Comic Book Films & TV

[livid]

I'd be really curious to know what the tipping point was because creative differences seems a bit odd for something that's been in the making with the same creative team for the better part of the last decade.

[Ant]

Bound to be something stupid like re-shots for 3D

[Skummy]

It's absurd to say that the "superhero bubble" doesn't exist, and that other genres don't go through the same thing. The horror genre was dead in the water for decades before Hammer Horror, for years again before the Exorcist, and again after that. You could say the same thing with romantic comedies, and just about anything else. Saying that superhero movies will never stop making money because they're making money now is like someone in the late '60s or early '70s saying that Ray Harryhausen's Sinbad movies would never stop being profitable, or someone in the '50s and '60s saying that Wild West movies would always be the be-all and end-all of Hollywood. Genre movies don't last. Everything has a shelf life, and it's extremely naive to assume otherwise.

To say "they might just scale back" doesn't work, because as soon as it becomes obvious that people are stopping going to see superhero movies, who's going to be willing to invest in them? And who's going to be willing to go and see a superhero movie that isn't a big budget blockbuster?

Yes, it's been going on since before the Dark Knight. Is anyone suggesting that the Dark Knight was the beginning of mainstream superhero movies? Personally, I'd say that the current trend began with X-Men, but could probably be loosely traced back to Blade.

They have stepped away from the campy and cheesy stuff to more grown up filming as shown by the Batman trilogy which is darker than 20 dead kittens in a cellar.

"Darker" doesn't mean better, and that's a trap that comic books fell into for an entire decade.

due to great quality control on the part of Marvel/DC,

"great quality control on the part of DC" is a sentence I never thought I'd read, so kudos for that at least.

[Benjamin]

The horror genre was dead in the water for decades before Hammer Horror

Er, no it wasn't. The Universal Monsters movies were the prevailing popular horror films for about 3 decades (if you include the Abbott and Costello ones), before Hammer Horror truly burst into stardom with Dracula. Horror has probably never been not popular.

The ones that you probably have a point on is the Spaghetti Westerns, which sort of died in popularity in the 70's. That had a lot of circumstantial things surrounding it that truly led to people not caring about it anymore, though.

[JasonM]

The horror genre was dead in the water for decades before Hammer Horror

Er, no it wasn't. The Universal Monsters movies were the prevailing popular horror films for about 3 decades (if you include the Abbott and Costello ones), before Hammer Horror truly burst into stardom with Dracula. Horror has probably never been not popular.

The ones that you probably have a point on is the Spaghetti Westerns, which sort of died in popularity in the 70's. That had a lot of circumstantial things surrounding it that truly led to people not caring about it anymore, though.

Like every director and their grandmother making a spaghetti western and flooding the entire god damned market with low-budget badly-acted flicks? Yeah that's pretty much a dealbreaker.

I also personally feel that ''horror'' as a genre isn't really up there anymore and has lost a lot of it's appeal. Tension buildup has been replaced with borderline-snuff and simple shock-horror. Stuff like SAW, Hostel, Final Destination and so on. There was a shock horror revival earlier last decade that went a few years, but just like with spaghetti's they just got killed bad due to terrible acting and oversaturation of the market.

Also, I fucking HATE shock-horror with a passion and they can all die a slow painful death (no pun intended). Give me The Shining any day of the week over that exploitative shit.

/rant

[Noah]

Ugh, is it after all of the credits?

Like, I got it the first few times, but at this point we know it's coming, do you really need to make us sit through the additional 10 minutes of names?

I just watched X-Men DoFP. Very few people left until the most important part of the credits(main cast names and such) was over but EVERYBODY bar me left pretty much as soon as they ended. I was the only one who waited all the way and the only one who saw the scene.

Heard one or two people complain saying like "Is that it?" "What did we wait for?" expecting any scene to have been right there after the initial bit of the credits.

The same thing happened with Winter Soldier as well. I was the only one who waited to see all the scenes.

Edited May 24, 2014 by The Rabbitman

[Noah]

By the way.....words cannot express how much I loved that movie.

I gave up my last chance to see ASM2(had a very short run in my local but was still in a cinema twice the distance away) and a chance to avoid waiting a couple of months to see Godzilla(it's in the further away cinema but wont be in my local untill probably July) to see X-Men immediately and I loved pretty much every second of the movie.

[Benjamin]

Aussies must be pretty terrible, because about 90% of my theater stayed for the end, and this was around 12.45 in the early morning.

The only person who was pissed at that was my girlfriend, by the way, who said "Those poor people that have to clean the cinema, having to wait so long for all these stupid people who stayed behind to see like less than a minute scene." Suffice to say she was not hyped for Apocalypse, although she loved DoFP herself.

[Noah]

That's funny Ben because I was thinking the same thing because both times with WS and DoFP the poor guys cleaning up after the movie would be trying to get in and I'd be there getting in their way.

[Skummy]

The horror genre was dead in the water for decades before Hammer Horror

Er, no it wasn't. The Universal Monsters movies were the prevailing popular horror films for about 3 decades (if you include the Abbott and Costello ones), before Hammer Horror truly burst into stardom with Dracula. Horror has probably never been not popular.

Universal's Monster flicks were biggest in the '30s and '40s, and business dropped off for all but the bigger titles by the mid-50s. When Hammer started making horror movies, and especially when they looked at doing stuff like Frankenstein and Dracula, the general consensus is that it was considered career suicide.

[Colly]

They just annoy me now, I tend to wait for the DVD.

[apsham]

Yikes. Edgar off Ant-Man is possibly a deal breaker for me as well. With the changes that they've made, I really had little faith in one of my favorite characters being given his proper due and Edgar was one of the few directors that I trusted to make it turn out alright.

[Maxx]

You say Ant-Man is your favorite hero, and I have to assume you mean Hank Pym, in which case that film was already way off track for you.

[apsham]

One of my favorite, and I already know about the changes made and mentioned my already low faith.

[GoGo Yubari]

Aaaaand now Drew Goddard has left Daredevil, which is not the news I wanted to hear 24 hours after Edgar Wright leaving Ant-Man. I imagine this has something to do with his involvement with the Sinister Six movie for Sony?

[Maxx]

Yeah, that's almost certainly what it is. Suuuuuucks. Go get Kevin Smith

Also, the comments in that article produced this gem:

Marvel is a studio that stifles creativity. It sends a wrong message to the industry about talent and that a unique vision is not required to earn massive amounts of money. All Marvel movies look and feel the same. They are all akin to a big budgeted TV series. Fuck Marvel Studios. They can never make anything as good as First Class or Days of Future Past because of this.

[TKz]

Man, I'm more bummed about that than Ant-Man. Care way more about Daredevil and the Netflix series than Ant-Man. I'm not even sure who could work as a replacement for that one.

[GoGo Yubari]

Goddard is staying on as an executive producer, Stephen S. DeKnight who did Spatacus is taking over as showrunner.

[TKz]

Works for me!

[zero]

Marvel is working hard to piss away all the goodwill they've built up. Here's hoping they don't go full AMC on us.