Is Marvel Entertainment evil?
I compiled commentary from twelve experts, and the results are not good for superhero fans.
“I’m not going to head off and do a Marvel film,” director Peter Jackson said on the eve of his Hobbit 3 release. “I don’t really like the Hollywood blockbuster bandwagon that exists right now. The industry and the advent of all the technology, has kind of lost its way. It’s become very franchise driven and superhero driven.”
Since Jackson’s Lord of the Rings marked that technology advent, and since Jackson made all six of the Tolkien franchise films, that leaves superheroes as his only objection. He doesn’t like them. Or at least he doesn’t like Marvel—which, despite Warner Bros’ best efforts, is the same thing.
Even Marvel’s own Iron Man Robert Downey, Jr. sees the rust: “Honestly, the whole thing is just showing the beginning signs of fraying around the edges. It’s a little bit old. Last summer there were five or seven different ones out.”
Actually, there were only four superhero movies last summer, and though Marvel Entertainment produced only two (Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy), the Marvel logo appeared at the start of the last X-Men and Spider-Man installments too. But you can’t blame Downey’s miscount. New York Times film critic A. O. Scott expressed a similar opinion after seeing Downey in The Avengers two year earlier: “the genre, though it is still in a period of commercial ascendancy, has also entered a phase of imaginative decadence.”
Alan Moore’s review was even more apocalyptic: “I think it’s a rather alarming sign if we’ve got audiences of adults going to see the Avengers movie and delighting in concepts and characters meant to entertain the 12-year-old boys of the 1950s.” Even The Avengers own director Joss Whedon acknowledges that audiences are tired of at least some aspects of the formula: “People have made it very clear that they are fed up with movies where entire cities are destroyed, and then we celebrate.”
And yet when a director attempts to shake-up the formula, Marvel fires them. Marvel’s Ant-Man went into production only because of Edgar Wright’s involvement, but when Marvel wasn’t happy with his last script, they rewrote it without his input, followed by a joint announcement that Wright was leaving “due to differences in their visions of the film.” Wright joined axed Marvel directors Kenneth Branaugh, Joe Johnston, and Patty Jenkins (as well as axed actors Edward Norton and Terrance Howard), all victims of similar differences in vision.
Is this the same risk-taking Marvel that hired Ang Lee to make his idiosyncratic Hulk? Is this the same Marvel that hired drug-addict Robert Downey, Jr. after Downey couldn’t stay clean long enough to complete a season of Alley McBeal? Is this the same Marvel that hired the iconoclastic Joss Whedon after his Buffy empire expired, his Firefly franchise flopped, and his Wonder Woman script never even made it into Development Hell?
Actually, it’s not.
Kim Masters and Borys Kit of The Hollywood Reporter explain: “Marvel and Wright were different entities when they began their relationship. Marvel was an upstart, independent and feisty as it began building the Marvel Studios brand.”
The Marvel I grew up reading, Marvel Comics Group, hasn’t been around since 1986, when its parent company, Marvel Entertainment Group, was sold to New World Entertainment. Technically, Marvel Comics (AKA Atlas Comics, AKA Timely Comics) ceased to exist in 1968 when owner Martin Goodman sold his company to Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation. The corporate juggling is hard to follow, but that next Marvel was sold to MacAndrews Group in 1989, and then, as part of a bankruptcy deal, to Toy Biz in 1997, where it became Marvel Enterprises, before changing its name to Marvel Entertainment in 2005 when it created Marvel Studios, before sold to Disney in 2009.
The real question is: at what point did Hydra infiltrate it?
I would like to report that the nefarious forces of evil have seized only Marvel’s movie-making branches, leaving its financially infinitesimal world of comic books to wallow in benign neglect. But that’s not the case.
Marvel comics writer Chris Claremont, renown for his 16-year run on The Uncanny X-Men, is currently hampered in his Nightcrawler scripting because he and everyone else writing X-Men titles are forbidden to create new characters. “Well,” he asked, “who owns them?” Fox does. Which means any new character Claremont creates becomes the film property of a Marvel Entertainment rival. “There will be no X-Men merchandising for the foreseeable future because, why promote Fox material?”
That’s also why Marvel cancelled The Fantastic Four. Those film rights are owned by Fox too, with a reboot out next August. Why should the parent company allow one of its micro-branches to promote another studio’s movie? Well, for one, The Fantastic Four was the title that launched the Marvel superhero pantheon and its subsequent comics empire in 1961. Surely even a profits-blinded mega-corporation can recognize the historical significance?
Like I said: Hydra.
This is what drove former Marvel creator Paul Jenkins to the independent Boom! Studios: “It bugs me that the creators were a primary focus when the mainstream publishers needed them, and now that the corporations are driving the boat, creative decisions are being made once again by shareholders.” Former Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas agrees: “There is a sense of loss because the tail is now wagging the dog.”
Compare that to Fantagraphics editor Garry Groth: “I think it’s a publisher’s obligation to take risks; I could probably publish safe, respectable ‘literary’ comics or solid, ‘good,’ uncontroversial comics for the rest of my life. I think it’s important, personally and professionally, to occasionally get outside your comfort zone.”
Marvel Entertainment is all about comfort zones. Even for its actors. “It’s all set up now so that you’re weirdly kind of safe,” says former Batman star Michael Keaton. “Once you get in those suits, they really know what to do with you. It was hard then; it ain’t that hard now.” New York Times’ Alex Pappademas is “old enough to remember when Warner Brothers entrusted the 1989 Batman and its sequel to Tim Burton, and how bizarre that decision seemed at the time, and how Burton ended up making one deeply and fascinatingly Tim Burton-ish movie that happened to be about Batman (played by the equally unlikely Michael Keaton, still the only screen Bruce Wayne who seemed like a guy with a dark secret).”
That’s the same Michael Keaton currently riding Birdman to the Oscars. How soon till Marvel’s Agents of H.Y.D.R.A. overwhelms that corner of Hollywood?
I guess the one question is whether there ever really was a moment when Marvel was not cynical corporate dreck. Parsing the moment when corporate created genre product became too corporate seems like an exercise in futility at some point….
Parts of this essay strike me as resonant with some of the paranoid ideas of superfans. For example, I am not sure I buy the dropping of Fantastic Four (for now) as emerging from the movie rivalry. More like it hasn’t sold well and Marvel is about to do a big Secret Wars reboot – so why not wait and re-introduce FF at the start of their new project? You know, like as an homage to its own history. I would bet something like that will happen – esp. since comics don’t drive movie sales. . . there is no way that an extra 20k (or whatever) issues of FF a month makes that big a difference to Fox’s films. It is absurd to think it. Has anyone confirmed this?
The whole directorial/actor thing makes more sense to me. I am one of the few people I know who actually liked Ang Lee’s Hulk – well, kinda, parts of it tried to evoke the comics page on the screen and I appreciated that. I would like for these films to take some chances (like Dr. Strange should be mad trippy mind-fuck of a movie, like what Inception tried to be, but good and with magic), but also know it is extremely unlikely.
It just seems to me that this is one step away from claiming that Marvel Comics is going to make all their mutants into Inhumans to have access to them in them in the movies (something I have seen claimed on the internet a lot).
As for Claremont’s claim, it seems strange since Bendis and others working on X-books have been making new charactersin the last couple of years. Sure, most are villains, but being X-Men, from Rogue to Magneto to Juggernaut, all their villains end up on the team at some point down the line anyway.
I guess I am cynical about this from the other side of where Noah is coming from – while I agree that there has always been this dreck, the point is sometimes great stuff gets through (just like anything else)
Claremont’s claim is odd if other writers have been able to make new characters, but like with the Paul Jenkins quote, it’s likely more about who’s is “in” and who is “out” among Marvel’s writing team. (I think Jenkins fled DC where I’m sure the “in” writers like Scott Snyder are very happy)
Claremont is likely no longer considered “top talent” and not treated as well as Bendis.
Brian Hitch talked about being shut out from the writing process at Marvel:
“Since “Ultimates” ended, I’d been less and less involved in a collaborative process at Marvel. They now had their various brains-trusts, architects or whatever the gang was calling themselves, and that was what led their creative process. It seemed a very closed shop and not what it was like when I signed up to do “Ultimates” at all. I felt like they wanted an illustrator not a creator, and that was very frustrating to me. I’d submitted several proposals for various series, getting nowhere”
It’s fine to take chances in the film biz, and Marvel has done it a few times. But the Ang Lee decision was a bad one, for the simple reason that Ang Lee ignored what made the Hulk brand popular in the first place. Theatergoers saw an extremely dark version of the Hulk few expected, and word-of-mouth quickly killed the film after an extremely strong first week.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Be very, very, very careful when you screw with a brand.
If you really want to plow into new creative territory, create new characters and do the plowing with them.
The reason the Superman film re-boots keep disappointing is because the filmmakers keep projecting a Superman who does not meet audience expectations. Remember the re-boot where Superman knocks up Lois Lane, dumps her, and then flies off to the ends of the universe to “find himself”? The consensus of the audiences was “Huh? Superman wouldn’t do that!”
Brand management is an extremely important part of the film success equation, and Hollywood hubris sometimes obscures that fact.
One other important point. In some cases, rebooting characters can be very successful — such as the original X-Men and Guardians of the Galaxy comic book characters.
In the case of the former, the comic was relegated to third string status after a strong start. A Neal Adams re-boot late in the original series’ run didn’t save the book, and it was cancelled. The second re-boot, with a totally different creative team clicked, and X-Men soon became a first-tier franchise.
In the case of the original Guardians, the franchise was on life support almost as soon as it started. Various creative teams fooled around with the characters over the years, until the team that showed up in the recent film was absolutely nothing like the team that made its debut in the comic I bought off the stands in late 1968, Marvel Super Heroes #18.
Why did these re-boots succeed? Simple. The original versions of the characters had a small to medium following at best, so, compared to top-tier characters like Superman, there were relatively few fans to disappoint, brand expectations-wise, when the characters were tweaked and eventually received their major overhauls.
Russ–
Superman Returns actually grossed more money than Batman Begins did, but the latter reboot was the one that was kept. It seems the whims of Warner corporate was more of a factor than commercial appeal.
I think Superman Returns was more in tune with brand expectations than you’re giving it credit for. I think most people knew Superman from the Christopher Reeve films. The picture, including the aspects you didn’t like, was clearly built from that foundation.
With the Hulk films, the film with Edward Norton was much more in line with brand expectations than the one Ang Lee directed. But commercially it didn’t matter. If you adjust the grosses for inflation, the one with Norton made less money. Might there be just a ceiling of interest in Hulk movies?
I think it can also be luck — what other films came out at the time, what other things were happening, the phase of the moon. I think it can sometimes be easy to overthink this stuff; every major film release is a gamble, and gambles by definition are somewhat random.
Hard to believe the main question here even needs to be asked when it is obvious to, well, almost anyone with half a brain that the entirety of Marvel is founded on a corrupt set of exploitations involving scores of artists who diod the lions’ share of the creative work for a glib blurbist to then take all the credit and writer’s pay for over-copy-writing. Marvel does not pay artists royalties, only “writeras” and the Marvel Methor artists didn’t get paid for any of the writing they did which was most of the writing, by most sane standards. And the Kirby family’s recent victory-by-default was only because Marvel was so certain that they were in the wrong t—they were forced to do the right thing, in no way was it voluntary and the rest of the non-royalty-eligible talent will have a cold chance in hell ever getting any satisfaction. The superhero movies, well, yuck—it is hard to believe so many of them get greenlit, since they are really not worth an adult’s time, but they are and somehow they might succeed in doing what television and video games did not: finally destroy cinema.
Well…doubt they’ll destroy cinema. Crappy big budget action films have been around for a while; doubt that it makes that much difference whether they’re superhero films or some other subgenre.
It’s hard to believe that the appetite for superhero films remains so high, though. Will people ever get tired of them? It seems like they’d have to, and yet…
RSM — Noah’s right that timing can be a factor. But in the case of the Hulk, I think it’s possible that the Ang Lee version forever crippled the film brand. Hulk 2003 made $62 million its opening weekend, and its take dropped 70 percent the next weekend — a big drop. Hulk 2008 made $55 million its opening weekend and dropped 60 percent in weekend 2 — an average drop.
I don’t think I’m off base with my assessment of the two recent Superman reboots. Superman 2006 only grossed $52 million its opening weekend — which is a pretty shitty opening for a top tier character like Superman. I think its because they mucked up the brand. Superman 2013 did far better, opening with $116 million its first weekend.
And the Tomatometer backs me up. “Superman Returns” was liked by 61 percent of audiences, while “Man of Steel” was liked by 76 percent of audiences. Both ratings are from a sample size of about 500,000 — which is pretty solid from a validity standpoint.
“Superman Returns actually grossed more money than Batman Begins did, but the latter reboot was the one that was kept. It seems the whims of Warner corporate was more of a factor than commercial appeal.”
I have trouble believing that if Warner mounts a reboot a few years after Superman Returns, the decision to discard the continuity of the first movie is attributable to whims of management and not a calculation of commercial appeal. I haven’t seen the figures for Superman Returns but you’ve got to account for factors like there not having been a Superman movie for decades, brand recognition, a massive ad campaign, publicity emphasizing the continuity with the Reeve movies… and then there’s the budget. Warners obviously expected it to do better. And for what it’s worth, I thought the movie was horrible. Just fundamentally misconceived. The Star Wars prequels did well too, but you can’t tell me anybody was pushing for the new installments to continue in that vein. Nostalgia will sell a certain number of tickets.
Why is it particularly surprising that we have not yet reached Peak Superhero Film in spite of the frequent predictions of highfalutin’ film critics?
The Western genre was top box office for how many decades in the mid-20th century?
I haven’t liked any of the recent superhero movies, and I have a theory about them that I’m sure you’d all like to hear.
Perhaps because of the horrors of the Great Depression and WWII, the 30s and 40s inspired some very inventive American pop culture aimed at escapism for kids, like Superman, Flash Gordon, and movie serials. In the calmer and more comfortable 50s and 60s, there were some likably jokey riffs on the original superhero stuff–the newly goofy Superman comics, the early Marvel comics, and the Batman t.v. show. And in the 70s and 80s, some very talented people who grew up with the 30s-40s material were able to do affectionate big-budget movie tributes to it, with the first two Superman movies, the original Star Wars movies, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. But nowadays, the people who make movies and t.v. shows are pop-culture-drenched suburbanite nerds who are so far removed from the original burst of inspiration that there’s no way they can possibly do anything interesting with it. It’s like a copy of a copy of a copy. Am I on to something here?
Russ–
Virtually every one of the Tomatometer ratings for Superman Returns is from the last five years.
Here’s a link to the RT page with the community/Tomatometer ratings from 2009, three years after the film came out:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100213003541/http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/superman_returns/reviews_users.php
All of 3024 reviews, as opposed to the current 500,000+. The rating back then was 73%. Neither Tomatometer rating is a gauge of how the film was perceived at the time of its release.
Incidentally, the September 2006 rating, from 574 reviews, was 80%.
As for the comparative numbers of Batman Begins and Superman Returns, here you go:
Batman Begins in 2005:
International gross: $374 million ($453m adjusted)
Opening week gross (North America): $48.7 million ($59.03m adjusted)
Superman Returns in 2006:
International gross: $391 million ($459m adjusted)
Opening week gross (North America): $52.5 million (61.65m adjusted)
They’re pretty much the same, with Superman Returns having a small edge. The interest in the films among North American audiences when they opened was comparable as well.
The studio executives pulled the plug on a Raimi-Maguire Spider-Man 4 and rebooted that franchise. Spider-Man 3 had the biggest international gross in the franchise, so the concern clearly wasn’t commercial appeal there. These things happen for all sorts of reasons.
If there’s a larger lesson, it’s probably that one shouldn’t jump to conclusions about business decisions of this sort. Taking them as a validation of one’s likes or dislikes seems misguided to me.
I never expect big budget cinema to take any more risk than is inherent in the venture. Massive amounts of money are involved. Under the circumstances, a safe, formulaic approach is rational, and rationally to be expected.
There are (or have been) a number of superhero and comics inspired movies that take more chances, just not any backed by a hundred-million dollars.
Comics (though also largely a profit driven mass media where art is often incidental or of secondary concern) are different from even smaller budget studio movies because comics’ production costs and potential profits are much smaller. For a company that can afford some failures, this should be freeing. But maybe Disney and Warner don’t see these subsidiaries as places where valuable ideas can be generated anymore or maybe they took away different lessons from comics’ boom and bust cycles than smaller publishers.
Batman Begins was released with several previous Batman films in recent memory. I don’t remember a big ad campaign for it, certainly not as ubiquitous as Superman Returns. They sold it as an origin story, not a reboot. It didn’t have a big budget as these things go; I remember the director explained that they resorted to the usual stiff rubber suit because “we spent our money on the Batmobile.” I think it seemed like a credible basis to rebuild the franchise, while the prospect of more movies about the conceited, emotionally cruel Superman of the fifties comics played by Pee Wee Herman in a Speedo and filmed in the style of Star Trek: The Motion Picture didn’t make any executives feel secure about keeping their jobs. The thing is, nobody behind the scenes was saying, “screw the box office, this is about artistic integrity.”
RSM — Maybe I am misguided, but I have a pretty good nose when it comes to the commercial viability of a given film — comic book-related or not. Countless times I’ve pegged winners and losers at sneak previews and rough cuts, and at opening weekend viewings. And I can do this whether or not I personally like a film or not.
I can usually peg films the critics will like as well, but I think I’m better dealing with mass appeal than critical appeal.
Rick, what exactly is the difference between a reboot and a series which breaks off from previous installments by starting at the beginning with a different telling?
This is actually a really great example of how the culture industry operates… Innovative smaller fish take risks, and when they succeed their innovations get adopted by the bigger fish. This is possible because the innovations aren’t innovations so much as tweaks to the basic product (the blockbuster). The tweaks might be timely, in that they respond to new cultural and/or political and/or economic circumstance, but the product is still a product. In short, this is a fine application of Horkheimer and Adorno.
However, I think Chris is really on to something when he cites the middle-managers in the culture industry…. The Downeys and the Jacksons. Specifically, there’s no pretense to art, or even the idea that an apparently stale genre product could have something to say. Instead, they just look forward to the next business cycle.
Superman Returns is good. Man of Steel is bad. Batman Begins is mediocre. I like the imagination-less suburbanite theory.
One reason they rebooted after Spider-Man 3 was because it was costing them so much money to try and retain Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, et. al. They decided they could make way more money by hiring cheaper actors/actresses and rebooting. Also Spider-Man 3 was an abomination despite its $ intake and there may have been some fear that even folks who went to 3 (maybe especially folks who saw 3) would avoid 4 on the basis of that experience.
Most of the Marvel movies are surprisingly competent/watchable. I wouldn’t say they’re “good” or “art”–but they’re usually pretty good popcorn bait.
I agree that we must be reaching saturation at some point in the not-too-distant future, but we’re clearly not there yet. Maybe the Firestorm spinoff on the CW will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Travis, there isn’t a difference, but an origin story that led into the previous continuity would not have been a reboot. Like I said, Batman Begins was sold as an origin story, in other words the advertising and general scope of the movie encouraged the impression that it would be a prequel and not necessarily a do-over.
1) Superhero entertainment is not a zero sum game. Marvel should improve and promote Fantastic Four and X-Men. Both companies will win.
2) I disagree with Noah’s first point. Fantastic Four #1 and Amazing Fantasy #15 were about artistic freedom — the first by a guy who thought he was going to quit and the second for a magazine that was cancelled anyway. They became more formulaic corporate product after they made money, in the manner Nate described well.
3) Sometimes chances turn out poorly. My wife has forgiven me for taking her to see Ang Lee’s Hulk, but she has not yet forgotten. On the other hand, we enjoy the popcorn bait Marvel films very much (I am a Philistine; she is sophisticated, but gracious and tolerant). I loved Unbreakable; I know no one else who did.
4) Rob, I concur 100%. Westerns had already been around forever when The Searchers came out. Same with superhero comics and Watchmen, realist art and the Mona Lisa, etc. also, the Western comparison is particularly apt. We came to own our identity as a pioneering people through Westerns. We are working out our feelings about being a superpower through superheroes.
5) If Marvel is squelching the visions of creators like Hitch in favor of an in-clique, they are making it no fun to work there. That does not bode well for the product.
I love Unbreakable, easily my favorite superhero movie (though the final moment is surprisingly bad). I teach it and Hancock in my superhero class.
Ah, so that makes two of us! Chris, I knew I liked you.
Although (spoiler alert!), the kids who worked in the theater may have been correct when they told me it should have been named Captain Poncho, or possibly The Adventures of Raincoat Man.
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