Captain America? Phuck no!

[Monterey Jack]

[AndyDursin]

Color me unsurprised with this story.

Also proof positive the "Golden Age" of Marvel is over. Long over.

[AndyDursin]

Ha!

[AndyDursin]

Testing worse than THE MARVELS! Fraught with reshoots and no clear direction.

This video is an awesome example of what making a movie for Disney/Marvel is like.

[Monterey Jack]

Is it any wonder why so many filmmakers have stepped away from Disney projects in the last several years? Who needs this level of micromanagement aggravation? It's also why their movies cost twice the original projected budgets, because they have to reshoot and tinker endlessly, because -- surprise! -- a movie based off a lousy, incoherent screenplay is gonna turn out to be incoherent and lousy. Disney should heed the old axiom of measuring twice before cutting once. Craft GOOD screenplays, hire the best filmmakers and actors to realize them, and leave them the hell alone, and the movies will cost less and turn out entertaining enough so that people will want to pay money to see them. Five years ago a lame movie like Captain Marvel could coast to a $1.2 billion gross simply for being sandwiched between the last two Avengers movies, but last year's The Marvels could barely scrape together $200 million (worldwide! ), and it's NOT due to "misogynistic male fanboys", but due to the movie looking like sh!t, and the few who did go to it reporting that it was, indeed, sh!t. Disney can stomp their feet and blame their recent failures on "sexism", "racism" or "homophobia", but it's down to a string of extremely mediocre movies that give us nothing but recycled ideas, with all of the original vibrancy and joy leached out, replaced with chiding social conditioning lessons. Whee...!

[AndyDursin]

Well that's the thing -- Disney won't leave them alone because it's not how they make the magic as George would say. What did Bob Iger say, that he watches every movie 3-5 times before it gets released? That's their whole problem in a nutshell.

Says a lot that they continue to churn out this stuff and can't retain directors, they come and go like a revolving door. One anonymous film school grad after another will come in and then get axed either before post-production is over or before the next movie is made.

Really it was when, say, they shifted from Kenneth Branagh doing THOR to "the guys who made the hit NBC comedy COMMUNITY" that it was apparent you needed no knowledge about directing movies to make a Marvel movie.

[Monterey Jack]

Really it was when, say, they shifted from Kenneth Branagh doing THOR to "the guys who made the hit NBC comedy COMMUNITY" that it was apparent you needed no knowledge about directing movies to make a Marvel movie.

The thing is, all of the "Phase One" MCU movies were done by Paramount (plus Universal for The Incredible Hulk). It wasn't until the first Avengers that Disney swooped in and bought the Marvel characters, after others had put in the work establishing the "Universe". And most of those Phase One movies were by established filmmakers (even Louis Letterier -- while certainly no auteur -- had some solid action movies to his credit before Hulk). Nowadays it's some nobody with one or two twee indie productions under their belt before they get handed the keys to a $200 million production. No wonder they come across as so bland, formless and bereft of any memorable stylistic quirks. Nia DaCosta deserved better than getting ground up in the failure of The Marvels (a movie she wasn't even present for the post-production on!).

[Monterey Jack]

Finally, a movie that's making the production of Dial Of Destiny seem like smooth sailing.

[AndyDursin]

This movie sounds like a runaway train spinning towards disaster.

Disney has no clue what to do with Marvel at this point. None of the post-"Phase 1" heroes have taken hold, even something like ANT-MAN (always a B grade hero to begin with) that generated multiple sequels played to rapidly diminishing returns.

Funny Theo has wanted to watch the Marvel movies so we've been going through them -- slowly. Done all the Iron Mans (the sequels of which were mostly self-contained other than Nick Fury dropping into 2), plus the first THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA. Of course I had to use Wikipedia to know when I need to take an "off ramp" to THE AVENGERS so it all makes sense (he doesn't understand you don't want to watch CAPTAIN AMERICA CIVIL WAR before the first AVENGERS!). And of course that's a whole other problem with those movies now as we've discussed...

When Marvel existed in the pre-Disney era you can see there was no "agenda" there and the movies had a lot less baggage, admittedly partially because they were making origin pictures, but the tone was a lot different. They didn't need to plant TOO much AVENGERS in those films, a lot of that was being done in off-screen PR.

IRON MAN 1 is still great, 2 is okay (at least the end is one of the briefest climaxes of any Marvel movie!), and 3 is fine; meanwhile CAPTAIN AMERICA holds up very well and is one of the best of those films. THOR I definitely didn't enjoy as much as I did originally -- Branagh looked like he was going for a much more serious, pseudo-Shakespearean tone and the performances especially Hemsworth and Hiddleston are a LOT stiffer than the much more comedic take they have in basically every other movie. The other thing about THOR is the budget -- it looks like a much cheaper film than CAPTAINA MERICA even though they roughly cost the same. The Asgard scenes are fine but then you end up...in the Arizona desert, where it looks like "cost savings" must've kicked in. It's okay but I think CAP is a much stronger film.