Welcome to the main discussion thread for the Marvel Cinematic Universe! This pinned post is here to establish some basic guidelines. All of the Media Forum rules
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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
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Ugh, Uncanny Valley at its worst.
To quote the immortal John Carpenter: "A lot of old-timers like to bitch, but movies are for the young. Audiences love superhero movies, and that's good. Things evolve and things change.
"
Martin Scorcese is my favorite of New Hollywood's Old Guard, but even he has his moments of being bitter.
Even beyond bitterness, Scorcese is also something of The Last DJ of the New Hollywood's hardcore auteur school in that he seems to be the last one of them still delivering austeur-esque masterpieces. the others are dead, retired or making mass-appeal/pretty bad films. The MCU empire (owned by none other than Disney) stand for the exact antithesis of what Scorcese and most of The New Hollywood school stood for: mass-appeal, blockbuster juggernauts produced by a industrial system.
For good and for ill, the MCU challenges the notion of Auteur Theory in several ways by inserting auteur directors in this massified genre and industrial production.
For one, I'd like to see the likes of James Gunn, Ryan Coogler and Taika Waititi (the three most "auteur" directors of the MCU) and Martin Scorcese, Ridley Scott and William Friedkin (three of the most vocal directors in their dislike for superhero movies) in a round table discussing and contrasting notions of cinema (and auteur cinema) in both their time and now within the MCU shadow.
And maybe have John Carpenter as a mediator.
Edited by Gaon on Oct 4th 2019 at 2:07:58 AM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."![]()
Eh, it's not entirely bad.
Scorsese's probably jealous...
Speaking of Kamala, I've been having a weird (if morbid) thought I had about having her connected to the bigger MCU. What if someone in her family was among the Snapped, like her brother Aamir, and she ended up growing up without him only for him to get Blipped five years later?
Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Oct 4th 2019 at 5:19:18 AM
I think people are way too hard on the MCU just cause its "made for mass appeal & a young audience'.
I mean Micheal Bay exists & his movies are made in a similar way yet they legitimately terrible. This is the same guy who made a movie that has a grown man justifing having sex with a minor through a law card he keeps in his wallet.
I say we all focus our collective energy on how much Bay sucks.
Edited by slimcoder on Oct 4th 2019 at 2:35:24 AM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."There were probably auteur filmmakers back in the day who claimed Star Wars wasn't real cinema. I recall recently reading a segment of an interview with Alfred Hitchcock where he talked about Star Wars and he basically was confused why they were using laser blasts instead of actual guns. This stuff has been around for a while.
To contrast, Paul Thomas Anderson (himself an auteur filmmaker of considerable talent) has always championed "lowbrow" mass appeal films and looked down on that kind of film snobbery, although I don't know if he's a fan of the MCU films specifically.
And then there's Troma, who are proud to make Schlock. Also helped James Gunn's career.
Edited by Demongodofchaos2 on Oct 4th 2019 at 6:42:24 AM
Watch SymphogearMost of them (except James Cameron and Spielberg, who are very good friends with Bay) probably hate him too, but Bay never took over Hollywood the way the MCU did. So I can understand the greater focus on this (alongside the whole auteur cinema discussion), even if I think is misplaced.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Well, I mean there is shallow and there is.....bloodless.
And off course the fact that a good portion of Michael Bay's characters often end up being racist or sexist, annoying stereotypes.
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianI have heard Lindsey (I think?) argue that technically speaking, Michael Bay is an auteur, just one whose vision happens to be something that would normally come out of the more "industrial" and cynical parts of Hollywood. Essentially, he's an anti-sellout.
Leviticus 19:34It is pretty funny that Bay actually has an auteur style, its just a style that synergizes really well with mass-market appeal & such.
His Transformers movies are a really indicative case of this. Each installment increasingly lambasted but it took the fifth movie for audiences to actually get tired of his repetitive & unevolving style.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."His Transformers movies are a really indicative case of this. Each installment increasingly lambasted but it took the fifth movie for audiences to actually get tired of his repetitive & unevolving style.
That's because there's a large difference between a movie that is good versus a movie that is popular. As much as people like to say that they don't want shit like Bay's mindless action flicks, the box office ticket sales say otherwise.
It's like Nickelback. Ask anyone what they think about Nickelback and they are quick to tell you how much they hate the worst band ever made. And yet, Nickelback is one of the highest-selling bands in the history of music. People are buying Nickelback records left and right. So what does that mean?
People don't know what they want; they know what they think they want. Other times, people are just ashamed to admit to what they want; they know what they want to want. And that's probably one of the hardest things about film production: trying to find real feedback in the ocean of egos, pretense, and concealment of guilty pleasures.
Because everyone wants to believe that they're only into really clever films with strong artistic merit while they're standing in line for the next Jack Black comedy. Everyone wants to say that Michael Bay is a terrible director with zero talent and no redeeming qualities to his work while they're hitting the theater for that third watch of Sailor Moon But Explosions.
Everyone hates reboots, hates sequels, hates adaptations, and watches the hell out of all three. Everyone talks about how the only good films are original IPs, but if you look at the top 20 highest-grossing films of all time
, you'll find 7 adaptations, 14 sequels, and even 2 reboots for good measure.
The only movies in that top 20 that are purely original IP are Avatar and Titanic, the former of which is also generally agreed by the internet to be shit. And both of those were recently surpassed by an adaptation sequel. You want to know why film studios aren't churning out original IP films? It's because nobody watches original IP. People just say they want original IP because it makes them sound classier.
So, yeah, that's where Bay falls. Like Nickelback, it's very popular to hate Michael Bay, but also people pay a lot of money for his movies so obviously he has an audience. It's just that nobody's willing to admit in public to liking his films.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I myself can't tell you what to like or not like or give money to, but it's always a good thing to seek out original I Ps.
Self-serious autistic trans gal who loves rock/metal and animation with all her heart. (she/her)I love Nickelback
A better comparison would've been the Call of Duty franchise imO.
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianI mean, to be honest, most people I think have a very different relationship with movies than most of us here do.
This forum is filled with people who spend a lot of time thinking about movies (and other media), dissecting them, comparing them to other films, trying to find out what makes them tick and what they're really saying, and so on. People who make films like Scorcese are also going to have that kind of outlook.
But really, for the average person, a movie is just a fun one and a half to three hours they're using to blow off some steam after a long day/week of their nine to five. Unless the film is really great and speaks to them in some way they're probably not gonna think about it too much after they get out of the theater. They may not even think something like Bay's films is all that great necessarily, but it's serviceable for that purpose. In fact it's apparently great for that purpose since those films made so much money for such a long time.
Edited by Draghinazzo on Oct 5th 2019 at 11:19:37 AM

He’s definitely an elitist.
And yet, Avengers: Endgame made more money than literally every movie he's ever made combined.
Some bitterness is not unsurprising.
Oh good. The trailer made it seem like she was probably going to be the main character, but I was half-expecting it to turn out to be "Your OC!" A lot of franchise games have been going that route lately. It's stupid.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 4th 2019 at 2:32:16 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.