"Hey, the script we gave you guys was solid! It's not our fault you left a third of it on the cutting room floor!"
"At least we knew better than to have the final fight - between @*^($@# vampires - happen in broad daylight!!"
Sony Spider-Verse discussion thread
- Thread starter Turtletrekker
- Start date
"Hey, the script we gave you guys was solid! It's not our fault you left a third of it on the cutting room floor!"
"At least we knew better than to have the final fight - between @*^($@# vampires - happen in broad daylight!!"
Well, Emma Stone certainly sounds open to slinging some webs:
Correct, Ms. Stone. The whole world, that's correct.
Hey Sony, no excuses. Hire the best writers, line up a great director, and sign her to whatever salary she wants for a Spider-person movie, or better yet three, yesterday.
(The only question is, have her cross over to the ASM universe for a reunion with Garfield in the first movie, or the second?? )
Stone, however, just recently learned that Marvel was even considering bringing her back [for No Way Home], as she told ComicBook.com at the red-carpet premiere of Poor Things that this was all news to her.
“I have never heard that before,” Stone said. “This is awesome. This is a big moment for me. Thank you for telling me.”
When asked if she was aware that some fans want Marvel to bring back Gwen (who died at the end of 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2) as Spider-Gwen, Stone said, “Oh my God. That’s again, new information. Everyone [wants that to happen]? Everyone in the world?”
“I have never heard that before,” Stone said. “This is awesome. This is a big moment for me. Thank you for telling me.”
When asked if she was aware that some fans want Marvel to bring back Gwen (who died at the end of 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2) as Spider-Gwen, Stone said, “Oh my God. That’s again, new information. Everyone [wants that to happen]? Everyone in the world?”
Correct, Ms. Stone. The whole world, that's correct.
Hey Sony, no excuses. Hire the best writers, line up a great director, and sign her to whatever salary she wants for a Spider-person movie, or better yet three, yesterday.
(The only question is, have her cross over to the ASM universe for a reunion with Garfield in the first movie, or the second?? )
The CW lives!
And has anyone ever looked like they wish they were somewhere, anywhere else than Dakota Johnson in every photo and clip from this movie?
And has anyone ever looked like they wish they were somewhere, anywhere else than Dakota Johnson in every photo and clip from this movie?
I mean, it is Sony.
Here's another one, found in Hong Kong.
"Madame Spider. Only in cinemas."
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Isn’t that her default expression?The CW lives!
And has anyone ever looked like they wish they were somewhere, anywhere else than Dakota Johnson in every photo and clip from this movie?
Probably threw a hissy fit when she heard who was playing Julia & insisted the spotlight be on her. Sweeney’s got nothing to lose if this thing bombs, but Dakota’s still trying to live the whole ‘Mrs. Grey’ thing down.
I'm going to say it: I like those costumes, and they're better than several MCU and DCEU costumes that come to mind. At least design wise, in those pictures the costumes almost look CGI'd on, but they're ok to good designs. I'm not putting them on a best live action superhero costumes of all times list, but they're nowhere near the bottom of the barrel.
Also, The CW Arrowverse had generally great costumes, at least for the main heroes and recurring heroes/villains.
Also, The CW Arrowverse had generally great costumes, at least for the main heroes and recurring heroes/villains.
It doesn't have to be "very, very cheap," just not as ludicrously overexpensive as current blockbusters. A return to more reasonable budgets would be sufficient. Along with less wasteful spending so that a higher percentage of the budget ends up on the screen.
I can't find numbers for Madame Web, but Sony has been pretty good at budgeting their superhero movies. The first Venom movie in 2018 had a production budget of $ 116 million, the sequel in 2021 was even slightly cheaper at $ 110 million, and Morbius (I almost said "last year", but it's been two years now) had a production budget of just $ 75 million.
So, even with Morbius bombing, it did not lose the studio that much money. Certainly not the way The Marvels cost Disney or The Flash cost Warner Bros..
On the other hand, they clearly know that the live-action Spider-Man movies are a relatively safe bet and give those higher budgets, which tend to pay off.
It is therefore reasonable to believe that Madame Web had a relatively modest budget, certainly not more than the Venom films. I suspect it might have been closer to the Morbius budget. So, even if (when?) this fails at the box office, it won't be as big a financial catastrophe as the competition has experienced last year.
So, even with Morbius bombing, it did not lose the studio that much money. Certainly not the way The Marvels cost Disney or The Flash cost Warner Bros..
On the other hand, they clearly know that the live-action Spider-Man movies are a relatively safe bet and give those higher budgets, which tend to pay off.
It is therefore reasonable to believe that Madame Web had a relatively modest budget, certainly not more than the Venom films. I suspect it might have been closer to the Morbius budget. So, even if (when?) this fails at the box office, it won't be as big a financial catastrophe as the competition has experienced last year.
The problem is that it seems to me that the public's expectations for superhero films are now very high. A perfectly okay film (as the latest Blue Beetle was judged to be) is bound to underperform. From this point of view I partially agree with Martin Scorsese. Viewers don't see superhero movies like other movies. For them it is an amusement park. Each viewing must be like an adrenaline-pumping roller coaster, a perfect amalgam of exceptional special effects, story and characters. And for the same price, why would one choose an "ok" roller coaster over one that makes you scream from start to finish? And if there are only "ok" roller coasters, then you might as well save the ticket money and wait for the streaming.
Yes, but as I keep saying, a great deal of the budget in modern Hollywood films is the result of inefficiencies and overcharges in the process, or ends up in executives' pockets rather than on the screen. So I am not talking about reducing the scale or quality of the finished film; I'm talking about cutting the waste out of the process so you can achieve identical onscreen results less expensively.
Although I do feel that modern blockbusters have gotten bloated and overindulgent, that they'd be better if they dialed back somewhat on the overly long and cluttered CGI sequences. One basic lesson I learned as a writer is the importance of editing, of trimming the fat out of a manuscript and tightening it up to the essentials; Stephen King recommends that you should aspire to cut your first draft by 10 percent as a rule of thumb. But modern blockbuster filmmakers don't seem to edit themselves anymore -- they just leave in all the excess, the unnecessary bits that the film would be better-paced without. Or, too often, they cut out the story and character bits that would improve the film in favor of overindulgent action and CGI that serves no story purpose.
I don't know, I just find it disingenuous to say that studios are helpless to influence what audiences want to see. Studios created the expectation that superhero movies had to be gigantic blockbusters by repeatedly making them gigantic blockbusters. But two of the biggest films last year were Barbie and Oppenheimer, which argues that audiences are hungry for films that aren't gigantic actionfests.
And studios have redefined audiences' expectations about superhero movies before -- with Batman '89, with X-Men, with Batman Begins, with the MCU. So it's nonsensical to claim that studios are helpless hostages to the expectations of the audience. The people who make the movies are the ones with the power to redefine what the audience expects. They do that by being brave, by taking a chance on something new and doing it well enough that the audience responds, rather than just timidly churning out copies of what succeeded in the past.
I partially agree. Of course viewers want to see other things, but by now I think what the "superhero" genre is is so ingrained in viewers that going back is difficult. It is now associated, as you summarized well, with "blockbusters" and "gigantic actionfests". And if they aren't there, the spectators feel cheated. Ironically, it's what if a film was marketed as a "romantic comedy" but there was neither romance nor comedy. Maybe it's a great drama about the conditions of factory workers in Nepal, but it definitely wouldn't be what viewers would expect.
The mistake, though, is assuming that's a bad thing. What is the point of telling stories that only give the audience what they already know and expect? The stories that make the most impact are the ones that surprise the audience, that shatter expectations and give them something they never knew they wanted. I mean, come on, would any moviegoer before 2005 have expected a Batman movie to be serious and grounded rather than broad, fanciful, and larger than life?
Well, let's see how the DCE reboot goes! Maybe this will be the path they will take. If anything, the second Suicide Squad was "different".
I think it's possible that a lesser movie might work as well if it offered something different. I do think a simply OK and generic superhero movie isn't likely to get people fired up at the moment.
Stephen King might want to consider upping that a bit.
I've had a theory for decades that failure to cut seems to be a result of success. When people start out, be it in film or novels, their works are shorter, cheaper, and they have less control and others enforce cutting. The more famous the artist gets, the less power to enforce cuts others have, and the result ends up a bloated mess.
Doesn't always happen, but happens a lot.
Doesn't always happen, but happens a lot.