 3 was a return to form and I liked it far more because of that!

Part of my enjoyment with GotG vol 3, was the fact that it was the first MCU movie, since Covid, where I honestly felt everyone was onset together. No one seemed green screened in. I really liked No Way Home, but you can tell a lot of the actors were not on set during certain scenes. It was even worse with Doctor Strange 2 and was laughably bad with Ant Man 3; with William Jackson Harper's scenes in particular.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Gunns the best, he should’ve made and written the Star Wars sequels instead of those mediocre filmmakers. Super is a work of art.

Edited August 11, 2023 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[sifth]

13 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Gunns the best, he should’ve made and written the Star Wars sequels instead of those mediocre filmmakers. Super is a work of art.

James Gunn mentioned that he never wanted to make a Star Wars film, but rather a movie that made people feel the same way Star Wars made him feel as a kid.

 

[SpaceChampion]

Minor point but meaningful:

 

[Caligula_K3]

I liked Guardians of the Galaxy 3 myself. It has a lot of heart thanks to the Rocket backstory, and a fun cast of heroes who I'm attached to and who were given solid character arcs. Probably the best Marvel movie I've seen since Endgame (though I've also only seen like, four Marvel movies since Endgame). I was even impressed by some of the action sequences, like the hallway fight: I thought the movie did a nice job of avoiding the third act pitfalls of endless CGI goon fighting/inflated world-ending stakes of most of the MCU.

As for James Gunn, maybe I'm just a fanboy, but I can't think of a movie he's made that I've disliked - granted, I've never seen the Scooby Doo movies. But his style of humour works well for me, especially when he's allowed to indulge his darker side, which GOTG 3 did. There's no argument from me though that the general Marvel style of humour has gotten very, very stale: some lines in GOTG 3 did feel like they were written by a Joss Whedon imitating AI.

 

[Heartofice]

6 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I liked Guardians of the Galaxy 3 myself. It has a lot of heart thanks to the Rocket backstory, and a fun cast of heroes who I'm attached to and who were given solid character arcs. Probably the best Marvel movie I've seen since Endgame (though I've also only seen like, four Marvel movies since Endgame). I was even impressed by some of the action sequences, like the hallway fight: I thought the movie did a nice job of avoiding the third act pitfalls of endless CGI goon fighting/inflated world-ending stakes of most of the MCU.

As for James Gunn, maybe I'm just a fanboy, but I can't think of a movie he's made that I've disliked - granted, I've never seen the Scooby Doo movies. But his style of humour works well for me, especially when he's allowed to indulge his darker side, which GOTG 3 did. There's no argument from me though that the general Marvel style of humour has gotten very, very stale: some lines in GOTG 3 did feel like they were written by a Joss Whedon imitating AI.

 

If James Gunn can make a good movie in the MCU, why is it so hard for everyone else! That is what is really getting to me. What did he do differently that allowed him to get a vision on screen. How did he manage to get decent CGI into it, did he have to get his own contacts in the industry and bypass regular channels?

It's really interesting to me that he managed to solve problems that seem insurmountable for almost every movie since Endgame.

[sifth]

42 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

If James Gunn can make a good movie in the MCU, why is it so hard for everyone else! That is what is really getting to me. What did he do differently that allowed him to get a vision on screen. How did he manage to get decent CGI into it, did he have to get his own contacts in the industry and bypass regular channels?

It's really interesting to me that he managed to solve problems that seem insurmountable for almost every movie since Endgame.

It's funny, how even the small things with the CGI they get wrong. For example Rocket and Groot look like crap in Thor 4, even though they were hardly in the film and the CGI artists were simply using the same models from Infinity War and End Game. Now fast forward about one year and suddenly Rocket and Groot look amazing in GotG vol 3; heck Rocket's face has more emotion in it, than ever before.

I think Gunn just understands human emotion very well. I saw this interview with him a few months ago, when he went over his original plans for the backstory on how Rocket met the original Groot. How the original Groot was treated more like an animal, than a person and how the new Groot by comparison grew up as a member of a family and loves Rocket, Quill and Drax as if they were his fathers and Gamora and Mantis as if they were his mothers. He was getting very emotional over a character, that is basically just a CGI effect, that says three lines. If he cares so much about a character like that, I'd trust him with anyone.

Edited August 14, 2023 by sifth

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, sifth said:

If he cares that much about a character like that, I'd trust him with anyone.

I'd guess this is a large part of it, just caring more and being determined to make things work, despite the difficulties involved in getting these productions rolling. He clearly wants to tell that story about Rocket and loves the character and wants the movie to be good. 

Contrast that to Hemsworth's comments about Love and Thunder. He basically admitted they just had 'too much fun' on the set and probably got carried away. It all sounds like a bit of a jolly, everyone has a laugh and a good time and less attention paid to making sure everything was perfect or worked. Maybe their hearts weren't in it or they took their eyes off the ball, but definitely that movie is far less polished in every department than GotG3.

[Caligula_K3]

10 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

If James Gunn can make a good movie in the MCU, why is it so hard for everyone else! That is what is really getting to me. What did he do differently that allowed him to get a vision on screen. How did he manage to get decent CGI into it, did he have to get his own contacts in the industry and bypass regular channels?

It's really interesting to me that he managed to solve problems that seem insurmountable for almost every movie since Endgame.

I agree with @sifth that Gunn has a really good understanding of emotion and how to create real emotional stakes in a movie. Even something like Slither, which is really silly, has a solid emotional grounding.

For the CGI... No clue. Right now there are serious issues with Marvel's demand for and use of VFX talent that is leaving artists in a constant state of crunch, leading to burnout, impossible deadlines, and worse and worse quality. I can't imagine GOTG 3 was immune to these problems. But it could be a direction thing: if Gunn has a clear vision for how CGI is going to be used in his scenes, doesn't demand constant re-makes of shots, etc... That would allow more time for creating high quality CGI.

I think ultimately the reason GOTG3 worked so well compared to other Marvel movies is that it has a distinctive tone and that it feels self-contained. It was a movie about the Guardians of the Galaxy, paying off their character arcs. It did not feel like setup for the larger MCU or require me to watch TV shows to get what was going on. Nobody said the word "multiverse."

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, Caligula_K3 said:

But it could be a direction thing: if Gunn has a clear vision for how CGI is going to be used in his scenes, doesn't demand constant re-makes of shots, etc... That would allow more time for creating high quality CGI.

Yeah this might also be a good point. If Gunn is used to working on these movies, he will know how to work with the visual teams to get the best results, and not just faff about doing improv and last minute rewrites when scenes have already been rendered. That's my hypothesis anyway.

Again I think it comes down to a question of hard work, preparation, experience and having high standards. Maybe other directors haven't understood what is needed, or found it too hard to fight back against the Disney machinery.
 

[sifth]

25 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Yeah this might also be a good point. If Gunn is used to working on these movies, he will know how to work with the visual teams to get the best results, and not just faff about doing improv and last minute rewrites when scenes have already been rendered. That's my hypothesis anyway.

Again I think it comes down to a question of hard work, preparation, experience and having high standards. Maybe other directors haven't understood what is needed, or found it too hard to fight back against the Disney machinery.
 

It also helps that Gunn storyboards his own films and has mentioned that he shoots almost everything he puts in his storyboards. He's a pretty decent artist and mentioned if he didn't go on to be a director, he would be making either comics or video games. Taika Waititi by comparison, has mentioned that he almost never storyboards his films.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

On 8/8/2023 at 8:16 PM, Jaxom 1974 said:

Finally watched GOTG3 and it was absolutely, completely, utterly...mediocre. Why is Gunn considered a genius? Oh don't get me wrong, I'd sooner see him helm a film than JJ or Snyder...but his movies just do not do it for me. They're fine. That's the best I can say about them. And maybe it's simply the characters. But the banter and humor just feels forced at times...I've also never been a huge Chris Pratt fan and believe that Dave Bautista as Drax was played out midway before the first GOTG film...

But that's all my opinion and I'll just let it all go now...

Ok, I need to see this now.

I thought the Guardians Christmas special was pretty good, not spectacular.

The last Gunn film I saw was TSS. Same; though it gets worse on rewatches. The color grading in the third act still gives me headaches. Like, I literally didn’t finish it once because I was slightly under the weather and it felt like my head was splitting in half.

[Myrddin]

13 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Ok, I need to see this now.

I thought the Guardians Christmas special was pretty good, not spectacular.

The last Gunn film I saw was TSS. Same; though it gets worse on rewatches. The color grading in the third act still gives me headaches. Like, I literally didn’t finish it once because I was slightly under the weather and it felt like my head was splitting in half.

I felt the same about the Christmas Special and TSS (but without the headaches). But absolutely loved GotG3. Solid ending to the trilogy.