Critiquing the comic book movies…

Topic

Jamie Lee Curtis’ latest quotes on the MCU and the new Multiverse movie compared to her smaller indie movie with the same theme… It brings us back to the one who started the critique: Martin Scorcese

It was Martin who said that the MCU was not cinema but more of a theme park that squeezed out what he felt were “real cinema” in theatres. Then Spielberg chimed in, the guy who did Dune, Copolla, and so on.

I would say we always have had summer blockbuster movies since the first Star Wars. I guess they weren’t a real “threat” until there were (like now) a LOT more being churned out by the MCU and DC movies.

It is hard to argue for or against it all. Even some here on the board say that the movies and overall production are cookie cutter.

Spielberg predicted that these cape movies will eventually go like the westerns. Then again, he was the one who insisted that all movies for the Oscar must be in theatres and not streamed. Then came Covid.

I have to say that there is room to watch what the consumer makes room for. It is not like consumers will not watch the next Scorcese project

There is such a thing as “franchise fatigue” but the MCU is varying bringing forth new characters.  I mean almost all the original Avengers are replaced now (they will get to a new Stark soon)

Who knows? So what say you?

 

 

Replies

Regardless of the genre, movies are entertainment. No matter how serious a director, actor, or whoever wants the audience to take their movie, it’s still just a movie. These auteurs need to get off their high horses. For most of the people criticizing superhero movies, they haven’t had blockbuster hits in quite a long time, if ever. I think there is some jealousy and bitterness that these “low” movies doing insanely well. I think if westerns happened to “the big thing” right now, they’d still be bitching.

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Ben, Al-x

Thanks Todd

The Summer blockbuster (actually a good one) is a money maker for the studio. That cannot be denied, only resented.

I guess Scorcese prefers more sophisticated content in cinema, something like more thought provoking plays than musicals on Broadway.

I get that but again, I just don’t see a popcorn flick taking away from whatever he feels is more elevated in cinema. Not the same audience.

Jealousy? There probably is some.

As for “the guy who did Dune”, the director Denis Villeneuve, he said that MCU was basically a copy and paste operation. That sentiment is also expressed here with the cookie cutter remarks. We all know the common elements in all the movies and I won’t rehash them.

However what Jamie Lee Curtis said may have some truth. I haven’t seen the “alternate worlds” movie she was in to compare it with the current Dr. Strange.  I will leave that to others who have seen both.

When Disney began creating and releasing full-length films, both animated and live-action, I don’t ever remember members of the film-making community trashing them for simplistic “cookie-cutter” storytelling and one-dimensional characters. In fact, films like “Snow White” and “Fantasia” were praised and lauded for what they were, skillfully-visualized pure entertainment. And when, after decades of releasing substandard fare, the “new” Disney under Michael Eisner began releasing quality films again starting with The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, etc., later expanding to Pixar films like Toy Story and Up, they were embraced and looked upon as Art. And when the more successful films generated sequels and spinoffs that made $$millions, I don’t recall hearing complaints from Scorsese or Coppola or Villeneuve or Ridley Scott (all of whom have spoken out against superhero films).

So why are so many Hollywood noses turned up against superhero films? Maybe a bit of jealousy, maybe a bit of prejudice, but mostly (I think) because of concern that film-goers are spending their money exclusively on the blockbusters that occupy 8 of the 10 screens in the multiplex while their smaller, more personal art films are screened to empty seats; and of the fear that eventually theater owners will decide they can make more money by turning those remaining screens over to the next blockbuster.

It used to be that the crowd-pleasing films were released during the Spring/Summer seasons while the potential Oscar films were released in the Fall/early Winter seasons (and late Winter got the leftovers). Now, with an MCU film booked for a November release every year, the Scorseses of the business likely fear that they are losing even that small window for their films to find an audience.

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DavidM, Ben, Todd, Al-x

Maybe Spielberg feels guilty for being a major part of creating the Hollywood blockbuster but trying to tear down superheroes isn’t going to be a form of absolution either.

You can’t move for people trying to set definitions of high and low culture.   For instance Fast 9 is a fun movie – two plus hours of total bollocks? Yes, but entertaining bollocks.  At the same time, if I’m inclined to I can also enjoy Arrival or boot up the BBC’s The Hollow Crown.  It is not mutually exclusive.

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Al-x, Christian

It used to be that the crowd-pleasing films were released during the Spring/Summer seasons while the potential Oscar films were released in the Fall/early Winter seasons (and late Winter got the leftovers). Now, with an MCU film booked for a November release every year, the Scorseses of the business likely fear that they are losing even that small window for their films to find an audience.

Even when the Oscar-bait films were released, their commercial success was always tenuous at best. They were lauded by critics but being brutally honest, people really didn’t show up for them. A Marvel movie screening at the same time is not going to really impact much differently than another time. When the Oscar nominees are announced each year, there seems to be a collective blank stare and shrug, as most people aren’t aware these movies even existed. While the auteurs of the world may turn their nose up at superheroes, the world is turning their nose up at the auteurs.

Jesus, guys, put in the quote, will you?

She’s just using the comparison to a big-budget movie to promote her movie. Good job, too. Haven’t seen either yet, but at this point I’m guessing I’ll love Everything Everywhere All at Once way more.

As for the other discussion… look, the movie theatres have changed and they will keep changing. But mid-level movies apparently have way better chances to be produced right now because of the streaming services, so I don’t really see the problem if people mainly go watch bud-budget superhero movies.

And if it wasn’t superhero movies it’d be big sci-fi or fantasy action movies again. Or another series with cars driving fast. So what? Just keep making good movies of all kinds.

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DavidM, Todd, Ben

Here is a list of the top 25 worldwide Box Office films of 2019, the last year before the pandemic hit.

1 Avengers: Endgame $2,797,501,328
2 The Lion King $1,656,943,394
3 Frozen II $1,450,026,933
4 Spider-Man: Far from Home $1,131,927,996
5 Captain Marvel $1,128,274,794
6 Joker $1,074,251,311
7 Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker $1,074,144,248
8 Toy Story 4 $1,073,394,593
9 Aladdin $1,050,693,953
10 Jumanji: The Next Level $800,059,707
11 Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw $759,056,935
12 Ne Zha $726,063,471
13 The Wandering Earth $699,856,699
14 How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World $521,799,505
15 Maleficent: Mistress of Evil $491,730,089
16 It Chapter Two $473,093,228
17 My People, My Country $450,064,993
18 Pokémon Detective Pikachu $433,005,346
19 The Secret Life of Pets 2 $430,051,293
20 The Captain $417,282,021
21 Alita: Battle Angel $404,980,543
22 Godzilla: King of the Monsters $386,600,138
23 1917 $384,919,389
24 Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood $374,375,059
25 Shazam! $365,971,656

Once you eliminate the Disney/Marvel/Star Wars films, various franchise sequels, and Chinese films, only three of the top 25 movies would be considered the type of film Scorsese and others would approve of: The Captain (a German film about WWII), 1917, and Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood. All well-crafted, critically acclaimed films, so why is it that their combined box office is less than what the #5 movie of that year earned?

And yet, I would never argue that mainstream movies by Chris Nolan and Quentin Tarantino (or Martin Scorsese, or Ridley Scott, or Francis Ford Coppola) should not be made. Such films and such directors are a critical part of the larger cinematic medium and deserve to be made and seen and appreciated. The thing of it is: MCU movies and DC movies and Star Wars movies are no less deserving. The problem (if there is one) isn’t with the MCU films themselves; the “problem” is that the studios and producers and investors want to make money, and if Avengers: Endgame earned 20 times what The Irishman (Scorsese’s 2019 film that was released primarily through Netflix) was projected to have potentially earned in theaters, which type of film do you think those investors will want to invest in?

I love films like Power of the Dog and Nomadland and Parasite, I will support them with my wallet, and I hope to see more films like those that tell an interesting story that I haven’t seen elsewhere. But I also want to see the new Doctor Strange film. There should be room in the theaters (or on streaming services) for both.

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Todd, Ben

@Christian

I put in the link in the Dr. Strange thread. Didn’t exactly want to constantly repeat it in each thread…

I guess this analogy might work:

The traditional mom and pop/brick and mortar retail stores have been upset that Bezos’ Amazon and the online shopping model has worked and squeezed them out. It is always the new business model or new way that threatens the old ways, takes from their revenue, and pushes them out.

So as mentioned above, gone are the blockbuster releases being confined to Summer and so on. Movies being released by streaming are now counted for the Oscars much to the dismay of a Spielberg. The old ways are being phased out and adjustments need to be made.

The other point is that these movies are all the same has been mentioned and does have some merit. Whether it will lead to fatigue and make the consumer take a break from all same old same old being churned out every 2 months… That remains to be seen.

 

 

Christian wrote:

Jesus, guys, put in the quote, will you?

She’s just using the comparison to a big-budget movie to promote her movie. Good job, too. Haven’t seen either yet, but at this point I’m guessing I’ll love Everything Everywhere All at Once way more.

As for the other discussion… look, the movie theatres have changed and they will keep changing. But mid-level movies apparently have way better chances to be produced right now because of the streaming services, so I don’t really see the problem if people mainly go watch bud-budget superhero movies.

And if it wasn’t superhero movies it’d be big sci-fi or fantasy action movies again. Or another series with cars driving fast. So what? Just keep making good movies of all kinds.

Kind of funny though that Curtis’ movie and Dr Strange 2 are both coming out around the same time, both have a multiversal theme, and both have a knockout dildo-fight action setpiece.

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garjones

This whole dildo fight thing is a fad that will go the way of the western.

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Christian, DavidM, Sean Robinson, Todd, Al-x

saga wrote:

This whole dildo fight thing is a fad that will go the way of the western.

They were doing it back in the 1980s:

Todd wrote:

Even when the Oscar-bait films were released, their commercial success was always tenuous at best. They were lauded by critics but being brutally honest, people really didn’t show up for them.

The first year I was aware of the Oscars was probably 1977, because of Star Wars. Annie Hall won best picture.

Annie Hall – $38 million box office

Star Wars – $775 million box office.

Even 45 years ago people weren’t watching Oscar-bait films.

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Todd, Ben, Al-x

Al-x wrote:

I put in the link in the Dr. Strange thread. Didn’t exactly want to constantly repeat it in each thread…

Well, some of us haven’t seen Doc Strange yet and are trying to stay spoiler free.

Except for dildo fights. That’s a spoiler I don’t mind.

Al-x wrote:

The traditional mom and pop/brick and mortar retail stores have been upset that Bezos’ Amazon and the online shopping model has worked and squeezed them out. It is always the new business model or new way that threatens the old ways, takes from their revenue, and pushes them out.

It’s probably worth pointing out that the vast majority of those “mom and pop” stores that are complaining haven’t been actual mom and pop stores for ages, but it’s Wallmart and they’re ilk whining that somebody is doing to them what they did to the actual mom & pop stores.

Uh, I think on some level this part of the analogy might also go for the movies? Or maybe not.

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Todd, DavidM, Al-x

Christian wrote:

Well, some of us haven’t seen Doc Strange yet and are trying to stay spoiler free. Except for dildo fights. That’s a spoiler I don’t mind.

Please don’t go see it on the strength of that alone.

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Todd, DavidM, Al-x

[Al-x]

Now Elizabeth Olsen joins in:

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/elizabeth-olsen-defends-marvel-movies-1235261945/amp/

And on some nice roles she had to pass up for being committed to playing Wanda:

https://www.cinemablend.com/superheroes/marvel-cinematic-universe/doctor-strange-2s-elizabeth-olsen-gets-honest-about-how-role-as-scarlet-witch-has-prevented-her-from-doing-other-movies#l334khs3u1xsqpt340r

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by Al-x.

I disagree with Jamie Lee Curtis. Her film clearly has a butt plug fight, not a dildo one.

We’ve kind of done this dance before but I can tell from being involved in a cinema that none but the most arty ones in big cities would survive to show any films without tentpole action movies. This is not new, it was true 40 years ago. A handful of big hits every year keep exhibitors in the black and that allows even the most standard multiplexes to dedicate one screen to ‘serious’ film every week.

I forget who it was now but the one ‘indie’ director who said more or less ‘thank fuck for Spider-Man NWH’ after it made a billion dollars plus is one who fully understands the business.

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Al-x, Todd, Dave

garjones wrote:

I disagree with Jamie Lee Curtis. Her film clearly has a butt plug fight, not a dildo one.

Are you saying it was a bum rap?

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Christian

garjones wrote:

We’ve kind of done this dance before but I can tell from being involved in a cinema that none but the most arty ones in big cities would survive to show any films without tentpole action movies. This is not new, it was true 40 years ago. A handful of big hits every year keep exhibitors in the black and that allows even the most standard multiplexes to dedicate one screen to ‘serious’ film every week.

I think infrastructure has more to do with sustaining theater tentpole movies more than public sentiment. The studio system had stagnated and started collapsing long before people stopped seeing them in the 60’s.

A lot of people running show business don’t keep in mind that the appeal that gets people to see movies is something that was invented by their predecessors. It wasn’t enough to figure out what kind of western or war movie or gangster movie (or biblical epic or swimming based musical, etc.), but they had to figure out how to get people to pay money to sit still and stare at a screen for an hour or two. That’s essentially the physics of the business – how do you get people to pay you to sit in a dark room and stare at a screen and then leave happy that they did it so they keep doing it?

When they got it right, a massive infrastructure grew up to support that, but in the end, it’s the structure – the system – that prevents a lot of innovation, so the end of Westerns (and all other sorts of genres as mentioned above like war movies and musical) came to an end in their classic studio form. However, especially with Westerns, we still got major studio productions and even more low-budget films well into the 80’s. Same for gangster movies and war movies, but they were not the same sort of films starring John Wayne and Randolph Scott.

In the end, I think the stagnation of the infrastructure supporting these films will be their downfall, but that could take a generation and it still won’t mean the end of superhero movies. We’ll just get different kinds of superhero movies that will look back on this period the same way we look back on THE SEARCHERS or THE WILD BUNCH.

We also forget that for a few decades, musicals were huge. Every studio was pumping them out. Eventually, they faded out until musicals became an rarity and rarely successful. Nowadays, animated children’s movies and TV show episodes (primarily animated series) are about the only places you find musicals.

Musicals used to huge draws until they weren’t. Tastes change. Something will come along that will spark a new trend.

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What I’d like to see more are pop star movies. Not movies where pop stars act roles in the film, but movies about a fictional version of the real pop stars who play themselves, but then get involved in ridiculous situations mostly like in a Three Stooges movie or Pink Panther film.

Maybe that only worked for the Beatles.

Still, I think that style of film has had a lot of influence. See any movie with a lead cast of four distinct characters who fall on the spectrum between really cool to really weird and it surely owes something to Beatles’ movies from A HARD DAY’S NIGHT to YELLOW SUBMARINE.

In a way, TMNT is as much a parody of Beatles’ comedies (or the Monkees) as it is a play on superheroes, ninjas, sci-fi mutants and teen movies.

Which is another strength of the superhero sub-genre. It can be pasted to anything. Superhero crime dramas like Batman, superhero horror movies like Darkman, superhero comedy like Deadpool, superhero tragedy like Logan – about the only thing we haven’t gotten are a bunch of superhero musicals (at least not in film), though I’m sure somebody is working on it.

“And they are superheroes” can be added to any pitch.

 

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Todd

about the only thing we haven’t gotten are a bunch of superhero musicals (at least not in film), though I’m sure somebody is working on it.

“And they are superheroes” can be added to any pitch.

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Anonymous wrote:

about the only thing we haven’t gotten are a bunch of superhero musicals (at least not in film), though I’m sure somebody is working on it.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

What I’d like to see more are pop star movies. Not movies where pop stars act roles in the film, but movies about a fictional version of the real pop stars who play themselves, but then get involved in ridiculous situations mostly like in a Three Stooges movie or Pink Panther film.

If you replace pop stars with “Nicolas Cage” this is practically the plot of Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

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Todd, njerry

The western of course had a different economic driver than necessarily popularity. When the movie industry chose Hollywood as a base they were the cheapest films they could make, in less developed LA they had the locations right there, as the city developed and the industry moved away from Hollywood they fell off.

There’s an element of that at play now, horror movies are cheap to make. Right now in east Asia 90% of locally released films seem to be horror movies. Are they really so popular 90% of people only want to watch that? Probably not but they deliver the best budget to profit ratio.

All this plays into every release and sometimes you get exceptions, from Crocodile Dundee to The King’s Speech you’ll get stuff that blows up outside of any normal formula but they are more unreliable.

It really is an incredibly unrepresented element of analysing movies, which is massively weighted to the interests of studios, to look at the exhibitors which are at least equally important. Every week managers are sat there deciding which film to show, on how many screens, to optimise how much they make. Like studios they can also make mistakes but in the age of digital distribution they can now adjust them cheaper and faster.

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Todd

garjones wrote:

All this plays into every release and sometimes you get exceptions, from Crocodile Dundee to The King’s Speech you’ll get stuff that blows up outside of any normal formula but they are more unreliable.

Yeah, there is some perception that the movie going audience is looking for something and producers have to find that. But in the simplest sense, people are just looking for a reason to go to the movies and all the accumulated knowledge of what they’ve gone to see before really isn’t going to tell you anything about what they will go to see next time.

Like Bruce Lee was not anyone’s idea of a television star, movie star and he certainly wasn’t really an actor or a stuntman. However, he was perfect for making Bruce Lee movies, and it turned out – to the surprise of every professional producer in Hollywood – that Bruce Lee movies were exactly what people wanted.

Westerns started out cheap because – well, movies were in the West and the Old West wasn’t really all that old when movies were being made. The actual Western heroes were still alive. They remained cheap because an infrastructure built up to support them – all sorts of ranch sets, horse trainers and wranglers and props and costumes made Westerns, War Movies, musicals and gangster movies easy to make with studio support. However, that also ended up making those movies all look and sound the same and no one wants the same thing forever… though the marketing for nostalgia and return to old movie franchises certainly may have changed that.

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Todd

Back in the day nostalgia was largely all in the head, unless you really wanted to spend time and money collecting all the stuff you used to enjoy when you were young. Now it’s all readily available on YouTube or wherever, so it never really goes away. Makes it a bit harder for some new thing to take hold in any meaningful way.

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DavidM, Todd, Al-x

saga wrote:

Back in the day nostalgia was largely all in the head, unless you really wanted to spend time and money collecting all the stuff you used to enjoy when you were young. Now it’s all readily available on YouTube or wherever, so it never really goes away. Makes it a bit harder for some new thing to take hold in any meaningful way.

I think that nostalgia is what made Knives Out a surprise hit. The whodunnit is an old movie genre though it’s more common on television. It was a refreshing surprise because it was really hadn’t been done in some time (at least not done well) but it was also very familiar.

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Todd wrote:

Musicals used to huge draws until they weren’t.

Remember how Spielberg predicted that super-heroes would go the way of the western?

And then he made a musical. Which went the way of the western long before westerns went the way of the western.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

What I’d like to see more are pop star movies. Not movies where pop stars act roles in the film, but movies about a fictional version of the real pop stars who play themselves, but then get involved in ridiculous situations mostly like in a Three Stooges movie or Pink Panther film.

Maybe that only worked for the Beatles.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

about the only thing we haven’t gotten are a bunch of superhero musicals (at least not in film)

Todd wrote:

I think that nostalgia is what made Knives Out a surprise hit. The whodunnit is an old movie genre though it’s more common on television. It was a refreshing surprise because it was really hadn’t been done in some time (at least not done well) but it was also very familiar.

Though it was a flop when it was released, it feels like the movie CLUE has had as much influence on the ensemble murder mysteries as Agatha Christie. Movies like KNIVES OUT. WEREWOLVES WITHIN and even the comedy thrillers like READY OR NOT and GAME NIGHT all have hints of CLUE as much as movies like TEN LITTLE INDIANS or MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

However, that also ended up making those movies all look and sound the same and no one wants the same thing forever… though the marketing for nostalgia and return to old movie franchises certainly may have changed that.

That’s true and the decline in the (cheap to make) western also coincided with the spread of television. Because the UK has always made 2 box office counts (the financial figure and the specific tickets sold rather than estimates based on inflation) they have some great graphs that show cinema attendances fall off a cliff between 1955 and 1960, they are cut by more than half – 1.1m a week to o.5m. That decline continues until rock bottom of 1984 where it was 54k and then has risen since up to around 175k before Covid (the 1984 thing was more a restructure of the cinemas to multiplexes than content – 1983-84 are the only two years since the establishment of cinema to today that my medium sized home town had zero exhibition screens, it currently has 6).

While there are a few westerns that are considered absolute classics of cinema, the quality ratio for the amount put out in that era isn’t great. What was true in the era up until the mid 1950s was that cinema was the only way to see both filmed entertainment and the news. People would go very regularly really regardless of what was on. While TV as first broadcast in 1936 it only started to become commonplace post the coronation in 1953 and becoming more and more affordable with more content year on year after that.

The fall in the number of westerns goes in a fairly direct line with the reduction in tickets sold (albeit the trend would probably be a few years ahead in the US and the UK still had a good degree of post war austerity until the 1960s). They decline in number through the 60s and 70s until they are fairly non-existent in 1984. Now we do get the odd western and they are generally well regarded critically, people will watch them but they won’t watch any old shit ones like they did in the early 50s.

Anonymous wrote:

Though it was a flop when it was released

Checking the numbers for Knives Out  – $311m global take against a $40m production budget. Close to 8 times budget – that’s a genuine big hit.

Clue was about 6 times budget but it’s so old they don’t record worldwide numbers so I’m going to guesstimate it did around the same overall as in the mid 80s the general ratio was about 80-20 domestic.

I’d say over the years it has probably had more artistic influence than it did commercial at the time, it didn’t really get followed up despite doing well. I think the whodunnit genre now has had a bit of a revival with more Knives Out on the way and the new Branagh ‘Poirot’ movies.

Clue was a definite flop (not Knives out, of course, that was a big hit) in the theaters and a lot of that was due to critic reviews panning it – Roger Ebert hated it – AND they had this idea to have different endings for each showing, but really only one of the endings was a satisfactory conclusion. When it finally came to cable, they included all three endings in the right order and the movie worked a lot better.

The Crazy Story Of How “Clue” Went From Forgotten Flop To Cult Triumph (buzzfeed.com)

To be fair, when Clue opened in theaters on Dec. 13, 1985, it was an unambiguous flop, ultimately grossing just $14.6 million (or $31.8 million adjusted for inflation). It was also massacred by most critics, many of whom were dismayed by the then unprecedented — and, for the time, scandalously crass — notion of basing a feature film on a popular family board game. “Fun, I must say, is in short supply,” sniffed Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times, while Janet Maslin of The New York Times bemoaned, “there is so little genuine wit to be found in Clue.” Not helping matters: those multiple endings. While they play back-to-back now on cable and home video, they were separated out for the movie’s theatrical run — one theater had ending “A,” another ending “B,” and so forth — a marketing gimmick that became the most common target of critics’ scorn.

As far as superhero movies, for me, I think the most successful ones are those that take elements from two very specific periods in comics. The first being the 80’s period from Claremont and Byrne’s NEW X-MEN that fizzled out a bit after creation of Image comics with Spawn. The second being the period in late 90’s where the writers and artists that grew up on X-Men, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, etc. started applying that writing style to the sort of Image Age characters in a much more cinematic style – – especially true of Wildstorm where I think the “heat” of that period really started with books like The Authority and Planetary and Alan Moore’s America’s Best Comics titles and culminated in The Ultimates and Marvel’s ultimate line. Really, that’s the basic appeal of Mark Millar’s comics, too.

However, other than Millarworld, we don’t see that many hot comics in that way on the stands these days. Things like Hickman’s X-Men series and The Immortal Hulk are some good examples but they are rare. So, the next phase of Marvel and the DC movies have a bit of a challenge as I think they are going to be more influenced by the movies that came before them than they are by the comics that originated them. In a sense, that was what happened to Westerns and other classic genres as well in that the original classic hits were based on a variety of Western Fiction that was diverse and well-developed, but the later and less popular movies were really copies of the older more successful movies. It’s a safe and easy road but one that dead ends as well.

Still, you can see how Disney+’s MOON KNIGHT and HAWKEYE drew elements with a questionable level of success from the more recent comic book series, and I think She-Hulk will take more than a few elements from the various popular runs of the comic – though I doubt it will be as completely comedic and fourth-wall breaking as Byrne’s run. That comic was a lot more like a Deadpool movie than I think Marvel would be comfortable with. However, WANDA and LOKI seemed to be more original and less dependent upon any specific comic book storylines and I think they were pretty successful doing that.

 

She-Hulk looks more directly influenced by Dan Slott’s run about a decade back. That had a comedic tone without going as wacky as Byrne’s run. It also had a lot more of Jennifer and the lawyer work which didn’t feature in the Byrne comic, he liked her being She-Hulk all the time.

This thread should have its titled changed to “critiquing the superhero movies”, as they are the de-facto subject matter. Not comic book movies like, say, Road To Perdition or A History of Violence.

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