The MCU is somewhat of an anomaly within the context
of the history of film.
It's an interconnected tapestry of films
that is both inviting to viewers and has inspired
massive financial windfalls.
But not unlike the comics the films are adapted from,
there are very concrete intangible pitfalls
to long-term, serialized, superhero storytelling.
To put it simply, orchestrating narrative escalation
correctly is key to maintaining a superhero universe.
That's easier said than done on the scale
that Marvel's attempting to do it.
When you have a universe built out of complete stories that
act as building blocks in order to build
a much larger narrative thread, it's
vital to know where the moments of tension are
and when they can be used to raise the stakes,
from 1,000 feet up, not necessarily film to film,
and conversely, when those stakes need to be lowered.
Every superhero story can't be the universe is ending,
we have to stop Thanos.
You need interstitial narratives to allow for character growth.
This hierarchy is what makes the big moment so successful.
You need to be able to play these stories off one another
without making it a battle of one-upmanship.
The MCU however, has struggled with this concept
at various points throughout its existence, understandably.
There's a tricky science to making the individual solo
films feel important while you're in them, while still
having them be a piece of a larger much more
important whole.
To break it down, one of the issues in the early MCU films,
which became a stereotype, was that in order
to make the movies feel like it was important to the larger
universe, it would end with a large aerial battle.
These are the kinds of fatiguing idiosyncrasies
that Marvel comics has been dealing with for 80 years.
They have numerous examples of when they read the tea leaves
well and when they didn't.
So how can the MCU avoid the same mistakes
that those very Marvel comics made,
especially post Infinity Gauntlet?
Infinity Gauntlet quickly became Marvel's prized jewel
within its comic line.
It was the defining cosmic crossover
for the house of ideas.
And this is when comics were selling.
Sure Secret Wars existed and was a sales juggernaut.
But Marvel didn't have a crisis on infinite Earths.
Until Jim Starlin and George Perez
supplied them with a sweeping, galactic, epic on paper.
It was loved by fans, generated loads of cash,
and put Marvel comics on the map in 1991,
well in a bigger or more crossover-ish way.
Despite some development issues, Infinity Gauntlet
was a modern classic within comics.
The likes of which the Marvel universe
hadn't seen previously.
Much like the MCU adaptation, Infinity Gauntlet
sees Thanos constructing the ultimate weapon in order
to wreak havoc across space and time.
Unlike the films, he does is to prove his undying
love to the concept of death as opposed
to attempting to balance the population of the universe,
because that would have been unbelievably silly
and shifted the tone of these films dramatically.
But anyways, the book comes out.
It's a huge success.
So where does Marvel go from there?
How do they top this truly epic run within comic books?
They make the obvious move.
They put a rushed sequel into production.
In fact, instead of just doing one sequel, they do two.
The Infinity War was released in 1992,
and The Infinity Crusade released in 1993.
The Infinity Gauntlet felt like a story
that had been worked on for a decade, well thought out,
intricate in its plot and character development.
And Infinity Crusade and Infinity War
felt like a quick comic book cash grabs,
because that's what they were.
So here is a big lesson immediately
for the MCU to learn.
When you have a massive juggernaut,
culture-defining success, don't take an iterative approach
to story, take a divergent one.
Do something different to de-escalate the narrative.
You've killed half the Avengers.
You brought them back to life.
What's left to do?
Introduce new characters.
Introduce new threats.
And introduce interesting and unique new status quos,
which thankfully, that's exactly what
Kevin Feige and the rest of the MCU head honchos
are currently doing.
Phase four looks chock to the brim with new characters
and new adventures that have nothing
at all to do with Thanos or the core Avengers at all that
were set up in phase one.
But that doesn't mean it's the only pitfall.
Going back to Marvel comics, biggest problem area
for Marvel that's almost one to one with the MCU
is not valuing creators and letting
them leave because of a lack of respect
and a lack of investment.
James Gunn, Edward Norton, Terrence Howard,
and Kenneth Branagh have all walked away
from Marvel for different and varying reasons, to be clear.
Did Joe and Anthony Russo leave the MCU
because they were offered money by a Chinese investment
firm in order to start their own studio?
Yes.
But the MCU needs its core brain trust
to keep the quality high and characters voices intact.
So should Marvel have fought for any or all of these people?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
For those who are unaware, in the 1990s
Marvel Comics was a big money business.
So much so that a single issue would sometimes
net the creators millions of dollars in royalties.
This spawned negotiations for character,
partial ownership, and increased royalties with some
of the company's top talent.
Creators like Todd McFarlane, Marc Silvestri, and others,
all felt underappreciated by the company,
and decided to go out and start their own comic book companies.
Parallels between them and the Russo brothers
are pretty clear.
Are there more directors and writers
currently in the Marvel system that will soon
jump ship to form their own enterprises
or just work elsewhere?
Probably.
What's important is that Marvel Studios treat those people
well.
Bleeding talent is the number one reason that too big to fail
becomes small enough to do so.
And Marvel has started to see some turnover.
But another one of the main issues
at the center of interconnected comic book universes
is the fact that the storytelling tropes associated
with them have become so easily recognizable
that they telegraph the rest of the story to the audience.
Specifically for instance the idea
that characters could be killed off in order
to raise the narrative stakes.
Marvel Comics has killed Spider-Man multiple times, Dr.
Doom, most of the X-Men, and even killed Galactus.
And they've all come back.
The audience understands that these characters are
coming back to life eventually.
They're highly valuable intellectual property.
People are smart enough to understand this.
And this is a major issue both in the comics and the MCU.
How many times has Loki been murdered?
How many times have they faked Nick Fury's death?
These repeated tropes lessen the viability of actual status quo
change and lessen the impact of potential decisions made
by writers and directors.
Therefore, you hit a point where if you're actually
going to kill someone, actually kill them.
And not just because of a Fox dispute like Quicksilver.
Kill them because there's a good narrative reason to do so,
and make it pay off.
Don't retcon it.
And this kind of comes down to maybe the biggest issue.
And it's a semi constant one across the board for both
of these things, but especially in comic books,
it's crossover fatigue or just fatigue in general.
Comic book readers are always being
forced to buy tie-in books, crossover books, and events
specials in order to read a full story.
With the MCU pushing out into TV, animation, and more feature
films, the parallels here are one to one.
It's a lot to ask people to have seen 23
movies ahead of Infinity War.
Now we need to also have a Disney+ subscription,
and a Hulu subscription, and the time to watch those things?
It's arguably the most pervasive issue facing the MCU.
Marvel Comics and DC Comics have both
suffered from repressive house styles.
During the late 80s and early 90s
Todd McFarlane was repeatedly told by Marvel editorial
to stop drawing Spider-Man's webs in such an
overly dramatic way.
In the 70s, DC editorial hired Curt Swan
to redraw all of Jack Kirby's Superman bases
on the Superpowers and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen
titles.
That same thing happens with Marvel films.
Creative intent is sanded down by attempts
at emulating what has already worked in the past.
Humor passes on the scripts are required these days,
leaving all the characters the same level of quote unquote
jokey.
The universe is filled with 15 different types of people
that all have that Joss Whedon esque bounce vocal pitter
batter.
And it's happening visually as well.
Here's a crazy idea.
Imagine if Marvel made a single movie without all the jokes.
Almost as though not every one of the films at this point
needs to carry the same tone.
Pretty crazy idea, right?
From visual standpoint, like I mentioned,
the films have a restrictively cohesive visual aesthetic
at this point.
The same fight choreography teams
work on almost all the films.
The same approach to color correction is used,
and the same overreliance on green screen and CGI fixes
become ubiquitous across the board.
It takes a lot to have a Marvel movie stand out visually.
For every Thor Ragnarok you have three or four Ant-Man
and the Wasps.
Managing tone is arguably something
that comics were doing better and still are doing better
than the MCU is at this point.
Look the reality is that Marvel Studios has still
been extremely intelligent in their approach
to building a cinematic universe.
They practically invented the modern popularized version
of the idea.
They're unarguably the first people
to accurately combine multiple film franchises
into a single cohesive world since the Universal Monsters
in the late 1930s.
And they have taken a large amount of that success
from looking at the Marvel comic book approach
to storytelling in detail.
They pulled the best and brightest characters,
the most interesting storylines, and the most dynamic visuals
directly from the books themselves.
So now the question remains, will they
roll in onto themselves now that they've become successful,
or will they have the foresight to continue
to learn new but existing lessons from Marvel editorial,
from those very comic books?
Will they attempt to rush out too much content too quickly?
Will they attempt to repeat the success of Avengers Infinity
War and End Game too. soon?
Will they finally kill a character
and have them stay dead for a good reason?
All questions we'll have to wait to see answered.
But the point is, is that art is not
all that dissimilar to really any other job.
There's always someone or something there to learn from.
There's always a way to make sure history doesn't repeat
itself even if what you're looking at
doesn't look quite like the thing you're doing.
[INAUDIBLE] can learn the same way
that all good artists should and do,
the MCU will remain in good hands.
Art is always about growth.
The MCU should be no different, Martin Scorsese's
comments and all.
Well guys that's it for today's episode of Nerdstalgic.
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