Marvel's Multiverse of Maddening Returns

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Was thinking about this more too - that stories, well, end. Endgame was a very good ending for the overall set of shows, with three major character deaths/retirements and the biggest bad being defeated. It's okay to end stories! It's okay to move on or do something different. 

But it's kind of weird to just...keep going after an ending that big. 

From a writing/artistic yes it is, from a corporation's business perspective, you know they cannot and will not stop.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

5 hours ago, Rhom said:

This hit me really hard just now.  I’ve been struggling lately with how fast time is moving for me.  So this blows my mind now that I see it in print (or pixels, whatevs.)

Xmen was 2000.
Ironman was 2008.

And in my head that feels like it was a huge time gap.  But it has now already been four years since Endgame and that feels like an eye blink ago.

IMO Bryan Singer's X-Men is ground zero for the modern CBM, not Donner's Superman or Burton's Batman. I've bored people with this before.

I have a vivid memory of seeing the X-Men teaser trailer for the first time. I knew this thing looked familiar but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Then came the final shot of Wolverine on the Statue of liberty with his claws out. I literally said, "Oh, wow! This is..." as "X-Men" appeared on screen. 

Another one is the first Spider-Man trailer. Blew me away.

[polishgenius]

It's funny how every one of us has a different theory about what's really going wrong and a bit worrying how I'm pretty sure we're all right. Despite most of the movies still making money it's a huge mess.

 

Like a while back I complained that they've mostly lost the art of the smaller scenes- little dialogues that are mostly inconsequential but just add a little bit of colour to the thing. But it struck me earlier that the opposite is also true- that up till Endgame even most of the weaker films had at least one scene or moment or line that broke out a bit, either via memification or just generally sitting well in the fandom's memory. Not all of them would necessarily qualify as iconic but there was almost always something there. 

Whereas apart from the GotG3 oner which might age quite well, or the Spidey-3 nostalgia fest, I think the most iconic moment since Endgame might be Zemo dancing. 

 

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, Rhom said:

Sometimes I try to keep going after a big finish too and its never been anything to brag about... 

 

Hey! Phrasing!

[Winterfell is Burning]

3 hours ago, Maithanet said:

I would also just point out that the success that the MCU had from Avengers (2012) to Endgame (2019) was basically unprecedented, and certainly unsustainable.  It's amazing they were able to keep it going as long as they did.  Mediocre films like Thor 2 and Iron Man 3 made almost 2 billion dollars in 2013!  C list properties like Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man became household names and spawned their own franchises.   

That kind of success simply cannot last forever.  Endgame was a good stopping point for a lot of people who were getting tired of superhero stories generally, and many favorite characters were put to bed.  It should come as no surprise that attempts to "recapture the magic" of 2012-2019 have been dramatically less successful, because the bar was impossibly high. 

Which makes again the reluctance to introduce X-Men and F4 look absurd. 

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Which makes again the reluctance to introduce X-Men and F4 look absurd. 

On X-Men I fully agree.  I think F4 has turned into kind of a joke at this point and they need to wait a bit longer for memories to fade. 

But X-men are certainly the most underutilized Marvel property at the box office, with X2 being the only movie that anybody actually likes and a few more that did ok financially but never took off the way the MCU did.  There's no reason to think that with good storytelling that characters like Gambit or Storm couldn't headline their own films.  They're certainly more popular characters than Ant-Man or GotG or Dr. Strange were prior to their big screen appearances. 

[IlyaP]

I will forever lament the Gambit movie we never got with Channing Tatum. He spent years, like Reynolds and Deadpool, trying to get that made.

[Caligula_K3]

24 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

On X-Men I fully agree.  I think F4 has turned into kind of a joke at this point and they need to wait a bit longer for memories to fade. 

But X-men are certainly the most underutilized Marvel property at the box office, with X2 being the only movie that anybody actually likes and a few more that did ok financially but never took off the way the MCU did.  There's no reason to think that with good storytelling that characters like Gambit or Storm couldn't headline their own films.  They're certainly more popular characters than Ant-Man or GotG or Dr. Strange were prior to their big screen appearances. 

I think that's underselling the X Men movies. X Men 1 is pretty dated now, but it was groundbreaking for the time. X2 is great, but since then there have been some really good movies: First Class, Days of Future Past, The Wolverine, Logan. I'd put Days of Future Past and Logan up there as better than most of the MCU.

And hell, even X Men: The Last Stand (like Spiderman 3) works a lot better when you treat it as a comedy.

[mormont]

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Was thinking about this more too - that stories, well, end. 

Comic book stories don’t.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

34 minutes ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Which makes again the reluctance to introduce X-Men and F4 look absurd. 

Before Y2K, the most popular solo comic titles were Spider-Man and Hulk. The most popular ensemble titles were X-Men and Fantastic Four. Two of these titles have spawned massively successful CBM franchises. Two of them have not. 

I think it's entirely possible the Fantastic Four is just one of those IP's that doesn't translate very well. 

X-Men is a different problem. The MCU X-Men would represent the second X-Men reboot. The previous saga is a tough act to follow. If they get it wrong, they're fucked. 

[polishgenius]

8 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

I think it's entirely possible the Fantastic Four is just one of those IP's that doesn't translate very well. 

 

I honestly can't see why. Other films have managed similar vibes in one way or another, including obviously The Incredibles. Even if you say it's not quite the same because while obviously inspired by them the Incredibles (1) don't have to deal with the 'Reed Richards is an insufferable genius' part of the family dynamic and (2) neither film is as cosmic as FF often is, well... the first FF films didn't really do either thing properly either and the more recent one was barely recogniseable as FF at all. They didn't even really try to bring the comic dynamic over so they can't really point to that dynamic being the problem in the adaptation.

[williamjm]

19 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Bingo. I think this works in their favor. Each movie in the series is marketed as an event film, but one that stands on its own, rather than being necessary viewing as part of a larger series, and each instalment is spaced out enough to let people have a breather. If they oversaturated, like you said, they'd kill their goose. 

At least, that's the impression I'm getting from having read up on it this morning. 

Also, looking at IMDB, it seems like the Monsterverse movies try to hire good actors that are interesting to watch, to (I guess?) balance out the insane VFX that dominates the viewer's screen. Looks like the movies thus far have included Lance Reddick, Kyle Chandler, Tom Hiddleston, Bradley Whitford (JOSH LYMAN!), Samuel Jackson, Jean Reno, Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanbe, David Strathairn, and even Juliette Binoche?! Stacked cast there. 

I think anybody watching the Godzilla films for their human cast is going to be disappointed, they're not really given much to much work with. This is particularly true if you are excited to see what Brian Cranston could do as the lead character in a Kaiju film.

[IlyaP]

25 minutes ago, mormont said:

Comic book stories don’t.

This was one of the reasons for abandoning comics when I got into university - I just couldn't afford to keep up with the never-ending stories, and didn't have the mental hard drive space for them either. 

And if a comic story doesn't end, it just relaunches. Or has a soft reset. For example, Ultimate Marvel, which was an early 00s sort of reimagining of all things Marvel, or Marvel Now! and Marvel Now! 2.0, which were relaunches/reboots of multiple series, including the Uncanny X-Men, which had over the course of its initial run reached a terrifying 544 issues - which is a lot for any read, new or old, to get into. 

If my current understanding of the Marvel publishing landscape is correct, it looks like they're keeping series smaller, and restarting with modified/new titles once a main story is wrapped up and sometimes (but not always?) calling them waves, or miniseries or limited series (?) - eg Avengers Assemble, Avenging Spider-Man, Wolverine and the X-Men, which then led to Marvel Legacy and Fresh Start - an official company-wide relaunch in 2018. 

I get the impression there's been a soft of half-hearted attempt to have stories end by having these sorts of....eras, I guess, which tell stories within stories, before wrapping up. But perhaps there are people here who read comics more widely than I do who can speak to this in better detail. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

36 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

I honestly can't see why.

The track record. 

Quote

...The Incredibles...

Obviously inspired by FF, but without being a direct translation. The differences are important. 

Has anyone here seen the Josh trank film? 

[Rhom]

1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

The track record. 

Obviously inspired by FF, but without being a direct translation. The differences are important. 

Has anyone here seen the Josh trank film? 

I wonder which is worse; the one from a couple years ago?  Or that one they filmed in 1990 just to keep the license?  

[IlyaP]

47 minutes ago, Rhom said:

I wonder which is worse; the one from a couple years ago?  Or that one they filmed in 1990 just to keep the license?  

...Yes.

 

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, mormont said:

Comic book stories don’t.

A lot of them do. They end and get canceled or are a limited series or they get reset and retold.

[sifth]

6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

A lot of them do. They end and get canceled or are a limited series or they get reset and retold.

Yup, this is sort of why I prefer Manga. It’s always one author, with one vision.

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

I honestly can't see why. Other films have managed similar vibes in one way or another, including obviously The Incredibles. Even if you say it's not quite the same because while obviously inspired by them the Incredibles (1) don't have to deal with the 'Reed Richards is an insufferable genius' part of the family dynamic and (2) neither film is as cosmic as FF often is, well... the first FF films didn't really do either thing properly either and the more recent one was barely recogniseable as FF at all. They didn't even really try to bring the comic dynamic over so they can't really point to that dynamic being the problem in the adaptation.

The Incredibles didn't really do FF at all. The powers are...somewhat similar, but the vibe is completely different. The problem is not at all the powers; while Sue's powers aren't incredibly exciting they're not particularly bad, especially with forcefield projections and whatnot. The problem is the actual dynamic and behavior of the team. 

Incredibles got around that by throwing all of that bullshit out the window completely, going instead with making them far more relatable and not going with an origin story for the adults. If you want to do that with FF I guess that's fine, but you might as well just make some random heroes yourself instead of doing it that way - because that won't be the incredibles. 

And yeah, Reed Richards is pretty fucking lame by himself. 

[dbunting]

Casting has as much to do with success as anything else. Anyone else as Iron Man and I don't think this whole craze ever happens. The X-men movie had several strong actors in it that carried the story. The FF casts have always left something to be desired and really, the heroes are too goody two shoes, for me anyway. Very vanilla powers and story.

The original Ant Man was fun, the sequels not so much. The original focused more on Rudd and his criminal friends and for me that made the movie. Once they pivoted to Wasp and his daughter it lost me.