None of Marvel's movies have really been dark ( Netflix shows are a different story) oh sure they've come close to being dark they pretended to be dark but none of them have really been dark. They always have to come back to the status quo of " oh yeah this is supposed to be fun we cant actually have consequences because how else is Iron Man supposed to show up In Infinity war and other sequel movies we have planned?"

Iron Man 3 undercut it's dark tone and commentary on terrorism by revealing that it was all the plot of a super villain behind the scenes. See also Winter Soldier doing a similar twist as well as Civil War.

DC tried to fill a different Niche by giving the audience who wanted that sort of serious storytelling what they wanted that Marvel wasn't delivering on. But they failed, and so now we're never going to get another superhero movie that tackles those things from DC ever again.

You completely missed the point of those movies.

Of course there's a supervillain behind the scenes, they're superhero movies. GOTG and Thor are pretty removed from earthly conflict being pure sci-fantasy but Iron Man and Cap's "solo" (in quotes because Cap's movies are Avengers 0.5, 1.5, and 2.5 respectively) adventures say some pretty obvious but somewhat brave and anti-establishment things and don't exactly tie them off with sunshine and rainbows that leave everything magically fixed. Look at the themes of these movies:

Iron Man 3: Terrorism is ultimately the product of the military industrial complex, of which Tony is a irrevocably a part. Various terrorist forces are asymmetrical responses to the West's use of force to extract diplomatic and economic outcomes. The fundamental difference between good guys and terrorists is media manipulation that designates one side as good guys and one side as bad guys. See: The Osama bin Laden analogue is a foppish British actor (important thematically, because Britain passed the torch to the US as the world leader in fucking things up and making freedom fighters out of honest folk trying to have their own culture, how dare they), they've dressed up "War Machine" as "Iron Patriot", a piloted embodiment of drone warfare who bashes into random people's houses and recites shitty Ahnold quips, and Tony's gauntlet weapon purposely juxtaposed against a gun; they are functionally the same in their effect but one is bright and flash and clean. The whole movie is a critique of how Americans know all this shit but just willingly choose to pretend otherwise and how superheroes are tied up in capitalist patriarchy structures as idealized Great Men of History.

Winter Soldier: This one draws on the real life phenomenon of the Good Guys who beat the Axis and won World War II somehow staying the good guys while wholesale adopting a lot of shit directly from the Bad Guys. Propaganda and pop culture manipulation, science, military tactics, the worst. It's a movie about confronting how we supposedly beat the enemy, but we met the enemy and now he is us; we pat ourselves for going to the Moon but the path there rested on the backs of slaves working under Wener von Braun, a colonel in the SS, our vaunted military might rests on tactics devised by the German military, and our intelligence services and even advertisements owe everything to Nazi propaganda. Yeah, it gets resolved at the end and there's supervillains behind it, but that's how stories work. The point of the movie is that we call ourselves the good guys but act exactly like the bad guys and we're inches away from being fascists if not there already.

Civil War: An extension of the previous movies' themes. Yes, it ends with a superhero moment, but even that is deeper here. It's the African king of the enlightened nation that ends the cycle of revenge and violence that, in the film, signifies the endless rotation of wars and powers that underscores geopolitics, while the embodiments of the West- Captain America, the fresh-faced idealized embodiment of America's image of itself, and Tony Stark, the loud mouthed drunken weapon-toting weapon-making Ugly American who comes up with some torturous logic all the time to justify his bullshit, are at each other's throats. Cap casting off the American iconography means something. The film is a critique of American propaganda about our vaunted special forces (that is, assassination squads) and how we paint them as heroes.

Nothing is undercut in these movies. They make their point and they don't go "syke!" and pull them back, they stand on their own. Plot does not equal story.

Consequences doesn't mean dead characters and dead characters only. You can tell a compelling and meaningful story where no one dies.

Besides, how is the DCCU even attempting to be more serious? It came baked in with a main character dying only to be resurrected in a deus ex machina.

The DCCU was never serious. It's the equivalent of a garage death metal band. If you put a modified Nietzsche quote at the front of a movie and think you can be taken seriously you don't know how to be serious.

Anyways Rant over.

Here's the new poster for a movie we can ALL agree on.

Ray wrote:THATS EXACTLY WHAT ALL OF THESE MOVIES DID CHUCK! ESPECIALLY IRON MAN 3! You're reading Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too deep into it

I get that a lot, but these are really superficial, surface level readings of these movies. I would barely even call them subtext, they're pretty explicit about it.

^ There wasn’t enough dark shadows in those movies, Chuckman. And nobody blubbered “MARTHAAAAH!!!” So clearly, you’re reading way too much into them. That’s just how movies work.

Because Spider-Man moping over Uncle Ben in the Raimi movies wasn't as overtly Melodramatic either.

Not that it matters anyways. You've already won. You get your FUN! Marvel movies. You'll get your FUN! DC movies after Flashpoint. and it'll be decades until we get another Dark Knight or Logan because all it takes is one big failure and Hollywood retreats to the comfort zone rather than try something different.

Depending on how long the process of the mouse devouring Fox takes, Deadpool might be petered out. If not, I can see them continuing it.

I don't really see the need for more Logans. Logan is Logan. It's a good movie, but it works because of the specific character that it's treating. I would prefer more creative risks over saying "Let's make the Logan of X character". That's how you end up with this:



It's also endemic to Hollywood thinking; a common practice in screenwriting is the "elevator pitch", i.e. "Sex and the City meets Star Wars" or "Logan meets Superman"

I also don't see the post-Flashpoint DC movies necessarily being a huge success either.

Honestly, I think the DCU would be better off developed as TV shows, something slick with good production values like Star Trek: DIscovery.

I also don't see the post-Flashpoint DC movies necessarily being a huge success either.

I hate to say it. But I agree with you. I doubt DC will ever be relevant ever again. At least as far as Movies the things that shape the publics perceptions are concerned.

I fully expect Deadpool to be made retroactively Canon in the MCU. Hell, the first movie already included a damaged Helicarier in the shipyard Deadpool faces off against Francis. Perfect for Reverse Compatibility,

Ray wrote:I doubt DC will ever be relevant ever again.

I doubt it'll be that simple. As I mentioned before, the next couple of DC movies at least don't have the budget problems that Justice League did, so that makes them more likely to be successful or at least profitable. There's also still the Arrowverse, Black Lightning, and Preacher--heck, if anything DC is kicking Marvel's butt in the TV department. This round might have gone to Marvel, but DC is a scrappy fighter and I fully expect to see them stage a comeback in the future, provided they get rid of Zack Snyder first.

Leave Zack out of this he's been tarred and feathered enough as it is. I doubt he'll ever direct a movie ever again after a failure this big it's one thing to fail with directing a single movie it's another thing to fail your entire Cinematic Universe. To the point where future movies go out of their way specifically to give the middle finger to your original vision for it.

The "Zack Snyder is a hack" meme went from poking gentle fun to being cruel and genuinely mean-spirited a long time ago.

I hope he can move forward for this and make a movie that proves everyone wrong but after a failure of this leve (and regardless of how I personally feel about bvs and Mos I do concede that in the eyes of the general audience and the box office they are failures) I just don't know.

If I were a studio executive I give him a job directing a reboot of John Carter of Mars. At least there he could exercise himself without a million different people breathing down his neck for not sculpting Supermans spit curl just the right way.

Edit:

As for Marvel Winning this round there won't be any future rounds for either side to win because big theatrical releases are going the way of the dinosaurs and silent movies. DC and one chance and they're never going to get it again.

Ray wrote:If I were a studio executive I give him a job directing a reboot of John Carter of Mars. At least there he could exercise himself without a million different people breathing down his neck for not sculpting Supermans spit curl just the right way.

If it were me, I'd give him Condorman, though I don't know much about his directing style to know if he would be a good fit.

As for Marvel Winning this round there won't be any future rounds for either side to win because big theatrical releases are going the way of the dinosaurs and silent movies. DC and one chance and they're never going to get it again.

If you are right, and everything is going to go to streaming services, then DC would be ahead of the game on this one. As I've stated earlier on this thread, DC has carved out quite a niche in TV with several shows on different networks. The infastructure is in place for them to produce content for these services.

While it's true that I don't know too much about the subjects you guys discuss here, I have to admit reading this thread that I'm sensing a lot of anger here.

Jesus Christ, guys. It's not like DC is dead or anything. It's only been 6 years since the last good DC movie, and less time has gone between The Dark Knight Rises and now than there was between Batman & Robin and Batman Begins. If The Amazing Spider-Man proved anything, it was that rushing reboots is a deadly practice. Good reboots take time. I don't know why the rules suddenly need to be different simply because the weird looking superhero in the reboot is wearing bat ears instead of a spider web.

Fads come and go in waves. DC will be popular again. It might take until the Superhero hypes dies and then is resurrected later on due to nostalgia, but they'll be back. And DC making smaller movies is objectively and inarguably a better thing for Hollywood to do as a whole because, God dammit, it used to be that you could make amazing superhero that everybody loved without needing China to make back all of the production costs. Movies didn't used to cost this much, movies shouldn't be as expensive as they are right now, and the first studio that crumbles under the weight of that reality is doing everyone a favor by encouraging smaller productions.

I don't care about the theatrical experience if it means that they'll only show high-dollar productions that are so expensive that domestic profits are considered less favorable than international profits.

I don't care about the theatrical experience if it means that every movie made for the theaters needs to be watered-down and screen to so wide an international audiences as possible that it looses whatever identity that it had to begin with.

I don't care about the theatrical experience if it means that everything needs to cost a billion dollars to make.

I don't care about the theatrical experience if it means that I can get better movies with stronger narratives on Netflix.

I don't care about the theatrical experience if it means that the more reasonable movie production standards of "Let's make a fun movie with a restrained budget that'll easily make its money back," will be better honored on other platforms.

I don't care about the theatrical experience if it means that skipping the theaters is also skipping DC fanboys crying over the fact that rich WB executives made a smaller profit than Disney executives. (Fun Fact: All DC movies were profitable, but had budgets that were simply too inflated to justify the sequels. It's not that these movies didn't make their money back and then some, but rather it's that they didn't make all of the money in the world.)

I don't care about the theatrical experience because movie producers who put movies inside of those theaters don't care about domestic audiences anymore. It's not that Millennials can't be bother to leave the house; it's that we can't be bothered to leave the house to tolerate Hollywood's weak-ass shit that's been watered down for broad appeal. When Colossal came to theaters, I drove miles away from home just to see it on the big screen. The Shin Godzilla came out, I drove an hour away from the house to sit in a nasty, smelly theater just to experience the local culture/politics of Japan.

When Thor Ragnorok was released, on the other hand, I waited a couple weeks and simply saw it out of curiosity. I keep forgetting when the Black Panther movie is supposed to be released, and I care so little about the Han Solo solo stand-alone solo movie about Han Solo's solo adventures in which Han Solo goes at it alone, solo-style that I seriously thought it wasn't going to be released until December or some crap like that. (Fuck that movie before it's even born.) I'd rather not leave the house for these things.

Netflix, on the other hand, for all of its sins of taking revenue away from major theater chains and Hollywood premieres, care about its domestic audiences. And that's why they're winning. They don't need an international release to recoup production costs, despite being distributed on a platform that can easily access the world wide market. They can make a horrible lack-luster movie like Bright and still be rolling in dough because that movie was made to appeal to a domestic audience, and it successfully appealed to that domestic audience. While I wish it was better written, its goal of courting domestic audiences again is refreshing, and needs to be seen in the rest of Hollywood if the larger studios want to regain that audience lost to Netflix.

(I still hate Netflix for forcing me to rely on its servers during a long-term period to enjoy the media I love, but at least they aim make movies for me instead of attempting to have an broader global appeal. Fuck that noise, the majority of art is for local culture.)

Anyway.

Screw DC.

Screw Disney.

Still looking forward to a forgettably fun time with Infinity War.

I don't know what else is happening in the theaters anymore.

I don't care, and neither does Hollywood. They'll make their money in China.

Ray wrote:If I were a studio executive I give him a job directing a reboot of John Carter of Mars.

Mars is where careers go to die.

@Freaky you said what I think, but said it better than I do. I see the fetishism of movie theaters as basically living in a fantasy world. The movie theater model pushes studios to make toothless movies and incessant sequels.

It goes against the grain of my usual comments, but the trailer for Solo looks terrible and though it took a lot, even I felt a twinge of sequel fatigue when I heard that in addition to Rian Johnson's trilogy, Disney has tapped another director for an ongoing, open ended series of Star Wars films.

What's weird to me about the whole industry is that Netflix and streaming are becoming what theaters used to be and movie theaters are starting to be a place to go watch longer, more expensive TV shows with a super long and inconsistent release schedule and $14 Skittles.

John Carter is a perfect example of why we should look forward to more streaming-based entertainment.

A major movie studio is never going to make a blockbuster where the female lead is buck-ass naked through the whole thing (and the hero, while we're at it) or take any risks. If you water down John Carter of Mars it just looks like a ripoff of every other scifi franchise, because it spawned them.

Plus, movie executives are idiots and they're so convinced that any movie with Mars in the title is destined to bomb that they make it happen to prove themselves right.

Chuckman wrote:John Carter is a perfect example of why we should look forward to more streaming-based entertainment.

A major movie studio is never going to make a blockbuster where the female lead is buck-ass naked through the whole thing (and the hero, while we're at it) or take any risks. If you water down John Carter of Mars it just looks like a ripoff of every other scifi franchise, because it spawned them.

Plus, movie executives are idiots and they're so convinced that any movie with Mars in the title is destined to bomb that they make it happen to prove themselves right.

I wouldn't go THAT far. I mean, removing the sex appeal and sheer victorian era insanity of Barsoom is what made the Disney movie collapse in on itself. But you don't need to have the characters be literally nude.

They're not nude, they wear jewelry.

Seriously though, I think the only director I'd tap to do John Carter would be Luc Besson, but someone else has to write the script. It needs less steampunk and more of that hyper-detailed wildly colorful pastel Möebius feel to it. On the other hand, there might be a director out there who could live up to the challenge of making a movie where Deja Thoris is practically naked through the entire thing without male gaze and without the nudity undercutting the power of her character, but I don't know who that would be.

Snyder's style doesn't fit Barsoom at all.

I mean, John Carter is reverse Superman. (Actually, Superman is the concept of the hero of a planetary romance like Barsoom reversed. Think about it)

Frank Frazetta really, really likes asses. Woman ass, man ass, ape ass, every ass, even ass ass. I respect that.