Comic Book Movies

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm honestly kind of indifferent towards the news. Holland and Watts are still contracted to keep their roles, so that'll be good (although I can take or leave Watts as the director), but they just won't be tying into Marvel's films. If this means that we'll get an actual Spider-Man film from them, and not another appendix towards the MCU, I'm curious. But Sony also hasn't shown that they really know what to do with the character, Spiderverse aside, so I don't have a lot of faith.

I mean, regardless of what people thought of MCU Spider-Man, having the rights revert back to Sony is hardly cause for excitement. Spider-Verse is great because Lord and Miller got to do their thing since the higher-up Sony execs don't take their own animation department seriously, so it's kind of whatever as long as it makes them money. Avi Arad still has his greasy fingers all over the live-action flicks, though. Regardless of any missteps he might make, I'd still take Feige over Arad any day.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Throwback to this clip.

[Foggle]

Some people are pissed off about this. Others are ecstatic. I'm just here for the drama. I want to see Disney and Sony have a metaphorical slap fight with each other protracted over several years that ends in both parties burning shittons of money and good will.

A slap fight would only either cost or complicate the jobs of people in both companies, and lead to an arms race that could further amplify a monopoly. I don't see that benefiting anyone involved.

I mean, it's not up to me what two of the richest corporations in the world do when they get petty over IP rights. I feel bad for anyone whose livelihood is affected by this but at the end of the day it's down to net billionaires getting cranky at each other for not coughing up enough millions over a comic book character. Certainly it won't hurt people in the industry more than Disney buying Fox and cancelling hundreds of film projects in development did.

[Foggle]

"When my father died, no one from Marvel or Disney reached out to me," Lee said. "From day one, they have commoditized my father's work and never shown him or his legacy any respect or decency. In the end, no one could have treated my father worse than Marvel and Disney's executives."

Yikes...

[Dr. Insomniac]

I'm finding it difficult to trust her words considering she was also accused of elder abuse of her father a couple years ago.

[Foggle]

I'm finding it difficult to trust her words considering she was also accused of elder abuse of her father a couple years ago.

Should've included this since it's apparently not common knowledge:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/stan-lee-sets-record-straight-relationship-daughter-jc-friend-keya-morgan-1101155

According to Stan himself, the accusations were bullshit concocted by the accuser in question, who was the one really abusing him.

[Dr. Insomniac]

And the person who filmed that video was arrested on elder abuse.

[Foggle]

Incredible.

It looks like his daughter never sided with the guy who filmed the video, at least, though who knows if he was lying in it. Unless proven that he was forced to say those things, it doesn't exonerate Disney in my eyes, though I do believe that Kevin Feige never had ill intentions at the very least.

Unfortunately, it's not hard to believe that one of the most famous elderly men in the world would be abused by his friends and family, as well as the company that owns his intellectual property, all at once.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Watched Dark Phoenix. You know what's funny? Jean never actually turns into the Dark Phoenix. The one or two innocent people she kills are completely by accident. Even though the X-Men have costumes this time, there's no visual indication the Phoenix Force makes her a different person either. And despite promises the movie would be more "Cosmic X-Men" than the Singer movies, it gets really gray and earthly dull after the space opening. X3 was more bombastic, the movie this was meant to be an apology for. How does that happen?

And what was the deal with the villain? Years ago, I used to think one of the pluses the X-Men films had over the MCU was better villains, a view that largely became outdated when Apocalypse came out. So it's almost poetic that on the same time we see Thanos get his due, X-Men gives us a complete waste of Jessica Chastain. She makes Sigourney Weaver's character in Defenders look cool. And according to behind the scenes reports I read, they kept changing her character's name because even they had no clue who she was supposed to be. Resulting in a vague fusion of Emma Frost and Lilandra who commands an army of Skrulls.

I liked the subway fight though. Really wish that could have been in a better X-Men movie.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Watched Dark Phoenix. You know what's funny? Jean never actually turns into the Dark Phoenix. The one or two innocent people she kills are completely by accident. Even though the X-Men have costumes this time, there's no visual indication the Phoenix Force makes her a different person either. And despite promises the movie would be more "Cosmic X-Men" than the Singer movies, it gets really gray and earthly dull after the space opening. X3 was more bombastic, the movie this was meant to be an apology for. How does that happen?

Apparently the entire third act as well as other stuff in the movie, which was supposed to contain more cosmic stuff, was entirely scrapped and re-written/shot to take place on a train because the original ending bore too much of a similarity to Captain Marvel. One has to imagine that, while the Disney/FOX deal was still in negotiations during the production of this movie, that decision still must have been influenced by Disney as I can't imagine FOX executives wanting to waste the time and money to re-shoot part of a film that was clearly doomed to disappoint at the box office either way.

I honestly have to say that, while the FOX-Men movies have been wildly inconsistent and all-over-the place in terms of quality, I'm kind of going to miss seeing an alternate interpretation of traditional superheroes in comic book movies. That is to say that, while I enjoy the more unabashedly over-the-top comic book aesthetic of the MCU and the post-Snyder DCEU, it was nice to have a mix of more realistic takes on these characters and Universes that didn't have to be restrained so much in style to fit in continuity with a cinematic Universe. While this could age poorly in some cases like with the original X-Men or Daredevil, it could also lead to great films like with The Dark Knight, First Class, or Logan. Both styles of superhero movies complemented one another and made the genre feel more varied, IMO. While I've personally never had an issue with the uniformity of MCU movies since to me it's a serialized story at heart, I do find myself agreeing with the sentiment that it'd be a lot more of an issue if that's the only style we got from the genre.

That is to say that I'm fine with most of my MCU movies being lighthearted and fun. I do want other stuff as well, though, and I'm wondering if Feige will really go in that direction with his take on X-Men or not. That's one reason I'm actually looking forward to Joker. If it's as good as early buzz suggests, and does well, it'll be an encouragement for producers to allow for some more riskier takes from time to time. After all, isn't that how superhero comics evolved in the first place?

Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and other writers and artists introduced characters with (relatively) more realistic problems and consequences to their actions than typical superheroes of the time. Writers like Roy Thomas and Dennis O'Neil took classic superheroes into surprisingly dark territory for the time proving that these stories could challenge the conventions of the CCA and expose young readers to somewhat more mature subject matter. And people like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison really explored what the medium of comic books were capable of by not being afraid to get weird and really tackle high-concept stories that couldn't be replicated by anyone but themselves. All of these writers and their works were highly influential on what came after them. While not everything they wrote or influenced was great, it kept the genre alive in that medium by always surprising readers about what these supposedly silly cape comics were capable of when applying new ideas to them.

After a hugely successful run of very entertaining but formulaic MCU movies, I'd really like the genre to take some more risks now. New superhero flicks should try to surpass what came before them rather than just recycle them and play it safe.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I think one of the issues and charms of the X-Men movies is that because they started since 2000 and are only going to end whenever New Mutants gets leaked/released, they've had to go up against three distinct eras of superhero movies. The first two X-Men films were meant to wash away the bad image superhero movies had gotten from critical failures like Batman & Robin, Judge Dredd, and Steel. And it's very easy to forget now, but that iteration of the X-Men became what plenty of people imagined the X-Men to be like in pop culture. But then they had to compete with the Raimi Spider-Man films and the Nolan trilogy, and combined with Singer leaving, the X-Men became far easier to make fun of for their overuse of Wolverine, refusal to dress any characters is anything but black or grey, and lines like this. Then once the MCU got big, Fox was divided on either chasing their coattails or going against the grain like the earlier films did but with better directors like Vaughn and Mangold. And I'm not sure how that would have worked out in the long run even if Disney never bought Fox. That Gambit film was probably always going to rot in development hell no matter what.

Maybe Dark Phoenix's critical and box office failure would have convinced Fox to shift the X-Men franchise yet again. Another thing I noticed about DP was there were plenty of scenes featuring group shots of the cast with a huge empty space between characters seemingly meant for Logan. Like there's a scene at the Cerebro set where Mystique and Beast are standing really far apart from each other, with dead air between their dialogue too as if someone was meant to be talking but got muted, and it's almost like the original script had Wolverine but instead of rewriting the scene they just erased all of his lines and scene directions without changing anyone else's. I'm probably blindly speculating there because it's not like I have Dark Phoenix's rough draft in my hands, but for all the moldbreaking we got from Logan and the Deadpool films, the mainline X-Men movies got trapped into their own formula. Charles and Erik fight each other then make amends and play chess. Mystique does something stupid. Characters like Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Quicksilver do absolutely nothing beyond a couple scenes. For all the claims from Fox this film would push the boundaries, it felt way too familiar.

[Daikun]

Spidey's back!

[Dr. Insomniac]

That took like, what, a month and a quarter? Shorter than the James Gunn fiasco.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Got around to watching Joker. Joaquin Phoenix was great as usual. I'll admit a lot of the memes surrounding the film made it hard to take some moments seriously, but I thought it was fine. It just never goes beyond "Let's paint Taxi Driver in clown makeup".

And all the dance sequences were dumb.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, it's an adequate version of The King of Comedy for people unfamiliar with actual Scorcese films, with Phoenix's performance being the one thing that helps elevate it. To be clear, I think it's a decent flick, if a bit overhyped (in much the same way that Black Panther was).

Speaking of Scorcese, I'm not quite sure why people are getting so worked up about his comments on superhero movies. At this point he's like, what, the 500th celebrity to say they aren't real movies? I just figured most people would be used to it by now and move on. Or, maybe I've just learned to roll with any general negativity toward the genre and just hold to my own opinions regardless. I mean, Scorcese is one of my favorite filmmakers of all time, but it doesn't mean that I have to agree with everything he says. I also don't have to get worked up about it, either.