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Topic: Scorsese’s Radical Attack on Marvel Movies
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Ed Gordon
Film Handler
Posts: 31
From: Mountlake Terrace, WA, USA
Registered: May 2019
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posted 11-07-2019 05:07 PM
In this article Richard Brody pulls together points of view and long term implications of how motion pictures are being made and shown.
A few quotes from the article:
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The synergy of streaming giants and concentrated franchise-bound studios represents a new and perhaps even more oppressive and totalizing centralization of movie production, an even more thoroughgoing corporate control of filmmaking and film distribution than what existed in the age of the almighty studios. Without mentioning Disney, Scorsese deftly casts some unambiguous and defiant shade in its direction. Disney, which is about to integrate itself vertically with the launch of its streaming service, Disney+, recently expanded horizontally, with the purchase of Fox; grave concerns have surfaced regarding its stewardship of the Fox catalogue (which, of course, reaches back to the nineteen-twenties and includes classics ranging from films by Ford and F. W. Murnau to ones by Terrence Malick and Wes Anderson).
As Matt Zoller Seitz recently reported in an indispensable piece at Vulture, Disney has placed stringent restrictions on the screening of classic Fox titles, granting primacy to nonprofit venues (such as Film Forum and the Museum of the Moving Image). Seitz paraphrases the remarks of one industry professional, who asked to remain anonymous, regarding Disney’s apparent motive: “Disney considers any screen that’s taken up by an older movie, even one that’s owned by Disney, to be a screen that could be showing the new Marvel or ‘Star Wars’ title instead. Or showing ‘Orangutans 4’ to an audience of three.”
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After all, the best movie of the decade (the envelope, please), Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” is far more than a study of financial chicanery and greed. It’s a story of desire and its framework: its rhetoric, its performance, and its transmission. Like a footnote to that great movie, Scorsese’s new essay isn’t a practical prescription; it’s a personal and profound vision of a social order distorted by greed.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-07-2019 09:20 PM
Hasn't it been a couple weeks since some of us had a discussion about this topic on Facebook?
To sum up what I said there: Scorsese is justified to cast very negative criticism at the movie industry's New Studio System. But Marvel movies are a very bad example to use in that criticism.
People say they're sick and tired of super hero movies. Like it not, Marvel keeps delivering on a pretty consistent basis. While those movies may not qualify as "art" to a few high brow film critics, most Marvel movies score very well on Rotten Tomatoes' Tomato Meter, typically in the 80%-90% range. Avengers: Endgame was well into the 90th percentile. Even more important, Marvel's movies keep raking in the box office dollars.
I think Scorsese would have done better to point out the far greater number of shitty sequels and re-makes. The big studios are so bent on doing sequels and re-makes that they'll make 8 fucking sequels of a bad horror movie that didn't even do well at the box office in the first place. The studios and their Wall Street overlords would rather do that than green light a production based on a new fucking idea.
The big studios based in the United States don't see the danger they're courting. People talk about how we're currently in a "golden age of TV." One reason why binge-watching TV series on services like Netflix has become so popular is that conventional Hollywood 2 hour movies have become so stale, tame and predictable. You gotta look elsewhere for fresh and edgy content. Netflix and Amazon have been upsetting a lot of established norms.
The movie industry is also a world-wide market. There's more than just Americans making movies. And if us Yankees become too fixated on repeating ourselves, thinking we can sell the same fucking ideas over and over again in re-used packaging, we won't have any right to be surprised if China, France, England or whoever comes along and bitch-slaps the hell out of us. The American movie industry is asking for it. Big time. It could be something far more Earth-shaking than what the British invasion did for popular music in the 1960's.
Given the purely shit term Hollywood studios have been dictating to American theater chains, I'm sure theater operators might eventually be open to booking some break-through content not controlled by the Mouse House. Of course, the US Government could turn into even more of a whore and completely reverse the Paramount Consent Decrees, allowing Hollywood studios to own and control theater chains again. I could actually see this happening if chains like Cinemark, AMC, Regal, etc get on the brink of failure.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 11-10-2019 12:57 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
...we won't have any right to be surprised if China, France, England or whoever comes along and bitch-slaps the hell out of us.
Can't see it happening. With France and China, you have both the language barrier and the fact that their film production industries are largely government-controlled and financed, with movies being made for political and/or cultural reasons, not in order to make money at the box office. In all my adult life I can think of precisely one French movie that was a big commercial hit in the UK and the USA, and made money, without any indirect subsidy from arthouse distributors and/or nonprofit theaters. That was Taxi, and it made money because its producers imitated the form and style of a 1990s Hollywood action blockbuster.
As for England, the output of its film industry has, since the 1920s, consisted either of gritty, realist, Ken Loach-style virtue signalling melodramas, or heritage movie TV adaptations (Downton Abbey, anyone?) that will go down well with the PBS crowd, but are never going to pack the 'plexes on a regular basis.
My gut feeling is that if Hollywood doesn't start to make the sort of movies that a large audience wants to see again, and pretty quickly, other centers of production will spring up within the USA to fill the gap in the market. We are already seeing the beginnings of that.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 11-11-2019 09:42 AM
quote: Leo Enticknap
Can't see it happening. With France and China, you have both the language barrier and the fact that their film production industries are largely government-controlled and financed, with movies being made for political and/or cultural reasons, not in order to make money at the box office.
Nevertheless the movie industry has gone deep into uncharted territory. A lot of old, established conventions could get up-ended. I'm not saying American theaters are going to get overrun with Mandarin language movies in English subtitles. On the other hand, Chinese companies have been funding a lot of "American" productions. Backers from the Middle East and other territories are involved. Those foreigners are getting wise to how the system works.
Then you have to consider the worsening raw deal big Hollywood studios have been sticking down the throats of American theater operators. The cinemas are already tired of eating big studio shit. I'm sure they would love it if credible alternatives with better terms came along. Hollywood acts like it has the only game around, but it's not going to stay like that. Digital technology is one factor. Production and posting studios popping up in places well outside Hollywood is another factor.
I'm hoping the glut of streaming service providers and glut of TV series and made-for-streaming movies will help create more American production companies and content distributors outside Hollywood. Movie and TV productions are all using the same kind of glorified video cameras and other gear. It should be possible for these upstarts to establish a back channel of sorts to get content onto movie theater screens.
quote: Leo Enticknap
My gut feeling is that if Hollywood doesn't start to make the sort of movies that a large audience wants to see again, and pretty quickly, other centers of production will spring up within the USA to fill the gap in the market. We are already seeing the beginnings of that.
Los Angeles is already a shadow of its former self in terms of movie and TV production. Initially the production exodus was driven by the need of getting out from under the thumb of the Teamsters and other unions. But lately it has been about other American states (and other countries around the world) offering better tax and financing deals. There is a shit-ton of movie and TV production taking place in Georgia that doesn't involve Tyler Perry. New Mexico has a great deal of production happening there. Texas has a pretty decent amount of activity too. Louisiana has been getting in on the act. Toronto and Vancouver are both major hubs of TV and movie production. And then there's the "American" productions that get shot over in Australia or New Zealand.
Here in Oklahoma people are trying to foster more TV and movie production in the state. This past Friday there was a cattle call in Oklahoma City and El Reno for some scenes in a movie starring Matt Damon. They were wanting people with oil field experience and offered additional bonuses if they brought their own vehicles or work trucks. But none of the vehicles could be white, black or red. Why are those vehicle colors an issue? Is that a color grading thing?
quote: Jarod Reddig
I look at the popular Marvel movies the same way I do the info-mercial industry. Just because millions and millions of people buy the stuff and spend their money on it, doesn't make it good. They are extremely formulaic and have a core audience in mind.
If Marvel's movies were that bad (or formulaic) they wouldn't be scoring very well on average with both movie critics and movie-goers. Marvel's movies aren't in any danger of winning top category Oscars like Best Picture. At the same time they're really not any more formulaic than most other movies being churned out by Hollywood distributors. If anything, Marvel's movies have to walk a delicate tight rope of being true enough to the original source material while maintaining a story line that runs through "phases" of multiple movie releases. And they have to be crowd pleasing too. Most other Hollywood movies can be cranked out directly from the Save the Cat! clip art template. They even change movie adaptations from books to conform to the rules of the Save the Cat! bible. Not enough book readers get pissed about those alterations.
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