Comment on To save the superhero movie, we need to bring back themes
Emperor@feddit.uk 3 days ago
the Age Of Aimless Intersecting Content
Having films serve the franchise, instead of doing the world-building on the side is definitely the problem. Cap 4 feels incomplete because it is - it’s merely a bridge between one piece of content and the next, which in turn will be a bridge to the next one and on and on. It’s done because it’s easier to do than come up with original ideas, especially when the studio demands a conveyor belt of content.
wjrii@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Beyond anything else, this is also what infected the Star Wars franchise, except there it was even worse because so much of the connective tissue was relegated to novels and comics. At least with Marvel you can keep up just via TV and movies.
Dumped into a new series of films that rehashes the first? Explain it in a bunch of mediocre books! Sequel that thinks that setup was boring (and tbf, it was)? Build up to it in a crappy comic! Petulant manchild takes the worst possible lessons from the first two? Set it up in a video game, lift the plot from old comics, and then tell your animation wunderkind that his entire live-action career will now be to “fix it.”
Disney owns the lion’s share of the blame for both franchises malaise, but fan culture enabled it by obsessing over everything, not insisting on tight storytelling (the number of online people who believe that no deleted scene is too awkward to be edited back in is… disconcerting), and whizzing their pants in glee with every easter egg or end-credits stinger. Honorable mention to Peter Jackson with the LOTR extended editions and ROTK’s eleventy-billion endings that (LOL) still somehow omitted the Scouring of the Shire.