Black Widow trailer

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Bert

I saw the new Black Widow trailer yesterday. I have a terrible feeling about this movie. I mean, I get it - investing the huge sums necessary to produce a Marvel superhero flick involves risk and the producers want to minimize the chance of failure, but this thing seems like a terrible waste of opportunity and a huge sell out. It seems like Marvel wants the good press of releasing another female-led film, but is completely unwilling to actually make that film. My two main problems are:

1. There are way too many hero and villain characters. This is actually much closer to an Avengers movie than a Captain America or Iron Man movie. It reeks of cowardice to not let the movie stand on Black Widow/Johansson's shoulders.

2. Black Widow is a highly trained, physically gifted regular human with no superpowers. Yet the action scenes are almost entirely wildly over the top set pieces depicting stuff that isn't even remotely possible. To me it doesn't come off looking impressive, just stupid and unbelievable.

The whole thing smacks of corporate decision making and formulaic laziness. Worst of all, if it ends up failing it will still be used as evidence that female-led superhero films don't pay off, even though that's not really what this is.
Damselbinder

Bert wrote:
3 years ago
I saw the new Black Widow trailer yesterday. I have a terrible feeling about this movie. I mean, I get it - investing the huge sums necessary to produce a Marvel superhero flick involves risk and the producers want to minimize the chance of failure, but this thing seems like a terrible waste of opportunity and a huge sell out. It seems like Marvel wants the good press of releasing another female-led film, but is completely unwilling to actually make that film. My two main problems are:

1. There are way too many hero and villain characters. This is actually much closer to an Avengers movie than a Captain America or Iron Man movie. It reeks of cowardice to not let the movie stand on Black Widow/Johansson's shoulders.

2. Black Widow is a highly trained, physically gifted regular human with no superpowers. Yet the action scenes are almost entirely wildly over the top set pieces depicting stuff that isn't even remotely possible. To me it doesn't come off looking impressive, just stupid and unbelievable.

The whole thing smacks of corporate decision making and formulaic laziness. Worst of all, if it ends up failing it will still be used as evidence that female-led superhero films don't pay off, even though that's not really what this is.
You'd have thought a Black Widow movie would be a tense, Bourne-style action-spy-thriller. Maybe hewing a little more to the Bond side of things because of the universe she's in. But this looks like very action-schlock stuff, which is strange because the second Captain America movie (while it certainly had plenty of big action setpieces) had more or less the right tone for a BW movie anyway, and people really liked it. Odd.
Bert

Damselbinder wrote:
3 years ago
You'd have thought a Black Widow movie would be a tense, Bourne-style action-spy-thriller.
Precisely!
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That does make sense since there is no more overall arching plot in the MCU and that a Winter Soldier type movie would not work for them. My guess is all MCU movies now will be one off movies with no overall plot tie in and no deep story of any kind. Its basically dead. As I said, this genre went the way of westerns. Huge spike then the genre dried up.
Damselbinder

Mr. X wrote:
3 years ago
That does make sense since there is no more overall arching plot in the MCU and that a Winter Soldier type movie would not work for them. My guess is all MCU movies now will be one off movies with no overall plot tie in and no deep story of any kind. Its basically dead. As I said, this genre went the way of westerns. Huge spike then the genre dried up.
I think that is a little premature. Their Wandavision series was a tremendous success. And if they are building up to a big overall plot tie-in thing, they'll do what they did before and work back up to it gradually.
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Bert wrote:
3 years ago
I saw the new Black Widow trailer yesterday. I have a terrible feeling about this movie. I mean, I get it - investing the huge sums necessary to produce a Marvel superhero flick involves risk and the producers want to minimize the chance of failure, but this thing seems like a terrible waste of opportunity and a huge sell out. It seems like Marvel wants the good press of releasing another female-led film, but is completely unwilling to actually make that film. My two main problems are:

1. There are way too many hero and villain characters. This is actually much closer to an Avengers movie than a Captain America or Iron Man movie. It reeks of cowardice to not let the movie stand on Black Widow/Johansson's shoulders.

2. Black Widow is a highly trained, physically gifted regular human with no superpowers. Yet the action scenes are almost entirely wildly over the top set pieces depicting stuff that isn't even remotely possible. To me it doesn't come off looking impressive, just stupid and unbelievable.

The whole thing smacks of corporate decision making and formulaic laziness. Worst of all, if it ends up failing it will still be used as evidence that female-led superhero films don't pay off, even though that's not really what this is.
-----------
Black Widow should have been done much earlier and there is superhero fatigue.
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Streaming put a stake into movie going and covid pretty much finished it off. Movie going was pretty much dying anyway. So making 100+ mil super block busters is probably going to be dying as well. And with those movies you get one size fits all and its pretty apparent movie makers don't care about American audiences and want to cater to China.

For story etc I think smaller budget, more focused movies or series is going to be more entertaining. The collapse of movie going might be a good thing overall since the barrier to produce comes down and smaller studios can now make something. Plus CGI is getting cheaper.
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Dazzle1 wrote:
3 years ago
Black Widow should have been done much earlier and there is superhero fatigue.
Agree that Black Widow should have been done years ago as the first female-led MCU blockbuster (well before either Wasp or Captain Marvel). That was a missed opportunity.

But I don't think there is superhero "fatigue". More like overload. High interest in shows like The Boys and F&WS proves that the interest is there.

I think a bigger question is the expense incurred when the movie theater business has collapsed. Making TV shows just makes more sense: compare Black Widow's $200+ million budget for *one movie* to Wandavision which cost $175 million to produce the *entire season*. And The Boys was $80 million for an entire season. With the TV shows, they get more eyeballs and way more watch time, which means lots more advertising slots.
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In the comics, BW has no superpowers. In the MCU, I'm not so sure. They just haven't told us yet that they gave her some russian super soldier low level injection. Not Cap America level, but enhanced.

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Advertising slots? Disney+, Amazon Prime, Netflix don't have commercials.

I don't see any sign of superhero fatigue...yet.
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theScribbler wrote:
3 years ago
@shevek
Advertising slots? Disney+, Amazon Prime, Netflix don't have commercials.
I don't see any sign of superhero fatigue...yet.
Sorry, I watch so much CW that I forgot about that. :) Still, much more watch time for a TV series (and I'm sure streaming services want to keep viewers on their platform as much as possible) than a single movie.

There is no superhero fatigue. There's a whole built-in generation which has 1) grown up with these movies and 2) more than any other previous generation, is immersed in an eternal 'emotional childhood', which will continue to lap this stuff up almost in perpetuity. They'll never step foot in a comic book store, unfortunately, but then again that's at least partially the fault of a terrible lack of coherent cross-promotion.
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I thought the implication was that Black Widow was one of the super-agents that Peggy ran into in Agent Carter.

But by this point in proceedings who really cares?

I'm 100% on board for whatever consequences we get from WandaVision, because that shit looked epic, but all this spy stuff? Black Widow/Falcon and Winter Soldier? Meh. I like the folks in it well enough but there's clearly something building and it's completely outside of their wheelhouse. Bring on Dr Strange 2 and some more Thor.
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I agree with the point about the over-the-top action sequences in the trailer suggesting a movie relying on action more than plot. A clever plot with suspense highlighting Black Widow's intellect as much as her physicality would have made a great change-of-pace superhero movie. A blend of John Le Carre and Ian Fleming and Tom Clancy would make a compelling Black Widow movie.
Slightly off-topic, I watched the opposite the other day. Kong vs. Godzilla was the epitome of amazing visuals with a horrendous plot and unbelievably flat and one-dimensional characters. The best way to watch that tripe is to fast-forward to each actions sequence and skip everything else. I bring this up because it seems for such a huge financial investment, why couldn't someone have kicked down 200K for a good script? How hard would it be to create a human interest angle or an allegory of some depth?
Perhaps future superhero movies can use a more plot-driven storyline. I'm thinking something along the lines of the Amazon series "Hanna". The titular character is a sort of superheroine, and the two seasons' storylines were quite good.
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Just saw this today. It was...meh.

Critical Drinker sums it up. BTW spoilers.

IMHO they missed a GOLDEN opportunity to have a realistic bad guy who was already in the movie.
Spoiler
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The majority on IMDB gives it a 6 to 8 out of 10 and I have read pretty good critics.
That's a good sign for me, even I would watch this movie anyway because it just interests me BIG time.
Scarlett Johansson in action? That's already all I need to know :whistle:
And the movie has a lot of other interesting aspects as well.

Still not 100% sure if I will go to the cinema for this one as I get my first Moderna shot next week.
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Thought it was okay.
Spoiler
I thought the underlying commentary about Weinstein, Hollywood and the exploitation of the abundance of young women was timely and interesting, but largely lost because every five minutes something exploded or caught fire, or there was a big fight.

It's funny that the amount of time and money that has gone into the MCU shows on Disney meant that this movie actually felt kind of like a made for TV movie for me. In hindsight there's some obviously hugely expensive and artfully choreographed action set pieces in this, but honestly the action scenes have been some of the weakest parts of the MCU for years. This looked like it could have been an episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Considering how many MCU movies there have been, and how much fighting and action there is in them, it's kind of a poor showing that the only two really iconic action scenes are the elevator fight with Captain America and Hulk's 'Puny God' brutalisation of Loki. Black Widow is equally forgettable. There's a half decent car chase that just serves as a reminder that the one with Nick Fury in Winter Soldier was better (that was just a really great movie tbh) and there's a prison break that is (for such a common trope) really average. The main fighty villain was bland too.

The ending was surprisingly sad though. There's a lot of character development here for Natasha, then she walks off to her jet happily at the end and then next time we see her it's in a post credits scene at her grave.

It's kind of a reminder of how the Black Widow character was done dirty by Whedon and the earlier writers with their pathological refusal to make movies about anybody other than white dudes. Done a few years earlier, like, before the character died maybe? This movie would have carried a lot more weight*.


*Although that said it might also have done a Ragnarok where everything seems to end well and then Thanos takes a giant shit on it.
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Liked it quite a bit, actually.
Spoiler
My main problems with it were probably the poor final acts, the whole 'we didn't show you this, but we knew that the villains were gonna do this all along!' thing where everything went 'just as planned'. Felt a little too convenient and lowered the stakes a great deal.

Taskmaster was probably wasted, they kinda telegraphed the twist quite a bit too.

The ending was a little weird, it was as if they wanted to end at the scene where the cars were driving to Nat, then suddenly they wanted to end at the quinjet. Felt like they forgot a few scenes in between.

But I felt where the show shines were the characters — Yelena was fantastic and funny, and the 'family' dynamic was pretty fun. I felt Red Guardian was a little wasted, would've been fun if it turned out that his chaotic and obscure fighting style actually took Taskmaster by surprise, but eh.

The intro act was great — loved the whole dark tone they were going for.
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A terribly mediocre blockbuster. I really hope it significantly underperforms.
I hate to say this, but The Tomorrow War was inherently a more enjoyable movie.
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Spoiler
The thing that wrecked it for me (among other things) was the bad guy was a zero. Nobody knew who he was. Plus even Black Widow points out, what's this all for. If this guy is the bottom of the rabbit hole then the universe truly is poorly organized.

Now they could have added a twist I think could have worked. These girls all are exposed to mind control drugs. What if this guy is also. Its not like he's immune. So he's merely a front man. It was the mother who made the formula who was really the master mind. She made the drugs, she made him the figure head so she could make the calls from the shadows. Just a thought.

But if this guy is the man behind the curtain then Oz is truly a sad, mediocre place. Not sure what they were going for other than some creepy Weinstien vibe.

Also Red Guardian was a let down. Like someone else suggested, have his crappy, unpredictable fighting style confuse task master. But he was just a jobber and clown.
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Mr. X wrote:
2 years ago
Spoiler
The thing that wrecked it for me (among other things) was the bad guy was a zero. Nobody knew who he was. Plus even Black Widow points out, what's this all for. If this guy is the bottom of the rabbit hole then the universe truly is poorly organized.

Now they could have added a twist I think could have worked. These girls all are exposed to mind control drugs. What if this guy is also. Its not like he's immune. So he's merely a front man. It was the mother who made the formula who was really the master mind. She made the drugs, she made him the figure head so she could make the calls from the shadows. Just a thought.

But if this guy is the man behind the curtain then Oz is truly a sad, mediocre place. Not sure what they were going for other than some creepy Weinstien vibe.

Also Red Guardian was a let down. Like someone else suggested, have his crappy, unpredictable fighting style confuse task master. But he was just a jobber and clown.
Spoiler
I'm not sure he was a zero, I think you have to remember that Black Widow's main skill other than posing and fighting is to get under people's skins to get them to reveal their plans. She provokes a response, however she needs to, to get people to lose the run of themselves and spill the beans. For the creepy guy, it was telling him he was nothing and compelling him to boast about the system he had set up.

It also makes sense that this is the main guy, because Natasha is dead now. No sense starting anything with her, and the character deserves to put a final lid on her own story, not die with the job unfinished. Chasing down the other operatives isn't a major story in itself but it does provide some nice busywork to keep Yelena out of the way for however long is required.

The way that the MCU isn't afraid to just end stories in a very un-comicbook-like-way is a plus for me to be honest. For the movies and shows to stay relatively self contained they need the discipline to finish a story with as few loose ends as possible.
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I love these guys. The way they always take apart the plot holes and the lame contrivances is TIGHT. :)

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Just saw it tonight, better than Captain Marvel, but it feels like they cut a lot of stuff for time that really should have been included, basic scene transition, emotional conversations thoroughly explored, building up the bad guys, etc. Speaking of bad guys they did Taskmaster dirty, not gonna go into spoilers, but while the fight scenes were very impressive it feels like every other aspect of the character was not great if you have an existing knowledge of the character and mediocre if you went in blind. A decent watch in the moment, but I can feel the nitpicky Youtube critics foaming at the mouth and I honestly can't say they don't have material to work with here.
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The big problem with Taskmaster in the movie is that they run into the same problems that several other scenes run into, which is that they are somewhat reminiscent of Winter Soldier but not as good.

They've tried to catch that same lightning in a bottle as Winter Soldier but I don't think any of it works as well. Which is no disgrace because Winter Soldier is probably the best MCU movie. Still though, if you can't build on something that is great you should probably avoid reminding people that it is there and that it is better than the thing you are currently doing.

Regarding comparisons to recent MCU things, I thought it was better than Spiderman Far From Home but not as good as Thor Ragnarok or Captain Marvel.

For the record it's also fucking tragic that I've heard this movie called a spy movie. Holy shit.
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Dogfish wrote:
2 years ago
The big problem with Taskmaster in the movie is that they run into the same problems that several other scenes run into, which is that they are somewhat reminiscent of Winter Soldier but not as good.

They've tried to catch that same lightning in a bottle as Winter Soldier but I don't think any of it works as well. Which is no disgrace because Winter Soldier is probably the best MCU movie. Still though, if you can't build on something that is great you should probably avoid reminding people that it is there and that it is better than the thing you are currently doing.

Regarding comparisons to recent MCU things, I thought it was better than Spiderman Far From Home but not as good as Thor Ragnarok or Captain Marvel.

For the record it's also fucking tragic that I've heard this movie called a spy movie. Holy shit.
Well Black Widow is a spy and she in the movie so that makes it a spy movie right? :giggle:

I'm surprised to hear someone say it's better than Captain Marvel, I feel like both movies suffer from a lot of the same problems, but at least Natasha as a protagonist is somewhat likeable While Carol is a complete mess who laughs while killing random foot soldiers only to give Space Hitler a firm warning for no reason.
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I think with the MCU part of the appeal of any given movie is when I watch it, do I feel like I want to see more, and with Captain Marvel I was thinking I want to see what the character does next. With Black Widow it left me feeling the wrong sort of sad, because the character had developed right at the point of her death, which was poorly timed in terms of the MCU as a whole. Also her little sister wasn't particularly compelling, nor were the rest of the family,
Spoiler
and having her set up to fight ShootBowMan or whatever he's called in the post-credits left me completely cold.
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Mr. X wrote:
3 years ago
Streaming put a stake into movie going and covid pretty much finished it off. Movie going was pretty much dying anyway. So making 100+ mil super block busters is probably going to be dying as well. And with those movies you get one size fits all and its pretty apparent movie makers don't care about American audiences and want to cater to China.

For story etc I think smaller budget, more focused movies or series is going to be more entertaining. The collapse of movie going might be a good thing overall since the barrier to produce comes down and smaller studios can now make something. Plus CGI is getting cheaper.
People have claimed the movie industry is dying when home TVs, video recorders, the internet etc came along and it hasn't happened (though you can tell when cinemas are panicking because they try 3D again). I think it's like saying cans of pasta will kill italian restaurants.

The constant whining that films are made for more international audiences instead of pandering to cosseted yanks is getting a bit tired too. People have been dumbing down films and series for American release for years and just living with it. As far as big scary china goes, from what I can see the movies made to do well there are basically 80s remakes, Bay style nonsense effects films that those audiences never saw the first time round. Do you want your blockbuster to perform in asia where 80% of the world lives? i would guess yes. Do you want to make a film (or try to run a franchise) that nobody in the colonies, Europe and Japan are going to watch at the expense of keeping the chinese censors happy? probably not.
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lionbadger wrote:
2 years ago
As far as big scary china goes,
They just banned all JGBT groups from the WE network. Yes they are big bad and SCARY.
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Mr. X wrote:
2 years ago
lionbadger wrote:
2 years ago
As far as big scary china goes,
They just banned all JGBT groups from the WE network. Yes they are big bad and SCARY.
What is "JGBT" - did you actually mean "LGBT"?
And what is the WE network - did you mean the TenCent Video Network? (known outside China as WE TV)

And yes, China is scary.

But not as scary as Gary Nerdrotic's takedown of Black Widow. He's not generally wrong.
I, for one, didn't even realize that Melina was supposed to be "Iron Maiden" (who is part of the Winter Guard in the comics...basically Russia's answer to the Avengers) since she wasn't wearing anything that looked like metal armor.

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I'm a little late to the party, but this was my first movie in the cinema after 18 months.
As I am normally going 10-20 times per year to the cinema....I nearly forgot how it felt :laugh:

Overall it was a good movie. Nothing sensational, nothing brilliant....but entertaining, good action, and tons of female fighters on screen.
And seeing Scarlett kicking ass is already worth the ticket. And thankfully she has her long red hair for 99% of the movie....much better than the blonde short cut.
Yeah, the action scenes are often over the top, ...but it's a Marvel superhero movie,
Spoiler
and as there is a gigantic flying fortress around that no outsiders can see, detect or find??????
....I accept the fantasy aspect.

And there were even
Spoiler
several unmaskings
....weird ones...but still kind of sexy for me.



P.S.: I stopped watching such videos like the one above from "Screen Rant" (stupid name, says a lot).
Sarcasm is a nice thing, but often these folks overdo it SO BIG, that's not funny anymore (for me) and they are just transforming into trolling, nagging bullies.
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lionbadger wrote:
2 years ago
Mr. X wrote:
3 years ago
Streaming put a stake into movie going and covid pretty much finished it off. Movie going was pretty much dying anyway. So making 100+ mil super block busters is probably going to be dying as well. And with those movies you get one size fits all and its pretty apparent movie makers don't care about American audiences and want to cater to China.

For story etc I think smaller budget, more focused movies or series is going to be more entertaining. The collapse of movie going might be a good thing overall since the barrier to produce comes down and smaller studios can now make something. Plus CGI is getting cheaper.
People have claimed the movie industry is dying when home TVs, video recorders, the internet etc came along and it hasn't happened (though you can tell when cinemas are panicking because they try 3D again). I think it's like saying cans of pasta will kill italian restaurants.

The constant whining that films are made for more international audiences instead of pandering to cosseted yanks is getting a bit tired too. People have been dumbing down films and series for American release for years and just living with it. As far as big scary china goes, from what I can see the movies made to do well there are basically 80s remakes, Bay style nonsense effects films that those audiences never saw the first time round. Do you want your blockbuster to perform in asia where 80% of the world lives? i would guess yes. Do you want to make a film (or try to run a franchise) that nobody in the colonies, Europe and Japan are going to watch at the expense of keeping the chinese censors happy? probably not.
These film companies are entitled to make any kind of films they want that they feel positively impact their financial bottom lines best, those are their decisions just as I have my opinions about those decisions. It is just disconcerting to me that American based film companies cater less and less to American audiences, that's just how I feel. I know this will be an incredibly unpopular opinion on here LOL, but in my opinion there are way too many superhero films released, too many sequels of any type of movie, too many derivative action films which I know are more easily translatable to Chinese audiences. I miss that great legendary decade of 70's films, how diverse, gritty, and original those films were. The 80's were excellent, and the 90's were OK. Those glory days of films are never coming back, yes, I accept that reality, but that does not mean I should not or ought not to mourn those glorified eras of films and wish these film companies would make different economic and creative decisions.
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bushwackerbob wrote:
2 years ago

These film companies are entitled to make any kind of films they want that they feel positively impact their financial bottom lines best, those are their decisions just as I have my opinions about those decisions. It is just disconcerting to me that American based film companies cater less and less to American audiences, that's just how I feel. I know this will be an incredibly unpopular opinion on here LOL, but in my opinion there are way too many superhero films released, too many sequels of any type of movie, too many derivative action films which I know are more easily translatable to Chinese audiences. I miss that great legendary decade of 70's films, how diverse, gritty, and original those films were. The 80's were excellent, and the 90's were OK. Those glory days of films are never coming back, yes, I accept that reality, but that does not mean I should not or ought not to mourn those glorified eras of films and wish these film companies would make different economic and creative decisions.

I don't know Bob. The studios are including a lot of moralizing and woke material that foreign audiences can't stand. And the Chinese do not like what I've heard them refer to as "old housewives" when it comes to American actresses. I do believe you are correct studios are not catering to a large portion of Americans and they are actively hostile toward a segment of the audience when they don't need to be. When Kevin Smith laughs about making fans cry.... yes might as well open a restaurant to pee in your customers food.
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Mr. X wrote:
2 years ago
bushwackerbob wrote:
2 years ago

These film companies are entitled to make any kind of films they want that they feel positively impact their financial bottom lines best, those are their decisions just as I have my opinions about those decisions. It is just disconcerting to me that American based film companies cater less and less to American audiences, that's just how I feel. I know this will be an incredibly unpopular opinion on here LOL, but in my opinion there are way too many superhero films released, too many sequels of any type of movie, too many derivative action films which I know are more easily translatable to Chinese audiences. I miss that great legendary decade of 70's films, how diverse, gritty, and original those films were. The 80's were excellent, and the 90's were OK. Those glory days of films are never coming back, yes, I accept that reality, but that does not mean I should not or ought not to mourn those glorified eras of films and wish these film companies would make different economic and creative decisions.

I don't know Bob. The studios are including a lot of moralizing and woke material that foreign audiences can't stand. And the Chinese do not like what I've heard them refer to as "old housewives" when it comes to American actresses. I do believe you are correct studios are not catering to a large portion of Americans and they are actively hostile toward a segment of the audience when they don't need to be. When Kevin Smith laughs about making fans cry.... yes might as well open a restaurant to pee in your customers food.
I don't get quite as upset as others on here when the subject of woke films or TV shows come up, I just don't watch that stuff, tune it out and move on to something else. At least with the woke films, these companies are subject to that Darwinian survival of the fittest economic theory here in the U.S, that if folks don't pay money to see those films then these companies perhaps lose money or not make as much of a return on their investment if they had greenlit another non woke mainstream film, those companies are only hurting their own profit margin. The other side of that coin is that catering to China at the expense of U.S audiences adds to these companies bottom line, it does not come at the cost of revenue. That is the unpleasant reality of the movie business at the moment.
Bert

bushwackerbob wrote:
2 years ago
I miss that great legendary decade of 70's films, how diverse, gritty, and original those films were. The 80's were excellent, and the 90's were OK.
The 90's were OK?

The Big Lebowski
The Thin Red Line
The Usual Suspects
Unforgiven
Goodfellas
Silence of the Lambs
Pulp Fiction
Heat

The 90's were awesome!
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Bert wrote:
2 years ago
bushwackerbob wrote:
2 years ago
I miss that great legendary decade of 70's films, how diverse, gritty, and original those films were. The 80's were excellent, and the 90's were OK.
The 90's were OK?

The Big Lebowski
The Thin Red Line
The Usual Suspects
Unforgiven
Goodfellas
Silence of the Lambs
Pulp Fiction
Heat

The 90's were awesome!
id add the shawshank redemption to your list.
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And disregards the rest Simon & Garfunkel
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How about a thread for top 10 films from each decade?

A possible flaw in any discussion of which decade had better movies is quality over quantity. And, of course, what about a criteria? Would “Titanic” or “Avatar” be great movies? The box office number say yes, my personal taste says no.
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sugarcoater wrote:
2 years ago
How about a thread for top 10 films from each decade?

...
Yes, please do that...otherwise it's more off-topic on a thread that is about Black Widow.
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Just saw this. Not surprised, but the bigger message got lost in the headline:
Sony (with Spider-Man, Venom, and Ghostbusters) did better in 2021 than Disney did - in fact, Sony won the box office race
two years in a row.

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Yeah the movie was pretty mediocre to bad. How can you have a movie with a bunch of athletic chics in catsuits showing to a nerd audience and still screw it up. Kind of like Marvel said "ok here's your movie... shut up". And you can use the Brie Larson argument of "its not for you" but the "you" people are the ones who actually spend money.

We're plagued with this mentality that things are a public resource in which everyone gets a turn vs its a market and you sell to the customers who pay money. Romance novel companies don't make books catering to model railroad people.
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Mr. X wrote:
2 years ago
Yeah the movie was pretty mediocre to bad. How can you have a movie with a bunch of athletic chics in catsuits showing to a nerd audience and still screw it up. Kind of like Marvel said "ok here's your movie... shut up".
Things have changed a lot in only one generation. If Kevin Smith had made a Black Widow 20 years ago, it would have simply looked like this. And everyone would have been insanely happy.

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It was like Many Python's "Contractual Obligation" album where Marvel had to put something out and they were running out of time. They could have done a better job, but they weren't obligated to do so. It had some good moments, but not a decent plot.
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shevek wrote:
2 years ago
Mr. X wrote:
2 years ago
Yeah the movie was pretty mediocre to bad. How can you have a movie with a bunch of athletic chics in catsuits showing to a nerd audience and still screw it up. Kind of like Marvel said "ok here's your movie... shut up".
Things have changed a lot in only one generation. If Kevin Smith had made a Black Widow 20 years ago, it would have simply looked like this. And everyone would have been insanely happy.

What a deliciously HOT Black Widow film that would have been, gorgeous blonde Yelana in that outfit would be begging for a ballgag hogtie and forced orgasm!!! Damn!!!
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So many Grandpa "Back in my day..." crushed hopes and dreams in this thread.

Alas, t'is impossible to walk uphill both directions.
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Femina wrote:
2 years ago
So many Grandpa "Back in my day..." crushed hopes and dreams in this thread.

Alas, t'is impossible to walk uphill both directions.
Just speaking for myself, but you've been on this forum longer than me, and I would bet there's very little chance you aren't Generation X, which means you could be a "grandma" yourself (technically), not that I'd use that derisive phraseology.

But the fact is that the vast majority of inspirations for what goes on here on this forum are derived from Golden Age to Bronze Age comics (Black Widow is almost the perfect example) and TV/film from the mid-1960s through the early 2000s, which would indeed be "Grandpa" era to any current zoomer. Yet without those inspirations, this forum would not exist.

Physically, it is perfectly possible to walk both up and down a hill, and visit all the houses located in between the valley and the peak. I live on just such a hill, and do it almost every day, both metaphorically *and* in reality.
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Femina wrote:
2 years ago
Alas, t'is impossible to walk uphill both directions.
What "uphill"?
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One need not be an actual grandpa to be disappointed by all the hip new jive the kids today are playing.

My previous post stands. Also, let us not pretend like the pvc clad hotties in the Jay and Silent Bob movies were a SERIOUS take on a sexy spy ladies property.
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Femina wrote:
2 years ago
One need not be an actual grandpa to be disappointed by all the hip new jive the kids today are playing.
I would maintain the "hip kids" are not animal house, they're Dean Wormer.
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Mr. X wrote:
2 years ago
Femina wrote:
2 years ago
One need not be an actual grandpa to be disappointed by all the hip new jive the kids today are playing.
I would maintain the "hip kids" are not animal house, they're Dean Wormer.
The kids are always hip. It doesn't matter if the adults are calm and the kids rowdy... or if the adults wanna be rowdy and the kids want them to be calm, the kids are the 'new' that makes us fogey's uncomfortable by not just being or doing what we'd like.
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Femina wrote:
2 years ago
The kids are always hip.
Sorry to take the discussion away from actually talking about Black Widow, but no, the 'kids' are not always hip.

In Soviet Russia (yeah, I know....) and Maoist China, kids were ratting on their parents. There's nothing 'hip' about that.
The 'hip' people in Communist countries were the brave souls who smuggled in Western rock and roll or blue jeans.

Basically, 'hip' is rowdy, exciting, and sexy stuff, and it's also subcultural.
Like people who listened to indie rock in the first few years of the 90s. Not all the kids did - just the hip ones.

If the kids are being calm, safe and suppressive, that is the opposite of hip.
That is corporate. It's not hip to be corporate, by definition. Huey Lewis' "Hip to Be Square" is supposed to be sarcastic.
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yeah lets just stick to Black widow. Didn't sell. And we know its not about covid cause Spiderman and Ghost busters did awesome. They just put in zero effort on BW. They should have done her and Barton in Budapest.
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Spiderman and Ghostbusters are steeped in mainstream nostalgia, and were entirely unavailable for streaming.
People got out of the house for that.

Black Widow had an early press push and then got bumped and bumped. Being available for streaming at a hefty price may have left a bad taste in some fans' mouths, but it also signaled we wouldn't have to wait long for it to be available with the base subscription -- and we didn't.

But you're right, it didn't have the character we expected in it.
And the backstory we expected was coyly toyed with, in the same way that Marvel Television coyly toyed with being in the MCU. It actually fleshed out the character, but as both a prequel and a last hurrah, we knew from the beginning it was a storytelling cul-de-sac, with no franchise momentum. And sure, it tried to also be a spinoff/handoff/origin story for the next badass female in the MCU, but Yelena was played so much for comic relief and so mocked the mantle she was supposedly taking up, the movie might well have crashed on lukewarm word-of-mouth even if it wasn't stalled by covid and then turned into a streaming market experiment.

Imagine if, instead of this after-the-buzzer shot, years ago we'd gotten a Black Widow feat. Hawkeye movie, instead of that grinder of a TV show, Agents S.H.I.E.L.D.ed From Actually Being In The MCU.

All that said I like Black Widow: Finally Ever After just fine as a movie on its own, the Pierce Brosnan 007 of the MCU, if I just pretend it came out after Civil War.
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