@ecarle. Interesting. For myself, however, I'm done with magical powers, superheroes, costumed vigilantes, et al. for at least the next few years and maybe for forever. Can Not Take It Anymore.
--
Ha. In the "larger world," there seems on the one hand to be a fatigue that has led to a desire "that it all end, God, please" -- and yet, a cursory visit to some of the Marvel and DC boards around here convinces me that these movies, and the literal universes they create(including alternative universes) are going strong as an obsession for a younger generation to which I say -- "more power to 'em." The movies seem to find their lovers in different ways in different eras.
I would also suspect that the true roots of this current phenomenon can be found in...wait for it...Star Trek.
I lived through the beginnings of all that. An NBC network TV series that wobbled its way through three seasons in the 60s. But in the early 70's -- and I lived through THIS -- is became a cult favorite in syndication , with a huge fan base. In high school, guys I knew thought it was funny to pull out their wallets and flip them like the cell phones of Star Trek, and there were debates about in which episodes Kirk clearly did bang the woman(whatever planet she was from.) Phrases were bandied about: "Beam me up," "The ship's taking as much as she can take" "I'm a doctor, not a pimp," "He's dead Jim." I wasn't a fan, but I saw it all around me.
And then it turned into conventions , and a "universe" of its own -- and the movies (that saved Bill Shatner from a decade of struggle). We are talking here about BELIEVERS.
And this has transferred into Marvel and DC. (Though hey -- a lot of Trekkies grew up to be scientists and engineers and made the Star Trek cell phone turn real, among other things.)
And now they have come to Marvel.
CONT
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
NOTE: I've been reading the Tarantino interviews from his brief re-surfacing to promote his novel and HE took up the Marvel movies much more combative than Scorsese was a coupla years ago.
QT plugged the Marvel/DC movies into his OTHER theory -- "the history of film decades." Roughly:
40's: Good ...with film noir and some suggestive films.
50's: Bad. Censored, white-bread, dull, corporate. "Any bestseller with sex in it had it removed."
60-66a; Bad. "The 50's Part Two." (I realize there was no R rating yet, but I disagree. Movies like Psycho pushed the envelope quite well enough.)
Late 60s-70s: Good. "The Second Golden Age." (Known to all. R ratings but also just a lot of great movies and "unique" blockbusters -- The Godfather, The Sting, The Exorcist, Jaws, Star Wars.)
80's. Bad. "Corporate Hollywood takes over."
90s" Rebelling against the corporations: indie films, QT films, more violence, more sex.
...
But here's the thing. Its like QT lost a decade or two in the there because he contends:
"Today": The Marvel/DC universes are the 50's and the 80's all over again. Corporate, dull, toothless.
And QT believes that a "rebellion" will occur and movies as exciting as those in the 70s and 90s will be made again.
Oh, maybe. But some patterns don't hold.
So the 90's were great.
How about the 2000's?
How about the 2010"s?
And now we are a bit into the 2020s.
I suppose the Marvel era hit its stride in the 2010's(It started with Spider-Man in 2002 and really started with Iron Man in 2008.)
But what OF the 2000s? Good? Bad? Anything?
In short, it is possible that QT's formulas just won't work anymore. A sudden return of indiefilm and R movies won't necessary rise again. Its a "worldwide market" now.
Plus: the corporations TOOK OVER indiefilm. That's why so many big stars were put into those movies(at reduced prices.) Tom Cruise in Magnolia. Sandra Bullock in Crash. Etc. And they created "mini studios" like Fox Searchlight.
CONT
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Supposedly, "right now" --we ARE seeing a decline in box office for the year's superhero films. Black Widow and especially The Suicide Squad have underperformed...but COVID is still a factor and the "streaming" debut of Black Widow undercut box office (and evidently led to a lot of pirating.)
For me, personally -- and even at my age, about which -- I don't care:
I see some comic book hero movies. I skip others. I skipped Black Widow -- no desire to go to the theater , no desire to spend $30 on Disney(or subscribing.)
I saw The Suicide Squad because it was "free" on HBO Max(with my subscription.) And then I looked at some of it on the big screen while at a multiplex to see Jungle Cruise.
But this: I was sort of interested in it, anyway. R-rated (HARD R rated -- the violence is gruesome.) Roots in "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Wild Bunch" and "The Magnificent Seven" and "The Professionals" (all better movies -- The Wild Bunch a true seminal classic.)
And yeah -- I think that Margot Robbie is hot and funny and nicely-acted crazy as Harley Quinn. Such a contrast with her sweet pixie in OATIH. I like the star charisma of Idris Elba(even if he just isn't cutting it as star.)
And there is a hilarious brief use of an SNL comedian named Pete Davidson whom I DO like(others don't.) He's got a great attitude thing going. Seated on a commando plane next to a man-sized CGI creature with bug eyes called "The Weasel", Davidson yells to his comrades:"What is this thing I'm sitting next to? A DOG? A giant rat? WHAT?"
SPOILER:
Mr. Davidson is the Janet Leigh of The Suicide Squad -- if Janet had left Psycho in the first ten minutes.
END SPOILER
CONT
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
I don't think The Suicide Squad is a particularly good movie -- like all of these things it devolves down to a CGI battle at the end(with a giant walking starfish!) . But it is subversive enough and violent enough and sexy enough(just barely -- they cast these beauties and do nothing much with them) that...it was OK. For free. On HBO Max. Which usually loses its internet connection mid-film in my home.
And so it goes. I am assuming that after The Avengers "ended" a few years ago, Marvel will wait a few years and just start the whole thing up again. Another Batman movie -- with another Batman -- has been ages in COVID-restricted making . (THE Batman, it is called. With Robert Patterson as Batman and the annoying Paul Dano as the Riddler. Eh.)
And of course this: Marvel and DC may put out a couple of movies each year, but they are thoroughly invaded "TV" -- cable, streaming, you name it.
There is no escape.
---
Some film historian wrote that "Hitchcock fans are almost like Star Trek fans" and it was an interesting observation. To be a Hitchcock fan (as I was, rabidly, in my childhood and teens) was to sign on to "the total package" when HE was hot -- the movies, the TV series, the short story books for kids, the short story books for adults, the "Three Investigators" series for kids, the Mystery Magazine, the RECORDS....but..
...it was mainly( I found) to sign on for the MOVIES.
No continuing characters. No shared universe. A different "story" every time -- and yet much more than a mere "story." An EVENT. An experience. A haunting.
CONT
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Some of it was a kid's desire to "join the hype." Hitchcock wasn't really a mere man to me -- he was some sort of legendary force. When these words came up in the Saul Bass credit sequences:
IN ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S
VERTIGO
IN ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S
NORTH BY NORTHWEST
ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S
PSYCHO
...it was as if he were some sort of institution, a government unto himself..bigger than life.
And...back then...so many of the movies DELIVERED. "In total,' as with Rear Window, NXNW and Psycho. Or in part, like the concert sequence in The Man Who Knew Too Much or the set pieces in The Birds. Hitch lived up to his hype.
Even almost at the end. Frenzy got TV commercials and rock station radio ads with Hitch in them, a summer re-issues of his Alfred Hitchcock Hour, great reviews, interviews with The Man (not so much to discuss Frenzy but to discuss EVERYTHING. He was finally appreciated.)
And Family Plot at least got a World Premiere at FILMEX .
--
But I digress...except I don't...because in an era when most movies were dramas, epics and musicals, Hitchcock movies kind of WERE Marvel movies ...genre pieces with chases and death, happening in fantastical universes.
But better.
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
Slight proviso. I'm kinda looking forward to The Green Knight which features medieval versions of general magical powers and happenings (with a moral teaching purpose a la everything from The Bible to Groundhog Day).
---
Well, from my readings of you, swanstep, you did have an affinity for Game of Thrones and that's a whole other universe to me -- somewhat of a derivative of the medieval epic, with the power politics endemic to that world.
---
Other provisos. I guess I haven't quite given up on Zombie premises. I got around to watching The Girl With All The Gifts (2016) recently. It's not perfect but the first half where *you* have to figure out its novel zombie premise is great and genuinely unnerving.
---
"Novel zombie premise" is probably the name of the game here. We have had "rules for zombies" since the first one (Night of the Living Dead) in 1968, and movies have toyed with those rules ever after ("Zombieland" actually put the rules up as titles on the screen during scenes.)
I recall the Brad Pitt zombie epic "World War Z" had two contrasting elements which intriged me: (1) Thousands of CGI zombies sweeping over barriers like ants and killing their victims and (2) just ONE sole male zombie captured and put in a room to be observed through glass, stumbling around and smashing his head against the glass. HE intrigued me - alone, separated out from his swarm -- still human, but not. And there to be "studied." To what effect?
---
CONT
reply
share
ecarle (14979)
3 years ago
And some of the core ideas (if not quite their execution) of the second half *have* stuck with me as a kind of horrifying analogue of what the world's response to Covid is sliding towards: to "living with" everyone being infected ever after (just not dyiAnd some of the core ideas (if not quite their execution) of the second half *have* stuck with me as a kind of horrifying analogue of what the world's response to Covid is sliding towards: to "living with" everyone being infected ever after (just not dying from it) perhaps with never-ending Pfizer updates and boosters to stave off the worst for the rest of our lives, but with unknown probably ghastly impacts on rates of depression, dementia, and other brain diseases in the long term.
---
It is rough thinking about how the "zombie apocalypse" movies of recent years have predicted at least some part of real life under COVID. But the "better news" is: the genre movies always get things wrong about scale of the problem and the world that will be created under it.
"How I learned to stop worrying and love COVID-19" is my Strangelove-influenced motto. Since I don't know what I don't know....I live with it. We all must.
"Hitchcock tie-in" I"ve always felt that The Birds also predicted "COVID world" -- a world in which, moment by moment, bit by bit, the humans come to understand that "something is happening, the world is changing" and by the end of the movie...THAT's the world the humans must survive in.
reply
share