Oh not you too! The Marvel brand isnt doing cinema any favors. These trite morality plays arent helping superhero movies either. Arent you exhausted by Marvel’s aesthetic? I hear the defense that it’s a genre, but the problem is that it’s a brand. These are shot like car commercials, no real direction. You want actual cinematic superhero films? Try Shyamalan’s Unbreakable; PWSA’s Res Evil 4&5. Cinema isn’t supposed to be a poly-sci essay or a polemic, told in clunky close-ups, bland action, etc

poorquentyn:

racefortheironthrone:

**poli-sci… and you know what’s infinitely better than any Marvel movie? Jupiter fucking Ascending. Hell, any Wachowski film. Or Edgar Wright’s. Sorry for rant but you were praising CA like it’s a goddamn Edward Yang movie. It’s all shouted worldviews, heinous action coverage, grimdark fetishism, horrible use of lighting, no sense of even competent cross-cutting. Meta diologue analysis of American exceptionalism? No thanks.

I think you and I have fundamentally different aesthetics, Anon. 

1. Marvel’s films can be incredibly stylistically different from one another – Joe Johnston, Joss Whedon, Kenneth Branaugh, James Gunn, the Russo brothers, are quite distinctive in their styles and interests, and indeed have produced movies that belong to different genres that all happen to be superhero movies. 

2. Captain America: First Avengers is not grimdark fetishism. (If it’s grimdark fetishism you’re looking for, Batman v. Superman is over yonder) It’s 40s camp, and it’s absolutely expressive of Joe Johnston’s aesthetic. Seriously, go watch Rocketeer and then watch Captain America and tell me that you can’t see the visual and thematic similarities. And yeah, I like some ideas in my super hero movies; better that than Zack Snyder. 

3. I don’t find your alternatives appealing in the slightest. Unbreakable is over-praised and incredibly self-serious from one of the biggest flash in the pans in cinema history. PWSA’s movies are video game movies rather than super-hero movies and they’re frankly unwatchable. Jupiter Ascending is ridiculously overstuffed, badly acted, poorly plotted, and strangely pro-bestiality, and if you don’t like cinema as polemic, how can you enjoy Matrix Reloaded or Matrix Revolutions? 

But at the end of the day, this is just my opinion about my aesthetic preferences. You don’t have to like what I like or vice versa. 

Amen. This widespread notion that the Marvel movies are homogenous frankly baffles me. It’s true that the MCU-building is their weakest aspect, but I kinda think people are just assuming any such studio-brand series must be inherently machine-tooled, ignoring the variety of the individual movies. 

And what variety! Winter Soldier is a straight-up ‘70s paranoid thriller, complete with Robert Redford. Thor finds Branagh mashing up B-list Shakespeare, disarmingly sweet fish-out-of-water rom-com, and the Rainbow Road level from Mario Kart, and somehow making it work. Avengers is a superbly acted ensemble comedy interrupted by the Old Ones. Guardians (my fave of the bunch) is a staggeringly beautiful ensemble comedy with a Tarantino soundtrack. Iron Man is basically a Shane Black flick. 

Oh but sure, they’re no Jupiter Ascen…bwahaha, I couldn’t get through that with a straight face! (Srsly, who praises Edward Yang and PWSA in the same breath? Don’t tell me “vulgar auterism” RE the latter is still a thing, that was the dumbest cinephile fad.) And yeah, calling the Cap movies “grimdark” while a Snyder movie haunts theaters, what even. 

Speaking of the MCU-building, I think we may have to reassess that in the future. For the longest time, there hasn’t really been anything to compare it with. Sure, other studios wanted to do the whole shared universe/megafranchise thing, but most of those efforts stalled (Universal with the movie monsters, for example) before reaching the big screen . The only thing that comes closest is Deadpool and the X-Men, and even then it’s incredibly tangential and you really get the sense that Fox is not ready to let people play with its toys yet. 

But by the old gods and the new, compare that to BvS trying to do a decade’s worth in one movie (that was already two movies), and suddenly Marvel looks like a master of understatement. Confining the world-building stuff mostly to post-credit scenes and visual hints meant that those who were there for the world-building could get it, but people who weren’t could just enjoy them for what they are. 

It started to get a little unwieldy in Age of Ultron, and I would caution Feig et al. that they should look at the shortcomings of that film (mostly the fact that film only lets you have so many well-developed characters on screen, so don’t try to push it too far or you get Spiderman 3 syndrome) as a guide for how to steer the MCU into the future. Also, while I’m at it, now that moviegoers are broadly familiar with the main heroes, it’s ok to have non-intro solo films develop the villains a bit more.