By George Robbins
This past year has been a horrific one for a number of reasons because of the pandemic and its affect on the economic marketplace as well as the general population. There has been pain going around in just about every circle that has affected the way that business has been forced to be handled as of late because of the rules and regulations in place. When the pandemic first started, we saw an incredible number of businesses shut down because they had to for the sake of shutting out new virus cases. The rate of new infections at the start of the pandemic was incredible to no one’s surprise because it was allowed to run rampant with no regulation in place. This is why almost all forms of business were shut down for awhile to make up for the time lost where they couldn’t prevent more people from getting infected.
What would end up following all of this is a few months where businesses were just completely shut down and there was very little business transpiring in the world for the most part. Only businesses which were considered essential were actually allowed to have their doors open to the public once they were past the initial quarantine period. These businesses were the ones like grocery stores and other main supply stores which gave people the opportunity to go and get their regular necessities. The main thing to take away from this was the fact that many other businesses were deemed non-essential in the end and therefore could not stay open during the beginning of the pandemic. This ultimately resulted in businesses starting to lose money very quickly as time went on resulting in them nit having any way to keep up with the economy.
The economy took a very quick and deep downward spiral which resulted in a lot of different businesses losing out on potential revenue due to the state of everything. There was no way of people being able to get revenue for their businesses because there were rules and regulations that had to be put into place before things could turn out for them in the end. They needed to have those rules and regulations to keep people from gathering unnecessarily and further spreading the virus in a time where the pandemic was in full swing. Eventually these rules and regs came out and people were finally given an opportunity to reopen and/or go back out to the public places they liked to visit. Unfortunately every business was not really treated equal and this resulted in some losing out on a lot of business even after they managed to reopen to the public.
One of the biggest businesses to be hit by this type of treatment and lack of patrons was the movie theater industry which had been suffering for a large majority of the year. When the pandemic began and theaters were forced to shut down, they immediately started feeling the affects of the shut down because all films that released before the pandemic began immediately left theaters and went to digital. Those films that were meant to have released soon after that period of time were delayed until further notice and this is still very much on-going for many movies that haven’t released yet. Most films that have yet to release onto the market are actually films which were supposed to drop earlier this year, but they unfortunately could not because the studios did not want to take the risk. This is fair, but it is easily resulting in changes that are overtaking the industry as a whole.
The biggest changes currently being made to the industry involve the fact that movie releases seem like they will be handled in a very unique way moving forward that we haven’t really seen before. Many movies are going to be releasing in theaters, but after just a few weeks they will be releasing digitally which is a landmark deal as they usually took months to release after they initially premiered in theaters. Warner Bros. is now taking this a step further because they are doing something which is now considered highly controversial by releasing all of their films over the next year on both HBO Max and in theaters. This has angered a lot of people in the industry, namely the actors and directors who are not being compensated for the change. In doing this, they are also apparently taking a huge risk as they are bound to lose money at the box office in the end, but the overall cost of this loss is projected to be over $1.2 billion at the box office. They are hopeful this will not happen, but we have an entire year to observe and see if this will end up happening in the end but it will take awhile to see these results.
By George Robbins
It is universally acknowledged by this point that this year has been a long one that no one is really ever going to forget in part because of the coronavirus, but because it truly has been an eventful year thus far. While the year is about to end, the events which have made it such a long year are nowhere close to actually being finished just yet and it will be awhile before they are. There are countless events that have been seen happening over this past year which have had people clamoring for the new year to begin in a haste because they simply want this year to be over so we could all move on. Unfortunately, just going into the new year won’t actually do anything in the long run and there isn’t really any hoping that things will get better that easily. We still have a long way to go before things may actually start turning out better than they have been as of late.
The way that this pandemic has been playing out has heavily affected a decent number of industries at this point due to the way the pandemic works. After the initial announcement that the pandemic was beginning, we were given an immediate look into how various forms of business would handle dealing with the pandemic as a whole. They were immediately shut down in order to prevent the spread of the virus among the general populace, but there were a lot of businesses that suffered this way. Obviously, having your doors closed to the public will generate issues with bringing in revenue, but some did not realize just how much of an issue would be presented by this in the end. When businesses shut down, it was the non-essential businesses that saw the most issues as opposed to those that were deemed essential.
After they finally came up with new rules and regulations that could be followed properly by most businesses, some local governments started the process of reopening some businesses. First they reopened the businesses that were the least at risk for spreading the infection before slowly starting to make the move to businesses that were considered to be a higher risk overall. This led to various businesses all over the country, and even the world, eventually being opened up to the public once again in some form or another. However, this did not guarantee that those businesses would actually end up getting their customers back which is what is being dealt with now by various small businesses and companies which are having issues bringing people back. Although those businesses are opened once again, that doesn’t mean that they are able to bring people back because the pandemic was still a very real threat.
Movie theaters started losing out on revenue, like most other businesses, the moment that they were forced to shut their doors to the public which unfortunately meant they were doomed from the start. They immediately started missing out on extremely important revenue that could help them in the long run because they simply weren’t allowed to have customers. After months had passed and other businesses were given the go-ahead to start reopening their doors, they patiently awaited their opportunity to do the same but it didn’t turn out so well. They eventually started getting impatient waiting for their chance to open and it resulted in them not being able to cope with not being open. Eventually they were given the go-ahead and most theaters managed to reopen all over at around the mid-August mark where things were once again getting difficult.
What followed was a period of time for theaters that we can really only refer to as the “dark times” at this point due to the affect that it had on the movie theater industry. Movie releases have been vying for the perfect windows to actually release to the public and movie theaters have become increasingly difficult for movies to release in. When they managed to reopen back in August, they immediately started showing any movies they could that were available to them and among those titles were new movies as well as old movies that have been able to draw people back for years. Unfortunately, these movies were not enough of a drive to actually get people to come back to theaters which resulted in theaters opening with no one coming into them. This led to theaters being open with little to no customers resulting in the loss of a lot of revenue over the past months that is close to causing theaters to go into bankruptcy before the year is actually out.
Needless to say, the state of movie theaters at the moment is truly a sad one, but the way that the rest of the industry is handling the pandemic has been vastly different. Studios have been doing their best to get their films done in an appropriate amount of time in order to get people back on track and films ready for release whenever that may be possible. For instance, despite the fact that the pandemic has made it more difficult, studios have started their productions back up again the best way they possibly could. Every production that had to halt due to the pandemic has since been able to resume and many of them have actually finished by this point in time meaning that they are now just working on post and then they will be ready for release. Some movies have actually gone even further than that and are actually completely ready to go for their release dates which are now set for over the next couple of years.
There are actually plenty of movies that have been worked on pretty heavily over the course of the past few months that will not be able to show any time soon even if they are completely finished and ready to release. This is due to the state of affairs currently surrounding movie theaters these days but there isn’t really anything that can be done about that at this point in time. All they can do is wait for the proper moment to release their content and this seems to be a long way off because there is nothing that will get people to go back out to theaters the way they were before unless the pandemic is over. Thus, most studios are holding out to release their upcoming films until the point where they can release them in theaters where they will get their usual proper treatment. This isn’t necessarily the case with all of their films though as the digital release method has been a huge topic for discussion over these past months.
Among the countless films that we have seen discussed over the course of this past year since the pandemic began, many of them are actually films that are being worked on now or they are going to be worked on soon. Unfortunately, there is not much that can be done at the moment because of the state of the pandemic and the spike in cases as of late, but many are hopeful things will change soon. Once things are able to go back to their original plans we may just end up seeing everything fall back into place the way that they were before. Many are hopeful that this is the case as many of the upcoming titles are films relating to comics that people have been looking forward to seeing for a very long time. Comic book films have exploded over the past years stemming from the creation and perpetuation of the MCU and they aren’t going to be going away any time soon in the same vein.
The comic book movies have been a huge part of the film industry for quite some time now and things are definitely not going to change any time soon. Comic books movies are easily one of the most popular and profitable types of films out there because they take a readable medium and turn them into something that people everywhere will fall in love with regardless of where they are from. On top of this, they are a type of movie that most people can like because they are now formulized in a way that just about anyone can go out and see and therefore enjoy. This past year has managed to maintain a strong presence for comic book movies and it has cemented the fact that they will be around for quite some time still because of how it has managed to play out. Even though no new movies have really released this year, the news surrounding those films have taken precedence over most other films that have been discussed in some way over the year.
In the news, we have seen that many Marvel films will be starting production once again come the start of the new year and many will be releasing over the course of the next few years. The MCU has a lot of films coming its way and, as such, there has been a lot of news surrounding those movies coming out as of late. Included in that list of upcoming content and releases is the fact that many of their upcoming films will be filming from between January to June including films like ‘Thor: Love and Thunder,’ ‘Black Panther 2,’ ‘Ant-Man 3,’ and ‘Doctor Strange 2.’ All of these films, and more, will be worked on just starting early next year and these are just the start of comic book movie news. Some more specific things are also happening within the realm of the MCU and in other circles like the DCEU including some major changes that could affect the way they end up playing out in the future.
One big change that no one really expected to see was the fact that the ‘Doctor Strange 2’ director was changed from Scott Derrickson, who directed the first film, to director Sam Raimi. While not a bad thing, it is certain to affect the way that the new film ends up playing out in the end, but in a good way. Next up on the docket is the fact that it seems like all Spider-Man films, including the non-MCU ones, could end up being a part of the MCU with the upcoming ‘Spider-Man’ film with major characters like Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock and Jamie Foxx’s Electro returning for the film. Next up is the fact that Michael Keaton’s Batman will be returning for ‘The Flash’ which could pull non DCEU films back into the universe in some way giving credence to an insanely detailed multiverse in the DCEU. Of course we also can’t forget to include the fact that the Snyder Cut of ‘Justice League’ will also be releasing in the not too distant future.
The Snyder Cut for Justice League is one that people have been looking forward to for some time now as it will premiere as a four-part series on HBO Max where all parts are one hour long. This special cut for the film is very much anticipated and is sure to kick off an interesting year for HBO Max in one way or another. Then, there is the much more tragic side of things where Black Panther lead actor Chadwick Boseman unfortunately passed away due to a battle with cancer that very few knew he was going through. This is of course a massive blow to the community who immediately began mourning his passing and it is a blow to the industry who now have to try and find someone who can fill the void. While this may not really be possible, it is something they are still going to try and fix when they start filming once again and it is sure to affect the way that the movies come out from now on. It has been a rough year and things just aren’t done yet with many more issues to resolve by both the beginning of next year and the end of this one.
There have been countless issues cropping up this year and there has been even more news bound to shake things up going into next year. There just isn’t really anything that can be done to fix these issues anytime soon, but the film industry as a whole is trying their best to adapt to the situation at hand. This pandemic could possibly end some time in the very near future, but we are still a ways off before we reach a point where things are stable again. There has been countless good and bad news as of late, but we have to try and focus on the better side of things moving forward because this is the only way we will be able to properly cope with everything. Focusing on what is happening with comic book movies is just one way of trying to understand and cope with what is happening but it is just one such way of doing so. This upcoming year is bound to be an even more transformative one for everyone so it will be interesting to see how things go once the new year rolls around.
By George Robbins
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, is easily one of the most recognizable franchises out there at the moment due to the fact that it is so well recognized by the general public. For the public at large, the MCU is a franchise where the world of comic books has finally managed to make it to the big screen in a way that a lot of people have fallen in love with. Taking the comic book medium, which has been known for being a niche for a certain group of people for a long time, and turning it into a video medium for everyone has been a trip. There has been a number of years that these films have been worked on and it should be no surprise that no one really thought it would turn out at first. When everything first began, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was not going as well as people may have originally believed it would due to the issues involved with the production of the first film, ‘Iron Man.’
‘Iron Man’ is known by just about everyone at this point as the film that kicked off the MCU and made it known that it was possible for the MCU to even exist in the first place. No one was quite sure about whether a successful shared comic book universe could be made but the ‘Iron Man’ film was a good start and it showed that there was a general crowd who were out there willing to watch the films. If there was actually a crowd who wanted to watch the film then they would definitely have a reason to keep making their films and this gave them the confidence to continue working on future films. It would not be until the first ‘Avengers’ film that we finally got to see the first act pay off and the idea of creating a shared universe for films became cemented as a possibility. This would end up being a template that many different studios have since tried to replicate in some way, shape or form, but many have not really managed to succeed.
Over the years since the initial success of the first act of MCU films, there have been a lot of studios which have been trying to capture the same success seen by the MCU, but this hasn’t been so simple. Legendary’s Monster-Verse is actually one of the few other shared universes to be relatively successful, but they do not have anywhere near as many films as the MCU has. The fact that Marvel Studios has managed to take countless films over the years and put them into the same universe successfully while each one maintains its own story just goes to show how impressive it all is. That aside, it has been a long road since and it is one that is not meant to end anytime soon as they are still working on getting a massive number of films started filming going into this next year. Needless to say, these next couple of years in general are going to be huge for the MCU and will change a lot of what happens moving forward.
So what exactly is being changed moving forward and why would this change what will end up happening in the future with the MCU as a whole? The answer to this lies squarely in the fact that the pandemic has fundamentally changed the way that things are going to be handled moving forward because dates for filming and releases have changed constantly recently. When the pandemic first began, the first thing that was affected was that all active productions in the industry ended up being shut down and while they may have resumed and mostly finished already, this pushed back the productions of many other movies. Going into 2021 many new MCU films are actually going to be starting production to release over the course of the next couple of years with ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ starting first in January. Things have already been heavily affected by the pandemic as well as other issues that have been dealt with in the past couple of years by the industry.
One of the biggest questions on the minds of a lot of fans is just how they are going to handle things going forward and how this is going to affect the overall story of future films. Obviously, they are still trying to release certain films before they finally release others, but it is now a matter of just what films now have to be released in what order for them to make sense. For instance, it has been made known that in order for things to continue in the proper manner, ‘Black Widow’ must release before the ‘Falcon and Winter Soldier’ show can premiere. This means that many storylines matter and the order by which they play out is affected by the order of release. On top of the films that are being discussed, there is also the fact that there are many others that people are trying to focus on that aren’t getting the attention people have been hoping for as of late.
Among those movies are the ones that Marvel Studios and Disney now have all of the rights to and that is the X-Men and Fantastic Four titles. These titles have been some of the most sought after by Disney because they are some of the most popular IP’s that FOX held before they were bought out by Disney. The fact remains that they are easily among some of the most popular titles for the MCU to now have their hands on and this has led to many now speculating how they will add those new additions to the already established MCU. This is something that many people have worried about with some of the upcoming titles because of the addition of ‘Blade’ and other characters who would have a huge impact on the universe. How exactly would they be able to handle the inclusion of mutants into the MCU with the X-Men and how would this play out in the future.
This same thing can be said about the Fantastic Four, but the X-Men is a much more complicated premise to try and establish as it would completely change the world order in-universe. With the X-Men being a part of the universe, a certain percentage of the population would actually be considered mutants which would mean that it would be difficult for them to incorporate this idea into future films. During the big Investors Day for Disney recently, it was announced that the Fantastic Four would be joining the MCU faster than people imagined they would. Kevin Feige, head for Marvel Studios, announced that Spider-Man director Jon Watts would actually be working on a ‘Fantastic Four’ film which would introduce them to the now established MCU. This is something that no one would have expected this soon, but it is a welcome surprise as people were thinking that their introduction would still be a ways off.
So why are they choosing this as the chance for the introductions of the characters to the MCU while they are shafting the X-Men for the moment. This can very easily be drawn back to the fact that they are not sure of how to properly introduce the characters and mutants as a whole to the universe any time soon especially with so many other films still in the works. While nothing other than the director has been announced for the Fantastic Four movie, we already know that introducing them in-universe would end up being a much easier task by comparison. There have been three Fantastic Four based films made by Fox in the past and none of them have really done all that well and, on top of that, those movies mostly stood on their own. This means that a proper MCU reboot for the characters would not be as difficult as people anticipated it to be as the characters would not need to go through much to make them viable for the universe.
On top of it not being too difficult to make the characters viable for the new universe they would be in, they could even use this as a set up for the future X-Men introductions. While not mutants in the same way as the X-Men or other mutants in-universe, the Fantastic Four are one way for those characters to introduce the idea of mutants to the MCU. Even if this isn’t the case, they are still an easier set of characters to introduce overall, therefore they are a good choice for characters to add now. Needless to say, all of this information is very exciting and even though we may not be getting the X-Men anytime soon, we know that we are bound to get them eventually. The introduction of the Fantastic Four is a step forward which shows that they are ready to introduce more previously Fox-owned heroes to the MCU. Therefore, these characters are a good stepping stone for bringing many other heroes into the MCU eventually, giving us an even more expansive MCU.
By George Robbins
Warner Bros. has been making waves as of late with the way they are handling things going into next year when it comes to their new movie releases. They have released a statement not too long ago saying that they will be making a move that has them releasing their new movies for the next year on their HBO Max streaming service as well as in theaters. Obviously this news is not what anyone expected to hear with the way that things have been going in the film industry as of late so there has been quite a range of reactions. Chief among those reactions have been the way that people have been reacting to it all within the industry and how they are now completely taken aback by it all. Needless to say, Warner Bros. really managed to kick the hornets nest this time as many people within the industry are now upset by the move they are making.
First of all, the movie industry isn’t exactly in a great position at the moment due to the pandemic and the affect it has had on every type of business out there. The pandemic has resulted in numerous businesses having to be shut down for awhile before being able to once again reopen because new rules needed to be put in place. New health and safety rules became a requirement before businesses were ever really going to be allowed to open back up again which has created a bit of an issue. After a couple of months had passed and the overall number of new cases dropped dramatically, governments decided to start reopening the businesses which closed down in the months prior. They had the standard health and safety rules in place, so they felt that they no longer had anything to worry about going forward.
There has been no doubt in anybody’s mind that the reopening of businesses in the middle of an active pandemic was a bad idea, but it was one many deemed as being a necessary action. The reason why so many people felt it was necessary to reopen businesses once again was because many economies were beginning to fail and this was what was needed to get them back on track. Unfortunately, this ended up being a detriment in some ways while actually being a good idea in other ways and this revolves around the types of businesses which were open. There is not a single type of business out there that doesn’t have some kind of inherent risk associated with it in regards to the pandemic. After all, the virus does not discriminate on where exactly it ends up infecting people so of course there is a risk anywhere we decide to go.
Businesses as a whole did actually have to reopen for the economy to keep itself from crashing and for small businesses to actually survive and make their way out of the pandemic. Unfortunately, small businesses are in a lot of trouble at the moment and there isn’t really all that much that can be done to help them as they are simply lacking overall business. One of the biggest issues at the moment is actually how risk assessment has been working out and what exactly that means to the remainder of businesses and people in general. The way that governments decide whether they should close things down or open them again is by assessing exactly what the rate is for new cases and how often new cases are bound to appear. Based on an overall population they check the density of just how many people are infected which gives them an idea as to what the numbers look like for new infected density.
It depends upon the local government, but the idea is that if a certain threshold is met for the density of an infected population, then stricter rules are put into place. For instance they check a population of one million and 10 people tested positive, they may consider this to be a good thing and allow businesses to open with the same restrictions as usual. However, there are some places where this is not the case and they are actually considering numbers like that to be hints of danger, thus keeping a lot of places shut down. California is a prime example of something like this because they have kept a lot of businesses closed based on an extremely low number of new cases based on population. This has, on its own, led to a lot of backlash among both the populace and many businesses that function out of California.
A perfect example of a place that has been affected by this in some way is Disneyland in Anaheim, California which has not been able to open up to the public at all since this whole pandemic began. They originally had plans to reopen to the public back in July, but a surge in virus cases led to those plans being crushed by the state government. Ever since then California has not laid off on their strict policies which has prevented the theme park from opening at all and this has led to some major issues cropping up. Chief among these issues is the fact that Disney has had to let go of over 28,000 employees with an additional 4,000 being let go early next year for a total of 32,000. This is just one example of how this has caused issues, but there are plenty more examples out there including what is happening with the film industry.
For the most part, the film industry has managed to survive what has been happening but this hasn’t changed the fact that the way movies are being handled now has been changed dramatically. For instance, movie productions have not really changed all that much and many of them are getting back to work the way they have always been done. There are new rules and safety regulations that need to be followed while on set, but this has not been such a huge difference that would end up affecting the industry as a whole. It is what has been happening with the releases of movies that has started to wildly change the industry and its affects are starting to be seen more clearly as time goes on. Starting next year, if things go as planned, we will be seeing an entirely different landscape for movie releases.
When movie theaters were finally able to start opening up once again during the summer, we immediately recognized that there were going to be issues. Among those issues was the fact that theaters were forced to open without any new movie releases or else they wouldn’t be able to show any films at all because studios would not give them films unless they were open. Finally, they were able to open and things immediately took a downward spiral as no one was actually going out to see movies the way they were originally hoping for. This immediately caused studios to panic and most of them pushed many of their remaining releases out of this year and into next year some time. This was a reaction that director Christopher Nolan considered to be a step in the wrong direction and that studios should be trying to help theaters out more rather than move all of their release dates.
One such studio to make moves like this was Warner Bros. which decided to push back their release dates after the failure of ‘Tenet‘ at the box office due to the lack of movie-goers. No one was surprised when Warner made this move as every other studio was doing essentially the same thing which resulted in most movies being moved out of this year’s line-up. What studios were doing with the films that they were releasing this year was that they were releasing them to theaters and waiting 17 days to put them up online as per a new deal with theaters or they were just putting them straight out on digital. Earlier in the year, Universal proposed that they would release films both online and in theaters simultaneously which caused a lot of backlash with theaters which eventually led to the new 17 day deal. They let it be known early on just what they wanted to do and a discussion was opened up in regards to that, but Warner has taken a completely different route now.
Warner, all of a sudden, made the decision to make not only their ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ movie available on their streaming platform HBO Max, but also in theaters simultaneously. Beyond the fact that they were doing exactly what Universal said they would not end up doing in favor of helping theaters, Warner made a completely different choice. They didn’t stop with just ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ as they announced that all 17 of their films next year will be doing the same thing which has angered a lot of people that work in the industry. When a movie is released in theaters, a portion of that revenue goes to theaters and the remainder is sent back to the studio where it is divided between the studio, cast, and crew. Needless to say, if a movie is going to be available digitally and it is more likely to be watched on that platform, theaters won’t be earning as much and everyone but the studio loses money.
This, of course, has a lot of people, primarily directors and lead actors, upset because this change was made suddenly before any contractual issues could be discussed. The only people to have been compensated for this change is ‘Wonder Woman 1984’s’ director Patty Jenkins and star Gal Gadot who were each payed $10 million to make up the difference in some way. No one else has received compensation so far and the change was so sudden that contracts could not even be properly discussed. This has now resulted in some Hollywood directors possibly boycotting the studio in the near future and it could result in a fair number of movies not getting made on time. This issue is one that needs to be resolved internally or else it could have repercussions that could end up spilling out into the rest of the industry and no one wants the industry to suffer even more than it already is.
By George Robbins
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, has easily become one of the most popular series of films out there at the moment with the assortment of films now considered a part of the franchise. As a franchise, the MCU has been able to consistently manage to bring in large numbers of viewers and keep them engaged for the length of their entire films. In fact, the franchise has become so popular at this point that it is widely considered to be a mainstream franchise by avid movie-goers. This doesn’t mean that the movies are bad by any stretch of the imagination, it just means that the general populace has taken to the franchise very well over the years. Just about anybody can go and watch MCU films now and be excited for when the next one is going to release and this is a trend which continues now.
The MCU began simply when the first live-action ‘Iron Man‘ film released back in 2008 and no one knew exactly how things would end up turning out. We learned much later that there was actually a lot that went wrong during the production and a lot of what was seen in the movie was thought up while in the middle of production. People may not really think about it all that much now, but the fact remains that the MCU only really managed to get its start at the bottom of the totem pole. However, after the film was a smash success, the MCU was able to begin in full force as there was now much more backing to get more films done. This was all so that they could do what has never truly been done in the past which is to create a universe shared by various characters.
Not only would those characters share the same universe, but the actions of some of them played a major role in the universe and shaped how it played out. Eventually, we were given the 2012 ‘Avengers‘ film which brought a variety of characters together on screen for the first time to fight a common enemy that threatened the world. The idea of bringing together such a cast of characters was seen as all the more impressive due to the fact that many of the films had different directors working on them. Not only that, but the scripts must be able to intertwine with one another in some way while also allowing more individual stories to happen on the side. This gave those working on writing and directing the films a challenge that no one else has really had to face before that period in time.
Of course, all of this wasn’t really made any easier by the fact that they were adapting something from comic books while also trying to create unique storylines. When they released the first ‘Avengers’ film they even introduced an over-arching storyline that would span almost a decade which actually started in movies before then. With the introduction of the infinity stones in early films without actually saying what they were, they set up a storyline that started getting revealed in full in later films. Needless to say being able to weave together a franchise is difficult and doing it perfectly is impossible but they managed to do extremely well with the productions they were tasked with making. Comic book movies were already receiving a sort of bad wrap from most people because they were difficult to pull of in a unique way.
Obviously, the movies had a lot of source content to work with and if not for that, there is no telling exactly where the franchise would have gone, or if it would have even existed. Over the years, comic books have always been the attraction for a lot of people but they were not for everyone and this was a recognized fact. Due to this fact, they decided to make something that would attract everyone to go and see it and the thing is, comic book stories are perfect for movies as a whole. They more times than not contain instances of action, suspense, deep thought, comedy, and tragedy and this makes them compelling to show on the big screen. There are not many films which are actually capable of pulling off a feat like this to begin with, so of course a lot of time and effort was devoted to these films.
The connectiveness of the films has been a major selling point for a lot of people and the continuation of not just the overarching stories but also the individual stories has sold people on the newer films as they’ve released. We knew as a society that the MCU was becoming a huge deal when Disney went and purchased Marvel Studios, the ones producing the films. After this massive purchase, which cost them billions of dollars, they just let Marvel Studios continue to do their work so that they could make more films as they knew just what they were doing. All Disney did was make sure that they would be able to make a profit on anything that has a Marvel label on it ranging from movies to books to action figures and other toys. While some were not happy about the films becoming mainstream, the general public, and therefore Disney, were happy with the results of what they got to see play out on the big screen as it was made just for people to enjoy.
Comic book fans have always been excited when they got to see their favorite characters take to the big screen in some way and that hasn’t really stopped all that much anymore. What ends up upsetting some people is that they think that people like it just because it is popular and they don’t like it for the characters. As a result a lot of character translations from comics to movies had been adjusted in some way to try and get more people to be on board with the characters and their stories. Tony Stark starts off as an arrogant playboy and very quickly turns that around to try and help people while still maintaining a somewhat arrogant persona. In the comics he was always that way and was more times than not, actually worse than his movie counterpart. Obviously this wouldn’t resonate with the general public, so they adjusted him as time went on to make him much more likeable in an annoying sort of way.
These sorts of changes are seen all the time when it comes to adaptations and this isn’t really all that surprising for a studio to do to get more people to start watching the series. Some characters, however, do manage to translate fairly well from their comic counterparts to the big screen though not without some minor changes to fit the story’s purpose. Other than that, their personalities and character designs get to stay relatively the same which makes it much easier for them to get people on board with the characters. One such character who they have managed to adapt in a pretty well done manner was Spider-Man and this was a character that people were afraid may never have entered the MCU at any point. Considering how important Spider-Man is to the Marvel universe as a whole, it is no surprise that this was a fear that people had for quite some time.
In the Marvel Universe, and more specifically the comics, Spider-Man is a beacon of morality among the denizens of that universe and he serves as a hero that doesn’t always try to save the world. Spider-Man is a much more localized hero who does whatever he can to help those in his community rather than constantly trying to save the world. While he has been seen helping stop worldwide catastrophe, a majority of the time he is in New York City trying to keep people safe from everyday hazards. Not only is Spider-Man known more for his everyman day-to-day deeds, but he is known for the fact that he manages to make even dire situations at least a little more light-hearted. The character is sarcastic and helpful towards as many people as he can be while doing his best to not hurt people too badly. He is one of those characters that doesn’t really want to abuse the power that he found himself having and this shines through very well on screen.
This is why Spider-Man was one of the first Marvel characters to get his own live-action film, although he was most definitely not the first. Sam Raimi took the Spider-Man character and gave him a place on the big screen in live-action for the first time ever which was a feat all on its own. While he did take creative liberties to make sure that the character made the proper transition, the 2002 ‘Spider-Man‘ was a success due to the efforts of everyone who was involved. The sequel which followed was even better than the original film and it introduced a villain that is central to the character of Spider-Man. In the first film, we saw iconic villain The Green Goblin appear on the screen and although he was a cheesy character he was one of the best parts of the original film. The sequel introduced yet another important villain which was Doctor Otto Octavius, known by most people as Doc Ock.
In this rendition of the character, Doc Ock, played by actor Alfred Molina, was just a scientist who was trying to help people by developing a clean source of power for the world. In order to do this he created four mechanical arms which he controlled with his mind via a computer chip on the back of his neck. For the arms to work properly, he had to give them artificial intelligence, but the chip prevented them from acting outside of his control. Peter Parker worked for Dr. Octavius because he believed in his mission to try and create a better future for other people, but of course it didn’t go as planned. The lab in which Octavius was conducting his experiment ended up falling to pieces and his wife was killed when the experiment went out of control and caused the building to collapse on itself.
The result of that destruction was that the chip that regulated the arms and kept them from losing control ended up being completely destroyed, but the arms were still fused to him. During an attempt to cut the arms off of him, every doctor involved ended up being killed and Octavius awakened in horror to see that he was now under the control of the arms he created to help save people. The goal that he and his arms now had was to recreate the experiment in an effort to succeed where he had previously failed while also fighting Spider-Man who had ended up in his way. He blamed Spider-Man for his not being able to succeed in his experiment which he thought was the reason his wife ended up dying, as a result he blamed him for her death. By the film’s conclusion, seeing Peter/Spider-Man trying to prevent all of New York from being destroyed reminded him of why he wanted to succeed in the first place, he wanted to help people.
At the end of the film, we saw Spider-Man being saved by Doctor Octavius who managed to overpower the arms with his own will once again and Octavius sabotaged the experiment to save everyone, proving he was really a good man. Dr. Octavius has been viewed through the eyes of people outside of the comic sphere of influence as an anti-hero of sorts instead of just a straight-up villain as originally intended. This is owed to the fact that Raimi made it understandable in his films that his villains were haunted and had their own reasons for wanting to do things. While they may not have been good through-and-through, they had redeeming qualities, but the writing and directing were not the only thing to make those two films what they were, it was the fact that the actors did an incredible job portraying the characters. This is why so many people wanted the original actor to return at some point in the future for the ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming‘ series as they felt he would really be the best choice for the character.
Once a character has been portrayed in an incredible fashion on screen, people tend to only really ever see that character being played by that one person from that moment on. Regardless of continuity or the fact that they have appeared in previous iterations of the character, some people are just deemed to be well-made fits for those characters. This is why, staying with Spider-Man, J. Jonah Jameson has been portrayed by J.K. Simmons on a number of occasions at this point and even in different iterations. He appeared as the character in Raimi’s films and he fit the role so well that people can’t see the character being played by anybody else from that point forward. They are not just stopping here though as they are also casting Jaime Foxx to once again play Electro from Sony’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2.’ Even if the movie itself wasn’t all that great, Foxx played the character pretty well; he just wasn’t given the best opportunity to show off his acting for the character.
Needless to say the next film in the ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ series in the MCU is going to have faces from many different films over the years and it is shaping up to be a film fans will never forget. There are plenty of characters that are returning to appear in this film and Sony is hopeful that this, plus their own string of Spider-Man universe side-films, will help them do a crossover at some point with the films they are making. While it is still a little ways off before the movie has its release some time in late 2021, or even possibly later than that, it is easy to see why so many people are excited for the next entry in the series. The fact that they are actually filming it now has people more excited since they know that these things are all happening as we speak. The future for the Spider-Man series of live-action films is looking very interesting and it is sure to get more people’s attention as time goes on.
By George Robbins
This past week has been an interesting one for the Warner Bros. studio as they have made announcements that no one would have ever really expected them to make. Over the weekend, they made the announcement that they would be releasing their new movies through the next year on both HBO Max and in theaters simultaneously. This announcement has been met with mixed reactions from both fans and those on the production team alike. When they made the announcement that they would be making this release plan a reality, they ruffled feathers with people who were insistent that they should be trying to help movie theaters recover. Instead of helping theaters it would appear to most that they are only really helping themselves in this scenario as opposed to trying to help theaters get back on track.
To be a little fair, Warner took a hit over this past summer and they have been trying to figure out the proper way of going about things these past few months. Obviously they knew that something needed to change or else they would not be able to keep up with the industry which has been on a steady decline since the pandemic began. Since the start of the pandemic, Warner has not been the only studio to have actually released a film as Universal has also put some work into getting a couple of films released. They have since tried figuring out how they too would continue going about their upcoming releases and it seems like they have chosen a release format that would suit both them, and the theaters. This would lead to what is now happening with Warner as it helped give them a push in the direction they are now headed in.
Universal was actually the first studio to announce that they wanted to release their films on both a digital platform as well as in theaters at the same time. The issue was that they made this announcement at the start of the pandemic when theaters thought they actually had a choice as to what would happen with movie releases. After a threat was issued that AMC would no longer show any more Universal films and Universal responded they went radio silent on the matter for months. When enough time had passed, AMC announced the deal that they made with Universal which would allow them to release films digitally just 17 days after release. This was something that was completely unheard of and under normal circumstances, it would never happen, but at this point theaters would only end up being hurt more if they didn’t take the deal.
This announcement was met with the announcement not much later that they would also be offering this deal to every other studio as well and needless to say it was a good deal for studios. A shorter theatrical run could end up generating more revenue for them and a digital release would ensure that they would end up getting more profits overall. Theaters take a portion of what is earned on each ticket, so studios really need to make a lot in order for them to make up what is lost when theaters take their cut. In being able to release their films early on digital, they can mitigate some of their losses and cash in on the money to be made by people not wanting to go out to theaters. All people would have to do is wait a couple of extra weeks and they will be able to go and purchase the film digitally without ever having to go see it in theaters.
Warner Bros. took this a step further by announcing that they were going to be essentially going with Universal’s original plan for their movie releases for the end of this year and all of next year. Of course, this has people like Christopher Nolan annoyed because it detracts importance from theaters and makes it harder for them to get income. It is making everyone else unhappy because they usually make their money off of a portion of the ticket sales as well so they would effectively lose out on a lot of money when people do not go to theaters to see the films. There are 17 films releasing this upcoming year and most of the people involved with them have said that they had not been compensated for the switch-up and new release format. Gal Gadot has said that she got over $10 million due to ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ going to HBO Max while a majority of other actors and directors have not received anything yet as they were blindsided by the decision and had no time to negotiate. It is still up for debate how this will be handled with all other directors and cast, but if it doesn’t go their way, Warner may have a major legal battle on their hands.
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