Film Martin Scorsese - Marvel movies are 'not cinema'
- Thread starter Sweet Square
- Start date
8 more Phase 6 projects coming at D23. LETS FECKING GOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Looks like they filmed this shit in the metaverse.
Surely people aren't taking clips from trailers and putting them through filters to make them look worse?
He's been rumbled.
@Sweet Square has been very quiet since he was ousted
He is right that at this point Hollywood doesn't really trust original movies. Often the ones that are original aren't that unique anyway. It's also the fault of movie goers. There are some original movies but we all normally go to the franchises. Like those new Jurassic movies are pretty crap but they all made over a billion.
Marvel stans:
"Marvel is good for the future of cinema"
Reality stans:
"Marvel is good for the future of cinema"
Reality stans:
Well if you hedge your bets that baguettes are going to be a big seller forever and turn your formerly bustling bakery into a baguette-centric paradise and it turns out that people enjoy and prefer making their own baguettes at home and your overheads are still very high and totally focused on getting people to buy your delicious baguettes then, like Cineworld, you'll be in a world of pain.
...something like that
Picturehouse is an interesting one. I was under the impression they were doing quite well with their boutique-style cinema operation... I wonder if US Cineworld's demise will pull them under?
From the little that I read on the cineworld story (as well as the overall struggles of the box office over the past couple of years which i've generally been following) this is a result of multiple things coalescing at the same time:
- Everyone pretty much has a home cinema setup at home, non-cinephile moviegoers like myself who appreciate good films are faced with a choice, should I watch something like Moonlight, Everything, everywhere at once, where the crawdads sing at home on my comfy couch with my partner/friends or pay to see it in the cinema. And in my head I go is there a visual/audio spectacle that makes it a must see on the big screen, for the majority of films that is no and I think the general audience thinks similar
- The streaming services have been eating away at the cinema/cable market for years now. I think this year will be the first time viewership of streaming services in the US will be more than cable. When it comes to the low-medium budget films in the cinema, they are now competing against low-medium budget films on streaming services. Before the streaming services you had movies that came out in the cinema and you had to wait months to see them outside of the cinema, and then you had straight to tv/vhs/dvd films which were of a noticeable lower quality. Nowadays all the streaming services are producing low-medium (sometimes high) budget films of varying quality so that part of the cinema market now has real competition. Again should I pay £20 for 2 tickets to watch where the crawdads sing, another £15 on popcorn/drink or watch the gray man, prey, spiderhead, or any of the other numerous movies in english or international that visually are as good and storywise are as good (not saying the grey man is good, but you get my point) for the price of my monthly subscription. Factor in the above point of a home cinema, the reality is low-medium budget films released in the cinema do not have a draw anymore
- The biggest factor in all these bankruptcy/takeover talks over the past couple years is due to covid. Covid has changed our consumer habits probably forever. We have gotten used to being able to access pretty much anything and everything from the comfort of our home, this include movies. Despite the relaxation of covid rules etc moviegoer numbers have not returned to pre-covid levels and probably never will. So taking all three of these points its easy to see where the problems are.
- With regards to Marvel specifically, the reality is that these cinema chains rely on the likes of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, the big tentpole movies to provide them with that injection of customers and money.
So I think the cinema industry is at a crossroad. As you pointed out with picturehouse, which I agree with is that there is a place and always will be a place for smaller cinema chains that show the low-medium budget movies, along with the odd blockbuster. What I think probably will change is having a Odeon/Cineworld every mile of london. Those giant chains probably cannot survive on just showing low-medium budget films and its looking like they cannot survive by doing a mixture of having 2-3 premium screens for big budget films and 5-6 smaller screens. So most likely they will have to reduce in size and probably have tentpole cinemas that are all premium screens that people go to for the true blockbuster experience.
@flameinthesun I'm going to read that properly later when I'm not busy at work. It certainly looks like a more thoughtful than my baguette analogy
Nah mate, baguettes.
In all seriousness, this is absolutely spot on. The rise of streaming services coupled with the fact most people have a decent enough TV to watch most films on in good quality, means less and less people are going to the cinema.
Almost certainly. I know it's hard to gauge online but I wouldn't use the term 'stans' seriously
Last edited:
Fixed
This is definitely a point also, a reason also why we are seeing the likes of HBO max, disney+ etc still playing about with the PVOD window which is pretty much replacing the dvd window that Matt Damon is talking about. The new digital chain being Cinema, PVOD, VOD.
It actually also ties into my post above as a fourth point in that there is an agreed window between the cinema chains and studios for how long a movie must play in a cinema before it can be released on dvd. I believe this is because of the split between the cinema and studio, with the studio getting a larger percentage of the revenue in the first couple weeks and then the cinemas percentage rising as time goes on (would need to double check this but fairly sure its along the lines of this). That agreement doesnt apply to pvod, which is why you see the much shorter 45 day window or in extreme cases a simultaneous cinema/pvod release (think warner brothers with wonder woman 2). Which means the cinema chains loses even more money because the movies do not stay in the cinema as long as they used to and less customers go because they have the pvod option.
This was also the reason why the cinema chains kicked up a big fuss when during covid warner bros decided to do multiple simultaneous cinema/pvod releases because it would inevitably cause the cinema chains to lose out on revenue.
Interesting post, cheers.
This is key. Can you imagine Good Will Hunting getting green lit in these times?
It was too good a script not to find a home surely? You would just hope A24 pick it up and not Netflix.
Turning to the clouds shaking my fist at them, I yell "HE'S GOT A POINT YOU KNOW!"
The superhero movie thing never made the slightest sense to me. Not because I've never been into superheroes. Indeed, for many years it was near the top of my list of interests. League of young superheroes, Fantastic four, Spiderman, The avengers, pretty much anything I could get my hands on. Lived and breathed for it. Of course, it was just comic books back in those days (and how's that for an old man yelling at clouds moment, actually using the sentence "Of course, it was just [insert object/phenomenon here] back in those days")
But then I turned 13. Or maybe 14, I don't remember exactly. And I just stopped caring. I really don't understand how an adult is able to get past the fundamental ludicrousness of the thing, even to the point of accepting it as light entertainment. The characters are laughable, the plots are unrelatable, implausible and predictable, and on this shaky ground they pile on the pathos, emotion and (semi-)human drama. How does anyone above the age of 20 manage to care? Even if you just like fast-paced action and things getting blown up, there are so many better alternatives.
Not just getting greenlit, but the film made over 225 million dollars at the box office. Don't think a film like that is making anywhere close to that amount of money today.
I dont know when you turning 13 happened but they've matured over the years. I mean its not high art but Watchmen and some of Alan Moores other stuff amongst others are quite good. In terms of fast paced action and stuff blowing up i thought Marvel were quite good for a time too. Not recently, most of them look like shit the last couple years but there was a decent standard for a while.
nailed it. it's all about "wow" and "feels". at least that's what it is once you move beyond the cgi shitfest and i can understand people being enthused by that at the start, as it was around the time avatar was big precisely because it ushered in a new age of entertainment consumption. smart tvs and 3d screens and other things coincidentally began to blow up in consumption trends at precisely the same moment. just an example of hollywood's role as corpoate marketing venture.
the superhero films that aren't shit are the ones that are least "super human". or the ones where the fantasy element takes a background seat. watchmen was essentially a mystery film with noir overtones. that was good. wolverine was a bit overrated imo but better than most. and that's generally the way you make good "super human" films.
worth listening to the whole thing
I had to turn her off her voice is going through me
isn't she just wrong? i don't like much of anything marvel makes, but their entire business model is one big easter egg. every film and series, of late, references a bunch of others so you can't get the "full" meaning unless you're consuming the entire merchandise. don't know if that's the case here or not but i don't see how a film which expands a franchise defined by the easter egg model can't be considered an easter egg in itself.
marvel exist to upsell you on a bunch of shit you shouldn't need to enjoy the primary film or show in isolation.
marvel exist to upsell you on a bunch of shit you shouldn't need to enjoy the primary film or show in isolation.
she's just complaining that the show doesn't have enough of those references, but yes, in the broader context, the show only exists because of a movie which only exists because of 6 previous movies.
Studios these days will greenlight certain films. First and foremost are existing IPs. They're the safest bet and despite everyone saying Jurassic World was shit... It made the money and that's the bottom line.
Then it's the high concept movies that are cheap to make. Think most films from Blum House like Purge. These usually cost sub £5m and their ROI is massive.
And then you get the films from auteurs like Tarantino and Peele (irrelevant if you liked NOPE or not) these are the kinds of guys that true cinephiles need too look to of they want that golden age back. But even then, they are few and far between.
If Good Will Hunting was somehow produced today, it would not make half the box office it did when it actually came out.
Just like at the current worldwide box office right now and you'll see what I mean.
Yep it is a bit odd how adults get so invested in either loving them or hating these movies.
I think you can get involved in hating them if you assume there’s a finite pool of money available to be invested in making movies and you hate the thought of so much money being invested in so many shitty movies. Plus it makes the type of movie on in big cinemas so much more homogeneous. Which is depressing.
You don’t need to be that old to remember cinema pre-Marvel superhero movies. When there was a far more diverse variety of big budget films on in the cinema
I get it but they're two side of the same coin for me. Whether it's loving them or hating them they're primarily kids films, I don't see the need for adults to get so worked up about them. If someone enjoys getting obsessed with them or getting worked up and hating on them fair enough I suppose, each to their own. I don't particularly like those Disney live action remakes so I just don't watch them. I personally don't jump to assuming their existence is taking money away from something potentially being made that I would like and then get myself upset about it.
We live in a golden age of Television that you can stream from the comfort of your home so it's not like there isn't plenty to watch, that more than Kids movies is what's killing cinema. And going to the cinema has mostly become an experience to bring kids to anyway these days, because the production companies and the cinemas know the little feckers are a licence to print money. That's why the majority of the movies on offer are geared towards them.
