Captain America: Brave New World

[battlewraith]

2 hours ago, Ghost said:

Kinda strange comparison

Previous Godzilla movies were made for kids, and Japan really didn’t have a strategy for US releases.

In fact, Minus One was supposed to follow their usual strategy of a very limited release.  Once it blew up - they extended how long and how many theaters it would play in.

 

Regardless, it doesn’t take away the fact that they were able to put out a huge hit on a modest budget.

 

Maybe the ones I grew up with were made for kids. There have been general audience movies made since then, I even saw one in the theater when I lived there. 

I don't think that anyone is arguing that huge hits haven't been made on modest budgets. The thing that doesn't follow, or at least hasn't been established, is that studios therefore should not invest heavily in big budget movies. 

[battlewraith]

2 hours ago, ZacKing said:

No one is suggesting that this means a studio or filmmaker who made one box office hit means they have to repeat that success with every project they are involved with.  I'm not looking for multi-billion dollar box office smash hits from the MCU every film either.  The quality of the films has progressively gotten worse while the budgets have gone up.  Something isn't working right there and it's not a crime for people to discuss that. 

 

It's not a crime but it's entirely subjective speculation about how big players in an industry are conducting their business. Based on whether you approve of the quality of certain films, whether you feel their budget was warranted, etc. I suspect the head honchos at Disney, or any large company, expect to have periods where they face reduced profits and they course correct. It might simply be the case that people are tired of superhero films. Or there are external issues at play that are affecting production--writer's strikes, actors aging out or passing away, etc. But the notion that other studios, with different budgets/goals/business models/etc. have periodic successes and that means Marvel studios have some sinister dysfunction at play is just silly. 

[Ghost]

38 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

 

Maybe the ones I grew up with were made for kids. There have been general audience movies made since then, I even saw one in the theater when I lived there. 

I don't think that anyone is arguing that huge hits haven't been made on modest budgets. The thing that doesn't follow, or at least hasn't been established, is that studios therefore should not invest heavily in big budget movies. 

They can spend what they want.

Its just not a guarantee it will make them any money or even be a hit.

Minus One is just brought up to say - see, a big time Hollywood looking movie can be made without spending big time Hollywood money.  That’s all.

[Glacier Peak]

I asked someone about this movie and they told me what they thought. I think I'll wait for it to come out on Disneyplus. The movie going experience is not anywhere near what it was when I was a youngster - my needs as a customer have changed and the movie theater chains I go to have a specific target audience they want to maximize their profit from.

 

And that's totally cool with me.

 

As a consumer, when I don't like a change in a product I've been consuming, I can make a choice to stop consuming it.

 

Here's a comparison I think it's appropriate - I think asking Arby's to give me their business expenses and revenue information so that I could make an informed decision on whether to order the ham with cheese or a deli sandwich is strange.

 

They already tell me the ingredients, how many calories each item contains, what they pay their employees, etc.

 

I ask myself, "am I hungry enough to pay for this product or do I want to spend less for something else."

 

If the product doesn't meet the individuals needs, they're going to go elsewhere (at least in free markets). 

 

Hopefully the detour to a comparison like food isn't lost on the discussion about a movie. 

[Ulysses Dare]

21 hours ago, BrandX said:

 

I was saying recast from day one.  From what I read, Chadwick said to recast too.

 

But I remember LOTS AND LOTS of people saying how disrespectful it would be to recast a character.  So much whining at the idea of recasting.

This drove me up the wall. After he died, I looked up Mr. Boseman's filmography. Before he took on the role of T'Challa, he played a whole host of characters including Thurgood Marshall and Jackie Robinson. From all appearances, he was a solid character actor and would almost certainly have endorsed "the show must go on".

[Troo]

5 hours ago, Ghost said:

but couldn’t since you dissed one of my favorite.  The Incredible Hulk!

 

The Edward Norton one with Liv Tyler and Tim Roth? I really wanted to like it more but just didn't, which is okay.

 

[Ghost]

2 minutes ago, Troo said:

 

The Edward Norton one with Liv Tyler and Tim Roth? I really wanted to like it more but just didn't, which is okay.

 

Yeah - it had its issues, but I still thought it was fun.

I still enjoy popping in the blu-ray every once in a while

[Octogoat]

9 hours ago, battlewraith said:

BUT WHERE DID THE MONEY GO??? Lol.

 

I did a quick search, the MCU as a whole has made around 30 billion dollars. The combined production costs are around 7 billion. Even if you tripled that number, you'd still be seeing 9 billion in profit. But people are acting like a few duds are bringing the studio to the edge of ruin. Furthermore, bitter fans are feeling entitled to know why so much money is being spent...for reasons.

Yea pretty much and the people that have the money make the products. It's our choice to consume it or not.

[Excraft]

On 3/1/2025 at 3:54 PM, TTRPGWhiz said:

I stand by my opinion that it’s weird to care about movie budgets (or box office, frankly) if it’s not your money. 🤷🏻‍♂️

 

Out of curiosity, where do you think the money Disney makes comes from?  Did the money that Disney used to make these movies grow on a tree?  All the money MCU fans spent over the years on movie tickets, film related merchandise, streaming services etc. wasn't their money?  And since it's not their money, they shouldn't care about the quality of the films being produced?  Interesting point of view you have there.

 

I don't see the harm in discussing where the money is going for these movies.

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 04:14 PM by Excraft

[InvaderStych]

Anyway ...

 

... This guy puts a rather fine point on the problem ...

 

 

The "Dying Dragon named Profit Motive," is the driving factor behind more than just the late stage MCU films. The theory being that if massive money is thrown at a project in the form of "bankable stars," multiple re-writes, multiple re-shoots, test screenings, press junkets, marketing blitzkriegs, then that automatically means the companies/execs should see the ROI to which they seem to feel entitled.

 

Note the subtle difference in the video - almost nobody ever wanted to make a film and not earn some money off if it, but the goal was to make a quality film, well crafted, that tells a compelling story first and thereby earning the audience's viewership and dollars.

 

DisneyMarvel seem to have lost sight of this along the way. The storytelling quality has just trended downward in the films - most were not as bad as the denizens of the internet (particularly those who have created the cottage industry of shitting on everything Marvel does for You Tube Views) would have one believe, but none of them - even as genre films - were as well conceived/executed as the higher points of the first couple of phases. Even under the expectations I have for an action/effects heavy genre work the later films lack cohesion, the multiple-film arc bends back upon or contradicts itself, and the performances are wildly variable. For example, young Miss Vellani's adorable, joyous, fan-girl energy was the only really watchable performance in The Marvels, no one else really seemed to want to even be there.

 

Which brings me to the streaming series, and why they have been - for the most part - superior to the later stage films. Less pressure from Profit Motive, more emphasis on the Craft. WandaVision was fantastic and unique, Loki took a broken continuity, salvaged it, and gave the character one of the more meaningful arcs in the whole oevure while looking ultra-slick the whole time, and Agatha All Along was a delightful diversion from form. Yes, the other series may not have been as good as those three, but with the exception of the abysmal Secret Invasion, they were still better - for the most part* - than what I've seen of the post-Endgame films.

 

* fwiw - F&WS had its good moments, but some of its "Try Hard" moments dragged it down. Hawkeye was sort of average, but nothing in it really weighed it down. I enjoyed Echo more than the average bear, and don't understand all the complaints about the lead's performance. She did quite well in my professional opinion. Ditto with Ms. Marvel - that one was exactly what it needed to be - nothing more nothing less.

Edited Wednesday at 02:19 PM by InvaderStych

[TTRPGWhiz]

On 3/4/2025 at 11:13 AM, Excraft said:

 

Out of curiosity, where do you think the money Disney makes comes from?  Did the money that Disney used to make these movies grow on a tree?  All the money MCU fans spent over the years on movie tickets, film related merchandise, streaming services etc. wasn't their money?  And since it's not their money, they shouldn't care about the quality of the films being produced?  Interesting point of view you have there.

 

I don't see the harm in discussing where the money is going for these movies.

 

 

"My money" stops being "my money" when I give it to someone else. Just like anyone's money.

I don't pay Disney to make more movies; I pay Disney to watch the movie(s) they already made. Maybe that's voting with my wallet and sending a signal to Disney that I, personally, would like more of the kind of movies I just paid for. But that's not really how any of that works (I don't know what I think of a movie until after I've seen it; Disney doesn't care what I, personally, do with my money).

 

People are of course "allowed" to discuss corporate finances or whatever else catches their interest. My opinion is that I find it lamentable that every thread about MCU movies in this sub inevitably turns into these armchair business analyses. 

[PeregrineFalcon]

1 hour ago, TTRPGWhiz said:

My opinion is that I find it lamentable that every thread about MCU movies in this sub inevitably turns into these armchair business analyses. 

I agree with you, but I'd also like to explain why this happens.

 

People will say they didn't like the movie and even explain why. And then other people will attack them for not liking the movie, demean them, insult them, and then the thread gets locked. When someone says "That movie didn't do well, and here are the number to prove it" what they're really saying is "I think this movie is garbage, the majority of people believed this movie is garbage, here's the objective numbers to prove that the movie is garbage, and you can't argue with that because the numbers are the numbers."

 

So I guess the bottom line is that if I felt it was ok to just say "I didn't like this movie because of these reasons" without a certain faction exploding and demeaning my opinion and even down right insulting me, even going so far as to call me a "not-see" simply because I don't like a particular movie (and yes that happened on this forum), then maybe I could discuss certain movies and what I liked and disliked about them. But as long as people are going to lose their marbles and compare me to a certain Reichskanzler simply because I don't like certain movies, or shows on Disney+, (and as long as the moderators on this forum allow them to continue doing that, while suspending me every time I push back against that craziness) then yeah, I'm going to stick to talking just about the numbers.

 

Hope this clears things up for you. 🙂

 

PS: Don't forget to go through my post history and put a thumbs down on all of my posts. It's become something of a tradition for you to do that, but I noticed that you forgot to do that yesterday.

[battlewraith]

14 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

People will say they didn't like the movie and even explain why. And then other people will attack them for not liking the movie, demean them, insult them, and then the thread gets locked. When someone says "That movie didn't do well, and here are the number to prove it" what they're really saying is "I think this movie is garbage, the majority of people believed this movie is garbage, here's the objective numbers to prove that the movie is garbage, and you can't argue with that because the numbers are the numbers."

 

Yeah I think that’s a dynamic that goes on here. People complain about a thing they don’t like. If that doesn’t satisfy, they point to bad box office. If pointing to bad box office doesn’t satisfy, they complain about the industry.

 

The thing is, bad box office doesn’t mean a film is bad or the studio necessarily did anything wrong. Especially for films that are ahead of their time and come to be appreciated later.

 

 

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, TTRPGWhiz said:

Geek movie discourse used to be about plots, performances, casting, special effects, costumes, etc. Even when that got annoying, it was still about “the product”. Now every conversation here turns into “how did this sausage get made?”

 

Well, I don't speak for anyone else, but the sausage problem is of interest to me because I've seen it happen several times already.

 

Do you remember a little game development studio known as Blizzard?  Oh, good, you've heard of them.  We're on the same page.  Let's continue.

 

Blizzard started out tiny, did what they wanted to do, made money and sold out.  The company changed hands several times in the late 90's, but it remained relatively unencumbered by the demands of their publishers.  They made good games, the games sold well, everyone made money and everyone was happy.  Their popularity and reputation grew continually, culminating when they released World of Warcraft.  They were swimming in success at that point.

 

And then... Ultrabig Money Publisher acquired them.  And it all started to fall apart.  The quality of their products started declining, then they started avalanching.  WoW expansions had less and less content, more and more bugs, entire areas incomplete, broken or despised mechanics, inexplicable retcons, gaping plot holes, quest lines which petered out to nothing.  Their Diablo franchise suffered as well.  Diablo 3 required an always active Internet connection, to the dismay of millions of gamers.  Their fourth Diablo game turned out to be a mobile app out-sourced to a developer notorious for making bad games.

 

And then the real world dramas hit the fan.  Dramas.  Plural.  Sexual harassment.  Discrimination.  A hostile work environment.  Censorship of users of their product.  A fucking "Cosby room" where execs would take women for exactly what the name implies.  Even China, with whom they'd had a mutually beneficial arrangement for over a decade, decided they didn't want anything to do with them.  China.  A communist nation with re-education camps, and censorship laws with prison time, and constant surveillance, and work conditions so harsh that employees commit suicide.  They decided that Blizzard was too unethical to deal with.

 

After Ultrabig Money Publisher stepped in, Blizzard fell apart.  Their IPs went from some of the most lucrative in the industry to barely scraping in enough to keep going.  And now they, and Ultrabig Money Publisher, have been purchased by another Ultrabig Money Publisher, which is supposedly cleaning house and trying to unfuck the whole mess they made so they can restore the franchises to their previous lucrative state.

 

At which point, I fully expect that Ultrabig Money to screw the pooch, too, but we'll have to wait to see.

No?  You don't like that one?  How about Ion Storm?  Or Bioware?  Black Isle?  We, gamers, have seen the results of Ultrabig Money taking over a smaller company over and over again.  Company becomes successful, Ultrabig Money buys Company, and the downward spiral begins.  It's almost inevitable.  I say "almost" because there are occasions when Ultrabig Money pulls its collective head out of its fat ass and stops fucking with Company (SquareEnix is the only one i can think of at the moment), and everything works out for the best.  Not often, though.  In the vast majority of cases, it all goes to shit.

 

In the short time since Marvel was purchased, we've already seen projects cancelled, scandals and controversies, products being shipped in an incomplete state because they were rewritten and reshot at the last minute... it's remarkable how familiar that is to me, as a gamer.  If they're true to form, they'll start cutting budgets, then jobs, then entire divisions.

 

Oh, my, the same thing is happening to Lucasfilm.  Imagine that.  It's almost like... this is a pattern which keeps repeating itself, with the same situations and conditions leading to the same results, even across different industries (there are actually a shocking number of parallels between game development and film development).

 

That's why I look forward to these off-topic side discussions.  I'm watching a train being driven along the exact same track where other trains have wrecked, and I'm pretty sure this one's going to be a twisted heap of smoldering metal soon, too.

 

And while I did say that I don't speak for anyone else, I'm also betting that this sentiment is shared by a lot of people reading this.  As tragic as it is to watch something you love burn to the ground, it's also rewarding, because watching people enact their own ruination via willful ignorance and abject stupidity is almost as entertaining as Marvel films used to be.

 

And, before you ask, or start assigning labels, this isn't a rant about capitalism.  The problem is, as it always is, the people.  The people making the decisions to cut jobs, cut wages, cut content, cut corners, cut their assets right down to the bone, do shady things, treat their employees and associates horribly, hemorrhage money on legal fees and settlements, never once seeing that they're just repeating history.  I don't know, maybe there's something about money that makes people really stupid when they get too much of it, or maybe they're just following some unfinished or half-assed business plan that's been passed around for decades, or maybe it's simply that shit floats and that's how all of the people making these bad decisions end up at the top.  It always goes back to the people, though.  The people who make the same boneheaded, moon brained, numbnuts decisions that end up tanking their companies.  In any system, regardless of how it's constructed or managed, when things go tits up, it's always attributable to people.

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

I trimmed a lot of posts that were players mostly bickering with each other.

 

Please discuss the topic and not each other.

 

 

[biostem]

4 hours ago, Luminara said:

The problem is, as it always is, the people.  The people making the decisions to cut jobs, cut wages, cut content, cut corners, cut their assets right down to the bone, do shady things, treat their employees and associates horribly, hemorrhage money on legal fees and settlements, never once seeing that they're just repeating history.

It could also be as simple as "new boss or investors have particular beliefs/philosophies/causes they want to insert in their products, (sometimes at the behest of whomever they are receiving funding from), and so prioritize hiring or moving around people who hold those views", and just assume that the existing fanbase will buy whatever they put out, simply because it bears the franchise's name...

[Ghost]

7 hours ago, biostem said:

and just assume that the existing fanbase will buy whatever they put out, simply because it bears the franchise's name...

Isn’t that what Sony execs were accused of with the Spidey characters?

”since it’s related to Spidey, the fans will pay for it”

 

I also think that’s what ultimately ended up happening with the MCU.  They felt that they were successful and that the audience would buy whatever they were selling - which led us to Eternals.

[Marine X]

44 minutes ago, Ghost said:

led us to Eternals.

I really didn't have any issues with the movie. I thought it was a unique movie that was set slightly outside where the rest of the Marvel films reside. The amount of Cash it brought in was good for a fringe movie, unlike Guardians of the Galaxy which I think surprised everyone with its success, including Marvel. Not every movie will be Infinity War / Endgame. I liked Quantumania, but thinking that it would pull in Endgame numbers was not to be expected based on the first 2 films viewership. I prefer to see what happens as they go forward, with the X-Men on the horizon and Doomsday and Secret Wars on the way, I feel something like Thunderbolts will probably get smacked with the " Not Endgame " stick instead of being judged on its own merits. Just my 2 cents worth.

[Ghost]

1 hour ago, Marine X said:

I really didn't have any issues with the movie. I thought it was a unique movie that was set slightly outside where the rest of the Marvel films reside. The amount of Cash it brought in was good for a fringe movie, unlike Guardians of the Galaxy which I think surprised everyone with its success, including Marvel. Not every movie will be Infinity War / Endgame. I liked Quantumania, but thinking that it would pull in Endgame numbers was not to be expected based on the first 2 films viewership. I prefer to see what happens as they go forward, with the X-Men on the horizon and Doomsday and Secret Wars on the way, I feel something like Thunderbolts will probably get smacked with the " Not Endgame " stick instead of being judged on its own merits. Just my 2 cents worth.

Not everyone liked or dislikes the same things.

Eternals IMO wasn’t bad because it didn’t/couldn’t compare to what came before it.  To me it was bad because it was extremely boring.  
I gave the movie 2 chances when it came to D+, and both times I fell asleep.

 

I really liked Quantumania.  It’s probably my favorite of the Antman movies.

Thunderbolts is a movie I wasn’t interested in originally.  But every time they’ve released something new, I’ve gotten more and more excited for it.

Do I care if it’s on the level of Infinity War/Endgame?  Not at all.

Hell, I loved Dr Strange MOM and that certainly wasn’t Infinity War (my favorite MCU film btw)

 

All I care about is if a movie entertains me.

If it didn’t, it’s not what I paid for and therefore not good.

 

Edited Thursday at 01:22 PM by Ghost

[TTRPGWhiz]

15 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

whole lot of words

 

My point was and is that it's regrettable that every conversation on this sub about these movies inevitably (and sometimes immediately) becomes "big company does bad thing to IP I like / why do these movies cost more but perform worse". It's like starting a conversation with, "Hey, there's a new Captain America movie coming out", and someone nearby rushing over and shouting "DISNEY HAS RUINED MY ADULTHOOD, LET ME SHOW YOU SOME SPREADSHEETS" at you. People are of course free to discuss "the industry" however they want; other people are also free to pine for the days when the biggest debate was about Bat-nipples.

[ZacKing]

On 3/3/2025 at 12:27 PM, Ghost said:

Regardless, it doesn’t take away the fact that they were able to put out a huge hit on a modest budget.

 

Correct and that was the point being made, which was lost and further muddied by the selective editing of this thread.  Disney throwing hundreds of millions at these MCU films doesn't automatically equate to big box office returns.  Maybe they'd do better to focus more on story and characterization and saving the big expensive VFX spectacles for the Endgame level team up films.

 

From what I've read, Disney is no longer automatically greenlighting anything related to the MCU and there's been a lot of interviews with Bob Iger over the last year or so where he talks about scaling back the number of MCU films and streaming shows per year.  Just recently read some articles where Disney has cancelled the bulk of the MCU projects on the slate because they don't see them as being profitable.

 

Having seen most of the MCU films now, I can definitely see the decline in quality story.  The focus seems to have become more VFX and more big action sequences instead of just having a good story.  Other than the Marvels (which was sewage IMO), the other MCU films like Quantumania weren't as awful as some of these YouTubers say, but I get that it's subjective.

[Excraft]

9 minutes ago, TTRPGWhiz said:

My point was and is that it's regrettable that every conversation on this sub about these movies inevitably (and sometimes immediately) becomes "big company does bad thing to IP I like / why do these movies cost more but perform worse". It's like starting a conversation with, "Hey, there's a new Captain America movie coming out", and someone nearby rushing over and shouting "DISNEY HAS RUINED MY ADULTHOOD, LET ME SHOW YOU SOME SPREADSHEETS" at you. People are of course free to discuss "the industry" however they want; other people are also free to pine for the days when the biggest debate was about Bat-nipples.

 

I guess my question to you in other posts were removed, so I'll ask again - did you see Captain America:  Brave New World?  What did you think of it?  What did you like about it?  What did you not like?  What did you think of the characterizations of the Leader and Red Hulk?  Comic accurate or too far divergent from the source material?

[battlewraith]

15 hours ago, Luminara said:

And while I did say that I don't speak for anyone else, I'm also betting that this sentiment is shared by a lot of people reading this.  As tragic as it is to watch something you love burn to the ground, it's also rewarding, because watching people enact their own ruination via willful ignorance and abject stupidity is almost as entertaining as Marvel films used to be.

 

Yeah it's Shadenfreude. It's understandable, but it's a bad look. 

 

Generally speaking, if we accept the premise that greedy incompetent people are ruining the media we love (ignoring any subjective component to that assessment), it's important to remember that the people calling the shots are not ruining themselves. Rich powerful people don't suffer the consequences; maybe they'll go sulk on their yachts.

 

The people that will suffer are the workers. Artists, animators, gaffers, costumers, lighting people, crew that build sets and props and so on. They will be looking for another job and continuing to struggle to make ends meet. 

 

So no, I don't revel in some studios miss-steps. I don't crave the financial disaster of failed movies or games. I continue to support the things that I want to see and don't worry about the rest.

[Techwright]

On 3/5/2025 at 9:11 AM, InvaderStych said:

DisneyMarvel seem to have lost sight of this along the way. The storytelling quality has just trended downward in the films

 

 

I have been saying one thing repeatedly since I was 12 when Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out in 1979:  "The play's the thing".  Okay, Shakespeare actually said it first, but the legend knew what he was talking about.  One has to start with a tight, superior script, or everything else is just lipstick on a pig.    

 

ST:TMP was a visual marvel for its day, deliberately crafted so by Paramount (which slowed the film's pacing down at points so you could enjoy their artistic endeavors)  but it wasn't successful because of that.  The plot was mediocre, the pacing achingly slow at times. ST:TMP succeeded because fans were desperate to see something, anything, of their favorite show and characters again.  But...once they saw it, they realized it wasn't up to par, and that they'd not be paying for the next one if the results were the same.  Fortunately, Harve Bennett recognized this, and despite not being a fan himself at the time, he sat down, watched every episode of the TV show, chose the episode "Space Seed" for its story potential, then went and wrote a cracker of a sequel to the story.  They could have had painted plywood ship walls with plastic doodads attached, and the fans would still have loved Star Trek; The Wrath of Khan, because Bennett got the formula right.

 

What has annoyed me in over 4 decades since, is that, as a whole, Hollywood has yet to realize what pre-teen kids did in 1979. That is, this incredibly simple key:  the foundation is a superior script.

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

I think that people want to see flawed people do amazingly heroic things. 

 

The jokes, special effects, and fan service add to that (perhaps), but without the underlying story of someone overcoming great adversity for the greater good, the jokes, FX, and Easter eggs alone can't make a good movie, despite what Uwe Boll and Michael Bay may think.  😁