No "serious" movies aren't likely to need $120 million in special effects to make them not look like a bunch of nerds in rubber suits posing in front of a blue screen. Why are better dramas going to streaming? They're cheaper to produce. So "serious" movies can find easier production at HBO, Amazon or Netflix. And many of the bigger, older, more thoughtful stars tend to have personal projects more complex than "Ant-Man Vs. Wasp Woman." These days, Disney practically has to crank out a billion dollar baby to make their money back — so they're stuck to making WHAT SELLS. The Marvel Universe is the McDonalds of cinema.
I think that QT is actually making the broader argument that an overly corporate movie-making culture sucks all the risk out of cinema and creates a myopic environment in which creativity and expression suffer. He prefers De Palma to Hitchcock, for example, because Hitchcock could only flirt with darker themes (for most of his career, anyway) while De Palma was able to pursue his every gratuitous whim (more or less). Yes, QT is clearly a fan of pulp, but he also views cinema as an artistic mode of expression that flourishes when creators are less bootstrapped by corporate decision-making, moral codes, or mass audience expectations. It's not that he thinks certain masterpieces from the 1950s or 1980s don't exist, it's that he thinks they were released during an overly mechanical studio era, which inevitably turns talent into cogs. He's also quite openly a fan of Marvel movies, if I remember correctly. But whereas the 1970s gave us "Taxi Driver," the modern era gives us "Joker," which is essentially a watered-down, corporate-approved version that does indeed take risks but not nearly in the same manner or with the same level of originality or intelligence. Along similar lines, "Winter Soldier" might borrow elements from classic 1970s conspiracy thrillers but it ultimately serves the superhero agenda and represents far less of a "risk" than some people might imply. If anything, "Iron Man" remains the biggest gamble that Marvel ever took because it's kind of non-traditional until the final act.
Taxi driver is well executed and brilliantly acted, but the story is quite derivative of the true crime genre. Still a strong story, just not very original. I prefer In Cold Blood (1967), although I like both Joker and Taxi Driver. One of the ironic things about Tarantino’s and Scorsese’s complaints is that auteur box office failures (some spectacularly so) partially led Hollywood to a more commercially driven focus. Some auteur-driven films stopped being great and inconsistency became the rule rather than the exception. It is curious that there aren’t more good (key word being good) vanity driven projects. Maybe we’re past that point. The interests of the current and recent culture seem to be comic books, video games and prepackaged music, as opposed to literature, traditional arts and art music. There also seems to be a perplexing, allergic Pavlovian response against anything that isn’t postmodern. Without knowing how can one know how to cinematically drive compelling, human narrative anymore ?
Please point me to the "original" work and its adjoining style from which "Taxi Driver" was derived in a manner that resembles the blatant way that "Joker" drew upon "Taxi Driver" and "King of Comedy." Or are you one of those people who can't distinguish the difference between influence and imitation and who thinks that everything is unoriginal until we go all the way back to some obscure European film from the silent era? Hollywood trends wax and wane and one can arguably blame overly commercial eras on the failures of the auteurist-driven eras that preceded them. People often point to the failures of movies like "Heaven's Gate" and "One from the Heart" as the nail in New Hollywood's coffin, for example. Tarantino has acknowledged as much so I guess I don't find it ironic. He's just making an observation and people on the Internet are the ones blowing it up into something it's probably not. I would also add that there's an extra tier of risk aversion when all these studios are owned by larger conglomerates that may want to protect a much wider range of interests. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by vanity projects but "Bardo," "The Fablemans," and "Armageddon Time" are in various states of release. And I think I agree with what you say about the tendency to shoot down anything that isn't postmodern—at least in the media—which may help explain the surprise success of old-fashioned genre films like "Smile."
Nicolas Winding-Refn made Drive over a decade ago, which had the kind of nervy energy and crime-drama intrigue of some of the 70's auteurs. I use him as an example that sometimes a new voice (though not perhaps wholly original) does come out of the studio system. Even he made the jump over to streaming with the perplexing and fascinating Too Old To Die Young, which came out around 2020. Not many probably saw it, unfortunately.
I don’t think Joker is particularly original and I would agree Taxi Driver is more original. Taxi Driver was, however, at least partially inspired by true events and the genre goes back hundreds of years across multiple disciplines. In Cold Blood isn’t obscure, especially the book. I’m certain Schrader and Scorsese are well-versed in the true crime space. The alienation and moral ambiguity aspects of Travis are fairly commonplace. Camus’ novel The Stranger is probably one of the most famous and influential examples of the 20th century. I don’t think the Taxi Driver screenplay blatantly borrows from anything. It’s solid, but the themes are de rigueur.
I see Hollywood's frustration with Marvel Studios throwing all kinds of big money at bankable stars, and locking them up in contracts to play characters from books they feel aren't worthy of the actors' better talents. Every studio probably has a project just waiting for one of these well-paid puppets to be free in order to work on a script of substance, that isn't tied to some adolescent power fantasy plot for a popcorn movie.
"Won't somebody think of the poor actors!!" You mean like Scarlett Johansson doing Marriage Story and JoJo Rabbit in between Avengers: Endgame and Black Widow? Something like that? The irony here is that someone's "script of substance" is someone else's crap movie. It's all relative.
No, "won't somebody think of the poor studios" who can't find 45 other Scarlett Johanssons because they didn't have her contract negotiation strength. When you say "something like that", you know you can't back up that the exception never proves the rule.
I think QT's films have always had "wanky" moments. I do agree that he can be self-indulgent, though. "Hollywood" showed that tendency to an extreme, and that's a lot of the reason I never warmed to it. When he's on, though, QT really is about as good as it gets.
If there were 45 other Scarlett Johanssons, that would kind of dilute the idea of a Scarlett Johansson, wouldn't it? Girl I used to date is an actor--she had an observation that these big stars have a concept of "one for them, one for me", where they star in giant Hollywood productions and then have a chance to fund something smaller and personal of their own. Plenty of other examples of this from George Clooney to Matt Damon. Tom Holland starred in other stuff in between Spider-Man roles too, so there’s another example of an MCU star doing it.
Movie stars still exist and always will. But the movie star who could "open" a movie and sell tickets just based on his/her name was in decline prior to 2011 - which was the first year we got a Marvel movie with an essentially unknown lead actor. The 1st 3 MCU flicks - the 1st 2 "Iron Man" movies and "Incredible Hulk" - had name actors as the leads. Yeah, Downey and Norton weren't "movie stars" in the Brad Pitt/Julia Roberts sense, but they were famous, whereas Chris Evans was semi-known and Chris Hemsworth was virtually unknown. And those 1st 2 "non-star" MCU movies didn't do that well - at least not relative to what we now expect from MCU. "Thor" was #10 US for 2011, and "Captain America" was #12. So fine but well below MCU expectations. 2012's "Avengers" was the movie that really set up the MCU as a behemoth.
It seemed to set in around Kill Bill Vol 2 that he would have these long stretches of monologues that IMO didn’t seem to add much except padding to the runtime. When he’s on he’s certainly on, but all of his films since have had this.
Lotsa Querulous Quentins wanna brand "MCU" as one-size-fits-all, but as you imply, there's a massive amount of variety under the MCU banner.
Isn't this 100% the case? Not that fans don't have preferences around who plays the role (for example, Adam West is the best Batman ever, albeit not Marvel), the character itself is the real draw. I mean, these are sourced from a comic book, so they've had a long life before appearing in film. Not to mention, how many people have played the various characters through the years?
Exactly. Obviously "WF" needed to account for the loss of Chadwick Boseman, but they could've just said "T'challa retired and moved to Montana" or some crap to get around his absence. Even if they acknowledged his passing and killed T'challa, they could've moved on thematically very quickly. I don't know how successful a semi-reboot is, as I wasn't wild about it, but it definitely takes risks. Though if by "recast" you mean "hire someone else to play T'challa", I disagree. The 1st movie was too iconic and Boseman too loved for them to hire a different actor to play the same part. That would've been roundly rejected.
You're missing my entire point, aren't you. That must feel special. The idea is that when a studio that needs a character available for a number of shooting schedules over a period of years, makes them unavailable to other studios if they have an exclusive promise to frequently suit-up as an Avenger (or just an Avenger's girlfriend), so they have less time available to shoot other movies. Now, that's their choice, and it's never not been their choice. But, there is certainly a limit on bankable faces to put onto marquees, and when Marvel locks all of them out with multi-mega-picture deals, that means less marketable faces for other studios for their priority films. That sort of goes in line with the thread topic, don't you see? That was the reason of my example, of a reason why Hollywood might have a beef with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's the same when you have a supermarket, but you let all your employees park all day at the closest spaces nearest the entrance. Now, there's nothing wrong with that if it isn't a store policy, but that's less parking spaces for the store's paying customers to find handy every time they go there, and eventually they might just reconsider their choice of grocery shopping if they have to park all the way in the back every time. The employee doesn't care about the customer, he's got his parking space. But the customer must surely feel slighted, if they realized the same cars are always parked in the best spots all day long.
My review of "Eight" describes it as "reasonably interesting", which means "bad by QT standards". It was decent but arguably his weakest film. I loved "Basterds", though. "Pulp" will always be my favorite QT film but "IB" might be his best. As noted above, "Hollywood" largely leaves me cold. Too much fetish, not enough story.
Glen Powell had a "large supporting role" as Han Solo in the last "Top Gun" movie. Majors has done nothing... major, but he has large roles in the upcoming "Ant-Man" and "Creed" sequels.
Precisely. If crapping on popular movies makes people happy, rock on, but it feels kneejerk and reactionary to me. By and large, the MCU movies are well-made. They're not lowest common denominator crap - which is why the brand has remained successful for nearly 15 years. Some people seem to think audiences will gobble up any comic book movies, but the relative lack of success of the DCEU shows that's not the case. MCU became a "trusted brand" due to quality. Honestly, I'm not a huge MCU guy. I liked the pre-MCU Spideys and lot and love the Nolan Batmans. But MCU deserves credit where it's due. I like their movies, even if I'm not in love with the MCU like some are.
I'd like 45 ScarJos! Actors have followed the "one for money, one for me" rule for years. Plenty of them take on big-budget films so they can then "afford" to work in low-budget stuff. In any case, I reject the notion that the MCU actors all feel they're slumming for the money. Not everything needs to be "King Lear" to be worth an actor's talents.
Couldn't one argue that QT's career started with a scene that was a long dialogue sequence that didn't add anything to the plot? Okay, the diner scene in "Dogs" does offer plot info. However, it runs much longer than necessary to convey the required information. This doesn't mean I think QT should've shortened it, as the diner scene is iconic. But in terms of advancing the story, it runs way longer than necessary. That's really part of QT's charm: all the quirky scenes that don't have real narrative purpose but are massively entertaining. I mean, "Pulp" doesn't need the dance contest scene, but it's a delight. For me, the issue feels less that QT devotes long stretches of film to "unnecessary" scenes and more he just doesn't do it as well as in the past.
Indeed. There have been some that well…I watched just to get a sense of what his taste were back on the day and all I can say is nostalgia
Depends on the character! We're on our 3rd cinematic Spider-Man - which became a fun part of "No Way Home", of course - but most of the characters have only had one actor in the role. Indeed, in the MCU, only Hulk has been recast, IIRC. Edward Norton played him in 2008's "Incredible Hulk" - which was a recast/reboot from the not-beloved Eric Bana "Hulk" of 2003 - and then Mark Ruffalo took over in 2012. There's a new Black Panther, but that wasn't a recast role: a different character took over the mantle as "Black Panther". Also, there will be a new Captain America, but again, that's not a different actor playing the same part. Chris Evans is the only Steve Rogers we've seen. The MCU has the advantage that until 2000's "X-Men", Marvel characters didn't make much of an impact. "Blade" was a moderate success in 1998, but prior stabs at Marvel movies didn't find an audience. With stuff like "Batman" and "Superman", DC had the hits. Because all the popular Marvel movies have been from the last 22 years, they've not needed to trot out actors who competed with well-known predecessors - there's no pre-2000 equivalent of Adam West, Michael Keaton or Christopher Reeve.
