Comic Book Movies & What Ails 'Em 3: Better, Not Bigger
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Superheroes and Villains
jriddle73 — 1 year ago(April 27, 2024 06:12 PM)
Well, the current comic-book movie boom just passed the quarter-century mark, so here's the latest installment of my series on what these comic-to-screen adaptations get wrong, some of what they get right and how they can do better, and must, if they're to continue.
Issues addressed: the negative impact of Hollywood's tentpole mentality on these projects, the problem of Stupid in comic-book movies, my long-delayed review of SHE-HULK: ATTORNEY AT LAW, the need for smaller projects that let these characters live and breath, the problems that arise when screen projects depart from the source material in an ill-advised way, Martin Scorsese's criticism of Marvel, my pitch for a Defenders franchise. Sort of a mondo article.
The article:
https://jriddle.medium.com/comic-book-movies-what-ails-em-3-better-not-bigger-6635078ef70a
"The Dig"
http://cinemarchaeologist.blogspot.com/ -
merry christmas — 1 year ago(April 29, 2024 12:56 AM)
The ending of The Batman felt like an idea that was tacked on to go bigger. What if they try to kill the mayor AND flood the city? That might have been a metaphor about washing the city clean like in Taxi Driver but I forget if something like that was explicitly stated.
If comic book movies are declining the last-ditch effort will be to go really big and have Marvel and DC team up to save the Omniverse. -
jriddle73 — 1 year ago(April 30, 2024 12:15 AM)
Yeah, that ending on THE BATMAN was like a second final act, tacked on after the movie was basically over. A lot of comic book movies do that. There needed to be some point to the Riddler's master-plan, but it needed to be something more like Gweneth Paltrow's head in a box than some budget-expanding extra ending that only serves to make what had been a pretty good movie outlast its welcome.
(If you didn't read the article, I wrote about that in it. lol)
"The Dig"
http://cinemarchaeologist.blogspot.com/ -
merry christmas — 1 year ago(April 29, 2024 11:44 PM)
Not many people had heard of the Guardians of the Galaxy and I don't think Doctor Strange or Ant-Man were nearly as popular as others. The problem is replacing their iconic characters with knockoffs nobody likes.
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jriddle73 — 1 year ago(April 30, 2024 12:22 AM)
And Blade, the character who started the current comic movie boom 25 years ago (!!!) was a complete unknown to the non-comic-reading general public. For that matter, so was Iron Man, who kicked off the MCU proper. Marvel built most of the MCU around the Avengers and their satellites, then, in very short order, killed off Iron Man, killed off the Black Widow (after criminally underusing her), aged Captain America out of action and has the Hulk replaced by one of the "smart Hulk" variants–usually the least interesting version of that character.
Marvel did this after building nearly the entire MCU around the Avengers, so they don't have anyone to carry the load after the originals were gone.
"The Dig"
http://cinemarchaeologist.blogspot.com/ -
merry christmas — 1 year ago(April 30, 2024 02:33 AM)
Marvel did this after building nearly the entire MCU around the Avengers, so they don't have anyone to carry the load after the originals were gone.
They're doing Secret Wars and apparently stuffing it with whoever currently constitutes the Avengers, the X-Men, Fantastic Four, the various stragglers like Shang-Chi and Spider-Man, and maybe the Eternals? It looks like it will be and so far is an unfocused mess but they might get smart and change course. -
Cosmic Dan — 1 year ago(May 02, 2024 06:38 AM)
The show’s head writer Jessica Gao revealed that the original approach was abandoned because the writers discovered that none of them could write good courtroom scenes! Which immediately raises the question of why these writers were hired in the first place and why, when this came to light, they weren’t replaced or didn’t at least try to do a little homework on this.
I think the problem was there was no compelling way to tell a super hero story focused entirely in a court room. The premise was just flawed from the start. For what it was I thought it was an ok show with way too much made about it being woke. It wasn't very woke at all. -
jriddle73 — 1 year ago(May 05, 2024 06:23 AM)
I didn't really care about whether it was "woke"; I just cared about the fact that it was really,
really
bad. I'd wanted She-Hulk brought to the screen for many years. I was appalled by what they did to the character. There was never any suggestion of the show being "focused entirely in a court room," but it is, in part, a legal comedy with a rich vein of material to mine; it's incomprehensible that they'd hire writers who could write neither comedy nor courtroom scenes.
"The Dig"
http://cinemarchaeologist.blogspot.com/