Current Events > The worst thing to EVER happen to cinema, is the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Worst thing that has EVER happened to cinema.

I used to think CGI was the most damaging thing, but this has done more damage. CGI has done less damage. Cheesy sitcoms did less damage. The Hayes Code did less damage. Govermental censorship in places like the Soviet Union and East Germany did less damage. Ed Wood did less damage. Tommy Wiseau did less damage. Studio execs more concerned with money than art did less damage.

Horrible. Just horrible.

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Oh so this is the Sunhawk everyone warned me about?

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this thread aint cinema - martin scorsese

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Sunhawk is like the personification of an above ground pool

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Yeah, well, thats just, like, your opinion, man.

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In what way?

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With shit like Epic Movie I'm gonna say no.

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Sunhawk posted...

The Hayes Code did less damage.

Completely wrong.

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Nah.

Let's face it, Disney had been sucking the art out of movies for decades before they bought Marvel. They were so ass-blasted by Robin Williams doing FernGully before Aladdin - despite signing on to do FernGully before he signed on for Aladdin - that they had people showing up to the animation studio and halting everybody's work out of some petty grudge.

They've commodified art to the point that most of their animated women of the past 10 years have had slightly modified designs between them - Rapunzel, Anna, Elsa, Honey Lemon and the fucking dragon from their latest movie have a weirdly similar face design. Movies like Treasure Planet and Lilo & Stitch, all-time classics to the kids who grew up with them, were shunted off to an animation studio in Orlando or something while Disney pursued Pixar - one of them bombed, and the other one did okay, but neither of them were handled with the same consideration or care as Disney's prior movies.

And then you have Disney's chokehold on copyright law, which put a 20 year halt on work entering the public domain. They've spent decades changing the law for the sake of their profits and trademarks, fighting to allow for a character to be claimed by a corporation when its original artist dies. They've singlehandedly prevented all-time classic literature from becoming freely available to the common man for the last twenty years, all in the name of commercialisation and profit.

And with Disney now owning as much of the media landscape as they do - they can mandate a set of standards and procedures of what they will and won't do in their media, and those standards and procedures can span close to 50% of the entire media landscape. What happens if they outline exactly how they want to frame certain crimes or issues in the fiction they create to a narrow set of criteria, and refuse to publish, produce or create any work that doesn't meet those principles?

That last example is speculative, sure - and I understand that it might not happen like that, if at all. But it illustrates just how much of a stranglehold they have over the media landscape today.

You need to zoom out here - the MCU is one aspect of Disney's sanitation of the pop-culture landscape. On its own, the stuff they make at Marvel is fine - it's perfectly enjoyable action schlock. On its own, the way Disney produces their in-house movies and character designs is fine - they're one corporation making movies by their own standards, the same as DreamWorks or Illumination. But it's one aspect of a monolithic entertainment machine that can - and already does - influence a wider swath of the entertainment industry. You can compartmentalize and say that the MCU is the specific death of cinema, because the best-selling action movies of all time are a bunch of digital action figures smooshing into each other over and over again - but the issues go much, much deeper than just Robert Downey Jr.'s miraculous meal ticket.

If there's a wider culture problem, it stems from the corporation with more fuck-off money than respect for human life. The MCU might be a factor, but you're trying to attack a giant by stabbing it in the toes. There's a metric fuckton of other shit attached to those toes that make up a significant majority of the thing you're railing against.

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It's all military propaganda anyway. It exists to condition kids to wanna enlist when they're older. :v

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It didn't do any damage, and neither did CGI.

No, that would be Adam Sandler.

Nah, I'd say Birth of a Nation

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TC speaks the truth

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Reminder that Marvel movies aren't cinema

Dorfmann_ posted...

Reminder that Marvel movies aren't cinema

They literally are.

Uwe Boll??

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Doom_Art posted...

Sunhawk is like the personification of an above ground pool

Ehhh it's a pool lol

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The problem is that the MCU has effectively replaced the "who cares" style action movie that was so common before. The kind of generic action/adventure movie that you really watch once in theatres, think "hey, that was cool" and then kind of forget about it.

And that's basically ideal MCU, almost entirely in CGI, with snarky quips and basically nothing being taken seriously outside of very specific situations (ie. Endgame and not much else) fits that, but the "everything is connected" angle makes you care more about the big things, but also makes it feel like you can't watch one on their own.

Also the MCU has gotten pretty formulaic, and if you don't like the formula, well it sucks for you.

Also made other industries try to make big interconnected universes with all of their franchises, but in a crappy way that exposes how dumb the concept is. The Mummy ****ed up the Dark Universe despite the fact that they had a monster-connected universe 80 years ago.

MrMallard posted... Consistent with great posts, good assessment
Turbam posted...

Nah, I'd say Birth of a Nation

This

Yep buncha nerds have the power now.

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I've been close to agreeing with this and Iots of my friends hate Marvel. But I've been watching WandaVision and it's straight up good TV.

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It's the best thing to EVER happen to cinema. Never has there been a cinematic universe, and done almost perfectly, such as the MCU. They're so good at it, that others are trying but falling (DC) because it's not easy. The ingenuity to make more than 20 movies that all coincide with each other, with some having their own contained stories, and to do it well is mind boggling. Hats off to Kevin Feige.

RadiantJoyrock posted...

They literally are.

By the lowest definition of the word, sure.

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I prefer DC in general but I actually really love the MCU Universe as a whole. You can't expect non-stop greatness, of course, so there are some movies that aren't that great but the MCU itself is so deep and expansive, and the pace we've discovered it at is so amazing. From the reclusive nation of Wakanda to the far reaches of the galaxy, the characters we've met and the stories about them have been so perfectly interwoven for a truly breath-taking experience not unlike epic poems of ancient times.

What's really impressive is that the crossover movies they build up to are actually so great that they make earlier entries better. Even weaker ones like the Iron Man sequels and ones that aren't so popular with even die-hard fans, like Thor 2, look considerably stronger upon re-watching.

The acting is generally serviceable.

TBQH, they could put out 10 movies a year and I'd pay to see all of them, then re-watch them on Disney+ (bundled with Hulu and ESPN+ for only 13.99/mo btw) as soon as they're available, alongside new hit shows like WandaVision and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier!

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