By George Robbins
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, has most certainly become something of a household name over the past twelve years. Marvel Studios now produces films that manage to captivate most of the audiences they are trying to and they bring in plenty of revenue for their parent company, Disney. This has easily made them one of the most successful franchises to date outside of Disney’s other property, Star Wars. It is pretty easy to see why things have been working out for them because Marvel Studios has pretty much been able to perfect the whole superhero genre film thing as a whole. So now, we expect nothing less than a good film whenever a new film of their’s comes out.
These days, a lot of problems now find themselves being pushed up front and center given how much is currently going on in the world. Over the past couple of years, Marvel has been doing their best to pull everything together in spite of their shortcomings. This is why the state of the MCU as a whole is something that is debated upon by the general public because everything that has been seen thus far has given a moment of pause. This mainly stems from the fact that the film industry as a whole is a mess right now and that Marvel has had their release plans set already. This makes things kind of difficult as they are now somewhat bound to a formula.
Even though Marvel has had a release plan for all of their movies over the years, there has been some level of flexibility involved in order to get storylines working. This is how they were eventually able to incorporate characters like Spider-Man and Thanos into their over-arching introduction saga. I say introduction saga because they called the entire first three phases a saga which means they plan on keeping this going for a very long time. This means that, in the future, there are sure to be more issues which mess with their movie plans going forward and they need a level of flexibility to deal with it. Although they have some flexibility with their stories, there is still the issue of them not having flexibility with their releases.
They had plenty of plans in place for how they were going to kick off Phase 4, but those plans got changed already a couple of times. The first time their plans were interrupted was back in 2018 when James Gunn was temporarily let go from directing ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.’ Originally, the plan was for the third film to be the one that would actually have the chance to kick off Phase 4 of the MCU. This plan was changed and now the film was moved much further down the roster. Not that it was really much of an issue at the time, but it showed that they needed some flexibility to move things around. The problem really started coming into play, though, when they released their launch plans at San Diego Comic-Con last year.
At SDCC last year, they announced the line-up and release dates for their films, but obviously they will not be able to keep this line-up the way they planned. The new first film on the line-up was meant to be ‘Black Widow,’ but the pandemic forced back the release date to some time in 2021. This has effectively pushed back the releases of every other film and shows that when they released their plans, they lost some flexibility. Another issue to crop up was the deal between Sony and Marvel for Spider-Man as Disney was trying to go back on their deal with Sony as they felt they were not getting enough money out of the character. Eventually this issue was resolved and we ended up getting new possible future films out of the deal.
When the new deal was made between Sony and Disney, it became known that Disney would get 25 percent of the profits in return for paying roughly a quarter of the production costs as well. On top of this fact, Sony would get more creative liberty to use the MCU’s Spider-Man in their own Spider-Verse films. This overall presents the possibility that we could end up seeing Sony’s Spider-Verse films becoming a larger part of the MCU in some way. So it appears that not every change made to the MCU will be a bad one as people have been wanting something like this to happen for awhile now. This just goes to show though, that the MCU is something that must be flexible moving forward or else the over-arching stories will end up suffering as a result.
Although their have been plenty of changes thus far, it is certainly apparent that Marvel Studios pretty much knows what they are doing in the long run. The pandemic has made it a bit more difficult for them now in terms of movie releases and when they can work on producing their films, but they have a pretty good idea of what they are doing. They have had to deal with many changes to Phase 4 already and it would not be surprising if they came up with a new line-up for the public soon enough. Marvel Studios has a long road ahead of them because it is highly likely that they will be changing even more due to the pandemic, but we know they can handle being flexible. We just shouldn’t be surprised if things continue to change in the near future for the MCU.
By George Robbins
Sacha Baron Cohen is a well-known face in the movie industries for his work on parodies which make fun of life in general. Basically, he takes aspects that would be seen as ridiculous in other cultures and makes them realized as parodied versions of themselves on screen. This is what he did when he made the movie ‘Borat‘ and it showed aspects of people’s lives in America that people would consider ridiculous. This was meant to be a satire for the people of not only America, but the world as a whole as it allowed people to see what American reactions would be like in certain situations. Now, we will have the chance to see the ridiculousness once again.
The movie ‘Borat’ has become very culturally significant since its initial release back in the year 2006. It very quickly became offensive to people, especially those who appeared in the film because they were not paid actors, so there was a lawsuit put against the film. This did not stop the film, and more importantly, the character from blowing up and becoming a well known part of the film industry. It became so well-known that Cohen had to retire the character of Borat after just a couple of years because he would not be able to use the character in public without people knowing it was him. Recently, this has become less of an issue apparently because he filmed a sequel in secret.
‘Borat 2,’ as it is currently being called, was a project that very few people knew was actually being worked on in secret by Cohen. It was only made news to the public recently when someone revealed that they saw the character being filmed somewhere driving around. It now appears that we will have the chance to see this film far sooner than we ever would have anticipated as it is set to release later this month. Although we only just heard about it, the movie has already had test screenings and is set for a release, so it is set to apparently release on Amazon Prime near the end of October. It might only be coming out in a month, but we still don’t know the name of the film and we may not know it until it comes out at this point.
By George Robbins
Clint Eastwood is responsible for being a part of some of the most well-known westerns of his generation. More specifically, he was a huge part of the spaghetti western films of the time period which were made with western audiences in mind to make them more appealing to the general public. After all, it was mainly the western audiences that were going to go see those films as westerns ended up being some of the most well-known movies for an entire generation. Among those westerns were a series of three films that all took place in the same universe and involved the same character otherwise known as the ‘Dollars’ trilogy.
Among the famous ‘Dollars’ trilogy was ‘A Fistful of Dollars,’ ‘A Few Dollars More,’ and to cap it all off, ‘The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.’ The last film served as the prequel for the entire trilogy, but the original was, in its own rights, considered an incredible film. In actuality, ‘A Fistful of Dollars‘ was a spaghetti western remake of Yojimbo from director Sergio Leone which saw a man tricking two rival gangs into killing one another. This eventually led to a lawsuit by Toho because this was not a movie that they allowed to happen, but in the end it gave the western world a version of the film they could relate to. Needless to say, the film and those involved with it were excellent.
Given the potential for the full story of the film to be drawn out to make things more interesting, it is no surprise that a TV show is in development for it. These days, movies of the past either get remade as new movies or turned into TV shows. It seems we got the latter with this one and to be honest, it definitely seems like it will be interesting. Needless to say, this is a project that we should all be on the lookout for as it will definitely be worth watching if the story stays the same. Given that the state of the film industry nowadays isn’t so great, we may not see it for awhile, but it is something to look forward to.
By George Robbins
Disney films have given people something to look forward to over the years as they grew up and they shaped how many people turned out. From the moment Walt Disney started making animated films, the film industry was just never the same again. It was after that period of time where we were then given countless Disney films that charmed people over the years and gave people childhood memories they would never forget. Unfortunately, there was a period of time where there was just nothing going on with their roster and we had no new films which could hold people’s attention like they used to.
The dark ages of Disney were followed by what should be known as the Disney Renaissance in the mid-90’s because that once again changed the way animation was viewed. The movie that helped push this envelope was the animated film, ‘The Lion King.’ This movie completely changed people’s childhoods and it introduced an entirely new generation to the animated film genre. This movie would go on to help revitalize the entire industry in a sense and Disney animation once again started coming out on top to make to world its oyster yet again. Ever since then, they have devoted almost their all to animation and it has paid off.
It can be said that without ‘The Lion King,’ Disney would have been in trouble as they were kind of struggling at the time trying to come up with movie ideas that could catch intrigue. The best way of getting that intrigue was to take the classic tale of ‘Hamlet’ and adapt it in a way that people could go and see it in droves; including children. The story in ‘The Lion King’ ends on a happier note than the play it is based upon, but it is still one that is filled with sadness, anger, and a sense of completion. It is no surprise that they decided to take the film and adapt it to a more live-action based format in 2019 like they have been doing with their other films. The movie didn’t do anywhere near as well as its original, but it still showed that there was interest in the film.
What some people may not be aware of is the fact that the original film had a straight-to-video sequel aptly named ‘The Lion king 2: Simba’s Pride.’ Although the movie did not do as well as the original, it was still loved by the general public. Therefore, it should be no surprise that Disney is now in the midst of making a sequel to the new live-action version of the original. Not much is known about when we may end up seeing the new sequel, but in all likelihood, it will be in 2023 which is when they have a few release dates already planned. Disney seems like they will be riding this cash cow as far as they can and it will probably make a fair bit of money despite how people felt about the first remake.
By George Robbins
The DC Extended Universe, or DCEU, has managed to claw its way into the film industry because of the fanbase that exists for DC in general. This fanbase is a dedicated one like all comic book fanbases due to the fact that people won’t invest in something they really have no interest in, at least most of the time. This is why Warner Bros. knew that they would have plenty of dedicated fans that would want to watch their films when they came out. Looking at the comic book fanbase, they managed to estimate jsut how many people they would be able to draw in once they started making films for the characters. While the universe may not be too expansive, it has still managed to attract plenty of attention.
The DCEU came into being back in 2013 with ‘Man of Steel,’ 5 years after Marvel started their Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU. The MCU has easily become the more popular of the two franchises because the movies are just done that well. There are still plenty of people who nitpick at MCU films for not being as good as they expected them to be, but nowhere near as many as their are for DCEU films. This is because the approach to both film series has been different and they have been shaped to be fundamentally different from one another. This has, more often than not, caused a lot of people to be disappointed in the DCEU films as a whole which gives future films a lot less wiggle room.
Basically, this just means that they have to let their directors do what they can to make films that people will enjoy, especially the fans. Although the movies thus far have not been very highly rated, they have still managed to make a fair bit of money. Even though I say they have not really been highly rated, they have actually been rated pretty decently, it’s just that fans are very picky about what they see. So although it is the fans that are bringing in the money for the film, it’s also the fans that are giving those films the reviews that we have seen thus far. Among the movies that has received some of the worst commentary has been the movie ‘Justice League.’
The ‘Justice League’ movie has received plenty of flak over the past couple of years since its release due to how the film plays out. A majority of the complaints people had with the film were focused primarily on how the film tried building up a huge ensemble plot with almost no build up whatsoever. What people were used to at that point were the Avengers movies which had prerequisite films that helped tie in the plot of the film. This was not done with ‘Justice League,’ where all we had was a couple of origin films and another half-ensemble film that people were somewhat disappointed in. This led to people wondering just how the film would play out and, in the end, it left a lot of people disappointed with the results.
The ‘Justice League’ movie as a whole ended up disappointing a lot of fans of DC due to the lack of content leading up to the film. It left a bad taste in the mouths of people going into the film because fans knew that the film was going to have to build itself up over its own runtime. Considering that there is a limit to the patience of people watching, they could not make the film too long and so it felt a bit more rushed than people were expecting. This ultimately led to many a fan wanting a different version of the film, which is how we are now ending up with a director’s cut of the film being made by Zack Snyder who was the original director on the film. This was not the only thing that disappointed fans though when the film released.
One thing that many people may remember from the promotional material for the ‘Justice League’ movie, Superman was not in any of it. That is, until the final trailer before the film’s release and up until that point Henry Cavill was told to lie about Superman’s role in the film. Cavill has said recently that having to lie about Superman being in the film was an awkward experience and it is not something surprising to hear because it was something everyone knew, but the studio just didn’t want to admit it. It just ended up being awkward for everyone at that point and, in the end result, he didn’t have a huge part in the film anyway. Hopefully this fact will be rectified when the Snyder Cut releases on HBO Max in early 2021.
By George Robbins
Hot Wheels are a brand that many of us all remember from when we were little and they have continued to be a major brand as the years have gone on. They were created by the Mattel toy company which has developed countless toys over the years that everyone knows and loves. Without those toys, many people would have had very little in the way of entertainment as children and, while toys are less important to kids these days than technology, they still play a vital role in the growths and imaginations of children. Much of what actually ends up being seen on the market for people to buy for their children stems from the Mattel company.
Mattel tries their best to expand beyond the limits people put on them by making TV shows and movies based upon the properties that they own. This has at least made it a little more possible for them to expand their influence a little bit given the modern day’s more technological focus. Therefore, it isn’t too much of a surprise that they are trying to get themselves into the movie market a bit more but, like most of their projects, they have to use their own toy properties to make this content. This isn’t exactly an easy task for them to accomplish, but they are going for it and eventually they want to see a ‘Hot Wheels’ movie come to fruition. This is why they have hired a set of writers that they feel will finally be able to give their movie life after so many years.
Apparently, Mattel has been trying to create a ‘Hot Wheels’ movie for over 20 years, but of course it is not an easy task because how do you even create a coherent movie out of toy cars. There is no telling how they plan on having this film play out just yet, but we now know that they have hired the ‘Now You See Me 3’ writers to work on the film. ‘Now You See Me’ and its sequel have both had unique storylines which have brought in crowds that were surprised at how well done the movies were. Hopefully, these writers will be able to do the same thing with a ‘Hot Wheels’ movie and we will see a storyline that does the brand justice. Unfortunately, it is a movie based on a toy brand, so most people should not expect the movie to be a good one, but maybe it will be passable.
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