Despite Lead-in On Disney+, 'The Marvels' Bombs at Box Office (deadline.com) 245
Despite a six-episode Ms. Marvel miniseries on Disney+, audiences aren't turning out now to see the 16-year-old superhero's team-up with Captain Marvel on the big screen.
The Marvels earned $47 million in its opening weekend, reports Deadline, "the lowest ever for Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe," and $110 million worldwide, "which is also a bottom rung for the MCU and below the $140M we were forecasting." In regards to U.S. admissions, The Marvels came in per EntTelligence at 3.3M compared to other superhero bombs, The Flash's 3.9M and Eternals' 5.5M. By all accounts and by all sources, it's a disastrous result for a $200 million Marvel Studios movie... Months ago, who would have thought that Universal/Blumhouse's Five Nights at Freddys two weeks ago in a day-and-date debut on Peacock would post a higher opening at the box office ($80M) than The Marvels...?
The Marvels meltdown isn't about superhero fatigue. It's about Disney's overexposure of the Marvel Cinematic Universe brand on Disney+, and those moth holes are beginning to show: Keep what's meant for the cinema in cinemas, and keep what's meant for in-homes in the home. Meaning, this whole crossover streaming-into-film master plan isn't working, nor is it really connected in a jaw-dropping way.. The Marvels — with its crossover streaming series blah-blah — looks like it was built to be seen in homes, not to get audiences off the couch.
The Marvels earned $47 million in its opening weekend, reports Deadline, "the lowest ever for Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe," and $110 million worldwide, "which is also a bottom rung for the MCU and below the $140M we were forecasting." In regards to U.S. admissions, The Marvels came in per EntTelligence at 3.3M compared to other superhero bombs, The Flash's 3.9M and Eternals' 5.5M. By all accounts and by all sources, it's a disastrous result for a $200 million Marvel Studios movie... Months ago, who would have thought that Universal/Blumhouse's Five Nights at Freddys two weeks ago in a day-and-date debut on Peacock would post a higher opening at the box office ($80M) than The Marvels...?
The Marvels meltdown isn't about superhero fatigue. It's about Disney's overexposure of the Marvel Cinematic Universe brand on Disney+, and those moth holes are beginning to show: Keep what's meant for the cinema in cinemas, and keep what's meant for in-homes in the home. Meaning, this whole crossover streaming-into-film master plan isn't working, nor is it really connected in a jaw-dropping way.. The Marvels — with its crossover streaming series blah-blah — looks like it was built to be seen in homes, not to get audiences off the couch.
On the subject of padering (Score:5, Insightful)
Put a chick it in, and make her lame and gay!
I wonder if Disney is self aware enough to see what they're doing to their properties, watch SP, and say, "maybe we should try actually writing decent scripts and characters"?
Re:On the subject of padering (Score:5, Insightful)
the pandering will continue until box office receipts improve.
Re: On the subject of padering (Score:2)
Re: On the subject of padering (Score:5, Informative)
> They just make less obscene amounts of money.
EPS (TTM) 1.29
Forward Dividend & Yield 1.76 (1.74%)
For every share they earn $1.29 and pay shareholders $1.76. They pay out more in dividends then they earn. This is unsustainable.
The 4 Flops Of 2023 That Cost Disney $1 Billion
https://www.forbes.com/sites/c... [forbes.com]
https://www.disneydining.com/d... [disneydining.com]
Disney Tried to Save Money by Purging Streaming Titles, Loses $1.5 Billion Instead
https://insidethemagic.net/202... [insidethemagic.net]
Re: (Score:2)
> They just make less obscene amounts of money.
EPS (TTM) 1.29
Forward Dividend & Yield 1.76 (1.74%)
For every share they earn $1.29 and pay shareholders $1.76. They pay out more in dividends then they earn. This is unsustainable.
The 4 Flops Of 2023 That Cost Disney $1 Billion
https://www.forbes.com/sites/c... [forbes.com]
https://www.disneydining.com/d... [disneydining.com]
Disney Tried to Save Money by Purging Streaming Titles, Loses $1.5 Billion Instead
https://insidethemagic.net/202... [insidethemagic.net]
And 3 months of income from Walt Disney World pays for the entire Organization. At least that's what I heard in the early 1980s.
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And 3 months of income from Walt Disney World pays for the entire Organization. At least that's what I heard in the early 1980s.
Wow, because the world hasn't changed in the last 40 years...
Seriously, Disney reportedly lost over $1BN on failed movies - that $1BN has to come from somewhere, and if we were to dedicate the proceeds from admission tickets to the theme parks to paying that debt, it would take about 10 million park admission tickets to cover that loss (without one penny of revenue from those 10 million tickets going towards, you know, actually running the parks).
Disney averages about 10 million admission ticket sales per m
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A company that is led by members of the tribe cannot go bankrupt. It will always get more credit from the other tribesmen. They create money out of thin air via the Federal Reserve and fractional banking of everyone's money. And they will cross-finance sell / buy parts of "their" companies (companies led or owned by members) whenever they struggle to one another, so the newly created money is channeled into the parent companies to keep them afloat.
As long as money is being created out of thin air, with no thought to actual reserves (if the reserves at Fort Knox are even there anymore), companies under control of the tribe will always survive AND outperform companies NOT under control of them, until they are bought and integrated into this group.
Look how 90% of the media market belongs to 6 companies. The same with food and pharma. Tech as well. There's are reason why all the tech company icons are blue-on-white or rainbow.
Try the Heavy-Duty Foil on that Hat next time. Or add another layer or two, and maybe a cable into a Ground Stake to be sure.
Re: (Score:3)
with no thought to actual reserves (if the reserves at Fort Knox are even there anymore)
Apparently a "geek" that doesn't acknowledge the existence of modern monetary theory (MMT). "Value" is not stored in precious metals. The US gov't (and the world) does not operate on the "gold standard". We could not have the operating economy we have today without moving on from Austrian economics.
While I'm actually unhappy along with you with the excesses of monetary creation exercised by the Federal Reserve Bank, and then exploited by Wall Street and the US Congress, we're just not in 1930's Kansas an
Re:On the subject of padering (Score:5, Interesting)
Go woke, go broke!
That's an often-repeated mantra in conservative circles, but researchers have made statistics on movie revenue vs wokeness, and there's no correlation, whether positive or negative. What correlates strongly with movie revenue is simply quality. High-quality woke movies make as much money as high-quality, er, napy, nape... nope?... movies, ditto for low-quality ones on both sides. The issue with woke movies is, rather simply, that there are tons of them nowadays, and therefore also tons of low-quality ones, so of course there's going to me more failed woke movies than failed "nope" movies, which skews the perception.
To put it another way: if from every 5 movies, 4 are low-quality and earn little money or even lose money, and only 1 is high-quality and makes huge profits, and if in a year there are 100 woke movies but only 10 nope movies, then there's going to be 80 failed woke movies vs 8 failed nope movies, which gives the impression woke movies are ten times more likely to fail compared to nope movies (80 vs 8 failures), but in fact they're failing equally. Were there 100 woke movies and 100 nope movies, we'd be seeing the same 80 failures on each side.
Case in point, the wokest movie ever, Barbie, grossed almost $1.5 billion globally, being the 14th highest-grossing among all movies, and Warner Brother's highest-grossing movie ever. It's extremely high-quality, and despite having, if I remember right, not one, not two, but what feels like four or five full speeches on the evils of capitalism and patriarchy, it's really fun and enjoyable. Heck, the movie is so self-assured it not only fully embraces its wokeness, but it goes the extra mile and pokes fun at its own wokeness while affirming it even more.
Simply put, "go woke, go broke" is strictly false, no two ways about it.
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Or it could just be down to marketing.
Box office receipts for the past 8 weeks have been terrible, no doubt due to the lack of marketing from the strike (SAG actors were prohibited from promoting their movies).
That combined with pushing out new releases pretty much meant the studios were starting to see the effects of the strike which is why they started negotiating again. But given the movie really only had a chance at a few days of marketing, I doubt that could've done much.
The only reason conservative ci
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The director simultaneously believes ALL of those.
*shrugs* Sorry, but I don't care for the demonization left-wingers and right-wingers do of each other. This rhetoric is utterly boring and never, ever relevant, so don't waste your efforts trying to proselytize that nonsense on me.
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People do not grasp that billionaires cannot spend their fortunes to zero within their lifetimes. (They can "gamble" their fortunes away.) The accumulation of money at that level is not about acquiring "wealth"; its about acquiring "power".
While I am not a huge Elon booster (and that the Twitter acquisition was probably the most stupidly damaging financial transaction in history), to Elon, the acquisition of Twitter wasn't about being an investment for him; it was about him seeing Twitter as a dangerous f
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Put a chick it in, and make her lame and gay!
I watched the Disney+ series and if they were trying to tick any of the LGBTQ+ checkboxes, I missed it. The star [wikipedia.org] is Pakistani though, so racial issues are something of a plot point.
My partner's preteen nephew saw the movie yesterday and his opinion of the movie was just that it wasn't very good. I'd venture a guess that since his parents aren't racist or homophobic and kids tend not to overthink things as much as adults do, it was just not a well written movie. Disney has never been immune to releasing b
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I watched the Disney+ series and if they were trying to tick any of the LGBTQ+ checkboxes, I missed it.
It's probably like we saw with Star Trek: Discovery - people who haven't actually watched the show are parroting bogus talking points they heard from someone else.
In case people don't remember, there were multiple people here on Slashdot complaining about how Discovery featured a lesbian lead character and focused on lesbian plotlines - which, if you've watched more than two episodes from season one, you realize someone pulled straight out of their nether-regions.
Re: On the subject of padering (Score:4, Insightful)
I watched Discovery though season 4 (I think? The way they break it up is confusing as hell) and while the woke shit was heavily pushed (I can't say I recall ever seeing a bathroom scene in Star Trek before they had a gay bathroom scene, which was very lame by the way and felt like it added nothing at all) the problem I had with the show was the way it was nearly impossible to follow the story line between seasons because the arch just kept changing so drastically.
Also slashdot made a big deal about the nonbinary character in Discovery, and I swear that was the most lame character in the history of Star Trek. Even more lame than Kes. The human/trill they had for a few episodes was even more lame and the entire character arch for both was such a slow grueling bore fest that I lost interest.
If they want to do LGBT stuff, that's fine but do it in a way that doesn't bore the fuck out of the audience, especially over multiple contiguous episodes (I can't say I recall that they've ever done that with ANY relationships, gay or otherwise, until discovery) particularly when the seasons are short to begin with. And do it in a way that adds meaning to the canon of the show. Like the Rejoined episode in DS9, THAT was done well and in a very Trekkie way.
FWIW I thought the Janeway relationships in Voyager were boring as well, but they never dragged on forever and were at least directly connected to the main plot.
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DS9 did an entire episode where Odo learns to be suave so he can woo Major Kira away from who he perceived to be her boyfriend at the time. There also were a few episodes revolving around the relationship between Commander Worf and Lieutenant Dax. So yeah, Trek certainly has its share of relationship drama episodes.
Discovery was Terrible (Score:5, Informative)
It's probably like we saw with Star Trek: Discovery - people who haven't actually watched the show are parroting bogus talking points they heard from someone else.
Sorry but I did watch the first season of Discovery and it was a shit show from beginning to end: the lead character was a selfish arsehole who mutinied and got people killed, the warp drive was replaced by magic mushrooms, other characters were entirely 2 dimensional and often stupid and/or incompetent, the stories basically told you what you were supposed to think rather than try to make you think and the whole thing had such a dreary, negative view of humanity that it bore no resemblance to normal Star Trek at all. When the evil twin thing came towards the end of the season I thought that perhaps they might save it by making the lead character be the evil twin given her actions but no, they made the only vaguely competent and likable guy the evil twin. When the writing is so bad that you find yourself wanting the supposed villains to win then it's time to turn off.
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Discovery did spend a significant amount of screen time subverting the Bury Your Gays trope. [tvtropes.org]
That may be - but, if there's any trope that the lead character (Michael Burnham) falls into, it's that of the heterosexual woman who consistently picks problematic boyfriends. I mean, first it's the klingon dude who gets turned into a human, then it's the gullible empath who gets tricked into almost destroying the galaxy...
Re:On the subject of padering (Score:5, Insightful)
>"I watched the Disney+ series and if they were trying to tick any of the LGBTQ+ checkboxes"
Oh, they certainly are, with great regularity. Or with some other identity-politics.
And it isn't just Disney+, most of the stuff on Netflix and Amazon Video are the same. It is painfully obvious when they do it, and annoying as well to a lot of people. I wish they put as much effort into the actual stories.
>"I'd venture a guess that since his parents aren't racist or homophobic and kids tend not to overthink things as much as adults do, it was just not a well written movie."
I know this might come as a surprise to many, but one doesn't have to be "-ic"/"-ist/" (categories of terms incredibly overused and usually inappropriate nowadays) to not like identity politics or the mindsets surrounding them.
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Oh, they certainly are, with great regularity.
I was referring specifically to LGBTQ+ pandering in the Ms. Marvel series, of which if there was any, I totally missed it.
I know this might come as a surprise to many, but one doesn't have to be "-ic"/"-ist/" (categories of terms incredibly overused and usually inappropriate nowadays) to not like identity politics or the mindsets surrounding them.
That may be the case, but I was talking about a child's opinion of the movie. A young kid is generally not going to hate a movie specifically because it has gay or brown characters unless their parents hammered it into them that they need to believe that there's something wrong with those kind of people.
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>"I was referring specifically to LGBTQ+ pandering in the Ms. Marvel series, of which if there was any, I totally missed it."
That might be. I was responding more generally and not specifically to that particular identity politic or show. Sorry.
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The only thing i saw in the movie was *maybe* a random couple in a the deep background where both partners are (apparently) the same sex, and in my opinion, that's fine - it just broadens the scope of characters in the background, it doesn't hijack the plot line narrative.
Re:On the subject of padering (Score:5, Insightful)
"not checking any of the LGBTQ+ checkboxes"
How would you expect to notice, as you seem to be a member of their ecosystem (I liked the implication that the previous poster was racist and/or homophobic - I'm not sure which would be worse: if you did that deliberately, or if you didn't notice you did it)?
Hint: There are many flavors of woke*, the alphabet-array isn't the only one. Brie Larson's acidic anti-male toxicism is one, the MCUs cheerful replacement of legions of canonically white characters with characters of color is another. How about making Capt America a nazi?
*obligatory: "I bet you can't even define what you mean by woke, you alt-right Magaboy!" followed by a deeply Platonic argument over the nature of words because semantics is Left Playbook page 1. Or maybe page 2, after ad-hominem, which you also hit.
My favorite: Marvel's sales are shitting, their customers are telling them why....and Marvel "isn't sure that's really the reason". LOL.
https://ew.com/tv/2017/04/03/m... [ew.com]
I'd agree with you that the writing is shit and the stories are dumb. My main gripe is that they seem to believe casting some non-white character is 'enough' to replace a lack of plot.
It doesn't have to be this way; I'd point to The Expanse as a magnificent example of diverse casting that allows BOTH men and women, both white and nonwhite, to shine and excel and be interesting.
Re: On the subject of padering (Score:3)
Dead tree Manga sales are absolutely curbstomping comic sales in the US.
Re:On the subject of padering (Score:4, Interesting)
I saw the movie Saturday night, 8 PM screening, and there were about two dozen people in the theater.
The movie just wasn't very good. There was a lot of Sci-Fi BS being hurled about with literally no explanation, and the casting of all women leads was fine, it didn't come across as trying to tick gender inclusion boxes.
I walked out and had no idea what I had seen, I couldn't really describe the plot of the movie after watching it.
Granted, I am not a comic book fan, I go to the superhero movies (DC, Marvel, whatever) just for the spectacle.
Re:On the subject of padering (Score:4, Insightful)
Pakistani is a nationality, not a race.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:On the subject of padering (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if Disney is self aware enough to see what they're doing to their properties, watch SP, and say, "maybe we should try actually writing decent scripts and characters"?
They're trying to appeal to the super hero and Star Wars crowd. It's funny that you guys consistently blame poor writing when you've gobbled up garbage for decades. You're talking about an audience that thinks Iron Man is high art.
The problem is simple economics. Most filmmakers would be elated if their film had an opening weekend of $100 million. They're spending a ridiculous amount to produce these films and then they make too many of them. They've saturated the market to the point where they no longer become "must see" events for a sufficient amount of their audience.
What they're trying to recreate is the 50s/60s westerns. Audiences loved them and ate them up and it was easy to churn out formulaic scripts for them. But the key difference is that westerns could be made cheaply. There was plenty of suitable land nearby L.A., plenty of sets purpose-built for the genre, tons of available costumes, etc. This isn't about Disney screwing the pooch with the writing—the writing for this genre has always been bad and audiences tend to react negatively whenever it deviates from bad.
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Hey now! Let's give the 8th graders more credit then that!
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I completely agree, and I'm a big fan of several spaghetti westerns. The spaghetti westerns tended to be good precisely because they didn't know all the rules the Hollywood directors were following to churn out their formulaic crap. In many ways, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is to the western what Watchmen (the graphic novel, not the TV show) is to superheroes.
Interestingly, the spaghetti westerns also existed because economics were on their side. Rural Spain provided a perfect shooting location and the
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Stop rewarding them with attention and their games will fail, just as they have several times when there were creative resurgences.
It's about demographics (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't people see how simple this issue really is? It's demographics.
The market for superhero movies, science fiction and fantasy is still a majority male audience. It's always been that way, even if the ratio is narrower now. In the 80's it was probably 90% male - Now, maybe 70%. Visit any kind of sci-fi/comic convention if you want to verify it. Also they are majority white and hetrosexual.
People like a protagonist they identify with so if you want a diverse protagonist you're unlikely to get high box office returns.
Look at the evidence:
Success (White male lead): Ironman, Superman, Batman, Dr Strange, The Hulk, Conan, Robocop, Die-hard, Back to the Future, Predator, Matrix, Rick and Morty, Bill and Ted, Ghostbusters (original), He-man (original), Terminator, Star Trek, Scooby-Doo, Lord of the Rings
Fail (female/diverse lead): She-hulk, Black Adam, Ghostbusters (female), He-man (female), Velma
Of course there have been exceptions like Captain Marvel, Black Panther, Black Widow, Spiderverse (Miles) and particularly Aliens and Barbarella (and mixed-leads with strong supporting women) but the overall trend is still obvious - especially if you argue some of these female leads still play to male sexual fantasies. Hard to say if they would have done so well if the leading woman was old or ugly or didn't undress.
I'm not saying it's fair but you really have to be blind or hopelessly optimistic to expect this to change in our lifetimes. There's definitely a good argument for making male-dominated genres more inclusive but you just shouldn't expect blockbuster profits. Acting surprised every time a female-lead sci-fi bombs shows people don't understand the issue.
Re:It's about demographics (Score:4, Interesting)
No.
I'm a cis-gendered male and I had my butt in a movie-seat watching this one on opening day. I have no problem with the idea of a female buddy/superhero-movie. I was excited by the promos and early reviews promising that they made it colorful and fun.
It had colors. They didn't make it fun.
The problems with this movie have nothing to do with demographics.
It was simply written and directed poorly. It was a mess of plot holes and tropes thrown together without any sense of meaning and no catharsis. There were a few good ideas stuck in here and there, but never as more than a throwaway plot-device.
They did the characters and the actors AND the fans a terrible injustice. I walked out feeling very sorry for Iman Vellani having this as her breakout movie role. She leant a great deal of life to each of her scenes, but that simply was not enough. No actor could have rescued this train wreck. It needed a complete re-write. ...I'd say it needed a better director, but my understanding is that Disney screwed up so badly that the credited director actually left for other projects well before the movie was completed. So we'll never know whether Nia DaCosta was up to the task.
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Yeah but we're talking about a movie that just released and the opening weekend box office. It's too early for whether the movie is actually good to really matter.
For the opening weekend people will choose to go based on whether they think they will like it - and that has more to do with lead actors, setting/theme, previews and hype. If enough people are thinking they won't enjoy a superhero movie with a female lead then they're just not going unless they hear it's actually really good. It doesn't help that
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Protagonist OR antagonist. Frankly, a really well written antagonist is far more engaging than any hero could ever be.
Oh, he wants to save the world! Shocking! Yet a good villain has you even questioning whether he was the villain by the end of the movie, has you questioning who was right and who was wrong.
The closest they ever came to that was Killmonger, and of course they killed him off.
You want a great example of the hero/villain dichotomy that I'm talking about, go watch Farscape. Crichton and Scorp
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A hero as confident as Tony Stark without being abrasive is lame?
From your post it seems like you're a massive fan of the character, so maybe you don't realize it, but Captain Marvel was fairly abrasive and poorly written in her first film. Surprisingly it doesn't take too much to fix it, maybe a half a dozen to a dozen scene and dialogue tweaks throughout the film change the tone entirely and make her a much more pleasant character.
The initial fight with her mentor when she says she can't sleep at the start of the film is a good example. Cut this line "I was already sl
Re: On the subject of padering (Score:3)
Why can't they just stick to the basics and make it be more about the character than their super powers? IronMan and Batman are literally the only comic book heroes I've ever found remotely interesting because that's almost entirely what they rely on.
Re:On the subject of padering (Score:5, Insightful)
Lame? Arguably the most powerful of the Avengers is lame? A hero as confident as Tony Stark without being abrasive is lame? Someone who's sense of right and wrong is on par with Captain America's is lame? The sense of humor of Thor, the intelligence of Bruce Banner, and as hot as Black Widow is lame.
Yes, funny how that works, isn't it? You can ascribe all sorts of good qualities to your hero-- you can max out their character sheet, as they say in AD&D-- but at the end of the day, if the audience doesn't *like* your hero, you've got a "lame" hero.
The comparison to Tony Stark is worth examining. When Tony describes himself in Avengers as "genius billionaire playboy philanthropist"... it's a *comedic* line. (The audience laughed pretty hard when I saw it in theaters). The running joke is that Tony can be arrogant and full of himself, and that's fertile ground for comedy and for ensemble work. Other characters can react to Tony's arrogance in their own characteristic ways. (Captain America lectures him, Hawkeye rolls his eyes, Pepper makes fun of him, etc). And, of course, a core part of the Tony Stark character is that he's fully aware of how ridiculous he is; he's constantly making fun of himself.
I don't see that sort of self-awareness or self-mockery in the Captain Marvel character (at least not the one in the movies). As far as I can tell, she's not allowed to have any character flaws, so there's nothing for her (or anyone else) to mock.
lol (Score:4, Insightful)
I wondered who were the idiots who gave Disney $47 million for this trash and what they were thinking and to my delight you popped up.
"Lame? Arguably the most powerful of the Avengers is lame?" is the dumbest take on literature I've ever heard. You think that a fictional character is more compelling just because the made-up magical powers given to her are bigger than those of other fictional characters? You know what a "Mary Sue" is right? Well of course you don't.
"the actress for Ms Marvel was so full of energy and joy that it's a shame anyone skipped it due to her skin colour" assumes facts not in evidence. Her comic character has never been popular, the comics have been canceled over and over. There are many many Marvel characters who have been popular for decades who are brown, the reason her comics consistently fail is the writing is trash. Yes some reviewers said that they like the actress Iman Vellani (others said they found her annoying) but that's hardly going to bring people to see a movie costing $300 million to make.
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One of my issues with the Marvel's movie is that they violated simple laws of physics.
Really? I mean... Really?
I dont even know what this is (Score:2)
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Never heard of it... Loki is good show though make more like that.
I wasn't thrilled with the writing in the season finale.
spoiler alert
We find out that the temporal loom is actually a failsafe which automatically prunes all alternate timelines once it goes into meltdown. If that's the case, why have a TVA at all? Then, when Loki explains to Kang that he's going to destroy the loom, Kang again warns that this will result in a multi-versal war. Loki destroys the loom anyway, and inexplicably the timelines begin dying. Loki then uses magic to restore the timelines and dr
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I wasn't thrilled with the writing in the season finale.
(more spoilers)
I don't think I understood a single thing about the plot of Season Two. Even when I *did* understand the plot, it didn't matter, because the plot revolved around complex rules of made-up multiversal physics, and there was no way to predict that "Aha, if A happens, then that means B is going to happen". B might happen, but it was equally likely that C, D or (fill in the blank) could happen. And at the end... Loki can heal the multiverse by floating around in space and using green glowy magi
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... but it bothers me that so many people are going to dismiss it outright because their favorite talking head on the right wing told them what to do and how the think and they just kind of follow along with it
This point is strongly supported by the fact that all the aggrieved whiners across all of the social media outlets all have exactly the same take. Some use "woke" Some don't. But the crying doesn't vary, doesn't change, doesn't add anything, doesn't expand beyond the talking point.
Re: I dont even know what this is (Score:3)
I don't watch superhero movies to begin with (partly because watching movies featuring dudes wearing their underwear on top of their pants with a cape isn't my thing) so I have no dog in this, but if they're all talking about the same thing multiple times across many movies, it sounds like they probably do have a point, namely that the movies have become very formulaic. Maybe "woke" *is* the formula that Disney seems to be relying on, and it's getting old to the superhero underwear fans?
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Maybe "woke" *is* the formula that Disney seems to be relying on, and it's getting old to the superhero underwear fans?
Let's be honest, there's only so many ways you can dress up Hero's journey. [wikipedia.org] Eventually you do end up with heroes with their underwear on the outside. [pilkey.com]
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the DC character, AKA shazam
Which also was a pretty bad movie.
Bomb about Disney+? (Score:2)
I would have thought that based on the trailer and advertisements and the general lack of appreciation for Brie Larsen's character in the previous movies it appearing to be by all accounts a horrible movie would be the reason for it to bomb at the box office.
I've seen every Marvel movie so far. I may save this one though for when I'm either really really bored or really really drunk.
Re: Bomb about Disney+? (Score:3)
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It's bad.
It has cute kittens in it though.
That said, I agree, the Spider Verse productions are the best these last few years.
Cows and milk .. (Score:3)
They milked that cow dry so much it's giving powdeted milk now.
time to put that one on ice for a few years/decades.
Saturation isn't the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Saturation isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The problems started when wokeism was inserted into their movies and stories.
No. People who complain about wokeism simply default to it because they don't understand what does and doesn't make a good movie. There's lot of excellent "woke" movies out there. Hollywood has a long history of being "woke" and there are plenty of "woke" Oscar winners out there too.
The issue is bad horrible writing. Nothing more. You can insert woke agendas as much as you want, as long as they are competently written you can turn them into a decent movie. The issue comes when you either a) don't have the movie written for them (i.e. just substitute the male role for a female role in an action film), or simply have crap writers who do not understand what to do with a female / LGBTQ+ / any other role and come across as cringeworthy as a father in a 90s movie about the cyberspace.
You did however touch on a part of the problem, it's a shame you focused on wokeism because you said:
They really need to learn how to develop great characters
The real key was this here. You can make your movie as woke as you want. Providing your character is well developed, relatable, and above all actually develops further during the story line you won't even notice it was "woke".
Re:Saturation isn't the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
People who complain about wokeism simply default to it because they don't understand what does and doesn't make a good movie.
When people say woke, most often they mean, "In an effort to cram down a political agenda, the characters, setting, and plot have been compromised and the quality is significantly lowered."
Don't label those who disagree with you rubes or ignoramuses just because they have a point.
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"In an effort to cram down a political agenda, the characters, setting, and plot have been compromised and the quality is significantly lowered."
Ever see that scene in that one Transformers movie where one of the robots is swinging a pair of gigantic metal robo-balls between his robo-legs? If they're not pandering to one group, they're pandering to heterosexual teenage boys who think dick and fart jokes are the pinnacle of comedy.
The problem is that you're expecting high art from low-brow popcorn flicks.
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Work isn't when the political agenda is more important than the story. It's when the political agenda is instead of the story. The political agenda is all there is It is, literally, propaganda.
And it's become far, far too common in movies and television.
Corporations don't have political agendas (Score:2)
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And finally CGI means that they're often writing a movie around the CGI.
Also, the novelty of CGI has worn off. Take the original Jurassic Park for example. If you released something like that today it would probably be a box office bomb too. It's basically the plot of Westworld but with Dinosaurs.
Also Titanic. An hour and a half of a girl cheating on her emotionally abusive sugar daddy, and then another hour and a half of the boat sinking.
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People who complain about wokeism simply default to it because they don't understand what does and doesn't make a good movie.
When people say woke, most often they mean, "In an effort to cram down a political agenda, the characters, setting, and plot have been compromised and the quality is significantly lowered."
Don't label those who disagree with you rubes or ignoramuses just because they have a point.
You SAY that, like that's what you want woke to mean, but the person crying "woke" will then proceed to complain about the cast.
Not character development, the setting, plot points or quality.
100% of the time. Kinda like it's not really about the thing you say it is, but that sounds better than the real thing.
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If that gay, trans, polka dotted alien is an interesting character, I want to see it.
If its main selling point is that it's a gay, trans polka dotted alien, I don't care.
Re:Saturation isn't the problem (Score:5, Funny)
The problems started when wokeism was inserted into their movies and stories.
Like in the the 1994 Lion King movie, where an anthropomorphic animated meerkat voiced by an openly gay man, puts on drag and dances the hula?
Man, I bet that movie must've done terrible? /s
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I mean, except for the part where the vast majority of us probably didn't have a clue and you can get away with a lot more silliness in animations versus traditional film. Plus that character was a tiny part of the movie.
It's really not about characters being gay but rather they try to make that to be a big deal. If your character has real depth and is interesting and just so happens to be gay, no big deal. When your character is boring and underdeveloped and being gay is the best thing they had going for t
Re: Saturation isn't the problem (Score:2)
You'd have a point if he puts on drag throughout the entire movie and was moved into a role more resembling that of a main character. Then people would probably hate it for the same reason that JarJar ruined star wars episode 1 for a lot of star wars fans. Otherwise it's not much different from when the genie in Aladdin does similar things -- just typical Disney shit. Like randomly breaking into a song for example.
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The antagonist in The Little Mermaid was famously based on a drag queen too.
Most of those Disney movies are pretty messed up when you think about it. In Ariel she is 16, falls in love with a much older guy, literally the first man she has ever met who wasn't her dad. And then they murder her aunt.
In Aladdin, a teenage girl meets an adult man who starts their relationship by lying to her about who he is, and eventually they murder her uncle.
I could go on. The basic plot to most animated Disney movies before
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There are those who know exactly what the problem is and then there are those that go nah couldn't be that... it must be over saturation.
Wandavision, Falcon, Loki, What If?, Hawkeye and Moon Knight were all great. The problems started when wokeism was inserted into their movies and stories. They really need to learn how to develop great characters who just happen to be whatever the victim of the day is and focus on their greatness. People don't like being slapped in the face with it and have other choices on what to watch.
To be honest, the Eternals was one of their best movies in a while. So I think there's an anti-woke crowd avoiding decent content out of spite. And in this case the story is the terrible opening, which is 10% quality of the film and 90% the marketing campaign (which I honestly didn't even notice).
And the problem isn't wokeism, it more awkwardness when dealing with women and minorities. Like in Miss Marvel where Bruno is a white kid in high school who seemingly lives on his own and his highly integrated into
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I think theres more to it than just anti-woke-ness going on.
Im very "woke", but pretty much anything after End Game hasnt interested me - I had my conclusion, Im not really interested in a continuing universe of expanding storylines. I think the only film I have watched of the latest phase has been Guardians of the Galaxy Vol III, and that was for Rockets back story.
I'm done, I don't want more of the same universe, I was invested in those characters and now they are either gone or changed beyond their prim
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I think theres more to it than just anti-woke-ness going on.
Im very "woke", but pretty much anything after End Game hasnt interested me - I had my conclusion, Im not really interested in a continuing universe of expanding storylines. I think the only film I have watched of the latest phase has been Guardians of the Galaxy Vol III, and that was for Rockets back story.
I'm done, I don't want more of the same universe, I was invested in those characters and now they are either gone or changed beyond their prime.
Honestly, I thought End Game kinda sucked. After the huge buildup of Infinity War they followed it up with a clip show.
I think the format still has potential, I mean comics have been around for decades, but trying to force another all encompassing storyline was a mistake. How they should have handled the Disney+ mini-series was as a testing ground. Find new characters that work and build around those. Instead they planned 'The Marvels' before they showed the first episode of Miss Marvel, so when her series
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Can you define woke for me? Everyone has their own personal definition.
Re: Saturation isn't the problem (Score:2)
These are comic books character, some of them for decades, with the race gender and ethnicity remained intact. In a lot of ways the movies had town down the political messages a lot. The real issue isn't about being woke, but the fact they made female characters that we don't want to masterbate to.
I think the real problem with the Marvel Universe is it has been diverging from our reality for a while now. Iron Man seemed out of current events, Avengers then created a post NYC attack split from our history
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So you think the only shitty writing in these super hero movies is their lame pandering to various demographics? All these Marvel movies suck. They have always sucked. Every single one of them. It's odd you can only see the suckage when it panders to a demographic you don't like.
Do I think Disney pandering to certain demographics is sloppy garbage? Absolutely. But the super hero genre is just sloppy pandering to dumb Manichean nerds. The problem they've encountered with this super hero stuff going so mains
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LOL. Falcon was the wokest Marvel show that ever woked. This can't have anything to do with your particular prejudices, could it? Nah. Must be "wokeism."
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The Marvels meltdown is about franchise fatigue (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't seen a Marvel/DC/Star Wars movie in a cinema for over seven years & have utterly regretted the utter waste of time watching the few I have seen on streaming services.
Give us newly authored fiction & characters, not rehashed tropes from decades ago.
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"...not rehashed tropes from decades ago."
Or centuries ago.
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It's not even necessarily franchise fatigue, it's character fatigue. Same old characters being pulled around the block on the nose ring again and again, at some point you just don't give a toss about them anymore.
We had the same with Batman recently. Batman was the darling of the masses for a long time. Half a dozen movies within a decade and all of them hits, so that cow needed more milking. But at some point, there simply wasn't really any interesting story left to be told. We've seen all the interesting
As a MCU fan... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen every movie and Disney+ series. The trailers make me more excited about this movie than probably any since Spider-Man 3. But I'm not seeing it in the theater. Since I'm subscribed to Disney+, I can wait a few months and see it for free.
Admittedly, I'm not really excited about theaters in general, but also with so much MCU content these days, it's not like I've been anticipating this for years. Well, actually maybe a year, but my MCU fix has been distracted with all the other stuff coming out. That makes it much easier to wait for streaming.
Disney has a real problem here. They need the MCU content to drive Disney+ subscriptions. At the same time, too much new MCU content is detracting from the theatrical releases. I don't know how they can make it work right for them. Maybe slow down the streaming releases to six months? More likely they'll just put out less MCU content.
On the Star Wars side, they're not doing movies right now, so there's no conflict.
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Admittedly, I'm not really excited about theaters in general
The idea of actually having to go somewhere to watch a movie seems so damn archaic and wasteful, so that's also why I didn't see it. Seems like a decent enough dumb popcorn flick, but I'm fine waiting for it to hit Disney+.
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And then it kept going. And now they're acting surprised that I don't want to watch their epilogue epilogue epilogue.
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Iron Man was awesome, fresh, etc. Despite the typical 'vs Nega' boss battle at the end, it was a good movie. While the MCU has had quite a few good movies since, they've been continually tightening up the productions to match 'the formula'. The fight scenes bore me, there's no tension. They escalate everything to the point of ridiculousness and even 'the multiverse' can't stop the lack of respect for continuity ruining things.
Then there's the 'woke' stuff - and c'mon, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, &
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On the other hand, there's been decades of racism, misogyny, and homophobia in the movies I've watched over my lifetime, and I don't know how people took that for so long.
Not only that, but the people who were writing and acting in Hollywood productions had to hide who they were, too. DS9 even had an episode about this. [fandom.com] We're getting a lot of stories today where creative types want to see a reflection of themselves in their work because for the longest time, they couldn't do that.
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A related and important point is that it's always difficult to remember that I am not the typical moviegoer, so my reasoning isn't nearly as useful as the reasoning of someone who went to see a movie in the theater this weekend, and chose something other than The Marvels despite having seen other MCU movies in the theater before. Or even just the opinion of people who have gone to the theater four or more times this year. Maybe their thoughts are different. Or maybe there's no such thing as the "typical
Embarrassing Spin (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite a six-episode Ms. Marvel miniseries on Disney+, audiences aren't turning out now to see the 16-year-old superhero's team-up with Captain Marvel on the big screen.
What do you mean "Despite"? Ms Marvel was over a year ago, and had the fewest viewers of any Marvel series (even lower than She Hulk). Nobody watched it and nobody liked the video game she was shoehorned into.
Months ago, who would have thought that Universal/Blumhouse's Five Nights at Freddys two weeks ago in a day-and-date debut on Peacock would post a higher opening at the box office ($80M) than The Marvels...?
Plenty people thought it would bomb years ago, as soon as they were exposed to the writing quality of Phase 4 and 5.
The Marvels meltdown isn't about superhero fatigue. It's about Disney's overexposure of the Marvel Cinematic Universe brand on Disney+, and those moth holes are beginning to show: Keep what's meant for the cinema in cinemas, and keep what's meant for in-homes in the home.
Or maybe don't hobble yourself with an ideology that forces you to replace every leading male MCU character with a female version, and then wonder why you lose hundreds of millions when there no popular characters left to lean on.
A Black Widow movie could have been successful; why didn't you release one before she was dead?
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A Black Widow movie could have been successful; why didn't you release one before she was dead?
Further, I think they should have done that one as a prequel. Doing it as "somewhere in the middle of the movies already seen' is rough enough, and to try to focus on a story without powers is kind of weird in the middle of a continuity chock full of friends with powers, making it really weird that none of her friends helped.
knowing disney (Score:2)
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And don't you dare complain that the milk tastes funny, you homophobic monster!
The people have spoken. Is anybody listening? (Score:2)
Give people what they want and they'll pay money to see it. Don't, and they won't.
Taylor Swift's home movie [imdb.com] was the second-highest-grossing concert film before it even opened.
...laura
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Taylor Swift's home movie [imdb.com] was the second-highest-grossing
concert film before it even opened.
Because if you're in a relationship with someone who is a Taylor Swift fan, you're going to go see it with them regardless of your own feelings towards dragging your butt out to the cinema. Probably worth mentioning that Taylor Swift absolutely loves her LGBTQ+ fanbase [cnn.com], so you really can't play the "but this non-woke thing is popular! card.
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We know where Taytay stands on various subjects (e.g. Lavender Haze, You Need To Calm Down), but it's never intrusive. Her music comes first. Fans respect that.
I saw her in Seattle back in July. A spectacular show, worth every penny.
...laura
The M-She-U (Score:2)
Boring as hell (Score:2)
Remember when (Score:2)
Remember back in the 70's when you were a kid and it was Sunday at 8PM. Yep, "The Wonderful World of Disney". You always hoped it would be a cartoon special, but no matter what it was, it was good and worth watching. I can't imagine today's kids getting excited over anything Disney. No anticipation like back then, just churn, churn, churn out content no matter how bad it is, and it has been particularly bad lately.
StarWars is not any better (Score:2)
So It's Disney cookie cutter. It's lost it screenplay edge. Ashoka is borderline watchable with every episode bringing "oh c'mon!" sights from my fam. Mandalorian had ups and downs (the first season was a-ok, second on the wrong side of 'watchable').
Are the authors still on strike?
At Home vs Movie Theater (Score:2)
It's simple - Where would you rather watch something?
At home where you can pause it for pee breaks and eat great food, on the streaming subscription you're already subscribted to?
Or would you rather go out to a movie theater where you can't pause it, anything you eat will be more unhealthy and taste worst, you'll likely strain your neck to see things, have to deal with other people being rude and talking, risk covid/cold/flu and pay $$ for that experience.
Simply, once they started having same-day releases f
Re: garbage in garbage out (Score:2)
Good point.
Men want to see their hot wife/gf in sexy lingerie before pounding her. So Victoria's Secret cashed in by making it easy for men to order it, or for women to get hold of it as they knew what pushed their mens buttons.
No-one apart from a minority of chubby chasers , or Americans maybe because they have little choice ?, want to see some obese land whale or gayboy dressed up in lingerie.
Thus sales are tanking.
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Oh man, now I feel bad for liking the She-Hulk series. I don't want to be a woke feminist man-hater!
Shame really, as She-Hulk was a lot of fun. Witty dialog, didn't take itself too seriously, some great characters and characterisations (Titania, social media influencer villain ... loved the concept), and the series enjoyed turning a few of 'em on their heads (great what they did with Emil Blonsky/Abomination). I genuinely had a great time watching this series.
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Witty dialog
Jesus.
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It was second only to Velma
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Five Nights at Freddy's is doing really well right now. It cost only $25M to make, had a simultaneous theatrical & streaming release and is still raking it in at the box office considering it's production cost, $250M at last count. Barbie & Oppenheimer smashed it at the box office too. The problem is most of the recently released movies are just plain bad to mediocre and with insane production production budgets that make it really hard to make any money off.