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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 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.

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