Marvel Universe (Thar be spoilers ahead.)

[jgsugden]

That raises an interesting question for me: Is Whedon as 'done' with Marvel as he was before this change?  Or could we see him take on Captain Marvel or the Inhumans?  Who forced the changes in Avengers 2 that drove him off?

[Khaldun]

My impression is that he's done. Like, he's pissed off but too professional to say it. I don't think he liked working on Avengers 2 and I don't think he liked the ways the suits controlled it.

[Khaldun]

Plus also I think everybody but everybody has learned the Eisner-Jobs-Lasseter lesson re Pixar: when your executive talent and your creative talent are synchronized, do NOT FUCK WITH THEM. Ride it, ride it, until the beast dies.

[Margalis]

So far being cheap has not hurt Marvel too much so far.

The Marvel films have a house style - the individual director is doesn't drastically change the production. On the Marvel films the actual director seems about as important as the second-unit director on most other films - you want a competent guy, but you don't need much beyond that. There's almost no relationship between the pedigree of the director and the quality of the finished film.

When Whedon came in to direct Avengers 1 all the storyboards and pre-vis for the set pieces had been done, before there was a script. That's the kind of beast you're dealing with. It's hard to imagine any director staying on board for too many movies in that sort of setup.

My impression of Whedon leaving is less that he was annoyed at meddling and more that working on the Marvel films is exhausting while being not particularly creatively fulfilling. You're working with established characters and stories and writing scripts that move from one already defined action scene to the next. At the end of the day the movie can't really be your baby.

[Velorath]

My impression is that he's done. Like, he's pissed off but too professional to say it. I don't think he liked working on Avengers 2 and I don't think he liked the ways the suits controlled it.

I doubt he's very pissed off. There were probably some frustrations I'm sure, but at the end of the day he always seems understandably appreciative that he got to direct two of the all-time highest-grossing movies.

[Evildrider]

Whedon probably just wanted more time to do his own personal projects.  I am sure there was some scuffling behind the scenes, but I doubt it was anything more than him just burning out from the work.  I wouldn't be surprised if he comes back to do another movie for Disney at some point.  If that's another Marvel movie or a crack at a Star Wars movie, who knows.

[sickrubik]

There was plenty of articles talking about Whedon's frustrations coming off of Avengers 2 and being burned out.

[jgsugden]

If you read between the lines in those articles, it looked like Whedon was frustrated in all of the ways discussed above.  In the end, it sounded to me like he realized that he was making movies that were 75% Marvel and 25% Whedon - with Marvel choosing the 25% that he was able to add.  That was not making him happy, so he decided to take the clout he earned from making those movies and turn it into the next things that he wants to make.

My question is: Does the Feige change - at all - create an environment that might be more likely to draw Whedon back.  Did Feige go to Disney and say, "The current regime is driving away your money makers like Whedon and the hardcore fans are panning the changes that he (Perlmutter) forced on the film that Whedon and I didn't want to make.  Get him out of the process and put me (Feige) at the top of the chain and I'll retain your talent and give you better films."  I'm not saying I think that was the core argument that led to the change, but was it perhaps one of the arguments.  Did Feige claim that if he was at the top of the chain the Wright situation have been better handled? 

I mean, there has to be some reason for this change.  It isn't just more money for Feige - they cut someone big out of the process.

I'm wondering, not asserting here.  If Whedon is lured back to Marvel in the next 3 or 4 years, we'll have an answer of sorts, though.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I don't see why thinking getting Whedon back is something that one should hope for. Next to Wes Anderson he might be the most overrated director today.

[jgsugden]

Let me go to the Box in my Office for an answer to that question, LS. 

When you have a recipe to make insane amounts of money, you don't want to mess with the recipe.  I don't care if the recipe makes sense to you or not - you don't mess with a recipe for lots of money as long as it keeps working.  Had Avengers 2 done box office more like Fantastic Four, the recipe would change.  But it didn't.  Marvel had every reason to want continuity.  I'm 100% sure that had Whedon wanted to do Avengers 3/4, he'd be doing Avengers 3/4.

Whether Whedon made the Avengers better movies or not is up to debate, but it is not up for debate that they made an insane amount of money with him in his role.

And, personally, I think he did a pretty good job.  The Whedonesque you see in these movies works, especially when you look at how he handled Cap (IMHO).  I think most of my complaints with Avengers 2 are things that are not typical for what Whedon has done in TV and movies - especially where the story rushes through moments that needed more building.

[HaemishM]

After making 2 of the highest grossing films of all time, there is literally no reason for Whedon to go back to Marvel movies. He probably can get carte blanche on almost any project he wants to do now, or at least finance it himself. A few billion at the box office does that. He might even be able to persuade the Fox pricks to do more Firefly. 

[jgsugden]

Fun read on the topic from Vanity Fair: http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/09/marvel-studios-ike-perlmutter-kevin-feige  Not much new, but some speculation in the vein I had towards the end of the article...

[Evildrider]

More news, they dissolved the Marvel Creative Committee.  This was apparently the reason that people like Wright left and some of the angst that Whedon probably had.  What was the Creative Committee? It was a group of people who would give notes and thoughts on Marvel productions as they made their way from script to screen. Some of the guys on the committee included Alan Fine, who came with Perlmutter to Marvel through Toy Biz, Brian Michael Bendis, who is a prolific Marvel Comics writer, Dan Buckley, publisher of Marvel Comics and Joe Quesada, former editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics and the current Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Enterprises.

 

[HaemishM]

Just based on half that list, I hope they jettisoned the Creative Committee into the fucking sun.

[Ironwood]

Hmmmm.

And yet, we've had quite a bit of success with who was in place.  Perhaps these Devils are better than the unknown ones ?

[Evildrider]

Hmmmm.

And yet, we've had quite a bit of success with who was in place.  Perhaps these Devils are better than the unknown ones ?

Apparently it was because these guys were so busy with their primary jobs that anything that had to go through them would take forever to get done.  This was leading to rushed productions and script changes that were happening during filming.  It sounds like anything that wasn't totally money related had to go through them.

Now Marvel has done awesome so far, but there have been complaints and of course problems with directors and actors.  I think that with what looks like a tier of bureaucracy being dissolved in the movie making process is probably going to be a great thing.  Mind you none of this will be really shown in practice til after Doctor Strange probably.

[Khaldun]

The danger with anything like this is that eventually people who have nothing at stake in the production start to become overly powerful. it's one thing to have a rich creative process at the beginning--though there is a growing body of social psychology literature that says "brainstorming is almost always crap and unhelpful" and another thing to have people who are actually making something feel like they have to constantly deal with notes from various well-meaning 'creatives' throughout. That's a pretty quite road to burning down the house--there are so so so many Hollywood case studies documenting that.

[sickrubik]

Hmmmm.

And yet, we've had quite a bit of success with who was in place.  Perhaps these Devils are better than the unknown ones ?

And it's arguable that as more nad more success was found, the worse the products have been. Of course, that bar is high, but Ant Man and Avengers 2 were definitely not at The Height.

[Khaldun]

I dunno, Ant Man was better than many allegedly "height" films. Might have been more distinctive if Wright had been left alone, but it was a solid flick.

[sickrubik]

I dunno, Ant Man was better than many allegedly "height" films. Might have been more distinctive if Wright had been left alone, but it was a solid flick.

I liked Ant Man and A2. But when we are talking about metric based things, it did not reach the heights of the cash nor the reviews/reactions from the audience. Everything else is just opinion and arbitrary.

We can also look at the stress that filmmakers have felt on these projects lately, with both Whedon and Wright.

[Margalis]

I'm sure Marvel is a bit nervous.

They are in this for the long haul - they have movie plans stretching out 5 years. Ant-Man and A2 both somewhat underperformed both critically and commercially.

The worrying thing about A2 is that it opened about as well as the first but slowed down a lot faster. Which means word of mouth was worse and that the audience was more Marvel zombies and less everyone else. Now the movie still did great, but you don't want to be looking at a downward trend when you have plans for 2020 and beyond.

[Velorath]

The first Avengers movie was in a fairly unique situation that was going to be near impossible to replicate so it wasn't shocking to lower numbers (and world wide A2 ended up at 1.4 billion vs A1's 1.5 billion so there isn't a huge downward trend yet in the grand scheme of things). That's not to say that A2 wasn't as positively received as the first movie, but I'm not sure if you can really draw too much from these numbers right now.

As far as Ant Man's numbers go, I guess hopefully Disney has reasonable expectations regarding the MCU. Prior to the Avengers, Iron Man was a hit, but Thor and Cap didn't put up huge numbers, and Hulk's numbers were pretty disappointing. Thor 2 got a small bump from Avengers, but I think Cap 2 was stronger critically and commercially than people would have expected, and then they had a surprise hit in GotG. Point being, the MCU wasn't hit movie after hit movie and now we're seeing a downward trend. It's been a mix of huge hits, modest successes, and the occasional disappointment.

[jgsugden]

There were comments a year out showing the realization that Ant-man was a hard sell. If not for Wright's pre Iron Man pitch, it would not have been made. They considered canning it and putting a  younger Pym  and Janet Van Dyne in Avengers you can find the Wasp artwork. Marvel seems disappointed, but not surprised, by the Ant-man BO.

[HaemishM]

Ant-Man worldwide did just under Captain America 1's numbers, and still made it's production budget back times 2. Anybody expecting Cap 2 or Avengers numbers were delusional simply based on the lack of recognition of the character. Based on the fact that they didn't immediately announce a sequel nor did they have one planned in their 5-year slate tells me they knew it wasn't going to be that kind of hit and were prepared for it.

[Lakov_Sanite]

It's not so much about the numbers going in but the reaction coming out of the movie.  AOU and antman both got a "It was a decent movie, not great" reaction from most people, unlike the "holy shit amazeballs!!!1!" reaction from the first avengers.  Short term money is great but Disney and Feige want long term and lukewarm reactions hurt the longterm.

[Khaldun]

Ruffalo said in an interview that the Hulk was in the original Civil War script but was cut because it would have forced them to reveal "where the Hulk is right now".

I'm calling it: I bet the Hulk's going to be in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Banner's going to find a way to get himself in space so he can get away from humanity only to find out that no matter where you go there's people who could be hurt (or saved).

[Ironwood]

Wrong thread ?

[Khaldun]

Eh, I figured it's two movies I'm speculating about, so this one.

[Evildrider]

Ruffalo said in an interview that the Hulk was in the original Civil War script but was cut because it would have forced them to reveal "where the Hulk is right now".

I'm calling it: I bet the Hulk's going to be in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Banner's going to find a way to get himself in space so he can get away from humanity only to find out that no matter where you go there's people who could be hurt (or saved).

The original plan was for that to happen at the end of AoU, but that was until they realized that GotG would be a huge hit.  Then they changed their minds and scrapped that ending for Hulk. 

[jgsugden]

There are a lot of quotes about the Hulk scene at the end of Avengers 2.  Whedon has said that Marvel would not let him show stars in that final scene with Hulk in the quinjet and that Marvel has not intention of doing Planet Hulk.  I think a lot of people are trying to be cute with a game of hide the Hulk hoping to put him on screen as a surprise twist, but that it'll be well spoiled before getting to screen.

What we know with regards to Hulk and Civil War is this: Ruffalo told some Italian site he is not in it, that statement was translated from English to Italian and the back into English - and then rereported everywhere.   Meanwhile, he was seen "near" set by a German newspaper in early August and Ruffalo tweeted a hint that he would be in the film back in May - and there are the Red Hulk rumors that started to appear a few days before the announcement that William Hurt was returning (followed by the "much different Ross" comments from Hurt after he was announced). 

My best guess: Act 1 has Cap find Bucky and the Crossbones battle and disaster.  That is followed by a second act where the two sides face off in a Stark / Rodgers Civil War with most of the other costumed folks in the background with Caps' side being scattered and captured.  Then the third act is focused around a government team - the Thunderbolts - led by a Red Hulk protecting prisoners that Cap is trying to free - and that Cap surrenders to in the end before Agent 13 has her moment.  I'm betting that the events of Civil War - unlike prior Marvel movies - occur over a greater period of time and we see discussion of it unfold over most of the season of MAoS.  The post credit clip in Ant-man, AFAIK, was the first time they showed a scene that could not be seen to chronologically take place when it was shown, but was to take place in the future.  Perhaps the early events we'll see in Civil War will take place before the events of MAoS season 3 begin? 

[Ironwood]

 

[Lakov_Sanite]

I'm waiting for him to start writing slashfics.

[jgsugden]

I'm waiting for him to start writing slashfics.

Can you go back to telling me what a moron I am for thinking we'll see Inhumans on MAoS?

Bucky found in first Act.  Major Stark versus Rodgers battle in the second act.  A Prison.  Thunderbolts and Red Hulk in Third Act.  I could be wrong, but that is what I'm seeing based upon when things were put out there.

[Merusk]

Hey, here's some more drama for yo mama.

http://uproxx.com/gammasquad/2015/09/avengers-age-of-ultron-failure/

AOU was a "Failure" and that's why Disney has "taken over" Marvel Studios and booted the old guard.

Edit by Trippy: trimmed off all the extraneous URL crap

[jgsugden]

Another Marvel project: not sure if it would be in or out of the MCU continuity - likely in with a wink: Damage Control: http://deadline.com/2015/10/marvel-damage-control-tv-series-comedy-abc-1201566243/ 

If it goes, I imagine we'll see this as a series that cleans up after the events of movies, TVs, etc... and pokes some fun at the "serious" properties.  Like the Marvel comics in the same vein, it'll be in continuity, but 99% in response to the events of other films and only minimally causing events other series respond to...

They hinted at this for a few years.  I'm betting it could be a summer series that addresses the ABC show finales, the summer blockbusters, etc...