Secret Asshole
Expert in things that never, ever happened
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⚡ Thunderdomer ⚡
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- Joined
- Jan 18, 2017
So, I've been in a pit lately and when I'm in a pit, I watch movies. Old movies. A lot of them. And thanks to free streaming services, there's a lot of movies from the 1980s, 1990s and early-aughts around. Besides the HILARIOUS language they used to be able to use (Even in the early 2000s, 'faggot' and 'retard' were still prominent), I noticed there were a LOT less adaptions. Most movies were based on books, either single shots or serial novels, where you can basically pick on out and adapt it. The characters are the same, but you don't really need to watch or read any books to know what is going on. So its basically like the 'Jack Ryan' movies, where Harrison Ford played Jack Ryan. Each was really condensed unto itself and Jack Ryan has been played by many actors until Amazon said 'Fuck it, we want to make a Jack Ryan Universe but we don't want to pay Tom Clancy's Estate so we'll just use his character'.
A lot of movies were made with no pretense of a sequel or 'shared universe'. Honestly, while those concepts were probably tossed around, a lot of the time they were probably squashed because: 1) Movies are expensive as all fuck. There's no guarantee of a sequel. 2) The blockbuster was very much oriented around movie stars back in the day (I say back in the day when it was less than a fucking decade ago, but I digress). For example, you had movie stars who were guaranteed to make you money, no matter the property. Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Will Smith, to name a few. The idea of a 'property' is relatively new compared to the movie star. So Even if you considered a 'property', most of them were based around the movie star. Not the material.
Now, I know what you are thinking "THIS ALL CHANGED WITH IRON MAN."
No, it didn't. It changed with Lord of the Rings. LotR was the first that had a concrete commitment to adapting material properly. It had three books and would straight out, no cutting things, adapt them. The Era of the DVD helped with this, greatly, but I digress. We're talking about firsts here. Lord of the Rings was absolutely committed. Actors, directors, producers. It wasn't an 'if' there would be a sequel, it was a guarantee. I mean, this was new, it was exciting. And they were shot back to back to back. It was a major achievement, for effects (I mean a lot of effects in LotR look as good or even better than some effects today), for scripting and for story telling. It was really the first time you had something really uncut and have such an impact on the business and pop culture itself. LotR was transformative and basically proved you could do long-form story telling where people HAD to watch the previous movie to understand what the fuck was going on. This paved the way for Harry Potter and shit like that. But these were still properties based on novels. IE: They had concrete sources. There wasn't an infinite volume of material to adapt. Three books, three movies for LotR. Same with however fucking many books for Harry Potter. That's it.
So what did Iron Man do? It basically showed that things as nebulous as a 'property' without a fixed series of books could be a well of INFINTECAHNTENTMONEY. You had this nebulous property 'Marvel' and then all of a sudden you had this universe coming with it, where public support and pressure actually wanted people to unite under this sort of banner. So this was basically the dawn of the franchise. with each successive iteration things got more and more profitable. And you had the building of the...ugh...cinematic universe.
Now, Marvel has been the only success on this front. Every other 'cinematic universe' has been a miserable fucking failure. From Star Wars, to DC to Universal Monsters. Everything has utterly and completely failed. (I'll get into why). Cinematic universes, by in large, are completely inferior to all other long-forms of story telling. This is because long-form stories need room to grow. Books adapted into movies has been done since...well, since film first was created, so that processes is very well defined. I mean they've adapted very troublesome books to the screen very well and even capturing the spirit in the two hour run time. So what makes longer works like comics and games, anime, manga completely unsuitable for film? Well, we can go into that. Lets start with why Marvel worked.
1) It was the first.
This is pretty much true no matter where you see it. It was the first one that really attempted it with any seriousness. The first out of the gate is always going to capture attention. A shared universe was also something day-dreamed about by many a comic fan. So the ground work and public appeal was there. To see all these characters united in a movie universe was like a dream to fans. So all it took was getting it delivered. Not to mention the novelty of it. It hadn't been done before. Ever. So something on the scale that it happened was going to catch people's eye.
2) Unflinching Vision
You had one vision there. Meaning, the tone of the films was universal as was the quality. The worst Marvel movie before the end of the universe with endgame, could be considered mediocre. That really was the worst thing you could say about them. This is because Kevin Figie kept people in line. He beat them with a fucking cattle prod until they did what he wanted. Edgar Wright trying to be too independent and not fitting in with the other movies? Get the fuck out. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
This is really why Marvel was successful. They had one vision and one tone. Which you need for a cinematic universe, because everything needs to be cohesive to hold it together. Why do you think they got successful indie directors who did one or two movies? Because they were poor fuckers and when you flashed that giant check, they'd do what you wanted. They would still keep their uniqueness, but they wouldn't go off the reservation. Because you were their meal ticket. Other 'quirky' independent directors that had tons of movies? Too much trouble and set in their ways. Not good for the vision. Get the fuck out and don't come back.
3) Playing to the Audience
Like it or not, these movies played to everyone. I frequently critique Disney for being the flavorless gruel of entertainment and it is (they've gotten way too militant about it, which I think will end them eventually), but before recently, they at least tried to add a butter flavoring or make it have pretty colors. They knew how to play an audience. And they did it fucking magnificently. This is why most of their films were wildly successful despite being rote.
Those three reasons are why Marvel basically remained popular up until Endgame. Then you had something really curious happen: the revival of TV. Now, TV wasn't dead, but the streaming services basically gave long-form story telling a shot in the arm. Even an eight episode series is 6-7+ hours, sometimes 3 or 4 movies worth. While movies could generate this unlimited content bubble, they were generally outplayed by television in terms of quality I feel. Especially during the pandemic when movie production had to grind down. The flaws in their long form narration just grew more and more clear to me.
TV has more punch to deliver long form stories because of time, cheapness of it, easier to produce. Movies are still unwieldy, take forever and are typically over produced. Just think about other adaptions. How are you going to adapt a ten year manga when a movie can't even adapt the most basic anime, Ghost in the Shell? Fucker is already a two hour movie and they couldn't adapt THAT. With television's ability to link content, produce it faster and cheaper, I think movie franchises are starting to show their cracks.
I know they're not all that young, but for long form stories, they've always been particularly bad. And forcing movies into this role for the sake of profit will always drive their quality down. The novelty of it has worn off, its proven to be too expensive and there are just too many hands in the pot right now. With marketing dictating who and what your movie can be about, who it can play to, focus tests...its all just becoming gruel. While television and Western media exhibits a lot of the same problems, I feel like the capacity for television to evolve is there since there's less at stake.
Though honestly fuck Western entertainment. Shit is gross. Let it all die.
A lot of movies were made with no pretense of a sequel or 'shared universe'. Honestly, while those concepts were probably tossed around, a lot of the time they were probably squashed because: 1) Movies are expensive as all fuck. There's no guarantee of a sequel. 2) The blockbuster was very much oriented around movie stars back in the day (I say back in the day when it was less than a fucking decade ago, but I digress). For example, you had movie stars who were guaranteed to make you money, no matter the property. Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Will Smith, to name a few. The idea of a 'property' is relatively new compared to the movie star. So Even if you considered a 'property', most of them were based around the movie star. Not the material.
Now, I know what you are thinking "THIS ALL CHANGED WITH IRON MAN."
No, it didn't. It changed with Lord of the Rings. LotR was the first that had a concrete commitment to adapting material properly. It had three books and would straight out, no cutting things, adapt them. The Era of the DVD helped with this, greatly, but I digress. We're talking about firsts here. Lord of the Rings was absolutely committed. Actors, directors, producers. It wasn't an 'if' there would be a sequel, it was a guarantee. I mean, this was new, it was exciting. And they were shot back to back to back. It was a major achievement, for effects (I mean a lot of effects in LotR look as good or even better than some effects today), for scripting and for story telling. It was really the first time you had something really uncut and have such an impact on the business and pop culture itself. LotR was transformative and basically proved you could do long-form story telling where people HAD to watch the previous movie to understand what the fuck was going on. This paved the way for Harry Potter and shit like that. But these were still properties based on novels. IE: They had concrete sources. There wasn't an infinite volume of material to adapt. Three books, three movies for LotR. Same with however fucking many books for Harry Potter. That's it.
So what did Iron Man do? It basically showed that things as nebulous as a 'property' without a fixed series of books could be a well of INFINTE
Now, Marvel has been the only success on this front. Every other 'cinematic universe' has been a miserable fucking failure. From Star Wars, to DC to Universal Monsters. Everything has utterly and completely failed. (I'll get into why). Cinematic universes, by in large, are completely inferior to all other long-forms of story telling. This is because long-form stories need room to grow. Books adapted into movies has been done since...well, since film first was created, so that processes is very well defined. I mean they've adapted very troublesome books to the screen very well and even capturing the spirit in the two hour run time. So what makes longer works like comics and games, anime, manga completely unsuitable for film? Well, we can go into that. Lets start with why Marvel worked.
1) It was the first.
This is pretty much true no matter where you see it. It was the first one that really attempted it with any seriousness. The first out of the gate is always going to capture attention. A shared universe was also something day-dreamed about by many a comic fan. So the ground work and public appeal was there. To see all these characters united in a movie universe was like a dream to fans. So all it took was getting it delivered. Not to mention the novelty of it. It hadn't been done before. Ever. So something on the scale that it happened was going to catch people's eye.
2) Unflinching Vision
You had one vision there. Meaning, the tone of the films was universal as was the quality. The worst Marvel movie before the end of the universe with endgame, could be considered mediocre. That really was the worst thing you could say about them. This is because Kevin Figie kept people in line. He beat them with a fucking cattle prod until they did what he wanted. Edgar Wright trying to be too independent and not fitting in with the other movies? Get the fuck out. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
This is really why Marvel was successful. They had one vision and one tone. Which you need for a cinematic universe, because everything needs to be cohesive to hold it together. Why do you think they got successful indie directors who did one or two movies? Because they were poor fuckers and when you flashed that giant check, they'd do what you wanted. They would still keep their uniqueness, but they wouldn't go off the reservation. Because you were their meal ticket. Other 'quirky' independent directors that had tons of movies? Too much trouble and set in their ways. Not good for the vision. Get the fuck out and don't come back.
3) Playing to the Audience
Like it or not, these movies played to everyone. I frequently critique Disney for being the flavorless gruel of entertainment and it is (they've gotten way too militant about it, which I think will end them eventually), but before recently, they at least tried to add a butter flavoring or make it have pretty colors. They knew how to play an audience. And they did it fucking magnificently. This is why most of their films were wildly successful despite being rote.
Those three reasons are why Marvel basically remained popular up until Endgame. Then you had something really curious happen: the revival of TV. Now, TV wasn't dead, but the streaming services basically gave long-form story telling a shot in the arm. Even an eight episode series is 6-7+ hours, sometimes 3 or 4 movies worth. While movies could generate this unlimited content bubble, they were generally outplayed by television in terms of quality I feel. Especially during the pandemic when movie production had to grind down. The flaws in their long form narration just grew more and more clear to me.
TV has more punch to deliver long form stories because of time, cheapness of it, easier to produce. Movies are still unwieldy, take forever and are typically over produced. Just think about other adaptions. How are you going to adapt a ten year manga when a movie can't even adapt the most basic anime, Ghost in the Shell? Fucker is already a two hour movie and they couldn't adapt THAT. With television's ability to link content, produce it faster and cheaper, I think movie franchises are starting to show their cracks.
I know they're not all that young, but for long form stories, they've always been particularly bad. And forcing movies into this role for the sake of profit will always drive their quality down. The novelty of it has worn off, its proven to be too expensive and there are just too many hands in the pot right now. With marketing dictating who and what your movie can be about, who it can play to, focus tests...its all just becoming gruel. While television and Western media exhibits a lot of the same problems, I feel like the capacity for television to evolve is there since there's less at stake.
Though honestly fuck Western entertainment. Shit is gross. Let it all die.
