Fury Road came out in 2015. The MCU started in 2008.
Disney is not losing money, access or time because of the MCU. It has been insanely profitable for them.
As far as Disney goes, their live action remakes have been way worse creatively and money wise.
There are tons of articles documenting the rise of marvel as the cause of the decline in mid-budget film.
The MCU is not only objectively awful movies but the externality of their rise was the decline of good films. It was a double whammy that has resulted in a huge decline of overall film quality.
Film historians will be writing about the last 15 years as a terrible era in the history of the art driven solely by one thing; stupid superhero movies.
Thatâs nice, but Master and Commander was by no means a mid-budget picture. It cost $150 million to make and grossed $94 million at the domestic box office. Not hard to figure out why it didnât get a sequel.
That wasnât the point.
The MCU killed both mid-budget and higher budget non-franchise film, like Master and Commander. It would never be made today because there are no morons in tights.
Itâs just that the mid-budget demise has been more widely discussed so I cited it as evidence.
That said, in the specific case of MaC, you are correct, its poor performance was certainly why a sequel wasnât made.
On the bright side, weâre getting a long overdue sequel to Gladiator. Bring on the memes
It was clear before Marvelâs dominance that franchises built around pre-existing IP were the best bet for big budget films. Look at Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, etc. Some of these overlap with MCU, but the initial entries likely got greenlit before anyone knew how successful the MCU would be. The problem was that these franchises eventually ran out of source material, leading to things like making stretching The Hobbit across three films. The MCU solved this problem (from the studioâs perspective) by using interconnected IP with enough source material to last for decades.
âThis movie wonât make moneyâ isnât a superhero problem.
There have been plenty, plenty of bombs in the last 15 years. The closest thing to an MCU bomb is Eternals, which still made close to a half a billion.
Look at the kind of movie not being made today, when was the last decent studio comedy? Game night? That was five years ago!
Movies like Donât Look Up, White Noise and countless others have gone to Netflix. Some become limited series. Itâs a really dumb take, but you are correct that plenty of people have it!
Itâs wild that I guess these people are assuming without the Marvel Universe the other big budget films this year wouldnât be Creed 3, John Wick 4, Fast 10, a new Indiana Jones, Transformers, Mission Impossible etc? Since basically ~2000 everything has been a franchise! None of those films are Disney nor Marvel.
All of those franchises bar John Wick, predate the MCU.
As you also point out, the MCU existed while we had much of the big YA craze. We even have a new Hunger Games movie this year!
I guess we will just agree to disagree but Iâll say that the vast majority of industry people side with my take, not yours. There are dozens of articles, interviews, surveys ect online that demonstrate this.
Take out every Marvel movie this year, and also the Disney remakes of their older movies.
Do we think with a year of:
Mission impossible
Creed
Dune
John Wick
Indiana Jones
Transformers
Spiderman (sony)
Fast 10
Hunger games
Teenage mutant ninja turtles
Meg 2
Expendables 3
That other studios are concerned about not franchises/IP?
Thatâs nearly every big budget non Marvel release. The only ones I didnât include were pixar/kids stuff, and some of the horror ones which are also sequels, but lower budget.
Even in TV, the most expensive shows of the last year were TLOU (based on a video game) and sequels to game of thrones, star wars and a lord of the rings show.
That is because of the MCU.
Nearly every single one of those franchises began before the MCU!
âIts because of Marvel we are getting more Fast and the Furious moviesâ is wild.
As I said, find an upcoming comedy youâre excited about seeing in theatres. Thatâs been the thing that has absolutely dropped off. Remember the last studio comedy you really enjoyed in theatre.
All media is like this fwiw, itâs not a Marvel thing.
Video games are like this,
Music is like this.
TV is like this.
Books are like this.
I think the thing about comedies is that people are perfectly content seeing them at home. Yes, there is something to be said for laughing with a big crowd, but the big screen doesnât really do anything for comedies like it does for big action flicks, superhero movies, anything with me in it, etc.
Yes but focused on the son of the thumbs down evil emperor.
And co starring Denzel Washington.
I mean I thought the early ideas about Russell Crowe navigating ancient Rome via the afterlife were hilariously stupid, but this sounds amazing.
This shows strong correlation if not causation.
However, this is an interesting paper from pre mcu that supports your argument.
Itâs come up on some of the Hollywood podcasts I listen too mostly bc of Paul Mescal being cast as the lead. Talking about how it could catapult him to Leo territory.
Ghost Crowe could have been quite a thing though
Clovis is truly having an old man yelling at cinematic clouds moment lol such breathless sweeping gestures toward the MCU that are wrong on their face.
Pointing out how many people have said this thing about the MCU destroying cinema as evidence it is a good poiint, idk thatâs kinda why I got my Masterâs in Journalism instead of English. At some point I wanted to talk about more than what I could persuade people to think through the sheer force of rhetoric and my conviction.
Remakes and sequels and innovations on old ideas is simply the state not just of genre fiction but of AMAZING storytelling. It always has been and probs always will be. I mean if you look into the history of most original IP, guess where it started? As a love letter or fan fiction to an already existing IP.
Sometimes the studio says we canât afford that, change the names and make it original. Other times, the people involved take the story in that direction organically. My first two novels were basically rip offs of my favorite books from when I was a kid. It would have been a lot simpler if someone had just let me write for the existing IP lol.
Even with the bad MCU and live action Disney remakes, just because a piece of art is bad doesnât make it heartless. I think Clovis and I discussed this years and years ago on 2+2? It made me mad back then too because of just how much art I make and how many artists I work with who are caught in the net of his criticism.
Can a movie even be heartless? A director or someone else involved might be a hack, but unless that was a solo production, a ton of people poured their heart into that movie. Please donât dismiss them and the quality of their art. You canât tell from the quality of a piece of art or the quality of your experience of that art whether the creator made a heartless piece of art.
Even when art is heartless, what do you want them to do? David Mamet movies have all been losers, just TERRIBLE box office, but they are prestige pictures that win awards and bring acclaim to the studio who burned money to make it. They bring them the reputation needed to make more movies.
Studios do the opposite too. They make C-level movies (that is its own genre even with a budget) to make the money that funds the A-list project.
This was decades ago now, but I sat with one small studio working on an absurd horror movie because they knew it could be fucking terrible but would sell and fund their bigger swings.
Letâs just hope SNL notices the low hanging fruit
This isnât a fair criticism of my position at all. I am the only one citing actual data. I even cited some against my position! Itâs not fair to say Iâm screaming at clouds.
Prove me wrong with counter data. I already provided some.
Clovisâ seething hatred for the MCU is amusing to me.