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I don’t see the point in making up scenarios and then getting mad about them.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I don’t see the point in making up scenarios and then getting mad about them.

I'm not mad about it. It just is, and reaffirms the wisdom of my decision to ignore everything Star Wars post-Disney takeover.

Imagine getting upset by your own imagination.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I know this is going to upset some Dakkanauts? But Leia, like Ripley and Sarah Connor was, is, and will forever be, a feminist icon on account at the time the relevant movies were released.

You'd be surprised at the amount of people who go "They don't count!" when you use them examples of how strong women used to be written and why modern no-weakness girlbosses are so exhaustingly awful.

But to be fair the reactionaries also don't count anything released before the current culture wars. See all the "when did Star Trek go woke" posts

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Imagine getting upset by your own imagination.

Wasn't it you who got upset the page before because you imagined people didn't think Leia was the main character and just a main character. She never were the main character yet you insulted someone for it.

Not at all.

But nice try. Please, play again.

 Jadenim wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
In a twist, Disney decides to take Live Action Star Wars and remake it as cell drawn animation!

Ok, that’s weird, I literally just watched a clip that had popped up on my social media feed where someone had done an 80’s style animation (think Transformers / Jayce & the Wheeled Warriors) of an Imperial fleet intercepting a bunch of rebel fighters. And it was awesome!

It is awesome. But the whole 'competent Imperial military shows why you have to do a careful rebellion' vibe doesn't go down well with the majority of Star Wars fans. Note I spent my childhood playing Tie Fighter on my 486 PC...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Imagine getting upset by your own imagination.

Imagine getting upset by someone else's supposed imagination. I know you've been belly-aching it somewhere else online even if it isn't here explicitly.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Maybe the secret to the MCU’s success was just bog standard humanity.

Cap, Hulk, Iron Man. All just started out as bog standard human beans. And one way or another, became absolutely rock hard.

Yes they were helped by not having the rights to mutants. As it seems inevitable they will come in Marvel will lose this as well without ever realising it.

Look, writer's pitch all sorts of crazy stuff that never gets made. Have you heard Kevin Smith's pitch for Superman?

Hollywood also options all sorts of stuff that they never intend to make. They even gets stuff all the way to Dev or Post-prod and then never release it. See Jodoerwsky's Dune as a reference.

I will believe a remake of A New Hope where they cut out Luke when I see it with my own two eyes. Until then, it is rage, rage, rage against the darkness. In this case, a dark screen.

It does strike me as a bit premature to worry about a remake of A New Hope until it actually happens. Wasn't the kid that played Leia in Obi-Wan cast younger than her character? We're good for another half a decade before Disney even has to think about starting production.

 Easy E wrote:
Do we feel like Marvel's formula is failing because they are become more genre focused? I.e. they are putting superheroes in superhero films? For a long time they put them in a different formula, but made the main character a superhero. We had a super in a heist flick (Ant-Man), a super in a spy flick (Cap II), a super in a wuxia flick(Shang-chi) , a super in a horror flick (WW by Night), etc.

Marvel didn't put those characters in unfamiliar formulas, though. Cap comics (especially the stuff they pulled from for CA2) often had that espionage-ish angle with a strong SHIELD presence. Master of Kung Fu was inspired by 70s martial arts films (and spy films also, an aspect missing from the movie). Scott Lang was an ex-con and thief in the comics. They didn't genre-swap those characters -- they really just put them in their proper, established elements. It's like saying WB was brilliant for giving The Batman some of those noir touches. But that stuff has really been part of the foundation of the character since it premiered in Detective Comics.

You know that, I know that; but does Joe audience know that?

The eternal question.

 Grimskul wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Imagine getting upset by your own imagination.

Imagine getting upset by someone else's supposed imagination. I know you've been belly-aching it somewhere else online even if it isn't here explicitly.

Thank you for the assumption.

But I assure you I have far, far better things to do with my time than get purposefully upset by things that aren’t true, let alone actively seeking out such.

Also, if your counter argument is to assume hypocrisy whilst admitting you’ve no evidence of said hypocrisy, maybe don’t make that assumption, yeah?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Imagine getting upset by your own imagination.

Passive-aggressive insults again? That's beneath you, Mad Doc. I thought better of you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Not at all.

But nice try. Please, play again.

I recall you calling me a 'melt' over it, whatever that means. And then I called you on it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:


Imagine getting upset by someone else's supposed imagination. I know you've been belly-aching it somewhere else online even if it isn't here explicitly.

Also, if your counter argument is to assume hypocrisy whilst admitting you’ve no evidence of said hypocrisy, maybe don’t make that assumption, yeah?

He said quite differently to your summation.

I would say he claimed to have evidence inadmissible to this forum.

Kindly take it elsewhere already, the amount of reports this thread generates is on the wrong side of hilarious now.

 Easy E wrote:
You know that, I know that; but does Joe audience know that?

The eternal question.

I didn't, and I think Winter Soldier was the best Marvel movie for the reason you described, it's a spy thriller where one guy happens to have super strength. You can remove the powers and the plot still works. Same reason Rogue One is the best only good SW movie.

 Easy E wrote:
You know that, I know that; but does Joe audience know that?

The eternal question.

There's an expectations angle there certainly. Like people have discussed ad nauseum, the characters the MCU had to work with weren't the top tier from the comics, so they didn't have much baggage for general audiences. Marvel could define them however they wanted. Now they're down to D/E-tier characters and things aren't working so well. Perhaps a factor in that failure is that these characters are D/E-tier in the comics because they innately aren't that compelling. That there is eventually a downside as you near the bottom of the barrel.

Honestly -- if they released a good FF or X-Men movie through this stretch, it probably would have had a different level of performance. They're just endlessly dragging their heels on both projects while barraging audiences with lesser characters they're also not invested in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
You know that, I know that; but does Joe audience know that?

The eternal question.

I didn't, and I think Winter Soldier was the best Marvel movie for the reason you described, it's a spy thriller where one guy happens to have super strength. You can remove the powers and the plot still works. Same reason Rogue One is the best only good SW movie.

Also by far the best Cap-related movie in the whole MCU. The first was okay. The third wasn't really a Cap movie. They left a ton of meat on the bone.

 gorgon wrote:
There's an expectations angle there certainly. Like people have discussed ad nauseum, the characters the MCU had to work with weren't the top tier from the comics, so they didn't have much baggage for general audiences. Marvel could define them however they wanted. Now they're down to D/E-tier characters and things aren't working so well. Perhaps a factor in that failure is that these characters are D/E-tier in the comics because they innately aren't that compelling. That there is eventually a downside as you near the bottom of the barrel.

People liked and got invested in the characters from earlier phases of the MCU which weren't particularly well known because they were well written and were put into good stories.

There's o inherent reason that the newer replacement characters shouldn't receive the same reception - however they're not well written, and the stories surrounding them are garbage.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
There's an expectations angle there certainly. Like people have discussed ad nauseum, the characters the MCU had to work with weren't the top tier from the comics, so they didn't have much baggage for general audiences. Marvel could define them however they wanted. Now they're down to D/E-tier characters and things aren't working so well. Perhaps a factor in that failure is that these characters are D/E-tier in the comics because they innately aren't that compelling. That there is eventually a downside as you near the bottom of the barrel.

People liked and got invested in the characters from earlier phases of the MCU which weren't particularly well known because they were well written and were put into good stories.

There's o inherent reason that the newer replacement characters shouldn't receive the same reception - however they're not well written, and the stories surrounding them are garbage.

Honestly, I wasn't that impressed with the writing for a lot of early MCU films either.

But I don't think we're necessarily at odds here. The bigger, better characters also tend to have the bigger, better stories, which can then inform the writing of the movies. What would Winter Soldier have been without Ed Brubaker's run on the book? DC keeps fumbling around with their characters except Batman. But look at all the great Batman characters and stories and runs...it's not hard to put something compelling together. Spider-Man films have been a little up and down, but again...great characters and stories to mine there.

Meanwhile, quick...name a legendary Doctor Strange run. It's hard, because he's a C/D-tier comics character who was often brought in as a "magic specialist" in someone else's story. And the movie ended up just kinda being an introduction to the Marvel multiverse rather than an interesting DS story, in order to set up things to explore in other movies and shows.

Other than the fact that Shang-Chi is the son of a crime lord, I don't really see much of Master of Kung Fu in the movie. And sure, some things had to change. But that's an example of them making a street-level character into something more conventionally superheroic (he had more superheroic team-ups in other books, but MoKF was largely grounded if weird). I think a darker, grounded but slightly weird crime/espionage style story that had Shang-Chi working with MI-6 could have been interesting and different. But they needed to make things MCU bright and colorful, and superhero him up so that he eventually could be an Avenger and fight Kang or something, so we got a very by-the-book, ho-hum MCU film complete with magic iron rings that grant superpowers and big battle scene against drones.

I'm not saying that lower-tier characters are doomed, but maybe you need to do something less formula with them make them work, and/or pay attention to what worked with them before. Daredevil certainly isn't bottom-tier, but look at the struggles they've had with the MCU show. The Netflix series showed them the way, but they're ignoring it. I just don't think it's that hard writing good Daredevil material...just go read some of the books.

 insaniak wrote:
Or don't.

The fact that more movies are being made with protagonists who aren't male and white is only a matter of politics if you choose to make it one.

Alternatively, we can just accept that white men have had the lion's share of leading roles in western movies for pretty much the entire existence of film media, and choose to enjoy seeing a wider range of people in those roles moving forwards, and be happy for the people who get to feel good about that additional representation.


As a father of daughters, I for one am more than happy to see more movies featuring roles for strong women. As are they. If I find myself feeling the need to see manly men on screen, the next Tom Cruise / Chris Pratt / Vin Diesel / Jason Statham / whoever epic blockbuster will be along soon enough. They've not actually gone anywhere.

Exactly. Well said. This is in the same utterly stupid realm as the crazies endlessly complaining that Godzilla is emitting pink energy in the new Godzilla x Kong trailers, and how it "killed Godzilla for them". My Godzilla used to FLY and fight monsters made of pollution. That also flew.

Give me some female Marvel protagonists that my daughter can care about, because a 7 year old girl certainly doesn't give a rip about the sacrifice of Tony Stark. She certainly loves Wonder Woman, but that's it for DC movie and tv media.

 gorgon wrote:
Honestly, I wasn't that impressed with the writing for a lot of early MCU films either.

Perhaps it's better to look at goals than execution in the case of the early MCU. Consider the stakes. Iron Man's villains and plots are about corporate douchebags and terrorists. Captain America is about beating up Nazis and spy nonsense. It gets interesting with Thor, but in Thor 1 it's still all about a feud between alien gods and really just a small desert town getting caught in the middle of it. Thor 2 is the first movie to up the stakes to Thor saving the universe, although from a purely Earth perspective, it's just a bunch of aliens trying to blow up a part of London or something. New York got it worse. The existential threats to Earth during that era were largely confined to the Avengers movies and things only escalated in standalone movies in the lead up to Infinity War.

In the aftermath of Endgame the movies didn't really go back to that kind of threat level. Spiderman has to fix collapsing reality. Namor tries to take over the world or something. Shang Chi, which I liked as a kung fu movie, escalates in the last third into a fight against a dragon or whatever that's going to destroy all life on the planet. Ant-Man? Let's have a look at that:

Ant-Man 1: Fights a corporate douchebag to stop proliferation of dangerous technology.
Ant-Man 2: Tries to save father-in-law's wife from the quantum realm while fighting off an assassin and some mobsters.
Ant-Man 3: Beats the multiversal big bad in a fistfight and frees the countless peoples of the quantum realm from oppression.

How did it escalate to that level? When Thor goes on from his previous god level adventures to fight a god slayer, it's in theme for him, no problem. In a way he's even taken down a notch in Ragnarok and Love and Thunder because he ultimately defeats his high powered adversaries with brains instead of brawn. You can just about see how Wanda turns into a villain, even if her logic in Strange 2 falls somewhat flat in the face of going full multiverse. But you can believe that a cataclysmic plot would happen at the end of her path from little villain to big hero to big villain. What that adds up to is that in the post-Endgame movies you'll have a hard time finding a story that doesn't involve the end of the world. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is pretty much the only one with personal stakes. Every other hero from the big saviors of the universe to the ex-con whose chief concern is the well-being of his daughter end up saving the world. Every single time.

At the same time you don't get the big team-up movies of the early MCU because of the combination of more and larger guest appearances of other heroes in technically standalone movies and no real potential to up the stakes for those team-up movies because it's all being done in the standalone movies already.

It seems to me that the movies have simply arrived in a dead end where the plots are too similar, the resolutions are too similar and the big fight in the end has reached the rock bottom that was previously comfortably occupied by DC. DC has been stuck in this place for a while. Mindless fights against apocalyptic foes at the end of every movie where the only possible resolution is a complete and unmitigated victory for the hero because otherwise the setting is over and you need time travel or multiversal madness to fix it. There's nowhere to go from there and it all just blurs into each other. Kind of a hard sell, trying to get people to invest in the same thing over and over.

As a final thought, while I don't want to bring too much reality into this I do have to wonder if the last few years have been a good time to bombard audiences with apocalyptic themes when they got plenty of that in real life.

That last bit is a genuinely interesting thought.

I for one am heartily sick of so many different “once in a generation” events happening in my lifetime.

What I wouldn’t give for a decade or two of utter global boredom.

 Geifer wrote:


It seems to me that the movies have simply arrived in a dead end where the plots are too similar, the resolutions are too similar and the big fight in the end has reached the rock bottom that was previously comfortably occupied by DC. DC has been stuck in this place for a while. Mindless fights against apocalyptic foes at the end of every movie where the only possible resolution is a complete and unmitigated victory for the hero because otherwise the setting is over and you need time travel or multiversal madness to fix it. There's nowhere to go from there and it all just blurs into each other. Kind of a hard sell, trying to get people to invest in the same thing over and over.

As a final thought, while I don't want to bring too much reality into this I do have to wonder if the last few years have been a good time to bombard audiences with apocalyptic themes when they got plenty of that in real life.

Honestly its all about having the biggest and most flashy bad in a film. Each time they do one they want to outdo the previous big bad. This leads to the insane escalation where you start out Spiderman saving a few people from a bank robbery to saving the entire multiverse in a few films. As you say the issue with this approach is that Hollywood very quickly ends up backing themselves into a corner where there isn't anywhere to go because they've gone up so far. Often they resolve it by just rebooting everything and starting over. Or they do multiverse stuff and just jump into another multiverse.


The issue for me is that often these massive events when they were originally presented were done after years of smaller adventures building up. Lots of small subplots coming together; stresses and strains on the characters and all; so you really felt the big event was more than just a big powerful boss; but a culmination of a hero's journey. Hollywood tries to smash that into 120minutes which means that not only have we so many "universe ending events" in a few years that its astonishing the universe got as far as it did; but you lack the emotional rollercoaster and story because its just not there. It didn't happen unless you bring it with you from decades of comic reading and TV shows.




I've long said that I'd love to see some more traditional adventuring films where the stakes are lower. Forget saving the universe, lets get back to saving the streets. Not only does it actually make for more time to actually focus on the characters, but it also makes a lot of them work better when they aren't trying to compete with god-powers. Batman can be Batman when he's against his regular foes (please no more Joker he's been overdone); but when you start putting him into the MCU he's just a moody Tony Stark - rich with expensive machine toys.

We kind of see the same thing in modern Doctor Who.

The original run, each serial mostly sat alone. Yes it did eventually build its own internal history, and on occasion we got loosely linked serials (Key to Time, E-Space). But even then, each serial block was a story unto itself with beginning, middle and end. And typically fairly low internal stakes.

Modern Doctor Who? Well he’s saved all of reality. He’s reset the universe. Then saved it again. And again. Nevermind the saves are often convoluted, they’re overused.

The escalation of stakes does have a natural ceiling. And repetition breeds boredom.

Perhaps the issue is Marvel looking at its back catalogue, and wanting not a new film, but say, A New Winter Soldier. Or a New Thor Ragnarok. Which can lead to forgetting the reason many of those films worked was that, in-universe, they were a refreshing change of pace.

Now that’s not always true. GOTG has three entires (three and a bit counting the special), and the comedy is there throughout, which is pleasing unto Nuggan. But, contrast that with the four Thor movies. First two are played straight, for better or worse. Ragnarok we see Chris Hemsworth’s comedy chops for the first time, alongside some genuine serious (I still get goosebumps for the final battle). Love and Thunder? It definitely has its moments, and I’m here for them. But it feels too much like “just do another Ragnarok”.

But then, I’m still watching and still enjoying, so I can pretend I have an entirely unbiased opinion. Though I’d still argue even a ropey MCU entry is still not a bad movie in the grand scheme of things. A 6/10 when we’re used to 8/10 is jarring, but not exactly offensive.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
We kind of see the same thing in modern Doctor Who.

The original run, each serial mostly sat alone. Yes it did eventually build its own internal history, and on occasion we got loosely linked serials (Key to Time, E-Space). But even then, each serial block was a story unto itself with beginning, middle and end. And typically fairly low internal stakes.

Modern Doctor Who? Well he’s saved all of reality. He’s reset the universe. Then saved it again. And again. Nevermind the saves are often convoluted, they’re overused.

The escalation of stakes does have a natural ceiling. And repetition breeds boredom.

Not to mention how many times the solution these days is the sonic screwdriver

But yes in the past we had a lot more stories that were stand alone adventures or were just much more minor. They weren't saving all creation every week, which meant when they did do it; it was a one off and epic.
I think the other difference is that in the past the "new bad" didn't have to be worse than the previous one. I think this is something writers have forgotten. It doesn't matter if the new bad is "more powerful" all that it matters is that they are the new threat. A threat is a threat, it doesn't matter if its stronger or weaker than the last one.

Of course when most solutions are hammer to a nail style it means that they kind of do have to make a stronger nail each time because their only solution is to hit it with a hammer.

I stopped watching nu-Who during the Matt Smith run. Everything felt so samey-wamey from episode to episode. So much running around and yelling.

Good point Geifer. Many of the intro stories of the Avengers were much smaller scale, almost personal stories. That seems to have been lost a bit with the "new generation".

Sure, their stories involve them overcoming personal stuff BUT the stakes if they don't are Universe/Multi-verse altering. Many of the earlier intro stories were much more personal in nature.

I mean, Iron Man 1-3 is just some folks who want revenge on Tony for being a douchebag.

I do also feel like they've kind of lost the grounded costumes a bit. Part of what made Iron Man so iconic is that suit had a really grounded appeal that captured the imagination of both costume designers and gearheads. They did a great job of being both comic accurate and real. There's been some winners in this regard recently like Kang, but the "Eternals" look has dominated a lot of the films and is kind of distracting. Like, I know the over the top suit was kind of the point in Thor 4, but visually that's how everything feels like it looks now (though in truth there's quite a few winners, they just don't stick out like the losers).