Are Superhero films dying?

[Ryujin]

I bellieve that is a trap the writers seem to fall into, thinking they must always raise the stakes. That is not why superhero movies succeed or fail. What really matters is that the story and the characters remain compelling. There must be something that we can relate to. Destroying universes or whatever isn't something reletable at all. Doesn't mean you can't use it, but it must really be just a backdrop to something much more "personal" to the characters.

Endgame worked because it also had these strong character moments (despite a gigantic cast!). We cared about Thanos killing his daughter to accomplish his goals, or this Stardude guy responding to the realization that is what happened, or Tony seeing his protegé Spiderman go to dust because these people had relationships established in this or previous movies. That also half the universe was going with them didn't actually matter that much for our investment, it matters that we saw what it did to the people we cared about!

Well, at least that's what I think.

Edit: I also think that fits with what others saying about how important strong leads are. They are the people we care about. We must believe and care about their struggles. It might be what ruined the DC attempts at their movie universe, they never really managed to establish these characters (even though undoubtedly they had found characters and actors that could have done it. But not in the type of movies they did.)

Spiderman is at its best when they remember that it's Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-man. The Marvel TV shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones were so good in part because they were relatively low stakes, but high stakes for the characters. Even WandaVision takes place on the scale of a small town, not the end of the world. The sort of massive stakes that end up being in various blockbuster comic based movies are unsustainable and, not to mention unrelatable. It's the sort of scaling that I've seen RPG campaigns fall afoul of and have been guilty of, myself, on occasion.

Much of Marvel's comic success was in having characters that readers could relate to, where DC created demigods.

 

[wicked cool]

Rumor has it Disney is thinking about bringing back the original avengers

Smart

 

[Zardnaar]

Rumor has it Disney is thinking about bringing back the original avengers

Smart

Wwll tracking for Marvels has gone down again. Somewhere in the 40-60 million range now as of yesterday.

This article been doing the rounds.

Crisis at Marvel: Jonathan Majors Back-Up Plans, ‘The Marvels’ Reshoots, Reviving Original Avengers and More Issues Revealed

Marvel has enjoyed a nearly uninterrupted string of hits ever since it started independently producing its movies with 2008’s “Iron Man.”

www.google.com

 

[Vael]

Expensive

 

[JAMUMU]

Yes. You ever see what a .44 Magnum does to a superhero franchise?

 

[Kaodi]

Well that was pretty brutal. I do not think I had heard about Victoria Alonso being fired. I was so used to seeing her name because it made me think of Hector Elizondo (whose name I had originally misremembered as Hector Alonso). Bringing back Iron-Man would be a massive mistake though. The same with Natasha Romanoff before giving Yelena a chance to be a new Black Widow.

 

[bloodtide]

I think part of the problem that can't be ignored is that they had a few perfect storms of character and actor early on, and some of the characters they have left to work with aren't going to easily carry movies no matter how good an actor you get for them. Iron Man was a big risk, but it worked because the character has a lot of nuance and Downey captured pretty much all of it; Captain America the same thing with Chris Evans.

There is something to be said for the classic classic characters. Ones that were created well over 50 years ago in a very different time. And yet, they have remained popular for all that time. The characters are timeless classics.

The actors play a huge part. The phase one actors really fit their characters like a glove.

. If you view the success of the MCU as a whole being dependent on construction an Avengers team, they just have a harder row to hoe now, and that's got as much to do with characters as actors.

This starts with the more modern character problems. Even just from the 80's you get the characters that just "trip" and get god like powers. And worse the character has no real back story and little personality. And worse, as you get into the 2000's you get the characters that just "exist" because...and they are just there.

I bellieve that is a trap the writers seem to fall into, thinking they must always raise the stakes.

Though it is not just "the writers". I'd add in showrunners, directors, and most of all the 'studios'. They all want that "oh my gosh Earth will blow up in five seconds" sort of count down clock. Star Trek and Doctor Who always must have an "oh no Earth" story line. And even spy movies must have them.

It's only 100% worse when the storm of undead zombie cyborgs or wahtever....are defeated with the push of a button.

Endgame worked because it also had these strong character moments (despite a gigantic cast!). We cared about Thanos killing his daughter to accomplish his goals, or this Stardude guy responding to the realization that is what happened, or Tony seeing his protegé Spiderman go to dust because these people had relationships established in this or previous movies. That also half the universe was going with them didn't actually matter that much for our investment, it matters that we saw what it did to the people we cared about!

Very True.

When you watch Eternal Number Three say "gosh I'll help you Eternal Number Nine".....it just does not have much impact. We don't care about the random characters.

 

[MoonSong]

My family and I are super pumped for The Marvels, and I expect it'll put up good numbers still; people forget that the first movie had incredibly great profits. I think the numbers will be depressed a bit because the actors can't be out promoting it right now, but I honestly don't think it'll be that bad.

I've had a hard time getting people to watch it with.

 

[Kaodi]

I have not seen a movie in theatre since the pandemic began, and I do not really want to get back into the habit of seeing Marvel movies in theatre. But I had hoped to see the Marvels for equity reasons. But if it turns out to be actually terrible I may not bother because it may not be in theatres anymore by the time my next COVID vaccine sets in.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

I miss being excited about the next Marvel movie. I don't think that highly of Endgame, but at least it accomplished what it set out to do (send off the old cast), even if it at times did it by completely misunderstanding the source material (let's trust the nazi ghost when they ask you to sacrifice a friend's life is on the level of Spiderman making deal with the Devil oh wait that happened).

Everything after it, though... nothing has had any care thrown its way (note: haven't seen GotG3 yet), and even positive first impressions like Miss Marvel or Moon Knight fall apart quickly. I just cannot understand how they could get things so right for so long, and then decide quality doesn't matter in the last... five years? And they decide to introduce their next arc by letting its main baddie get beaten by ants? Uhh..

I might end up seeing The Marvels at the theaters anyway, because we have extra tickets that were meant to go towards seeing Dune Part 2, but that got pushed back, so... I hope it isn't a completely trainwreck, though the implications of that 270m budget (CGI messfest, reshoots for a script someone's cousin scribbled last weekend) do not fill me with hope.