I'm not young, but for what it is worth, I'm jazzed about Captain Marvel.
Though I am also old enough to relate to not having the same urgency (and ability to) make it to the theater to see things the way I did when I was younger. And I don't have that feeling that I need to see them all to keep up with the conversation the way I might have when I was younger.
I only saw the first teaser (I tend to avoid trailers, if I can, for movies I think I will see). But from what I have seen and know of it, I like that it is using 1970s Marvel Cosmic stuff. I like that it is introducing a new corner/ set of powerful beings in the MCU, with new kinds of aliens and places (I assume) to design. I like that it is I think all or at least partly in a decade of MCU history we haven't seen yet.
And I missed Jackson's Nick Fury in the most recent Avengers so I am looking forward to seeing more of him. I don't think I have ever seen Brie Larson in anything, but I'm game.
Also I've skipped the last few live action superhero movies, like Ant Man & The Wasp, Aquaman, and Justice League. So I think I'm ready for another one. I'll be there.
For all the different directors who have handled the Marvel movies, they could have all been directed by the same person and it probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference. That’s the kind of consistency I'm talking about.
I don't think that's the case - if it was there wouldn't be the level of outcry at James Gunn being let go. Or people mad that Shane Black made a Shane Black film. Or Black Panther getting a best film nomination.
Not every Marvel film is Iron Man 2.
Now, the thing that has me having second thoughts about Captain Marvel is it's the first time since the split from Perlmutter and the creative committee that Fury and SHEILD have been featured this heavily.
And that was the old telltale sign of the old Marvel homogeneity that not only infected the movies, but originated in the comics too. The repositioning of the superhero as anti-authority figure to being a cog in the military-industrial complex.
That's kind of baked into Carol as a character, but it would be more interesting had they not spent a good part of the last 17 years militarising superheroes in every medium. Thanks Mark Millar...
I don't think that's the case - if it was there wouldn't be the level of outcry at James Gunn being let go. Or people mad that Shane Black made a Shane Black film. Or Black Panther getting a best film nomination.
I haven't seen Black Panther yet, or the most recent Avengers, so perhaps they are exceptions, but the rest feel fairly homogeneous to me. Gunn did bring something extra to the mix in how he used music in his movies, granted. Maybe another director wouldn’t have come up with that. And he’s one of the few directors who co-wrote his scripts, so he affected things on the writing end as well, and for me that’s where most of the differentiation between the movies lies. How much I like the various movies depends much more on the quality of the scripts than the execution of those scripts. In terms of the execution, Gunn is still following the same recipe as the other directors, he’s just a slightly better cook.
2 superhero movies just won Oscars. Aquaman was a smash hit. Even Venom did well. Predictions of the genre's demise are a bit premature.
The comparison to westerns always cracks me up. Westerns decline is easy to understand. It's a genre about a bygone era. No one has grown up fantasying about living in a world with no electricity or showers for a long time. Westerns we're replaced by sci-fi.
Kids do still grow up liking comic book characters (even though they don't read comic books). If there's a threat to the genre it's probably anime/manga stuff
Are there adults on the forum still jazzed for comic books? I enjoy showing my kids the properties, but they don’t see me reading comic books to get the fever to want to as well.
I definitely think the genre will continue, it’ll probably just have a reduction in output each year. I’m wondering if interest will start to wane by non-MCU & DCEU movies jumping into the market.
I was thinking the limitations with regard to casting. I think westerns have grown to be seen in the same way the South & hillbillies are viewed in today’s society.
These days I find myself a little more excited for an interesting documentary coming. Or a small indie drama, Blindspotting and Leave No Trace were two of the best films last year
I still look forward to and enjoy many of the comic book movies/geek properties that come out. But I will admit that the constant online vitrol does dampen my enthusiasm a bit. Thankfully this particular space doesn't engage in such nonsense.
Well in the last few days you've stated that you're not jazzed by comic books, comic book movies, Netflix, or making friends. At this point the only thing I know you're jazzed by is talking about how nothing jazzes you. ;-). So I don't think the problem is movies or friendship or whatever.
2 superhero movies just won Oscars. Aquaman was a smash hit. Even Venom did well. Predictions of the genre's demise are a bit premature.
The comparison to westerns always cracks me up. Westerns decline is easy to understand. It's a genre about a bygone era. No one has grown up fantasying about living in a world with no electricity or showers for a long time. Westerns we're replaced by sci-fi.
Kids do still grow up liking comic book characters (even though they don't read comic books). If there's a threat to the genre it's probably anime/manga stuff
Four westerns have won Best Picture awards. During the 20-year peak of the western genre, eight westerns were nominated for Best Picture. And like I said, 40% of the movies made prior to 1960 were westerns. You don't make that many films if the genre isn’t overwhelmingly popular. Popularity at a given time does not equate to long-term sustainability. Westerns had about a 12-year window when they dominated the industry, and about a 20-year window of high popularity. Marvel is now in its eleventh year, with its initial big story arc about to reach its conclusion. I can definitely see them falling into the same trajectory as the westerns.
Westerns weren’t replaced by sci-fi. They were replaced by a resurgence of the crime genre and a rise of the anti-hero (and to a lesser extent exploitation films). Sci-fi, like westerns, reached their peak (in terms of output) in the 1950s, but they were still far behind westerns, and they kind of died out in the ’60s and didn’t make a real resurgence until Star Wars (a fantasy movie with sci-fi trappings) blew up eight or nine years after the western bubble burst. But that resurgence only lasted about eight years before falling back down to a low but fairly steady output. And as for kids not fantasizing about the western era, I'll just point out that arguably the most popular video game release of last year was Red Dead Redemption II.
Are there adults on the forum still jazzed for comic books? I enjoy showing my kids the properties, but they don’t see me reading comic books to get the fever to want to as well.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m one of them. Just because I'm not particularly excited by anything Marvel and DC are putting out, it doesn’t mean I don’t have comics I’m excited about. I can’t remember the last time I was as excited about a comic as I was about last year’s The Highest House. My kids don’t read nearly as many comics as I do, but they both have two or three books that they look forward to.
These days I find myself a little more excited for an interesting documentary coming. Or a small indie drama, Blindspotting and Leave No Trace were two of the best films last year.
I'm with you. I watched more documentaries last year than fiction movies.
;-). So I don't think the problem is movies or friendship or whatever.<\/p>","bodyRaw":"[{\"insert\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thecomicforums.vanillacommunity.com\\\/discussion\\\/comment\\\/113935#Comment_113935\",\"attributes\":{\"link\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thecomicforums.vanillacommunity.com\\\/discussion\\\/comment\\\/113935#Comment_113935\"}},{\"insert\":\"\\n\"},{\"insert\":\"Well in the last few days you've stated that you're not jazzed by comic books, comic book movies, Netflix, or making friends. At this point the only thing I know you're jazzed by is talking about how nothing jazzes you. ;-). So I don't think the problem is movies or friendship or whatever.\\n\"}]","format":"rich","dateInserted":"2019-03-07T14:00:28+00:00","insertUser":{"userID":2671,"name":"mphil","url":"https:\/\/thecomicforums.vanillacommunity.com\/profile\/mphil","photoUrl":"https:\/\/us.v-cdn.net\/5019455\/uploads\/userpics\/860\/nQJAR97K1565M.jpg","dateLastActive":"2020-10-04T23:41:33+00:00","banned":0,"private":false},"displayOptions":{"showUserLabel":false,"showCompactUserInfo":true,"showDiscussionLink":false,"showPostLink":false,"showCategoryLink":false,"renderFullContent":false,"expandByDefault":false},"url":"https:\/\/thecomicforums.vanillacommunity.com\/discussion\/comment\/113939#Comment_113939","embedType":"quote"}">
https://thecomicforums.vanillacommunity.com/discussion/comment/113939#Comment_113939
We could open a thread on our kids, 80s tv series, or the Boston area sports teams. THOSE still get me jazzed.
I don't think there's ever going to be a time I won't be jazzed about comics in some form. The question is whether I'll be jazzed about the new stuff coming out right now or finding some old nugget I'd always wanted to get around to reading and finally found the time.
For me these movies have taken the place of the itch I had for the superhero comics. Yeah every now and then there's a stinker, but for the most part their solid movies. And now with them getting FF and the X-Men I'm excited to see what they add to the Verse. But I am also worried what a post Cap and Iron Man Verse will be like.
My only grip is I wish they wouldn't call things like Infininty War and Endgame Avengers movies because their not, their Marvel Cinematic Unverse the movie lol.
I always attributed the death of the western to the popularity of James Bond spy movies and Star Wars and everything that followed. I agree that Star Wars and its ilk are fantasies, but in the end aren't they all just primarily populist male power fantasies that are also enjoyed by women? I always assumed Bond and the spy stuff overshadowed westerns since they could be more glamorous and "sexy". To me westerns continued to exist but they did so as Mad Max style post apocalypses or some other setting that's not the Old West. I assumed the 60s and Vietnam did kill the John Wayne heroic style war films.
I don't know but I do know that I absolutely LOVED Captain Marvel. I'm getting the vibe that I may be alone on this but for me it outshined Wonder Woman in every way - especially the scenes of empowerment which I found much more moving.
I always attributed the death of the western to the popularity of James Bond spy movies and Star Wars and everything that followed. I agree that Star Wars and its ilk are fantasies, but in the end aren't they all just primarily populist male power fantasies that are also enjoyed by women? I always assumed Bond and the spy stuff overshadowed westerns since they could be more glamorous and "sexy". To me westerns continued to exist but they did so as Mad Max style post apocalypses or some other setting that's not the Old West. I assumed the 60s and Vietnam did kill the John Wayne heroic style war films.
The spy craze may have been a contributing factor to the slow-down of westerns from the ’50s to the ’60s, but the western popularity actually outlasted the spy craze, which really only lasted about five or six years, by a couple of years. But even during the height of the spy craze, I think westerns on the whole were still more popular, and were certainly more “respectable”. Take James Bond out of the equation and it’s not even a contest. During the spy craze you had westerns like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, A Fistful of Dollars, Hud, Cat Ballou, and The Shooting. Here are a few of the 37 western movies just from 1969, as the spy craze was coming to a close: The Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, True Grit, Support Your Local Sheriff, and MacKenna’s Gold. You still had a lot of the typical westerns in the ’60s, but you also saw more cynical takes on the genre, as well as more humor and a bit of self-awareness happening.
Good point but I do think there is something about a western that's become unappealing since the 70s. Or more specifically, unappealing to Hollywood producers, whereas I don't think sci-fi has ever really gone away. There was a burst of Star Wars imitators and a mad rush to make the next star wars sci-if fantasy/western that eventually came to an end, but as a genre it never really left. You still have hugely popular sci-fi movies like a lot of Cameron's oeuvre, Back to the Future, Robocop, a couple of Phillip K Dick adaptations, the Matrix, Independence Day, Men in Black, and Trek and Star Wars have never really gone away.
I do think there is one now-dead franchise that suggests someone could make a super popular western again: the Pirates of the Caribbean. I think it would need 2 things to be huge: action sequences on a grander scale we haven't really seen before (in Pirates the characters are almost flying around on those ship ropes) and maybe to a lesser extent a horror/monster/CGI element. Of course without a great script you'll wind up with Cowboys vs Aliens or worse, the Jonah Hex debacle and no one wants that.
Sci-fi has become much easier to produce and have it look “believable”, and it's a good genre for the big-budget spectacles theaters are leaning more and more heavily on. Also, sci-fi means so many different things to people—there are just so many subgenres. For instance, most of the movies you listed I wouldn’t classify as pure sci-fi. I mean, most people consider superheroes to be a subgenre of sci-fi rather than a separate genre of its own. So in that sense, yes, sci-fi will never completely go away.
But westerns have never completely gone away either. Production is down, unless you count the genre mash-ups like Westworld, but there were still over a dozen “pure” westerns released last year. With the rise of Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other streaming services producing their own films (the recent Ballad of Buster Scruggs comes to mind), I think westerns will still have a home for many years to come. Maybe the cyclical spikes of productivity of the past may become fewer and farther between, but I think westerns are just too strong an allegorical tool to simply disappear.
Sci-fi has become much easier to produce and have it look “believable”, and it's a good genre for the big-budget spectacles theaters are leaning more and more heavily on. Also, sci-fi means so many different things to people—there are just so many subgenres. For instance, most of the movies you listed I wouldn’t classify as pure sci-fi. I mean, most people consider superheroes to be a subgenre of sci-fi rather than a separate genre of its own. So in that sense, yes, sci-fi will never completely go away.
But westerns have never completely gone away either. Production is down, unless you count the genre mash-ups like Westworld, but there were still over a dozen “pure” westerns released last year. With the rise of Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other streaming services producing their own films (the recent Ballad of Buster Scruggs comes to mind), I think westerns will still have a home for many years to come. Maybe the cyclical spikes of productivity of the past may become fewer and farther between, but I think westerns are just too strong an allegorical tool to simply disappear.
I'm sure there was a time people would've said the same about Elvis.
I was just joking around, but Graceland still gets well over half a million visitors a year. His Spotify numbers are much better than I expected too, considering the age demographics of the app. Elvis still has game.
1. Captain America The Winter Soldier 2. Infinity War 3. Guardians Of The Galaxy 4. Thor Ragnarok 5. Captain America Civil War 6. Avengers 1 7. Iron Man 8. Black Panther 9. Spider-Man Homecoming 10. Captain Marvel 11. Doctor Strange 12. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2 13. Avengers Age Of Ultron 14. Captain America The First Avenger 15. Ant-Man 16. Ant-man and Wasp 17. Iron Man 3 18. The Incredible Hulk 19. Thor 20. Iron Man 2 21. Thor The Dark World
Comments
Though I am also old enough to relate to not having the same urgency (and ability to) make it to the theater to see things the way I did when I was younger. And I don't have that feeling that I need to see them all to keep up with the conversation the way I might have when I was younger.
I only saw the first teaser (I tend to avoid trailers, if I can, for movies I think I will see). But from what I have seen and know of it, I like that it is using 1970s Marvel Cosmic stuff. I like that it is introducing a new corner/ set of powerful beings in the MCU, with new kinds of aliens and places (I assume) to design. I like that it is I think all or at least partly in a decade of MCU history we haven't seen yet.
And I missed Jackson's Nick Fury in the most recent Avengers so I am looking forward to seeing more of him. I don't think I have ever seen Brie Larson in anything, but I'm game.
Also I've skipped the last few live action superhero movies, like Ant Man & The Wasp, Aquaman, and Justice League. So I think I'm ready for another one. I'll be there.
Not every Marvel film is Iron Man 2.
Now, the thing that has me having second thoughts about Captain Marvel is it's the first time since the split from Perlmutter and the creative committee that Fury and SHEILD have been featured this heavily.
And that was the old telltale sign of the old Marvel homogeneity that not only infected the movies, but originated in the comics too. The repositioning of the superhero as anti-authority figure to being a cog in the military-industrial complex.
That's kind of baked into Carol as a character, but it would be more interesting had they not spent a good part of the last 17 years militarising superheroes in every medium. Thanks Mark Millar...
2 superhero movies just won Oscars. Aquaman was a smash hit. Even Venom did well. Predictions of the genre's demise are a bit premature.
The comparison to westerns always cracks me up. Westerns decline is easy to understand. It's a genre about a bygone era. No one has grown up fantasying about living in a world with no electricity or showers for a long time. Westerns we're replaced by sci-fi.
Kids do still grow up liking comic book characters (even though they don't read comic books). If there's a threat to the genre it's probably anime/manga stuff
Are there adults on the forum still jazzed for comic books? I enjoy showing my kids the properties, but they don’t see me reading comic books to get the fever to want to as well.
I definitely think the genre will continue, it’ll probably just have a reduction in output each year. I’m wondering if interest will start to wane by non-MCU & DCEU movies jumping into the market.
I was thinking the limitations with regard to casting. I think westerns have grown to be seen in the same way the South & hillbillies are viewed in today’s society.
I feel that way about most movies at this point. Same recipes, just variations on the presentation of the final product.
I still look forward to and enjoy many of the comic book movies/geek properties that come out. But I will admit that the constant online vitrol does dampen my enthusiasm a bit. Thankfully this particular space doesn't engage in such nonsense.
Well in the last few days you've stated that you're not jazzed by comic books, comic book movies, Netflix, or making friends. At this point the only thing I know you're jazzed by is talking about how nothing jazzes you. ;-). So I don't think the problem is movies or friendship or whatever.
Westerns weren’t replaced by sci-fi. They were replaced by a resurgence of the crime genre and a rise of the anti-hero (and to a lesser extent exploitation films). Sci-fi, like westerns, reached their peak (in terms of output) in the 1950s, but they were still far behind westerns, and they kind of died out in the ’60s and didn’t make a real resurgence until Star Wars (a fantasy movie with sci-fi trappings) blew up eight or nine years after the western bubble burst. But that resurgence only lasted about eight years before falling back down to a low but fairly steady output. And as for kids not fantasizing about the western era, I'll just point out that arguably the most popular video game release of last year was Red Dead Redemption II.
I'm pretty jazzed about Bendis's Superman run and the immortal hulk
And my daughter is still excited about reading her Scooby Doo comics (she's all about the team up book now).
We could open a thread on our kids, 80s tv series, or the Boston area sports teams. THOSE still get me jazzed.
My only grip is I wish they wouldn't call things like Infininty War and Endgame Avengers movies because their not, their Marvel Cinematic Unverse the movie lol.
Damn, I forgot about the merger. When all the tools in the toolbox become assessable, THAT will get me jazzed.
I don't know but I do know that I absolutely LOVED Captain Marvel. I'm getting the vibe that I may be alone on this but for me it outshined Wonder Woman in every way - especially the scenes of empowerment which I found much more moving.
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=4493&p=.htm
Good. There are things I’m not fond of about the movie, but I’ve always found boycotts (and censorship) foolish.
I do think there is one now-dead franchise that suggests someone could make a super popular western again: the Pirates of the Caribbean. I think it would need 2 things to be huge: action sequences on a grander scale we haven't really seen before (in Pirates the characters are almost flying around on those ship ropes) and maybe to a lesser extent a horror/monster/CGI element. Of course without a great script you'll wind up with Cowboys vs Aliens or worse, the Jonah Hex debacle and no one wants that.
I mean, most people consider superheroes to be a subgenre of sci-fi rather than a separate genre of its own. So in that sense, yes, sci-fi will never completely go away.
But westerns have never completely gone away either. Production is down, unless you count the genre mash-ups like Westworld, but there were still over a dozen “pure” westerns released last year. With the rise of Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other streaming services producing their own films (the recent Ballad of Buster Scruggs comes to mind), I think westerns will still have a home for many years to come. Maybe the cyclical spikes of productivity of the past may become fewer and farther between, but I think westerns are just too strong an allegorical tool to simply disappear.
The thread has ventured off onto a tangent. Is it too late to add that I find the Beatles to be dreadfully overrated?
Eh. We’ll see. I’m sure there was a time people would’ve said the same about Elvis.
2. Infinity War
3. Guardians Of The Galaxy
4. Thor Ragnarok
5. Captain America Civil War
6. Avengers 1
7. Iron Man
8. Black Panther
9. Spider-Man Homecoming
10. Captain Marvel
11. Doctor Strange
12. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2
13. Avengers Age Of Ultron
14. Captain America The First Avenger
15. Ant-Man
16. Ant-man and Wasp
17. Iron Man 3
18. The Incredible Hulk
19. Thor
20. Iron Man 2
21. Thor The Dark World