The Big Picture: Wrongs & Rights

[Ashley Blalock]

It's kind of funny how some of this ends up as more of a curse for studios than a blessing. They have to make a movie to keep the rights and then give part of that money to Marvel and Disney. But if the rushed out film is a flop then they get all of the bad while Marvel and Disney sit back and laugh.

Between Avengers setting the bar so high and the Ultimate Spiderman cartoon pushing a version of Spiderman towards kids they are just setting up the Sony film to be a disappointment. Just because Sony has the rights it doesn't mean that Marvel and Disney can't do things to hurt Sony making money off Spiderman.

 

[OZITOMAI]

i'm still looking forward to the new spiderman cause it does look good, your ideas on it is kinder too bias but anyways, it does make sense which really does suck

 

[LadyRhian]

http://ideologyofmadness.spookyouthouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/doctor-voodoo.jpg

Marvel already has a magic man who isn't white, i give you brother voodoo , who is a bit of a badass.

Because, yeah, he's not a flaming stereotype, and I don't even want to think about the number of people who cry out about a stereotypical depiction of voodoo... or outraged parents decrying a film that makes voodoo/Vodun/Vodou look cool- just look at the backlash from Harry Potter, and that kind of magic isn't even based on anything REAL. At least Doctor Strange isn't based on any kind of real magic (but as you can see, that doesn't mean some kind of backlash anyhow). I see the same kind of problems happening with ANY magic based hero, except maybe Meggan, Captain Britain's girlfriend/wife(?), who is some kind of faery. I think. Nah, mutant. Oh well, there goes that idea...

Snowbird from Alpha Flight? Puck (also from Alpha Flight)? The problem with so many heroes in the Marvel universe is that so many are their nation's version of (Fill in the Blank) . Captain Britain is English Captain America. Silver Samurai is Japan's Iron Man (more or less) and so on.

Maybe Luke Cage

There is no maybe on Luke Cage, they got the Old Spice guy for him.

Ha! I guess this means a Luke Cage/Iron Fist movie! Or.... ooh! Moon Knight!

snowbirds a shaman
does that count as two ethnic
and silver samurai is just a samurai lol crimson dynamo or red guard are better examples of that.

And i don't think media ought be censored because some crybabies disagree with certain types of magic on the screen, ffs we have a genre called torture porn i think we can handle voodoo.

Snowbird is a goddess. An elemental goddess. I think you are thinking of Shaman, (Michael Twoyoungmen and/or his daughter), and I remember Silver Samurai as being more of a techno-samurai rather than straight Samurai, but it's been a while and I might be mis-remembering. The only problem with most of the mages of the Marvel universe is how stereotypical they are. I mean, they are all stereotypes, like "Doctor Druid" and "Brother Voodoo". Even Shaman has his "Native American Shamanistic powers", which is just really insulting to anyone sharing those ethnicities/religions. TV Tropes "Magic Negro" for the EPIC FAIL. Just because someone comes from a culture or religion that believed in magical powers doesn't mean there should be a superhero with those stereotypical magical abilities. Magik is about the only one can think of who isn't stereotypical, because she is a white Russian girl who got blipped to Limbo and studied magic there, but she is the X-men universe, so is out of the running.

And Daimon Hellstrom is "The Son of Satan"- you can just imagine how the Christians would LOVE that...

 

[Caffeine_Bombed]

Think I might be the only person in the world who actually loved Daredevil...
I would say I relish the idea of another movie, but the rumour so far is: Daredevil reboot starring Jason Statham.
No-fucking-thank you!

Out of the characters that they have the rights to use in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (that they're actually looking at) I would be happy top see:

Black Panther
Cable
Dr. Strange
Luke Cage

I haven't made up my mind about Edgar Wright's "Ant-Man" yet.

 

[rayen020]

Is there any way marvel could get their IPs back without paying gratuitous sums of money? other than the caveat that the companys have to keep making movies, is there a caveat or loophole that says like "You really suck at this and we're suing you for slander?" Because i'd really like to see marvel get their toys back and see how they use them.

Also, Somewhat topical, Is it just me or is disney becoming a movie powerhouse again?Like there was a time between like 1996 and 2006 where it seemed like the only good movies coming from them were made by pixar? Was that just Eisner effect or am i just noticing becasue they're making movies I like again.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Ow... my head hurts. I wonder how anyone keeps any of this stuff straight...

 

[Pat Hulse]

So, here's a question: Why can't the studios collaborate? Y'know, like they all go "Okay we'll make the movie and divide the gross 3 ways and split the budget 3 ways. Each of us invests 60 to 100 million, each of us is almost guaranteed to get that back and then some".

Oversimplification is now done, let's see how I'm out of touch!

Actually, there's not a whole lot of reason why they can't, other than general unwillingness. Sony doesn't want to have to submit to Marvel Studios' mandates regarding their continuity (and to share more of the profits in order to do so), and Marvel makes money whether or not they make the movie in-studio.

What we'll have to wait and see is whether or not Avengers has raised the expectations of movie-going audiences such that they won't want to see a Marvel movie that DOESN'T take place in the larger universe. In other words, if Amazing Spider-Man fails, we will either see Marvel Studios getting many of their rights back, or Sony and Fox will start actively collaborating.

Of course, there's a chance that Disney will discourage any such collaboration, seeing Sony and Fox as competitors.

So yeah. It's not just about money. It's about whether or not the studios can make MORE money through collaboration and whether or not that extra money is worth sharing IP's (something Disney has never been eager to do).

]

So, in other words, if the upcoming Marvel's don't do well the odds of them getting their universes shared would increase? Well, I'm pretty sure Spiderman is going to suck anyway so no loss there.

I know Disney's evil but you'd think the prospect of "share the risk and potential huge income or get a blame figure if things go wrong" wouldn't be something they could pass up.

Basically, yes. If ASM sucks and does poorly in the box office, it's plausible that Sony will scrap its plans for a sequel and try and sell the license back to Disney while it's still worth something.

And unfortunately, Disney could get a potential huge income from a collaborative work, or they could just get a small income from a failed work done by Fox or Sony (since Marvel still makes money from those movies) and then get the rights back and make an even bigger income from an in-house production that doesn't suck. The only thing they risk going the latter route is whether audiences will get sick of the properties themselves or just sick of studios other than Marvel making Marvel movies. They potentially stand to gain a lot more if they let the other studios fail. And if the other studios don't fail, they still make money off of it. There's not a lot of incentive for them to collaborate with competing studios that they already make money off of through the licensing deal. It's not so much evil as a rational business decision (though those two things are often hard to distinguish).

Yeah that's fair (I'd think like that too in that position). Honestly, I'm rooting for it to suck. It just doesn't look right as a whole. They're hinting that Peter's powers might not be a direct result of the spider but rather this was planned to happen to a degree, the driving force for him to actually become Spiderman is being virtually ignored, and the lizard and the costume still suck. See, my question is why are they making it another origin? Why not just make a Spiderman 2 esque movie, something where Peter is already Spidey and just drop us in with a good story? Everybody knows Spiderman's origin by now, and if they don't then odds are they could just ask a friend or the guy next to them, the origin is a part of pop culture through and through!

"Hey, why can he do that?"

-"radioactive spider bit him"

"Oh, neat!"

That's a good question, and I'm not entirely sure I have a good answer. They probably would have had an easier time just doing the James Bond thing and continuing Spider-Man's story ignoring or acknowledging as much or as little of the movie continuity as they wanted and most people wouldn't care. But I guess someone early on in development decided that they should make this movie closer to the comics so that people might accidentally think it's connected to the MCU. They wanted to put Gwen Stacey in her traditional role, give Spidey web-shooters instead of a weird wrist-gland, and they wanted to put in the weird parents back-story (which I'm not entirely sure they can properly pull off without being able to use S.H.I.E.L.D.). Also, someone probably argued that a reboot would be more popular than a sequel considering how poorly Spider-Man 3 was received. They probably looked at "Batman Begins" as a template and figured that was a good way to go.

The problem is, Batman in his original franchise never really got an origin story. He talked about his origin in flashbacks, but we never actually saw him become Batman before. But general audiences HAVE seen a movie about the origin of Spider-Man, and even if this movie tries to be a little different, they'll still feel like they've already seen it and wonder why they are doing a reboot so soon. On top of that, with the success of "The Avengers", general audiences may also wonder why this movie doesn't have Iron Man or Nick Fury in it. If the movie also fails to impress critics, it may just fail to garner enough interest from general audiences to do very well.

If I were a betting man, I'd say that "Amazing Spider-Man" will do about as well (or poorly depending on your definition) as "Green Lantern" did last year, which would likely be construed as a box office failure by Sony, potentially prompting them to try and sell back the license to Marvel Studios.

 

[DSQ]

One of my favorite Marval people Black Panther will never make it in to Marval Studio films since he is married to Storm and his name is maybe a little contraversial. Maybe they could make a period 60's film about him but I'm pretty sure the attual black panthers would not like that.

I really want Scarlet Witch to make an aparence and if she isn't gonna be a 'mutant' any more then maybe they could do an colour blind casting or something with her and cast my favorite actress right now Naomi Harris as her despite her age or go the more traditional route and cast Kaya Scodelario or Jessica Brown Findlay. (for some reason I can't think of any suitable amarican actresses. EDIT: Lily Collins?)

As much as I like Andrew Garfield I hope that his reboot Spiderman film maybe ends up not being worth the money to make a number two so that Marval ends up getting the rights back but I hope that Fox keep making Xmen films since I think the whole civil rights metaphore loses its poignancy when theere a a whole lot of non mutant superheroes kicking about.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Nick Fury's line about the world filling up with powerful people or whatever lends credence to the idea that some of the reclaimed IP is probably going to be put to use soon. Though, I wonder how long they'll let out the properties before they just make enough Avengers gold to buy the rights back outright, saving themselves some trouble. The problem being that the longer the Avengers goes on, the more it's going to be awkward to get the other properties in again. Spider Man and the X-Men are both pretty prominent in Avenger-related shenanigans, but without setting up their own stories in universe, it's going to be tricky. Fans will undoubtedly be confused about which story they have.

 

[LadyRhian]

http://ideologyofmadness.spookyouthouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/doctor-voodoo.jpg

Marvel already has a magic man who isn't white, i give you brother voodoo , who is a bit of a badass.

Because, yeah, he's not a flaming stereotype, and I don't even want to think about the number of people who cry out about a stereotypical depiction of voodoo... or outraged parents decrying a film that makes voodoo/Vodun/Vodou look cool- just look at the backlash from Harry Potter, and that kind of magic isn't even based on anything REAL. At least Doctor Strange isn't based on any kind of real magic (but as you can see, that doesn't mean some kind of backlash anyhow). I see the same kind of problems happening with ANY magic based hero, except maybe Meggan, Captain Britain's girlfriend/wife(?), who is some kind of faery. I think. Nah, mutant. Oh well, there goes that idea...

Snowbird from Alpha Flight? Puck (also from Alpha Flight)? The problem with so many heroes in the Marvel universe is that so many are their nation's version of (Fill in the Blank) . Captain Britain is English Captain America. Silver Samurai is Japan's Iron Man (more or less) and so on.

Maybe Luke Cage

There is no maybe on Luke Cage, they got the Old Spice guy for him.

Ha! I guess this means a Luke Cage/Iron Fist movie! Or.... ooh! Moon Knight!

snowbirds a shaman
does that count as two ethnic
and silver samurai is just a samurai lol crimson dynamo or red guard are better examples of that.

And i don't think media ought be censored because some crybabies disagree with certain types of magic on the screen, ffs we have a genre called torture porn i think we can handle voodoo.

Snowbird is a goddess. An elemental goddess. I think you are thinking of Shaman, (Michael Twoyoungmen and/or his daughter), and I remember Silver Samurai as being more of a techno-samurai rather than straight Samurai, but it's been a while and I might be mis-remembering. The only problem with most of the mages of the Marvel universe is how stereotypical they are. I mean, they are all stereotypes, like "Doctor Druid" and "Brother Voodoo". Even Shaman has his "Native American Shamanistic powers", which is just really insulting to anyone sharing those ethnicities/religions. TV Tropes "Magic Negro" for the EPIC FAIL. Just because someone comes from a culture or religion that believed in magical powers doesn't mean there should be a superhero with those stereotypical magical abilities. Magik is about the only one can think of who isn't stereotypical, because she is a white Russian girl who got blipped to Limbo and studied magic there, but she is the X-men universe, so is out of the running.

And Daimon Hellstrom is "The Son of Satan"- you can just imagine how the Christians would LOVE that...

Sorry got confused with talisman (i only have two "flight" based books, one is the ultimate one where talisman/snowbird are merged and omega flight which didnt have snowbird my mistake.

Whilst they shouldn't inherently have to come from said racial backgrounds it does seem like a more logical place to tell stories of that nature, in the same way you would set a chupacbra story in mexico rather than dorset.

Because there are interesting facets behind those mythologies which wouldn't be able to be explored otherwise.

True. It is possible to tell respectful stories about various other religions and beliefs- usually it's the character's writer/creator who does that. It's when the book switches hands that the more exploitative stories come out- or at the hands of someone who hasn't done their homework or has a stereotyped idea of that religion/magical tradition. Like if Brother Voodoo gets a sidekick named Houngan and fights a sorceror named Bokor, well, all of those come from actual Voodoo/Vodou/Vodun. And then someone else comes along and has him playing with snakes and raising the dead and equating Damballah with the Devil. And lets not forget the chicken sacrifices! Many characters only remain "respectful" as long as the original creator/creatrix is involved, and after that, it's a crapshoot. DC did this with Starfire in the recent reboot where Starfire becomes a whore who barely even remembers who she's slept with and comes on to her teammates, well, apparently "Just because". There is a scene where her teammate who she is coming on to asks her if she remembers Dick Grayson (who she almost married in Teen Titans), along with a bunch of other characters, and she says, "No." And as the list gets longer, "You're boring me. If you're not interested, I'm going." And I was just D:. Oy... But I suppose that's more of a problem with all comics, not just magicians.

 

[Quiet Stranger]

If I'm not mistaken, isn't Apokolips the first mutant technically??

 

[Katya Topolkaraeva]

Waw, I always wondered how rights worked for this stuff. Thank you so much for making this your topic this week! I guess now it makes more sense why they keep popping these movies out. Frankly i wish there were more adaptations of more obscure interesting comics rather then redoing the same old stuff. For example, i'd love to see a movie based off of X-Statix (Marvel).

 

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

Great video, Bob, very much taps into the questions that are circulating in the wake of the movie, and clears up a fair bit of stuff.

Also, Marvel are going to need to get their game on and release quite a few more new hero movies because ...

Spoiler

... otherwise Thanos will absolutely obliterate The Avengers in the second film.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

Don't really fancy another DareDevil or Fantastic Four at all...
Mind a DareDevil could be alright without Ben Affleck, though no high hopes there either.

 

[Taunta]

I thought the recent Superman movie did well? Bob seemed to like it, cause he showed it as one of his examples of great superhero movies.

Warner Bros. doesn't totally suck. Besides Batman, Watchmen did really well. But yeah, I was wondering if we would ever see Spiderman with the Avengers, thanks for explaining that. I had fun learning about copyright laws today!

Besides Justice League, the idea of which I'm still kind of "ehh" about, what about a live action Teen Titans movie? Whether it follows the original comics or the silly cartoon theme, I could see it doing well. And Nolan doesn't plan on using Robin ever so...

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

If we wanted to get Spider man, x-men, et cetera back under Marvel's roof does that mean we should boycott the new Spider-man film?

ok, i'll join the boycott movemant to get Spidey on the Avengers

 

[Sphinx86]

I think Warner Brothers problem is they're afraid of failure. Which ironically leads to it happening. Every time they make a super-hero movie, they go in with the attitude of, we need a really big budget to make sure this comes out right. Then usually make something lackluster and boring.

Before Marvel super-hero movies took off, they scattered the rights around and a bunch of low budget turkeys got made. But it showed all the mistakes that could be made. Got that stuff out of their system. Now they know to trust the source material.

Warner Brothers and DC, need to make a bunch of more modestly budgeted movies to try out various characters and interpretations, with less risk and less need to be a blockbuster. Once they learn to not suck, they can start building a universe franchise and the Justice League movie the comic fans want to see.

I actually see this where I work. While teams that have constrained time/budgets can pull out things that are well balanced and efficient, a lot of the projects that have the 'Business backing' to blow huge amounts of money end up being over-cost, behind schedule and complete shit.

In movie terms look at X-Men First Class. As Bob said this movie was rushed and low-budget, but people who cared made an awesome movie. I think this is directly related to needing some restraint involved. Whereas the people who made Green Lantern spent far too much money on CGI, when I can so desperately see a decent movie under there had someone just said 'No. You only have the money for one CGI bad-guy, not two. Now go back and rewrite your story to make sense'

 

[Bloodstain]

The rights for both Punisher AND Blade have already reverted to Marvel Studios. http://www.comicbookmovie.com/blade_movies/news/?a=42706

I am now imagining an Avengers film with both Punisher and Blade in it.

Woah.
The money they would make.

 

[Bloodstain]

black panther was around for ages before he got married to storm, there isn't even a question that he's not an x-character. And i don't see what's controversial about naming yourself after a powerful animal,(see phoenix).

...do you not know who the Black Panther Party was/is?

 

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

If I'm not mistaken, isn't Apokolips the first mutant technically??

I've been complaining about wanting to have an X-Men film with Apocalypse in for about a decade now, I kid ye not. Don't get me started again.

... although after the failure that was Galactus in FF2, I'm not sure I want to see how badly a villain of that sort of ability can be portrayed.