5 Ways to Fix the Comic Book Movie Genre
The comic book movie genre has been in a bit of a weird spot in 2023, some movies are beloved while others are box office bombs. With Marvel and DC still making lots of new movies, what are the ways they can fix the genre? Let’s get started!
Outside Inspiration: One of the things that I think DC has done really well with their movies pulling outside inspiration for the movies. The Dark Knight takes inspiration from Heat. Joker is very clearly a modern day version of Taxi Driver. The Batman has a lot of similarities with Se7en. All of those movies took outside inspiration and were praised and made lots of money. I think both Marvel and DC could learn something from this, don’t take inspiration from other comic book movies. Figure out what outside genres they can pull from to make their comic book movies. They can probably find a way to mix the superhero movie genre with The Magnificent Seven template, have something new and different while also feeling like a comic book movie. Even Shazam! feels like the superhero movie genre mixed with Big. That’s just a fun mash up of two very different things that work together really well. Hopefully with James Gunn’s DC Universe they can find ways to take out inspiration and apply them to Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, whoever that might be. Fans want something that feels new and I think doing this is a great way to do that.
Director’s Creative Vision: I think another aspect the films need to do a better job of doing is giving directors more creative control. Again, going back to what I said about The Batman and Joker, those movies feel like there’s one voice over the entire thing. They don’t feel like movies that had a bunch of notes from the studio saying to add this or take away that. No, those movies feel like Matt Reeves and Todd Phillips had a clear and distinct vision for those movies and they gotta make the movies they wanted to make. Even looking at the MCU, two of the most praised post-Endgame movies would be Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. It honestly feels like Ryan Coogler and James Gunn were given more creative control then most to tell the story they wanted to make. After Quantumania I think a lot of us were worried about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 feeling like just another generic MCU movie. It doesn’t, it feels like James Gunn got to direct the movie he wanted to direct. It doesn’t feel like Kevin Feige or other producers were giving James Gunn a bunch of notes, there weren't massive reshoots happening for the film. A handful of people will say that’s the best MCU movie since Avengers Endgame. Why did Quantumania fall below expectations? Because, it feels like a corporation directed the movie and not Peyton Reed the director they hired for this film. There’s reports of them changing the ending one month before the movie came out, that’s because Marvel couldn’t make up their mind with the film. Multiverse of Madness came out last year and it’s very polarizing and a large percentage of people thought it was a big disappointment (I’m one of those people). Since then Xochtl Gomez, America Chavez from the movie said “they” demanded 33 rewrites of the script. Elizabeth Olsen even said after a while she stopped reading the scripts because it was changing so much. Even though they got Sam Raimi who is one of the legends of the comic book movie genre, it feels like they wasted his talents as a filmmaker. Whether you love it or hate it, I think Love and Thunder feels like one creative vision for a movie. Did it work for most people? No it didn’t, but it feels like Taika was given creative control for that movie. That’s one of the reasons why I’m nervous about The Marvels, is the director going to have a distinct vision for the film or is it going to feel like another generic MCU movie. I’m not sure, but I think if the directors were given more control the quality of films will go WAY up.
Take their time: I think this more so applies to Marvel then it does to DC. DC normally puts out 2 movies a year, I believe this year it’s going to be 3. And they don’t have a lot of tv shows to put out. Last year we got Peacemaker. So in general, I think DC is better as far as stretching out the content and not jam packing it. Marvel on the other hand, I think struggles with this and I think that’s why the quality of Marvel has dropped. They’re wanting to put out 3-4 movies every year, plus 3-4 tv shows. So that means we’re getting 6-8 MCU projects a year. That’s a lot of MCU in one calendar year. in 2021 we got 4 MCU movies plus 5 tv shows, that’s 9 MCU projects in one year. In 2022 we got three movies, three tv shows, and two special presentations. 2023, not getting as much. Looks like it'll be three movies plus two tv shows. Maybe there because What If…? season 2 is rumored to premiere in December 2023. That’s a better pace to be moving at in my mind. As frustrating as the strikes were, I think studios like Disney could take advantage of that. They could sit down and figure out what hasn’t been working. Kevin Feige probably sat down and talked with Bob Igor and said “I’m exhausted, we need to slow down on the amount of content we’re producing”. So earlier this month Marvel delayed several of their upcoming tv shows. Echo was supposed to come out in November of this year, but it got delayed to January 2024. Several tv shows got delayed indefinitely which means they got delayed without a release window picked for it. Hopefully, they use that time to figure out how they can make their shows better. With the strikes I’m not sure if the 2024 movies will get delayed, I know Deadpool 3 is about half way done filming. Captain America: Brave New World has finished filming. I know Thunderbolts hasn’t started, that’s slated for December 2024. That could get delayed to 2025 depending on when they can start filming that movie. As of now, Echo and Ironheart I believe are the only confirmed MCU tv shows for 2024. The big takeaway from this, I think they need to slow down on the amount of content they’re producing. 2017, 2018, and 2019 Marvel had three movies per year in those three years. That worked really well for them, get back to that. I think a great strategy could be three MCU movies a year plus one tv show a year. Maybe two tv shows a year, so about 5 MCU projects a year.
Clear Vision for The Future: One of the things that worked so well about The Infinity Saga was from Iron Man in Phase 1 to Spider-Man: Far Far Home in Phase 3 there was a very clear plan for everything. Where Agent Coulson appears in almost every Phase 1 movie. The Avengers teases Thanos for the future, Phase 2 introduces the Guardians of the Galaxy, Thanos has a cameo in that. Black Widow is in Captain America: The Winter Soldier that introduces Falcon who’s also in Ant-Man. Leading up to Captain America: Civil War that was set up by events earlier on in the MCU. The Infinity Stones start to become a very big part of all of this that was a connective tissue between the movie. Then Infinity War and Endgame was the culmination of 10-11 years of movies that brought all of these characters together. After that, we’re now 2 years into The Multiverse Saga. Twice as much hours of content in The Multiverse Saga then what was in The Infinity Saga. And there’s not a clear vision for the future, we know we have The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars coming in a few years. But we don’t know who The Avengers are, we could make guesses but I don’t feel confident with my guesses. We know it’s multiverse and we’ve gotten several multiverse projects with Loki, What If…?, No Way Home, and Multiverse of Madness. But none of them really tie into one another, so it’s confusing as to what the rules of the multiverse are. No Way Home and Multiverse of Madness have a little bit of connective tissue but that’s because Doctor Strange is in both movies. The first season of Loki ended with the multiverse being broken, that’s not a big deal afterwards. Season 2 starts up later this week, and 2 years later we’ll follow that up. They’re setting up all of these things, but without a clear vision. Going back to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss showed up to recruit John Walker, she recruited Yelena in Black Widow. We know that’s leading up Thunderbolts. But how does that connect into Kang, how does Moon Knight tie into things, how does Eternals tie into it. That movie ended with a giant ceslitral head in the middle of the ocean, no projects since then have mentioned that. Sam Wilson’s Captain America we won’t see him until July 2024 even though The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ended in April 2021. That’s the big thing here, they’re setting up all of these things, all of these new characters without knowing where we will see them next. Hopefully very soon we get some connective tissue and get a clear end goal for The Kang Dynasty. I hope with James Gunn taking over, we don’t have what Marvel has done with Phases 4 and 5. Either in Superman: Legacy or the next project after that they should tease Darkseid or whatever the big bad is going to be. Maybe in Superman: Legacy they drop lines talking about this vigilante in Gotham City. Little things, nothing major but steps that get bigger and bigger leading to the final goal.
One singular voice over everything: In some ways, this kind of ties up everything I’ve said up to this point in time. Marvel and DC need one voice over everything, they need one person that oversees everything. For Marvel, that’s Kevin Feige. I’m not sure if I blame Kevin Feige for the disappointment of Phases 4 and 5. I would blame Disney and the people above him more than him. I think The Infinity Saga proves that Kevin Feige knows to run a big franchise, he gained our trust through 2008-2019. Now it feels like Kevin Feige doesn’t have as much of a voice “they” do. Who’s “they”? The “they” are the people that Elizabeth Olsen is talking about when she says “they demanded 33 rewrites of the script”. The “they” are in charge, not Feige. The DCEU kind of failed because they had multiple people over seeing the DCEU, they didn’t have their Kevin Feige. Now they have James Gunn, who I would say has gained most comic book movie fans trust over the years. I trust him, I have faith in him. I think they need to have James Gunn’s singular voice over everything. Hopefully WB and DC have learned after the DCEU basically failed as a shared universe. They need one voice over everything, they hired James Gunn to do that so let him do that.
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