The Four Color Media Monitor

A writer at Variety commented on the collapse of comics movies, and once again, we have an example of somebody who won't get into the meatier issues for why comic adaptations are waning in popularity:

Comic-book movie culture didn’t just stumble this year. It face-planted, giving us one movie after another that fans didn’t much care about and that the corporations backing these films took a disquieting loss on. And that’s not how it was supposed to go. According to the Gospel of 21st-Century Hollywood, the words “comic-book film” and “box-office disappointment” are not supposed to appear in the same sentence. When they do, not just once but over and over and over again, the tea leaves are telling us something ominous and maybe definitive.

Umm, weren't the 2 Hulk movies both failures, ditto the most recent Fantastic Four movie? I realize those weren't produced by the Disney-owned Marvel studio proper, but still, there were some abortive Marvel adaptations in the past 2 decades, not to mention DC adaptations, so it's not like the franchises were ever foolproof to begin with.

Why, in 2023, did this happen? The analysis that has mostly been offered is simple: The movie companies served up mediocre superhero product. That’s why they — and we — suffered. If it had just been one or two duds, the situation might have been explained away. But when you think back on “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” and “The Flash” and “The Marvels” and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” the pattern is clear. It’s not simply a Marvel thing or a DC thing. The primal thrill and popularity of comic-book movie culture took a major hit, and it may be fading away. And yet...

In the very drubbing these movies received, at the box office and in the drumbeat snark of critical reviews, you might say there’s hope. Comic-book movie culture is, after all, only as good as the movies it gives us. And this was the year that the corporations — let’s name names: Disney and Warner Bros. — failed. They made bad movies. What if they’d made good movies?

Well they won't make good ones if they're woke. Did it ever occur to them that politicized liberal lectures are something even most liberal moviegoers don't like hearing? Yet that's what's been turning up lately, and the most leftist observers steer clear of any such queries. If they refuse to consider liberal PC's destroying entertainment, what business do they have working in the profession at all? And what hope is there?

The temptation to point a finger at the producers and executives and vilify them for their shoddy product has always been there. But now it’s part of the new couch-potato rebel culture. Critics, on their reflexive high horse, mostly hate comic-book movies, and more and more they have used their reviews of them to chastise The Man. The fans would seem to be on the other side of the fence, but they have their own collective resentments and rebel fire. This year, the critics and the Comic-Con horde stood shoulder to shoulder, joining forces to look the suits in the eye and say, “You did this to us! We’re bored as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

All that said, there’s a larger reality about comic-book movie culture that we tend to ignore. So let’s state it outright: This shit is starting to fail because it is spent. Because it’s been used up. I’m not just talking about Ant-Man or the Flash. I’m talking about the characters who got us in the door in the first place, the iconic larger-than-life ones: Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Thor, The Hulk, Black Panther. They were the mythic engine of this thing, and for a good long stretch we didn’t just want to see them onscreen — we craved it. We needed them to be our gods again. And they were…until they weren’t. Memo to James Gunn: Gods have a way of losing power when you stick them in reruns.

Yes, but they also have a way of losing power when you resort to wokeness like Thor 4 and the Eternals did, not to mention when you associate with "characters" like Ezra Miller and Amber Heard, refusing to distance them from the production no matter how bad the PR could turn out to be. That alone was easily what brought down both movies and embarrassed their reputations. Why the executives in charge wouldn't recast the Mera role with somebody better Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom when they had the chance is bewildering in the supreme. The columnist also, interestingly enough, suggests animation might be the path forward for superhero fare:

...This year, the darkly bedazzling aesthetic and commercial triumph of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” pointed toward what may be the future of the superhero-movie form — the mutating majesty of animation. [...]

On the surface, that might sound exciting a prospect, and encouraging. But if the animators turn out to be as woke as the live action filmmakers, then no go. There's a lot of advantages in animation, but not if far-left politics get forced into the script and visuals. And chances are the stories would continue to be marketed at PG-13 level with few exceptions, remaining very watered down, with only woke ingredients permitted in the story. So there'd still be nothing truly sophisticated, nor anything to provide something healthy/informative to think about.

So no, comic-book movie culture isn’t on life support…yet. Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, was certainly right when he acknowledged — in an act of damage control — that the MCU had spread itself too thin, diluting its appeal with spin-off TV series and a general sense of the multiverse as something that was becoming homework even for fans. Yet what’s the solution? There’s no real way to put the genie of too-much-product overkill back in the bottle. Because the only way to “solve” that problem is with more product. James Gunn, in his role as the executive guru (along with Peter Safran) of DC Studios, now ready to wipe the slate clean and launch a new universe of DC storytelling, wants to fix it all with quality control. He’s basically saying, “Fuck those Zack Snyder movies. My Superman will be boss!” Yes, except that his Superman is going to feel like it’s about the 12th Superman.

The executives, sitting in their Death Star suites, were full of excuses this year. “The movie got rushed into production.” “We overextended ourselves.” And no one can blame them for the personal and legal implosion of Jonathan Majors. At the same time, the critical-rebel establishment, speaking more than ever for fans, saw blood in the water, and with it the opportunity to help kill off the comic-book movie culture it has come to regard as an existential threat to cinema.

Unfortunately, the mainstream pop culture observers are full of excuses too, or they're making little to no attempt to address anything regarding the degeneration into political correctness. Plus, weren't there any signs before Miller and Heard were bad news? Whatever happened to vetting process and guidelines for actors? Coupled with wokeness, you can see why the latest batch of comic movies took such a blow.

By the way, since we're on the subject, if you think the columnist's dialect is laced with crudeness, that's why somebody in the comments section pointed out:

Since when does Owen curse in his columns? We can’t curse in the comments.

Oh yes, that is hypocritical if Variety won't allow the audience to cuss, but the reviewers and op-edders can?!? See, this is just the tip of the iceberg in how the world's collapsing, morally or otherwise, due to some of the most lugubrious double-standards. These mainstream news sources need to tone down their use of profanity, or that's more reason why they won't convince any more than the studio executives themselves. And in the end, they haven't done much to explain why comics movie culture's collapsing any more than various other news outlets to date.

Labels: animation, Avengers, Batman, Black Panther, dc comics, Fantastic Four, Flash, golden calf of LGBT, Hulk, marvel comics, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, sales, Superman