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The executives and producers. There’s a fascinating leaked email thread from Marvel where a couple random execs are hyping up each other’s terrible ideas, sayin
by fullsend 4y ago
The executives and producers. There’s a fascinating leaked email thread from Marvel where a couple random execs are hyping up each other’s terrible ideas, saying they could kill off characters and reboot Iron Man and other self-indulgent nonsense. Then Kevin Feige, all hail and hallowed be his name, joins the thread with a simple sentence - “We don’t need to reboot, we can make infinite stories in these universes.” With a stroke of the keyboard he stopped that garbage in its tracks.
There’s also a great speech by Kevin Smith where he describes being hired to write Superman and he goes to the producer’s house to read the script. The guy is coked out, ranting about how there needs to be action every 10 pages in the script or the audience will get bored. He’s talking about spiders and says the main villain should be one. Then Smith says Superman’s kryptonian name, “Kel’al” or whatever, and the guy is like, who?
That’s the people making these calls sometimes. Most companies do not have a Kevin Feige.
Amazon especially is going to be an overly cautious and bureaucratic behemoth. Inexperienced as a whole despite whoever they hired. Meanwhile HBO just bought a Channel 5 documentary produced by Tim and Eric and A24 with total creative freedom. Risky. That’s the difference between shills and artists.
- effingwewt 4y agoWay late but any links to the email thread? I could only find one where they thought women superhero movies were disasters. Edit found it [1], I always imagine it being like this, but seeing the emails is just...wow. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/qaju55/emails_from_kevin_feige_and_alan_fine_former/ https://old.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/qaju55/email...
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoI’m not sure I would use the Marvel franchise movies as something aspirational when it comes to writing. They very much are paint by numbers movies. I think the Disney recipe is the worst thing to ever happen to action cinema and part of the reason these shows are all so poor. Peter Jackson first trilogy is probably a better benchmark.
- fullsend 4y agoWriting isn’t there for Marvel sure. But to me the achievement is reliably producing B grade movies. Entertaining, worth a chuckle, easy on the eyes. None deserve an Oscar, but none (or few) are really very bad. Even if that were easy to do with one movie, and I’ve watched a lot of real garbage, doing it with a string of 20 interconnected films? Culminating in Endgame? That required the steady hand of a few really solid people. It was the first of its kind by an absolute mile, a totally new achievement in cinema. Spielberg and his ilk have been obsessing over all the CGI and sleeping on the real achievements. For reference my favorite movies would be No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Fury Road. I like The Wire, Breaking Bad, True Detective season one. But I think Marvel is a different sort of thing altogether. The sheer reliability of it is unrivaled. Which is why I say that’s what Rings of Power lacks for me. The writing doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. Just keep the thing competent despite all the cooks in the kitchen. Many pieces of media seem to fail at this. Lately I will say the formula has worn thin. I consider their run to be from Iron Man to Endgame.