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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27509 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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‘The Marvels’ Meltdown: Disney MCU Seeing Lowest B.O. Opening Ever At $47M+ — What Went Wrong

SATURDAY AM UPDATE: The last-minute push for The Marvels with an appearance by star Brie Larson on The Tonight Show and at a theater in NYC post-actors strike have not moved weekend grosses any higher for Marvel Studios‘ The Marvels. The film is seeing a Friday in the vicinity of where we expected it at $21.5M, and a weekend opening between $47M-$52M, the lowest ever for Disney‘s Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Oh, also, The Marvels gets one of several post-pandemic B CinemaScores from audiences after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (B+), Thor Love & Thunder (B+), Eternals (B), and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (B). Comscore/Screen Engine PostTrak exits are worse at 3 1/2 stars and a 73% positi

It's even worse after factoring in double-digit inflation since 2021 or so. Disney, however, is the master of 'Hollywood accounting' and squeezing every drop of water from a franchise installment, such as licensing or merchandizes for years after the movie is discontinued from theatres. Also the "Disney‘s Marvel Cinematic Universe" is comprised of 24 movies. Some of these movies are expected to be underwhelming or loss-leaders and are not given an equal marketing push. It's assumed that Iron Man sequels will do better than stuff like "Ant-Man and the Wasp".

Richard Hanania blames gender pandering/wokeness, but it's worth noting that the 2017 Wonder Woman did well ($800+ million gross total , $100+ million open) despite obviously having a female lead. Also, having a pretty (by conventional Western standards) blonde lead does not also fit into the wokeness paradigm either.

I think "wokeness" is the wrong way to think about what's happening.

It has more to do with women who have worked their way up in the entertainment industry with the help of some affirmative action and are now in important decision making positions.

As they approach the end of their careers they want to be remembered as groundbreaking feminists and give talks at women's conferences and that sort of thing. But they can't get much attention for that sort of thing if they are producing content that's mostly popular with males.

There are other contributing factors. Advertising driven TV networks produced content mostly aimed at women. Women make most household purchasing decisions, so they are what advertisers want. Subscriber funded content naturally has a more even male-female split. However the back catalog is more female focussed.

So the marketing numbers tell them to produce more male focussed content. The lady execs resent that and push back. It feels wrong to them.

There was that famous quote from an Amazon exec who complained that if they based their decisions on focus group results they'd make nothing but movies about white men with guns.

Which strikes me as false. I'm open to other races. I'm sure they could find an American Chow Yun-fat.

Sci-fi / fantasy genre content has another issue. Making content nerdy men enjoy feels low status. After a few comic con panels they want to try to attract young women.

There also seems to be a thing where men who have daughters start wanting to make their content more appealing to young girls. However they overestimate the crossover appeal of their stories and end up producing things no one wants.

Wonder Woman is a hyper sexualized Amazonian played by the top model of Israel who wears skimpy clothes while being a bad-ass and falling in love. It is literally the opposite of woke. Her rogues gallery (villains) are also women and she was never gender swapped.

A strong woman != woke movie.

If wonder woman had been made in the 90s, it would not have been THAT different.

An interesting specification here:

a pretty (by conventional Western standards) blonde lead

Is the detail in the brackets really necessary? Is there really any hetrosexual man who wouldn't, in his heart of hearts, grant that this woman is at least "pretty"?

I mean perhaps there are some freaks who'd demur - but they'd simply be wrong. This is "pregnant people" hair-splitting.

If the word "pretty" means anything, and if there are any moral/æsthetic truths at all, then it's just simply true that this actress is "pretty".

To my eyes, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is physically attractive enough that she could transition directly into modelling/influencing at the end of her term in office with no loss to her income. While Zendaya is by no means the most physically attractive actress of her generation, I have a hard time understanding how anyone could find her ugly. And yet, I've seen hundreds of memes and jokes about how both of these women are ugly - not merely "mid" or "not as hot as they're made out to be" but actively ugly - usually taking the form of asserting that AOC has a "horse face" or representing Zendaya using the "mutt" wojak. It's baffling to me, but there you go. Not quite as baffling (but in the same ballpark) are those people saying that Margot Robbie is "mid", when to my eyes she's easily one of the most beautiful people alive, even speaking as someone who doesn't normally go for the blonde blue-eyed type.

Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder I guess.

I've also never understood the "Zendaya is ugly" thing (I haven't even really seen people call AOC ugly that much). Most people arguing it seem to mainly refer to still images of her from "Dune", a movie where she's deliberately portraying a somewhat unkempt desert nomad.

Of course, many claiming this are the sort of lady-doth-protest-too-much white nationalists going "Well, I CERTAINLY would never find a nonwhite attractive! Not me! That's something I would never do! I consider them all ugly as sin and none of their women would certainly cause me to pop a boner!"

They also played down her looks for a lot of scenes in Spider Man Homecoming because they wanted her to be more of an outsider type.

She got her start as a child model and she definitely has a look better described as striking and distinct instead of bombshell.

There are women where a certain number of men will find her very attractive but another group of men will find absolutely hideous. See this blog post about the mathematics of beauty.

Data is a bit old and from OkCupid blog, but this shows there are men that would rate women a 1/5 even if in my opinion they are fairly average. These same women get a lot of men that would rate her a 5/5. It goes on to show that being divisive on how attractive you are is an advantage compared to being a 7/10 to everyone (at least on OkCupid circa 2010s).

It's also possible that a lot of the people calling AOC/Zendaya ugly are influenced by their personal dislike of the individuals rather than by actual attractiveness of the two.

It's also possible that a lot of the people calling AOC/Zendaya ugly are influenced by their personal dislike of the individuals rather than by actual attractiveness of the two.

That was my assumption. Sort of the mirror image of leftists who deny that Elon Musk can possibly have any good qualities whatsoever because they dislike his politics.

I read it as saying that it's evidence of non wokeness that the lead is pretty and blonde, not in some interesting, scissor kind of way that heterosexual men have mixed feelings about (but people generally enjoy watching act) like Sarah Jessica Parker or Tilda Swinton, or in a clearly Very Pretty and rather charismatic way, like Scarlett Johansson, but in a conventionally, even generically pretty way.

For instance, an article that starts out talking about how nobody recognizes Bri Larson in person https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/a43340909/brie-larson-captain-marvel-interview-2023/ "'I don’t get recognized,” she told comedian Mike Birbiglia on an episode of his podcast. “I get ‘Are you friends with my cousin?’ I am the classic face of ‘friend of your cousin.’ ”"

Maybe I'm weird, but the knowledge that someone holds me in contempt takes a big chunk out of my aesthetic appreciation of them. Plus, maybe this is my bias talking, but she never looks happy or joyful in any of the photos I've seen of her. People in general are more attractive when they're happy than when they're scowling.

I wouldn't call Brie unattractive, but I definitely don't find her attractive for precisely the reasons you stated.

She was quite comely in Kong: Skull Island, lol

it's worth noting that the 2017 Wonder Woman did well ($800+ million gross total , $100+ million open) despite obviously having a female lead.

Woke is defined by presentation, not by having a female lead. Also, the female lead in Wonder Woman is Israeli and Jewish which the woke have really mixed feelings over (as has recently become obvious).

got dogpiled so badly here. even SBF got easier treatment at his trial. I dunno. I feel like if this were 2020 and I made this same comment few would have disagreed so strongly. I am not even sure what people are disagreeing with. i thought my commentary was unopinionated and was not expecting such strong rebuke. feels like a minefield posting here lately.

There's been a lot of heavy news and discussion about Gaza lately. I think there was an appetite for something lighter and you just stumbled into it with some pop culture discussion.

I think the reference to Wonder Woman as a counter argument to the claim that gender pandering/wokeness is killing movies suggests that Wonder Woman is a gender pandering, woke movie, which implies that you think wokeness isn't a leading cause of the failures of the recent movies.

Maybe Wonder Woman is a gender pandering, woke movie (I haven't seen it), but is it as woke or pandering as the movies that are failing today?

There does seem to be a general societal trend against wokeness nowadays. Maybe people are looking to bash anything woke so anything that might go against that narrative can cause more friction that it would have years ago.

Probably should also take into consideration that the economy was doing much better in 2017 and superhero movies were in general doing well. Except for Barbie and Oppenheimer, I'm struggling to recall a recent movie that did well, so perhaps the movie industry as a whole is struggling right now.

Yeah. Woke is not casting a female. Woke is casting a female lead and then making her perfect and the villains exclusively male.

That's just one form of Mary Sue. It's not actually woke until the character herself points this out.

I’ve seen it. The first half felt, I kid you not, just like watching the local college women’s basketball team.

My family loves the Lobos of the University of New Mexico. I’ve gone to many games at The Pit, our basketball arena, and watched both men and women play. With the men, it’s about the almost martial precision as they dribble, shoot, pass, and execute plays. With the women, it’s about watching them put in the effort and the emotion, feeling their drama as they play.

The Marvels is a superheroine movie, a different beast than its spear counterparts. The emotions are more important than the scenarios; issues of identity, status, duty, wants and fears are what matter. Kamala is a teenager worried about her family, Carol is an unaging guilt-ridden mess, and Monica is an orphaned grownup working through her grief. Their punches and zaps don’t hit as hard, though that may be the directors’ fault. They want to convince, not to fight, but their appeals aren’t to logic, they’re pleas of emotion.

They’re, quite simply, beta Avengers in a made-for-TV movie trying to be postmodern and flailing back into modernity for money shots.

It’s worth sitting through the first half to get to the second half. Ironically, it’s when they get to the Bollywood planet that things come together. Once that fight finishes, however, the movie seems to delight in swapping them into other scenarios where their swift action is necessary, making the point that women’s lives are all about multitasking. Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury stuck in Earth orbit but available by ear comms makes the whole thing Charlie’s Avengers.

(Culture war angle: the villain looks uncannily like VP Kamala Harris.)

All in all, I watched it for the Marvel continuity, and enjoyed it, but I was moved more by the movie I watched directly afterward: Five Nights At Freddy’s.

Out of curiosity, what movies would you say capture that male, high-octane, martial precision?

I didn't think of it in these terms, but I think DuplexFields captured exactly what I was feeling when I watched The Matrix: Resurrections, compared to the original The Matrix, vis a vis the action scenes. The first film was full of that high-octane martial precision, famously so. Almost down to the individual punch, each action of each character in each fight scene seemed like another paragraph in the story being told, holding intent and purpose that communicated the flow of how the particular fight was going, what emotions the combatants might have been experiencing, what sorts of risks and rewards they were seeking, etc. The soft reboot, directed by one of the two original directors, had none of that, and the fight scenes looked like little more than people waving their hands at each other while explosions went off in the background, along with super-ugly slowmo.

Now I'm wondering how much, if any, of the transition of the gender from male-to-female of the one director who directed both films played into this. The soft reboot also didn't hire the same martial arts choreographer (or perhaps any martial arts choreographer? I don't recall) that they did for the 1st 3 films, which obviously must have played a factor, but that just moves it back a step of why did the director decide that she wanted her Matrix film not to make use of an martial arts choreographer, or was okay with putting her name on the film if she was prevented from hiring one by executives?

My interpretation of Matrix 4 is that it's a giant FU to the Hollywood exec who came up with the idea to make one. The hints aren't exactly subtle. From that perspective it's no surprise they were half-assing the fight. Other than the fights Keanu Reeves looks like he was specifically directed to look like he doesn't care, and doesn't want to be there.

I'll recommend the Chris Hemsworth Extraction flicks.

I remember reading that Hemsworth was tapped for a US adaptation of The Raid films. I didn't think it would work because American fight choreography wouldn't capture the appeal of silat.

Suddenly I'm watching a prison fight in Extraction 2 that feels very similar to Raid 2's. And it works! Sure, the protagonist has merc gear and guns, and it dodges direct comparisons to the Indonesian films since it's not an adaptation. But without knowing anything about Extraction's production history, it feels like vestiges of the old pitch made their way in.

I was specifically thinking of the gold standard in cape flicks, the big Iron Man/Thor/Captain America fight in Avengers, although the fights in Iron Man 2 choreographed by Genndy Tartakovsky are tremendous. I could pick through a half-dozen good Marvel fights with high stakes and high emotions with good choreography.

The first fight in The Marvels had a lot of spectacle, but like Black Panther 2’s big fight, it just became too over-choreographed, dance-like, and blatantly stuntperson-reliant, and the cameras were zoom-and-pan messes. The second fight was CG-heavy and bounced between several sites, and with better direction could have been a classic Marvel fight.

Inception. Any Christopher Nolan movie really. People say he can't even write female characters.

Mad Max: Fury Road?

Master and Commander?

Crank 2: High Voltage

Fury Road was exactly what I had in mind. Or maybe something like Bourne Identity or John Wick.

I still haven't seen Master and Commander, actually.

I still haven't seen Master and Commander, actually

2003 saw the release of two big naval films, Master and Commander and Pirates of the Carribbean. It is a sad indictment of our fallen world that Master and Commander stopped at 1 film (despite having a huge amount of written book plots that could easily be turned into movies) while Pirates of the Caribbean became a huge franchise.

I guess I'll just leave people with this...

In some ways I think it's better they didn't make a millions sequel movies. Knowing how cinema developed now, there's a decent chance they would have ruined what is truly sublime source material.

With respect to your link, the score and sound were top notch. I'm still impressed how much justice they did to the role music plays in the books. Midshipmen Geoghegan appears something like three times in The Yellow Admiral, but I still think about his tragic death whenever I hear the Oboe Quartet.

I still haven't seen Master and Commander, actually.

Worthwhile. It's like a manly and warm-hearted 19th British century writer, such as Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, or Rider Haggard somehow travelled through time and made a big budget film, with a talented cast and astounding craftsmanship by the crew.

Master and Commander is so effortlessly high quality it makes me weep remembering it was basically an “average” excellent movie that we simply took for granted that we would be treated to up to a dozen times a year for like basically 15 years between 1993 - 2008.

It’s also, hilariously, completely bereft of female dialogue. I find it to be a very funny coincidence but frog twitter and their world see it as a sign akin to a burning bush.

It’s fucking rad, A+ would recommend.

Watched it. Liked it overall, but I just can't get myself to like Russell Crowe. Not sure why exactly. I'm somehow under the very vague impression that he's too full of himself and not half the actor he thinks he is, but I can't actually pinpoint why I see him that way.

Still, nice movie. 1 out of 1, did not regret giving two irreplaceable hours of my finite, fleeting life for it.

You gotta watch it. If only for the hilarious french accents.

The main problem, other than the general trend lately of MCU movies losing steam, is that the first one wasn't any good. Nobody walked out of that theater wanting to see more of Carol Danvers. This simple fact was extensively covered-up. With Rotten Tomatoes changing it's rules not once, but twice in order to prop up the audience score.

Yeah the first one was awful. Jude Law was atrocious in that movie, and I usually like him. I think that was the last Marvel movie I saw in the theater and stopped because I hated it so much.

despite obviously having a female lead.

Nobody has a problem with "a female lead". Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley were anchoring movies before I was born. Nobody had a problem with Black Widow. Nobody was annoyed by the original Charlie's Angels movies, even if they hated the recent woke abomination

I would say the problem of "wokeness" is beyond that now. Things like Rachel Zegler's comments on Snow White or the replacing of the dwarves had nothing to do with the mere presence of women in a fairy tale about a woman. It often just feels hostile to the existing IPs, general beloved tropes and stories and even the legacy audience (which matters since they drive hype)

That sort of wokeness applies in two ways here: Brie Larson is seen in a similar light as Zegler by the sorts of males who love this shit and (more importantly) the original movie was "woke" in the sense that Larson's character was so bland (most of her struggle being essentially against social forces telling her she's not good, fitting wokeness) that there's nothing to be loyal to. Middle class people will go watch that movie when they're told it's The First , and it's right before Endgame. But they don't love the character the way people love Stark or even Black Widow and so they have no reason to stick with her when the MCU's brand is collapsing.

Besides that, the problems are:

  1. This "phase" is dead so there's nothing to be excited for. Between Ant-Man fumbling Kang and Johnathan Majors allegedly beating women right around the time two movies of him being an intimidating boxer were in theaters it's clearly going to have to be rejiggered. So what's there to be excited about?
  2. Too much Disney+ material fatigues people.
  3. Audiences know they can get mediocre Marvel movies on Disney+ eventually, especially since they're no longer event movies due to the first two points.
  4. Feige clearly seems stretched thin by all that extra material he needs to produce, and Marvel's ad hoc style (decide after we film) apparently doesn't work if someone doesn't have their hands around everything.

I would say the problem of "wokeness" is beyond that now.

"Woke" is them not making the movie you want, but the movie they think a better person would want, on the theory that their audience will live up to their expectations.

Nobody had a problem with Black Widow.

Black Widow - Clumsy, Dumb and Disappointing

Black Widow is AWFUL | Marvel's Second-Worst Movie

Black Widow: An Unbridled Catastrophe

Nobody had a problem with Black Widow in the original run of the MCU. Her movie was quite woke and legitimately awful.

Fair enough. I spoke too strongly. Let me correct...a Black Widow led movie wasn't that controversial as a concept.

The problems with the film we got was that it was too late , it was derivative (the ending was basically The Winter Soldier) and it frankly sucked beyond the actors' charisma.

I only watched the first link to conclusion and The Critical Drinker, who is one of those anti-woke guys, basically says as much: it's disappointing because he actually wanted a good movie. Not true for a lot of "woke" stuff that crosses his path. I'm inclined to believe him because his reaction to the trailer was negative, but a lot of that was because of the tardiness

Too much Disney+ material fatigues people.

It's clear Loki and the Wanda thing should have been full feature films, I guess they had to "degrade them" into being tv shows due to covid?

Marvel plans it's films/movies five years out. These were effectively finished pieces before Covid happened.

Worth noting this same general timeline is abused to make it seem that Bob Chapek is responsible for the Disney flops that were well underway when Iger was still in his first run as CEO.

I think at least Loki was always planned to be a show. A lot of content was mandated to get Disney+ going as a Netflix competitor. Why not go with Loki, who is one of the second-stringers with a fanbase?

They overestimated Disney+, something I was pretty sure of at the time. It flattens out Disney's product line putting classic Cinderella on par with Brandy's Cinderella or Little Mermaid with Little Mermaid 2-4. There's no distinction between television, direct to DVD and big budget film projects. They screwed the pooch on planning and execution and IIRC, this is mostly under Bob Iger's leadership.

It's insane that Iger caused a huge mess, ducked out for a break during COVID and is now coming back as savior.

He's also to blame for the entire Star Wars fuck-up.

Disney/Marvel's current predicament is best expressed by describing their post-Endgame plan.

  • Drop all of the well-known characters who are portrayed by popular actors.
  • Ignore most of the established continuity that normal people will recognize and remember from other films.
  • Replace the well-known characters with obscure, unlikable characters.
  • Replace the popular actors with cheap actors that fill out the DEI bingo card.
  • In an effort to lower the barrier to entry (and thus cost) for new writers, throw away existing continuity with something something multiverse something something.
  • Create dozens of low-budget tie-in properties and make the entire edifice look like a massive effort to follow.

Suddenly, in 2023, Disney is surprised that people don't want to spend a ton of time and effort to watch movies:

  • That may or may not jive with what they know
  • Starring actors who acted in a soap opera and a cereal commercial once
  • Are written by bargain-bin writers
  • About characters who aren't interesting
  • That probably won't make sense without watching 40+ hours of content on Disney+ for $14.99/month.

Is anyone surprised that sales are down?

On a related note - where was that movie even marketed? I'm not the most "hip" or "plugged in" person, but even I knew that movies like "Avengers" or "Iron Man" were being released. When a friend of mine first told me about "The Marvels", I thought that it was a soon to be released streaming TV show. That's probably a sign of an absolute marketing meltdown.

The sequel came too late, Captain Marvel (female version) was too obscure a character, Brie Larson went around shooting her mouth off after the first movie and made it actively unpleasant to even contemplate watching, and when they finally released it, it had been downgraded from the sequel to Captain Marvel to "The Marvels" which was (1) a character you probably didn't like from the first movie (2) a character you probably didn't remember from the small parts she had in the other movies and (3) a teenybopper from a Disney+ TV show you may have watched. Or not.

The irony here is that the audience which is going seems to be predominantly men, but they've failed to get the Young Female Demographic they may have been going for. I haven't watched any of the Marvel movies in so long that I was honestly shocked to learn they had killed off Iron Man. An understandable move because the actor would be too expensive to cast in new movies (as well as aging out of the part), but a stupid move because the characters that comics fans know and want are Iron Man, Captain America, and so on.

Not "So she used to be Ms. Marvel, but when Captain Marvel became Shazam, now she's in his boots and Ms. Marvel is now a teenager and it's all different and worse".

Disney and Marvel Studios went one too many times to the well, and milked the cow dry (to mix my metaphors). The golden goose has stopped laying. They need to give it all a rest, then come back in a couple years and reboot with a new Iron Man (but please God don't update too much and make it bad). Find a halfway decent actor to replace Robert Downey, write a script that isn't "Rings of Power" level stupidity, and ditch the cheap costuming and awful CGI. If the movie looks cheap even though you spent the GDP of a minor European nation on it, nobody is going to like that.

a stupid move because the characters that comics fans know and want are Iron Man, Captain America, and so on.

I think the issue was a bit different:

  • Iron Man, etc. became popular because of the MCU movies. Back when Marvel was broke, they sold off the movie rights for all their most popular characters (Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic 4, Hulk), and Iron Man and Captain America were the most popular out of the ones they had left.
  • Captain America wasn't even popular in the first 2 movies he appeared in. I remember in the Honest Trailer for The Avengers[1], they called Captain America "no one's favorite character". He only got popular after The Winter Soldier came out because that movie was really good.

My point being, the MCU could have been just fine without Iron Man and Captain America. They made those characters popular, so they could have done the same thing again—introduce some new characters to the film-going audience and make them compelling. The problem wasn't that they brought in unknown characters, it was that they didn't make those characters compelling.

[1] This is a tangent but re-watching this video reminded me of how when they switched from their old narrator (who does this video) to the new one, tons of people complained that the old one was better. Which was crazy to me? The "new" narrator (not really new at this point, he's been doing it for >10 years) sounds like an actual movie trailer narrator, the old one sounds like a guy who can do a decent impression of a movie trailer narrator.

The irony here is that the audience which is going seems to be predominantly men, but they've failed to get the Young Female Demographic they may have been going for. I haven't watched any of the Marvel movies in so long that I was honestly shocked to learn they had killed off Iron Man. An understandable move because the actor would be too expensive to cast in new movies (as well as aging out of the part), but a stupid move because the characters that comics fans know and want are Iron Man, Captain America, and so on.

Random aside: given that the MCU audience is and will almost always be mostly male, I'm wondering if there's an alternate universe where The Marvels film was more like a Charlie's Angels wearing a Marvel skinsuit. You've got 3 young women as heroines, along with Nick Fury who's been the "Charlie" sort of figure for the Avengers for a long time already, and the MCU franchise is already known for its rather irreverent sense of humor. What if they'd leaned into that and sexified the ladies, maybe it would've been more successful. I'm pretty sure Cameron Diaz doing booty dances in her underwear helped sell the Charlie's Angels film to men, who knows what Brie Larson doing the same could accomplish.

And on Iron Man, I had thought Iron Man had become so popular because of the MCU, and so perhaps Marvel thought they could elevate another hero from their comics to take his place? As someone who wasn't big into superhero comics, pre-MCU, I would've said Iron Man was probably a tier below Captain America in terms of stature or popularity, who in turn is a tier beneath Superman and Batman (with Spiderman and X-Men probably flirting with both tiers). Still, that's several tiers above characters like Ms. Marvel or even Captain Marvel, I suppose, whom I had never heard of before the film or TV show.

They need to give it all a rest, then come back in a couple years and reboot with a new Iron Man (but please God don't update too much and make it bad).

That makes sense, but it might not make sense financially for them. They seem to have planned on the assumption that comic book movies and Star Wars were IPs that would keep paying dividends every year. Can they afford to leave those fields fallow?

If they're blowing huge budgets on movies no-one is coming to watch, it makes more sense to find out what is the new up-and-coming popular genre. Horror? Romantic comedies? Chick flicks? Good old fashioned action blockbusters?

Then again, they can always cancel movies for the tax write-offs, as Warner seems to have done. Allegedly (but who knows?) this movie had good previews so should have been successful if released, but they needed the tax breaks much more:

In another maneuver by the David Zaslav-run Warner Bros Discovery to kill movies, we hear on very good authority that Warner Bros will not be releasing the hybrid live-action/animated Coyote vs. Acme, with the conglom taking an estimated $30M write-down on the $70M production. We understand the write-down for the pic was applied to the recently reported Q3.

This reps the third time that Zaslav’s Warner Bros has pulled the plug on a movie greenlighted by the previous Warner Media administration, the other two being the Max-destined Batgirl and the animated Scoob Holiday Haunt!

The difference here is that Coyote vs. Acme is a completed movie with very good test scores, 14 points above the family norm. We’re told that the cash-strapped Warners finds that it’s not worth the cost to release the film theatrically or to sell to other buyers (and there are parties who are interested for their own streaming services; we hear Amazon kicked the tires). After reporting a mixed third quarter, the best means for Warners money is a tax write-off. At one point, Coyote vs. Acme was dated for theatrical release on July 21, 2023, before getting pulled; that date was taken by Barbie, which went on to become Warner Bros’ biggest hit of all-time at $1.4 billion worldwide.

All that being said, I had to laugh as I read this review of The Marvels, given that it's bombing at the box office.

A Cosmic Triumph Grounded In Sincerity And Humanity

The Marvels ignites Phase 5 of the MCU with an emotional sincerity and vibrancy that penetrates through the formulaic façade of much of Phase 4’s offerings. Every facet of the production — from the thoughtfully designed costumes to the immersive set pieces — feels meticulously crafted, a far cry from the often over-relied-upon CGI of its predecessor.

At the heart of The Marvels is a trio of realized heroines. Larson’s Carol Danvers is afforded a complexity and depth that showcases Larson’s acting range, delving into the hero’s cosmic journey and the dual impact of her actions — both the lives she’s touched and the unintended damage she’s caused. Parris’ Monica Rambeau exudes charisma and nuance, while Vellani’s Kamala Khan brings a refreshing innocence and humor to the table. Together, they transcend the contrived “girl power” narrative, instead shining through the strength of their individuality and agency. This authenticity extends to the soundtrack, which eschews on-the-nose anthems for a more nuanced score that resonates with the narrative core.

Uh-huh. I thought (but this is just impressions from the trailers) that the costumes looked cheap, dull, and plastic; the characters were kludged together with no reason why they're linked, and the movie can't figure out if it wants to take this seriously or be a comedy (jellyfish on her head, really?) and ultimately, nobody cares about the characters. I don't care about Photon, I don't care about Ms Marvel teen superheroine, and I certainly don't care about Captain Marvel.

That excerpt looks like AI written content (I'm expecting a "It's important to note that" or "In summary, Libya is a land of contrasts" at the end of the review) but I suppose LLMs like ChatGPT were trained on such dreck, so it's hard for reviewers like that to avoid such an impression.

Then again, they can always cancel movies for the tax write-offs,

Am I the one terribly misunderstanding tax write-offs, or is seemingly every person that talks about them? Like, sure, you can add the money you spent to your costs, but you're only getting $cost * $tax_rate from that back. You're still losing money.

From what I've seen, the idea is that they have such debts, they need the $30 million write-off now even if the movie cost $70 million to make.

I have no idea if that's true or not, but that's the explanation I've seen for it. The $70 mil has already been spent a couple of years back; the $30 mil will reduce their debt repayments (or whatever it is) right now. They've offset the tax against their recent Q3 earnings, so they've got the benefit of that.

There's a thread here discussing what is going on; basically the movie cost somewhere around $70 million to make. Okay. But if they release it, they need to spend as much again on marketing, and then the cinemas take their bite of the profits, and so on. So they'd need to make about $170 million to break even, and even if they do that, that return is spread out over the next financial year. Meanwhile, they have to pay taxes etc. on their earnings now, so taking the write-off makes more financial sense.

I dunno, I'm not an accountant or an economist 🤷‍♀️ But this Variety article from March of this year say Warner Studios (or whatever name they're going by this minute) are drowning in debt:

Warner Bros. Discovery, which is struggling with billions of dollars in debt, is willing to pay more money to executives who might be able to help reduce it.

...Warner Bros. Discovery has been under extreme pressure to lower its debt, and the company has cut staffing levels, scuttled major plans like the CNN+ streaming service, and taken $3.5 billion in content writedowns.

It has $45 billion in debt, and if I go by this breakdown, its assets don't cover its liabilities in the short term.

It's true that you're still losing money, but you're losing less money than you are if you release it and it does poorly. In order for releasing it to do better than writing it off, you have to make $cost * $rate after paying the expenses of releasing it, profits to other people in the chain, etc. They've probably also got a limited number of slots to release things in and it's probably not going to make $cost * $rate * $expenses more than the thing whose slot it replaces. They could release it to streaming, where they don't have a limited number of slots but if they do, it'll make no money at the margins, and zero is still less than $cost * $rate.

It seems clear that it’s Marvel fatigue rather than wokeness or the casting. That doesn’t help, especially in some international markets like China (where the movie has also done poorly iirc), but it’s not the cause. After all, Black Panther and Ms Captain Marvel both did very well.

If I were Iger I’d be annihilating the upcoming Marvel slate right now and cancelling as much pre-production stuff as possible. The only MCU properties that can survive now are Holland’s Spider-Man and RDJ’s Iron Man, so Bob should probably call the latter up and ask how much it’s going to take to bring him back.

The more interesting question is what the next big Hollywood trend is going to be.

RDJ’s Iron Man, so Bob should probably call the latter up and ask how much it’s going to take to bring him back.

After how they ditched him for cost-cutting, Downey should ask for the moon on a stick. Depends whether or not he wants to go back to playing the part, of course. But I couldn't blame him for getting a little revenge in, if they do come back cap-in-hand to him.

It seems clear that it’s Marvel fatigue rather than wokeness or the casting.

Not quite. There were extensive reshoots - and a lot of anti woke critics that I follow (specifically the critical drinker) note how surprisingly low woke the film is. So it may have been tone down since Bob Iger came back, but maybe it was just not possible with project already in motion.

Also Capitan Marvel was designated to be the feminist woke banner bearer.

From my understanding the problem with the movie is that it is just dull and weak.

From my own perspective, as someone rabidly anti woke and very ready to criticize “cape-shit” and every opportunity, it’s definitely not that.

Because all that being said, I absolutely adored the last two animated Sony Spider-Man movies, “Into the Spider-Verse” and “Across the Spider-Verse”.

We’re they “woke”? Oh absolutely, noticeably so.

But they were extremely high quality, clearly made with passion and drive, absolutely gorgeous, creative almost to a fault, stylish, full of interesting characters with tons of personality, compelling, and often hilarious.

I watched them both with my kids multiple times. No regrets.

I watched them both with my kids multiple times. No regrets. someone rabidly anti woke

And that "spiderman-but-black" shit didn't crawl up your ass and bite your spine hard enough? The animated spider things were fine but very much inspite of the diverse characters. Like the race swap with morales has always stunk to high heaven.

"Spiderman-but-black" debuted in 2011.

I had successfully managed to not care about their "x-but-black/woman" shit they have going on in the print comics.

It did at first but but honestly Miles Morales is actually a pretty interesting character, very distinct from Peter Parker on multiple levels apart from the obvious skin tone.

Going in I suspected it would be another insipid, brainless race/gender swap to stick it to the legacy fandom, but I feel I was proven wrong. Despite the obvious and very cynical dei-style calculus at work, the character was interesting and somewhat inspired. At least compared to the vast majority of marvel-dom.

Honestly it’s nice to be proven wrong once in a while.

My young kids really enjoy the "spider friends" cartoon. Its basically young miles, young peter, and young gwen teaming up to fight bad guys.

It feels like a very traditional kids cartoon thing, where the worst thing the villains are trying to do is "ruin everyone's fun".

I feel like the spiderverse concept saved the spiderman franchise a bit. I liked the original spiderverse movie and miles simply because I've heard the peter storyline so many times.

It may not be "woke" by today's standard, but if they dropped this in 2008 when the MCU was first coming out with Iron Man, people would have said this is super woke/SJW/progressive and be like wtf is this?

I don't think that Black Panther would count as "woke-casted", which I'd associate with the sort of casting that seems to be intent on going through an Excel sheet of ethnicities to present whatever are considered to be the correct ratios at the moment. Almost all of the important cast consists of black actors, with Martin Freeman as the rather oddly-cast token whitey CIA agent.

Blacks are over-represented in most media and the only criticism is that it doesn't go further. The correct woke ratio is 100% black.

At the time of Black Panther coming out black people were hardly overrepresented as main characters in superhero movies.

I’m not even sure that will stop the bleeding. I see the same things happening with most franchises— the problem isn’t woke (though I think it’s a symptom) it’s that the franchises have been essentially coasting of name-brand recognition and bizarre fan-service ideas rather than doing anything new, thought provoking, or interesting.

I can’t remember the last franchise show that I’ve genuinely been surprised by, or even thought about ten seconds after I stopped watching it. That’s not just Marvel, it’s any franchise TV series or movie. I follow Trek a bit more than Marvel, but even here it’s like they’re so insular that they don’t even realize just how silly the ideas are. It’s like they think if they throw the images of old characters on the screen, or crib notes from ten year old franchises that they’re going to attract people. The academy idea is pretty much literally “Harry Potter, but in the Star Trek universe,” Picard is basically “hey, look, it’s those character from other, better shows, reprising their old roles,” and both Discovery and Strange New Worlds are busy reintroducing Spock to Kirk because really, in an entire universe, with an entire galaxy, the best modern Hollywood has is “let’s imitate things that worked before, change nothing, say nothing, and cover it up with current thing”.

I follow Trek a bit more than Marvel, but even here it’s like they’re so insular that they don’t even realize just how silly the ideas are.

Do not get me started on what they did to Trek. I'll just note that even there, with Disco being all! original! girlboss!, they still had to bring back Pike, who was only briefly mentioned in original Trek, in order to have a character who was connected to canon and wasn't an unpleasant, self-righteous, pain in the backside.

Discovery could have been okay, if it hadn't been chock-full of (excuse the phrase) the woke agenda from the very start. It's like they set out to make a parody: the mushroom-obsessed Chief Engineer? Potty-mouth Ensign? "my name's Michael but I'm a girl ha ha see what we did there?" and the rest of it. Plus they went full Mirror Universe in the first season and you don't do a Mirror Universe episode until a couple seasons in, when your characters have been established and the audience is familiar with them.

They had Klingon Richard Spencer who was PURELY WHITE SKINNED for crying out loud. The only thing he didn't do was chant "the knife-ears will not replace us."

What Enterprise did to the Vulcans (now they're Space Fascists, Father?) pissed me off. Don't even talk to me about the idiot scriptwriters who made it canonical (because it's in a televised show, the bastards!) that Vulcans think Humans are literally stinky and have to wear nasal filters around us. I thought this was meant to be a not-very-funny in-series joke amongst Humans, but nope. It Troo. This, among other things (I was delighted when I heard Scott Bakula was cast as Archer because I think he's a good actor who can give sensitive performances, then they made Archer a well-balanced character by having a chip on both shoulders), make me nope the hell out of it. I've heard it got a lot better in later seasons, but by then it was too late, I was never coming back.

Then Discovery showed me that you can always go lower. I haven't watched any Trek since then, no matter how well-reviewed it's been, and I was a Trekkie since I was seven.

Picard is unwatchable except the last season is mildly ok. STD (lel) is a complete write off. Strange New Worlds is suprisingly not that bad, it's ok when it's not focosuing on uhura(actress can't fill those shoes not even one bit) or Nurse Chapel ( her character is she's an E-girl but in space wearing a medical uniform ). And don't get me started on Pike doing most of the captaining from his personal mess hall while he's cooking. Other than that it's not as rage inducing as it could have been. Honestly STD set the bar so low it formed a black hole in the middle of the earth and is slowly consuming the planet. Anything else in comparison to that is ecstatic.

And don't get me started on Pike doing most of the captaining from his personal mess hall while he's cooking.

Y'know, this makes me glad I haven't watched any of the new stuff. And I still think Chef Pike sounds better than "Start an interstellar incident because I couldn't keep my goddamn dog on a lead" Archer 😀

But why the hell are they always doing Chapel dirty? I know the original got saddled with an unrequited romance for Spock, but she was a scientific researcher in her own right who re-trained as a nurse so she could join Starfleet to search for her missing scientist fiancé. She wasn't an idiot or the punchline of a bad sex joke like reboot made her.

TBH the knife ear bit would at least be sort of creative. Bad, but creative. I don’t even mind messages I disagree with, but I think especially in science fiction, you don’t beat people over the head with them, and you show rather than tell. My nanowromo is more subtle than professional Star Trek. That’s not a good thing.

It seems clear that it’s Marvel fatigue rather than wokeness or the casting.

I think this is probably most of the issue: there have been lots of MCU movies and the universe as a whole has changed so much it's hard for people outside of the fandom to keep up. Someone watching Iron Man cold in 2008 saw a very familiar world with American weapons in Afghanistan being a major part of the plot. Someone watching anything after Endgame needs to know that half of everyone disappeared for a year or two. Lately I've been thinking it would have been better to have Endgame end in an even larger reset to a world more like our own: Marvel is trapped in a huge escalation loop where each villain of the week has to threaten even bigger than the one before. Either force the heroes into hiding (a la The Incredibles) after their final victory or somehow resolve the time travel to undo the whole thing, or some combination of the two: there's a chance for cameos of the familiar actors, but also re-telling the origin story of a new character playing a new take on a familiar hero.

Honestly, you can see some evidence they tried to go that way (trying to pass the mantle of Captain America in one of the TV shows, and the hammer of Thor), but it feels like they weren't willing to commit to the bit and either (1) tell a smaller-scoped origin story against smaller enemies and (2) commit to writing off familiar characters and starting over.

Although I did see an interesting take on the wokeness claim that the MCU has stopped or slowed showing shirtless male superheroes of late, which had been a fairly constant feature of the early movies. I don't get much out of male eye candy personally, so I'm not sure I had noticed its absence, or its effect on the other half of the potential audience. I will say that all the most recent heroes are almost visually uninteresting in matching full-body spandex suits, only differing in colors and patterns, which is perhaps related (and they all shoot beams of different colors of light).

After all, Black Panther and Ms Marvel both did very well.

You mean Black Panther and Captain Marvel? Ms. Marvel was one of the least watched Disney+ shows. (which is a shame; the actress playing her is wonderfully charismatic)

It's possible that Captain Marvel is the important case to look at here, though. The audience decision during the Captain Marvel release was roughly "we're in the middle of the biggest cliffhanger in history; do we want to watch an extra 2 hour blockbuster movie that might be important to the epic resolution?" Obviously yes. The audience decision for The Marvels release is roughly "we're in the middle of a bit of a lull; do we want to subscribe to an extra streaming service and watch an extra 10 hours of direct-to-video shows that might be important to the blockbuster movie?" (Wanda Vision introduced the third one of The Marvels' protagonists) That's not so obvious a yes.

Yeah sorry I meant Captain Marvel, the one with the blonde woman.

No problem, that was confusing even in the comics continuity, and (if I'm remembering the Old Days right) in part because of feminism; why is the female superhero still being Ms. Marvel while the male superhero gets to be Captain Marvel? Since you couldn't have two Captain Marvels running around, she got promoted to being the Captain Marvel and he got killed off. The history is tangled since they kept swapping around "who is Captain Marvel now?"

Not that simple, of course, but it was part of it: keep the character as "female empowerment".

The more interesting question is what the next big Hollywood trend is going to be.

I don't think there will be another trend. Two hour movies at the movie theater are now deprecated. They are increasingly irrelevant to the culture zeitgeist. My prediction is that there will never be another major popcorn movie franchise at the level of Star Wars, MCU, or Harry Potter. That time in history is now over.

In terms of general trends in video, then AI has to be the next frontier. I was just watching some prehistoric planet thing on Netflix narrated by Morgan Freeman. It seems like the technology is already available to replace a person with an AI generated voice. And it'd be a lot cheaper than Morgan Freeman.

It's seems like it might be movie/TV adaptations of other properties that are actually competently made.

There are some early successes here and if studios shift away from superheroes this might be the next thing. You both get the brand brand recognition of a pre-existing property and get around the "franchise fatigue" stuff. You also have a product line ready to sell stuff from. It works kind of like how anime works for the manga industry, it's often not really intended to make a big profit on it's own, it's marketing. You could even integrate the streaming services to directly sell stuff from the shows/movies.

I could easily see there being ten+ years until ai stuff really takes off in a transformative way for media production in such a way that these kinds of trends don't matter as much but until then this could fill the void.

I think honestly, the writing is 99% of the problem. The reason these franchises suck is that they’re badly written, have no actual thought behind them, and no characters that people actually care about. A simple test here. If the first thing you’d ever seen of your franchise were the most recent three entries, would you even care? It’s a quality problem. The stories are poorly constructed, poorly thought out, full of plot holes, and have nothing to say that hasn’t already been said.

This does sound convincing. I remember as a child eagerly awaiting the release of "The Wizard", a glorified commercial for Super Mario 3. At the time, I would have also been happy to watch an actual 90 minute Super Mario 3 commercial.

but but it's worth noting that the 2017 Wonder Woman did well despite obviously having a female lead.

Wonder Woman is a girlier Rosie the Riveter and Gal Gadot has a desirable personality. There's a lot more basic appeal there than a film that inexplicably shouts "black girl magic."

The problem isnt putting a chick in it, it's the making her lame and gay.

Edit: And doing it all the time while pretending that it's daring.

There's a lot more basic appeal there than a film that inexplicably shouts "black girl magic."

Lol. Did that actually happen? I think we should be thankful to whoever invented that phrase. I can think of few more reliable signals to avoid something or someone.

Related note: I have noticed "Black Girl Magic" wine on sale at the local Grocery Outlet discount store.

They put it in the trailer.

I respect that decision. It should probably be legally required for consumer protection purposes.

The top comment is "it's all so tiresome" lol

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