Tuesday, September 12, 2017

The OMNB Roundtable: Down With the Sickness (of Marvel Franchise Fatigue)

Kyle:
Guys this one kind of hurts me, because I have been a voice crying out in the wilderness against the general rising tide of “ugh, I am soo sick of comic book movies” that has permeated reviews everywhere. A comic book is just a fucking medium to tell a story, that gets adapted into a different medium. No one ever says “uggghh I am so sick of movies based on books.” 

That said, I am worried that the very specific house style of Marvel Studios is starting to peak. I watched Guardians of the Galaxy 2 the other night and I had so looked forward to that movie, as the first is still one of my all-time favorites, and man was it just an overly forced rehash of the second, saved only slightly by a pretty decent climax and Kurt Russell.

The sad thing is I wouldn’t even say any Marvel movie I have ever watched is objectively bad (although I could be convinced that Age of Ultron sucked if I could remember any of it), but there comes a point when factory-produced B+ movies that never really take risks just become noise. Thoughts? 

Oh and maybe we should also touch on JJ Abrams getting Episode IX because I am very split on how I feel about this. 

Erik:
They've kinda backed themselves into the most comfortable corner possible. When you're pumping out 3-4 movies a year and they're all "good," that becomes your new baseline. All their movies are thoroughly acceptable, at the absolute worst, so unless something is the Winter Soldier it gets a resounding shrug from me. Great work, Marvel, you did what you've been doing every 3 months since I was in high school.

Kyle:
Oh I agree they’re still in a good spot. They’re going to make all of the money for the foreseeable future, and so it’s hard to ask what is ultimately a business to mix things up, but man am I hoping Infinity War takes some chances and shakes things up in a big way, even if, like, killing off Tony or Steve would really be because Downey and Evans are about done, and not because they actually want to take huge story risks. Guardians just kind of shook me as a guy who defended even Ant-Man and Dr. Strange for being more unique than people give them credit for. I did not expect to come out of a movie that had fucking Ego the Living Planet as the villain going “meh, that was nothing I haven’t really seen before.”

Travis:
I didn’t like Guardians 1, so hearing this means I’m not watching Guardians 2, but as to the larger issue of every other movie being a comic book movie, I’m not sure I care specifically? To elaborate, what I mean is that I don’t care about any superhero movie because I know I won’t have a shortage of them anytime soon. There are no stakes. This is also, humorously, an issue with American comics in general, though for a different reason. Back with X2 and Spider-Man 2 it really seemed like those movies could go away, so maybe this is the last adventure with these characters I’ll get to see. Now there’s just no way. Most likely DoFP was the last great one we’ll see, because it provided actual closure to a series of things we won’t get again (technically Logan is the end for those movies, but that movie… look, that’s another discussion entirely).

As far as Abrams is concerned, he was a good choice to do a shiny reboot that was competently made that set the table for all the future SW movies, but I don’t have any faith in him making a movie that exceeds his usual fare. He’s proven pretty comprehensively that his ceiling is a 3 star movie that you don’t hate but don’t ever need to see again.  
Kyle:
I just can never shake the memory of Star Trek Into Darkness. Star Trek 2009 was a fun movie full of likeable characters that had a tolerable level of plot contrivances, easter eggs, and fan service that you put up with knowing that the goal was to end the movie with a re-introduced crew blasting off for new adventures. Then the sequel did the exact thing the first movie did. It retroactively ruined its predecessor.  I have some fear that this is where IX will go, but I comfort myself with the knowledge that A) JJ is above all else a Star Wars fan, and he really cares about this story in a way he never cared about Trek and B) the Lucasfilm Story Group is undefeated so far in battling the worst impulses of directors and ensuring a good, continuous story throughout all forms of media, so they should hopefully keep JJ on track. The key here is if Rian Johnson turns The Last Jedi into something that takes us in a new enough direction that turning IX into a rehash of Return of the Jedi is not possible.

Also, Travis, to speak to your point about how “knowing the series can actually end” makes comic book movies better—this is weirdly enough why I am so happy that the DC Extended Universe appears to have failed and that after JL their plan is entirely self-contained movie franchises and even stand-alone, one-shot Elseworlds type stories. Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman is no longer needed to service a larger franchise, so Patty Jenkins is as free to tell a self-contained story that might even end in the character’s death as Christopher Nolan was. Despite everything WB is doing seemingly being a massive clusterfuck, we’ve got the potential there for some good, independent films about DC characters. James Wan being handed a blank slate and a blank check for Aquaman definitely intrigues me more than an Infinity War movie that’s still just going to set up another decade of sequels.

Travis:
Right, at this point the Marvel movies are basically just the comics, and what has always frustrated me about American comics is how impermanent they are. Artists and authors change, stories change, old stories are either canon or not depending on… well, anything, really. You get 40 issues of one guy, then another guy steps up and everything is different. Dead people come back, new people die, they come back later. The universe is always threatened, but you know it won’t end with the universe going away (unless a brand new one is going to pop up next month). To Erik’s point, it’s the security Marvel feels right now that has removed the punch from their movies. Back when I was a kid this waa all I could have asked for, and now I’m getting my just desserts.

And yeah, there are very clear through-lines in all of JJ’s work. He makes the one movie, and it’s a horrible fit for a part 3 in a trilogy.


Erik:
I did appreciate Guardians containing the novel twist that at the end the hero learns all of the villain's powers in like 45 seconds and uses them to kick his ass. It was a delightful inversion of their standard.

Kyle:
Travis your argument against American comics is a fair one, but that’s pretty much why I follow creators and not titles. Scott Snyder’s Batman has always been its own self-contained story. The second he left the main Batman title, so did I (even though I hear Tom King is really good). I will give DC credit—as much as the constant reboots have been annoying, you have pretty much been able to pick up any DC title since 2011 and as long as you can get the back issues written by that specific author, you should have all you need to follow the story. Any time I have tried to pick up a Marvel Comic in the last 15 years I have been incredibly overwhelmed by the depth of what I do not know, so I’m not sure if they’ve really ever moved on from 90s Era YOU MUST BUY X-FORCE 37 IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND SPIDER-MAN 299 stuff. 

Amusingly, WB may have stumbled on the movie universe most like DC Comics. A Wonder Woman and Aquaman who ostensibly live in the same world and yet never interact any of the times in which you think “hey maybe one of them should be here to help the other right now”, and then sometimes will appear together in a potential Justice League sequel that is never mentioned again by either of them.

Travis:
I liked the Snyder run on Batman a ton, but I’ve never really been an author follower with comics, and that really just sent me right back to reading more manga. I’ve heard good things about the King stuff as well, but a lot of the things I heard are a dramatic departure from Snyder’s Batman. In one way it’s great, because there’s a Batman for everyone, but in other ways it’s terrible because Batman can basically have any personality and history you want, it just depends on who’s running the show. Superheroes end up being like James Bond, where you really can’t tell if you should tune in or not from story to story.

To tie that back into the movies, it’s just this pervasive feeling that nothing that happens will be the end, or some kind of permanent anything. If Tony Stark dies it’s just so RDJ can get a massive payday in 5 years by showing back up after uh… the Phalanx wrecks shit.

Kyle:
We should probably end this before I get into why it’s great that different creators can have different takes on a character ( so long as certain constants are there, like NOT BEING A MURDERING PSYCHOPATH, ZACK), but yeah I understand that frustration. 

And yeah, the biggest example of the “nothing is permanent” feeling to the Marvel movies is how Iron Man 3 wrapped up so much of Tony’s battle throughout the entire trilogy to become a guy who doesn’t need the Iron Man suit, and then literally the next time we see him he’s in full armor, fighting with the Avengers, he’s apparently broken up with Pepper, and we get absolutely no explanation of what even dragged him back into the fray. 

That’s all I’ve got for now. I just really hope Infinity War and  Black Panther set the stage for some dramatic changes in that universe or even I might have finally reached the saturation point with them. Also, lord, let Thor: Ragnarok be everything I hope it will be.

Travis:
Basically, these movies, and Iron Man 3 is a great example of this, really do feel like they’re just filling out a schedule now.

Erik:
Iron Man 2 ends with Tony realizing he needs to be more responsible. In Iron Man 3, he gives his home address to a mass murderer and then enlists a child to help him fight a one-man war against international terrorism using weapons he made at Home Depot. That movie ends with him giving up being Iron Man. Then Ultron begins with him back in the suit, and he learns that he shouldn't mess with powers he doesn't understand... until he does the exact same thing 45 minutes later and it works perfectly and Vision saves the day. That movie ends with him leaving the Avengers, and apparently breaking up with Pepper. Then at the end of Civil War he's back at the compound, and by the time of Homecoming he is not only back to leading the Avengers, he's also back with Pepper.

All of these changes might be okay if they actually explain why they occur. But at this point, Tony Stark is just in whatever emotional situation makes the plot of the current film work.

Travis:
I feel like we should frame that explanation somewhere as the greatest example of why it’s hard to care about Marvel movies right now.

Kyle:
Wow and a great place to end this is also that I forgot Spider-Man: Homecoming happened.

Erik:
Hahahaha. That might be their greatest crime yet. It's one of if not the best origin story they've made, and it happened so far into the Quality Overload that I don't even think about it unless I'm talking about Michael Keaton.

Kyle:
And by bringing up Keaton we come full circle, since he made Batman ’89, the spiritual forefather of all comic book movies (this is a reach but I’m done talking now).


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