Agreed regarding the Russos. Their only truly great MCU production was The Winter Soldier, and they have never matched that structurally / creatively solid level since.
Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread
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Agreed regarding the Russos. Their only truly great MCU production was The Winter Soldier, and they have never matched that structurally / creatively solid level since.
The idea of going to see a movie because of the writer, director or even cinematographer, composer or cast has never occurred to me.
I go and see a movie if the subject matter appeals and it is getting O.K. reviews.
There's people I tend to avoid because of disliking previous work - Spielberg, Shyamalan, Ridley Scott (who still managed to make two of my favourite movies), Scorsese and so on.
Edit - "S" would appear to be the problem until I thought of JJ Abrams. He's a hard 'no' too.
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I’d personally never go on opening night but the films I will pay for having to interesting visuals or sound to make it worth a trip to Dolby cinema or IMAX otherwise I will watch at home.
Marvel's Kevin Feige on Future Avengers Movies and More
io9 spoke to Marvel Studios' president about Deadpool & Wolverine as well as the rest of the MCU.
gizmodo.com
I had just thought they had many it very clear post-Endgame that they were moving on from Marvel, and that a big part of the Multiverse Saga was that they were moving on and bringing in new directors as part of the shift to new characters and new storylines.
I guess I see it as going backwards, instead of moving on and doing new and different things.
Don't get my wrong, I loved the Russos' MCU movies, I was just a little surprised to see them both them and Marvel giving up on doing new and different things so quickly.
There's also the issue that things went sideways for the Avengers plans, and it sounds like they don't even have a script ready for a movie that supposedly releases in less than two years. Calling the Russo's could be the MCU equivalent of a Hail Mary.
I wouldn't call it a Hail Mary, since that's a long shot when you've exhausted all other options -- a gamble so unlikely to succeed that you have to pray for a miracle, hence the name. Calling on known commodities who've repeatedly proven their ability to deliver dependable work is the exact opposite of that.
Which strongly suggests the Russos would be forced to slap anything together to fit a release schedule--something not organic to any "progression"with the MCU's existing in-universe narratives.
In sports, a "hail Mary", is when you use your heavy hitters.
In football, it often refers to a long pass made to a receiver who has the ability to run the ball to the Endzone.
It is a desperate play, late in the game. Trek_God_1 got it.
Bro it is literally named after a prayer - and that is what it is. When you haven’t got a hope in hell and it’s the final minutes you throw caution to the wind and pray it comes off - hence Hail Mary
Absolutely not just bringing on your big name players as in most teams and sports they are in the starting line up.
Throwing your keeper up top for a corner in football would be classed as a Hail Mary - would be like letting the star actor also direct.
Sometimes it works (Allison’s goal for Liverpool vs Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool) sometimes is doesn’t (Shatner and TFF vs David James for City
This is more like when Chelsea brought Mourinho back as manager - previous success, gone on to do well elsewhere after moving on, club is struggling to reach those heights, bring back the proven success (obviously it didn’t work out perfect when he came back but the principle is the same)
Absolutely not just bringing on your big name players as in most teams and sports they are in the starting line up.
Throwing your keeper up top for a corner in football would be classed as a Hail Mary - would be like letting the star actor also direct.
Sometimes it works (Allison’s goal for Liverpool vs Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool) sometimes is doesn’t (Shatner and TFF vs David James for City
This is more like when Chelsea brought Mourinho back as manager - previous success, gone on to do well elsewhere after moving on, club is struggling to reach those heights, bring back the proven success (obviously it didn’t work out perfect when he came back but the principle is the same)
Not sure that makes what Christopher said wrong.
Didn't think about possible football (soccer) scenarios--I was really thinking of that late game pass in American football. Good examples though.
As usual, his comment was correct. It just took my use of a term way too literally and missed the point--which is, it is pretty last minute hiring a directing team for a movie that doesn't even seem to have a script finalized and is scheduled to release in May 2025.
No, it isn't.
Hail Mary pass - Wikipedia
"A Hail Mary pass is a very long forward pass in American football, typically made in desperation, with an exceptionally small chance of achieving a completion. Due to the difficulty of a completion with this pass, it makes reference to the Catholic "Hail Mary" prayer for strength and help.[1]
"The expression goes back at least to the 1930s, when it was used publicly by Elmer Layden and Jim Crowley, two former members of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish's Four Horsemen. Originally meaning any sort of desperation play, a Hail Mary pass gradually came to denote a long, low-probability pass, typically of the "alley-oop" variety, attempted at the end of a half when a team is too far from the end zone to execute a more conventional play, implying that it would take a miracle for the play to succeed....
"The term "Hail Mary" is sometimes used to refer to any last-ditch effort with little chance of success."
Which is exactly why it's not a Hail Mary gamble to turn to their most proven and reliable directors, the ones with the best chance of being able to pull that off.
Hail Mary pass - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
...
Originally meaning any sort of desperation play, a Hail Mary pass gradually came to denote a long, low-probability pass, typically of the "alley-oop" variety, attempted at the end of a half when a team is too far from the end zone to execute a more conventional play, implying that it would take a miracle for the play to succeed....
"The term "Hail Mary" is sometimes used to refer to any last-ditch effort with little chance of success."
That is exactly what I was referring to--thank you. Been watching sports and American Football since the 80's.
I think it is great the Russo's have been called in; however, the move reeks of last-minute desperation to save the upcoming Avengers projects.
I see nothing desperate or unreasonable about Feige turning to proven collaborators to do another project for him. It seems like a perfectly natural thing to do. And all this talk of "last-minute saves" is overly melodramatic. It's hardly unusual for motion pictures to go through multiple scripts or directors before they're deemed satisfactory. Would you rather they rushed ahead with a version they weren't satisfied with? Taking the time to get it right is a good sign, not a bad one. Laypeople are so quick to read disaster and dysfunction into perfectly routine and healthy parts of the filmmaking process.
I think I've said that hiring these guys is a good thing, but that's just this "layperson"'s opinion.
Damned laypeople!
What would be a good football analogy? I suppose this is like not developing some future prospects or maybe trading some draft picks to sway some veteran maybe a bit past their prime to come back to the team to take a swing at the championship again. Reminds me of RTD coming back to Who.
What would be a good football analogy? I suppose this is like not developing some future prospects or maybe trading some draft picks to sway some veteran maybe a bit past their prime to come back to the team to take a swing at the championship again. Reminds me of RTD coming back to Who.
Why are people acting like the MCU is on its last legs, and hiring the Russos is some desperate measure? Black Widow probably under performed but it released during the height of the pandemic, same with Shang-Chi (although it seems to have atleast doubled its budget even as a pandemic release) and Eternals (which got bad reviews and was a pandemic release). By Spider-Man: No Way Home people were getting past the pandemic (well they were starting to ignore it more, I don't think it ever really ended) and it made over 1.9 billion dollars, Multiverse of Madness made almost a Billion dollars without even playing in China, and BP2 and Thor 4 both had a box office over triple their budgets. GotG 3 also tripled their budget with thweir box office, and all of this is not even taking into account things like merchandise, etc, which is probably bringing Disney money even from weaker films.
The MCU has ONE recent film that was definitely not profitable (The Marvels) and one that maybe only broke even (Quantumania). Every other (post pandemic) MCU film since Endgame has done ok to amazing. One can argue that some of the Disney+ shows have been awful, but they're not really the part of the MCU that determines its overall success, thats pretty obviously the films. Secret Invasion sucking or She-Hulk being mediocre doesn't change the fact that the movies are still mostly very profitable. The MCU is at the point where not everything they do is guarenteed to be successful, but they're still successful the majority of the time and still popular with the general audience (a group that isn't usually online so they're not heard as much as the loud MCU haters).
The MCU has ONE recent film that was definitely not profitable (The Marvels) and one that maybe only broke even (Quantumania). Every other (post pandemic) MCU film since Endgame has done ok to amazing. One can argue that some of the Disney+ shows have been awful, but they're not really the part of the MCU that determines its overall success, thats pretty obviously the films. Secret Invasion sucking or She-Hulk being mediocre doesn't change the fact that the movies are still mostly very profitable. The MCU is at the point where not everything they do is guarenteed to be successful, but they're still successful the majority of the time and still popular with the general audience (a group that isn't usually online so they're not heard as much as the loud MCU haters).
I agree to an extent, but Quantumania definitely did not break even. Earning less than 500m gross on a 326m budget is not even remotely close to breaking even. Huge portions of that gross box office do not go to the studio and the budget figures don't even usually include all the marketing costs.
So, yeah, two movies in one year that lost money (large sums of money in both cases) is a serious issue, especially for a franchise that hasn't lost money on a non-pandemic release since 2008, despite releasing literally dozens of films since then.
At the same time, though, a serious issue is not automatically death's doorstep, either, and Deadpool 3 is showing every sign of probably being the most successful superhero movie since No Way Home.