Monday, January 22, 2018

Universal Monstrosities: Paying Dues


Roll the dice enough and a few winners are bound to pop up by chance.


X-Men film series


While the future of this series, responsible for setting the superhero boom of the modern era into motion, is officially up in the air with its recent acquisition by their competition at Disney and inevitable reintegration into the setting of their parent company, Marvel, the “X-Men” Film series has made remarkable strides in the last few years that make the abrupt upheaval and potential close of its run more than a little bit tragic.

It’s a franchise steeped in a legacy whose ramifications can still be seen in almost every superhero movie released over the last decade or so and it may not have a stainless track record but that may very well be key to what helped it to mutate, evolve and endure similar to the emerging species of which its namesake belongs to.

As the “X-Men” series had begun to run its original course, with the critical tanking of its third installment and first Wolverine solo spinoff, it found itself unfortunately written into a corner that it could only worm its way out of by soft rebooting with 2011’s “X-Men: First Class.”

While Twentieth Century Fox ultimately managed to reinvigorate the franchise with a succession of entries using continuity in broad strokes to thematically tie things up and reposition the franchise for higher creative potential, the chances taken on them along with the success of the R-rated, comically focused, and highly experimental “Deadpool” incentivized them down a path of genre experimentation that brought them higher critical acclaim, financial success, and full maximization of their concepts potential, which has always bumped up against the ceiling of the broader Marvel Universe.

In short, by using mainstream “X-Men” entries to bolster their finances, Fox, accidentally or otherwise, has essentially managed to capitalize on the “X-Men” franchise by enhancing focus on its science fiction concept to create a series that exists as a testing ground for new ideas within the superhero genre, shaking up the very foundation of what we would commonly consider to be superhero films. Although cohesion was sacrificed for this, it has yet to be done in the name of actual quality as the only superhero movie potentially threatening to topple “Logan” in terms of quality is the one bringing together 10 years worth of introduced cinematic superheroes.

At a time when DC faced its own struggle, the only real competition Marvel face was from Fox’s handling of a property that they didn’t even own.


Legendary Monsterverse


With 2 decently received movies released to the public and successfully reviving interest in Godzilla overseas, the coming showdown between Kong and the King of Monsters looms ever closer and while the immediate financial success of the film has only been rather modest, its fittingly modest presentation may have helped it to sustain its decent level of support and prevented it from slipping into the territory of more cynical expectations.

While the Kaiju genre, running the gamut of clever thought provoking socially aware films to dumb fun popcorn blockbusters, has always had a history of being able to produce functional sequels on the flimsiest of premises, it no doubt helps that the genre that essentially characterizes anthropomorphic natural disasters doesn’t exactly require the level of sequel baiting that tends to sink other movies attempting to build up to a grander spectacle.

All that the films of the “Monsterverse” have had to do is tell a self contained story that doesn’t destroy the monster and the sky is the limit on what they can do with subsequent movies, like a big budgeted and less forced version of a slasher movie.

Time will tell whether this franchise can keep its ambitions in check long enough to complete their short term plan, as well as whether or not the license will be extended beyond 2020 but for now, “Godzilla (2014)” and “Kong: Skull Island” have set this franchise on a path that seems to recognize that the worth of a cinematic universe is in the sum of its individual parts rather than convoluted metanarrative rendering single installments as commercials for commercials.


The Conjuring franchise


Perhaps referring to this as a “universe” is a bit of an overstatement but there’s no denying that despite leaving behind any veneer of truth in favor of embracing the fictionalized Warrens as folk heroes, “The Conjuring” has left a surprising mark on the Hollywood landscape by providing a series of fairly high quality horror films sharing something of a definitive pathos that thus far seems to exist more for the sake of enriching the setting of subsequent movies rather than stringing the audience along with randomly generated plot threads.

The system of having the main series following the exorcisms of Ed and Loraine surrounded by minor spinoffs based around antagonistic spirits has managed to finally hit a proper stride on both ends with the surprise hit of “Annabelle: Creation” and even though the franchise seems to rather quaint compared to its many competitors on the Cinematic Universe scene, its grasp of the fundamentals of selling people on good movies rather than a continuing franchise perhaps best epitomizes just about everything that has gone wrong with other examples.

The concept may be malleable to the needs of individual film genres but ultimately, the only organic way to develop a Cinematic Universe is to let it come into being naturally.

Ignoring that the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” didn’t confirm its setting was building to a crossover of radically opposing elements until 3 years and 4 movies in, what we ultimately have in sampling from other examples that have managed to thus far succeed is proof that the promise of crossover is simply no substitute for a strong foundation, careful planning, and worthwhile individual installments.

For further evidence of this, one need not look any further than the currently flailing…


DC Extended Universe


a The “DCEU” has been a true tragedy in motion to watch.

Unlike the fragmented licensing of the Marvel properties, Warner Bros. had 100% access to every inch of the DC Universe and still managed to piss away all of the worth and potential of a functional Cinematic Universe for DC superheroes by shutting out criticism to the inaugural entry and doubling down on the vision of a man that presented a polarizing vision of the setting’s most iconic character, producing a film subjected to a major critical lambasting upon its release and lining up the subsequent 3 films for failure via domino effect by counting their chickens before they hatched and accelerating development on said films to follow a similar production mold.

I bring this all up here simply because I have no intention of studying what went wrong with the DCEU in any particular depth in this series at all. This is partially because I’ve more or less done that on some level several times, ignoring my thoughts on the reviews of the actual films, which still more or less stand as is.

Another factor in this is my general desire to move on from beating a dead horse. A lot of my early ire for the DCEU stemmed from my frustration in knowing that I may have lost any sense of iconography and adoration in the depiction of some of my absolute favorite characters of all time. As the continued success of the comic books with the DC Rebirth initiative has shown, this is no longer the case and a general sense of understanding in who these characters are and how forcing them against their mold with very little in the way of insight has prevailed to make them better than ever and assure me that even if they become unrecognizable, they’ll always make a comeback one day. This leads into my third and final reason for avoiding the topic.

If you like the DCEU and any of its negatively received turn out, we may disagree but power to you. My opinion should never be the final authority on what you enjoy. However, there’s just no way to avoid the reality at this point that the franchise is fundamentally broken and to say otherwise would be mildly delusional.

The clusterfuck of “Justice League” and “Suicide Squad’s” production, along with members of said casts and production expressing disappointment and dissatisfaction with the final products is well documented at this point and most of this is tied to a lukewarm response to “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” that really wouldn’t have had much impact if its financial performance and critical reception from both professional reviewers and audiences didn’t indicate a problem that would inevitably sink the ship.

The accelerated time table that colored the bulk of the Universe through the lens of a man that didn’t know how to make its content resonate with audiences universally under the belief that the studio had a sure fire hit on their hands just because marketing information shows that people like a superhero cinematic universe thus assumed they would jump on board just by meeting quotas is a fundamental problem that has led to the development of a series that only works for a certain core demographic that doesn’t justify the budgets being pumped into them.

If you need any further evidence than this, consider that the only 2 film that haven’t been widely lambasted by critics and audiences are “Wonder Woman” and “Man of Steel,” only one of which has received unambiguous critical acclaim and both of which operate more or less independently of any world building set into motion by “Dawn of Justice.”

Then recall that those little factoids are only the tip of the iceberg that now consists of a shocking underperformance by “Justice League,” whose aforementioned production nightmare may have actually led to the intended crown jewel of the DCEU and Warner Bros. answer to “The Avengers” losing money and damaging the future of their brand.

Universes don’t happen overnight and next time, we’ll kick things off by looking at the one example of cynical thinking that led to premature failure that dwarfs the DCEU by comparison, keeping its franchise in the mummified grave from which it rose.

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