criterionforum.org

I think it was the 60s when Stan Lee introduced the shared universe concept to Marvel and started making all those crossover storylines, so perhaps that accounts for their good business.

Incidentally, I’ve never read a Marvel comic. I’ve read some DC comics, but mainly to experience the work of a couple big names famous even outside comics circles (Moore, Miller).

Japan has an interesting comics market. While still squarely a popular entertainment medium, comics have a wide, mainstream readership of both adults and children and are not considered juvenile or niche.

Mr Sausage wrote: Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:25 am

zedz wrote: Thu Oct 24, 2019 4:02 am What you're referring to was more of a Beanie Babies fad that was aimed at speculators rather than actual comics fans. In many cases, the comics were sold sealed and needed to stay sealed in order to preserve their 'value.' They weren't intended to be read. Once those people realized that their 'treasures' were basically worthless unless other speculators were prepared to buy them, the market for these gimmicks collapsed. The people at the top of the pyramid, like Todd McFarlane, made a killing in the short term, which was the entire point.

Hmm. Hadn't realized just how much of a fad that boom was. Thanks.

Do you agree with mfunk's claim that few people ever read comic books and Marvel studios basically invented the comic book nerd through marketing? I've always had the sense that, tho' it went through boom and bust cycles, the industry was pretty robust and there was a significant group of people who were comic book fans as kids.

I've only seen a few of the movies. They were fine, but I didn't see anything that made me want to seek out more, and I'm really not in tune with modern Marvel Movie fandom (because -shudder- ), but it seems to me that the movie franchise is really following the model that first made Marvel comics such a big success in the 60s and 70s.

In the 1940s and 50s, superhero comics (please, let's remember that these are just a not-especially-artistically-significant category of comic books / comic strips) were aimed at very young children, and were almost exclusively self-contained. DC was pretty much the only game in town at that point (having sued their biggest competitor into submission). There was an assumption that the readership for comic books was wholly casual, and that readers needed to be able to enjoy a comic book with no prior knowledge of the characters or ongoing story. In fact, there was no ongoing story. There were situations (e.g. Lois Lane loves Superman), but they were static or eternally resetting themselves at the end of each issue. There was no real characterization, psychology or emotions, either, just feints at them (e.g. Lois Lane loves Superman, is jealous of Lana Lang). Nothing changed. Some writers and artists were so stultified by this perpetual status quo that they came up with narrative tropes that allowed them to have fun with the impossible idea of change, such as Red Kryptonite (which had wildly unpredictable, but safely temporary, effects on Superman, such as making him obese, or blind, or sarcastic for a few hours) or the Imaginary Story (an update of the "but it was all a dream" escape clause - e.g. What if Superman married Lois Lane? What if Superman married Lana Lang? What if Superman married [his cousin] Supergirl and became a Superhillbilly?).

Most of these heroes had tragic backstories, but none of that tragedy impinged on their adventures. Most of the interest came from a wide range of colourful supervillains, enjoyably bonkers plotting and, if you were lucky, lovely artwork from the likes of Kurt Schaffenburger or Joe Kubert. The best of these were great kids' literature.

Marvel's rival superhero comics came along in the early 60s (before that they published other genres, like monster comics and romance), and they immediately rejected several of the previously accepted 'truths' of the industry. Half of the Fantastic Four had sketchy personalities (the Human Torch was impetuous; the Thing was a self-pitying wisecracker), and these personalities evolved (or randomly changed) over time. Spiderman had your standard issue tragic origin story, but he continued to be angst-ridden long after. This was often referred to (not least by the writer Stan Lee) as adding a 'soap opera' element, and that's actually a pretty fair summation in terms of the function and depth of these emotional hooks.

One of the key hooks Marvel introduced was the illusion of change. Over the long haul, nothing fundamental ever really changed - or not so much that it couldn't be reversed by a cosmic handwave - but it looked like things did. Mr Fantasic and Invisible Girl got married, and had a child (with her leaving the group while she was pregnant). Spiderman graduated from high school, and was doomed to spend the rest of eternity at university (oh, and one of the serial loves of his life was murdered by the Green Goblin). Characters' circumstances could change; characters could even die - sometimes permanently! There was actually a long-form narrative to follow and a mythos to discover, and this in turn created a new kind of comics fandom and comics collecting, where picking up every issue of a favourite title was not just tidy completism, but necessary to know what was going on.

A good example of how Marvel differed from DC is The Avengers. This comic initially followed the template of DC's Justice League of America, in which the company's biggest stars at the time (Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk, Ant Man and the Wasp) teamed up to fight evil. But the group was unstable. The Hulk quit in a huff after two issues. Captain America (one of the company's heroes from the 1940s - another one, the Sub-Mariner, had previously been resurrected as a villain) was thawed out and joined the group, and a year later everybody except Captain America quit, leaving him to recruit and reform three former villains from other magazines as the first of many, many "New Avengers".

This exemplifies another of Marvel's innovations: their mythos was much less static that DCs had been. New characters - even new worlds - proliferated. This was largely down to the extraordinarily fertile imagination of the primary creator, Jack Kirby, who created probably 90% of the characters in the ten years he was with the company, and these are the ones that have formed the IP backbone of the company ever since. Of the Marvel films released to date, the only characters not created by Kirby are the Guardians of the Galaxy (who debuted after he left the company) and Dr. Strange (created by Steve Ditko, who's best known as the first artist of Spiderman, though that was also a Kirby creation). The characters were promiscuous as well, appearing in one another's comics, and often carrying ongoing plot business from one title to another - another encouragement for the new, ravenous fandom.

A further big innovation was long-form plotting, with major events dragging on and on for years across various titles (e.g. the (yawn) Kree-Skrull War), and slow-burn sub-plots teasing future cataclysms. My all-time favourite example of this comes from Steve Gerber's 1970s run on The Defenders. They were a goofy Avengers knock-off that started out a supergroup of the company's unclubbable leftovers (Dr. Strange, The Hulk and the Submariner - a group of characters with a daunting absence of chemistry!) and evolved into the only supergroup with no official membership, just a random agglomeration of comings-and-goings. In its early issues there was a long-running subplot involving a homicidal gnome. It ran for years, with the character randomly killing people every so often, slowly making his way towards the group's headquarters. When he finally reached his target - the first time he'd been so close to the main plot - he was run over by a truck and nothing was ever heard of him again (until, I'm sure, some doofus from a subsequent generation felt the need to 'resolve' the loose thread).

The end result of all of these innovations was a new kind of comics fandom: more engaged, more obsessed (often with trivia), slightly older (although Marvel had a 'hip' factor in the 1960s, and some high-profile 'serious' enthusiasts like Alain Resnais, it was primarily a shift from pre-adolescent to adolescent, and has never really gone beyond that, despite a lot of media hoopla).

That's all a long-winded way of pointing out that most of the 'innovations' of the film series (the soap opera, the illusion of change, the proliferating mythos, the inter-connectedness of individual films and series, the long-form plotting and sub-plotting) are just a super-charged version of the innovations that made Marvel such a success in the 1960s and 70s, and they've created a super-charged version of the new form of fandom that the comics created on a much smaller scale back then. I find it quite interesting as a sociological phenomenon, but stultifying in terms of what it's doing film culture. Even here, people want to talk about these films more than anything else.

That’s a fascinating post, zedz, and as an outsider to this phenomenon I really appreciate the breakdown. (Being a regular reader of Mark Evanier’s blog I vaguely knew who Jack Kirby was but didn’t really know the full history and never really had the patience to parse it out.)

To your last point, logging on to film twitter (always a mistake) lately I see so much defensive posturing about the Scorsese-Coppola dust up but it primarily seems to result in this specific flavor of film continuing to take over the discourse. I’m just so bored with it (but here I am posting on this thread so the joke’s on me I guess).

Yeah, thanks for the background, zedz. Very helpful. Were/are you a comics fan?

I was a comics fan as a kid and wrote / drew them for a while in the 90s (not superheroes).

Regarding Marvel and financial problems: I don't think they declared bankruptcy but in the mid-70s the company was in pretty bad financial dire straits, so much so there was serious talk in the comics industry that Marvel would have to cease publishing monthly comics. Their fortunes were reversed by the incredibly successful monthly Star Wars comic. In, fact Star Wars is typically credited with single-handedly saving not only Marvel but the entire American comic book industry.

In 2014, The New York Times published an article about the topic.

Gizmodo published a similar article in 2011.

Zedz' post is making me wanna unearth my mid-to-late 70s Marvel comic books stash, locked since forever in an old chest trunk along with hockey cards, and read them again! (Last time was before puberty.)

zedz wrote:I was a comics fan as a kid and wrote / drew them for a while in the 90s (not superheroes).

Wow. What do you think of your fellow countryman, Dylan Horrocks’ work? I haven’t read a lot of comics, but I always found his work among the most enjoyable to read.

I've known Dylan since the 80s and always liked his work. I haven't really kept up with it in recent years, though I did catch up with him briefly earlier this year.

For the record, I was in no way saying that comics were "unpopular" as though to imply that people were out there actively disliking them. Just that they were very niche as an actual thing that was read. Even the comic book stores in my town were mostly places where people bought and sold sports and trading cards, and played board and collectible card games like Magic the Gathering. There were hardly any comics there to speak of (and I spent a lot of time in these places, as I was the target demo but I was there for the CCGs). Again, veering into the anecdotal. But whenever I did see a Marvel film with an end credits coda that'd have some guy playing someone and everyone gasping and whispering a character name to each other, I always felt as though I stepped into some kind of twilight zone. Not sure about the comic sales now, but the consciousness of the minutiae of these plot lines and things couldn't be higher.

My experience as someone who was a kid in the 90s with superhero comics were I never saw anyone read one but knew plenty who watched the various cartoons. Later on in preteendom “cool kids” (who in retrospect were enormous losers) seemed more into things like the Sandman et al, though Serious Graphic Novels always make me think of that long-running plot point on Roseanne about Darlene and David’s comic book that turns out to be smut. I just read Bone and EC Comics reprints and was coolest of all

God, you're right about Saturday morning cartoons. Those were definitely consumed regardless of what they were about, just because they were TV and you were allowed to watch them. In what other medium could dreck like Captain Planet succeed?

mfunk9786 wrote: Fri Oct 25, 2019 4:26 am God, you're right about Saturday morning cartoons. Those were definitely consumed regardless of what they were about, just because they were TV and you were allowed to watch them. In what other medium could dreck like Captain Planet succeed?

I was under the impression that Captain Planet survived as long as it did because Ted Turner pushed it so hard. I mean it had Martin Sheen, Sting, Malcolm McDowel and l even James Coburn of all people. They certainly weren't worried about budget at some level and because of that it survived to air three seasons and over a hundred goddamn episodes.

Like Caroline in the City, I watched Captain Planet even though I have no memory of enjoying it

For all the benefits having limited channel programming did to provide variety for Gen Xers to sift through there was a whole lot of disposable forgettable content. Discovering classic films and other random quality productions was worth watching through the forgettable ones, though. Sometimes I want to sit my nieces and nephews down with a random sampling of what my local Fox affiliate programmed on Saturdays in 1994 (some cartoons, syndicated cuts of 80s Fox movies, crappy first run sitcoms) just so they can discover their own tastes/filter for content in a manner that isn't so self-determined as their streaming usually is.

RIP Film wrote: Wed Oct 23, 2019 10:14 pmYou have a disaster-torn Mexican town, and then Nick Fury pulls up in newest Audi SUV, in pristine condition, and the camera pauses on it for a moment. It quite literally comes off as a car commercial. I think this is one aspect that has been neglected in this “is this cinema” discussion, and that is how closely Marvel movies resemble a commercial.

I don’t mean just product placement, but the MCU itself being a product that spans more than movies, but also lines the aisles at Walmart. It reminds me vaguely of how Hasbro developed the Transformers cartoon in 1984 to sell the toyline. I don’t think it’s an innocent distinction; the medium is the message and all that.

This is absolutely right and should be the point of this argument.

As a whole film/tv/art/music carry all the responsibility (I don't even think this should be a requirement of art to begin with) for having to be morally just, have some kind of political message, equality/representation etc, etc. while advertising, which is the real problem, gets away with virtually everything up to and including undercover ads in art.

Consumer art, the overlap between art & advertising has been the most dangerous development within our culture over the past couple of decades and is what should have a #metoo campaign against it.

Scorsese has written an op ed about his remarks for the NY Times, which is stupendously good

There’s worldwide audiovisual entertainment, and there’s cinema.
- Martin Scorsese

Excellent piece by Scorsese!

It seemed to me that his original comment wasn't meant to be provocative and was blown out of proportion. To be honest, I thought his comment wasn't so much insightful as truthful common knowledge.

Of course it wasn't made to be overblown. But such is the Internet and the medias and the MCU and its fans.

There isn't anything particularly inspiring in Scorsese or Coppola's statements that should have warranted such a long-winded controversy. It's been a month now, and I still don't understand why it's still going on in the way it is going on.

At best, it should have inspired a deeper discussion on the schizophrenia ofthe movie industry, art vs money, etc. But in practice, it has been and still is dumbed down to "he's an old director who lost his touch and I love these movies they're so good and he hasn't even seen one so what does he know ?"

Martin Scorsese wrote:That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption(...)
In many places around this country and around the world, franchise films are now your primary choice if you want to see something on the big screen. It’s a perilous time in film exhibition, and there are fewer independent theaters than ever. The equation has flipped and streaming has become the primary delivery system(...)
It’s a chicken-and-egg issue. If people are given only one kind of thing and endlessly sold only one kind of thing, of course they’re going to want more of that one kind of thing.(...)
But the most ominous change has happened stealthily and under cover of night: the gradual but steady elimination of risk.

Excellent Op-Ed. I wonder if he had to rewrite it 4 times like Rosenbaum's Op-Ed on Bergman obituary...
Why does he namedrop a few of the filmmakers he likes, but none of those that are bad at doing franchise films?
His chicken-and-egg issue is a bit weak in my opinion. When you only serve people the same thing, they could get fed up and look the other way at some point. The problem is bigger than this. It's the disinterest for diversity in the people taste, not because they've been accustomed to it by necessity but because they seek this same kind of cheap thrill.
I appreciate his plead for auteurism, but it's hardly a solution to the franchise problem. We're not going to reverse the tentpole/niche model by replacing a team of screenwriters by an auteur.
He somehow throws Hitchcock under the bus... but better exemples of expensive blockbusters from the past should have been Cleopatra, BenHur, Intolerance, Foolish Wives, Gone With the Wind, The Ten Commendments, Metropolis...

One factor that hasn't been brought up is the perceived value of a movie ticket now that they cost $12-20/each (or even more on Deluxe large screens). Large crowds have shifted towards the franchises/spectacle action films more often than not because they consider them reliable; the elimination of risk is part of the reason for their success. People are still willing to take chances on other movies, but the economics of the theatrical experience has them looking for streaming deals for $10/less a month to catch the dozen of smaller, riskier art films, or even the standard drama. So this pattern feeds itself: people stay at home for films that they feel may burn them, theaters book more franchise and less smaller films, and the disparity grows.

That seems like a really good and insightful point, captveg. I wonder how much chains that offer subscription plans are seeing changes in their customers' behavior.

BenoitRouilly wrote: Tue Nov 05, 2019 10:58 pm

Martin Scorsese wrote:That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption(...)
In many places around this country and around the world, franchise films are now your primary choice if you want to see something on the big screen. It’s a perilous time in film exhibition, and there are fewer independent theaters than ever. The equation has flipped and streaming has become the primary delivery system(...)
It’s a chicken-and-egg issue. If people are given only one kind of thing and endlessly sold only one kind of thing, of course they’re going to want more of that one kind of thing.(...)
But the most ominous change has happened stealthily and under cover of night: the gradual but steady elimination of risk.

Excellent Op-Ed. I wonder if he had to rewrite it 4 times like Rosenbaum's Op-Ed on Bergman obituary...
Why does he namedrop a few of the filmmakers he likes, but none of those that are bad at doing franchise films?
His chicken-and-egg issue is a bit weak in my opinion. When you only serve people the same thing, they could get fed up and look the other way at some point. The problem is bigger than this. It's the disinterest for diversity in the people taste, not because they've been accustomed to it by necessity but because they seek this same kind of cheap thrill.
I appreciate his plead for auteurism, but it's hardly a solution to the franchise problem. We're not going to reverse the tentpole/niche model by replacing a team of screenwriters by an auteur.
He somehow throws Hitchcock under the bus... but better exemples of expensive blockbusters from the past should have been Cleopatra, BenHur, Intolerance, Foolish Wives, Gone With the Wind, The Ten Commendments, Metropolis...

The chicken and egg issue makes sense to me and Rosenbaum has expressed the same concern many times:

To put it simply, the U.S. is a third-world backwater when it comes to the opening of most foreign and independent pictures. This state of affairs seems to suit most of the industry flacks — giving the studios first dibs on what we see and ensuring that most mainstream publications will treat studio product as the best stuff around, regardless of how awful it is — and it isn’t likely to change unless people drastically revise their moviegoing habits. In other words, a fundamental lack of respect for the American public is now being factored into the basic policy decisions of the studios and their yes-people — a lack of respect that can be traced through film production, distribution, promotion, exhibition, and most reviewing.

The disinterest for diversity has been cultivated by the studios and the culture at large. People aren't born to love Marvel or born to be disinterested in challenging cinema.

Oh I know plenty of people who never wanted movies to be anything else than brainless entertainment.
We've have this kind of debate in France for decades, especially to remind people not all non-brainless entertaining movies are Bela Tarr-styled.
But while in reality, the general audience knows this perfectly since the box office figures show independant quite serious movies being sometimes public successes too, when it comes to theorising it, you can easily see the manicheism there.
The price of a ticket and the ability to see many things at home but on smaller screens most likely indeed also influences the audience to choose their movies accordingly. $15 a ticket for a big screen ? Yeah, let's choose a very long and loud movie.

On Hitchcock : he doesn't really throw him under the bus. It's quite the opposite actually, since Scorsese reminds people you can do studio "franchise" and end up with movies that aren't only the children of a shareholders brainstorming.