Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie • Page 278

I went to the theater to watch King Hu films but those are spectacles to me in their own way.

Films like Drive My Car, for example….I bought it, watched it plenty of times in my house, but I wouldn’t pay to see it on a big screen. Not because it’s not worth ticket admission but because it’s a different experience and one that doesn’t fit Drive My Car, imo.

 

I loved being in a theater for Drive My Car. I saw Paterson, a very small, quiet film, in Washington DC in theaters and was so transfixed I forgot I was out of town when I left the auditorium.

 

This is your opinion, which is fine, but the issue Scorsese is taking is that predominantly there’s only one kind of movie available at theaters. In one of those articles I linked, it points out that movies are more consolidated now than they were pre-1940. 90% of theatrical films came from 7 studios. That isn’t choice! That’s one kind of thing dominating, which is great for you, but not for people who don’t share your taste.

 

I just… completely fundamentally and philosophically disagree that small movies are an inferior theater experience than blockbusters

 

I should have clarified, I was asking about the ArtHouse theater. I know Disney has done it to larger theater chains, but I wondering if the local ArtHouse cinema was forced to or if the owner decided to just go for extra cash.

And the thing about films is that they don’t have to be revolutionary. They have to be entertaining. They have to get emotional responses from the audience, which the MCU does.

You’re right, a lot of people don’t go the theaters to watch MCU films and then watch Tar or Banshees of Inishiein and have inner monologues because that would first require a quarter of those people to care to watch Tar or Banshees of Inishiein. And let’s be honest, they don’t.

 

Inferior is a word I wouldn’t and didn’t use. I said it’s just more intimate to watch them in my house and I like my small movies to be in an intimate setting.

 

It was Disney. It was a widespread campaign that they repeat with every MCU and Star Wars movie. They threaten to withhold indie films they own that those theaters actually want to show unless they show those Disney blockbusters for whatever window, when you can see those movies anywhere, and meanwhile the smaller movie that would actually find an audience in a theater designed for it, doesn’t get an opportunity.

Movies like that aren’t gonna be $100 million+ box office smashes or anything but part of the reason some people don’t see those movies is because they’re barely marketed, barely in theaters, and the independent theaters that normally show them are closing rapidly.

 

I was about to make a post indicating that I believed this to be your point.

I also agree with this. Everyone has their own thing that they like doing and I totally get people who want to see a smaller intimate movie in a big open space. I mean, when I watch movies I tend to tune out everyone around me anyway (if possible), so I get just wanting the wow factor of seeing something on as large a screen as possible.

But that doesn't appeal to me, and I'm willing to bet that probably doesn't appeal to a lot of people.

 

Here’s an idea that can save the theaters. Daycare.

I will see whatever fucking movie you’re showing me if you’re promising me 3 hours of free daycare while I sit and eat popcorn lol

 

There's unfortunately a chicken-or-egg argument happening here, and it's entirely possible both positions are right at the same time, but the question is "do people see less indie movies because they're not as widely advertised" or "do indie movies get less widely advertised because not a lot of people see them"?

The truth is the goal of any company is to make money, so they're going to put their money where they feel the most opportunity exists to make money back on their investment. That's the driving factor everywhere.

 

Alright, it’s midnight here. Night night time for me

 

It absolutely is people see less smaller movies because they aren’t advertised and barely have any screenings. To argue the opposite is disingenuous.

 

This is exactly Scorsese’s point: the devaluing of art for “content”, and the priority away from creating cinema (don’t get me wrong, money was always a motivation as well) and instead finding a slate of movies you can release over the next decade and expect safe returns. This is actively bad for cinema and shuts out original and diverse voices completely.

 

It’s not about some of the people seeing Marvel movies getting to and choosing to watch non-blockbusters.

These big movies are being pushed towards their audience so strongly, it crowds other kinds of movies for other kinds of audiences out of theaters, due to limited space in theaters. Which, has been bad for the film industry. There’s not infinite space for infinite movies to be made and released properly.

 

Is it though? I'm curious. I mean, I don't doubt there are people who don't see a smaller movie because they don't know it exists, but I'm wondering on what scale. At what point does the advertising push to get those people as an audience stop being cost-effective?

I'm not asking this out of the desire to make any kind of point, I'm just genuinely curious.

 

By the way, if you love a good cape film (like I very much so do), you should also be frustrated with this, seeing how this blockbuster content engine also devalues those movies hogging up the space.

Just look at the narrative around Marvel Studios output in the last few years. Look at how happy even loyal fans seem to be at recent implications that they’re slowing down how many films and shows are pushed out per year. And, how longtime Marvel filmmaker James Gunn is emphasizing that DC Studios is gonna wait ‘til a script is ready before finalizing the other details, which is in sharp contrast to how a lot of Marvel stuff has been done lately.

 

You were experiencing this with a movie or two you wanted to see very recently, I believe!

 

If you want, you can trace it back to what actually did alter what kinds of movies audiences would pack in theaters to see: Jaws and A New Hope. The birth of the blockbuster changed the landscape, but there was still diversity (from a content perspective, though not the writers/actors/directors being hired) and Spielberg and Lucas (for all his flaws as a storyteller) created original works with an artistic, not a corporate, vision. Part of what makes the MCU hard to stomach for me, personally, is the corporate feel. They’re manufactured to fit a release schedule and build to the next movie, and rather than artists translating an artistic vision to the screen in an exciting way via the blockbuster (Lucas, Spielberg, even Raimi and Nolan in their superhero projects), we get WWE style storytelling where there’s a relatively generic storyline, you get X cameo to set up Y tv show or whatever while a multibillion dollar corporation abuses VFX houses to create hollow moments like the female heroes lining up to protect Tom Holland in a franchise that took over a decade to make a movie starring a woman.

 

nathan laid out everything 10x better than I could so I won’t rehash the argument.

 

yep. And as an example my local Cinemark has 32(!) screenings of ant man and 5 of marlowe. Both were released this weekend.

 

To be fair to Marvel, improvisation has done a lot of wonders for getting some great moments in the films. I mean, wasn't the first Iron Man heavily improvised? I don't know if this was your point or not.

I don't know what he said in the post above yours that answered my question, but I'm all for less arguing.

 

This isn’t about improv vs tight adherence to scripts. It’s about not being in the midst of a visual-effects-heavy film, slated to come out within a year, fully without a plan for the ending.

I don’t like overly romanticizing “having a plan.” I don’t think, for example, that the Star Wars sequel trilogy needed some definitive 3-film plan on the outset to be better, like some people like to say. But, the final product of The Rise of Skywalker is a great example of prioritizing the steady stream of ~*content*~ over making sure they’re making a quality film. Joss Whedon’s Justice League, which had a ton of money sunk into uncanny valley face so that it’d come out in the right fiscal quarter for shareholders, is another great example.

 

I believe if they truly intend to make the MCU go on forever in a creatively sustainable way there will be a point where the comics stop being the thing that influences their stories. MCU will eventually start introducing original characters and storylines just for them.

 

This fails to consider that people who do see promo for smaller movies actually have a chance to see the movie at their theater. My theater showed the Licorice Pizza trailer for months, we never got a single screening. That’s just one example, but it happens more often than it should. Why do you think my theater doesn’t get a film like that? And I’m not trying to make you say, “blame Disney.” I am sure there are multiple factors in what movies we get. But Disney forcing screenings of their big movies is absolutely one of them.

 

Oh, I'm not denying that at all. Disney forcing screenings is absolutely a shitty dick move that they honestly shouldn't even need to bother with at this point. It's unnecessary and mean.

I'm not trying to absolve Disney of wrongdoing by any means. I guess I'm just interested in this as a multi-faceted problem.