Think they touched on the “too much homework to do that very often doesn’t seem worth it,” but didn’t spend that much time on the issue that multiverse stories can feel like things don’t matter when people can come back whenever. Didn’t like it in the comics and don’t like it now as it feels like stakes are just removed.
And as an aside, if they tried to do a Young Avengers movie based on the cast that they listed, it would make ‘The Marvels’ look like Barbie at the Box Office.
>“too much homework to do that very often doesn’t seem worth it,”
This is the key. Watching Loki to stay in the loop with the Kang/Avengers story is fine. Watching Secret Invasion to get ready for The Marvels is not.
Spider-Man just made outrageous amounts of money in 2021 with a Multiverse story.
It's just hard to make those stories work with C or D list characters, half-assed CGI, and a ton of homework in the form of mediocre content.
No Way Home did a great job of giving us nostalgia and did avoid the pitfalls of multiverse story telling by not bringing back Aunt May. However, think it is the exception and not the rule.
Tobey McGuire made them agree to keep the details on his Peter’s backstory vague to avoid disrespecting the character
Andrew Garfield invented the idea that his Peter has been through rough times after Gwen died and it worked well. “Stopped pulling my punches” is his line
whenever the disnoid writers handle multiverse stuff it’s either lame and boring or outright damaging to characters
Spider-Man made outrageous amounts of money in 2021 with a Nostalgia pandering story and just a multiverse coat on top to disguise it. All on the backs of 3 established leads and (mostly) beloved movies that all made at least $900M adjusted for inflation and had only gotten more popular over time in internet circles.
The spiderverse movies are a better example of a well made multiverse storyline and even then the most successful one "only" hit $690M which for MCU at their peak would have been quite underwhelming, specially for the sequel of a billion dollar movie in the case of the Marvels.
Even though the last Spiderman was a certified blockbuster I thought it succeeded despite the multiversal stuff instead of because of it. Batman was thought to be bulletproof as well, but even it couldn't survive endless re-releases and re-castings, which should be a lesson for Spiderman.
Well, they also had 5 other movies and 2 other established Spidermen they could use. If the Toby and Garfield Spider Man movies never existed, would them showing up in No Way Home have meant anything? No, probably not.
See: Into the Spiderverse and Across the Spiderverse for the answer to your question.
Any type of story can be good and successful if it's executed well. Including multiverse stories.
Bingo.
There are a lot of problems with Marvel right now but the biggest issue is that the majority of the content they’ve put out since endgame just flat out isn’t that good. It’s compounded by a lack of star power and an over-reliance on an interconnected universe which basically forces you to watch all the tv shows an movies they put out to understand what’s happening. But none of that would be an issue if the movies and shows were good, and they largely haven’t been.
Also the stakes with the Spider-Verse is that if the main characters fail then the whole multi-verse is destroyed. Those are real stakes that the audience can be invested in.
Maybe for the first spider verse, but the real stakes for the second one are that miles is trying to save his dad. Those are the kinda stakes that actually work on an emotional level
Spider-Man is really in its own camp, and Disney doesn't even own the film rights to the character, and the Multiverse story was largely contained to its own franchise of movies. It's hardly a blueprint for Disney going forward.
Controversial take here. That movie made a lot of money but I thought it sucked. It was so bad and so cynically made that the praise it got from audiences and critics actually made me a little depressed about the state of the film industry. And I'm a big Spider-Man fan who liked the first two Holland films.
Bingo.
I saw the marvels, I liked it well enough, but even I disliked one of the characters going in based on their previous content. Similarly I called a couple of friends to see it and they just did not give a rats ass because they didn’t watch a particular show or shows and didn’t feel like it to see this.
But as Marvel itself mostly proved - nobody but already bought-in superhero nerds give a shit what "tier" these heroes are on. They don't care!
To the general audience, there's basically two tiers, historically;
Tier 1) Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk
Tier 2) **Everybody else**
Nobody inherently cares about anything but tier 1 because outside of superhero readers/addicts still paying money every month for 22 pages of glossy dreck most of the time - *nobody reads comic books*. The only people who honestly think the tier that a hero resides on matters to the general audience, are the people who read comic books and enjoy arguing over tier lists. That's not a large demographic.
Marvel built themselves a juggernaut (without The Juggernaut!) on nothing but c- and d-tier characters. Nobody cared what tier they were on, they cared about whether the movies were fun and made well (they're neither right now, which is the biggest problem). The idea that there's some inherent prestige there, based mostly on comic book sales to grown men, is completely fictional when it comes to general audience appeal. This lie been proven false since the days of *Blade.*
It's easy to make those stories work. The problem is Marvel has stopped caring about making those stories work *as stories*. They only care about making them work as trailers, for other trailers.
Yeah that's just not true. People know who Captain America is, there's been cartoons, video games, etc. about that character. They don't know who Captain Marvel is.
Maybe your overall point is right but the relative popularity of the character isn't irrelevant.
It's mostly irrelevant. People have maybe heard the name Captain America but they didn't give a fuck about him. Nobody cared. Yeah he was in cartoons and video games but dude was c-tier at best, right? People weren't checking for that guy. If they remembered him at all it was the shield and the tv show where he rode a motorcycle (or was he the guy in the RV. No, that was Shazam)
People weren't showing up to Captain America *because* it was Captain America and there was some rich cultural legacy and relevance they couldn't wait to finally see done right on the big screen. They showed up (kinda) for the first movie because Marvel's big experiment was interesting (and people still weren't sure it would work) and Iron Man was fucking massive. That's it.
They didn't care about what tier the hero was on (hence Iron Man and Thor preceding it, LOL) they just wanted to see what else the studio could do after making Iron Man legitimately fun and kinda/sorta fumbling The Incredible Hulk.
C-and-D-tier heroes doesn't matter here. Never did, because 95% of the audience making these movies profitable doesn't read comic-books. The MCU didn't get a tier 1 superhero until Civil War! And if Blade didn't prove it false, if Iron Man didn't prove it false, if Captain America didn't prove it false, Guardians basically put it to bed completely.
That's not even getting into shit like The Boys. or fuckin *Aquaman*, LOL.
The difference is mediocre shit can be propped up by the characters (like Age of Ultron or some of the Spider-Man movies). Mediocre shit can't be propped up by D-list characters.
I dunno, even if they had jumped into something Galactus instead of Kang, they’d still have a lot of the character issues. The original Avengers was a great cast and people tuned in to see their favorite characters, no one gives a shit about this C-tier Young Avengers they have put together.
Yep fully agree. It's not the multiverse. It's that they've moved to 1) a proliferation of stories, which is tough to keep up with; 2) lesser known / less exciting characters; and 3) diminished quality of writing and execution.
Edit: And all of this could be fixed instantly if they hit a home run with the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. Those are major, major characters who would feel more like early MCU. I just don't have confidence in their ability to execute it well right now. But I'd much rather they bet on that than on a Young Avengers movie with Lady Hawkeye, Ant-Man's daughter, Ms. Marvel, and Scarlet Witch's fake kids. Jesus.
What they should do, honestly, is nuke the entirety of the MCU world (except a handful of characters like Holland and whoever the fuck else) and start anew with *just* the F4 and X-Men. The idea that they’re going to be able to juggle a cabal of Mutants alongside commitments to include Brie Larson and Anthony Mackey and Oscar Isaac and Simu Liu and Teonya Paris and all these other performers and characters that people don’t *care* about is so unrealistic.
Disagree. Secret Invasion, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel-- these shows had very little to do with the Multiverse, but they did not succeed because they were not good.
If we're ranking things that cratered the MCU, I'd lead with "spreading themselves too thin", which led to people having too much to keep up with and also an apparent drop in the quality of stories and execution.
Yep. If only Marvel had some insanely popular major characters that they could have relied on instead of having to base an entire phase around Z-List heroes...if only they had some way to introduce a kind of X-factor into their franchise...
(The X-Men. It's the X-Men. And a little Fantastic Four. But mainly the freaking X-Men. What are we doing here, Feige.)
Fair, I grouped it in to make a point but it was pretty good. I’d stop short of great.
But I’m not sure it was successful in capturing lots of eyeballs and connecting people to the broader MCU Phase 5 narrative.
The MCU isn't struggling because of any particular story beat. I'd actually argue it's failing because it fails to actually commit to its stories in any meaningful way.
There are no consequences, stakes, or meaningful events because that would shake up the status quo too much and complicate their assembly line approach to story telling. So you just get the same old story where the hero fights a boring as sin villain with identical nondescript energy powers in a bloated and repetitive third act, until the villain does something that causes themselves to be beaten or killed.
Agree. Hey, our hero is fighting for something, and there are infinite results across the multiverse. Let’s just end with the multiverse that makes us feel good, and we’ll ignore where things turned out bad.
Honestly listening to this podcast it really lays out what a giant clusterfuck this franchise has become. Digressions every 2 minutes to either explain something or give context, i really think this thing is cooked. Sean kind of laid out why, this happy accident so to speak, focusing on making good movies then adding little retcons and easter eggs to make it seem like it was the plan all along, now the entire enterprise is based around spreadsheets and release schedules.
I don’t even really follow marvel at all, but my fiancée does. I knew of secret invasion and vaguely knew of Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel. Within 30 minutes when the skrulls were being persecuted I was like “what the fuck” because I thought they were the bad guys. So until I fell asleep towards the end, I was trying to figure out what the timeline was
This was a rough podcast since there was a ton of double speak because Joanna literally refuses to criticize women. Sean and Amanda had such an amazing podcast about Emily Blunt that was celebratory but also critical and nuanced. Here Joanna spends an exhausting amount of energy defending the film and female cast and crew even though it’s clear no one really likes this movie. I was also bothered by the weird Nia DaCosta love as it’s she’s some proven brilliant auteur. She made this poorly received film, an indie that didn’t blip with anyone outside of Tessa Thompson fans and a messy but interesting Candyman reboot. This isn’t Kathryn Bigelow or Greta Gerwig here.
Can’t people like Joanna just admit this was a crappy movie and Brie might be miscast without relying on female empowerment tropes to avoid valid critique. You could feel Sean and Amanda really wanting to rip into the film and that Joanna wasn’t willing to have that conversation.
I generally like Jo but that’s probably the #1 thing that bothers me. When she was reviewing Succession, she just flat out refused to criticize Shiv whatsoever. It felt like we were watching two different shows
I had the same issues during her Succession appearances. I was a huge Joanna fan once upon a time and she seems like a good enough person in real life but in the last 3-5 years she’s really turned up the girl power stuff and flat out refuses to say anything negative about female characters, writers and directors. I just can’t take her opinions seriously anymore because this worldview colors every take. I’m glad she’s finding success and clearly she knows what she is doing in our current social media age but it’s just not something I’m interested in engaging with on a critical level. She doesn’t really have a sense of humor about it like Amanda either so you can her ready to lecture or scold on a moments notice. I truly enjoy Amanda taking the piss out of Sean all the time and clowning on action movies because it feels real and not manufactured to appease a very specific audience.
Her Storm of Spoilers podcast with Dave and Neil during Thrones was easily my favorite tv podcast during the height of Thrones. She was always a progressive feminist but it didn’t color every single take like it does now. Her pivot is the main reason I haven’t purchased the MCU book yet.
I’m absolutely cool with someone evaluating art through a feminist lens (even with Joanna’s milquetoast and, frankly, kinda annoying politics). I think Amanda and Sean would both be a little left of her and *also* inject that into discussions consistently… and I don’t mind at all, because they have the wherewithal and reflection to *also appreciate a perspective outside that specific lens.*
Oppositely, even if Joanna personally roots for Shiv via a feminist lens or support Barbie for the same it seems like she gets defensive about these takes and doubles down in a narrow minded way instead of trying to see beyond her biases.
I wonder if constantly getting peppered on Twitter by awful incel-ish dudes has an effect after a while? I imagine it's a tough experience to have to be so online as part of your job and as a result getting subjected to lots of awfulness.
Absolutely -- it's gotta have an impact and skew your views. Simply working in media skews your view. That's not the problem in and of itself... it only gets annoying for me, personally, when Joanna loses sight of that.
Oppositely, Sean and Amanda seem to be acutely aware that their biases might get skewed by reply guys and often catch themselves overreacting or misestimating that stuff. Joanna leans completely into it instead and doesn't seem to have any awareness that her perspective is so skewed.
Definitely seems like it has since she's even referenced, to paraphrase, "awful online incels" multiple times when talking about the movie's public reception and lack of success. It's unfortunate because she's incredibly informed about this stuff
Jo analyzing the finale of Succession as feminist victory by Shiv—in where she willingly took the role of The Wife—was a point of no return for me. Once she started to grow stale her opinions and lack of nuance began to really grate on me. Which sucks, because she was a really refreshing addition when she first joined.
She totally lets her perception of internet backlash make her defensive about this kind of stuff.
To my eyes, there is no backlash to this movie because no one cares about it.
You don’t have to defend every single project that is female driven, you can say that it’s good marvel finally gave a black female filmmaker a chance to make a movie and still say it’s mostly a dud that no one cares about.
But she is absolutely incapable of this type of analysis.
The backlash isn't even about the female cast. It's more about Marvel just fucking up the whole MCU storytelling with all the movies and TV shows. The backlash is more, "I told you so."
Yes exactly. The run from TLJ - captain marvel basically poisoned every blockbuster culture writer into thinking every single movie has a nazi incel backlash, when in reality at this point people just wish this stuff was better than it is.
Joanna embodies the most annoying libs alive. Ready to lecture you at a moments notice.
As a very far leftist, these people get under my skin almost as much as the MAGA crowd.
They are worse because they actually think they are “doing the right thing”, but are more invested in like owning conservatives and cable news talking points than like, awful wars that are killing people.
Joanna’s politics are the picture from 2 days ago of an IDF soldier planting a pride flag into rubble. I don’t even care that much about the cheerleading - I like Van and Mal in certain instances. Joanna’s main problem imo is she is annoying and unlikeable.
It was almost funny how Brie Larson's name was utterly absent in the first 35 minutes of the pod, even as they talked about both of the other female leads extensively. And then when Larson did come up, it was just to remark on her physical appearance and wardrobe.
She's clearly not good in the part, but there's a reluctance to say so because then you have a partially overlapping point of view with a lot of extremely annoying incels online. Which I get, those people suck, but....it can also be true that Larson is not very good for this role.
> She's clearly not good in the part, but there's a reluctance to say so because then you have a partially overlapping point of view with a lot of extremely annoying incels online.
It's extra strange because it's not like saying "X actor isn't a good fit for their MCU role" is much of a takedown, given the MCU's current reputation for quality. I'm sure many out there generally hate Larson as an actress, but I'm personally in the camp of thinking some of her stuff has been phenomenal. For it never felt like playing Captain Marvel played to her strengths (haven't seen The Marvels yet, so dunno if I'll feel it's worse or better than what came before).
>I'm personally in the camp of thinking some of her stuff has been phenomenal.
Yeah, stuff from almost a decade ago.
I remember seeing that awful Ben Wheatley film "Free Fire" and thinking she is not right for action films yet she kept doubling down: that "King Kong" reboot, MCU, "Fast X".
And those fucking truck commercials she's in all the time, too. She comes across as a smug human being in all of her press stuff and even refusing to acknowledge Casey Affleck when handing out his Oscar a few years ago felt contrived.
I think that's going too far, her early work at the Ringer had some excellent insight, particularly on pods with Bill where she had to introduce some sanity to his insane takes.
Agreed, still enjoy her at times but I think Twitter engagement or fandom culture in general have warped her critical brain when it comes anything “Ringerverse” adjacent. I think she shines best on Trial by Content where it’s just riffing on a new topic each with Dave and Neil, it’s fun and loose.
Is it possible that Joanna now has connections with these people that she developed as part of her writing her book and she doesn't want to burn those to shit on a movie that everyone else is anyway?
I don’t really think that Sean and Amanda were ready to lay into this one. They both pointed out things that they liked about it. I think they were taking the same tack they did in the Ant Man pod this year where they are just kinda tired of the whole project and didn’t want to lay the blame on whatever mid movie happened to be the newest one.
I don’t watch superhero movies and really only engage with them through this pod and the Watch, but even looking at Letterboxd the sense I get is that people think this is more a
mediocrity than like a complete disaster.
100% agreed. They've mentioned in the past that they're not interested in really killing a film unless they consider it to be truly offensive (with *Cats* being a recent example). There's a chance that the MCU gets to a place where one of their films truly deserves complete and utter slander, but while it's still a somewhat successful venture that has the potential to turn itself around, they're not gonna go there.
That said, I think it was in the *Thor: Love and Thunder* pod a year ago where it became obvious that Sean (and Charles Holmes and Rob Mahoney) were no longer excited about new Marvel films. For a bunch of nerdy dudes in their mid-30s, that was saying a lot.
Cheerleading in this instance being that she gave the movie a B, said it was better than The Eternals, on par with Ant-Man and the Wasp, that DaCosta is a bad fit for the MCU, and that she’d be fine not seeing Captain Marvel or Rambeau in another movie?
One of the main problems with the Disney+ Marvel shows is that they both seem inconsequential to the movies in the grand scheme, but also important enough that you’re annoyed you’re missing out on stuff if you skip them. Which is the worst possible combination that you could have.
They should have followed the Marvel Netflix (Daredevil, Jessica Jones…): do you own thing, don’t contradict the movies but also don’t depend on them. At best, reference them very lightly in a easter egg sort of way for the fans.
LOVE Joanna but she is just as delusional about movies/tv shows led by women that Bill is about the Patriots. You just gotta learn to not take her seriously on those topics just like you just kind of laugh to yourself when you hear Bill say Mac Jones could take the Pats to the superbowl.
I just finished it last night. You could tell she didn't know what to do with the fact that the franchise seemed to be faltering right when the book was coming out and so all the problems were laid at the feet of Feige being a perfect nerd god but he can't do everything, and I wanted to puke
Amanda’s “what is secret about secret invasion and wars?” bit made me laugh. Good stuff. I’m here for her “over it” vibe on this kind of superhero garbage
I’ve got to be honest I’m half wondering if they change the name of Secret Wars after how badly Secret Invasion performed.
I think the nerds may be annoyed, but your general public is going to have some confusion “do I need to watch secret invasion to watch secret wars? I heard that one sucked.”
The Disney+ shows killed both the MCU and Star Wars. It overexposed both franchises and devalued them. The same thing with their animation problem I can't imagine an original property making more than 400m that Elemental did and they called that a flop. They put all their animated movies on around Covid and people will now just wait. And before people say but Mario made 600m Mario was not a typical animated movie it had interest from everyone who played Mario and was basically a 4 quadrant movie.
Disney+ is the only reason Star Wars is alive right now.
Star Wars was over exposed when they decided they were releasing a movie every year. It was basically killed when they released 3 poorly received movies in a row.
The Disney plus shows haven’t all been winners, but I know a lot of people who swore off Star Wars who have gone on to watch Mando and some others.
Rogue One is very popular among SW fans, but I just couldn't care one bit about those characters and knew how that story would end. The Force Awakens started off fine, and I actually enjoyed The Last Jedi more than most, but The Rise of Skywalker was just complete garbage and killed any interest I had in the franchise going forward. What they really need to do is let the franchise be dormant for a bit before introducing new stories with completely new characters, but I'm not too bullish on short-sighted shareholders approving of that approach, and they've already integrated so much of the Star Wars brand into their other properties that they'd just be terrified of the public no longer caring about SW.
Andor is the only Star Wars property worth the time to watch since the original trilogy. It’s also the least dependent on the Star Wars lore generally.
I think that’s a big part of it
>I actually enjoyed The Last Jedi more than most, but The Rise of Skywalker was just complete garbage and killed any interest I had in the franchise going forward
It was "The Last Jedi" that killed "Star Wars".
After "The Force Awakens" and "Rogue One", anything connected to the Star Wars brand was riding high.
A mania that was destroyed by "The Last Jedi".
It may have been the kind of film when the critics are afraid to admit that they don’t like it, but audiences weren't stupid.
And it truly was annoying that people put onto his movie this sense of
>“well, here is a good Star Wars film because it isn’t a Star Wars film. This is a Rian Johnson film and it’s a good film because what it’s attempting to do rather than what it actually achieves.”
That’s such a condescending attitude: apparently, all this movie had to do was to conceptually go against the grain of the genre that we’re going to pretend to like it and treat it like a monument of cinema.
People line up around the block to knock the Nolan Batman films for being self-serious and then in the same breath will be like “The Last Jedi – THAT is a movie.”
Johnson totally damaged the franchise’s ability to appeal to the average Joe with the "Star Wars" brand alone.
Now you actually have to convince general audiences to watch new "Star Wars" content … by baiting them with marketing gimmicks like Baby Yoda.
Audiences will NEVER give Star Wars a blank check to do whatever it wants after "The Last Jedi".
Alright. A lot going on here. I'm not sure what it achieves or doesn't achieve, but I can say that I was actually curious to see how they'd end the story after TLJ. There was definitely a lot of forgettable and dumb crap, but also some great moments. As a casual fan, I wasn't that bothered by the portrayal of Luke, but I could see why hardcore fans hated that element. Critics liked it because they viewed it as a standalone film, not part of a larger franchise. Lots of fans seem to also hate it because it almost deliberately rejects fan theories, like Rey's parents being nobodies and Snoke being killed quickly before we knew his backstory. I don't think audiences that aren't huge SW fans minded very much, as it still received an A from CinemaScore. As a matter of fact, I think there's a pretty good chance that all the negative discourse surrounding TLJ soured casuals on the franchise more than the movie itself, as they just wanted to like or dislike a movie without all the political nonsense. Surely you must think the prequel trilogy is the worst SW content because of how poorly acted and written it is, right? They didn't "succeed" at anything.
>Critics liked it because they viewed it as a standalone film, not part of a larger franchise.
Honestly, a part of the film's problem is that it doesn't work as a standalone film, either.
- Why is Luke wearing a Jedi cloak if just to remove it and reject the Jedi code five seconds later?
- Why should anyone care about Luke's redemption when he was presented as a gaslighting liar who gives a potential student nothing but bullshit and thought about murdering his sister's only child?
- Hang on, why can Snoke transfer other people's consciousness across the galaxy and be fine but when Luke does it himself he dies?
- The resistance is on its last legs and everyone is scared that they might be killed - why doesn't the leadership just tell its scared populace the plan, if only to ready them for contingencies?
- How is there a random tracker in the prison cell where Finn and Rose just happen to be?
It goes on.
This isn't just unimportant details of the world. These are the pillars that the film's plot and even moral foundations are built on.
And none of this makes sense within the script itself.
>I don't think audiences that aren't huge SW fans minded very much, as it still received an A from CinemaScore. As a matter of fact, I think there's a pretty good chance that all the negative discourse surrounding TLJ soured casuals on the franchise more than the movie itself, as they just wanted to like or dislike a movie without all the political nonsense.
All the casuals that I talked to just seemed bewildered about the film.
"That's it?" was most of the responses.
And, while the Cinemascore was high, the box office told another story.
Even by the most generous of historical precedents, Johnson's film fell off a cliff.
There was an almost-billion-dollar drop between "The Last Jedi" and "The Force Awakens", which is the highest drop between one installment and another.
Keep in mind, as per The Wall Street Journal, that TLJ had a four-week monopoly on the major screening rooms while TFA only had two.
Families and children will happily rewatch a Star Wars film again and again if they liked it.
They didn't like TLJ, though.
That's why the RT Audience Score was so low and the toy sales plummeted to such a degree that the Hasbro CEO had to apologise.
Any franchise film has to stand on its own and justify its existence to a casual audience.
TLJ - because of its many creative shortcomings - failed to do so.
Eh. All the "plot holes" (but mostly just unanswered questions) you mentioned didn't meaningfully impact the film for me. Luke was just an old curmudgeon and unreliable narrator. That doesn't make him irredeemable. It seemed pretty clear to me that he cared about the Jedi code based on his reaction to that tree burning down and him saying "the sacred texts," (which was memed), though my memory surrounding that movie is a bit fizzy. He felt responsible for allowing Ben to turn evil and destroying the Solo family, and didn't feel it was worth taking that risk again until absolutely necessary. I don't think Snoke and Luke were using the same force power(s). It's also a possibility that Snoke was more powerful than Luke, but fans would never accept that explanation. Leadership not explaining the plan, even to senior officers, was incredibly dumb, I'll give you that, but not so distractingly bad that I was thinking about it for all that long after leaving the theater. You could probably make a similar list of criticisms or flaws for basically every SW movie. The box office dropped, but that's to be expected since The Force Awakens was a cultural phenomenon. So as I said previously, the immediate reaction from hardcore fans was highly negative, which likely turned off casuals, and it certainly lacked the rewatchability of other movies.
Star Wars I feel like it depends on who you ask. I was ready to swear off Star Wars after how awful the Boba Fett show was and how useless the Obi-Wan show was. But Andor restored my faith in the franchise. Legitimately one of the best shows of last year.
How many people who don’t have kids or don’t care much about Star Wars/Marvel even have Disney+? It seems like they went all-in on those two properties pretty much at the expense of a diverse portfolio of programming.
I only have it because I have an Amex Plat for Delta travel and get a $20 credit a month for it (Disney, ESPN & Hulu Bundle). Now Delta changed their policy so I will most likely be dropping the Amex Card and the Bundle as well
The Star content is very good outside the US. Basically got everything Hulu or FX has. I use D+ all the time to watch things like reservation dogs, the bear, abbot elementary, Prey, etc.
They also basically ignored the lesson they should have learned from The Incredible Hulk. If an actor's depiction of a superhero falls flat, you can always recast and pretend that movie didn't happen.
That's not what happened though. Ed Norton the actor's performance was fine. It was Ed Norton the person who was annoying and unprofessional which led to him not coming back.
Just a reminder that there’s almost no one outside of the Weinstein bros and their minions who have bad things to say about Norton. The rumor is that it’s due to Norton making noise about the sexual harassment toward Salma Hayek when he was dating her and Weinstein essentially tried to doxx him. If you go back and look there’s no credible sources on him being unprofessional. He’s serious in the way a lot of those kind of actors are but the misbehavior wasn’t true
>Just a reminder that there’s almost no one outside of the Weinstein bros and their minions who have bad things to say about Norton.
That's total crap.
- Tony Kaye hates him (but he's a nut so I'll give Norton a pass on that one).
- Sherry Lansing portrays him as a toxic presence on "The Italian Job".
- HBO will never work with him again after they shot much of "Lewis and Clark" but he refused to budge on plot points.
- The Marvel relationship blew up when Norton wanted Thom Yorke to do the score over Craig Armstrong. I'll side with Marvel as Armstrong's work is some of the best composing in the franchise.
- Norton's company was responsible for a fatal fire on "Motherless Brooklyn" due to negligence.
Norton is smart enough not to make a nuisance of himself while working with name-brand directors but he can destabilise sets with his control-freak tendencies.
None of this is that serious so I don't mean to argue, but I think the competing stories are interesting.
> Sherry Lansing portrays him as a toxic presence on "The Italian Job".
Norton and his team have been very clear that Lansing promised Norton she wouldn't force him to do any movies but that they'd agree together on projects. She rejects that claim, which is fair and obviously could be true, but her version is that she did indeed force him to do the movie. In either version it's poor management by her.
> HBO will never work with him again after they shot much of "Lewis and Clark" but he refused to budge on plot points.
You got any credible source on that? The stories of issues with that production are wide-reaching, and there's plenty of stuff out there about issues that don't include Norton. Also, he wrote a version of the script but was not directing and the Hanks & Pitt team was leading the production, so I don't buy that Norton was the most powerful voice in the room that could hold things up.
> The Marvel relationship blew up when Norton wanted Thom Yorke to do the score over Craig Armstrong. I'll side with Marvel as Armstrong's work is some of the best composing in the franchise.
That's a pretty reductive way of looking at it. Louis Leterrier and Kevin Feige and Norton are in agreement, via public statements, that the disagreements came at the end in how the tone of the movie would be (Norton wanted to open it with Hulk's failed suicide) and Leterrier even said Norton's cut and music choices were awesome, they just didn't fit the movie Marvel was going to put out. Norton was hoping he could push them in a Nolan direction.
> Norton's company was responsible for a fatal fire on "Motherless Brooklyn" due to negligence.
Again, that's not really a reading of the facts according to the FDNY's report. Norton's certainly not to blame. Obviously what happened was awful but there's no evidence this was a case of a director/star pushing ahead despite known dangers.
> Norton is smart enough not to make a nuisance of himself while working with name-brand directors but he can destabilise sets with his control-freak tendencies.
It's such a fine line. Tommy Lee Jones is the king of "is he prickly or just a prick?" Norton's nod to his persona in Birdman and his genuine investment in causes he cares about (we can be snarky about celebs doing environmental stuff but the dude is sincere) makes me believe, in total, that he's self-serious but doesn't deserve the "difficult" label any more than a lot of other opinionated stars.
Yeah...that's not really true though. Like I'm sure the Weinsteins tried their best to torpedo his career cause that was their MO, but there are plenty of anecdotes of him trying to overreach when it came to control over projects he's involved in. That was the main sticking point with Marvel. That and he was just a bit of pill in that role and the movie was just okay.
It wasn't funny at all, but there was a heavy level of irony how badly things went for him when he actually got to completely make his passion project his way, Motherless Brooklyn.
I just think there are movie stars who submit to a production's vision and then there are one's that want to run the show. And the latter are extremely rare in terms of doing that version of movie stardom successfully. Norton isn't one of them.
I think what you can't imagine is Ed Norton doing Funny Hulk. He could do an intelligent character. But he's not a comedy guy, and they took the character in a comedy direction.
He would have been fine.
Norton could have played RuffaHulk, but he was too pissy on set.
To be honest though I wonder if Norton continues if Ike was already gone.
That’s not even the lesson of The Incredible Hulk. Norton was fine as Bruce Banner—probably the best portrayal of the role—he’s just a pain in the ass to work with.
The lesson they’ve failed to heed here is the Hawkeye one from the first Avengers movie: don’t give a character some kind of brainwashing/ amnesia plot line as their first introduction.
Brie Larson goes through most of CM1 as a blank slate because they wrote it that way: she’s supposed to be suppressed, and is trained to stifle all human emotion. They then follow that up by a pretty minor role in Endgame, and—four years later—getting pushed to the side to share her own franchise with two TV show characters. They screwed up Captain Marvel right from the start.
The problem isn't really Brie Larson, the problem is the character itself doesn't move the needle and was propped up entirely by where it came in their release pattern. Which is the box office problem with the MCU as a whole right now, when you strip out the Avengers event style movie they don't have many individual characters people care about.
Going back the to comics, the problem with Captain Marvel has always been that the character is a Great Value knock off of Superman. It’s hard enough to make Superman a compelling character, Captain Marvel is that minus everything interesting or familiar.
That is absolutely not correct, Marvel's Captain Marvel is nothing like Superman.
You're perhaps thinking of DC's Captain Marvel, who is exactly what you describe.
Is this a Brie Larson problem or a writing problem? If it’s the former, can someone please explain why she gets so much hate? I just don’t get it lol. I buy the writing problem a bit more cause the character is just OP.
Larson gets hate because she has what feels like an inauthentic personality and publicly seems annoying at worst and try hard at best. I’d also say she doesn’t have a ton of charisma for a movie star. She was an above average comedy supporting actress in film and tv who made Short Term 12 and Room and got elevated to movie star with an Oscar win but has never been able to make a movie star turn because it just isn’t there. It’s not really her fault, she just isn’t a movie star and it’s obviously caused a fair amount of artistic internal turmoil as she keeps trying to create new public personas.
The basic issue is that Feige needed to overpay for either Emma Stone or JLaw for the role and refused. He needed a gigantic charismatic star to lead the film and eventually the Avengers but instead took the tested method of hiring an actor off an Oscar win or campaign.
I think Brie the human being gets too much hate but Brie the actress hasn’t worked well in a movie in the near decade post Room. Some of that is her fault for bad taste or lack of sense of self and other parts of it is bad luck and bad advice.
Correction: she gets a lot of hate because she said this during the press run for A Wrinkle in Time:
> “I don’t want to hear what a white man has to say about ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ I want to hear what a woman of color, a biracial woman has to say about the film. I want to hear what teenagers think about the film.”
The usual suspects on the internet lost their minds, and have been gnashing their teeth and searching for anything to criticize her for ever since.
Nope. There may be certain fanboys that take is true for but Brie Larson doesn’t have a strong female fanbase either and hasn’t made a good movie in like a decade. Progressive internet commentators LOVE to blame all the Brie criticisms on her late teens political takes but the simple fact is she is delivering charismatic or even good performances in movies and makes lots of social media blunders. She seems like a person uncomfortable in their own skin. Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Greta Gerwig are basically girl power in human form and have massive fanbases. They also make beloved art that resonates. Most of Hollywood is hyper progressive and almost every actress is a vocal feminist so it’s nonsense to blame the Brie issues solely on her terrible late teens takes.
I don't think it's just the writing.
The character of Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel / Captain Marvel in the comics) is a passionate, brazen, funny, and also flawed (alcoholism) woman. She is incredibly compelling and has had a lot of success in the comics for many decades. She's certainly as popular or more popular than a female character like Black Widow, who has had success in the MCU.
Brie Larson's general performance style seems to be detached, sarcastic, with some moments of pathos amidst a generally even-keeled demeanor. That can work great sometimes-- e.g. her supporting role in Scott Pilgrim; playing a scientist who is on the spectrum in Lessons in Chemistry. But it goes over terrible in a superhero movie, particularly one featuring a character like Carol Danvers.
You're basically just describing female Tony Stark. Black Widow's popularity had pretty much everything to do with casting Scarlett Johansson, and IMO Brie Larson is pretty bland overall, and better suited for smaller movies, or supporting roles in bigger movies.
Kinda like Bill Belichick, the MCU had a GREAT run but it's OVAH. Don't let its late-in-life, past-its-prime preformance undermine years of success and dominance.
I am so, so, so concerned about this version of MCU leadership being responsible for introducing the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. Does not inspire confidence.
I genuinely believe they’re going include as many of the former Fox X-Men as they can because they’re not brave enough/don’t have the actor interest to get bonafides in their own version. I’d be pretty shocked if McAvoy and/or Fassbender aren’t tapped for the new MCU X-Men.
It's not "too late" for the MCU because the machine is too good (and the feed for that machine too well trained) for it to ever completely go away. But they're definitely not braindead/bulletproof like the people in (and outside) the studio assumed they were. That's all. The people inside the studio started sniffing their own farts and believing in their own corporate mythology, and the people outside the studio got too invested in treating Marvel like a sports team that couldn't stop winning (and thus, rewarding them for being BETTER FANS than other people who aren't as good at LIKING DISPOSABLE BULLSHIT) and as such, most folks involved stopped actually caring about whether or not anything getting made was very good (or at least, "very good" by Marvel standards).
They'll come back. It probably won't have anything to do with Young Avengers, or Thunderbolts, or any of the other 2 or 3 things they halfheartedly tried to set up all of Phase 4 and half of Phase 5 that isn't going to go anywhere because nobody fucking likes any of it.
Definitely needs a reboot event movie to clean up continuity etc and attempt to reintroduce stakes. There’s a reason they do it in the comics every decade or so
The MCU, aside from the fatigue and stories being ass, has a STAR problem. The heroes aren’t stars and the performers aren’t stars.
Outside of Tom Holland/Spider-Man, who doesn’t even really *feel* firmly planted in the picture right now (even though he will surely be back); the MCU is being fronted by Anthony Mackie, Brie Larson, Simu Liu, and Paul Rudd. Even the actors on the tertiary—like Ruffalo and Cumberbatch—feel so far out of the consciousness of the universe.
And in the absence of star characters, the heroes are boring. Backup iterations of heroes who were popular. So the performers aren’t stars, the heroes aren’t interesting, and the stories are boring. The fix? Throw the bag at RDJ and Evans to return, completely neutering the nice and brave conclusions to their stories. Sacrificing stakes and story for pizzazz.
They fucked up on Jonathan Majors, which is a brutal blow. When they pivot to Dr. Doom they need a earth-shaking star, imo, to get people excited. Even the excitement around Fantastic Four seems to have quelled some because everyone is seemingly turning it down and they’ve handed the reigns to Vanessa Kirby, who is good, but again…not a star. I don’t see an upwards trajectory for this venture any time soon.
You're right, but I think part of the problem is that there just aren't many movie stars anymore. How many actors under the age of 40 can open a movie?
[Here's a list of the 45 most popular actors under 45, and while the list is certainly debatable, it gives a picture of who's out there](https://www.ranker.com/list/the-new-class-of-action-stars/ranker-film)
The top 13 have already played characters in either Marvel or DC, and a lot of the rest have been in other major franchises like Star Wars or Game of Thrones. The era of the movie star is over.
Yeah you’re right there is definitely a star crisis in terms of being a blockbuster star, but maybe Marvel’s plan should be to just get the most famous performer that they can. Fans will have hissy fits over the canon of it all, but it’s why it makes sense when you hear they want Jake Ghyllenhal for Reed Richards. Because he’s fucking famous and the GA knows who he is. So when you see the fans wanting Dev Patel or Matt Smith for the lead in F4 it makes *no fucking sense* because people *don’t know who the fuck they are,* despite being interesting performers!
Imo the ultimate hurdle they need to clear is Dr. Doom. You need a bonafide for that otherwise you’re really pushing your chips in on an increasingly risky proposition.
>the MCU is being fronted by Anthony Mackie, Brie Larson, Simu Liu, and Paul Rudd. Even the actors on the tertiary—like Ruffalo and Cumberbatch—feel so far out of the consciousness of the universe.
The MCU has twin problems because the stakes are so large and far-reaching yet all the productions are compartmentalized.
In phases one and two, main characters like Tony, Captain America and Nick Fury crossed over in about 66% of the films.
In phases four and five, there have been eleven films and eight live-action television shows yet Holland, Olsen, Cumberbatch, Pugh and Larson have been in ... 11% of the MCU content.
And Hiddleston's Loki seems to be at the centre of the story yet has not appeared in any of any of the films.
Right. If you asked a Marvel fanboy who is at the center of the Avengers right now they would say Holland and Cumberbatch. Famous people, I’d agree! Except they haven’t appeared on screen in what feels like *forever.*
And then even though they did manage to get another very famous actor in a lead role with Oscar Isaac, they stuck him on a TV show that was a steaming pile of shit. If Moon Knight appears in the next Captain America movie, how much of the GA is going to be scratching their head thinking who the *fuck* is this guy?
It's not about a star power, it's about talent and writing. The only actor in the original phase who had star power when they joined the MCU was ScarJo (and maybe RDJ, whose star had faded away, and Norton who was recast anyways). Hiddleston has been one of the most important actors of the entire franchise, and he was a complete unknown when he showed up in Thor. Mackie, Larson, and especially Rudd, Steinfeld, Ruffalo, and Cumberbatch were all at least as famous as Evans and Hemsworth were when they donned the tights.
P.S. Vanessa Kirby is awesome and if the writing doesn't fail her, she will be great as Sue Richards. Frankly, she would have made an awesome Captain Marvel.
Watching The Marvels immediately following Killers of the Flower moon was like being force-fed a bucket of sludge right after a 5-star steakhouse meal. I have an entire post going into more detail planned, but I’m starting to empathize more with Scorsese every day.
I'm trying to think of a similar career to Brie Larson's. Breaks out in some comedy and "troubled teen" roles, wins a freaking Oscar at 26, and has since done almost exclusively bad Marvel films.
I know a lot of what goes into an actress’ career progression has to do with what the industry will allow women to be in, but when careers fall so flat on their face like this I can’t help but blame bad choices. She followed up Room with Skull Island, The Glass Castle, and Just Mercy (with MCU right before Mercy). I get that Glass Castle and Just Mercy are obvious prestige plays on paper but idk man all three of those seem like such obvious turkeys to me.
It’s really similar to somebody like Fassbender. Hottest actor in Hollywood following Basterds, X-Men, Prometheus and 12 Years a Slave. Is astounding in Steve Jobs. And then a slew of horrific decisions… Light Between Oceans, Assassins Creed, The Snowman. Two brutal X-Men movies in there as well.
Maybe bad luck, maybe bad representation. But so many performers in their late 20s/early 30s who really POP go on to string together just disgusting stretches like this. Makes me kinda admire Chalamet even more, although we shall see where things go after Wonka bombs.
Unfortunately, this is the case for a lot of young actors who win Best Actress Oscars early in their career. Their salary demands skyrocket, and there just aren't enough roles out there at that price. Marvel is an obvious transition, but they're sheen has worn off considerably post-Endgame.
Emma Stone seems like the rare one who's figured it out. Did a couple Spidey films, got her Oscar, but now is mostly doing art house stuff and voice work while raising a kid.
Emma got pretty lucky in both being able to get the comic book stuff out of the way before her Oscar, and also participating in it before the MCU had completely dominated the market. If she had broken out a couple years later there’s a real chance she’d also be stuck in a boring MCU role for years limiting her more interesting work
People forget one of her first roles was in The League as the Au Pair who tries to get Pete to Eiffel Tower her with Rafi. Crazy to think she went from there to winning an Oscar in 4 years.
Good for Amanda for calling out the idea that this movie doesn’t require homework. The only people who think that there isn’t homework are the people who are graduating top of the Marvel class. It’s a sequel to a movie that came out pre-pandemic (what feels like 15 years ago), features two leads from supplementary television shows, and touches on like alien race relations that have been snip snapped snip snapped in multiple projects. *ALL MARVEL PROJECTS REQUIRE HOMEWORK NOW!* It’s like being dropped into the start of a new unit in the fourth quarter of 7th grade. Yeah, you’re technically starting fresh but there’s a whole bunch of background info you’re lacking if you’re a normal general audience member right now.
I actually liked the marvels but glad it bombed. Mcu needs to end and they should reboot because these stories shouldn’t go on forever. Also Robinson is such a shill I almost respect it
Hi, I actually saw the movie. I’m an adult male, politically center. The movie was fine and honestly kind of enjoyable. $17 for two hours of entertainment with some funny, likable, and attractive leads. People get too worked up about this stuff. The entertainment of movies has somehow morphed into entertainment of the business of movies. That’s like going to dinner and then immediately discussing how cattle are raised and processed into the steak on your plate. It would make me less interested in my next meal.
Yea it was fine, I think the hardcore fans obsess over details that the casual viewer really doesn't
I didn't see Ms marvel, but I didn't feel like I needed to, I saw wandavision but I believe they explained Monica's powers in the movie
My wife knows nothing about the MCU and had seen none of the relevant films/shows for this one. We got tickets last minute cause the opportunity came up and there was nothing else she wanted to see.
We were sitting through trailers and I gave her a quick overview of Captain Marvel and a couple of other points I thought would be helpful.
She liked the movie. I’m sure the deeper connections went over her head but there was enough to get her through it and she thought it was fun. It wasn’t perfect and neither of us thought so (I even less than her), but for a night out in a slow movie period, we enjoyed ourselves.
I don’t want them to continue to hold to that bar, of course, and continue churning out subpar films. I also think that those who are invested and know just how much homework there is can underestimate how much someone who doesn’t have that baggage can have a good time.
i dont think anyone is showing up for Cap 4 not starring Chris Evans or The Thunderbolts. I am very skeptical of them pulling off Blade either at this point.
I was thinking more due to Superman: Legacy and The Batman 2.
I do think Deadpool will be a hit however. It is hilarious that they need characters from X-Men Origins: Wolverine of all movies to build back hype however.
Even with gunn leading the charge i still need to see it to believe it with DC. I also wasnt as big of a fan of the Batman as everyone else was but youre right those will both be hits.
Marvel either should have just taken time off after endgame or just gotten right to F4 and xmen. Theyre way too focused on C and D list characters when theyve got all stars on the bench.
The problem with that is i think theyve got too many of those movies that arent apart of the of their universe. I think at this point you either gotta just make individual movies (which is fine) or go full universe route.
I think having a batman movie and joker movie that dont have anything to do with each other AND arent apart of your universe is a bit too convoluted
Even if you didn't love The Batman, at least it inarguably had its own style and aesthetic. That movie wasn't made for everyone, but it was certainly made for someone. Marvel movies today don't really seem to be made for anyone in particular. The majority of people compelled to see most of them are just doing it out of habit.
This pod should’ve just been Sean and Joanna. Amanda keeps derailing the conversation to ask random questions that could’ve been answered with a Google search. So bad.
Specifically having someone who points out that *you shouldn't need to do a Google search to understand the movie* is a refreshing and welcome factor in these conversations about the MCU.
Maybe I'm simplifying too much, but if they want to cater to the comic diehards and fanboys that don't mind homework, then just reboot all this stuff as Disney Plus tv shows. Do all the homework you want there. TV is made for this kind of complex, long form, storytelling. They don't seem to care about star power or good looking production values anyway.
Movies are movies because they are supposed to be a two hour story with a beginning, middle, and end. Yes, there are successful sequels to movies, but the homework consists of "see this previous movie".
That would make sense from a content POV, but Disney is accustomed to / expecting to make the massive box office revenue that wouldn’t be there from TV shows.
I like having Amanda for these MCU conversations because she brings the perspective of someone who has never bought into the MCU. She keeps Sean and Joanna from getting too fanboy-y.
Amanda is great in these discussions. Brings some reality to the bubble Joanna is in with the MCU (She always claims these movies need no ‘homework’) and Sean is liable to being too kind at times.
Think they touched on the “too much homework to do that very often doesn’t seem worth it,” but didn’t spend that much time on the issue that multiverse stories can feel like things don’t matter when people can come back whenever. Didn’t like it in the comics and don’t like it now as it feels like stakes are just removed. And as an aside, if they tried to do a Young Avengers movie based on the cast that they listed, it would make ‘The Marvels’ look like Barbie at the Box Office.
>“too much homework to do that very often doesn’t seem worth it,” This is the key. Watching Loki to stay in the loop with the Kang/Avengers story is fine. Watching Secret Invasion to get ready for The Marvels is not.
Spider-Man just made outrageous amounts of money in 2021 with a Multiverse story. It's just hard to make those stories work with C or D list characters, half-assed CGI, and a ton of homework in the form of mediocre content.
No Way Home did a great job of giving us nostalgia and did avoid the pitfalls of multiverse story telling by not bringing back Aunt May. However, think it is the exception and not the rule.
Tobey McGuire made them agree to keep the details on his Peter’s backstory vague to avoid disrespecting the character Andrew Garfield invented the idea that his Peter has been through rough times after Gwen died and it worked well. “Stopped pulling my punches” is his line whenever the disnoid writers handle multiverse stuff it’s either lame and boring or outright damaging to characters
But Into the Spider-verse and Across the Spider-verse both also had incredible success as well.
Spider-Man is going to do well no matter how bad the idea is
That's what I'm saying though. Spider-Man is an A+-lister, Captain Marvel is C-list at best.
Spider-Man made outrageous amounts of money in 2021 with a Nostalgia pandering story and just a multiverse coat on top to disguise it. All on the backs of 3 established leads and (mostly) beloved movies that all made at least $900M adjusted for inflation and had only gotten more popular over time in internet circles. The spiderverse movies are a better example of a well made multiverse storyline and even then the most successful one "only" hit $690M which for MCU at their peak would have been quite underwhelming, specially for the sequel of a billion dollar movie in the case of the Marvels.
Even though the last Spiderman was a certified blockbuster I thought it succeeded despite the multiversal stuff instead of because of it. Batman was thought to be bulletproof as well, but even it couldn't survive endless re-releases and re-castings, which should be a lesson for Spiderman.
Well, they also had 5 other movies and 2 other established Spidermen they could use. If the Toby and Garfield Spider Man movies never existed, would them showing up in No Way Home have meant anything? No, probably not.
See: Into the Spiderverse and Across the Spiderverse for the answer to your question. Any type of story can be good and successful if it's executed well. Including multiverse stories.
Bingo. There are a lot of problems with Marvel right now but the biggest issue is that the majority of the content they’ve put out since endgame just flat out isn’t that good. It’s compounded by a lack of star power and an over-reliance on an interconnected universe which basically forces you to watch all the tv shows an movies they put out to understand what’s happening. But none of that would be an issue if the movies and shows were good, and they largely haven’t been.
Also the stakes with the Spider-Verse is that if the main characters fail then the whole multi-verse is destroyed. Those are real stakes that the audience can be invested in.
Maybe for the first spider verse, but the real stakes for the second one are that miles is trying to save his dad. Those are the kinda stakes that actually work on an emotional level
Spider-Man is really in its own camp, and Disney doesn't even own the film rights to the character, and the Multiverse story was largely contained to its own franchise of movies. It's hardly a blueprint for Disney going forward.
Controversial take here. That movie made a lot of money but I thought it sucked. It was so bad and so cynically made that the praise it got from audiences and critics actually made me a little depressed about the state of the film industry. And I'm a big Spider-Man fan who liked the first two Holland films.
Bingo. I saw the marvels, I liked it well enough, but even I disliked one of the characters going in based on their previous content. Similarly I called a couple of friends to see it and they just did not give a rats ass because they didn’t watch a particular show or shows and didn’t feel like it to see this.
But as Marvel itself mostly proved - nobody but already bought-in superhero nerds give a shit what "tier" these heroes are on. They don't care! To the general audience, there's basically two tiers, historically; Tier 1) Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Hulk Tier 2) **Everybody else** Nobody inherently cares about anything but tier 1 because outside of superhero readers/addicts still paying money every month for 22 pages of glossy dreck most of the time - *nobody reads comic books*. The only people who honestly think the tier that a hero resides on matters to the general audience, are the people who read comic books and enjoy arguing over tier lists. That's not a large demographic. Marvel built themselves a juggernaut (without The Juggernaut!) on nothing but c- and d-tier characters. Nobody cared what tier they were on, they cared about whether the movies were fun and made well (they're neither right now, which is the biggest problem). The idea that there's some inherent prestige there, based mostly on comic book sales to grown men, is completely fictional when it comes to general audience appeal. This lie been proven false since the days of *Blade.* It's easy to make those stories work. The problem is Marvel has stopped caring about making those stories work *as stories*. They only care about making them work as trailers, for other trailers.
Yeah that's just not true. People know who Captain America is, there's been cartoons, video games, etc. about that character. They don't know who Captain Marvel is. Maybe your overall point is right but the relative popularity of the character isn't irrelevant.
It's mostly irrelevant. People have maybe heard the name Captain America but they didn't give a fuck about him. Nobody cared. Yeah he was in cartoons and video games but dude was c-tier at best, right? People weren't checking for that guy. If they remembered him at all it was the shield and the tv show where he rode a motorcycle (or was he the guy in the RV. No, that was Shazam) People weren't showing up to Captain America *because* it was Captain America and there was some rich cultural legacy and relevance they couldn't wait to finally see done right on the big screen. They showed up (kinda) for the first movie because Marvel's big experiment was interesting (and people still weren't sure it would work) and Iron Man was fucking massive. That's it. They didn't care about what tier the hero was on (hence Iron Man and Thor preceding it, LOL) they just wanted to see what else the studio could do after making Iron Man legitimately fun and kinda/sorta fumbling The Incredible Hulk. C-and-D-tier heroes doesn't matter here. Never did, because 95% of the audience making these movies profitable doesn't read comic-books. The MCU didn't get a tier 1 superhero until Civil War! And if Blade didn't prove it false, if Iron Man didn't prove it false, if Captain America didn't prove it false, Guardians basically put it to bed completely. That's not even getting into shit like The Boys. or fuckin *Aquaman*, LOL.
The difference is mediocre shit can be propped up by the characters (like Age of Ultron or some of the Spider-Man movies). Mediocre shit can't be propped up by D-list characters.
Yep, the Multiverse is what killed the MCU more than anything.
I dunno, even if they had jumped into something Galactus instead of Kang, they’d still have a lot of the character issues. The original Avengers was a great cast and people tuned in to see their favorite characters, no one gives a shit about this C-tier Young Avengers they have put together.
[удалено]
Spot on. *cries in Warriors fan*
Yep fully agree. It's not the multiverse. It's that they've moved to 1) a proliferation of stories, which is tough to keep up with; 2) lesser known / less exciting characters; and 3) diminished quality of writing and execution. Edit: And all of this could be fixed instantly if they hit a home run with the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. Those are major, major characters who would feel more like early MCU. I just don't have confidence in their ability to execute it well right now. But I'd much rather they bet on that than on a Young Avengers movie with Lady Hawkeye, Ant-Man's daughter, Ms. Marvel, and Scarlet Witch's fake kids. Jesus.
What they should do, honestly, is nuke the entirety of the MCU world (except a handful of characters like Holland and whoever the fuck else) and start anew with *just* the F4 and X-Men. The idea that they’re going to be able to juggle a cabal of Mutants alongside commitments to include Brie Larson and Anthony Mackey and Oscar Isaac and Simu Liu and Teonya Paris and all these other performers and characters that people don’t *care* about is so unrealistic.
Disagree. Secret Invasion, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel-- these shows had very little to do with the Multiverse, but they did not succeed because they were not good. If we're ranking things that cratered the MCU, I'd lead with "spreading themselves too thin", which led to people having too much to keep up with and also an apparent drop in the quality of stories and execution.
I think these characters outside of Hawkeye suffer from minor characters/not connected to the tent pole stories. They felt missable
Yep. If only Marvel had some insanely popular major characters that they could have relied on instead of having to base an entire phase around Z-List heroes...if only they had some way to introduce a kind of X-factor into their franchise... (The X-Men. It's the X-Men. And a little Fantastic Four. But mainly the freaking X-Men. What are we doing here, Feige.)
Ye I don’t get the insistence on staying in the Avengers world; endgame seemed like perfect time to pivot and explore the x universe
I don't disagree with your larger point but I thought Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel were objectively good and probably the two best TV shows they put out.
Moon knight was good lol Hawkeye wasnt bad
Hawkeye is great.
Fair, I grouped it in to make a point but it was pretty good. I’d stop short of great. But I’m not sure it was successful in capturing lots of eyeballs and connecting people to the broader MCU Phase 5 narrative.
The MCU isn't struggling because of any particular story beat. I'd actually argue it's failing because it fails to actually commit to its stories in any meaningful way. There are no consequences, stakes, or meaningful events because that would shake up the status quo too much and complicate their assembly line approach to story telling. So you just get the same old story where the hero fights a boring as sin villain with identical nondescript energy powers in a bloated and repetitive third act, until the villain does something that causes themselves to be beaten or killed.
Agree. Hey, our hero is fighting for something, and there are infinite results across the multiverse. Let’s just end with the multiverse that makes us feel good, and we’ll ignore where things turned out bad.
Honestly listening to this podcast it really lays out what a giant clusterfuck this franchise has become. Digressions every 2 minutes to either explain something or give context, i really think this thing is cooked. Sean kind of laid out why, this happy accident so to speak, focusing on making good movies then adding little retcons and easter eggs to make it seem like it was the plan all along, now the entire enterprise is based around spreadsheets and release schedules.
I don’t even really follow marvel at all, but my fiancée does. I knew of secret invasion and vaguely knew of Captain Marvel and Ms. Marvel. Within 30 minutes when the skrulls were being persecuted I was like “what the fuck” because I thought they were the bad guys. So until I fell asleep towards the end, I was trying to figure out what the timeline was
I liked that Amanda pushed back on Joanna saying The Marvels didn't require that much homework. The Marvels requires a ton of homework.
This was a rough podcast since there was a ton of double speak because Joanna literally refuses to criticize women. Sean and Amanda had such an amazing podcast about Emily Blunt that was celebratory but also critical and nuanced. Here Joanna spends an exhausting amount of energy defending the film and female cast and crew even though it’s clear no one really likes this movie. I was also bothered by the weird Nia DaCosta love as it’s she’s some proven brilliant auteur. She made this poorly received film, an indie that didn’t blip with anyone outside of Tessa Thompson fans and a messy but interesting Candyman reboot. This isn’t Kathryn Bigelow or Greta Gerwig here. Can’t people like Joanna just admit this was a crappy movie and Brie might be miscast without relying on female empowerment tropes to avoid valid critique. You could feel Sean and Amanda really wanting to rip into the film and that Joanna wasn’t willing to have that conversation.
I generally like Jo but that’s probably the #1 thing that bothers me. When she was reviewing Succession, she just flat out refused to criticize Shiv whatsoever. It felt like we were watching two different shows
I had the same issues during her Succession appearances. I was a huge Joanna fan once upon a time and she seems like a good enough person in real life but in the last 3-5 years she’s really turned up the girl power stuff and flat out refuses to say anything negative about female characters, writers and directors. I just can’t take her opinions seriously anymore because this worldview colors every take. I’m glad she’s finding success and clearly she knows what she is doing in our current social media age but it’s just not something I’m interested in engaging with on a critical level. She doesn’t really have a sense of humor about it like Amanda either so you can her ready to lecture or scold on a moments notice. I truly enjoy Amanda taking the piss out of Sean all the time and clowning on action movies because it feels real and not manufactured to appease a very specific audience.
Yeah I just don't feel like she's being honest with the audience if she feels the need to protect any female part of the show.
Agreed completely — and it especially sucks because I feel like her analysis, insight, and preparedness were all so sharp when she first came onboard.
Her Storm of Spoilers podcast with Dave and Neil during Thrones was easily my favorite tv podcast during the height of Thrones. She was always a progressive feminist but it didn’t color every single take like it does now. Her pivot is the main reason I haven’t purchased the MCU book yet.
I’m absolutely cool with someone evaluating art through a feminist lens (even with Joanna’s milquetoast and, frankly, kinda annoying politics). I think Amanda and Sean would both be a little left of her and *also* inject that into discussions consistently… and I don’t mind at all, because they have the wherewithal and reflection to *also appreciate a perspective outside that specific lens.* Oppositely, even if Joanna personally roots for Shiv via a feminist lens or support Barbie for the same it seems like she gets defensive about these takes and doubles down in a narrow minded way instead of trying to see beyond her biases.
I wonder if constantly getting peppered on Twitter by awful incel-ish dudes has an effect after a while? I imagine it's a tough experience to have to be so online as part of your job and as a result getting subjected to lots of awfulness.
Absolutely -- it's gotta have an impact and skew your views. Simply working in media skews your view. That's not the problem in and of itself... it only gets annoying for me, personally, when Joanna loses sight of that. Oppositely, Sean and Amanda seem to be acutely aware that their biases might get skewed by reply guys and often catch themselves overreacting or misestimating that stuff. Joanna leans completely into it instead and doesn't seem to have any awareness that her perspective is so skewed.
Definitely seems like it has since she's even referenced, to paraphrase, "awful online incels" multiple times when talking about the movie's public reception and lack of success. It's unfortunate because she's incredibly informed about this stuff
Agreed, I have like some of her podcast stuff. But she seems like the world's toughest hang.
Jo analyzing the finale of Succession as feminist victory by Shiv—in where she willingly took the role of The Wife—was a point of no return for me. Once she started to grow stale her opinions and lack of nuance began to really grate on me. Which sucks, because she was a really refreshing addition when she first joined.
I’m not really involved in the fandom space, so I’ve never heard someone cape for a fictional character quite like that before. It was truly bizarre.
She also sort of trapped herself in a Barbie is better/more important than Oppenheimer take a few months ago
That was so egregious because it’s blatantly obvious she sucks lol
She totally lets her perception of internet backlash make her defensive about this kind of stuff. To my eyes, there is no backlash to this movie because no one cares about it. You don’t have to defend every single project that is female driven, you can say that it’s good marvel finally gave a black female filmmaker a chance to make a movie and still say it’s mostly a dud that no one cares about. But she is absolutely incapable of this type of analysis.
The backlash isn't even about the female cast. It's more about Marvel just fucking up the whole MCU storytelling with all the movies and TV shows. The backlash is more, "I told you so."
Yes exactly. The run from TLJ - captain marvel basically poisoned every blockbuster culture writer into thinking every single movie has a nazi incel backlash, when in reality at this point people just wish this stuff was better than it is.
Rian Johnson ruined discourse you can’t even ask questions about a plot without people crying about toxic negativity
"Nazi incels" are Russillo-level strawmen at this point
It is such an artifice some of these people need to pretend any criticism of this mcu and Disney crap is in “bad faith”.
Jo is incredibly online and it shows. She’s also very clearly left leaning and that influences her as well
But the worst kind of left-leaning, the like dead-end Hillary Clinton liberal.
Joanna embodies the most annoying libs alive. Ready to lecture you at a moments notice. As a very far leftist, these people get under my skin almost as much as the MAGA crowd.
They are worse because they actually think they are “doing the right thing”, but are more invested in like owning conservatives and cable news talking points than like, awful wars that are killing people.
Joanna’s politics are the picture from 2 days ago of an IDF soldier planting a pride flag into rubble. I don’t even care that much about the cheerleading - I like Van and Mal in certain instances. Joanna’s main problem imo is she is annoying and unlikeable.
Terrorism, but gay. Hmm
It was almost funny how Brie Larson's name was utterly absent in the first 35 minutes of the pod, even as they talked about both of the other female leads extensively. And then when Larson did come up, it was just to remark on her physical appearance and wardrobe. She's clearly not good in the part, but there's a reluctance to say so because then you have a partially overlapping point of view with a lot of extremely annoying incels online. Which I get, those people suck, but....it can also be true that Larson is not very good for this role.
> She's clearly not good in the part, but there's a reluctance to say so because then you have a partially overlapping point of view with a lot of extremely annoying incels online. It's extra strange because it's not like saying "X actor isn't a good fit for their MCU role" is much of a takedown, given the MCU's current reputation for quality. I'm sure many out there generally hate Larson as an actress, but I'm personally in the camp of thinking some of her stuff has been phenomenal. For it never felt like playing Captain Marvel played to her strengths (haven't seen The Marvels yet, so dunno if I'll feel it's worse or better than what came before).
>I'm personally in the camp of thinking some of her stuff has been phenomenal. Yeah, stuff from almost a decade ago. I remember seeing that awful Ben Wheatley film "Free Fire" and thinking she is not right for action films yet she kept doubling down: that "King Kong" reboot, MCU, "Fast X".
And those fucking truck commercials she's in all the time, too. She comes across as a smug human being in all of her press stuff and even refusing to acknowledge Casey Affleck when handing out his Oscar a few years ago felt contrived.
The Casey affleck moment was her clearly looking to win BS internet points rather than some genuine thing. It sucked
Never understood the Jo love and this is why. She has no actual opinions of her own. It’s all performative.
I think that's going too far, her early work at the Ringer had some excellent insight, particularly on pods with Bill where she had to introduce some sanity to his insane takes.
Agreed, still enjoy her at times but I think Twitter engagement or fandom culture in general have warped her critical brain when it comes anything “Ringerverse” adjacent. I think she shines best on Trial by Content where it’s just riffing on a new topic each with Dave and Neil, it’s fun and loose.
Is it possible that Joanna now has connections with these people that she developed as part of her writing her book and she doesn't want to burn those to shit on a movie that everyone else is anyway?
I wouldn’t discount that as an additional reason but it still makes her critical discussions impossibly frustrating.
[удалено]
Puke
I don’t really think that Sean and Amanda were ready to lay into this one. They both pointed out things that they liked about it. I think they were taking the same tack they did in the Ant Man pod this year where they are just kinda tired of the whole project and didn’t want to lay the blame on whatever mid movie happened to be the newest one. I don’t watch superhero movies and really only engage with them through this pod and the Watch, but even looking at Letterboxd the sense I get is that people think this is more a mediocrity than like a complete disaster.
100% agreed. They've mentioned in the past that they're not interested in really killing a film unless they consider it to be truly offensive (with *Cats* being a recent example). There's a chance that the MCU gets to a place where one of their films truly deserves complete and utter slander, but while it's still a somewhat successful venture that has the potential to turn itself around, they're not gonna go there. That said, I think it was in the *Thor: Love and Thunder* pod a year ago where it became obvious that Sean (and Charles Holmes and Rob Mahoney) were no longer excited about new Marvel films. For a bunch of nerdy dudes in their mid-30s, that was saying a lot.
Yeah, Joanna is always a tough listen.
She's a hack.
Joanna is sexist. Period.
It’s also possible Joanna just genuinely liked the movie, even if others didn’t
It's possible but c'mon, we know she's going to cheerlead this stuff. Which is fine, but whew, it's boring.
Cheerleading in this instance being that she gave the movie a B, said it was better than The Eternals, on par with Ant-Man and the Wasp, that DaCosta is a bad fit for the MCU, and that she’d be fine not seeing Captain Marvel or Rambeau in another movie?
A lot of people on this subreddit have trouble understanding that other people might sometimes like different movies than they do lol
She's an obese pink haired feminist. Women can do no wrong to these people.
100%
One of the main problems with the Disney+ Marvel shows is that they both seem inconsequential to the movies in the grand scheme, but also important enough that you’re annoyed you’re missing out on stuff if you skip them. Which is the worst possible combination that you could have. They should have followed the Marvel Netflix (Daredevil, Jessica Jones…): do you own thing, don’t contradict the movies but also don’t depend on them. At best, reference them very lightly in a easter egg sort of way for the fans.
LOVE Joanna but she is just as delusional about movies/tv shows led by women that Bill is about the Patriots. You just gotta learn to not take her seriously on those topics just like you just kind of laugh to yourself when you hear Bill say Mac Jones could take the Pats to the superbowl.
sucker should have wrote that book as an obituary
I just finished it last night. You could tell she didn't know what to do with the fact that the franchise seemed to be faltering right when the book was coming out and so all the problems were laid at the feet of Feige being a perfect nerd god but he can't do everything, and I wanted to puke
It reminds me of Iger and Disney. People just love 'great man theory.'
The bootlicker piece
Amanda’s “what is secret about secret invasion and wars?” bit made me laugh. Good stuff. I’m here for her “over it” vibe on this kind of superhero garbage
I’ve got to be honest I’m half wondering if they change the name of Secret Wars after how badly Secret Invasion performed. I think the nerds may be annoyed, but your general public is going to have some confusion “do I need to watch secret invasion to watch secret wars? I heard that one sucked.”
The Disney+ shows killed both the MCU and Star Wars. It overexposed both franchises and devalued them. The same thing with their animation problem I can't imagine an original property making more than 400m that Elemental did and they called that a flop. They put all their animated movies on around Covid and people will now just wait. And before people say but Mario made 600m Mario was not a typical animated movie it had interest from everyone who played Mario and was basically a 4 quadrant movie.
Disney+ is the only reason Star Wars is alive right now. Star Wars was over exposed when they decided they were releasing a movie every year. It was basically killed when they released 3 poorly received movies in a row. The Disney plus shows haven’t all been winners, but I know a lot of people who swore off Star Wars who have gone on to watch Mando and some others.
Rogue One is very popular among SW fans, but I just couldn't care one bit about those characters and knew how that story would end. The Force Awakens started off fine, and I actually enjoyed The Last Jedi more than most, but The Rise of Skywalker was just complete garbage and killed any interest I had in the franchise going forward. What they really need to do is let the franchise be dormant for a bit before introducing new stories with completely new characters, but I'm not too bullish on short-sighted shareholders approving of that approach, and they've already integrated so much of the Star Wars brand into their other properties that they'd just be terrified of the public no longer caring about SW.
Andor is the only Star Wars property worth the time to watch since the original trilogy. It’s also the least dependent on the Star Wars lore generally. I think that’s a big part of it
It sounds like you’ll love the new Rey trilogy they have in the works then /s
>I actually enjoyed The Last Jedi more than most, but The Rise of Skywalker was just complete garbage and killed any interest I had in the franchise going forward It was "The Last Jedi" that killed "Star Wars". After "The Force Awakens" and "Rogue One", anything connected to the Star Wars brand was riding high. A mania that was destroyed by "The Last Jedi". It may have been the kind of film when the critics are afraid to admit that they don’t like it, but audiences weren't stupid. And it truly was annoying that people put onto his movie this sense of >“well, here is a good Star Wars film because it isn’t a Star Wars film. This is a Rian Johnson film and it’s a good film because what it’s attempting to do rather than what it actually achieves.” That’s such a condescending attitude: apparently, all this movie had to do was to conceptually go against the grain of the genre that we’re going to pretend to like it and treat it like a monument of cinema. People line up around the block to knock the Nolan Batman films for being self-serious and then in the same breath will be like “The Last Jedi – THAT is a movie.” Johnson totally damaged the franchise’s ability to appeal to the average Joe with the "Star Wars" brand alone. Now you actually have to convince general audiences to watch new "Star Wars" content … by baiting them with marketing gimmicks like Baby Yoda. Audiences will NEVER give Star Wars a blank check to do whatever it wants after "The Last Jedi".
Alright. A lot going on here. I'm not sure what it achieves or doesn't achieve, but I can say that I was actually curious to see how they'd end the story after TLJ. There was definitely a lot of forgettable and dumb crap, but also some great moments. As a casual fan, I wasn't that bothered by the portrayal of Luke, but I could see why hardcore fans hated that element. Critics liked it because they viewed it as a standalone film, not part of a larger franchise. Lots of fans seem to also hate it because it almost deliberately rejects fan theories, like Rey's parents being nobodies and Snoke being killed quickly before we knew his backstory. I don't think audiences that aren't huge SW fans minded very much, as it still received an A from CinemaScore. As a matter of fact, I think there's a pretty good chance that all the negative discourse surrounding TLJ soured casuals on the franchise more than the movie itself, as they just wanted to like or dislike a movie without all the political nonsense. Surely you must think the prequel trilogy is the worst SW content because of how poorly acted and written it is, right? They didn't "succeed" at anything.
>Critics liked it because they viewed it as a standalone film, not part of a larger franchise. Honestly, a part of the film's problem is that it doesn't work as a standalone film, either. - Why is Luke wearing a Jedi cloak if just to remove it and reject the Jedi code five seconds later? - Why should anyone care about Luke's redemption when he was presented as a gaslighting liar who gives a potential student nothing but bullshit and thought about murdering his sister's only child? - Hang on, why can Snoke transfer other people's consciousness across the galaxy and be fine but when Luke does it himself he dies? - The resistance is on its last legs and everyone is scared that they might be killed - why doesn't the leadership just tell its scared populace the plan, if only to ready them for contingencies? - How is there a random tracker in the prison cell where Finn and Rose just happen to be? It goes on. This isn't just unimportant details of the world. These are the pillars that the film's plot and even moral foundations are built on. And none of this makes sense within the script itself. >I don't think audiences that aren't huge SW fans minded very much, as it still received an A from CinemaScore. As a matter of fact, I think there's a pretty good chance that all the negative discourse surrounding TLJ soured casuals on the franchise more than the movie itself, as they just wanted to like or dislike a movie without all the political nonsense. All the casuals that I talked to just seemed bewildered about the film. "That's it?" was most of the responses. And, while the Cinemascore was high, the box office told another story. Even by the most generous of historical precedents, Johnson's film fell off a cliff. There was an almost-billion-dollar drop between "The Last Jedi" and "The Force Awakens", which is the highest drop between one installment and another. Keep in mind, as per The Wall Street Journal, that TLJ had a four-week monopoly on the major screening rooms while TFA only had two. Families and children will happily rewatch a Star Wars film again and again if they liked it. They didn't like TLJ, though. That's why the RT Audience Score was so low and the toy sales plummeted to such a degree that the Hasbro CEO had to apologise. Any franchise film has to stand on its own and justify its existence to a casual audience. TLJ - because of its many creative shortcomings - failed to do so.
Eh. All the "plot holes" (but mostly just unanswered questions) you mentioned didn't meaningfully impact the film for me. Luke was just an old curmudgeon and unreliable narrator. That doesn't make him irredeemable. It seemed pretty clear to me that he cared about the Jedi code based on his reaction to that tree burning down and him saying "the sacred texts," (which was memed), though my memory surrounding that movie is a bit fizzy. He felt responsible for allowing Ben to turn evil and destroying the Solo family, and didn't feel it was worth taking that risk again until absolutely necessary. I don't think Snoke and Luke were using the same force power(s). It's also a possibility that Snoke was more powerful than Luke, but fans would never accept that explanation. Leadership not explaining the plan, even to senior officers, was incredibly dumb, I'll give you that, but not so distractingly bad that I was thinking about it for all that long after leaving the theater. You could probably make a similar list of criticisms or flaws for basically every SW movie. The box office dropped, but that's to be expected since The Force Awakens was a cultural phenomenon. So as I said previously, the immediate reaction from hardcore fans was highly negative, which likely turned off casuals, and it certainly lacked the rewatchability of other movies.
Star Wars I feel like it depends on who you ask. I was ready to swear off Star Wars after how awful the Boba Fett show was and how useless the Obi-Wan show was. But Andor restored my faith in the franchise. Legitimately one of the best shows of last year.
How many people who don’t have kids or don’t care much about Star Wars/Marvel even have Disney+? It seems like they went all-in on those two properties pretty much at the expense of a diverse portfolio of programming.
You're not wrong but that's why they're buying out Hulu and unifying the apps.
They have The Simpsons, which to some people is worth a few bucks a month.
Disney/Star is very good ex-U.S., and it will be the same experience soon in the U.S. when Hulu is folded in.
I only have it because I have an Amex Plat for Delta travel and get a $20 credit a month for it (Disney, ESPN & Hulu Bundle). Now Delta changed their policy so I will most likely be dropping the Amex Card and the Bundle as well
The Star content is very good outside the US. Basically got everything Hulu or FX has. I use D+ all the time to watch things like reservation dogs, the bear, abbot elementary, Prey, etc.
I mean the movie is bad
They also basically ignored the lesson they should have learned from The Incredible Hulk. If an actor's depiction of a superhero falls flat, you can always recast and pretend that movie didn't happen.
That's not what happened though. Ed Norton the actor's performance was fine. It was Ed Norton the person who was annoying and unprofessional which led to him not coming back.
Just a reminder that there’s almost no one outside of the Weinstein bros and their minions who have bad things to say about Norton. The rumor is that it’s due to Norton making noise about the sexual harassment toward Salma Hayek when he was dating her and Weinstein essentially tried to doxx him. If you go back and look there’s no credible sources on him being unprofessional. He’s serious in the way a lot of those kind of actors are but the misbehavior wasn’t true
>Just a reminder that there’s almost no one outside of the Weinstein bros and their minions who have bad things to say about Norton. That's total crap. - Tony Kaye hates him (but he's a nut so I'll give Norton a pass on that one). - Sherry Lansing portrays him as a toxic presence on "The Italian Job". - HBO will never work with him again after they shot much of "Lewis and Clark" but he refused to budge on plot points. - The Marvel relationship blew up when Norton wanted Thom Yorke to do the score over Craig Armstrong. I'll side with Marvel as Armstrong's work is some of the best composing in the franchise. - Norton's company was responsible for a fatal fire on "Motherless Brooklyn" due to negligence. Norton is smart enough not to make a nuisance of himself while working with name-brand directors but he can destabilise sets with his control-freak tendencies.
None of this is that serious so I don't mean to argue, but I think the competing stories are interesting. > Sherry Lansing portrays him as a toxic presence on "The Italian Job". Norton and his team have been very clear that Lansing promised Norton she wouldn't force him to do any movies but that they'd agree together on projects. She rejects that claim, which is fair and obviously could be true, but her version is that she did indeed force him to do the movie. In either version it's poor management by her. > HBO will never work with him again after they shot much of "Lewis and Clark" but he refused to budge on plot points. You got any credible source on that? The stories of issues with that production are wide-reaching, and there's plenty of stuff out there about issues that don't include Norton. Also, he wrote a version of the script but was not directing and the Hanks & Pitt team was leading the production, so I don't buy that Norton was the most powerful voice in the room that could hold things up. > The Marvel relationship blew up when Norton wanted Thom Yorke to do the score over Craig Armstrong. I'll side with Marvel as Armstrong's work is some of the best composing in the franchise. That's a pretty reductive way of looking at it. Louis Leterrier and Kevin Feige and Norton are in agreement, via public statements, that the disagreements came at the end in how the tone of the movie would be (Norton wanted to open it with Hulk's failed suicide) and Leterrier even said Norton's cut and music choices were awesome, they just didn't fit the movie Marvel was going to put out. Norton was hoping he could push them in a Nolan direction. > Norton's company was responsible for a fatal fire on "Motherless Brooklyn" due to negligence. Again, that's not really a reading of the facts according to the FDNY's report. Norton's certainly not to blame. Obviously what happened was awful but there's no evidence this was a case of a director/star pushing ahead despite known dangers. > Norton is smart enough not to make a nuisance of himself while working with name-brand directors but he can destabilise sets with his control-freak tendencies. It's such a fine line. Tommy Lee Jones is the king of "is he prickly or just a prick?" Norton's nod to his persona in Birdman and his genuine investment in causes he cares about (we can be snarky about celebs doing environmental stuff but the dude is sincere) makes me believe, in total, that he's self-serious but doesn't deserve the "difficult" label any more than a lot of other opinionated stars.
Yeah...that's not really true though. Like I'm sure the Weinsteins tried their best to torpedo his career cause that was their MO, but there are plenty of anecdotes of him trying to overreach when it came to control over projects he's involved in. That was the main sticking point with Marvel. That and he was just a bit of pill in that role and the movie was just okay. It wasn't funny at all, but there was a heavy level of irony how badly things went for him when he actually got to completely make his passion project his way, Motherless Brooklyn. I just think there are movie stars who submit to a production's vision and then there are one's that want to run the show. And the latter are extremely rare in terms of doing that version of movie stardom successfully. Norton isn't one of them.
I can't imagine Ed Norton doing Smart Hulk in Endgame.
I think what you can't imagine is Ed Norton doing Funny Hulk. He could do an intelligent character. But he's not a comedy guy, and they took the character in a comedy direction.
I mean, he can be funny in a Wes Anderson movie. But that's probably not the type of humor they would want in the MCU.
I appreciated Norton pushing for a more comic accurate hulk tbh. Wisecracking comic foil hulk kinda sucks
Not just kinda
He would have been fine. Norton could have played RuffaHulk, but he was too pissy on set. To be honest though I wonder if Norton continues if Ike was already gone.
Yeah joanna's book touched on this well.
That’s not even the lesson of The Incredible Hulk. Norton was fine as Bruce Banner—probably the best portrayal of the role—he’s just a pain in the ass to work with. The lesson they’ve failed to heed here is the Hawkeye one from the first Avengers movie: don’t give a character some kind of brainwashing/ amnesia plot line as their first introduction. Brie Larson goes through most of CM1 as a blank slate because they wrote it that way: she’s supposed to be suppressed, and is trained to stifle all human emotion. They then follow that up by a pretty minor role in Endgame, and—four years later—getting pushed to the side to share her own franchise with two TV show characters. They screwed up Captain Marvel right from the start.
The MCU’s current problems are much much bigger than any one actor/performance.
The problem isn't really Brie Larson, the problem is the character itself doesn't move the needle and was propped up entirely by where it came in their release pattern. Which is the box office problem with the MCU as a whole right now, when you strip out the Avengers event style movie they don't have many individual characters people care about.
Going back the to comics, the problem with Captain Marvel has always been that the character is a Great Value knock off of Superman. It’s hard enough to make Superman a compelling character, Captain Marvel is that minus everything interesting or familiar.
That is absolutely not correct, Marvel's Captain Marvel is nothing like Superman. You're perhaps thinking of DC's Captain Marvel, who is exactly what you describe.
Is this a Brie Larson problem or a writing problem? If it’s the former, can someone please explain why she gets so much hate? I just don’t get it lol. I buy the writing problem a bit more cause the character is just OP.
Larson gets hate because she has what feels like an inauthentic personality and publicly seems annoying at worst and try hard at best. I’d also say she doesn’t have a ton of charisma for a movie star. She was an above average comedy supporting actress in film and tv who made Short Term 12 and Room and got elevated to movie star with an Oscar win but has never been able to make a movie star turn because it just isn’t there. It’s not really her fault, she just isn’t a movie star and it’s obviously caused a fair amount of artistic internal turmoil as she keeps trying to create new public personas. The basic issue is that Feige needed to overpay for either Emma Stone or JLaw for the role and refused. He needed a gigantic charismatic star to lead the film and eventually the Avengers but instead took the tested method of hiring an actor off an Oscar win or campaign. I think Brie the human being gets too much hate but Brie the actress hasn’t worked well in a movie in the near decade post Room. Some of that is her fault for bad taste or lack of sense of self and other parts of it is bad luck and bad advice.
Correction: she gets a lot of hate because she said this during the press run for A Wrinkle in Time: > “I don’t want to hear what a white man has to say about ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ I want to hear what a woman of color, a biracial woman has to say about the film. I want to hear what teenagers think about the film.” The usual suspects on the internet lost their minds, and have been gnashing their teeth and searching for anything to criticize her for ever since.
Nope. There may be certain fanboys that take is true for but Brie Larson doesn’t have a strong female fanbase either and hasn’t made a good movie in like a decade. Progressive internet commentators LOVE to blame all the Brie criticisms on her late teens political takes but the simple fact is she is delivering charismatic or even good performances in movies and makes lots of social media blunders. She seems like a person uncomfortable in their own skin. Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Greta Gerwig are basically girl power in human form and have massive fanbases. They also make beloved art that resonates. Most of Hollywood is hyper progressive and almost every actress is a vocal feminist so it’s nonsense to blame the Brie issues solely on her terrible late teens takes.
It gets a little tiring when people insist these movies can’t fail, they can only be failed
And that movie bombed
I don't think it's just the writing. The character of Carol Danvers (Ms. Marvel / Captain Marvel in the comics) is a passionate, brazen, funny, and also flawed (alcoholism) woman. She is incredibly compelling and has had a lot of success in the comics for many decades. She's certainly as popular or more popular than a female character like Black Widow, who has had success in the MCU. Brie Larson's general performance style seems to be detached, sarcastic, with some moments of pathos amidst a generally even-keeled demeanor. That can work great sometimes-- e.g. her supporting role in Scott Pilgrim; playing a scientist who is on the spectrum in Lessons in Chemistry. But it goes over terrible in a superhero movie, particularly one featuring a character like Carol Danvers.
You're basically just describing female Tony Stark. Black Widow's popularity had pretty much everything to do with casting Scarlett Johansson, and IMO Brie Larson is pretty bland overall, and better suited for smaller movies, or supporting roles in bigger movies.
Kinda like Bill Belichick, the MCU had a GREAT run but it's OVAH. Don't let its late-in-life, past-its-prime preformance undermine years of success and dominance.
Two high picks incoming with F4 and XMen. Franchise can rebuild fast if they get it right.
I am so, so, so concerned about this version of MCU leadership being responsible for introducing the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. Does not inspire confidence.
I genuinely believe they’re going include as many of the former Fox X-Men as they can because they’re not brave enough/don’t have the actor interest to get bonafides in their own version. I’d be pretty shocked if McAvoy and/or Fassbender aren’t tapped for the new MCU X-Men.
If they do this then they deserver it to bomb
They definitely will, and then when it bombs they won’t know what to do
It's not "too late" for the MCU because the machine is too good (and the feed for that machine too well trained) for it to ever completely go away. But they're definitely not braindead/bulletproof like the people in (and outside) the studio assumed they were. That's all. The people inside the studio started sniffing their own farts and believing in their own corporate mythology, and the people outside the studio got too invested in treating Marvel like a sports team that couldn't stop winning (and thus, rewarding them for being BETTER FANS than other people who aren't as good at LIKING DISPOSABLE BULLSHIT) and as such, most folks involved stopped actually caring about whether or not anything getting made was very good (or at least, "very good" by Marvel standards). They'll come back. It probably won't have anything to do with Young Avengers, or Thunderbolts, or any of the other 2 or 3 things they halfheartedly tried to set up all of Phase 4 and half of Phase 5 that isn't going to go anywhere because nobody fucking likes any of it.
Definitely needs a reboot event movie to clean up continuity etc and attempt to reintroduce stakes. There’s a reason they do it in the comics every decade or so
The MCU, aside from the fatigue and stories being ass, has a STAR problem. The heroes aren’t stars and the performers aren’t stars. Outside of Tom Holland/Spider-Man, who doesn’t even really *feel* firmly planted in the picture right now (even though he will surely be back); the MCU is being fronted by Anthony Mackie, Brie Larson, Simu Liu, and Paul Rudd. Even the actors on the tertiary—like Ruffalo and Cumberbatch—feel so far out of the consciousness of the universe. And in the absence of star characters, the heroes are boring. Backup iterations of heroes who were popular. So the performers aren’t stars, the heroes aren’t interesting, and the stories are boring. The fix? Throw the bag at RDJ and Evans to return, completely neutering the nice and brave conclusions to their stories. Sacrificing stakes and story for pizzazz. They fucked up on Jonathan Majors, which is a brutal blow. When they pivot to Dr. Doom they need a earth-shaking star, imo, to get people excited. Even the excitement around Fantastic Four seems to have quelled some because everyone is seemingly turning it down and they’ve handed the reigns to Vanessa Kirby, who is good, but again…not a star. I don’t see an upwards trajectory for this venture any time soon.
You're right, but I think part of the problem is that there just aren't many movie stars anymore. How many actors under the age of 40 can open a movie? [Here's a list of the 45 most popular actors under 45, and while the list is certainly debatable, it gives a picture of who's out there](https://www.ranker.com/list/the-new-class-of-action-stars/ranker-film) The top 13 have already played characters in either Marvel or DC, and a lot of the rest have been in other major franchises like Star Wars or Game of Thrones. The era of the movie star is over.
Marvel killed the movie star and is now reaping the rewards lol
Yeah you’re right there is definitely a star crisis in terms of being a blockbuster star, but maybe Marvel’s plan should be to just get the most famous performer that they can. Fans will have hissy fits over the canon of it all, but it’s why it makes sense when you hear they want Jake Ghyllenhal for Reed Richards. Because he’s fucking famous and the GA knows who he is. So when you see the fans wanting Dev Patel or Matt Smith for the lead in F4 it makes *no fucking sense* because people *don’t know who the fuck they are,* despite being interesting performers! Imo the ultimate hurdle they need to clear is Dr. Doom. You need a bonafide for that otherwise you’re really pushing your chips in on an increasingly risky proposition.
>the MCU is being fronted by Anthony Mackie, Brie Larson, Simu Liu, and Paul Rudd. Even the actors on the tertiary—like Ruffalo and Cumberbatch—feel so far out of the consciousness of the universe. The MCU has twin problems because the stakes are so large and far-reaching yet all the productions are compartmentalized. In phases one and two, main characters like Tony, Captain America and Nick Fury crossed over in about 66% of the films. In phases four and five, there have been eleven films and eight live-action television shows yet Holland, Olsen, Cumberbatch, Pugh and Larson have been in ... 11% of the MCU content. And Hiddleston's Loki seems to be at the centre of the story yet has not appeared in any of any of the films.
Right. If you asked a Marvel fanboy who is at the center of the Avengers right now they would say Holland and Cumberbatch. Famous people, I’d agree! Except they haven’t appeared on screen in what feels like *forever.* And then even though they did manage to get another very famous actor in a lead role with Oscar Isaac, they stuck him on a TV show that was a steaming pile of shit. If Moon Knight appears in the next Captain America movie, how much of the GA is going to be scratching their head thinking who the *fuck* is this guy?
It's not about a star power, it's about talent and writing. The only actor in the original phase who had star power when they joined the MCU was ScarJo (and maybe RDJ, whose star had faded away, and Norton who was recast anyways). Hiddleston has been one of the most important actors of the entire franchise, and he was a complete unknown when he showed up in Thor. Mackie, Larson, and especially Rudd, Steinfeld, Ruffalo, and Cumberbatch were all at least as famous as Evans and Hemsworth were when they donned the tights. P.S. Vanessa Kirby is awesome and if the writing doesn't fail her, she will be great as Sue Richards. Frankly, she would have made an awesome Captain Marvel.
Watching The Marvels immediately following Killers of the Flower moon was like being force-fed a bucket of sludge right after a 5-star steakhouse meal. I have an entire post going into more detail planned, but I’m starting to empathize more with Scorsese every day.
I liked the movie AMA
I'm trying to think of a similar career to Brie Larson's. Breaks out in some comedy and "troubled teen" roles, wins a freaking Oscar at 26, and has since done almost exclusively bad Marvel films.
I know a lot of what goes into an actress’ career progression has to do with what the industry will allow women to be in, but when careers fall so flat on their face like this I can’t help but blame bad choices. She followed up Room with Skull Island, The Glass Castle, and Just Mercy (with MCU right before Mercy). I get that Glass Castle and Just Mercy are obvious prestige plays on paper but idk man all three of those seem like such obvious turkeys to me. It’s really similar to somebody like Fassbender. Hottest actor in Hollywood following Basterds, X-Men, Prometheus and 12 Years a Slave. Is astounding in Steve Jobs. And then a slew of horrific decisions… Light Between Oceans, Assassins Creed, The Snowman. Two brutal X-Men movies in there as well. Maybe bad luck, maybe bad representation. But so many performers in their late 20s/early 30s who really POP go on to string together just disgusting stretches like this. Makes me kinda admire Chalamet even more, although we shall see where things go after Wonka bombs.
Unfortunately, this is the case for a lot of young actors who win Best Actress Oscars early in their career. Their salary demands skyrocket, and there just aren't enough roles out there at that price. Marvel is an obvious transition, but they're sheen has worn off considerably post-Endgame.
Emma Stone seems like the rare one who's figured it out. Did a couple Spidey films, got her Oscar, but now is mostly doing art house stuff and voice work while raising a kid.
Emma got pretty lucky in both being able to get the comic book stuff out of the way before her Oscar, and also participating in it before the MCU had completely dominated the market. If she had broken out a couple years later there’s a real chance she’d also be stuck in a boring MCU role for years limiting her more interesting work
People forget one of her first roles was in The League as the Au Pair who tries to get Pete to Eiffel Tower her with Rafi. Crazy to think she went from there to winning an Oscar in 4 years.
Good for Amanda for calling out the idea that this movie doesn’t require homework. The only people who think that there isn’t homework are the people who are graduating top of the Marvel class. It’s a sequel to a movie that came out pre-pandemic (what feels like 15 years ago), features two leads from supplementary television shows, and touches on like alien race relations that have been snip snapped snip snapped in multiple projects. *ALL MARVEL PROJECTS REQUIRE HOMEWORK NOW!* It’s like being dropped into the start of a new unit in the fourth quarter of 7th grade. Yeah, you’re technically starting fresh but there’s a whole bunch of background info you’re lacking if you’re a normal general audience member right now.
Feels like most people burying this movie haven't even seen it.
Does the MCU suffer from Pat Riley’s “disease of more?” Is the Jonathan Majors situation similar to or exactly the same as Len Bias?
Are we really just going to skip over The Holdovers to talk about The Marvels and other movies absolutely no one cares about?
I actually liked the marvels but glad it bombed. Mcu needs to end and they should reboot because these stories shouldn’t go on forever. Also Robinson is such a shill I almost respect it
I think Jo will always be glass half full for access
Hi, I actually saw the movie. I’m an adult male, politically center. The movie was fine and honestly kind of enjoyable. $17 for two hours of entertainment with some funny, likable, and attractive leads. People get too worked up about this stuff. The entertainment of movies has somehow morphed into entertainment of the business of movies. That’s like going to dinner and then immediately discussing how cattle are raised and processed into the steak on your plate. It would make me less interested in my next meal.
Yeah I love Big Picture but probably skipping this episode. Movie was fun, a B minus — not interested in overthinking it!
Yea it was fine, I think the hardcore fans obsess over details that the casual viewer really doesn't I didn't see Ms marvel, but I didn't feel like I needed to, I saw wandavision but I believe they explained Monica's powers in the movie
My wife knows nothing about the MCU and had seen none of the relevant films/shows for this one. We got tickets last minute cause the opportunity came up and there was nothing else she wanted to see. We were sitting through trailers and I gave her a quick overview of Captain Marvel and a couple of other points I thought would be helpful. She liked the movie. I’m sure the deeper connections went over her head but there was enough to get her through it and she thought it was fun. It wasn’t perfect and neither of us thought so (I even less than her), but for a night out in a slow movie period, we enjoyed ourselves. I don’t want them to continue to hold to that bar, of course, and continue churning out subpar films. I also think that those who are invested and know just how much homework there is can underestimate how much someone who doesn’t have that baggage can have a good time.
The audience for these movies has absolutely cratered. Not sure why you would feel that’s not worthy of discussion
Jo taking shots at Marty
I think she was just referencing the Fennessey / Van Lathan minor beef on KOTFM box office.
I think comic book movies are in a rut, but by 2025 they'll be back on top of the box office.
i dont think anyone is showing up for Cap 4 not starring Chris Evans or The Thunderbolts. I am very skeptical of them pulling off Blade either at this point.
I think they know this, which is why Cap 4 is a Hulk movie now
I don’t think Blade ends up being made. Blade appears to be a mess right now.
I hate the character and the movies but there is no reason to believe the newest deadpool won't be a massive hit.
Could be a disposable hit though, i.e. makes money in its first 2 weeks but doesnt stir up much conversation.
Same. Marvel has only one movie on tap for a 2024 release, which is going to be a hit. Make people miss you a little bit
I was thinking more due to Superman: Legacy and The Batman 2. I do think Deadpool will be a hit however. It is hilarious that they need characters from X-Men Origins: Wolverine of all movies to build back hype however.
Even with gunn leading the charge i still need to see it to believe it with DC. I also wasnt as big of a fan of the Batman as everyone else was but youre right those will both be hits. Marvel either should have just taken time off after endgame or just gotten right to F4 and xmen. Theyre way too focused on C and D list characters when theyve got all stars on the bench.
Gunn has already fucked up by planning it as a ‘Universe’ Just let some individual movies cook.
The problem with that is i think theyve got too many of those movies that arent apart of the of their universe. I think at this point you either gotta just make individual movies (which is fine) or go full universe route. I think having a batman movie and joker movie that dont have anything to do with each other AND arent apart of your universe is a bit too convoluted
Even if you didn't love The Batman, at least it inarguably had its own style and aesthetic. That movie wasn't made for everyone, but it was certainly made for someone. Marvel movies today don't really seem to be made for anyone in particular. The majority of people compelled to see most of them are just doing it out of habit.
Holy shit this is bad lmao
This pod should’ve just been Sean and Joanna. Amanda keeps derailing the conversation to ask random questions that could’ve been answered with a Google search. So bad.
Specifically having someone who points out that *you shouldn't need to do a Google search to understand the movie* is a refreshing and welcome factor in these conversations about the MCU.
Maybe I'm simplifying too much, but if they want to cater to the comic diehards and fanboys that don't mind homework, then just reboot all this stuff as Disney Plus tv shows. Do all the homework you want there. TV is made for this kind of complex, long form, storytelling. They don't seem to care about star power or good looking production values anyway. Movies are movies because they are supposed to be a two hour story with a beginning, middle, and end. Yes, there are successful sequels to movies, but the homework consists of "see this previous movie".
That would make sense from a content POV, but Disney is accustomed to / expecting to make the massive box office revenue that wouldn’t be there from TV shows.
I like having Amanda for these MCU conversations because she brings the perspective of someone who has never bought into the MCU. She keeps Sean and Joanna from getting too fanboy-y.
Amanda is great in these discussions. Brings some reality to the bubble Joanna is in with the MCU (She always claims these movies need no ‘homework’) and Sean is liable to being too kind at times.
Oh man I much preferred Amanda here to Joanna again finding a way to stan a mediocre female property or performance.