I just think you have a slightly rose tinted view of the 2000s especially. That era seems to have been just as Studio driven in the high budget / top grossing lists as now, except that it was a more even mix of various studios, such as WB and Sony with Dark Knight and the Spider-man series respectively.
I also think trying to lay the blame on the lack of creative mid-budget films at MCU's feet to be completely off base, as that feels like a result of streaming services gaining popularity.
It wasn't about holding up the 2000s specifically over any other decade/viewing them with rose tinted goggles (I really wasn't), I just used that era specifically because it came right before the current era, to demonstrate how things changed so fast and recently. I could put together similar lists for the 80s and 90s to about the same effect.
Again, you don't seem to be really wanting to hear my point. It's not about whether there are studio driven movies or not. It's about movies being created specifically because a creator wants to do them versus movies being created specifically because a studio wants to do them.
The push out of mid-budget films is endemic of a few things, including streaming, sure, but also because of the studios focus only only these ultra big budget pictures. Disney has made statements to exactly that effect in recent years.
There is nothing wrong with these movies existing, the problem is these movies becoming almost all that exists outside of the low-budget tier.
I am not trying to hold up Black Panther as some perfect example of high art in cinema. It has its issues and I personally feel like it went to soft
on the overall colonialism critiques. However, I was just pointing out that I feel like it was thematically different than other Marvel movies. You tried to just hand-wave that away and say it doesn't feel varied compared to the other MCU movies. I don't agree with that take at all. I also feel like Thor 1, Iron Man 1, Ragnarok, and Winter Soldier all feel like very different productions where you can see the lead creatives touches in obvious ways.
I also don't really agree that the cohesive nature of the MCU is a negative. In fact I feel like it is an unparalleled achievement in an industry that can barely pull off a competent trilogy most of the time.
I didn't bring up BLACK PANTHER, you did, in an attempt at "gotcha" hence my "yes, yes" response -- because it's like a go to with people defending the MCU. As I acknowledged, BP was striving for something slightly deeper than the average one of these, but despite that it still does fall into a very large amount of the same beats as all the rest. When I say "paint", this is what I meant. It is not to diminish the quality or work that goes into that "paint", it is that the SKELETON is very much the same. The creative vision is what is not differing much. The craftsmanship on display in all the various other fields is not in question (barring, perhaps, some very rough CG in spots in this particular case).
Long story short, most of these MCU movies (my original statement) are very much basically the same thing. There is very little difference once you really look at them structurally between the movies (major exception being ENDGAME... to an extent).
Again, using my paint analogy, which is not meant to be derogatory to the different craftsmen working on the movie, yes they do a great job of making each movie look and feel a bit different on the surface. I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about going deeper and really looking at what happens in each movie. How the films are resolved. What the characters are like in each movie. How in-depth they're explored. How much time they're even allowed to have moments to themselves. Real statements the movies are trying to definitively make past the generic shallow stuff. Most of these are identical in these regards.
Thor 1 may feel unique in that Branagh got to insert his dutch angles, maybe it feels slightly more "Shakespearean" due to the way they talk and the villain being a sibling, but... at the end of the day Thor is still another selfish hero who has to learn that he shouldn't be so selfish, and instead should be more selfless. Again, I want to reiterate, this isn't a bad arc in isolation, but it is repeated with literally just about all of them. And it's never really explored deeper than that. So what you get is a ton of characters that are all basically the same thing and are instead defined by their personality quirks instead of actual character differences.
At the end of all of it, the truth is the Marvel movies simply aren't interested in telling deeper stories.
And that's okay. These movies are fun popcorn thrill rides. That's why Scorsese used the term "theme park". It's fun. A lot of fun. It's not meant to be derogatory. It is just meant to describe the experience.
The problem is in a world where most big movies are that, we lose out on films that ARE striving to tell deeper stories. Every single one of these Marvel movies could be better than they are. Every single one. But the studio is happy to hold them back at the level they are because it's good enough, and because it allows them complete control over the process.
Being iterative is not in itself a negative and is not something exclusive to the MCU.
Are we really going to pretend that Scorsese is reinventing the wheel with The Irishman and not just iterating on a formula that he has worked with for decades?
Again, iteration isn't a problem in isolation. It's when it's all that is happening that it becomes an issue. We don't know what The Irishman is yet, but Scorsese hasn't done a gangster movie in nearly 15 years anyways -- and that one (THE DEPARTED) was quite different from his previous ones. Scorsese's body of work is a lot more varied and interesting than simply doing "gangster movies". He isn't pumping them out 3 times a year, or even one time a year, and he also isn't influencing the entire industry to try to copy him and make their own. It's not a comparable situation.
No one can actually give a solid argument on which fronts the MCU movies are somehow a lesser endeavor and 'not cinema' and just fall back on hyperbolic comments about it being 'manufactured', an 'assembly line', 'just a paint job', etc. Those are not valid complaints and are just nebulous and vapid comments that shed no actual knowledge about the production process and what specific issues they may or may not have with them.
They're manufactured/an assembly line because they literally are. Marvel plans these out over 5 years in advance, often announcing several years of that to the public. People move off one project directly onto the next. Scripts are written in many cases before directors are found, and always to the confines of the grand plan, utilizing the tired and true formula. Action sequence begin pre-vis work before principal photography even begins, etc.
We will just have to agree to disagree. Basically everything you say would be comparable to using 'lazy devs' to critique a game's quality, and that is banned on this forum for a reason because it does not lead to any sort of meaningful discussion and comes from a place of ignorance on how much work goes into every step of the production process.
Also, the original comment as especially condescending because it was "They slightly change the paint over them, that's it."
No, that is absolutely not it. Does Thor:Ragnarok reuse the exact same set design from a previous movie with nothing but a new filter put on top?
Because that would be the equivalent of "just slightly changing the paint job and that's it."
It's just a wrong statement that lacks any sort of nuance worth discussing.
I see that you're in the games industry, so maybe that is where this sentiment is coming from. I get that. For the record, I'm in the film industry, so I am sort of speaking from an informed position when I say this as well:
The games industry is not the film industry. Honestly, what we're all trying to prevent is the film industry becoming the games industry. There are still creative leads/directors in games, but the entire industry is already essentially studio controlled. It's decided what the next project will be.
With film history shows us it doesn't have to be that way. To simplify it (perhaps too much), The Director and Writers of any given project are meant to completely create and then guide the vision that then all of the craftsmen go to make reality. It is no indictment of the level of craft of these people, they are going to do their job to their fullest whether the movie is studio controlled or creative controlled. That is why the "lazy devs" comparison is not applicable at all.
A lot of the people on these Marvel films DO just rotate to a next one. Thor: Ragnarok doesn't use exactly the same sets, but it does use a lot of the same set builders. And the design is replicated or iterated upon from work that came before (be it previous Thor films or Guardians of the Galaxy). Obviously there's lots of teams working simultaneously since there's so many coming out -- again, not so different from AAA game development. And it's actually great for those people as they get to consistently have work. What we're talking about here really has nothing to do with that.
I don't agree that it's the same or comparable to the "lazy dev" argument and I hate that complaint. Lazy devs is a direct critique of the people making it where as saying it's the same with a different coat of paint is critiquing the product. The comparable complaint to lazy devs in movies would be a lazy director, or lazy writer, they did it for the paycheck, or they phoned it in. People can work hard on something and the end result ends up not being good or very similar to something else. Complaining that something is awfully similar is not a direct knock at the effort of the many people who worked on it. Complaining something is iterative by your definition could be seen as complaining they were lazy or put little effort into it too if you want to make it that simple to dismiss the work involved to create it.
I think most people understand that saying something having a different coat of paint doesn't literally mean they took the same thing and changed the paint. People have commonly used that term to describe something that while it may look different on the surface, when you dive into it, there's a lot of similarities. It's not meant to be taken literally and it's absolutely the right statement if someone is complaining how similar the movies are.
Thank you. Perfectly stated.
