Captain America: Civil War

[apocrypha]

They are spending tens of millions each time and I don't begrudge them playing it safe. I'd do the same.

It limits their ability to do anything except follow the template.

This is the situation for 95% of movie releases though. It's something that games and films have in common - the costs for AAA/blockbuster releases has got so high that they have to be as risk-free as possible. Indie films & games are where the innovation happens.

[eldaec]

Broadly yes.

But even more so for Star Wars or MCU than other blockbusters.  If Disney fuck up an MCU film it puts the whole money train at risk. If they fuck a standalone film its a big deal but not as big a deal.

Which is presumably why GotG and Ant Man are a lot safer than Deadpool.

[jgsugden]

A different facet on that... That is why it took Fox a decade to sign off on the risk presented by Deadpool... but that was.a smaller risk than what Marvel has done in the MCU over and over.

Can someone clarify for me how Marvel is so risk adverse with their Gun crazy Space Raccoon, replacing Wright in the very last minute, introducing magic into the MCU, and making Ultron the villain of Avengers 2? People act like Black Panter, Captain Marvel, and Doc Strange are new risks after Marvel already sold us on Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Ant-man.

Marvel disappointed me by failing to cording te TV with the movies better. Beyond that, in Feige I trust. I have read very few Doc Strange comics in my day, but I'm looking forward to that film more than anything else in theaters this year.

[Sir T]

Thor wasn't exactly a risk, he has been a pretty popular character for years. Ant man I will give you.

[jgsugden]

Thor wasn't exactly a risk, he has been a pretty popular character for years. Ant man I will give you.

Step back in time.  Thor was released in 2011.  There had been Thor pitches being pushed forward for 2 decades by Raimi, Goyer and a bunch of others, all of which failed to get off the ground because they couldn't get people to believe it could work as a profitable film.  The effort that turned into this film was green lit in 2006, two years before they knew whether Iron Man was going to be a success.  They cast a relative unknown in the Title Roll.  While the character of Thor is known from mythology, it is not one of Marvel's A list characters (Spider-man, Hulk, Captain America, The X-men, Fantastic Four were all far more popular.  The Avengers characters were basically considered second tier Marvel properties until Iron Man... that is why they still had rights to them... nobody else wanted them).  The confusion between the myth and the comic character was a problem.  The director they hired: A guy known for Shakespeare, not action. All of this added to a very high special effects budget to pull off the cosmic/mythic setting and elements. 

RISK.  Well managed risk that paid off, but risk ... and if you think that just having the character be well known is a lock insuring the franchise is going to do well, I have FOUR FANTASTIC reasons to believe that not to be true.

[HaemishM]

Yes, besides Guardians of the Galaxy, I think Thor was their biggest risk on first hearing about the project. He's only well-known now because of the success of Avengers. Before the movie came out, I had no hope they could turn it into an interesting movie or a profitable one.

[Trippy]

Thor was also a big risk cause they had Kenneth Branagh direct it.
 

[eldaec]

Yes, besides Guardians of the Galaxy, I think Thor was their biggest risk on first hearing about the project. He's only well-known now because of the success of Avengers. Before the movie came out, I had no hope they could turn it into an interesting movie or a profitable one.

On the other hand, MCU didn't have any established capital when Thor was announced, wheras later films could have put what IM, Thor, and CA built at risk. Plus Thor 1 had a really strong strategy for keeping it light and relatable.

FWIW I'd say the biggest single risk they've taken was Thor2. The risk being they seem to give the writers their head and ended up straying way further toward unnecessary, unrelatable, and off-brand high fantasy.

Thor was also a big risk cause they had Kenneth Branagh direct it.

I don't know, this is with hindsight of course, but assuming they checked they were all on the same page about what Thor was going to be, hiring Kenneth Branagh to direct anything seems much lower risk than a guy whose only movie credit was an indie from 1995 (Thor 2), a guy whose last notable work was Jumanji (Captain America), or a director whose last film was Movie fucking 43 (GotG).

Turns out Disney are pretty good at hiring directors (except on Thor 2).

[Khaldun]

I'm not even sure Thor 2's problem was direction. I think it was a weak script and a weak buy-in from the MCU planners. They didn't really know what the point of that film was except to throw in another Infinity Stone and to keep Tom Hiddleston on board.

Definitely whomever decided that the right thing to do in casting Eccleston was to put him in heavy makeup and give him virtually no lines to deliver needs to think again, though.

[Tale]

Thor 2 was a spectacular remake of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings that I would have enjoyed if it had made any sense.

[MahrinSkel]

I'm not even sure Thor 2's problem was direction. I think it was a weak script and a weak buy-in from the MCU planners. They didn't really know what the point of that film was except to throw in another Infinity Stone and to keep Tom Hiddleston on board.

Definitely whomever decided that the right thing to do in casting Eccleston was to put him in heavy makeup and give him virtually no lines to deliver needs to think again, though.

I believe I described it as "casting one of the great scenery chewers of our time, and then giving him 9 lines of subtitled dialog and the emotive range of a malevolent tree stump." Eccleston was probably the only thing about the movie that interested me, and in the end he could have been offscreen the entire time and nothing else would have needed to change.

--Dave

[eldaec]

I'm not even sure Thor 2's problem was direction. I think it was a weak script and a weak buy-in from the MCU planners. They didn't really know what the point of that film was except to throw in another Infinity Stone and to keep Tom Hiddleston on board.

Definitely whomever decided that the right thing to do in casting Eccleston was to put him in heavy makeup and give him virtually no lines to deliver needs to think again, though.

Thor 2's problems are so wide ranging its hard to pin them all down. Inconstency of tone, too many (mostly female) characters that had no purpose beside being a mcguffin for other characters, really poor choice of locations, awful pacing, the only interesting character being entirely peripheral, plenty of unnecessary exposition, no arc for the main character,  no real sense of threat because the antagonist is so abstract and subplots were just weird.

On a first watch I quite enjoyed the explosions - espeicially the attack on Asgard. So the visual effects guy gets a pass (at least until the godawful bit in Greenwich).

But you rewatch it and start to realise it would be more fun to watch a Red Letter review of the problems than it is watching the actual film.

[K9]

I didn't even realise that Christopher Ecclestone was in the film

[jgsugden]

Perspective:

Thor 2: Tomatometer 66, Audience Score 77
Incredible Hulk: Tomatometer 67, Audience Score 71
Iron Man 2: Tomatometer 72, Audience Score 72

BvS: Tomatometer 27, Audience Score 64
Suicide Squad: Tomatometer 26, Audience score 67
Man of Steel: Tomatometer 55, Audience Score 75
Watchmen: Tomatometer 65, Audience Score 71
TMNT: Tomatometer 38, Audience Score 50

I think Thor 2, as a Superhero Movie, is pretty fine.  The worst of Marvel is pretty fine.  They wasted some opportunities and did not give us their best work, but relative to the non-Marvel competition, it is art.