They were both good films. I happen to prefer CM, but I love WW as well. Except that shitty boss fight, that is.
Not that that’s my experience of the film, but you don’t think a brainwashed partial amnesiac might exhibit personality changes?
What does that make the woman who spied on him right under his super-smart nose?
Does “giving paid subscribers new content that we want (and paid for)” not count as a legitimate use of the money? That is to say, they have to spend the money we already did pay them on stuff we want. Extra subscriptions are gravy, but servicing existing customers should come first.
Not to hijack the thread more than it already has been, but I agree with Rick - CM was a poorly-defined character, just as the movie didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be.
For example: she’s a (purported) alien, and she’s stranded on earth. OK, it’s a fish out of water story! Except she manages to blend in perfectly… a little too perfectly. OK, so that’s a plot point! Except it never was. Apparently, it’s perfectly normal for aliens to adapt seamlessly to random planets.
The movie was full of half-assed elements like that. The whole plot was about a woman who wasn’t what she was told she was, except we never actually really learned what she thought she was in the first place. Why did she think she had those powers, which even restrained, were so much more powerful than anyone else’s came from? Why did she think she lost her memory? Why was a woman with no memory and unexplained powers on a special forces team? Why were some Kree blue and some human-colored?
It doesn’t help that CM is an inherently boring superhero - she’s Superman, without the vulnerabilities (Kryptonite, the secrete identity, the strong code of ethics) which means she’s Superman without the interesting parts.
The Superman films were basically the standard for superhero films in their day. There really wasn’t anything else good until Batman came out in 1989. I suppose Swamp Thing did well, as campy as it was. Back then, DC was the only one bringing any successful superhero films to theaters. Marvel films were horrible B movies.
I remember watching the 1979 Captain America movie, where he dressed like Evil Knievel (including motorcycle helmet) and his shield was made of clear plastic. Marvel had better success with TV shows, like The Incredible Hulk or The Amazing Spider-Man.
Marvel’s first real hit didn’t come out until 1998 with Blade, and even that was less of a superhero movie, and more a vampire genre film. The X-Men film of 2000 was what truly opened the door to Marvel’s future as the creator of quality superhero films, and then in 2002 Spider-Man broke box office records (the first film in history to reach $100 million in a single weekend). That really ushered in the modern era of superhero films, a sort of renaissance for the genre. Marvel has continued that role for more than 20 years now, seemingly only getting stronger and better as the years continue.
DC should think about reaching back into that well and trying to rekindle that early success from back when they were the ones who were finding box office success with their comic book characters. The fact that people like Snyder sneer at those classics, that is the problem. They don’t even know what a good superhero film is, so how can they possibly release one?
Right. I’m generally not interested in a dark, gloomy experience at the movies. The original Christopher Superman movie was fun (though the time reversal aspect of the ending was eye-rollingly stupid, even to me as a child) and some of the sequels were awful (like the one with Richard Pryor). And many of the Marvel movies also manage to be fun, like the Guardians of the Galaxy and others.
I agree with this and many of your points, and I won’t really defend Netflix strategy because I’m not sure it’s correct nor do I totally understand it. But here’s my best understanding of it.
One useful way of looking at it is that Netflix wants to be the “necessary” or “first” streaming service. The one that everyone has in addition to whatever others they might have. They had this status for years kind of by default, due to some smart early licensing deals and because all the other streaming services took a while to exist or really hit their stride. But that doesn’t exist any more, and now they have to actually compete.
To do that, they need to cater to many tastes. A little bit for everyone. Netflix makes lots of shows and movies at lower cost, but there is a market for expensive high production value stuff. Some people want to watch an action movie with the sorts of effects that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and if that’s what they watch and Netflix doesn’t have those, they might find themselves at some point thinking “I haven’t watched Netflix much in the last few months. Why are we still paying $15 a month for that?”
Also, if Netflix just fails to make any big budget stuff, I think they run the risk that they will start to be perceived as a low-budget low-quality source of content. I’ve definitely heard some rumblings about that and it matches my experience. There are a lot of Netflix-made (or at least branded) movies that they clearly did on a shoestring and most of them are mediocre.
Now, the reviews are that most of Netflix’s big-budget movies (including The Gray Man) are kind of mediocre as well, so they may not be executing very well. But if you look at their streaming competitors: Amazon, Apple, HBO, Disney, they all have a mix of low budget and big budget products.
Why are some humans brown, and others unpigmented?
That’s your opinion - I found her anything but.
Kryptonite vulnerability is the most boring part of Superman to me, personally, since it seems to be the most common substance in the universe.
Captain Marvel was interesting for completely different reasons than Superman. But she was interesting nonetheless. At least, to me (and a lot of other people.)
In the books, blue was the species’ original skin color, but a “pink-skinned” mutation occurred in the species (due to interbreeding with other species, and/or experimentation upon Kree by a more advanced species in the distant past), and in the present day, “pinks” are more common than “blues” among the Kree.
Kryptonite is indeed boring. Superman’s obsession for maintaining his secret identity, though, isn’t, and neither are his boy scout principles and his refusal to kill. They’re what turn a too-perfect character into someone you can tell a story about.
(Full disclosure: I don’t really like Superman as a character. Even with his vulnerabilities, he’s still too perfect. That’s one reason why I’ve always preferred Marvel superheroes - their humanity, even when they weren’t human)
Fair enough, but the fact that it wasn’t addressed in the movie was, to me, indicative of the firm’s half-assed worldbuilding. Anyway, it was just a little thing that bugged me in a movie where a lot of things bugged me.
You know what scene drove me crazy? She’s sitting with Nick Fury in a bar, and he asks her to prove she isn’t a Skrull. She shoots the wall with her laser-fist, and says something like, “Plasma blast. A Skrull can NOT do that”. And then they change the subject.
Why wasn’t there a follow-up question?
“And Kree can?”
“… no. Just me.”
“Really? How come?”
And then we’d get some necessary background, we’ll learn what exactly she thinks she is, what she thinks about it, maybe see her start to doubt the lies she’s been told. It’s Storytelling 101 - establish your premise. The film, instead, just skips over it to more quips and snark.
That’s bullshit. You’re cherry picking one scene which has nothing at all to do with the narrative arc of that movie. And your complaint isn’t even accurate. Prior to that scene there were lots of hints about her origins and her questions about them. The entire reason they are on earth is because the Skulls extracted the memories she had of herself on Earth as a human with human friends. The first scene of the movie is her dreaming about her “injury” and then discussing it with Yon Rogg and the Supreme Intelligence (who transparently try to suppress it). Nick Fury already saw her shoot energy blasts at Kree (who used guns) outside the Blockbuster. Everything you’re saying is missing is had already been heavily foreshadowed or answered earlier in the movie. Her “evidence” is about the only thing that Fury would have reason to trust…any other verification she offered would need her to further explain it to Fury. It’s actually a very tidy scene. Frankly you’re just making up complaints, other (male led) MCU films have far worse plotholes or exposition dumps.
Logically, “I can shoot energy blasts and Skrulls can’t” isn’t proof of anything to someone who had never heard of Skrulls or Kree until just now. That said, she actually is giving him a logical reason to trust her – “if I wanted to hurt you I would have already done it”.
He spent the previous 30 minutes of screen time fighting Skrulls. And he witnessed a fire fight between a Vers and Skrulls, one where Vers saved his life. Your facts are just wrong.
A “follow up question” would be just like one of those massive quote-tweet threads (that I have, to my shame, been a part of too many times) that go for ages because neither side wants to yield.
There was never ever going to be a way that Danvers could prove to Fury that she wasn’t a Skrull, because Fury didn’t know what the hell a Skrull was. He either just went with it to see where things lead or he pulled out a gun and shot her in the head. Because those really were the only two options on the table here.
I think the movie worked out better because he went with the former.
…Captain Marvel was largely a “buddy cop” movie and in buddy cop movies quips are kinda the point. But it also had action and a story and a character arc that didn’t really resonate with the typical Marvel audience, but it did resonate with a target market that superhero movies often ignored. Which is why it smashed over a billion dollars at the box office.
