Guardians of the Galaxy (Page 5 of 7)

We're talking about a company that rebooted Spiderman with an entirely new cast only five years after the previous incarnation.   They'll keep all their current roster grinding out movies as long as they can because that's easiest.  But as soon as anyone can't or won't show up, Marvel will replace/reboot with new actors. 

The evidence clearly shows audiences will still keep coming, no matter what.   Pretty sure Marvel isn't worried at ALL about the individual actors.  And they don't have to be.   There've been, what, seven Batmans in my lifetime?  And that's just so far.

It's a co-production, yes, although Marvel's still involved.  Either way, the precedent is there to show the actor doesn't matter, just the property.  And Marvel's already replaced supporting actors in their own solo movies without anybody giving a darn. 

Twitter will light up for a couple weeks when they announce the new Iron Man actor someday.  But unless the bottom falls out of the superhero movie market entirely, the new movie will make a half billion like always.

Nope.  They're not involved.  Like, at ALL.  Marvel Studios has absolutely zero say in what Sony does with Spider Man and with what Fox does with X-Men.  If they did, Spider Man and Wolverine would both be in Avengers movies tomorrow (because in the comics at least, they're Avengers).  It is for this reason why Marvel Studios, as we know it in its post 2006 iterations, exist at all.  Time for some history, kids.

Go back to 1996.  Marvel Comics, for a multitude of reasons we'll just sum up as, "The 90's, am I right," declares bankruptcy.  Avi Arad was the co-owner of Toy Biz, who had been doing all of Marvel's toy licensing, successfully maneuvers himself onto Marvel's Board of Directors, and founds Marvel Studios (formerly Marvel Films) as a way to make some fast cash for the failing company.  He licenses out Blade to New Line and does decent business, causing other studios to get interested.  Arad helped snag Singer for X Men, which helped broker the Fox deal, and soon after got Spider Man to Sony, partially off the back of James Cameron's work on his never fully developed Spider Man treatment.  Arad's number one goal was simply getting cash for Marvel and getting it the fuck out of the red, so he had no problem loaning our characters to different studios.  The problem with these deals is that they were licensing deals, with very little in terms of back end profit.  Marvel made money off other licensing, but they're share of GBO was virtually non existent.

After a failed mass licensing of characters to, fucking get this, ARTISAN PICTURES, a now reinvigorated Marvel was realizing just how much money they were losing by not developing these films themselves.  After disagreements on the nature of these deals, Arad left on 2006 to set up his own shingle, and Feige was put in charge.  His vision was to create an ACTUAL movie studio with a Marvel brain trust (guys like Joe Quesada and Brian Michael Bendis, and now Ed Brubaker) to guide the overall arcs of these characters, partner with distinct directors and writers, cover most of developmental, and rely on larger studios primarily for co financing and distribution.  The Disney sale didn't really impact their workflow too much; they had to buy out the distro deal with Paramount (made post Arad) but nothing could be done about the deals with Fox or Sony.  As long as they make movies from those properties every few years (which is the REAL reason Spider Man got a reboot, because Raimi didn't wan tot do it anymore and no other director wanted to continue his work and they were about to lose the license back to Marvel) those characters are locked in indefinitely.

So, what creative control does Marvel comics have over Sony's Spider Man or Fox's X-Men or Fantastic Four?  Not fucking much.  If there's a scene where Spider Man bludgeons Aunt May with a tire iron, Marvel could sue for IP damages, but that's about it.  Rumblings I've heard is that Quesada fucking HATED the last two Spider Man movies, but the X Men First Class and DoFP are pretty well respected. 

tl;dr version: If Marvel/Disney had any creative control over non MS films, they would have exercised prior to the Disney sale.

Last edited by Eddie (2014-08-03 16:24:37)

Just saw it, and I'm gonna be in the very slim minority here, because, while I would by no means call it bad, I just didn't care for the film. It was certainly witty, but it was witty without possessing any humanity. I was amused by what the characters said, but I couldn't have given less of a damn about any of them. I was more invested in The Amazing Spider-Man II than I was in this movie, and I have an equal degree of unfamiliarity with each of the films' source material, so it's not just that. I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that, for all ASMII's flaws, Peter and Gwen felt like real people with real emotions and relationships, and none of GotG's characters had that reality for me. The WTF-ness of the plot that Trey mentioned earlier certainly contributed to that feeling. Also, I think I'm just burned out on this kind of movie. Oh no, a new villain with no backstory and a desire to destroy an entire planet must be stopped. Again. And we will stop him in battle sequences full of over-the-top CGI and no real sense of danger for anyone. I've never been a fan of that kind of film to begin with, and I guess the catalyst for my getting utterly fed up with it had the misfortune of being this movie.

Last edited by Abbie (2014-08-04 04:14:59)

I liked it a lot. It pulled off that great Ratchet and Clank vibe.

I do see where Praxus and sellew are coming from. I had a lot of those same thoughts, but I was having enough fun that I could sort of ignore them. Probably not my favorite of the year, but I'll definitely appreciate this movie before I criticize it.

I was thinking the same thing, and I made my conclusion pretty early on. I spent the whole movie thinking that it was Rachael Leigh Cook.

And there are also two daughters of this guy called Thanos, only they aren't his daughters really, and they're working for Ronan because reasons...

Quite honestly, that whole subplot is the film's weakest link for me.

Something else I really liked that primed me for a sequel: Quill's present. Talk about nailing something. That actually had me just about cheering.

I get the feeling that they put Thanos at the end of Avengers expecting him to be the Big Bad for Avengers 2, but they changed their minds somewhere along the way. So they threw him in Guardians so that audiences wouldn't forget about him and took the opportunity to introduce the Infinity Stones while they were at it.

IMO, the worst part about Thanos was Josh Brolin. He was just...not bringing it at all. You expect a dude who looks like Thanos to sound like James Earl Jones or something. I think they made a bad call casting him.

Honestly, thanks for that write-up.

Quoted from the chat for posterity.

"It was exactly and entirely everything I hoped it would be."

I LOVED this movie. Every single bit of it. It's exactly the sort of movie I've been pinning for for a very long while, and it delivered on every single front.

I'll do a longer write up when it's not 1 in the morning, but damn, that was beautiful.*

*And I don't just mean Karen Gillan...although yes... yowza.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2014-08-08 06:56:33)