Marvel on a budget

Why do Marvel’s productions look so bad? Why does Secret Invasion look like it was shot by numbers in about three weeks on an Atlanta backlot the size of a basketball court? Why are scenes so often in cars or indoors? Why are so many actors unknowns or newbies? Why does everyone seem sedated except Olivia Colman?

Likewise, why was Ant-Man 3 so aggressively ugly? Why were the graphics so poor? Is the studio on a budget? Is Disney siphoning money from Marvel to other IP? Is Disney’s current cost-cutting already evident in Marvel’s post-Endgame entries? Is Marvel’s aesthetic on purpose? Are the directors and cinematographers happy with the way the shows and movies look, or is the aesthetic imposed on them from on high?

Either way, where is all the money going? Consider the latest season of Jack Ryan on Amazon. Shot on multiple locations, regularly featuring wide-angled shots of gorgeous outdoor vistas, it looks and feels like a slick action movie with a visual language and a modicum of style. It’s never hazy or gooey the way Marvel (and, for that matters, Netflix) productions are. You can see everything. It’s high definition. Care has been put into the image. And into the acting and writing. Even if it’s just popcorn entertainment, there’s forethought and planning in evidence. Bezos is getting his money’s worth.

You can’t say the same for Marvel. It’s embarrassing. It’s beginning to feel like late 90s primetime television: same production quality, same writing exhaustion, same pseudo serialization. This, from a multibillion-dollar movie studio that conquered the globe over the last fifteen years. Does anyone know why? What’s going on?

I’ve stuck with the movies just for fun. And Guardians 3 was good. But last year I couldn’t bring myself to finish Moon Knight, much less try She-Hulk or Ms. Marvel. I don’t know anyone who did. I sampled Secret Invasion because (a) it’s summer and (b) Samuel L. Now I’m hooked just to see how the car wreck comes to an end.

After this, it’s Loki (potentially solid) followed by a run of shows and movies that are humdrum, eyerolling, or parody: The Marvels, Echo, Agatha, Captain America 4, Ironheart, Daredevil (again), and Thunderbolts. (Deadpool 3 doesn’t count; it’s inherited, won’t follow house style, won’t mess around with MCU canon, and will wrap up the trilogy.) Future Avengers movies keep getting delayed, contain no narrative momentum, and feature no names or actors normie audiences care about. Plus the one interesting thing about the multiverse, Jonathan Majors’ performance as Kang, is unlikely to continue; I assume Majors will be replaced by another actor by year’s end.

When Kevin Feige hired Ryan Coogler and Taika Waititi and James Gunn, it seemed as though Marvel’s productions would have style and panache, built on relative directorial freedom. Sometimes that came through. But in the last few years it’s become clear those were exceptions to the rule. The rule, it appears, is half-rendered sludge on a budget that will always prefer an Atlanta green screen to an actual physical location. At the very moment Tom Cruise is defying death in practical stunts on the big screen. It’s bizarre.

If there’s an explanation, I’m all ears.

NOPE, BCS, TOM, MCU

Some pop culture odds and ends…

Nope. I’ve got little to add to the Discourse here, just a few scattered thoughts. (I saw the film with friends and processed it with them; I’ve not done any online reading besides skimming—and being disappointed with—this article.) First, Daniel Kaluuya remains Jordan Peele’s not-so-secret super-weapon. What an actor. Second, it’s nothing but good for the movies that Jordan Peele productions have become events unto themselves. That’s a happy world to live in, even when Peele doesn’t quite hit the mark, as here. Third, the problem with Nope is the opposite of what ailed Us. Where Us worked at the visceral level of story and characters, it failed at the symbolic or metaphorical level. In Nope, by contrast, the allegory is what’s potent and compelling, whereas the literal narrative has gaps and questions. At times it feels like the plot does X or Y because that’s what the Meaning requires, rather than the significance arising organically from the story. When the allegory calls for the same signifier to mean two or more contrary things at once, the plot becomes unmoored. Having said that, fourth, a couple minor interpretive ventures. What’s up with that shoe? What came to my mind was the monolith in 2001, whose presence always signals a powerful evolutionary or technological shift in a group or species’ agency—and whose first appearance involves apes, tools, violence, and a jump to spaceships (re the last, the dad in the sitcom appears to be space-related in interests or profession). I wonder if, on a re-watch of Nope, mention or flashback or appearance of the shoe would similarly signal not only Gordy’s turn but also key turns in the narrative and/or Jean Jacket’s behavior. I’ll also add, mostly tongue in cheek, that when wondering aloud about the title of the film, what came to mind was Knope, as in Leslie. If Get Out (still his most successful film) was Peele’s rejoinder to the fantasies of well-meaning Obama-era white-liberal post-racism—though it understandably took on new force when someone other than Hillary was elected—perhaps Nope is a rebuttal of the same phenomenon, only applied to Hollywood instead of Washington, D.C. It’s Peele’s Nope to Poehler’s Knope.

Better Call Saul. I’ve been on the BCS bandwagon from the beginning. I’ve written about it briefly before, but mostly I’m just here to stand in awe. Like MBD, I anticipate these final episodes like each is Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Be sure to be reading what Alan Jacobs writes about it. Even DBH is in on the glories of Saul:

I became genuinely addicted, however, to Breaking Bad, which was so much better written than any of the television of my youth—and better written than just about every studio film made since the 1970’s—that it astonished me. It was the perfect balance of Dostoyevsky and Ed McBain, with just a hint of Lawrence Sanders here and Charles Portis there. I did not even mind the somewhat fantastic conclusion of the series. When, however, its sequel (or “prequel”) Better Call Saul came out, I was hesitant to watch it, fearing it would prove to be an inferior product that would only diminish my memory of the original program. But I watched. Now, in its final season, having just returned from its mid-season break, the show is dwindling down to its end over half a dozen episodes; and I am prepared to say not only that it is the better of the two programs, but that it may be the finest wholly original program ever to grace American television (or television anywhere). Like its predecessor, it is a grim portrayal of the gradual destruction of a soul, though now perhaps with somewhat greater subtlety and nuance, and with a richer range of characters. Comparisons aside, though, the quality of the writing has proved consistently astounding, and never more so than in these concluding chapters. Anyone who has followed the story—and I will give nothing away—will know that the final episode before that mid-season break was at once shocking and brilliant. It arrived in its closing minutes at a denouement (ominously announced by the slight flickering of a candle’s flame) that made perfect sense of the entire narrative of the series up to that point, and of the current season in particular, but that was (for me, at least) wholly unexpected until the moment just before it occurred. The construction of the story was so ingenious, and its moral and emotional power so unexpectedly intense, that I was left amazed. I do not know what it tells us about the current state of our culture that good writers have more or less been banished from the movie industry and have had to take their wares instead to television; but I am glad the medium as it now exists can make room for them. I also do not know what to make of the reality that there are television programs so much more competently written than most novels today. But, whatever the case, I can at least assure my three correspondents that, yes, I do watch television, even sometimes when something other than baseball is on; and that, moreover, in the case of Better Call Saul I feel positively elevated by having done so, because the program is a genuine work of finely wrought art.

I’ll add that, though Alan Sepinwall is usually reliable, his most recent recap of the show is strange, and it worries me he might know something about the final three episodes and be unintentionally telegraphing it to readers. He’s done this in the past, where he interprets an episode’s implications in ways no normal viewer would, because screeners or confidential information tugs his mind in an unpredictable direction. All that to say, he suggests over and over both (a) that this is probably our last glimpse of Gene’s future story and (b) that it provides a “happy ending” to Jimmy/Saul/Gene’s story.

A happy ending? What could that possibly mean? Deceiving and abusing an elderly woman and her loser son with a meaningless heist that could get the latter sent to jail, thereby reminding Jimmy of “the good old days” when—wait for it—theft, fraud, drugs, and murder were part of his daily life … this is a “happy ending”? Huh? The story is explicitly and intrinsically a fall narrative, a decline into moral squander and misery. The eminently wise and trustworthy writers and showrunners of BCS may or may not have more Gene in store for us. But even if we don’t return to him, his ending is as far from happy as one could possibly imagine.

The Old Man. Shows like The Old Man are more or less factory-produced for my tastes: The Honourable Woman, The Night Manager, The Americans, Fauda, even season five of Homeland—self-contained, stylish cocktails of spycraft, action, and character, realistic enough to be taken seriously, unrealistic enough to be fun. Le Carré lite, in other words. I was disappointed by the finale of TOM, however, because I thought it was a seven-episode miniseries, not the first of two seasons. I also didn’t realize Jeff Bridges’ battles with lymphoma and Covid brought production to a halt multiple times. Imagine being 70 years old, cancer in remission, Covid finally beaten, and the next day you’re hanging out a window at 70mph playing grandpa-Bourne, shooting back at the bad guys chasing you (and grandpa-driver John Lithgow). Not a bad capstone to a remarkable career.

Marvel. By my count, between May 2008 and November 2025, if Disney has its way, there will have been at least thirty-nine official “Marvel Cinematic Universe” movies. By the time the fifth and sixth Avengers films come out (six months apart) in 2025, my bet is that there will have been even more than what’s currently announced, which means the number will likely cross the threshold of forty movies in a little over seventeen years. And that’s not counting any Marvel characters produced by Sony outside of the MCU. Nor is it counting the Marvel TV shows, which in the same time span should amount to at least twenty-six in toto, which on average run two to three seasons each. So again, in less than two decades, we’re talking one hundred movie hours and hundreds of TV hours.

Now look at quality. From 2019 to the present there have been nine MCU movies. Two have been very bad (Captain Marvel and Eternals), three have been middling (Black Widow, Shang-Chi, and Thor 4), and four have been solid (Avengers 4, Spider-Man 2 & 3, and Doctor Strange 2). People love the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, but they’re actually pretty forgettable; and although the final Avengers entry provided a cathartic conclusion to the previous two dozen films’ worth of story lines, it was bloated and even sort of boring in the middle act.

All that to say, that’s three and a half years of the world-bestriding Marvel Universe, the most successful film franchise of our (all?) time … and it’s a pretty mixed record, when you step back and look at it. Add in the deluge of Disney+ series and their even spottier quality, plus a narratively unclear and mostly uncompelling “multiversal” saga connecting these films to the coming ones in the next few years, and it makes sense that people are writing about Marvel’s “problem” or “crisis.”

Nevertheless, I think that sort of language overstated. Between one pole, which suggests the MCU will keep on breaking records forever, and the other pole, which suggests the MCU is about to crash, I think the correct position lies somewhere in the middle. When characters and properties that people love are featured in a Marvel movie, people will keep buying tickets; see Black Panther 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Blade, etc. When people don’t care, or the movies are bad, people will start to drift away. Instead of seeing 2019 as a peak followed by a steep cliff, we should see it as the highest peak, followed by only very slowly diminishing returns, with many subsequent slightly smaller peaks, with a cliff awaiting only after 2025. At that point, unless they nail revivals of Fantastic Four and X-Men, which somehow spark another wave, a new generation, a seventh “phase,” and thus a third decade of MCU fandom and culture-wide mania, I think that’s when it all, finally, comes to an end—where “end” doesn’t mean “no more popular comic book movies” but “everyone and their mom ceases to reflexively see most MCU movies in the theater.”

Then again, the almighty Kevin Feige has been doubted before. He knew something no one else did fifteen years ago. Maybe he knows something we don’t today. But count me skeptical.

God help me, an MCU viewing order

Regarding the Superhero Industrial Complex I have always felt ambivalent.

On the one hand, I couldn’t agree more with the long exhausted sigh that is the sum total of film critics’ response to the comic book takeover of Hollywood. I wish it were not the case; I wish we still had a diverse array of mid-tier, mid-budget, middlebrow movies made with style and competence for adult consumption; I wish Hollywood did not let the profit motive, and the current fad of capes and tights, determine so much of its offerings—at the very moment that the theater experience is at risk and quality writers (and directors!) are moving to TV.

On the other hand, I don’t hate the MCU. I think few of the Marvel movies stink, most of them are a blast, and some are quite good. My suspicion is that the critical exhaustion with them is due not just to their colonization of cinema, but also to their not being as bad as critics think they ought to be. (By comparison to J.J. Abrams, for example, Kevin Feige comes out smelling like roses.) Moreover, if the Marvel movies existed alongside and within a healthy cinematic ecology of flourishing diverse films made for adults, teenagers, and children alike, I suspect further that most of the ugh and meh tenor of their reception would be muted, or at least marginal.

So, God help me, though I know they aren’t High Art or Great Cinema (yes, I get it, thank you for the reminder, Mr. Scorsese), I enjoy the MCU, and have enjoyed its run since 2008. And now that my oldest two children have gotten to an age where they can be introduced to these movies, I’ve been doing so, slowly, over the last six months, just as I did a couple years prior with Star Wars.

And I’m here to tell you: it’s been fun. Really fun.

And as we draw ever closer to Thanos In Two Acts, as I like to think of Infinity War and Endgame, I’ve drawn up my ideal viewing order for all 24 films of Phases 1-3, at least for elementary-age boys, since they are the sole two-person viewership of my little experiment. Called it the Sacred Order. Here it is, in all its glory:

Part I: Avengers, Made and Unmade

1. Captain America: The First Avenger

2. Iron Man

3. The Incredible Hulk

4. Thor

5. Iron Man 2

6. The Avengers

7. Iron Man 3

8. Captain America: Winter Soldier

9. Thor: The Dark World

10. Avengers: Age of Ultron

11. Ant-Man

12. Captain America: Civil War

Part II: Fallout, Earthly and Cosmic

1. Black Widow (minus post-credits tag)

2. Spider-Man: Homecoming

3. Black Panther

4. Ant-Man and the Wasp (minus mid-credits tag)

5. Captain Marvel (minus mid-credits tag)

6. Guardians of the Galaxy

7. Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2

8. Doctor Strange

9. Thor: Ragnarok

10. Avengers: Infinity War

11. Avengers: Endgame

12. Spider-Man: Far From Home

What’s the logic? What are the benefits? Answers:

• I like sequences organized by character, event, or theme. So, for example, in Part I there are two sets of three films in a row in which Stark (the man or the family name) is central: IM2–AV–IM3 and later AV2–AM–CA3. This keeps the focus on him and his character arc, as well as the consequences that spin out from decisions he makes. (In fact, Tony reappears two films later, in SM1 in Part II, then disappears for seven full movies. That’s good! It clears the path for others to make an impression.)

• I like as well that the division of the 24-film sequence is divided evenly in two; that it focuses on the run-up to the creation of the Avengers and to its rather disastrous dissolution; and that in Part I, apart from two Thor films, it focuses entirely on Earth (and even those two Thor films spend time on Earth, too). It also makes clear that Thanos has basically no narrative role whatsoever in this run of films; Part II, accordingly, is all about (a) the fallout from the Avengers’ dispersal and (b) the slow march to Thanos’s grand entrance on the scene.

• Part II contains, in effect, three mini-sequences: fallout from the events of CA3, while doing double duty as extended introductions to new, important characters; a more expansive look at the cosmic, celestial, and magical side to the universe; and the two-part Thanos epic as climax of all that came before (along with the SM2 epilogue in a minor key).

• The opening of Part I and the closing of Part II form a sort of inclusio for the narrative arcs of both Steve Rogers (who is in five of the 12 films in Part I) and Tony Stark, both of whom are absent (minus Stark in SM1) for nine straight films in Part II. That’s fitting: we don’t see them for a good while, not only because we need to meet some other folks, but also because they’re separated from each other, and suffering the consequences.

• The space sequence of CM–GG–GG2–DS–T3 as a five-film lead-in to AV3–AV4—plus having the latter two as a back-to-back double-header, rather than interrupted (as they were in real life) by AM2 and CM—is ideal. Ideal for world-building, for developing character and narrative momentum, for opening up the larger scope of the story and beginning to point to where it’s headed. It also makes clear that Thor is a part of that world more than he is of Earth’s, and that his story will continue beyond Thanos, unlike Rogers’ and Stark’s.

• Also: Spider-Man stars in the final three-film sequence, and depending on the chronology of Shang-Chi and The Eternals, I could imagine SM3 coming hot on the heels of SM2, in which case you would get a straight shot of four movies in a row featuring everybody’s—especially my boys’—favorite teenage webslinger.

• Finally, this arrangement of the MCU’s first 13 years makes a clean break both for the huge slate of new Disney+ shows (WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, Secret Invasion, She-Hulk, Armor Wars, Ironheart) and for the next Big Step into space, magic, aliens, and the multiverse. Knowing what’s ahead, then, it seems clear (to me at least) that there really are three major movements of the MCU, rather than four phases (governed by chronology and artificially timed/named Avengers films), and we are about to see that third major movement played out in the next three to four years. Given that Part II is all about fallout from Part I, it makes sense that Part III will in turn be all about fallout from Part II: Wanda’s grief and possible breaking-bad, Sam’s acceptance of the mantle/shield, Loki’s pruning from the sacred timeline and introduction to the TVA, Kang’s multiversal war, Quill’s search for Gamora, Yelena’s search for Clint, Clint’s training of a successor, Fury’s (and Monica’s) exploration of space, Carol’s encounter with Kamala, Strange’s adoption of Peter, Peter’s continued maturity … and did I mention the multiverse? Put all these characters and events and hours upon hours of plot together, and you’ve got a jam-packed Part III as a worthy sequel to the previous two Parts.

That, in any case, is how I see it. My boys are eating it up. I’m having a good time, too. Feel free to ignore. But if this is your thing, and you’ve got intrigued little ones, follow my lead and heed the Sacred Order.

MCU Phases 4 & 5: dream or nightmare?

I have a mixed relationship to the Marvel movies that have so dominated the last decade of Hollywood. On the one hand, I readily enjoy them. I think, for the most part, that they are well made blockbusters, occasionally quite good, directed competently, written with care, and acted superbly. Their achievement as TV-like serialization across 23 films (and three "phases") is, as Matt Zoller Seitz has written, without precedent and accordingly impressive.

On the other hand, I'm neither a comic books "fan" nor an apologist for the MCU. I've read all of two graphic novels in my life, and have nothing invested in "geek culture." I furthermore share the general sentiment that the Marvel-fication of cinema as such is an unhealthy trend. It isn't good that there's a new superhero movie out every three weeks, and that Hollywood wants any and all blockbuster filmmaking to be (a) built on preexisting IP and (b) part of a larger "cinematic universe."

At the same time, I think it's too easy to use Feige and the MCU as a scapegoat. Marvel's (and Disney's) success did not and does not necessitate a systemic change in Hollywood, or the monotonous assembly line of genre fare we've seen in its wake. Moreover, while critics like Scorsese are certainly right to be exhausted by the last decade, two factors militate against an overreaction. First, great films continue to be made and recognized. Second, "cinema" includes more than the art house: indeed, cinema intrinsically includes the spectacle of sheer, broadly appealing fun. Scorsese and his cohort of directors know that more than anyone.

Having said all that, with Feige and Marvel taking a victory lap right now, it is a fascinating and revealing thing to look into Disney's plans for the MCU going into the next 3-4 years. For denizens of the art house, it is indeed a nightmare of sorts. For geeks, doubtless it is a dream. But like all dreams, it's going to come to an end. Indeed, in looking at the lineup below, it's hard to believe it's real.

So far as I have been able to put together, what follows is the forthcoming schedule of theatrical films and television shows (exclusively on Disney+) on the slate for 2020 through 2023 or so. Beginning with 2022 I'm taking educated guesses on timing. Movies are bolded and shows have a (+) after them. Read it and (alternately) weep or rejoice.

2020

May – Black Widow

Fall – The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (+)

Nov – The Eternals

2021

Feb – Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Spring – Loki (+)

Spring – WandaVision (+)

May – Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Summer – What if...? (+ animated)

July – Spider-Man 3

Fall – Hawkeye (+)

Nov – Thor 4: Love and Thunder

2022

Feb –Deadpool 3

Spring – Moon Knight (+)
May – Black Panther 2 [update: confirmed]

July – Ant-Man 3 

Fall – Ms. Marvel (+)
Oct – Blade [February seems a better bet, but since they specified October, that suggests "scary"]

2023

Feb – Captain Marvel 2

Spring – She-Hulk (+)
May – Guardians of the Galaxy 3

July – Fantastic Four reboot

Nov – X-Men reboot [perhaps FF or X-Men are introduced back-door via a summer or fall Avengers 5, a la Black Panther or Spider-Man in Civil War—that seems wisest]
 
–It's worth noting that not included here are even further sequels: Shang-Chi 2, Doctor Stranger 3, Spider-Man 4, Black Panther 3, The Eternals 2, Captain Marvel 3, and so on. It also assumes some sort of big team-up. [Updated question: Will there be another "Avengers" movie, properly speaking? Or will team-ups just happen organically within other characters' movies?] And there are definitely even more properties and characters to be introduced not mentioned here.

–It seems clear that, although 2020 will revert to 2 films in the year—a sort of deep breath after Endgame and before the onset of Phase 4—beginning the following year, it's going to be four MCU films per year going forward. And that, as they say, will test the market's limits.