Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

I'm always a bit disappointed to see people who's work I respect and enjoy rip on something else I enjoy. I guess I can see what Scorsese is saying, but that doesn't really effect my enjoyment of the Marvel movies. I go into these kind of movies just looking to have fun, and that is exactly what these movies are, fun.
I have to admit, I was a bit surprised when I saw James Cameron and Steven Spielberg ripping on comic book movie, because IMO a lot of the stuff they've done isn't that far off from the MCU movies. Hell, Cameron was even going to do a Spider-Man movie at one point.

 

Yes, neither Cameron nor Spielberg should be talking. Spielberg is the reason these kinds of movies exist in the first place, while Cameron makes movies that all of us see as popcorn flicks, while to him they are high art.

 

Yeah. I mean, Spielberg? Okay, he's come to be known for some pretty classy movies, but his original claim to fame was doing blockbuster bubblegum movies no different from stuff like the MCU today. I remember how film critics back then scorned Lucas and Spielberg for dumbing down the filmmaking industry with their lowbrow, effects-driven spectacles. So it's a bit hypocritical for Spielberg to echo those criticisms toward other filmmakers' work.

 

I would love to get this, but I have so many other things that I should put that $550 towards. I just hope that the deleted scenes disk eventually drops on YouTube.

https://mcuexchange.com/infinity-saga-box-set/

 

The Indiana Jones movies especially are pretty close in tone and style the MCU movies.

 

Holy crap!

 

Damn. Too bad I don't have $550 just lying around.

I also hope those deleted scenes show up elsewhere. That's the only real appeal of this set for me and I ain't paying that much for them.

Pity it doesn't include an Infinity Gauntlet with the set.

 

I really didn't understand where Scorsese was coming from. Yes, there's a huge amount of boom and BOOM and MORE BOOOOOOM in the MCU. But in the end, the movies to me were always about the characters and their struggles. I felt like I was watching a movie about Steve Rogers, not Captain America. You know what I mean? I never got that with the new DCEU movies for example.

 

The Scorsese thing reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke's First Law: "When a distinguished, elderly scientist says that something is possible, he is very probably right. When a distinguished, elderly scientist says that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." Even geniuses get hidebound in their thinking as they age, or get too invested in the ideas their success and self-image are based on.

So while he's entitled to his personal preferences, we shouldn't ascribe them any more weight than we would any other moviegoer's opinion.

 

Actually, I think we should ascribe them less weight than many other moviegoers. This is why I find the whole discussion of Scorsese's talent and the stripes he's earned (here and elsewhere) nothing more than a distraction.

Even if you could argue that his history makes his opinion weightier, there's still a fundamental baseline requirement for even having a worthwhile opinion on any creative endeavour in the first place, and he doesn't meet it. He hasn't seen the movies he's criticizing. He says he 'tried' to watch them but couldn't. A bunch of people freely interpret this as 'he definitely watched some unspecified MCU movie(s) all the way through' - but that's not what he said. And even if it were it would only be support for his opinion of that/those movies, not the other 20 odd films he hasn't seen.

At this point, his opinion on this subject holds as much weight for me as the fanboys who whine about how some movie that hasn't even been released yet 'totally ruins the source material' and clearly 'can't have any redeeming qualities'.

 

I thought of that, but his comment seemed ambiguous enough that I didn't want to assume anything. In any case, the point is that negativity and dismissal don't become more valid when they come from a luminary in the field. They may be able to create great things, but it doesn't mean they can't have the same blind spots and closed minds as other people. And it does mean that they have an obligation not to punch downward. They should try to encourage their successors, not dismiss them.

I mean, so what if MCU films are designed more for popular appeal than as elevated "cinema"? There's nothing wrong with popular appeal. Shakespeare's plays were considered lowbrow mass entertainment in their day. It was his sonnets and epic poems that were his stabs at literary respectability, but it was the plays, with all their crowd-pleasing action and melodrama and dirty jokes, that made him immortal. Similarly, Arthur Conan Doyle went down in history for the Sherlock Holmes stories he wrote to pay the bills instead of the "classier" literary and nonfiction work he wanted to be remembered for. It's not the current generation that defines which works are the greats; it's posterity.

 

Ed Norton speaks of his time with Marvel and Kevin Feige and wants to clarify that the press and fandom have misrepresented some of the things that he has said about Marvel in the past. While he does describe the Marvel press release announcing Mark Ruffalo as a cheap shot towards him, which he believes to be "brand defensiveness or something", he really does seem to have nothing but respect for Kevin Feige and his accomplishments at Marvel. He also details what he would have liked his second Hulk movie to be like and how it didn't fit in with Marvel's plans and admits that he probably would have asked for more money than Marvel was willing to pay.

https://heroichollywood.com/hulk-edward-norton-marvel-studios-kevin-feige/

 

The last thing Marvel needed was a "dark" Hulk film inspired by Christopher Nolan's stuff. As DC found out, you can't just copy Nolan's style to everything and expect it to be another Dark Knight (and I find the Nolan movies to be mediocre anyway). Its like how comics from the era right after The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen got stupidly dark and violent because they thought that was how they'd make money (which, to be fair, worked out in the short term more then copying Nolan stuff badly did for DC, but it still lead to a lot of shit comics over the years).

Recasting Bruce Banner was a really great decision on Marvel's part, in my opinion, as was doing its own thing and not copying The dark Knight just because it was the "hot"superhero movie of its time.

 

I don't know if I would call Nolan's trilogy "mediocre", but I believe it is a tad overrated, based solely on the strength of The Dark Knight, which I consider to be a master class example of superhero cinema. Batman Begins was certainly different from the previous Batman movies, and it was a very good Batman movie, but I didn't think it was particularly revolutionary. And The Dark Knight Rises was disappointing on multiple levels.

And Bale's Batman growl. Oh God, not Bale's Batman growl. Anything but that...

 

Yeah, the Nolan trilogy is one brilliant film bracketed by two ambitious but highly flawed films.

 

The Dark Knight Rises was also fantastic, and Batman Begins was a great origin. I'll see your Bane and raise you Selina Kyle. And the ending was absolute perfection.

 

I agree.

In fact, I don't think TDK is as great as people make it out to be, either. It's an outstanding performance in an otherwise good film with serious pacing issues. For my money, BB is the better experience.

 

BB would be a terrific movie if it hadn't lost its way in the third act and gone from being a really smart, grounded drama to being a really dumb, overblown action movie with a scientifically inane premise (if the microwave weapon could boil all that water instantly, then every water-filled human being and animal in Gotham would've been cooked to death just as instantly). And if it had been more consistent about Bruce's refusal to kill, instead of having him pay lip service to it and then blow up a whole monastery five minutes later, not to mention that petulant "I don't have to save you" at the end. It was a potentially great movie marred by the imposed need to conform to the conventions of an action blockbuster. TDK was able to be more consistent and unified in its vision.

 

Agreed. BB I really dig. TDK goes completely off the rails during the chase scene imo.