#thecheckin: Ep. 27 - 2000s Marvel & Cinematic Imagination
These were movies that had imagination, because each one of these characters were very, very unique. And I think they were more interested in being a movie than being a start of a franchise or trilogy or spin off or bridge to some other bigger story. And so much of this today is 100% absent of any standalone ability to have an imagination and just entertain an audience. They don't have any arteurship
I mean, there can be a degree of that in some of the choices that they make, but I'll put a link here. It's, I guess, survey results of what teens and young adults are looking for in storytelling, also with respect to movies. And when I think about the movie houses in some senses, it's like they're almost creating and milking machines for different generations or different perspectives than what's up and coming as well
But one thing I will say that I think is fascinating, because you said that the comic books are usually revered for their exploration, and that's absolutely true. I'll give you an example of Spider man, because whenever we think of dark storytelling, we tend to always gravitate towards Batman because it's an easy aesthetic to be able to apply that fear and look, know he's dark already. We would expect that from him. Spider man has a storyline where essentially somebody that he loves is raped
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Okay. Wow. I had no idea there was such a storyline with Spiderman, and I completely forgot about the merchandising aspect of it. And you're right. And when you think about, like, merchandising, I mean, there are adults who buy things. There are kids who buy things. That's like, the broadest spectrum of customer, not just the movie. Wow. Yeah. The. I can't even imagine them
It. So the, the weird thing about it is, like, especially when you look at comic book films, that industry and the comic book genre as a film, it's such a conundrum, because when you think about what comic books already are, they're merchandising. Because the average comic book, in many ways, before there were television shows for these different characters, before there were movie for these different characters, they were already being printed on t shirts
And so even a small decision, like, and again, now to look at Marvel movies and comics and how much is stripped just, it's so disappointing. I mean, I get know they've got to make money and they want to make it, quote unquote, family friendly. But why can't there be these multiple shades, let's say the family friendly, friendly versions and then something that is more thought provoking and more gritty and more disappointing
That's a very interesting genre to use as a comparable device in this conversation because science fiction has always been a cautionary genre. Most of the best science fiction is trying to warn us or is trying to give us a forewarning of sorts, foreboding and letting us know ahead of time of things that are occurring and building that we refuse to acknowledge. And I think the unfortunate method is that aliens and spaceships and all these types of different things are what people only think of
But if we deem certain forms of literary writing or pieces of culture, movies, tv, et cetera, as, quote unquote, childish or elevate others to be, quote unquote, the adult thing, crime, romance, thriller, even those three categories is funny, right, to see those described as. As adult because to me, they're stripped of. It's almost really reductive. Adults do crime, adults do thrill seeking things, and adults do romance
Because one is the original, the other is not a sequel. It's more of a remake or more of a reimagining. And the second one is very disturbing because I'd argue that if the first one is about these dynamics of communism, integration, changing of a guard from american traditionalism, it's being challenged by things that look like us, or however you want to use it as an allegory for the 1970s, one is about after integration, the dynamics of conformity, the mundaneness of it
I mean, it's also very white, right? Where is the diverse lived experiences, perspectives, the shades of Gray, do you know what I mean? And no wonder then that shapes the decisions made of which scripts to consider again and how they're presented. And I may be talking out of my ass, I don't know
Because in a world where everything is heteronormative, there is a discussion that needs to be had about the levity of it all. Like, how do we balance this? Like, at what point do we put ourselves out there in order to achieve equality? And at what point do we just put ourselves out there as our own identity because of mediocrity, because we have nothing else to offer? These are different topics and difficult topics, and film used to help with that
Evidently you can't find it on streaming, so I ordered it on Amazon. Thankfully it's very cheap and I'm hoping they re release it on Criterion because it's a very unique film. From everything that I've read about and the film that I brought up to you before, big girls don't cry, they get even, which is personally a terrible name for the movie, considering that the original name was Step kids
There was a show that was done, I think it was in Japan, and it was called old enough. And this sound really weird as a tangent, but it was basically children under the age of usually under four, but sometimes under five, and starting at maybe 18 months, two years, and they would send them on their very first errand all by themselves
And I don't know if I'm seeing it through a nostalgic lens or a filmmaker's lens, but when I watch a certain trailer for movies of the era, I don't need to see diversity. And that's what, to me, it robs us from the ability to really understand what life is and take away any type of virtue or any type of moral of the story
Okay, I am just blown away. I put a link here for anybody else who's coming along to a link to the trailer, to step kids. And the amount of nuance and complexity in just the trailer alone compared to the things that we see today. There's so much more character development. There's so much more. Just more. Wow. Also, I've put a link here to the YouTube SAS account, the morbid zoo for anybody else who's interested as well. Thank you
The two words that really stood out to me that you used were texture and whether it was relatable or not. And not only is there going back to, again, the Christmas movies, and there's a lack of connection with respect to the human story, let alone how can we connect with it if there isn't connection within the movie, right? And so how can we create relatability between a viewer and what's being created if there isn't that texture?
You. So I harvey something that's called the sitcom theory. And the sitcom theory is one of the reasons why sitcoms were so successful during their time period, whether. Let's just start in the 1950s. I'll even argue the. The late 1940s, whenever the honeymooners came on. But let's start at the honeymooners all the way up until. What is it, like, ten rules for dating my teenage daughter right there?
If it's possible to create media that reintegrates all of these different compartments that we've made, these hollowed compartments, and include more of the real grittiness of humanness, but I don't know what that looks like, and I don't know how that happens. I would like to think it's possible, but at this point, I feel like we're so far down the path that we are and even fooling ourselves, or perhaps, I don't know, chicken and an egg, right?