Marvel Comics on Film

[BenoitRouilly]

Imagine :
The Iron Man, a film by David Lynch
Hulk, a film by Peter Jackson
Thor, a film by Darren Aronofsky
Captain America, a film by M. Night Shyamalan
The Avengers, a film by John Woo
The Guardians of the Galaxy, a film by Wes Anderson
Ant-Man, a film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Spiderman, a film by Steven Spielberg
Black Widow, a film by Guillermo del Toro

[tenia]

Questions are :
Would they be better than their real counterparts ?
Even so, would they make the same, less or more money ?

[nitin]

Pretty sure that Captain America would be worse.

And we did have a Hulk by Ang Lee and Spider-Man by Raimi.

[Glowingwabbit]

Its funny that several of the directors you listed already make these same kind of big budget multiplex movies. So its not hard to imagine them doing a Marvel film but doubtful they would do it any better.

[BenoitRouilly]

Questions are :
Would they be better than their real counterparts ?
Even so, would they make the same, less or more money ?

IMHO they can't be worse at any rate. But would they be as good as the auteur's usual fare, probably not...
Definitely less money, because if they have something that makes them better (thoughts, depth, characters, mise en scène) that something won't please the crowds like a theme park does. However the BO records is not my goal here.
I guess it is a lose-lose situation : auteurists won't get what they want, and fanboys/girls won't get what they expect.
Only a minuscule demographic may enjoy those : the comics geek with a cinephile bent.

True nitin. (And a Batman by Nolan, even if it's not Marvel)
So sometimes it works. But were these attempts closer to auteurism or to Disney in the end?

Glowingwabbit, I tried to make this list believable. But maybe we could imagine crossover more radical.

[Glowingwabbit]

Glowingwabbit, I tried to make this list believable. But maybe we could imagine crossover more radical.

I get that and I'd be fine with about all but two of the directors you listed taking on Marvel projects. Personally I don't want to see talent wasted on any of these projecs. I'm not so sure want any kind of crossover unless it affords them more opportunities to do non-franchise projects. This is actually quite similar to how it is in comics nowadays whereas creators work for Marvel/DC to build up their name (or brand) so they can move on to Image and other independent publishers.

I'm also not sure if it matters at this point if these movies get more creative/diverse/better -- at least for me, I'm pretty checked out to the point. I did have fun watching Thor: Ragnarok, but otherwise the only Marvel projects I've thought were actually worth checking out aren't even a part of the Disney/Marvel brand (i.e. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - which is still the only movie, animated or otherwise, that has actually felt like a comic book; and Legion Season 1 which has some of the best non-narrative visual storytelling I've seen outside of Twin Peaks: The Return when it comes to television)

[The Pachyderminator]

Imagine :
The Iron Man, a film by David Lynch
Hulk, a film by Peter Jackson
Thor, a film by Darren Aronofsky
Captain America, a film by M. Night Shyamalan
The Avengers, a film by John Woo
The Guardians of the Galaxy, a film by Wes Anderson
Ant-Man, a film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Spiderman, a film by Steven Spielberg
Black Widow, a film by Guillermo del Toro

Some of these, no doubt, would be good. (Not all: I shudder to think what would happen if Peter Jackson was let loose in the Marvel universe.) But I'd much rather see the non-Marvel films these directors made/would make instead. The same applies to acting talent. Chadwick Boseman and Scarlett Johansson, to name two, are clearly capable of much more interesting and wide-ranging work than they get to do in the MCU. (I don't hate the Marvel movies by any means. I voluntarily watched through them all right before Endgame, but having done that I'm done with them for at least a year.)

[DarkImbecile]

An excerpt from a 2016 interview with Alan Moore on superheroes is getting the Internet riled up today:

[mfunk9786]

Hopefully they're getting riled up because Moore is so incredibly spot-on and we're so lucky to have him

[nitin]

Waiting for Moore to be deemed old and clueless and for Watchmen to be canceled.

[nitin]

Questions are :
Would they be better than their real counterparts ?
Even so, would they make the same, less or more money ?

IMHO they can't be worse at any rate. But would they be as good as the auteur's usual fare, probably not...
Definitely less money, because if they have something that makes them better (thoughts, depth, characters, mise en scène) that something won't please the crowds like a theme park does. However the BO records is not my goal here.
I guess it is a lose-lose situation : auteurists won't get what they want, and fanboys/girls won't get what they expect.
Only a minuscule demographic may enjoy those : the comics geek with a cinephile bent.

True nitin. (And a Batman by Nolan, even if it's not Marvel)
So sometimes it works. But were these attempts closer to auteurism or to Disney in the end?

Glowingwabbit, I tried to make this list believable. But maybe we could imagine crossover more radical.

I don’t know, I really really love Spider Man 2 but I don’t know that I would say that’s because it’s more auteurist than MCU stuff. But it seemed to have a much better and earnest tone for me personally than the glibness present in a lot of MCU movies and it probably also helped that it wasn’t part of a 20+ movie franchise where every film felt fundamentally pretty much interchangeable.

[BenoitRouilly]

David Bordwell analyses the whole Scorsese's no-cinema shenanigan

[DarkImbecile]

I get that everyone has their own favorite hero, but...

[Never Cursed]

That isn’t even the first time that Trump’s team has made an edited movie clip depicting Trump massacring his enemies (NSFW), just in case you thought this was a new part of The Discourse

[Big Ben]

The most remarkable thing about it is how much it's being dunked on. Not even the bots are defending that.

[flyonthewall2983]

[BenoitRouilly]

"[...] Cinephiles must wake up. It's not a generational struggle, it's destruction of art, present and past, by loosy salesmen."
Cahiers Edito, january 2020 (in French). on the Scorsese Op Ed backlash.

[Big Ben]

At some point though Marvel is going to start running on fumes and will start to see diminishing returns. I'm just not sure how long that will take to happen though.

[Rayon Vert]

by loosy salesmen."

"loosy"?

"by carpet dealers" would be more accurate.

[domino harvey]

It’s a French colloquialism meaning “haggler,” I suspect BR as (I believe) a native French speaker was trying to approximate it with his translation choice

[tenia]

It's indeed the French for haggler.

[BenoitRouilly]

I suspected "carpet dealers" wouldn't translate well in English. I wasn't sure if "haggler" had the meaning of "petty salesman".
But if you can read it in French all the better

[BenoitRouilly]

New interview of Vincent Cassel who chimes in on the Scorsese debate : Kombini, 13 jan 2020, 4'30" (FRENCH)

[TheKieslowskiHaze]

An excerpt from a 2016 interview with Alan Moore on superheroes is getting the Internet riled up today.

He's back at it, but media outlets seem to be misreading (intentionally for clickbait?) his claims. He says the popularity of superhero movies and the rise of Trump are symptoms of the same problem, which is not the same as saying superhero movies caused Trump.

“This may be entirely coincidence, but in 2016 when the American people elected a National Socialist satsuma and the U.K. voted to leave the European Union, six of the top 12 highest-grossing films were superhero movies. Not to say that one causes the other, but I think they’re both symptoms of the same thing — a denial of reality and an urge for simplistic and sensational solutions.” -Moore

[soundchaser]

Most movies are denials of reality and often provide sensational solutions. Did Astaire/Rogers musicals cause FDR to get re-elected?

And more importantly, it was the replacement of the Lime Skittle with Green Apple that caused Trump.