The Marvelization of Cinema

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Living in NZ when the lotr trilogy was being filmed, it's hard to express how much the entire country got behind the production. Not just government support, but cottage industry, legions of extras travelling from small towns each of whom was dedicated to the source material, backcountry farms picking the best horses, tiny backyard forges, dedicated jewelers examining sketches from various Tolkien works, local helicopter pilots showing the best spots and working long hours. The work showed the passion of the production team but also the supporting passion of millions.

Part of marvelization is that it treats the audience of adult media like children, and the audience of children’s media like babies. It assumes that audiences need everything explained to them and they need a fast pace to keep their attention. That’s why older movies feel so refreshing to me, bc they actually give you time and space to breathe and opportunities to wonder and put the pieces together by yourself

I think it's key to recognize that this isn't just noticable in cinema, but other creative mediums as well. Videogames, music, anywhere that passion and creativity used to flourish, it is now so heavily cooperate and reliant on things like nostalgia as mentioned in the video. I don't think this video specifically pertains to just cinema, but society and art in general.

It started with Thor Ragnarok for me. I like Waititi's humour but there were a number of moments in that movie where a strong emotional connection could have been made but he fell back on quippy one liners. It was not only a missed opportunity to take the movie to the next level but it cheapened the moment. It's only gotten worse from there to be sure where everyone is doing it and they wonder why they're losing audiences. You have to go deeper than surface to make a lasting impression but studios only seem to have fast food on the menu.

When Martin Scorsese said that Marvel wasn't cinema and they're "closer to theme parks than they are to movies", he got a lot of backlash. Now, everyone is realizing he was right the whole time.

One point that was in this video that has been something I've been saying for years now: We need stories that END. Not stories that are cancelled. Not stories that exhaust themselves into oblivion. Not stories that change their essence so much in the name of continuation that they don't resemble their origins anymore. I feel a lot of ourselves as an audience are to blame for this. We get so attached to stories that we don't ever want it to end. I sometimes feel like every single person I talk to about this kind of thing simply don't want to see their beloved stories end, and I cannot understand why, if the alternative to it actually ending is always one of gradual disinterest or actual degeneration of what it was before. To me, it doesn't matter how great and amazing a story actually is if it doesn't have an intended ending to it. It's like making an absolutely beautiful and delicious cake only to use sewage as the icing, or keep messing with it until it actually starts to spoil and become rotten when you're still starting to make the icing. What we crave as spectators, readers and story-enjoyers in general is COMPLETE stories. As much as we would love to have something that can last forever, no such thing can exist in regards to narratives. That is a hard truth to accept but it is definitely a necessary one. I can only hope that either the industry realizes that, or the mass of audiences do so in an effective way that it shows itself in the movie industry investor's paycheck.

I recently distilled my feelings about corporate moviemaking down to "Corporations don't want storytellers, they want story factories". Entropic storytelling is appealing to corporations because it can be cranked out rapidly; it doesn't rely on coherence, it relies on brand recognition, a thing that business majors understand and can easily make use of. It doesn't require careful writing or passionate cast and crew, which can be expensive and time-consuming, and even more expensive/time-consuming in unpredictable ways; in fact, you can rip entire chunks of story wholesale from existing movies, and you'll be praised for the homage--which means you can save massive amounts of time on figuring out what to do and skip straight to doing it. And, market forces encourage this--because a work of art doesn't start making money until after it's finished, there's immense economic pressure on the team to spend as little time in pre-production and production as possible, because every hour worked is an hour of wages that has not yet been recouped. All of this pushes companies (and filmmakers!) toward making films by the numbers, because doing it in any other way means taking risks that are--in the opinion of those who believe in the story factory--unnecessary.

Great essay. I think one major point that has started to ruin many modern movies that I didn't hear mentioned: You don't have to tear down your heroes to introduce new ones. I think this has to do with our modern nihilism, or lack of respect for what previous generations built, but it seems like most sequels nowadays can't help but belittle and tear down their previous heroes, in order to prop up any new ones they're bringing in. The MCU, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones are just some of the biggest examples that pop into my head. One reason Top Gun Maverick was so successful was that they didn't tear down their hero. They gave him new challenges, and had him in a different stage of life, but he was still a force to be reckoned with, who had a lot to share with the younger pilots. I guarantee if Disney had made that movie, they would have made him a washed up has-been, who is shown up by the newer pilots. And nobody wants to see that.

Irony poisoning is such a good term. LOTR is a good example of genuine, earnest emotion without the need to wink at the audience obnoxiously while feeling those emotions.

This is why I loved the new Dune so much. No irony, no inappropriate jokes. It took itself and its story seriously. It didn't constantly undermine its own characters and themes. Seeing that movie for the first time gave me a new hope for blockbuster movies, and science fiction especially

It's genuinely impressive just how far big movies will go to not have a 'real' moment in a movie. To completely stomp out any genuine moments between characters by adding one final line that makes the entire conversation become a joke. It works sometimes, it really does. The right characters with the right relationship can nail a scene. Where the comedy is part of the discusion they are having to ease tension. But instead alot of times it's meant to basically derail the impactful moment at the last second and segway out of it to the next scene. Either delaying the actual impactful part of the conversation or undermining its meaning.

Wandavision was a turning point for me. It was a passion project that explored grief and loss. And marvel saw it did well and their only takeaway was "clearly we need more shows!" And completely missed the actual love that went into the script and the sets.

"It's like the weekly adventure has become the daily homework" is honestly a brilliant summation of the exhaustion everyone seems to be feeling.

One thing I've noticed in the Original Trilogy and Prequel Trilogy: Whenever a Lightsaber is drawn in anger, something significant happens. Someone either loses a limb or loses their life. A Lightsaber drawn in anger CHANGES things. in Disneywars however, it's just flashing lights and colours, followed by someone running away. It's pathetic how they've reduced such a meaningful thing to a mere lightshow.

Man, I'm so glad you touched on irony-poisoning. I've been trying to coin my own term for it whenever I get time to think about it, but this is perfect. It really is an epidemic against genuineness.

11:41 that little joke is actually fantastic and VERY true to D&D. When playing D&D and you finish a big bad evil guy, you may be asked to describe the finishing move. In this scene you can almost hear the player saying “So I grab them! And you know that bit in Avengers with the Hulk and Loci?….” The whole film is also working on that other higher level where players choose to do random and cheesy stuff.

A lot of creators seem so scared of being sincere. We’ve become jaded. We need more Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. We need more movies willing to embrace the storytelling elements that are “corny” and engaging with them honestly. Corny is only bad when its hollow, you have to mean it and take it seriously for it to work

I still remember fondly how the artisans of the LOTR team modified a custom Rohirrim bike seat for Theoden, because he couldn't sit on a normal chair in his armor and they didn't think that a regular bike seat was what the King of Rohan should sit on. There was more passion and soul poured into this very bike seat than in all the armor of the Rings of Power combined.

On the Owlbear smashing scene, this makes sense to people that plays RPG such as D&D. It's a reference that we as players would make, because movies would inspire us. This feeling of being "playing" D&D was very well done by that movie, through language and those type of references. The bulk character smashing the magic one makes a lot of sense for D&D and other context as well. Wizards are a crystal canon (low life, lot's of damage), if your melee get him, he's done.