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Anyone else fed up to the back teeth of all the superhero shite?

fucthest8

fucthest8

Cool people die horrible, preventable deaths.
Just fucking enough already. I'll allow another season of The Boys and even Umbrella Academy because at least they are slightly different, but everything else needs to fucking stop now.

The whole Marvel thing in particular can fuck right off.

Will this period be looked back on like 50s sci-fi? A product of the political climate? Or is it just another expression of capitalism, everyone jumping on the latest bandwagon to make money?
 
I don't like it but people seem to like the simplicity of the good guys winning and lots of running around and fighting rather than a story that they've never seen before.
 
platinumsage said:
Even if you never watch them they have negative externaltities. They suck resources from potentially interesting projects for example.
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Ok, well yes and no.

About 15 - 20 years ago, DVD sales were enormous and grown up dramas often as star vehicles were very well funded as these films would make a lot of their money on dvd even if they didn’t do so well at box office.

Then faster internet speeds fucked the dvd market. At around that time China became a huge growth market for films at the cinema, and as a result Chinese funding of Hollywood studios became the saving grace to step into the place of rose dvd revenues. But Chinese audiences want action films and characters they already know. Hence superhero proliferation, reboots, and franchises like Star Wars branching off in every direction. The star-led project lost power unless also a franchise (Pirates of the C), the adult drama became harder to make unless explicitly Oscar fodder, BUT... UK/USA cinemas start opening rather than closing, and we also have the rise of TV’s Golden Age to film the void for grown up cinema.

And then Netflix starts commissioning the odd film, soon followed by Amazon. Except Amazon starts by buying the rights to Manchester by the Sea, and Bezos, against expectations starts commissioning films which are really quite intelligent.

So - all kinds of changes, but the superhero thing has sort of saved the western film industry.
 
S☼I said:
I just wish there was a choice about whether or not to watch them :-(
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The problem is that they’re making this trash instead of good stuff. Half of the Netflix offering is superhero pish and it’s creeping into proper stuff. What looks like a half decent show gets you interested and then you find out that the main cunt can fly or has x-ray vision and the whole thing should've been clearly labelled “THIS IS FOR CHILDREN”.
 
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Mrs Miggins said:
I don't like it but people seem to like the simplicity of the good guys winning and lots of running around and fighting rather than a story that they've never seen before.
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I like feel good escapism, if I want depressing reality I will watch the news instead.
 
Nivag said:
It could be said they make more money so the "interesting projects" can be made for less/loss money.
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That’s how it used to work but not anymore. The studios making „interesting projects“ usually are smaller Independent studios and now also streaming services like Netflix. The big Hollywood studios mostly pool their money to finance few films at mega-budgets, many of them superhero flicks.
 
There's probably something interesting to be said about the sense of crises and impending doom that many develop in the current political/ecological climate, and the absence of any tradition of collective action appropriate to addressing it, and the creation of a market for fantasy solutions to the problems of the world. Or it could just be the increasing influence of the chinese market. <Shrugs> In cultural studies if you say what you think with enough confidence you can get away with quite a lot.
 
I've thought this for about a decade. I suppose originally it was less specifically superheroes and more CGI monsters/robots fighting.

It's culturally worthless and it's got massive opportunity cost.

Scorsese said about this, "Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks,” he said. “It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being".
 
Mrs Miggins said:
I don't like it but people seem to like the simplicity of the good guys winning and lots of running around and fighting rather than a story that they've never seen before.
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This is why I hate them. No one has any agency over their lives and needs a big powerful super man to solve their ills. I want to see Batman hung from a lamp post. We'll do it upside down, just so he's comfortable
 
While I agree that there is a problem with the major Hollywood film studios throwing most of their money at big budget blockbusters, many of them superhero films, its not like there aren't alternatives, both when it comes to independent and foreign language films. It was telling that the Oscar for Best Film went to Parasite this year, a smart South Korean satire about class differences, the first time Best Picture went to a foreign language production. In Hollywood, the writing and acting talent has mostly migrated to streaming and subscription TV channels.

Personally I don't mind superhero films, some of them are fine, but they make up only a small fraction of what I watch.

Right now Covid-19 has put a stop to the production and and exhibition of films anyway. Tenet is the first summer blockbuster released in cinemas since the crisis, to test the waters but most of this years big moves have been delayed till next year.
 
I hate super heros. Even the concept annoys me. Naked monkey logic need big man to look up to, make fighty fight.

Anyway, having never read comics, have no grounding or nostalgia for the genre not that I'm dissing comics persay. Their are some excellent non SH based ones I've heard rightly enthused about. but the whole wearing daft costumes and beating people up thing is boring as fuck.

That said, I quite enjoyed the film Logan.
 
Personally, I've never liked any of these Marvel type CGI bore fest superhero movies. Just never seen the appeal unless you're 8 years old.

But then I was never into these sort of comics anyway. I was more about the Beano or Dandy than anything do do with this genre, and I'd grown out of that by the time I was 10. People like 'Captain America' or 'The Hulk' just never appealed.
 
Only tangentially related, but I've been wondering lately if there are any properties - film, TV, books or otherwise - that feature superpowers but don't involve fighting in some way?

I guess there are certain fantasy stories, perhaps, but can't think of many where it's humans who have the superpowers and then don't go on to use them to fight people.
 
Can accept that individual superhero films might be well scripted, acted and directed but don't understand their high profile as an adult audience genre. It's like if a quarter of all new cars sold were modelled on Mattel Hot Wheels dragsters and Wacky Races bangers.
 
Doodler said:
Can accept that individual superhero films might be well scripted, acted and directed but don't understand their high profile as an adult audience genre. It's like if a quarter of all new cars sold were modelled on Mattel Hot Wheels dragsters and Wacky Races bangers.
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They are all ages stuff to get the most bang for your buck. Big Mac for the oldies and kids meal for the younguns
anything that doesn't fit all ages is wasting seats. Sure there are some exceptions but cinemas need to fill those seats and sell that popcorn.

Also I would totally buy a wacky races car.
 
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