Are Superhero films dying?

[Paul Farquhar]

Being back the old avengers, X-Men, Fantastic 4, plus Spiderman might right the ship

Not a chance. It doesn't address any of the real issues - declining cinema, poor writing, or ungroundedness.

We just have to hope that those actors are wise enough to say "not at any price" and not destroy their legacy.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Not a chance. It doesn't address any of the real issues - declining cinema, poor writing, or ungroundedness.

We just have to hope that those actors are wise enough to say "not at any price" and not destroy their legacy.

Oh better writers will have to be addresses, but a huge part is they keep pushing characters that aren't even popular at the comic books level.

And word is as part of the his price Robert Downey Jr. gets to pick stuff like the Director. I could see him picking the writers too.

And cinema still makes money, look at Oppenhiemer, Barbie, Mario, Taylor Swift, (this was not a year where my tastes won out except GotG) etc...,

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mean Kang is no Thanos, heck he's no High Evolutionary or Ego

Sure he is.

Kang isn't the problem - he's easily as compelling as those guys in the comics. Building an entire storyline you're forcing multiple movies into around a single actor however, that's a problem.

on top of that alot of the characters they pushed in phase 4 and 5 just weren't popular, even in their comics form

I tend to think the initial popularity of the characters doesn't matter than much, even without Gunn, but you need to give them compelling stories, and that's what hasn't really happened.

Not a chance. It doesn't address any of the real issues - declining cinema, poor writing, or ungroundedness.

We just have to hope that those actors are wise enough to say "not at any price" and not destroy their legacy.

Indeed. The current MCU ship is essentially sinking and won't be fixed that way. That said, if Disney/Marvel are smart, they could change course drastically and perhaps get to a port as it were.

But that won't be by bringing back people - I mean, I think that was always the plan, to have a Secret Wars movie pairing where they brought back/in whoever the heck they wanted, but if they were going to do that they should have just gone for it - we shouldn't be several years away from such. Also that that was the plan doesn't mean it was a good plan. I think your points re: groundedness and writing are relevant here. Secret Wars (the original) was a lot of fun in the comics in a "mashing action figures together" kind of way, but that might not translate to the screen, and the 2015-ish comics Secret Wars? UGHGHGHGHGHGH no awful bad boring lame overcomplicated pretentious.

I do think they have an opportunity to "start over" with the X-men, but it won't be with the MCU as we know it at this point.

but a huge part is they keep pushing characters that aren't even popular at the comic books level.

Nah. It's not a huge part. It is a part, but the success of frankly largely forgotten characters like Thor (whose popularity outside hardcore Marvel fans was basically zero prior to the MCU) and utterly risible characters like Captain America and Dr Strange shows that real-terms popularity doesn't matter if the character can be made compelling.

Picking characters better does matter, but it's not "who is popular in comics", it's "who can we make compelling". They're not the same thing. There's overlap, but there's also stuff outside that that works.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Sure he is.

Kang isn't the problem - he's easily as compelling as those guys in the comics. Building an entire storyline you're forcing multiple movies into around a single actor however, that's a problem.


I tend to think the initial popularity of the characters doesn't matter than much, even without Gunn, but you need to give them compelling stories, and that's what hasn't really happened.


Indeed. The current MCU ship is essentially sinking and won't be fixed that way. That said, if Disney/Marvel are smart, they could change course drastically and perhaps get to a port as it were.

But that won't be by bringing back people - I mean, I think that was always the plan, to have a Secret Wars movie pairing where they brought back/in whoever the heck they wanted, but if they were going to do that they should have just gone for it - we shouldn't be several years away from such. Also that that was the plan doesn't mean it was a good plan. I think your points re: groundedness and writing are relevant here. Secret Wars (the original) was a lot of fun in the comics in a "mashing action figures together" kind of way, but that might not translate to the screen, and the 2015-ish comics Secret Wars? UGHGHGHGHGHGH no awful bad boring lame overcomplicated pretentious.

I do think they have an opportunity to "start over" with the X-men, but it won't be with the MCU as we know it at this point.


Nah. It's not a huge part. It is a part, but the success of frankly largely forgotten characters like Thor (whose popularity outside hardcore Marvel fans was basically zero prior to the MCU) and utterly risible characters like Captain America and Dr Strange shows that real-terms popularity doesn't matter if the character can be made compelling.

Picking characters better does matter, but it's not "who is popular in comics", it's "who can we make compelling". They're not the same thing. There's overlap, but there's also stuff outside that that works.

This version of Kang simply isn't scary enough, he's too easily replaceable. Now if there was a central, irreplaceable Master Kang that would be different, someone key to all of it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This version of Kang simply isn't scary enough, he's too easily replaceable. Now if there was a central, irreplaceable Master Kang that would be different, someone key to all of it.

I agree that him not being scary enough is an issue. I don't think that's a plot problem though - you don't need "Master Kang" or whatever. The lack of scariness problem is that Kang was portrayed as too fun and witty and, frankly, kind of reasonable. If you want a villain to be fun and witty and also scary, they need to be actually terrifying in some way, like The Joker being an utterly ruthless psychopath. Kang unfortunately has just seemed like kind of a megalomaniac which doesn't work as well and feels a bit passe.

But the bigger issue was even if they managed to course-correct on that, they now have to replace the actor, and they didn't prepare well for that, and made too many films dependent on that.

I think they were trying to fix one problem with pretty much every villain in an MCU movie for the last few years at least, which is they weren't given enough time to breathe, enough screen time to be their own character. It's very clear, for example, that with Thor: Love and Thunder, the villain's role was massively cut down so we could have more time with marketable and reusable characters like Thor and Valkyrie, and that illustrates a fundamental screw-up. You need compelling villains, and that could have been one - you had Christian Bale, for god's sake! But no, he's all on the cutting room floor so we could have screaming goats and so on. Thanos got that time, but others have not. Even Namor only got what time he did because he's future-marketable, not to be killed off.

 

[MoonSong]

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.

There is a grain of salt to go with this. Yes, early silver age Marvel was known for its groundedness and its relatability, but it didn't stay that way. I tell this as a middle of the pack millenial. Growing up in the nineties and the turn of the century, Marvel wasn't that relatable anymore. It was this edgy tremendist playground that dealt with grown up stuff without actual consequences, one where everything would eventually reset and characters remained ultimately static and unable to truly grow up. It felt theatrical if not farsical. The most relevant example for this was One More Day.

At the time DC felt truly relatable. There was change, evolution, and real consequences. In the same timespan from Spiderman getting married out of the blue to him selling his marriage to the devil, everybody in DC kept changing and growing. Wally West went from teen sidekick, to adult Flash to parent. The same was true of a lot of younger heroes who made the universe feel alive. Even the bigger iconic established heroes had that sort of progression. Less of the edgy play about grownup issues and more actual grown up issues with consequences. Of course that went off the window a long time ago, but for fifteen-twenty plus years it was more relatable and felt more grounded despite the characters being more mythical and idealized.

 

[Kaodi]

I was not trying to make anything immune to criticism. It was just the perceived off-handedness of the remarks, combined with my entirely possibly mistaken view of what the show was doing with some of its characters, that led me to commenting. To bring it back to the present topic though I suppose you could still ask whether Yellowstone or Wakanda Forever did a better or worse job at including those things, and that might be relevant particularly if you think Yellowstone did it badly.

In any case here was my impression of the show is as a non-viewer: the Duttons are the protagonists, but they are also, more or less, bad guys. The tribe in the show has an antagonistic relationship with the Duttons, but the characters are a mixture of good and bad, just like, you know, real people, and are not made out to be noble or villainous in general. If anyone would like to explain how that show actually does them dirty then please do, as that could be relevant to whether I ever watch it in the indeterminate "eventually" .

As for Sabra, while it would not surprise me whether the reshoots have to do with her character, removing her entirely is not unproblematic depending on what she was doing in the film in the first place.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Oh better writers will have to be addresses, but a huge part is they keep pushing characters that aren't even popular at the comic books level.

"Popular in Comics" is irrelevant. No one in the UK had heard of Iron Man, but the movie was still hugely popular - because it was good. People will turn out to see a character they have never heard of - if the movie is good enough.

And word is as part of the his price Robert Downey Jr. gets to pick stuff like the Director. I could see him picking the writers too.

Even with the greatest writers ever it's still a tired old franchise. The kindest thing would be to take it behind the barn and shoot it.

And cinema still makes money, look at Oppenhiemer, Barbie, Mario, Taylor Swift, (this was not a year where my tastes won out except GotG) etc...,

The pattern has changed - people will still turn out for "event movies" but they aren't going to the cinema on a regular basis any more. And Marvel movies just aren't event movies any more.

Personally, I think "event movies" are also on borrowed time. Cinemas are closing, and if people have to travel large distances to go to the cinema, they will even wait for event movies to stream.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As for Sabra, while it would not surprise me whether the reshoots have to do with her character, removing her entirely is not unproblematic depending on what she was doing in the film in the first place.

Given the age brackets and social leanings of the majority of people going to MCU movies, you gotta weigh your options and even with her apparently being now a mutant and working for the CIA not Mossad (not exactly a huge change), if she's a major character in the movie, it's potentially going to have a negative impact on the box office. But yeah as you say simply deleting her would cause a lot of columnists, talking heads and politicians previously largely uninterested in superhero movies to make a lot of um, how to put this, "emotive statements". So I expect they're carefully reducing the role.

And I doubt that's all they're doing - a synopsis of Cap 4 came out a while back from a plausible source (who has provided accurate synopses previously) and it did not sound like a very coherent or compelling movie, but rather a bit of a mess. Given the lead writer is the same as Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and he got forced to change the plot of that and do a bazillion reshoots and it was a total mess that would be sadly unsurprising (don't hire Spellman if you're not up for what he's doing, Marvel!).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There is a grain of salt to go with this. Yes, early silver age Marvel was known for its groundedness and its relatability, but it didn't stay that way. I tell this as a middle of the pack millenial. Growing up in the nineties and the turn of the century, Marvel wasn't that relatable anymore. It was this edgy tremendist playground that dealt with grown up stuff without actual consequences, one where everything would eventually reset and characters remained ultimately static and unable to truly grow up. It felt theatrical if not farsical. The most relevant example for this was One More Day.

At the time DC felt truly relatable. There was change, evolution, and real consequences. In the same timespan from Spiderman getting married out of the blue to him selling his marriage to the devil, everybody in DC kept changing and growing. Wally West went from teen sidekick, to adult Flash to parent. The same was true of a lot of younger heroes who made the universe feel alive. Even the bigger iconic established heroes had that sort of progression. Less of the edgy play about grownup issues and more actual grown up issues with consequences. Of course that went off the window a long time ago, but for fifteen-twenty plus years it was more relatable and felt more grounded despite the characters being more mythical and idealized.

That's a good point for sure. I mean, I think the X-Men and spin-offs largely remained relatable (even when being weird) through the '90s, but I mostly stopped following them after that, and what I have seen, which is only bits and bobs, has been anything but grounded. And a lot just seemed profoundly ill-judged.

That said, the Netflix Marvel shows knew grounded-ness mattered. As I think did the Iron Man movies and even Captain America. But once the MCU started "getting away with it" (with Thor, for example), and particularly after GotG managed to "make fetch happen" with a ludicrous set of characters in a silly space adventure with a lot of whimsy but which also connected with audiences, Disney/Marvel seems to have decided to go "all in" on being ungrounded, without really thinking what that meant and without having Gunn's talent for extracting pathos and humanity from even the most insane situations.