The Accuracy Trap in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
- Thread starter MovieBob
- Start date
Oh gee willikers, a piece on why MCU is that good AND a video about why Spider-Man 3 isn't as bad as ASM fanboys say? Boy howdy, which Gods did I please?
No sarcasm in that, I'm genuinely glad to see both of these here. Thanks, Bob. I always found Spider-Man 3 not being nearly bad and it saddens and enrages me that the general public turned from praising the Raimi trilogy to hating it overnight.
No sarcasm in that, I'm genuinely glad to see both of these here. Thanks, Bob. I always found Spider-Man 3 not being nearly bad and it saddens and enrages me that the general public turned from praising the Raimi trilogy to hating it overnight.
"Where other filmmakers might have looked at these various licenses and said "This is all silly and it needs to change," they seem to say "We own this and we've watched it be successful and resonant already, so figure out how it did that in the first place and get as much of it up on-screen as possible.""
I almost feel like that's a direct contradiction of the previous point "Faithfulness is not always a good thing." I get what he's saying about the good adaptations "honoring the spirit" (a phrase which unfortunately has become a red flag for me), but it makes me wonder just HOW faithful something should be without the possibility of taking the material a new direction that redefines and strengthens the story. I still say there's a fantastic Street Fighter movie waiting to be made that can take from the (convoluted) plot of the games and other media and condense it into a solid meditation on good and evil and competition and balance and so many other things, all while featuring "faithful" costumes, move-sets, music, and all the other things that can initially draw people in the first place. And what about Zelda? Link is a non-entity as far as personality - he would need a massive overhaul that would end up coloring the rest of the story, but if he's shown talking, people will get pissed.
I almost feel like that's a direct contradiction of the previous point "Faithfulness is not always a good thing." I get what he's saying about the good adaptations "honoring the spirit" (a phrase which unfortunately has become a red flag for me), but it makes me wonder just HOW faithful something should be without the possibility of taking the material a new direction that redefines and strengthens the story. I still say there's a fantastic Street Fighter movie waiting to be made that can take from the (convoluted) plot of the games and other media and condense it into a solid meditation on good and evil and competition and balance and so many other things, all while featuring "faithful" costumes, move-sets, music, and all the other things that can initially draw people in the first place. And what about Zelda? Link is a non-entity as far as personality - he would need a massive overhaul that would end up coloring the rest of the story, but if he's shown talking, people will get pissed.
I can get behind this idea to a certain point.
I think it's much easier to gauge the accuracy of a book (a conventional book with lots of prose and little to no pictures) than a comic since, like I've said before, it subject to interpretation since different writers, artists, editors take the character in different directions, if not entirely different universes. So, I think since there is not really any definitive arcs of a comic book character (other than the massively popular ones), I think it's easier to interpret films on their own merit and just judge them on that. For example, Winter Soldier took some deviations from the original source material, but it still worked great as a film.
This whole 'subject to different interpretation' and 'universe reboots' are pretty much why I've stayed in the Shounen manga camp. At best, it's just the canon and the filler or a reboot of another anime (FMA:Brotherhood).
I think it's much easier to gauge the accuracy of a book (a conventional book with lots of prose and little to no pictures) than a comic since, like I've said before, it subject to interpretation since different writers, artists, editors take the character in different directions, if not entirely different universes. So, I think since there is not really any definitive arcs of a comic book character (other than the massively popular ones), I think it's easier to interpret films on their own merit and just judge them on that. For example, Winter Soldier took some deviations from the original source material, but it still worked great as a film.
This whole 'subject to different interpretation' and 'universe reboots' are pretty much why I've stayed in the Shounen manga camp. At best, it's just the canon and the filler or a reboot of another anime (FMA:Brotherhood).
Wait, how is Movie Thor different from Lee & Kirby's original version? Besides him not turning into Donald Blake, I mean.
This line here...
Anyway, SFDebris tread similar ground from the other side in the intro to his recent review of Bay's Transformers [http://blip.tv/sf-debris-opinionated-reviews/transformers-review-1-of-2-6854374] (around the 6:17 mark), so I thought I'd post it here as a complement to your thoughts.
...is my new slogan. This is what exactly what got my goat about the Abrams Star Trek movies. I didn't want Abrams to just regurgitate what I loved about the franchise 20 or 30 years ago. I know there are things that made those shows work in their own time that wouldn't be as effective today. And I thought the whole "alternate timeline" setup of the 2009 film was done to give them that creative freedom: we're not shackled to the original franchise. (I would have preferred a clean break from the original, Galactica-style, but fine, I'll deal.) But no, they immediately tapped one of the franchise's universally acknowledged highlights in the most hamfisted and tone-deaf manner possible. I would have loved "revisionist but great" or even "revisionist but good". Instead I got "revisionistically faithful and crap".MovieBob said:
Anyway, SFDebris tread similar ground from the other side in the intro to his recent review of Bay's Transformers [http://blip.tv/sf-debris-opinionated-reviews/transformers-review-1-of-2-6854374] (around the 6:17 mark), so I thought I'd post it here as a complement to your thoughts.
Part of the ire felt towards blockbusters, especially blockbusters that are from existing fanbases, is that problem: what we've been waiting for has been displaced by something that fits a predetermined formula. Trekkies saw it with the Abrams reboot 5 years ago, and its sequel. And the questions that are asked of fans who feel this way are, "Are you just being uptight about this?" Maybe. Yes, sometimes. Another is the comment, "Fans just have this sense of entitlement, like they have some kind of ownership of it."
I won't presume that I speak for all of fandom, but I think I speak for quite a few when I say, I don't own it. But I do own the feelings that it has created within me. The things that I loved about it. The things I hated about it. The things I was embarrassed about it. The musings and arguments and fun I had with others about it. That's what made it special. Why I might be uptight, maybe, yes, sometimes. I'm not joining a shrilling chorus with an endless stream of profanity, punctuated with nitpicks over every deviation because that's no better than being an explosion-watching drone.
But if I tell you I don't like it, and why. If I feel it's dumb, and why. If I say you're missing the soul, and why. That's not entitlement. That's the part of it that I do own. What it means to me. And to handwave that away pretending that it's something wrong with me--that's entitlement. That's arrogance. You don't have to agree with me--and some degree of dismissiveness is probably necessary for the sake of one's sanity--but don't pretend there's something wrong with people who are disappointed. Because how ever proud you are of that Snickers bar you made, well it's no different than one cranked out at any of the other factories.
So what I'm saying is: there's nothing wrong with a blockbuster, and your partnership with science fiction. But the thing about that genre you might be missing is the question, "What if things were different?" So I ask you, about the formulaic blockbuster mentality that has been fused onto science fiction, can't things, sometimes, be different? Because as I hope some of the films I've covered this year have shown, it can be done.
I won't presume that I speak for all of fandom, but I think I speak for quite a few when I say, I don't own it. But I do own the feelings that it has created within me. The things that I loved about it. The things I hated about it. The things I was embarrassed about it. The musings and arguments and fun I had with others about it. That's what made it special. Why I might be uptight, maybe, yes, sometimes. I'm not joining a shrilling chorus with an endless stream of profanity, punctuated with nitpicks over every deviation because that's no better than being an explosion-watching drone.
But if I tell you I don't like it, and why. If I feel it's dumb, and why. If I say you're missing the soul, and why. That's not entitlement. That's the part of it that I do own. What it means to me. And to handwave that away pretending that it's something wrong with me--that's entitlement. That's arrogance. You don't have to agree with me--and some degree of dismissiveness is probably necessary for the sake of one's sanity--but don't pretend there's something wrong with people who are disappointed. Because how ever proud you are of that Snickers bar you made, well it's no different than one cranked out at any of the other factories.
So what I'm saying is: there's nothing wrong with a blockbuster, and your partnership with science fiction. But the thing about that genre you might be missing is the question, "What if things were different?" So I ask you, about the formulaic blockbuster mentality that has been fused onto science fiction, can't things, sometimes, be different? Because as I hope some of the films I've covered this year have shown, it can be done.
I think the problem is less about staying true to the source material and more about staying true to the themes that made the source material worth adapting in the first place. Tony Stark's thematic cruz was that he had everything someone could ever want but could never truly enjoy it because he had the Heart Attack of Damocles constantly hanging over his head. That Captain America arc that was an allegory for Watergate is a classic because it suggests we redefine what "America" is and means. From where I'm standing it seems like the MCU is actually failing with regard to adapting these themes, and the closest I can recall to this happening is actually from Iron Man 2.
Now that I think about it,Nolan's Batman Trilogy Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were straight-up Batman Films, not just movies with Batman in them. BB showed us how and why Wayne creating Batman would happen and TDK approaches how everyone would react to Batman and what "Batman" means in the first place. Sure there's a massive overhaul of "realism", but that's purely an aesthetic choice and I'd argue that Nolan's duology is a better adaptation of the classic themes than what the MCU's done so far *cough Hawkeye cough*.
Now that I think about it,
The Thor of the comics is different in many ways. He's an incredibly smart man (which isn't saying much in a comic book universe), he had two identities (not in the secret identity type of way, he was literally two people in one body when it started), he was much more of an asshole in the early years, and he has always been magnitudes of power stronger then in the movies (as have all Asgardians) to the point where he probably could have taken on the Chitari invasion on his own.Darth_Payn said:
I think the qualm people have with the many changes is that often, as the case with any comic-book movie, the source material is so much better. They make changes that turn things to shit.
Not to mention his speech. He's not the BIIIIG HAM that he was back then, now he's just sort of weird-British.
Personality, powers, depth and looks to some extent.Darth_Payn said:
Not to mention his speech. He's not the BIIIIG HAM that he was back then, now he's just sort of weird-British.
I'm surprised you didn't bring up Watchmen, the king of the faithfulness uber alles approach, which managed to end up just alright by essentially photocopying the source material but without an understanding of its underlying workings. I think that the real problem with the idea of fidelity making these movies successful is that it assumes that most of the audience know the source material (I know next to nothing about the cast of the Avengers in the comics and I watch Linkara's show).
Superhero comics are a pretty niche market, with about 300,000 regular readers in the United States, who if they each paid $9 a ticket would get you about $2.7 million. Iron Man 3 made $400 million in the US and $800 million outside of it and superhero comics are less popular outside the states (local material is especially more popular in non-english speaking countries). The only way fans can propel a movie anywhere near this kind of success is if it's something like Twilight which is read by pretty much every single person in its target demographic (in its case teen girls). Superhero comic fans would need to make up almost 10% of the population of the US to be a majority here. They only seem like that at times because they are very pervasive on the internet.
Also I wouldn't be too optimistic about Wondie, her first live-action screen appearance will be done by the director of Sucker Punch after all.
Superhero comics are a pretty niche market, with about 300,000 regular readers in the United States, who if they each paid $9 a ticket would get you about $2.7 million. Iron Man 3 made $400 million in the US and $800 million outside of it and superhero comics are less popular outside the states (local material is especially more popular in non-english speaking countries). The only way fans can propel a movie anywhere near this kind of success is if it's something like Twilight which is read by pretty much every single person in its target demographic (in its case teen girls). Superhero comic fans would need to make up almost 10% of the population of the US to be a majority here. They only seem like that at times because they are very pervasive on the internet.
Also I wouldn't be too optimistic about Wondie, her first live-action screen appearance will be done by the director of Sucker Punch after all.
this, I love this, I've been making this argument for some time now. it's not that things have to be EXACTLY AS WE REMEMBER THEM AND NO CHANGE IS ALLOWED to please fans. it has to be true to the spirit, the message, the theme.
case in point, iron man 3 and captain America 2 both did at least 1 thing that was a drastic upheaval of continuity and basically threw out massive chunks of comic book lore to make their own movies. the iron man version of the mandarin is absolutely NOTHING like the comics version and for good reason, in the comics mandarin is by today's standards one of the most offensive Asian stereotypes you could come up with. and doing him this way as a red herring drunken ben kingsly is such a brilliant idea and knocked tons of comic book fans on their ass but we for the most part loved it. it was clever and for me it made the movie.
In general shield has been a totally different beast in the movies than in the comics, fury being hopeful and betting it all on the avengers initiative is unlike him. he has a very antagonistic relationship with all metahumans I mean cap and him having it out in cap 2 is the closest it's come to true depticion of their relationship. fury respects cap but that's really it. maria hill is the one who ordered captain America's arrest in the comics during civil war, she is dedicated to the shield way so much she's often depicted akin to Amanda waller from the animated justice league. extremely distrustful of any hero with more power than the government can keep in check. I laughed my ass off in cap 2 when maria hill of all people saved Captain America from shield.
these changes are all differences from the comics, the MCU has taken it's share of liberties with the source material but it's all true to the intent or spirit of the characters.
my other big thing is how marvel elevates the characters it does alter. the falcon being a good example, they took a character and kept his sense of fun and likeability but by making him a paratrooper they gave him a reason to have the wings and a reason to have the wings the way they are depicted instead of the sonic constructs and big red crazy suit. but my favorite example of MCU elevation is batroc. batroc the god damn leaper is the equivalent of X the eliminator from Harvey birdman or the rat catcher from batman. he's a footnote, a gag, a brightly colored stooge from when bionic legs was a super power. not only is he really good in captain America 2 his fight scene is one of the best in the movie. imagine instead of zod man of steel had used mister mxyzptlk and instead of a disappointment it was a glorious success. that is the level of awesome marvel pulled off with cap2.
case in point, iron man 3 and captain America 2 both did at least 1 thing that was a drastic upheaval of continuity and basically threw out massive chunks of comic book lore to make their own movies. the iron man version of the mandarin is absolutely NOTHING like the comics version and for good reason, in the comics mandarin is by today's standards one of the most offensive Asian stereotypes you could come up with. and doing him this way as a red herring drunken ben kingsly is such a brilliant idea and knocked tons of comic book fans on their ass but we for the most part loved it. it was clever and for me it made the movie.
In general shield has been a totally different beast in the movies than in the comics, fury being hopeful and betting it all on the avengers initiative is unlike him. he has a very antagonistic relationship with all metahumans I mean cap and him having it out in cap 2 is the closest it's come to true depticion of their relationship. fury respects cap but that's really it. maria hill is the one who ordered captain America's arrest in the comics during civil war, she is dedicated to the shield way so much she's often depicted akin to Amanda waller from the animated justice league. extremely distrustful of any hero with more power than the government can keep in check. I laughed my ass off in cap 2 when maria hill of all people saved Captain America from shield.
these changes are all differences from the comics, the MCU has taken it's share of liberties with the source material but it's all true to the intent or spirit of the characters.
my other big thing is how marvel elevates the characters it does alter. the falcon being a good example, they took a character and kept his sense of fun and likeability but by making him a paratrooper they gave him a reason to have the wings and a reason to have the wings the way they are depicted instead of the sonic constructs and big red crazy suit. but my favorite example of MCU elevation is batroc. batroc the god damn leaper is the equivalent of X the eliminator from Harvey birdman or the rat catcher from batman. he's a footnote, a gag, a brightly colored stooge from when bionic legs was a super power. not only is he really good in captain America 2 his fight scene is one of the best in the movie. imagine instead of zod man of steel had used mister mxyzptlk and instead of a disappointment it was a glorious success. that is the level of awesome marvel pulled off with cap2.
But also the director of 300, Watchmen, The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Gahoole. Also Bob actually did a bit on Sucker Punch on his big picture show. It earned him the ire of many of his watchers because it was seen as a defense of the movie. Honestly I think the biggest problem with Man of Steel was Nolan. Goyer is hit and miss but Nolan isn't exactly someone I want to touch comic books beyond Batman. His films and his styles. Batman is the only superhero that Nolan can touch and do right. Any others though no. I know he just produced Man of Steel but I have a strange feeling he falls into the "creative producer" the one that has a lot of input into what goes in the movie.Zombie Badger said:
I agree completely. Having Nolan do a Superman film is like making Frank Miller write a Superman comic. It's just not gonna come out right. Frank Miller does fantastic with characters like Batman or Dardevil but not so good outside his wheelhouse. Nolan should make a Daredevil film... I'd watch thatKazeAizen said:
Kind of makes me wonder who they got to direct the Daredevil Netflix series. Also beyond The Dark Knight Returns Frank Miller just pisses me off. Its the only work of his I've been exposed too. Scratch that I've seen 300 so the only 2 works of his I've been exposed to. His version of Superman while I guess making sense in the context of that universe offends me and pisses me off to no end. Superman is my favorite hero and seeing him like that....coheedswicked said:
......chilling out. calming down. not dwelling. Personally I was surprised and glad with how good a job Zack did with Man of Steel but yeah I saw Nolan's prints all over it and while I'm glad he produced the movie just so Superman could finally have a modern movie in this golden age I really don't want him to touch the Man of Steel again.
See, now, to me, the reason the movies did so well is because they stripped away the ever growing cancer that was the 'need to know backstory' so people who didn't know anything about Iron Man could get into his story from the moment the movie starts. If you've read the comic, cool, good for you, but you don't need that massive encyclopedia of information to enjoy the movies. They simplified the characters while still keeping them complex. And because of that, more people are actually enjoying the movies, since they only have to know the movies, if that. And there's hints in the movies about the larger world the comics have built up, but they're not required reading.Zombie Badger said:
I've been saying for some time now that you shouldn't do a thing solely to please the fans of a thing. And I'm going to point at Hasbro for a moment. But I'll try to keep it short. There was an episode where the studio decided they would officially name the poor wall-eyed animation error of a pegasus (who had already been named, mind you) and had one of the main characters call her by the fanon name for her. And, not even an hour later, there was a massive backlash against the name, because... well, the way I understand it, 'Derpy' Hooves is apparently ableist. So Hasbro took the episode off Itunes, rerecorded the one line to have her name be Ditzy Doo again, and put it back up, but bronies who liked 'Derpy' made another backlash, so Hasbro took it down again. And it's just ridiculous on all sides now. So, when Hasbro 'accidentally' let slip that Twilight was going to become a princess by the end of season 3? And the fans screamed bloody murder? And Hasbro did it anyway, because they'd seen what catering to the fans does?
This is what sticking exactly to the source material is, in my mind.
The ability to make changes in adaptations isn't easy to pinpoint. It helped with things like Iron Man and Thor precisely because they aren't super mega popular. They're fixtures, legacies, characters that almost never to big sales but are kept around because you do you can a character that's been around since the 60s consistently. It makes changes easier because we as a culture don't really have the attachment we've had to Superman or Spider-man, who we freak out if one's too quick to kill, and the other doesn't have mechanical web shooters.
In many ways, that's the thing: change is neither good or bad. It's a neutral thing that affects people differently that we call good if we like it and bad if we don't. Then like good spoiled children, we complain people on the other side are either too willing to accept or too afraid of change. So our ability to accept change starts with are we able to accept what something is changed to, or are we too eager to see such a change. Swapping out Hal Jordan for John Stewart pleases diversity fans sight unseen, while people not fans of John but of Hal, are left upset. Sometimes it's anal (organic web shooters) but sometimes it feels something got lost (the Mandarain might have been well done, but some of us we're looking forward to the battle with the guy with the super rings), and sometimes that can be our perception at fault (Nolan's Batman was closer to the noir roots of the character, but some really only know the Adam West version).
To disagree with something, I do think adaptations come from people that do want to see their favorite scenes in books and comics in full motion on the big screen (in addition to pandering and selling nostalgia) but also get a little too quick to put their own spin on things. Hallie Barrie's Catwoman was the published example of character in name only, and horror stories about what was coming out with that attempted "Death of Superman" film in the 90s to not at least fear people coming in to pass off their own vanity projects under an established name. We can't hold ourselves to the original, but people do come for something resembling the source, so I can only really say if changes are made, make them with care. No, not in the question of "is any change necessary, but rather "am I doing good in what I'm changing". Anything you alter will be under fire, it needs to be of decent quality to quell that flame once they see it.
In many ways, that's the thing: change is neither good or bad. It's a neutral thing that affects people differently that we call good if we like it and bad if we don't. Then like good spoiled children, we complain people on the other side are either too willing to accept or too afraid of change. So our ability to accept change starts with are we able to accept what something is changed to, or are we too eager to see such a change. Swapping out Hal Jordan for John Stewart pleases diversity fans sight unseen, while people not fans of John but of Hal, are left upset. Sometimes it's anal (organic web shooters) but sometimes it feels something got lost (the Mandarain might have been well done, but some of us we're looking forward to the battle with the guy with the super rings), and sometimes that can be our perception at fault (Nolan's Batman was closer to the noir roots of the character, but some really only know the Adam West version).
To disagree with something, I do think adaptations come from people that do want to see their favorite scenes in books and comics in full motion on the big screen (in addition to pandering and selling nostalgia) but also get a little too quick to put their own spin on things. Hallie Barrie's Catwoman was the published example of character in name only, and horror stories about what was coming out with that attempted "Death of Superman" film in the 90s to not at least fear people coming in to pass off their own vanity projects under an established name. We can't hold ourselves to the original, but people do come for something resembling the source, so I can only really say if changes are made, make them with care. No, not in the question of "is any change necessary, but rather "am I doing good in what I'm changing". Anything you alter will be under fire, it needs to be of decent quality to quell that flame once they see it.
My point regarding Wondie was regarding Snyder's idea of what makes a strong female character rather than his overall directorial skills, especially since he is co-writing the story this time. I did see Bob's bit on Sucker Punch and while I thought he had an interesting idea I do not believe Snyder is that clever; he always struck me as a visual stylist without much understanding of thematic development. Regarding Nolan and Man of Steel, in every interview with Snyder and Goyer I've read they both make it clear that Nolan helped come up with the plotline and then left them to their own devices, so the finished product is really the result of the pair trying to copy Nolan's style and failing. Also, nice avatar by the way.KazeAizen said: