Marvel has been a bit "mercury retrograde" recently.
rival DC won the Golden Lion Award with the independent film "Joker" and became the most honored superhero-themed movie in history.
The art affirmed by the film industry is the DC company, so naturally, people will have an opinion on the current super-British movie boss, Marvel, which is known for its popcorn entertainment and commercial value, and then evolved into a "Marvel movie" The controversy over whether it’s a movie or not, and this seems to have a growing trend in European and American film circles.
This discussion about the world's largest film IP may change the history of the entire film development.
｜The essence of the dispute: Is existence reasonable? The cause of the
incident stems from a recent remark by the film master and director of "Taxi Driver" Martin Scorsese. When he promoted his new film "The Irishman", he claimed that "Marvel movies are not movies, it is like a theme park" (coincidentally, the film "Taxi Driver" greatly influenced the "Joker" The story style, and the former starring, Hollywood acting god-Robert De Niro has also become a pivotal link in the growth of the clown in the latter movie). When
came out, it could be regarded as a scolding war across the Internet. Marvel fans claimed that Martin Scorsese could not keep up with the times and could not truly understand Marvel movies; those who supported him said: Marvel movies are entertainment in themselves It’s a bit far-fetched to be included in the film as one of the art forms. If
is simply tearing apart on the Internet, it is nothing, but as the incident slowly ferments, many Hollywood directors and actors have also appeared one after another, splitting into two groups of views.
The supporters of Scorsese are basically the big-time figures in the European and American film industry, Francis Ford Coppola, Pedro Almodova, Ken Roach, Ang Lee, and Zach Schneider, the former general director of DC.
These directors who take art films as their mission are attacking a fatal flaw of Marvel-too commercial. As Coppola said, Marvel's movies have no knowledge and inspiration, and audiences cannot feel the artistic value of light and shadow in them. Faced with the cool special effects created by Disney's gold smashing, Ang Lee, who is now doing a technological revolution, also said that Marvel's moves are too simple and repetitive. Even with the support of a networked background, the audience will slowly feel aesthetic fatigue.
The other faction that supports Marvel is basically the people involved in the production of Marvel movies, including Robert Downey Jr., the director of "Guardians of the Galaxy" James Gunn, Natalie Portman who will become the female Thor, and Disney CEO Robert Iger.
The reason they support is very simple-people need entertainment, they need comfort after hard life, and existence is reasonable. These views are a bit like Guo Jingming's remarks in "Actors please take their place" some time ago: Even if you don't like it, you have to let him exist, and it's your business that you don't like it. The most important thing is that the public likes it.
In fact, the differentiation of these two schools of speech is not as simple as a simple verbal war. If you look at the representatives of the two parties and the film ideas they adhere to, you will find that behind this is the market and the film itself, capital and All aspects of traffic IP, technology and content game. This not only shows that the development of Hollywood has come to a crossroads, but can even intuitively discover the changes in the thinking of a generation.
even, some people say: After this battle, maybe the movie will soon die.
｜Veteran film directors need to rely on streaming media companies to invest.
First look at the experience of these directors of supporters. They are all perfect spokespersons for orthodox movies. In the eyes of these directors, their works are not to please others, but to leave artistic footprints And when they were born, they used to use movies to express their views on things, and used light, shadow and personal descriptions of stories to tell the audience. To put it bluntly, they stick to the original intention of the movie.
You can extract the "Bible"-like philosophy in Coppola's "The Godfather", and understand the ethical viciousness between people in Almodovar's "Tie Me, Tie Me". Looking back at Marvel, it is indeed impossible to experience the sociological significance of "Taxi Driver" in "Iron Man", nor can I feel the director's unique style in the group drama of "Reunion". But the unanimous voice of these directors also shows that they all feel the real crisis, which stems from their common predicament-no money.
Take Scorsese’s new film "The Irishman" for example, thisThe film has the great director personally, and Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, two hardcore actors and actresses have joined forces again. The quality of the film will definitely not have a big problem, plus the blessing of new CG technology. , The director also broke the previous tradition and used new things. Comprehensively speaking, he should not worry about investment.
And the fact is that before the project was established, none of the six major Hollywood film companies gave the director who had been in the film industry more than 50 years old. In the end, it extended a helping hand and invested in this movie by the emerging giant in the streaming media industry, the young Netflix.
The rise of Netflix actually symbolizes the failure of the traditional film and television industry. In the early years, Netflix was a company that provided online DVD rental. After 2006, they began to expand their territory and provide online streaming media subscription services, which attracted A large number of fans pay attention and insist on buying the copyright of a large number of excellent works, which increases the richness of content. And their most notable achievement is to rely on the analysis of audience experience to create their own drama series. Under such circumstances, the traditional screenwriting model is broken. The innovation of the drama story does not come from a certain screenwriter, but from the whole network. Tens of millions of viewers, this undoubtedly brought great innovation to the creation of film and television, and guaranteed the inspiration of filmmakers.
Many big directors began to like this model, like David Fincher, Alfonso Cuarón have all embraced Netflix. The effect of this is that the content of the drama and the company that produces the drama surpass the income of the film company, and even Apple is considering building its own streaming media company.
Looking at the traditional film market, the North American box office market only fluctuates by about 10 billion a year, and the bad consequence of lack of money is the brain drain. The creativity of the film industry is slowly being swallowed up. This is a shortcut of the Internet to bring films. The biggest impact to come.
This is not the worst. The worst is that the movie market, which moviemakers are about to lose, is occupied by the Disney family for more than half. Especially after Marvel acquired Twentieth Century Fox, giants like Warner seem to be unable to fight Disney.
happens to be Marvel Pictures, the most valuable IP under Disney. To put it bluntly, the old filmmakers' attack on Marvel is actually a counterattack against Disney's monopoly of the movie market behind it.
We can also look forward to the anti-Marvel sword of "Joker" now. Will this movie, which is produced by Marvel's rival and full of artistic style, win the best at next year's Oscar? If not, Disney has completely ruled Hollywood.
｜Veteran filmmakers take the route of technological innovation and fail to succeed
Since the content cannot be spelled out, what about technological innovation? At present, it seems that this is still unsuccessful, and Li Ang has proved it very realistically. Before
, his "Billy Lynn's Midfield War" broke the traditional 24 frames of the movie for the first time, replacing 24 frames with 120 frames, which can make the movie more delicate and real, and the viewing experience is more shocking and real than the "relink" It can also greatly change the creative habits of directors and actors. If this technology is successfully popularized, it will be a big event that can be recorded in the history of film, and it will be the greatest change in the past ten years since the birth of the film. Ang Lee will be able to stand in the position of Lumiere. character.
Unfortunately, four years have passed, and there are only two 120-frame movies in the world, both of which were shot by Ang Lee.
This shows that technological innovation does not seem to be enough to bring exciting news to the film industry. In this way, Marvel and the Disney behind it and even these emerging streaming media companies have completely turned movies into capital playthings. Movies as a form of entertainment seem to be at stake.
｜History will prove: Marvel is a great
. Put aside these directors because of the capital's prejudice against Marvel and Disney's capital invasion. All that Marvel has done can only be described in terms of greatness. Not only is it great, it is also an important changer in film development.
Prior to this, the film's story mode was still relatively simple, and many huge contents generally needed to be realized within two hours, which was a big challenge for directors and actors. But the episodes are different. The episodes can be laid out and then narrated. Its content has a large layout capacity, which can reflect more things, and the story suspense left in each episode of the episode can better attract the audience.
I have rarely seen these in previous movies. Although there are movie series like "Harry Potter", Marvel has really turned this dramatized model into its own movie universe.
comicThe difference between Wei’s movie universe and series of movies lies in its expansibility. Marvel, which has comics as the foundation, has a huge story system as a base, which allows them to separate different movie series and finally merge into a collection. One of his films can exist independently, or provide clues to later films, or even dig out a new story. Take "Iron Man" as an example. This film is Iron Man's personal film, and it is also a "complex". The beginning of the "Lian" story also led to S.H.I.E.L.D., relying on S.H.I. This is equivalent to layers of expansion, giving Marvel an almost unlimited source of stories. Even if a series of stories is exhausted, new content can be drawn through the main story line.
Therefore, Marvel can tolerate different styles of directors and actors to create in their plans. Not only that, Marvel’s superhero stories can also develop all over the world, providing opportunities for actors of different skin colors, such as "Black Panther" and "Shangqi". This is a very good creative opportunity for the lifeless film industry. Because of Marvel’s financial guarantee, the director does not have to worry about issues other than the film and concentrate on creation. This is the best guarantee that Marvel can give.
In addition to this, Marvel slowly turned superhero movies into a new culture, accompanied by the progress of the entire movie market, old filmmakers will not stick to the traditional model without innovation, new movies People will create new stories that attract audiences based on the characteristics of traffic brought by Marvel. This is a change that is more important than technology, and it promotes changes in the vision of shadow people.
The fast culture brought about by the Internet is a characteristic of this era. Movies cannot stand still and do not know how to adapt. Yangchun Baixue’s film art is still appreciated, but their creative mode must adapt to the changes of this era.
Finally, Marvel is actually a classic memory of our post-95s. The story it laid out accompanied our growth, and we were also used to the role of Marvel in our lives.
