You know, I really wanted to enjoy The Incredibles. I really did. But its guiding ethos -- that some people are just better than everyone else, and that anyone who tries to set themselves up as their equals is just evil, that "if everyone is special then no one is special" -- I just found it really disgusting and immoral. It's an Ayn Randian vision of superheroism that I don't abide by at all.
In 1966, a couple from our church took me to see Hawaii, starring Julie Andrews and Max von Sydow. I was 15, and was bored with it until the ship arrived at the islands and there were topless native girls on the screen. The film suddenly had my interest. Unfortunately, the people I was with got offended by that, and we immediately left. I've never seen it since, so I don't know if the topless scenes are still there or not.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe offends me deeply. They spend millions upon millions of dollars to create the heroes for the screen, and to connect them. All they are really doing is saying "hey, these characters are part of the (OMG, get ready for this) same universe." What they seemed to have missed is that there is no story connecting these characters, no themes, nothing that resonates. In order to bring the heroes together, they had to fight aliens. In order to bring them together again, they have to fight even more aliens, this time, even more powerful aliens, but not as powerful as the aliens they'll fight by the time Phase Three comes to a conclusion, which is well after superhero ennui should have set in. And by then the novelty factor of seeing them fighting together as a team will no longer be new. (this was really the main draw of the Avengers film, more so than who the aliens were and why they were attacking and all of that.. it didn't matter.. just seeing them fighting together was the draw of the film, make no mistake) The MCU is insulting because now everyone wants to replicate it. It's insulting because it convinces the audience that they are watching real movies. It's convincing people that simply saying "OMG look at that.. a reference to Asgard!" is cool; it's convincing people to wait through credits for no good reason whatsoever. It's all bright colors and no story. The characters don't learn anything, they don't grow, and they aren't dealing with anything at all aside form fighting big, obvious threats. The MCU also has destroyed science fiction cinema. If you want science fiction at the cinema, it better have a superhero in it, otherwise it is bound to flop, bound to be dissed and put down. There's no reason to think that Jupiter Ascending will greet the public with a box office and an RT average than Cloud Atlas. The MCU is all about superhero angst. It's all about "oh kkeewwwwlll" and it's turning critics into apologists. The MCU offends me. Back when Star Wars came out and "created " the blockbuster, there were some valid criticisms that claimed it ruined cinema, and that the art-house or darker studio films had been pushed aside in favor of formula and spectacle. Maybe true, but cinema needed this. It needed to remember how to entertain and inspire. And it was still a delicate vision that succeeded on a wing and a prayer. By contrast the MCU is all branding. Marvel slaps it's big name on every movie. It's not the Avengers. It's Marvel's The Avengers. It's all about branding. It's all about a studio having vision and hiring good filmmakers merely as hired guns to fulfill it's vision of dollar signs, and not about the filmmakers having a vision and struggling within limits to bring that vision to life, and to give people something new to think about and experience. There was a time when no one knew what a Star Wars film or a Back to the Future film or an Indiana Jones film or a Superman film would look like: filmmakers had to fight an uphill battle to create these things from fair cloth and lots of hard work. But Marvel studios knows exactly what each of their films will look like, and they know exactly how they will help meet the bottom line. Oh, but then you can argue about risky projects like Guardians of the Galaxy. Even people taking sides with Marvel will claim that they've already made enough profitable films that if GotG flops terribly, it won't even make the studio flinch very much: the MCU will continue like a juggernaut, eating everything in it's path. And they won't movie CA3 from date of Batman vs. Superman because of this sense of pride that doesn't stem from any kind of vision or creativity, but because of pure cockiness. Yeah, screw it, I know they had the date first, and this Superman project is DC's to screw up an d no one else, but people have been waiting for generations to see those two in a film together, and Marvel are just being disrespectful for trash-talking the shit (I kind of find it funny, but it saddens me the lack of respect for the millions of dollars being tossed around by both sides in this game of chicken, and not one cent of that money feels like it has been used to support anything creative). More than Star Wars ever could, the MCU has killed cinema.. we are left to watch these shallow films and look at the rotting innards of what should be the greatest artistic and story-telling medium around, and now it's all about bright colors, strong branding, turning big franchises into even bigger franchises, and making sure the number crunchers are happy. It's slight entertainment without taste, without risk, without soul, all with the "you need to see this" attitude that has brought down every other similar medium that has gone by the wayside in the past. For the same reason I am offended by Amazing Spider Man 2 even before it's released. There have been countless trailers and clips and photos to this film, all of them championing all the bright colors and nice CGI and cheesy story with a giant sledgehammer that says "you need to see this crap. You really do." Oh my god, Oscorp creates all the villains! Wows! Oh my god, Oscorp has Peter under surveillance. Oh my god! Oh wow, the girl will die in this film, and Peter will get sad, angry and enraged, and blame himself,! Waaah! And Electro is a villain that got into this big vat of water filled with (I kid you not) electric eels and now he is Electro, because, you know, superhero villains can't stop being absurd and derivative, now they have to be both along with just plain stupid.
Because, of course, Marvel's superhero movies are the first films ever to place spectacle first and story considerations last, and to be more concerned with the audience having a good time than with being a work of pure art. This has never happened before. Ever. Totally worth being offended by. And, I'm sorry, but saying that they don't have thematic concerns is just wrong. There are clearly themes at work in the various Marvel CU films, including father-son conflict (Iron Man 2, Thor, Thor: The Dark World), the meaning of patriotism (Captain America, natch'), duty and sacrifice vs. selfishness (Thor, Captain America), learning to compromise and trust as a team (The Avengers, natch'), etc. Are these films great works of Kubrickian art? Of course not; their first and foremost goal is to have fun and be spectacle. But it is simply not accurate to say that they are empty of deeper concerns.
Well, yeah, there are some other "themes" as well. Sure, both tony and Thor need to learn humility for example And I can have fun watching these movies. But I feel like I have to sink to a certain level, and that I'm enjoying them just like I enjoy a Big Mac. It's not really good, but yeah But I'm trying to point out the mentality behind these films and how they are a harbinger for some creatively vacant times ahead for the film business.
Totally did not get that from "The Incredibles", but I guess that if you looked at from a kind of sideways perspective you could infer that meaning.
Since most of superhero mythology has a questionable "guiding ethos" anyway, this particular guiding ethos wasn't any harder for me to squint past than any other. Though you're right that there's some soft-sell Randianism going on, the movie had so many virtues from so many other angles that I found it fairly easy to enjoy anyway. Frank Miller's Dark Knight stuff, seminal though it was at the time, ages a lot worse.
Completely agreed on that part. Frank Miller is an out-and-out fascist, and The Dark Knight Returns, entertaining and compelling though it is, reflects a deeply Nietzschean/Wagnerian neo-fascist worldview. (It literally ends with Batman leading an army to take over Gotham City when the civil government collapses, using himself as a charismatic cult leader.)
I liked most of The Incredibles pretty well, though I winced when the kids were shot at with machine guns: I just don't find that fun, or appropriate family entertainment, in any context. But at least it was contextualized by that speech from their mom, that this was a serious, horrible, life-or-death situation, nothing fun about it. So, okay. But then, the emotional payoff to the family coming together at the end is that the whole family suits up to fight a new threat. Wait, what? The parents not only let the kids have suits in order to fight, they also allow them to wear them under their normal clothes all the time? They're literally making their kids underage fighters. Hooray for child abuse! As to Sci's point, the Narnia movies offend me, also. Here's a foreign realm filled with adults (many of them animals, yes, but animals with mature, adult-like emotions and intellect). So, who should rule over them? How about a bunch of white Anglo children? They flee the bombing of the Master Race-obsessed Nazis... and are then recognized as members of a Master Race ("Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve")! Uh, great?
I haven't seen The Incredibles, but it's my understanding that it's a computer-animated film. In other word, it's a cartoon. Sounds like a harmless wish-fulfillment fantasy for kids if you ask me.
^ They're also well-aware of the potential weird factor of putting kids in super suits, and play it up beautifully: [yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOpH6E7T6I0[/yt]
I'm sure the various people (like me) who actually work in Hollywood on television and feature films to bring you the myriad of content you consume and enjoy and then bitch about online ad nauseum quite appreciate your singular logic here. I mean, God forbid people be credited for their work and make you stay in your seat for two whole minutes before they show another scene from the film. The horror! THE HORROR! However do you manage through what must be those excruciating one hundred and twenty seconds?
For what it's worth I always watch through till the end, whether there is a credit cookie or not. Sometimes the credits have some of the best work from the composers (usually a medley of all the major themes from the film) and sometimes they just have some good songs so they can pad out the soundtrack.
The credits wasn't the only issue I brought up. FWIW, I often sit through the credits. My problem how people are talking about "ooooh, what could the post credit scene possibly be" months before the film comes out (usually it's a random dog tipping cars, or something dumb) but it really is all about how Marvel is using this kind of thing as a branding tactic; they may be humorous, but it's still a business decision. Taken in the context of my post, it was merely one ingredient amongst some much larger issues.
I don't get the concept of post credit scenes either. It certainly doesn't make me read the credits. And those who read the credits because they look for talent don't need a post credit scene for motivation.
So you attack the poster not the post. That's really cool. Or it could be cause for an infraction. You never know. As was mentioned above, a good score is usually enough reason to sit through the credits