LogFAQs > #876257088

The Wave Master posted...

It's not a bad choice considering Marvel killed his hopes and dreams after Avengers 2. Which wasn't that bad of a movie, but it wasn't that good either. Middle ground effort because of a lot of studio interference. Basically the Spider-Man 3 effect.

I'm not sure I really buy that, though.

With Spider-Man 3, there's definitely a feeling of studio demands for Venom completely ruining everything Raimi actually wanted to do (not helped by the fact that he was clearly enamored of/homaging the 1960s/1970s version of the character, while the entire Venom storyline was a very tonally different slice of 1990s bleh), combined with a sense that Raimi basically went "Well, you know what? Fuck you" and more or less tanked the whole premise on purpose because they killed his interest.

In the same vein, you also have Jon Favreau, who after directing Iron Man 1 & 2 left the franchise - apparently because he was annoyed by studio interference (so much so that he felt the need to go make a barely-veiled movie complaining about it). But even so, he still made fairly serviceable films.

So while I acknowledge that executive meddling CAN ruin a film (but not necessarily so), I tend to have less sympathy on that score when it comes to Marvel Studios movies - because, as much as people whine about creative freedom or too much executive control, at least in Marvel's case, there's a pretty clear case of that overarching control being used to preserve the tone and meaning of the original work, and to produce movies and characters that can more easily interlock into group films (precisely the sort of thing DC/WB movies NEED, but have literally never had - and likely never will, because WB isn't directly answerable to DC, and WB clearly doesn't want to be making comic movies in the first place).

Because of that, I tend to be much more on Raimi's side, and even willing to acknowledge Favreau's complaints, but I'm less likely to care when someone like, say, Edgar Wright complains about interference because I get the impression that he was the one fucking things up far more than Marvel was. It's unrealistic at best and asinine at worst to sign on to make movies as part of a massive existing franchise with literally decades worth of narrative and expect to be given total creative control to fuck everything over in whatever way you like.

In Whedon's case, I'm even less sympathetic because I've actually READ Astonishing X-Men, and feel like maybe he shouldn't be as involved with comic book properties as he thinks he should (a similar criticism I'd probably direct towards Kevin Smith, among others). I've also watched Buffy and Firefly, which means I'm much more apt to pick up on the various Whedon-isms that give away some of his weaknesses as a writer and director.

The first Avengers film was awesome, but part of that was the uniqueness of seeing that sort of crossover movie for the first time, and that most of character-establishing work was already done for him in advance. As a stand-alone, it's good, but not great - and the second film was worse. It's kind of telling that the Russos managed to make a better Avengers film without even calling it Avengers - and I'd much rather see them helming the next movie than him.

The biggest complaint he has seems to be that the studio made him shoehorn in the Thor Ragnarok tie-in scene (which he did a poor job of anyway), and that he spent too much time on the Hawkeye's family scenes (which he did). But neither of those things explain why there are other aspects of the movie that are weak or lacking.


---

"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family