Are Superhero films dying?

[Irlo]

Isn’t basically a movie about women empowerment? I remember reading that many feminists were not happy that men didn’t get the message of the movie?

We're getting pretty far from the topic of super-hero movies, but I'll just say that the message that women are people is not a message that only women should hear.

 

[Zaukrie]

Streaming is what's killing theaters for me.... Is just easier to stay home and cheaper.

 

[payn]

I think I did say I had not watched it myself and was going off of what I had read and also the few times I remembered seeing those characters when I put that show on for my Dad to watch (at a time I was literally trying to find anything for him to devour all the time, as watching TV is about all he can handle).

But to address your point: yes, something like Reservation Dogs is going to be the gold standard. But you are not living in a healthy media environment if the only people capable of doing reasonable writing about an entire race are people from that race. Imagine saying that only white people could write (well) about white people: that would be insane. So the existence of Reservation Dogs does not, in fact, obviate the need for other shows to be able to include Indigenous characters and do a decent job of it.

Oh: did I forget the post the link before or was it removed: “Yellowstone” Is The Most Important Drama On TV Right Now

Thanks for adding the link. I tried to google find it and came up with dozens of articles saying the opposite. In fact, there are some compelling arguments about the indigenous depictions being problematic. I used to just think YS was bad in general, now I loathe it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

And again, the overt superpowers that Mrs. Peel and Mr. Steed exhibited were...?

Apples to apples man.

I don't know why you think it's necessary for movie heroes to have overt superpowers.

But in this case, they clearly have the same powersets as Black Widow and Nick Fury.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I see three main factors:

1) General decline in movie-going as a leisure activity. And frankly, I only see that accelerating. All the cinemas near me have closed down.

2) Poor, formulaic writing. People will not keep turning out for the same story with slightly different characters.

3) The MCU has lost touch with the ground. Iron Man was set in a world that could have been our own. But with the blip, space stations, etc, the MCU has become nothing like the world we live in.

 

[Zardnaar]

I see three main factors:

1) General decline in movie-going as a leisure activity. And frankly, I only see that accelerating. All the cinemas near me have closed down.

2) Poor, formulaic writing. People will not keep turning out for the same story with slightly different characters.

3) The MCU has lost touch with the ground. Iron Man was set in a world that could have been our own. But with the blip, space stations, etc, the MCU has become nothing like the world we live in.

I think 2 is the main one.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think the dismissing "geriatric" actors as worth less is, at least, kinda ageist. Certainly making a show for an older audience is not going to be any kind of silver bullet (pun intended) but I do not think it would hurt, either. An actor who is 75 today would have been thirteen years old when Fantastic Four launched, practically the exact right age to have been around at the start of the Marvel revolution. They should not be dismissed out of hand.

It's obviously not ageist in any sense beyond "being realistic about what audiences actually want from superhero movies" might be considered ageist.

It's one thing to bring back a beloved actor who is getting on in years, but provided a classic portrayal of a character, and quite another to invoke Yellowstone and Tulsa King as appropriate models for Marvel. The former can impact things, but as Michael Keaton shows, it can't save a bad movie - though he probably made them more money than the actual star did. The latter is ludicrous nonsense without specific examples and absolutely should be dismissed out of hand until such examples are provided.

Also, this talk about Yellowstone being just a "rancher" show ignores one of the most significant things that I have heard about it: that its portrayal of its Indigenous characters is multifaceted and has depth, which, if true, is a lot more than can be said about a lot of other properties. In any case here is at article written by Elamin Abdelmahmoud about it. Do not dismiss it because it was for BuzzFeed: Elamin was hired that same month to do a program for CBC, the Canadian national news network.

That absolutely doesn't prove your point about it not being "just a rancher show". You can still be "just a rancher show" if you do a much better job on indigenous cultures than previous rancher shows did. A lot of adventure movies before now were often kind of racist or at least incredibly culturally insensitive, but that doesn't mean an adventure movie now that does a better job on that is necessarily more than an adventure movie. Also have you even seen it? You seem to arguing on the basis of a specific laudatory article (which you didn't link btw lol), rather than having seen any episodes.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I think I did say I had not watched it myself and was going off of what I had read and also the few times I remembered seeing those characters when I put that show on for my Dad to watch (at a time I was literally trying to find anything for him to devour all the time, as watching TV is about all he can handle).

But to address your point: yes, something like Reservation Dogs is going to be the gold standard. But you are not living in a healthy media environment if the only people capable of doing reasonable writing about an entire race are people from that race. Imagine saying that only white people could write (well) about white people: that would be insane. So the existence of Reservation Dogs does not, in fact, obviate the need for other shows to be able to include Indigenous characters and do a decent job of it.

Oh: did I forget the post the link before or was it removed: “Yellowstone” Is The Most Important Drama On TV Right Now

I want to briefly address this. First, I don't think that it is only possible for a show to have a good or accurate depiction of people if those exact people wrote it and directed it. This is fiction, after all. I do think, however, that if we are going to talk about shows that are great shows (in general), and great shows (in terms of an accurate depiction of indigenous people) ... then Reservation Dogs should be the starting point, not Yellowstone.

That wasn't really the thrust of what I was saying, however. It was more an observation that it was very strange to me that a person would invoke the depiction of indigenous people as a reason to make Yellowstone immune from criticism. Let's put aside the actual merits of the claim... which, if you look around, you will see is more controversial than your source is stating. The actual point is this- Yellowstone is not about indigenous people in any meaningful way. It's about ... well, it's about certain mythologies of the west, and of history, presented in a soapy fashion, and viewed primarily through the lens of white ranchers.

Which is fine! Some people like that. And people are also welcome to discuss the merits of the inclusion (and the accuracy) of indigenous people. But it's not about, or for, them, is it? So invoking them is kind of weird. Again, representation is a good thing, and it matters, but it also doesn't mean a show is (or isn't) good.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

They have already pretty much indicated that they're going to be running three or four different lines - the Cosmic Heroes (Guardians. Thor, Marvels), Street Heroes (DareDevil & Co, Spiderman), New Avengers World Heroes - (Captain Falcon, Shuri Panther, Hawkeye girl), Magic Heoes (Dr Strange, Scarlet Witch, Agatha) then theres Thunderbolts and whatever genre Loki is. Could be an interesting development

World is whatever plans they previously had are in the trash and being reworked for a host of reasons.

I mean Kang is no Thanos, heck he's no High Evolutionary or Ego, and on top of that alot of the characters they pushed in phase 4 and 5 just weren't popular, even in their comics form. A James Gunn could have pulled that off, but most couldn't, and he's gone.

Word is the old Avengers team is being dusted off and put back in, with Dr. Doom replacing Kang (whose actor is facing qlegal problems on top of a lack of popularity). Being back the old avengers, X-Men, Fantastic 4, plus Spiderman might right the ship, plus maybe Black Panther Jr. coming of age, with a less sloppy way of making movies that reduces budgets could make Marvel Amazing again.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I see three main factors:

1) General decline in movie-going as a leisure activity. And frankly, I only see that accelerating. All the cinemas near me have closed down.

2) Poor, formulaic writing. People will not keep turning out for the same story with slightly different characters.

3) The MCU has lost touch with the ground. Iron Man was set in a world that could have been our own. But with the blip, space stations, etc, the MCU has become nothing like the world we live in.

I dunno if 1 will accelerate - it might - but if it does, it'll be in part because as revealed by the pandemic, MCU/DCCU-style superhero movies are some of movies least worth seeing at the cinema. They've increasingly rarely made actual good use of the big screen, and their wild overreliance on ultra-heavy CGI contributes to this - further, some of them actually got improved for home release, because Marvel touched up the FX or corrected issues!

The cinemas near me remain open (in North London), but their prices are very depressed compared to what they used to be, in order to get bums in seats (apart from the ones even further out in true suburbia, interestingly).

2 is the case for sure and Kevin Feige needs to eat the bulk of the blame for this. It is he who has been making these decisions on who writes and broadly what is written and authorizing these movies. I think sadly The Marvels, which by most accounts is not as bad as recent MCU movies, is suffering from something videogame sequels often do - it's not the crap sequel that necessarily suffers from a huge sales drop, it's the sequel AFTER the really crap one (there's also sexism in the mix, but it's hard to say how big a role that plays here). Notably all MCU movies have been delayed out of 2024 except Deadpool 3, which is only technically MCU. Captain America 4 is undergoing yet more reshoots (not for the first time), which will no doubt make it even more disjointed and less compelling (no doubt to lessen/remove a certain character's presence - a character who should never have been there in the first place - not every character needs to make the leap from comics to screen!).

Further to blame Feige and Disney/Marvel management, it seems like a lot of these movies should just never have actually be made, and only got made because of the perceived need for an overarching plan consisting of various interlinked movies. It's got a lot of bad to mid movies kicked out the door or even decent ones rushed out with terrible VFX/CGI because the order needed to be correct.

3 was somewhat inevitable if the Marvel universe went on, I think. You can't get away with completely forgetting to have consequences with movies in the way you can with comics. Movie audiences just aren't the same people. If they see New York trashed in one movie they do expect there to be an impact. The blip was a corner they wrote themselves into, because the only way out of letting Thanos get the snap off was a reset of some kind, and going for the obvious time-travel reset to stop him before it happened might have seemed to cheap to audience - but I don't think it would have. It's made the need for coordination of movies and so on drastically worse, so really is a huge self-inflicted burden by Marvel/Disney. You're certainly not wrong though, and the problem is Feige and the rest seem to think this is fine, and that "cosmic nonsense" is the right way to go. This is crazy because just like Secret Invasion sucked in the comics and should never have made it to screen (that it did in a version that was somehow much worse is amazing), the cosmic stuff in Marvel is generally the least-compelling and most nerdy stuff. You need someone with a touch like Gunn to get away with it, and they haven't got anyone like that.

And whilst it was somewhat inevitable, it could also have been dragged back groundwards or taken in directions that gave enough space to distract from the previous shenanigans. And Disney/Marvel just don't seem interested in that.

The grounded-ness matters too because it was, in comics and in earlier superhero stuff, the major distinguishing factor between DC and Marvel. DC had these epic, godlike, iconic characters, sure, but they often felt slightly mythic rather than relatable, despite some strong attempts. Whereas Marvel didn't have quite as iconic characters (barring Spider-Man, the X-Men, and arguably the Hulk), but it did have a universe that seemed more like our own, more relevant. They've lost that, and much as people might like, in the short term, movies full of whimsy and weirdness, and indeed, considered on their own, such movies may be strong, it detracts from one of the major selling-points. I don't think Feige and Disney/Marvel management really "got" this until recently.