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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Slightly off-topic, but I recently watched the short...and overall, I actually quite liked it. It is not as great as Mickey's Christmas Carol and some other featurettes Disney did in the past, but for a story that simple, it had a lot of heart. I just wish the introduction to the actual Olaf plot of the movie hasn't been quite as long. And I say that as someone who doesn't even like Frozen all that much.
Anyway, if that short is any indication for the writers abilities, I have a good feeling. Not because I felt that the short was amazing, but because she took a really simple concept and handled it the best she could, without going all corny in the dialogues (which is really not easy). One of her scripts is also in the "best unfilmed script" pool.
But there is no way we get this Black Widow movie before Avengers 4 anyway. Who knows what happens to Natasha until then.
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Well, yeah, people have no patience whatsoever nowadays...I had no problems whatsoever to sit through Mickey's Christmas Carol back when it was released as a lead in for another movie. I had more problems because it was a traumatic childhood experience (the Ghost of Christmas Future is freaking terrifying on a big screen!).
I usually would ask why they simply turn up later if they don't care for the pre-program, but then I remembered that US theatres are still often not offering pre-assigned seating.
Anyway, different discussion....the important part is that hopefully Marvel has scored another talented writer. They could use some competent back-up for Marcus and Mc Feely.
I think it also has something to do with start times, how long the movie they paid for was supposed to last, and bladder capacity.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersProbably also factors like Frozen burnout, which is only exacerbated by the fact that it's a short about a non-Pixar franchise playing in front of a Pixar movie, and it's a Christmas short playing in front of a movie about Day of the Dead, which is sure to rub some people the wrong way.
Plus, not to get nitpicky on what constitutes a short, but you can't deny that twenty-something minutes for the length of the actual movie is a bit ridiculous, especially considering how brief most other shorts in front of Disney/Pixar movies tend to be. At the length it has, Olaf's Frozen Adventure feels less like a short and more like an episode of a hypothetical Frozen TV series with the commercials cut out.
Bringing it back to the MCU though, there wasn't anything really wrong with it aside from running too long and that I'm not an Olaf fan to begin with, so I imagine a Black Widow movie written by the same person would be... fine I guess?
shrugs* Granted, Coco is around 15 minutes longer than the standard animated movie, but, sitting through most blockbusters out there would take even longer even with the short. And regarding the bladder capacity, I am not sure what other people do, but I consider the time when the trailer run the ideal time to "wash my hands".
I guess, I have good feeling about this. Like I said, the MCU needs more truly great writing talent.
edited 12th Jan '18 10:34:08 AM by Swanpride
Technically it's the Black List
, and it's named both in honour of the writers/directors/actors/etc who lost their careers to Mc Carthyism, and (Wikipedia says) as a nod by originator Franklin Leonard to his race. That's the joke, in other words, because as good as the scripts might be, they're still not getting produced.
edited 12th Jan '18 11:15:19 AM by Unsung
Sure, didn't mean to overstate the reliability of the list. As good as some of those scripts might be, in the opinion of those polled, then. Because in the first year of the list alone we have Ender's Game, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. There are decent movies on the list, but no guarantees.
Well, you never know...sometimes an initially good script doesn't yield a good movie because it goes through so many studio mandated rewrites that the end-result is, eh, questionable. Also, while it is pretty much impossible to direct an outstanding movie off a bad script (unless you rewrite it along the way), it is possible to ruin a good one through bad directing. Plus, the black list is only partly about writing quality, it is also about good story ideas.
And their average is not that bad....ten of the twenty last screenplay academy award winners were pulled from the black list. And a lot of writers who have unpublished scripts on the list were successful after hired for other projects based on said scripts.
Nothing there is a guarantee...bad writers sometimes struck gold, good writers can deliver nonsense, and sometimes a writer is simply wrong for the project in question.

Part of me would like to see this as the MCU's first R-rated film (since Bob Iger says that he's open to that idea). And she's a character that kind of fits there.
Not that I expect that to happen mind you, but it'd be kind of cool. Basically a MAX story as a film.