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Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

What grade would you give the Marvel Cinematic Universe? (Ever-Changing Question)

  • Total voters
    185
wayoung said:
I wouldn't excuse the directors. There are shitty people who direct just like there are shitty people in every job. If you look, there are no shortage of former VFX people posting stories of terrible directors.
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In some cases, sure, but I think as a general rule that kind of insensitivity is more likely to come from management. And it could be that some of those directors are obligated to follow orders from above and would do things differently if they could.
 
Christopher said:
In some cases, sure, but I think as a general rule that kind of insensitivity is more likely to come from management. And it could be that some of those directors are obligated to follow orders from above and would do things differently if they could.
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I mean, you can believe what you want (and I find the idea that directors aren't "management" kinda wild) but like I said, all you have to do is Google/search twitter and you'll find no shortage of complaints about directors being huge assholes to VFX people and demanding last minute changes in days replacing months of work because they had a change in vision the night before.
 
wayoung said:
I mean, you can believe what you want (and I find the idea that directors aren't "management" kinda wild) but like I said, all you have to do is Google/search twitter and you'll find no shortage of complaints about directors being huge assholes to VFX people and demanding last minute changes in days replacing months of work because they had a change in vision the night before.
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As I said, I don't deny it can happen; nothing is a mere binary. But that's my point, that directors are individuals rather than a uniformly behaving monolith. Some are better at the job than others, including the part of the job that entails understanding the needs of their employees.

I'm just saying that in the current climate, it's obvious enough that most of the cruelties in the film/TV industry come from the studio executives. While some directors are genuinely insensitive, it may be that some of them are just reluctantly passing on the orders from on high, but their underlings only see the directors who give them the orders and thus blame the directors. Sometimes that blame is justified, no doubt, but maybe sometimes it isn't. Life is complex. Most things have more than one causative factor.

Granted, I've felt for a long time that one of the biggest flaws in the Hollywood system is that directors are given too much absolute power over movies at the expense of writers, so that probably extends to other professionals as well. But that's a flaw in the overall system, and not exclusively the fault of the directors the system overindulges. They're part of the issue, but not the sole cause.

Either way, though, it's good that the VFX workers have unionized, since unions are the best defense against that kind of institutional devaluing of workers' needs.
 
I think a lot of the VFX issues come from time, and I think most of scheduling comes from the studio and producers, rather than directors. So I'd say at least significant part of the responsibility lies at the feet of them more than the directors.
 
If I recall correctly, one of the reasons Victoria Alonzo was let go from Marvel was because of the fact that the VFX departments all hated her.
 
JD said:
I think a lot of the VFX issues come from time, and I think most of scheduling comes from the studio and producers, rather than directors. So I'd say at least significant part of the responsibility lies at the feet of them more than the directors.
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Except a directors job is to bring a film in on time and within budget. So if they’re changing their vision to the point of asking months of work to be scrubbed with only weeks to rework/replace it that is absolutely within their core remit and responsibility.
 
The Knappos said:
Except a directors job is to bring a film in on time and within budget. So if they’re changing their vision to the point of asking months of work to be scrubbed with only weeks to rework/replace it that is absolutely within their core remit and responsibility.
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Again, yes, in some cases directors handle things badly. But that's not an indictment of all directors, because directors are individuals who deserve to be judged individually. And it doesn't preclude the executives and the larger culture being parts of the problem as well. As I said, the system is set up to be too indulgent of directors, treating them like all-powerful auteurs, and that's why many modern directors lack discipline.
 
The Knappos said:
Except a directors job is to bring a film in on time and within budget. So if they’re changing their vision to the point of asking months of work to be scrubbed with only weeks to rework/replace it that is absolutely within their core remit and responsibility.
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Not to split hairs, but the budget and schedule is indeed more of a Producer thing (especially an EP) than a Director. Mostly what a Director is there for is to coordinate all the different departments so that everyone on set is all on the same page and all working towards the same vision.
It's never that cut-and-dried of course as changes to schedule and extra budget expenditure is (ideally) more of a conversation between Director & Producer. Typically when movies go off the rails is when Directors do a poor job of coordinating, and/or the relationship with the Producers breaks down for one reason or another. More often than not though, it's usually because the Producer isn't doing their job in either reigning in a rogue Director, overly micromanaging, or not shielding them and the rest of production from Studio nonsense, up to and including actively undermining the Director. (the 'Alien 3' situation leaps to mind)

Regardless; at the end of the day, dumping extra time pressure on post production because production ran over time and the studio won't move the release date, is not a sustainable approach, and the buck stops at the Studio, not any particular Director.
By contrast; when Lucasfilm has had Director go rogue on them, they fired them and got someone reliable to get it finished. That's generally the sign of a producer actually doing their job right.
 
You know you're getting old when the most impressive part of the GOTG 3 Assembled behind-the-scenes is watching Sean Gunn squat walking everywhere as Rocket.
 
Christopher said:
Again, yes, in some cases directors handle things badly. But that's not an indictment of all directors, because directors are individuals who deserve to be judged individually. And it doesn't preclude the executives and the larger culture being parts of the problem as well. As I said, the system is set up to be too indulgent of directors, treating them like all-powerful auteurs, and that's why many modern directors lack discipline.
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This is Marvel/Disney we're talking about. They rarely allow directors to have that kind of control, unless said director also serves as producer and/or writer.
 
Caretaker said:
Steven DeKnight is calling out Daredevil Born Again, specifically Disney for their iffy contracts work-arounds.
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He's not calling out the show itself, which he's clarified he's very much looking forward to. He's calling out the studio accounting trick of retitling a show as an excuse to reset cast and crew payments to first-season levels.
 
It's always aggravating when they pull that kind of bullshit just to keep from paying people the money they deserve.
 
It seems to me that what DeKnight is talking about is clearly an important issue that Hollywood needs to improve on. But that it actually applies to Daredevil Born Again specifically seems more like an assumption than a fact. We still don't have any actual clarity on whether Cox is even supposed to be playing the exact same version of Matt Murdock as the Netflix series in the first place.
 
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