May Day 10 Posted August 9, 2015 Posted August 9, 2015 I grew up with video games and I do not like superhero movies. I was never into comic books. They are just so repetitive and like someone said... paint by numbers. Boring. I am hoping someday that everyone else decides they are done with this.
Cugalabanza Posted August 9, 2015 Posted August 9, 2015 (edited) So it is ashame b.c you dont like superhero movies... Plenty of "intelligent" movies coming out. I don't think however you understand that the superhero movies are for adults also. It is called entertainment.It's fine. I understand it's entertainment. To my eyes, it's crap entertainment. And it's crowding the marketplace. Further evidence of the idiocracy phenomenon in action. It's as if the grocery stores expanded the candy aisle to 90% of the space in the store and eliminated the produce section. Then they said well there's a specialty store you can go to that's 20 miles away where you can buy produce. A similar thing has happened with big book/media stores. You can't find any meaningful selection of cool stuff in a physical store, but you can get tons of toys, designer notebooks, gag gifts, etc... I realize I'm exaggerating and I realizing that I'm complaining about something that is inevitable, but I reserve the right to lament in my own curmudgeonly way if I want. I also get it that some superhero movies are far superior to others. I've enjoyed a couple, but it's a very slight, fleeting kind of fun. Like candy. I can still find a good meal when I want one. I just feel a little sad that the mainstream pop stuff is getting lamer and the voice of the film making artist is getting drowned out more. Edited August 9, 2015 by Cugalabanza
Fadingpain Posted August 9, 2015 Posted August 9, 2015 The industry is shifting to accomodate an audience who grew up playing video games. It's not a fad, it's a trend. You can either learn to love it or become one of those old people who complain about the lack of Westerns and Musicals.
Lurker Posted August 9, 2015 Posted August 9, 2015 (edited) . Stop ruining my childhood, and give the franchise back to Marvel! FF was my favorite Marvel series back in my teen years (along with Silver Surfer) and it's frustrating that Hollywood can't get it right. As to why so many comic book movies are in production, you only have to look at the internationl grosses--which is where the money's at. Domestic ticket sales basically cover production and marketing costs and the foreign sales are pure, unadaulterated profit... http://www.boxofficeguru.com/intl.htm Like minds on Fox selling the rights (don't hold your breath): http://screenrant.com/fantastic-four-movie-rights-fox-marvel-studios-2015/ Edited August 9, 2015 by Lurker
Deranged Rhino Posted August 9, 2015 Posted August 9, 2015 So it is ashame b.c you dont like superhero movies... Plenty of "intelligent" movies coming out. I don't think however you understand that the superhero movies are for adults also. It is called entertainment. I'm not anti-super hero movies at all, which I get is tough to discern from my occasional posts on this subject. What made me want to write movies was watching big popcorn movies growing up. Most of the stuff I work on in this business is heavy genre in one way or the other. So I'm not some art film snob coming in here trying to rain on people's Marvel parade. The issue is that there are less movies being made by the big studios every year, and less original movies being made. It's the lack of original movies that bothers me the most. The lack of options. Every super hero movie, even the best of the best, follow the same exact formula. Admittedly I'm more jaded than most, but even Ant-Man (which I dug) was predictable through every beat because there are only one or two ways you can tell a super hero origin story. And because we've had dozens of origin stories over the past decade, the audience has seen every twist, turn and beat before. And once you move into the sequels, where you have more room for original storytelling with super hero characters, the studios seem content to flood the sequels with too many bad guys, too much action and too little story to differentiate them from the rest of the genre. Films like Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, LA Confidential, Goodfellas, Heat, Groundhog's Day, Leon the Professional, SeVen, Usual Suspects, Fight Club, hell even Raiders wouldn't get made today. All of those were made by major studios, all (with the possible exception of Goodfellas) are original content that would be too risky to be made by those same studios today. To me that's a crime. Imagine if we never had those films -- we'd never have Fincher, Singer, Hanson, Reitman or Mann... at least not in the capacity that we've come to appreciate them today. There's no telling how many new, original, fresh voices the studios are missing out on (both behind the camera and in front of it) by being so risk adverse. It's crippling to an industry that relies upon creativity and inventiveness to remain relevant. The plunge into super-hero driven flicks is a cash grab by a studio system that feels the walls closing in. It's easy and allows them to print money in foreign markets. But domestic theater attendance continues to nose dive. And I'm convinced this is directly tied to the lack of options for the audience. It's fine. I understand it's entertainment. To my eyes, it's crap entertainment. And it's crowding the marketplace. Further evidence of the idiocracy phenomenon in action. It's as if the grocery stores expanded the candy aisle to 90% of the space in the store and eliminated the produce section. Then they said well there's a specialty store you can go to that's 20 miles away where you can buy produce. A similar thing has happened with big book/media stores. You can't find any meaningful selection of cool stuff in a physical store, but you can get tons of toys, designer notebooks, gag gifts, etc... I realize I'm exaggerating and I realizing that I'm complaining about something that is inevitable, but I reserve the right to lament in my own curmudgeonly way if I want. I also get it that some superhero movies are far superior to others. I've enjoyed a couple, but it's a very slight, fleeting kind of fun. Like candy. I can still find a good meal when I want one. I just feel a little sad that the mainstream pop stuff is getting lamer and the voice of the film making artist is getting drowned out more. I'm with you.
unbillievable Posted August 9, 2015 Author Posted August 9, 2015 What's the real difference between a screenwriter producing a movie vs a book writer adapting his work? The content and story is still original, only that one was made specifically for the theater instead of print. It just looks like people are complaining about the origin instead of the content.
Deranged Rhino Posted August 9, 2015 Posted August 9, 2015 What's the real difference between a screenwriter producing a movie vs a book writer adapting his work? The content and story is still original, only that one was made specifically for the theater instead of print. It just looks like people are complaining about the origin instead of the content. The complaint is about originality and new voices. You can't discover new voices and original material if you're only producing existing work. That has a long term effect on the quality of films being produced and the industry as a whole. The more you rely on existing material, the less inventive and creative the work becomes. We've seen this come to fruition over the past seven years. Films have gotten worse because there is no incentive to innovate -- on the page or while the cameras are rolling. It's more important to be the "same" as other box office winners than it is to be unique. That's a death sentence for any art form. That's not to say you can't make a great original film from an existing piece of literature (look at Shawshank for example), but it's rare that a film tops the book -- because books and films work differently. They're not interchangeable as the marketing departments would like people to believe.
PromoTheRobot Posted August 9, 2015 Posted August 9, 2015 Isn't this the second or third time F4 bombed?
Deranged Rhino Posted August 10, 2015 Posted August 10, 2015 Isn't this the second or third time F4 bombed? Second I think. I think Marvel is trying to buy it back from Fox to try for a third time, but I'm not sure.
Buffalo Barbarian Posted August 10, 2015 Posted August 10, 2015 The industry is shifting to accomodate an audience who grew up playing video games. It's not a fad, it's a trend. You can either learn to love it or become one of those old people who complain about the lack of Westerns and Musicals. get off my lawn !!! I grew up with video games and I do not like superhero movies. I was never into comic books. They are just so repetitive and like someone said... paint by numbers. Boring. I am hoping someday that everyone else decides they are done with this. That's what I think every time my kid shows me the same "epic" ending of all their games.
dpberr Posted August 10, 2015 Posted August 10, 2015 I watched Heat over the weekend. It's in my Top 5 of all time favorite movies. It was made in 1995. Studios wouldn't touch a movie like that today. The actors would be too expensive. No super heroes, robots, cyborgs or time travel. It was rated R. People died in it. It was a long movie. It was never intended to have a sequel.
shrader Posted August 10, 2015 Posted August 10, 2015 I agree with every thing you said in this post. The fact of the matter is, that if you went back about 2000 when X-Men came out and superhero movies really started to take off, there has been an average of roughly one good one per year. 2000 - X-Men 2001 - None 2002 - Spider-Man 2003 - None - X2 was just OK IMO 2004 - Hellboy 2005 - Batman Begins 2006 - V for Vendetta, XMen Last Stand 2007 - None 2008 - Iron Man, The Dark Knight 2009 - Watchmen 2010 - Kick-Ass 2011 - Thor, Captain America 2012 - The Avengers, Dark Knight Rises 2013 - Iron Man 3 2014 - Guardians of the Galaxy 2015 - Maybe Ant-Man, haven't seen it yet. That's right around 1 per year. The rest of them were either terrible or just m'eh. Did you just list X-Men last stand as a good movie while shooting down X2? That one is such a train wreck.
Mark80 Posted August 10, 2015 Posted August 10, 2015 Did you just list X-Men last stand as a good movie while shooting down X2? That one is such a train wreck. Yes I did. It's been a while since I've seen either though, perhaps I got them mixed up. I know I hated one of them and thought the other was pretty good.
shrader Posted August 10, 2015 Posted August 10, 2015 Yes I did. It's been a while since I've seen either though, perhaps I got them mixed up. I know I hated one of them and thought the other was pretty good. I feel like we've talked about this on here before. All I know is that I'm glad they found a way to re-start things and throw that movie out. There's a lot of stories they can tell now and so far I think they're batting 1000 with the new movies.
Deranged Rhino Posted August 10, 2015 Posted August 10, 2015 I watched Heat over the weekend. It's in my Top 5 of all time favorite movies. It was made in 1995. Studios wouldn't touch a movie like that today. The actors would be too expensive. No super heroes, robots, cyborgs or time travel. It was rated R. People died in it. It was a long movie. It was never intended to have a sequel. It could be made -- if they added enough action sequences to bring the budget over 100 million -- which of course is absurd. That's the weird thing about the studio system today. The middle class movie, by that I mean any movie between 20-80 million dollars (a budgetary category that includes most dramas, comedies), have been completely erased from the studios' slate. Unless the movie is a 100 million plus, the studio won't touch it. And the studios won't invest 100 plus million into an idea that they aren't assured will sell -- which means original content is treated as suspect while existing content is prized.
Pine Barrens Mafia Posted August 10, 2015 Posted August 10, 2015 It was rated R. The shameful thing is, I think THIS is the point. In an attempt to maximize income potential, studios are trying to fit everything into a PG13 mode. After all, if mom and dad can take their three kiddies with them, why that's more money for everyone. Thinking about the truly GREAT rated r movies of my generation: Wall Street (1987) Goodfellas (1990) Silence of the Lambs (1991) Scarface (1983) Full Metal Jacket (1987) Blue Velvet (1986) None of those movies could have been made today. And I don't think it's for the reasons that GreggyT believes. I believe that NONE of those movies are "politcally correct" enough to survive in today's environment. They deal with complex issues in sometimes offensive ways. They all portray real evil in all its forms, and I think Americans are so pussified that they're afraid to conceive of the idea of evil. Just my amateur opinion.
KD in CA Posted August 10, 2015 Posted August 10, 2015 The shameful thing is, I think THIS is the point. In an attempt to maximize income potential, studios are trying to fit everything into a PG13 mode. After all, if mom and dad can take their three kiddies with them, why that's more money for everyone. Thinking about the truly GREAT rated r movies of my generation: Wall Street (1987) Goodfellas (1990) Silence of the Lambs (1991) Scarface (1983) Full Metal Jacket (1987) Blue Velvet (1986) None of those movies could have been made today. And I don't think it's for the reasons that GreggyT believes. I believe that NONE of those movies are "politcally correct" enough to survive in today's environment. They deal with complex issues in sometimes offensive ways. They all portray real evil in all its forms, and I think Americans are so pussified that they're afraid to conceive of the idea of evil. Just my amateur opinion. It doesn't even need to be real evil. Try making The Bad News Bears today. Portraying children as they actually exist?!? Horrors!!!
May Day 10 Posted August 10, 2015 Posted August 10, 2015 yeah. Some of the movies were crude. Especially some comedies... but they didnt over-do it which would be "required" today. Slapshot comes to mind. Also "The Jerk". Its about a white guy who thinks he is a poor black child but he has no rhythm listening to the Blues... but hears (white) Roger Wolfe Kahn on the radio and suddenly has some rhythm and needs to go find it.... lol.
shibuya Posted August 10, 2015 Posted August 10, 2015 I love a good super hero movie.. But the problem most do jump the shark and many are just horrific story lines with little to no depth in story telling. I usually watch most of them once they come out on Netflix but never wanted to go see one in the theater
USMCBillsFan Posted August 10, 2015 Posted August 10, 2015 I went to see it last night despite all the horrible reviews. Well the reviews were right. Awful movie.
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