"Modern Audiences" are just a small bunch of people that hates good stuff and want to hijack everything with woke, but then, these same people never appear to watch it.
Ghostbusters 2016 was a great example of a studio effing up royally, and immediately engaging the thinky-thinky bits, retooling, and getting back on track. Not enough studios capable or willing to do that.
@@retroblastingThat is true, but the confounding factor is owners and interest in the properties. The Marvel properties that Sony has access to are still heavily influenced by the Disney people they sold their souls to, er, partnered with. It's a mess that, frankly, isn't worth it. On the other hand, Ghost Core said, "Yeah, nah, we go back to formula or we don't do this."
@@retroblastingNot just same studio. Same clueless cocaine fueled idiot producer behind it. Good ol’ Amy Pascal! Of North Korean Sony hack email leaks fame.
You're right, although what they did immediately was attack half the world for not liking their shitty film whilst at the same time re-editing it for bluray and streaming. Absolute cluster fuck and potentially damaging to the brand, as you say they re-evaluated and steered in a better direction.
Hey, remember that augmented, stoic, emotionless and indestructible combat soldier and you never see his face? Yeah, we're taking his helmet off first episode and you'll see his face all the time. And then he does the nasty with a human spy, who is working with the Covenant alien race. And remember in the games, where Master Chief eventually/ basically falls in love with his AI (Cortana) but can't bring himself to tell her? Now Cortana is like his bratty little sister, who ends up watching him do the nasty with the spy.
Your moment about introducing yourself to the older corporate fellow, hit me in the memory zone thoroughly. When I still worked for the last major company I was at, I had spoken to a guy who was placed over handling a lot of the IPs we had, and some of the products we would generate. I remember asking him if he liked sci-fi or fantasy, because that's a lot of what we did. Nope. He "didn't watch that kind of kid stuff". I asked him what his hobbies were, and he said "Um, I don't know, reading the paper. I used to like to play fantasy football, but only when I won." I'd never met a person that was literally a dry piece of human toast like that. That year, we had DISMAL sales, made some massive oversights, all on his watch, his calls. He's still employed there, even with the massive layoffs that the company has endured for the last few years.
Unfortunately that's the corporate world for you. Anyone with good Ideas is flushed out & they keep the corporate yes men who have little to no personality involved because they will agree with everything that their superiors say & treat the people below them like they are just a number instead of a human being.
@@MichaelYianni-sn3wm Oh man, yeah, I know, I'd worked the corporate sectors of many companies for well over 28 years. The horror stories and stupidity I've seen could fill a dictionary page count level book.
So that is why money rarely meets talent. They are in charge of a business where they have no passion or even like what the customer likes. And they are not interested about what customer likes or interested in pleasing the customer. They think money is the cause and effect.
The fact that Sydney Sweeney practically had to beg to have a scene of her in costume hanging upside down should be enough to tell that no one had any interest in making anything with these characters.
Its so often so obvious its like. "We bought the rights to chicken soup. Now we know fans of chicken soup will eat it up no matter what. How can we change this so it will appeal to fans of beef soup and tomato soup? I know itll end up tasting nothing like chicken soup but we gotta expand the market!"
"Galaxy Quest" was another movie that was mis-marketed, and potentially released at the wrong time because the studio wasn't exactly sure what the movie was. It went on to become a cult classic, and a great homage to Star Trek, but that was because of the audience.
The US government quietly removed its restrictions of propaganda in 2020. I know it's probably a coincidence but I definitely seen a declining quality.
@retroblasting well thats because Hollywood is and always has been their #1 recruitment tool, for example Top Gun Maverick was fast tracked because recruitment was diwn. But I think the other element here is that studios just take for granted the fans, e.g., they'll consume what we tell them because it has a star wars badge but now we'll get new "non-existent" fans by having a Girl Boss main character
I have never heard of Sidney prior to today. I couldn’t pick her out of a line up. The idea of a spider-man movie without spider-man is lucky charms with out marshmallows. It doesn’t matter if studios tease eye candy but try to shame you for looking at it. This movie screamed uninteresting. Sony shit Hollywood needs to understand “if it’s worth doing. It’s worth doing right”.
My question is, who asked for a Madam Web movie? I'm asking for X-Force. Where is that movie? I'm asking for Robotech/ Macross. Where is that movie? I'm asking for Metroid. Where is that movie? Anyone want to add?
@@craighofmann638I'm a huge M.A.S.K. fan as well! (Just ask Michael which 80's property I comment/talk about the most!) And there actually was some development, pre-pandemic, about a live-action M.A.S.K. movie! But the FIRST 'improvement' the studio was going to make, was to make it......a comedy!! Seriously, that was the direction they were considering! So I look back and think that maybe one of the GOOD things about the pandemic, was that it was able to shut that process down. It was at that point, that I am RELIEVED that a lot of 80's cartoons haven't been touched by Hollywood. At least, not yet......
Oh yeah, and Samus Aran is my favorite video game character of all-time! 👍But I hope they NEVER make a Metroid movie. Because I can all but GUARANTEE that they will just make her another generic 'girl-boss' in a power suit, with really NONE of the nuances, depth, and uniqueness that make her such a brilliant character.
The problem is that writers probably never watched M.A.S.K. and may not be interested in developing such materials. They would be interested in preaching their way within any story and that would kill the franchise. It is better to have no movie than a bad movie.
Would have been nice if they hold up to the Madam Web of the comics. This had nothing to do with the comic SpiderVerse. Just stole the name and fantasize a Total new character
Once again, you hit the nail on the head, Michael. We're in the wilderness, man. Especially, when it comes to great content. Recently, I have come to the conclusion that if we want good movies and television series produced that we’re going to have to make them ourselves. That's the only path I see going forward.
About six months ago, I was telling a coworker "Guess what one of my FAVORITE cartoons from the 80's was. And still is.......JEM. That's right, the cartoon for GIRLS. I'm just a regular BLACK man, but my older cousin tricked me into watching a few episodes when we were kids. And I ended up actually liking it! Because behind a lot of the 'Truly Outrageous' stuff, there were actually a number of deep and heavy episodes. Like the flashback episode where the father of Jem/Jerrica and Kimber was pretty much dying of CANCER. But he never really told them because he didn't want his own daughters worrying about him and just wanted to enjoy the time he had left with them. Pretty deep stuff for a kid's cartoon, and even a GIRLS cartoon at the time." And come to find out just a few years ago that the idea of Jem from Hasbro was essentially to make "Transformers, but for girls". And after all, didn't Jem and The Holograms basically 'transform' every time she used her holographic earrings to switch outfits and identities on the fly? And the part that really drives it home: The producers and writers targeted the show obviously for little girls with the glamour and fashion and romance elements, but they also put in JUST enough sci-fi and adventure......so that BOYS would maybe watch it too! And many of us did! In speaking with a lot of other just regular guys too, MANY of us watched Jem. We were just 'secret fans' at the time. So even today, I look at Jem from the 80's as arguably the best example of a female-centric concept/property done right!
Then they made a crappy reboot movie a few years ago, and none of the people who worked on the show or created the characters were involved. I never watched Jem but even I can tell they screwed it all up from what little I knew about it.
@@KasumiKenshirou Facts! I didn't see it myself. But the movie was so terrible as a matter of fact, that I think it was only in theaters for a SINGLE week! Literally . MAYBE ten days at most. A female co-worker who actually DID see it said that "They got almost EVERYTHING wrong. It was the worst 80's remake movie I have ever seen!" Then she later told me about a completely FANmade movie on TH-cam. It's only about 35-40 minutes long. So I checked it out, and it wasn't bad! It was an example of what Michael basically often points out: Fans with just a passion and respect for a property, made a movie with probably a few THOUSAND dollars, better than a multi-BILLION dollar company did. It's crazy....
She-Ra was popular with boys as well. Powerpuff Girls, Kim Possible, Totally Spies are all very popular with guys. Hell, Rainbow Bright was popular with guys.
With Hollywood being all over the place, going from one extreme to the next, I'm reminded of a quote from Red Dead Redemption. "You keep jumping from one side of the fence to the other, you might just get impaled on it."
It didn't even have Madame Web in it. She's supposed to be an old blind and crippled woman with mental powers. And from what I hear, it doesn't really have a "Spider-Woman" in it. "Madame Web" just has brief visions of the future where the girls are superheroines. The clips of them in the costume from the trailer is all that there is.
Yup. I love how eloquently you put what I’ve been feeling about modern Hollywood lately. Someone also mentioned that Disney changed all the boy brands into girl/princess brands. So the lost both the boys and the girls.
I work for a major corporation, not even in entertainment, and we do this all the time with both our customers AND even our own employees. Come up with something "we" think is cool, put zillions into it, and never once ask: who asked for this? Does anyone want it? What are we solving for? Then all Surprised Pikachu when there's no interest.
The Tom Holland and Riami trilogy plus Spider-Verse outweigh the bad so far. However the mischaracterization of Venom, Morbius now Madame Web really affect the MCU proper in a bad way.
24:23 Ironically, Pixar can directly trace it's lineage to Star Wars. Once upon a time, John Lasseter worked for Lucasfilm and saw potential in an R&D project called the Pixar computer. He then proposed that Steve Jobs provide capital to purchase the Pixar computer so they could create a start up animation studio. And the rest is history.
3:21 This is one of the things I really admire about retroblasting: Michael makes an active effort to critique media targeted at specific demographics, without targeting those same demographics. This might sound like a low bar to clear, but I've met too many people who dont understand this distinction, and will cruelly mock those demographics because a bad movie came out that "represents" them
Pretty much the Retroblasting videos I rewatch the MOST....are Michael's analyses of corporate culture and the decline of quality in modern fandoms! Close to 90% of the material IS almost eerily prophetic! He all but literally warned us over EIGHT years ago, (when even the 'Almighty' MCU was at it's peak), that corporations were going to get rid of all creatives and replace them with executives. He even said during a livestream over 5 years ago something like "Hollywood is so lazy creatively, watch them start considering computers to come up with a way to replace creatives and actors." And what issue was at the core of the actor''s strike just last year? 😮
Welcome to post-market capitalism, where the want of the customer and the product of the company is no longer how these big companies get their funding. The executives aren't chasing an alternative audience like we've all been assuming. They're chasing funding grants and investment from capital management groups. The largest of them, which owns a lot of stake in the entertainment industry says "Contribute positively to society, or you don't get our funding." which sounds great on paper. Most of the time it just results in a shell-game, or a half-hearted social initiative from the company concerned, and then they go right back to dumping chemical waste into the Francisco Bay as per normal. In the entertainment industry it creates an even bigger problem. How do you move the needle on the ol' "Good-boy-o-meter" when your industry is a non-essential parade of dancing monkeys distracting the populace from their lives? Why use your products as social engineering propaganda of course! But hey! Why not bake all that wholesome egalitarian messaging into a really good product that people will enjoy, even if they don't entirely agree with the message? That's the gag! If the product is popular, then the studio isn't exactly making a sacrifice for the greater good, now are they? If's more like they're just doing good business. If they want that sweet capital asset investment, the project has to be hated! They want you to hate it. They want you to boycott it. They want you to be very public about that! Companies like Disney, and Warner aren't making money to make movies as Ol' Walt famously said. They aren't even making movies to make money. They're making movies to attract investors, who don't actually care about the movies. Thats why we have hundred billion million projects being shot entirely just to be shunted into the vault without even so much as a DVD release. That's why we have show runners and producers and actors actively trying to antagonize the audience, and don't even get me started on AI. we're watching the death of arts and entertainment as an industry. It's going back to the age of Patronage, where the wealthy and powerful decide what gets made and why, and we the slobbering masses just have to be grateful his Lordship wanted is to see this culturally important thing that "He did," and all our boycotts, and consumer advocacy is exactly what the penguins want us doing! We're all... helping them. That's why they smile like the Cheshire Cat when the backlash hits, and throw more fuel on the fire.
Upvoted. Post-market capitalism can be more obviously defined as: fascism. Corporations are your government and at best supreme oligopolies, if not outright monopolies.
That bit about Hollywood trying to make an actor/actress a thing, at 10:54, despite audiences not being interested, happened with Taylor Kitch and Jai Courtney. In the 1990s it was this one actress, whose name escapes me.
They're "designing" movies by checklist. It's stupid and doesn't put any emphasis on script and character aside from fulfilling the boxes on the list. The "property or brand" being adapted serves no more purpose than fulfilling another checklist item. By their own logic and data the most successful movie I can produce should be a Marvel, Period set, True Crime, Transfomers, Romance, James Cameron production. That will sell all the tickets.
Not only does the audience not exist for Madame Web or the Marvels, but I also think that superhero movie burn out is a thing too. Too many comic book movies in a short period of time. Trying to cram like 15 marvel movies into a single year is going to lead to burn out among comic fans.
I honestly don't think it's a thing, I think that's deflection and corporate coping. When you can blame "burnout" you don't need to take responsibility because you don't think there's anything wrong with your process and product. Crappy movie burnout is a real thing, though. Audiences wisening up to the fact that quality isn't the default with movies anymore.
Hi ... 1965 here . Watching Anime with Great Female protagonist since the 70's. Hollywood is just Decades late .... and doing all wrong , for the wrong reasons ....
I call these Anchorbaby movies. Sony just wants to keep the rights to Spider-man when they know they don't deserve to keep them. And they don't put in an effort to make them.
Well, Madam Web was made quite popular in the '90s thanks to the seminal Spider-Man cartoon (1994-98). I have not seen this new film, but from several reviews I've learnt that the biggest problem with the titular character is that she is allegedly nothing like the well-known version from the comics and cartoons.
She is a suporting character, it'd be like making a Blade spinoff called Whistler where a gimp legged old man is the main character and Blade is a background character with no action scenes.
She should have had a role in the Spiderverse films, she would have had a monumental following if they had used something similar to the 90’s cartoon appearance. Even if she was presented as a villain.
When thinking about modern Hollywood I’m reminded of that old definition of insanity: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. When is Hollywood going to finally learn that lesson?
when they get rid of the DEI and ESG incentives.... When you believe that you are too big to fail, it actually makes sense for them to keep making products like this. If you are a tool for a centralized power w/ all the weapons in the world to propagate, social engineer and shape culture/beliefs, you just do what the centralized power/ oligarchy tells you to do. Fuck money and the consumer audience, power is much more seductive.
* Space 1999. They turned the hardcore scifi into the romantic adventures of Mata in season 2. * Buck Rogers. In season 2 commander Wilma Deering became a secretary. * Wonder woman. At some point she lost her powers and became a fashionista who loved shopping. It happened in the comics. * Dungeons and Dragons. In 50 years the made the same mistake 3 times. They tried to force customers to like something. The first time TSR went bankrupt. The second one caused Paizo, the competitor to lure customers towards Pathfinder board game. And we are seeing the third one now. So trying to force customers is as old as sliced bread.
The other big problem is that the script writer of this film has consistently made terrible scripts from Dracula Untold to The Last Witch Hunter to Power Rangers to Gods Of Egypt to Morbius, which have mostly been box office bombs, and yet somehow they still keep getting work. Why aren’t these writers fired?
Madam Web's issue had more to do with a studio fumbling a great concept because they wanted to be cheap. You had a mentor like figure paired with THREE Spider characters which is like the easiest of layups and yet they decided to make a movie with comic book characters and didn't even have them in the suits doing heroic things.
What's even funnier is that up until filming Dakota Johnson thought this movie would be part of the MCU, or so she was told. But in interviews she claims she's only seen (in her own words) 4% of MCU movies, and couldn't name even 1 of the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies correctly. She was just there for the paycheck nothing more..
Sony simply thought that just because it's a Spiderman related property, then is an automatic box office success. Not realising that the success of Venom was down to Venom having a strong individual fanbase. Unlike Morbius and Madame Web who aren't highly popular characters in their own right. Morbius is.a popular villain yes. But without Blade or Spider-man involved. The general movie-goer doesn't care for Morbius. The same with Madame Web. Without Spider-Man being directly involved, the movie-goer couldn't care less for a Madame Web movie.
Nice video. Speaking of Japanese cinema, what is your take on Godzilla minus one? I'm sorry if I missed your video on that movie if you made it. Thanks for entertaining us over the years.
The "DC never got out of the pits" story is one I'd look forward to hearing your perspective on, if you haven't covered that subject already recently Michael.
Barbie started fine. The first third of the movie captured the essence of women in an imaginary world of wonder. But then it made a dark turn and Barbie girls had to fight soyboy Ken and the patriarchy. If I was Barbie I would also have friend zoned Ken.
Yet another great video, reiterating and reinforcing what so many of us have been seeing for well over a decade now - the death of the toy and film industries as we knew them. Both industries seem so disinterested in what the majority of us are or were, as kids, interested in. Everything is that much more money driven as well as elitest agenda-driven than ever before that the essence of each brand has been completely drained out in favor of more virtue-signaling themes. It's to the point where you almost feel these companies are deliberately trying to kill off these brands rather than nurture them and respectfully expand on them to produce results that both the original adult audience AND their children can appreciate. The live-action Joe movies were nothing short of awful, Avatar, the Last Airbender, downright ridiculous and so on. Unless the majority of us get together, pool our money and resources and collaborate to make some great retro films and toys to go along with them, we may never see the likes of good, quality toy-based/comic-based films and toys ever again. After all, as you have coined, Michael, it truly seems that the fans really are doing the best work. 😉
I first learned of Madame Web in Spider-Man The Animated Series from the mid-90s... I thought she was an unnecessary and ludicrous character then, and that hasn't changed.
There is no greater example of hitting a target demographic they didn’t aim for than My Little Pony. Everyone wins because they made a good product for a primary demographic and found another one and were massively successful.
They kicked Lauren Faust the author of the popular My Little Pony Friendship is magic show and they redesigned the ponies to make them look ugly, so they do not sell toys. Lauren Faust dream was to make superhero cartoons but she landed on My Little Pony and this is why it has that super friends feeling.
From what I've seen and heard so far, BY FAR the biggest problem with this particular film is that it is incredibly badly executed. To the point that it is unintentionally laughable and/or baffling.
10:50 Jai Courtney, Taylor Kitsch, Sam Worthington, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Kristen Stewart, Jennifer Lawrence, Anne Hatheway, Idris Elba, Mellissa McCarthy, Taylor Lautner, Katherine Waterston, Michael B Jordan, Jan Michael Vincent, Kate Hudson, Reese Witherspoon, and so on. None of them were huge at the box office, non of them are good actors, but wow did Hollywood ram them down our throats, for a while anyways.
I think it’s more like Sony owns a property and are trying to make use of that franchise’s backlog of characters before they are either forced to sell it back to the owner or sell it off to someone else. This movie takes place BEFORE Peter Parker is even born (which would make sense for Madam Web to be young) and delves into more recent SpiderMan lore than what you and I grew up reading. I don’t think this was a good decision to even make since a majority of the audience wouldn’t know who was who.
How you describe execs is just that scene on Big from Tom Hawks, where the exec is showing a Transformer that is a building to sale to the kids and Tom that was a kid said nah man, kids wants vehicles not a building to transform into a robot... that is the kind of vibe this out of touch people in Hollywood are, great video man as always.
My wife was a huge Star Wars fan. She read every book, even wrote her own fanfic novel. Then two things happened. 1.) The Yuzong Vong (?) happened in the novels which crapped all over the Force. 2.) Disney bought Star Wars and did exactly what she said they would do - milk it for every dollar, dilute it, and destroy the franchise. Now, she has completely written Star Wars off, and out of her life.
I'll always be a Star Wars fan for life, but ONLY for the first generation of it 1977-1996, before the cgi infested Special Editions started the rot of the franchise. The Prequels only made it worse and then Disney has killed and buried it. But at least I'll never acknowledge Disney Star Wars as official canon, same for the Prequels and the Clone Wars.
I wish that every company in the entertainment business would listen to this video. As a Star Wars fan, I've felt for a long time that Lucasfilm has thought "We're not concerned about the hard-core fans because we can crap on a paper plate, write Star Wars on it with a black sharpie and they'll eat it up. The people we want is everyone else. What do those people like and how can we make it appealing to them." The only problem is that those other people don't care anyway and in the meantime the studio ruins the movie for the rest of us in the process. They just don't have any respect for the target audience. This goes for everything. Movies, tv, merchandise, even sports. Ever since Taylor Swift started dating Travis Kelce, they started cutting to her a dozen times a game to try to get swifties to watch the games and increase ratings. All they're doing is pissing off the football fans who want to watch the game and not see her. Your idea can be used as a template for everything out there. All it seems to be doing is getting worse. I honestly don't see it changing.
For end game. The females shown. Was interesting and I like it. To me, It show that their minor roles, was very important. And they gave a helping hand. Though Mrs Marval was bore. Her story was such a lost. Great review! As always. Keep up the great job. Madden Webb. Was like watching pancake cook on low heat.
Another excellent video Michael. One of my favorite Jet Li Hong Kong movies is Born to Defense. I am a 22 year US military retiree and combat vet who is an American of Mexican descent. Technically I’m part of the Villain’s side in the movie, so it’s obviously not “made for me”. What I like about it is it’s the pre-communist era Chinese version of Rocky IV. It may not be his best film, but I enjoy it.
ButtPlug lady was to play female blind Xavier with multiverse sightseeing powers - she was in few episodes of animated spidey - it could have been good to have female Brand Stark as the protagonist creating a team - the same way Avengers were about Nick Furry being on screen all the time with his backstory and creating a team to fight his personal nemesis
As someone who works in the industry, getting work is a nightmare. The people running the show have no clue what they're doing and they are so disconnected that that they are turning down scripts that aren't ready to go into production. If someone reading this doesn't understand why that's a problem, I'll elaborate. No script upon first reading is immediately ready for production. Revisions are made to accommodate, producers, writers and actors during preproduction. I've worked one day this month because studios are holding off on starting projected until the teamster strike. Not the contract negotiation. They are planning on letting them strike. These people are insane. and they do not care as little about the men and women who make films and TV happen as they do the audience.
Great take, Michael Much of the observation is parallel to the the comic book industry-if-the industry is defined as Disney and Time/Warner…I mean, Marvel and DC
How many billions do they need to lose before the real bosses (stock holders) tell them to just go back to the way they were doing things a decade or more ago?
Disconnection from customers is as old as cinema. Aelita Queen of Mars is a terrible scifi, the Soviet equivalent of woke. A man who was a terrible husband who mistreats his woman and kills her, wants to know more about space, and manages to discover we are not alone, and finds there is a beautiful queen on Mars. So he builds a rocket and upon arrival the king is a dictator because of reasons, so he puts up a glorious soviet revolution in place, and keeps the queen and escapes with her, and all this was a dream, so he goes back to his life with a loving wife, and work as an ordinary soviet worker. This is a silent movie.
The "appealing to everyone motif" is spot on. Once I was told by a younger professor that when creating presentations the presenters must focus on PREVENTING the audience getting bored, pulling out their phones etc. Considering that the audience is more or less of the same field (why else would they participate?) possessing the same sort of "vernacular", this concept is just plain crazy. Of course, not each presentations are tailor made for everyone, nor of the same quality level, but who feels justified to seem VISIBLY bored just making the presenter feel guilty, because either the theme or the form is not of his/her liking?? And hence, the system supports this type of attitude by playing along with it by saying "yes, everyone must feel included etc". And this attitude is, I feel, precisely the same as what's going on in Hollywood.
You absolutely nailed it, Michael! “Supreme arrogance” I wish they’d go back to the supreme greed model by pleasing the target audience and taking my money.
Or "Sheer f*cking hubris", as that old b*tch admiral that was lecturing "Picard" about his white male privilege in that crappy Star Trek Picard show put it.
This makes me fear that Sony will learn the exact wrong lesson and say that woman-led movies don’t make money. This is especially concerning since just a couple of years ago they cancelled the film “Silver and Black,” which would have focused on Silver Sable and Black Cat, two decently popular Spidey supporting characters that could absolutely hold their own in a film, but were just never given a chance. This also goes back to Sony not knowing what characters to focus on as well
Those people who have no interest or hobbies are usually people who go back to work after retiring bc they don't know what to do with their lives. I know of Madam Web bc of my older cousin and 90s Spiderman's cartoon. I would have watched it if they made it good. Dakota Johnson is Antonio Bandera's stepdaughter. The Madam Web movie looks like the same people who made morbius. Doesn't look good. I was hoping the female ghostbusters to be good. Went opening weekend. I wasn't content. I wanted to see Quantumania and marvels, but had no babysitter.
A good example: Paramount showed ugly Sonic The Hedgehog and people bombarded the internet roasting it, then they fixed his design and showed respect for the audiences and guess what? People really went to see that movie that was set to failure (because of the first trailer reception) and it became a success! But what would happen if ugly Sonic didn´t change at all? I would bomb the movie. Then we get Super Mario, Barbie and Godzilla Minus One! All big hits! Because they undestand the audiences that want to see those movies. Heck, I´m not even the guy that these movies are targetering as audience, but I watched all of those and had a great time. I just can´t say the same for the Marvel and DC movies, they aren´t fun experiences anymore for anyone for quite sometime.
Dear Michael, if it's relevant; the most personally impactful TV shows I've watched in the last few years were Wanda-vision & the Flight Attendant! Both of those Female Leads were my Protagonists, I watched through their eyes as though it was Me, & the issues of Loss & Alcoholism hit close to home. The fan-base, of any age, sex, creed, doesn't need to be taught by corporations - I think we were cool before they got here ;)
“You believe it… cuz you crazy” is now my favorite Michael quote
Ha, yes, me too, and you can see him enjoying having said it as he carries on with the rest of the sentence.
Agreed! How does Michael do it? 😄👍 Before the week is over, I MUST find a way to work that into a conversation on some level!
I stopped the video to laugh so hard. Then I decided to post a comment, and was pleased to see that I wasn't alone. Funny stuff.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed
I always laugh at this notion of a "Modern Audience" There is no modern audience, there is just the audience.
Idk what you're talking about, I always market my movies to the people of the 1800s! /s
Just replace "Modern" with "Woke" and you get the code they are talking in...
"Modern Audiences" are just a small bunch of people that hates good stuff and want to hijack everything with woke, but then, these same people never appear to watch it.
If they made movies for 1980s - 1990s audiences, I'd go. There was something new out every month I was dying to see.
Ghostbusters 2016 was a great example of a studio effing up royally, and immediately engaging the thinky-thinky bits, retooling, and getting back on track. Not enough studios capable or willing to do that.
Irony being the same studio as Madam Web. Let's hope the same wisdom applies here.
@@retroblastingThat is true, but the confounding factor is owners and interest in the properties. The Marvel properties that Sony has access to are still heavily influenced by the Disney people they sold their souls to, er, partnered with. It's a mess that, frankly, isn't worth it. On the other hand, Ghost Core said, "Yeah, nah, we go back to formula or we don't do this."
@@retroblastingNot just same studio. Same clueless cocaine fueled idiot producer behind it. Good ol’ Amy Pascal! Of North Korean Sony hack email leaks fame.
Spot on. I had no idea who these character were and I’m a long time comic book fan. I quit watching most of this stuff because I lost interest.
You're right, although what they did immediately was attack half the world for not liking their shitty film whilst at the same time re-editing it for bluray and streaming. Absolute cluster fuck and potentially damaging to the brand, as you say they re-evaluated and steered in a better direction.
Paramount’s Halo is another good example of a company not understanding a property, and alienating its audience.
Hey, remember that augmented, stoic, emotionless and indestructible combat soldier and you never see his face? Yeah, we're taking his helmet off first episode and you'll see his face all the time. And then he does the nasty with a human spy, who is working with the Covenant alien race. And remember in the games, where Master Chief eventually/ basically falls in love with his AI (Cortana) but can't bring himself to tell her? Now Cortana is like his bratty little sister, who ends up watching him do the nasty with the spy.
Also a TV show and a FPS shooter are two different types of story telling media. So yes a show will be different
Very true .
Witcher: Hold my beer
@@mediawarrior5957 Don’t make excuses for bad writing.
Your moment about introducing yourself to the older corporate fellow, hit me in the memory zone thoroughly. When I still worked for the last major company I was at, I had spoken to a guy who was placed over handling a lot of the IPs we had, and some of the products we would generate. I remember asking him if he liked sci-fi or fantasy, because that's a lot of what we did. Nope. He "didn't watch that kind of kid stuff". I asked him what his hobbies were, and he said "Um, I don't know, reading the paper. I used to like to play fantasy football, but only when I won." I'd never met a person that was literally a dry piece of human toast like that. That year, we had DISMAL sales, made some massive oversights, all on his watch, his calls. He's still employed there, even with the massive layoffs that the company has endured for the last few years.
Unfortunately that's the corporate world for you. Anyone with good Ideas is flushed out & they keep the corporate yes men who have little to no personality involved because they will agree with everything that their superiors say & treat the people below them like they are just a number instead of a human being.
@@MichaelYianni-sn3wm Oh man, yeah, I know, I'd worked the corporate sectors of many companies for well over 28 years. The horror stories and stupidity I've seen could fill a dictionary page count level book.
So that is why money rarely meets talent. They are in charge of a business where they have no passion or even like what the customer likes. And they are not interested about what customer likes or interested in pleasing the customer. They think money is the cause and effect.
The fact that Sydney Sweeney practically had to beg to have a scene of her in costume hanging upside down should be enough to tell that no one had any interest in making anything with these characters.
Wow really? I hope she stays as SpiderWoman
@@thatoneguy378 it would be nice, she was easily the best part of the movie
Its so often so obvious its like. "We bought the rights to chicken soup. Now we know fans of chicken soup will eat it up no matter what. How can we change this so it will appeal to fans of beef soup and tomato soup? I know itll end up tasting nothing like chicken soup but we gotta expand the market!"
Vegan Chicken Soup!!!
What they turned it into isn't even soup anymore.
This is exactly how they think.
“As JJ Abrams would say that’s a story for another time “ .. that’s the best quote of this video lol
I wish JJ had said that about a few of his movies.
translation: that's a story for another WRITER to deal with.
Police Chief from Mad Max: Nobody Showed! The girls didn't show, the boys didn't show, the fans didn't show... NOBODY SHOWED!
Me-“What happened to this movie, it looks like it was chewed up and spat out…”
Bubba-“Perhaps it was a result of anxiety.”
"Galaxy Quest" was another movie that was mis-marketed, and potentially released at the wrong time because the studio wasn't exactly sure what the movie was. It went on to become a cult classic, and a great homage to Star Trek, but that was because of the audience.
The movie mocked Star Trek but it did it in a way that respected fans and respected Star Trek so fans of scifi loved it.
According to the government, Hollywood was a very very essential industry.
I rest my case.
@@retroblasting😂😂
The US government quietly removed its restrictions of propaganda in 2020. I know it's probably a coincidence but I definitely seen a declining quality.
"The three true branches of the government are military, corporate, and Hollywood." (That 70s Show)
@retroblasting well thats because Hollywood is and always has been their #1 recruitment tool, for example Top Gun Maverick was fast tracked because recruitment was diwn.
But I think the other element here is that studios just take for granted the fans, e.g., they'll consume what we tell them because it has a star wars badge but now we'll get new "non-existent" fans by having a Girl Boss main character
Love your content. You articulate the point so well. Thank you for the work you put into these, just amazing!
Sony: "Okay...we got it this time. A Robbie Robertson movie where he's bitten by a radioactive newspaper editor..."
I have never heard of Sidney prior to today. I couldn’t pick her out of a line up. The idea of a spider-man movie without spider-man is lucky charms with out marshmallows. It doesn’t matter if studios tease eye candy but try to shame you for looking at it. This movie screamed uninteresting. Sony shit Hollywood needs to understand “if it’s worth doing. It’s worth doing right”.
The audience is teaching companies that, if they want their money, they have to give them what they want. Nobody wants trash.
My question is, who asked for a Madam Web movie? I'm asking for X-Force. Where is that movie? I'm asking for Robotech/ Macross. Where is that movie? I'm asking for Metroid. Where is that movie? Anyone want to add?
M.A.S.K. would be fun. Think the better parts of Fast and Furious with the better elements of Transformers.
@@craighofmann638I'm a huge M.A.S.K. fan as well! (Just ask Michael which 80's property I comment/talk about the most!) And there actually was some development, pre-pandemic, about a live-action M.A.S.K. movie! But the FIRST 'improvement' the studio was going to make, was to make it......a comedy!! Seriously, that was the direction they were considering! So I look back and think that maybe one of the GOOD things about the pandemic, was that it was able to shut that process down. It was at that point, that I am RELIEVED that a lot of 80's cartoons haven't been touched by Hollywood. At least, not yet......
Oh yeah, and Samus Aran is my favorite video game character of all-time! 👍But I hope they NEVER make a Metroid movie. Because I can all but GUARANTEE that they will just make her another generic 'girl-boss' in a power suit, with really NONE of the nuances, depth, and uniqueness that make her such a brilliant character.
The problem is that writers probably never watched M.A.S.K. and may not be interested in developing such materials. They would be interested in preaching their way within any story and that would kill the franchise.
It is better to have no movie than a bad movie.
Would have been nice if they hold up to the Madam Web of the comics. This had nothing to do with the comic SpiderVerse. Just stole the name and fantasize a Total new character
Once again, you hit the nail on the head, Michael.
We're in the wilderness, man.
Especially, when it comes to great content.
Recently, I have come to the conclusion that if we want good movies and television series produced that we’re going to have to make them ourselves.
That's the only path I see going forward.
This is the most concise and accurate assessment of exactly what’s going on in entertainment. Outstanding work
About six months ago, I was telling a coworker "Guess what one of my FAVORITE cartoons from the 80's was. And still is.......JEM. That's right, the cartoon for GIRLS. I'm just a regular BLACK man, but my older cousin tricked me into watching a few episodes when we were kids. And I ended up actually liking it! Because behind a lot of the 'Truly Outrageous' stuff, there were actually a number of deep and heavy episodes. Like the flashback episode where the father of Jem/Jerrica and Kimber was pretty much dying of CANCER. But he never really told them because he didn't want his own daughters worrying about him and just wanted to enjoy the time he had left with them. Pretty deep stuff for a kid's cartoon, and even a GIRLS cartoon at the time." And come to find out just a few years ago that the idea of Jem from Hasbro was essentially to make "Transformers, but for girls". And after all, didn't Jem and The Holograms basically 'transform' every time she used her holographic earrings to switch outfits and identities on the fly? And the part that really drives it home: The producers and writers targeted the show obviously for little girls with the glamour and fashion and romance elements, but they also put in JUST enough sci-fi and adventure......so that BOYS would maybe watch it too! And many of us did! In speaking with a lot of other just regular guys too, MANY of us watched Jem. We were just 'secret fans' at the time. So even today, I look at Jem from the 80's as arguably the best example of a female-centric concept/property done right!
Then they made a crappy reboot movie a few years ago, and none of the people who worked on the show or created the characters were involved. I never watched Jem but even I can tell they screwed it all up from what little I knew about it.
@@KasumiKenshirou Facts! I didn't see it myself. But the movie was so terrible as a matter of fact, that I think it was only in theaters for a SINGLE week! Literally . MAYBE ten days at most. A female co-worker who actually DID see it said that "They got almost EVERYTHING wrong. It was the worst 80's remake movie I have ever seen!" Then she later told me about a completely FANmade movie on TH-cam. It's only about 35-40 minutes long. So I checked it out, and it wasn't bad! It was an example of what Michael basically often points out: Fans with just a passion and respect for a property, made a movie with probably a few THOUSAND dollars, better than a multi-BILLION dollar company did. It's crazy....
She-Ra was popular with boys as well. Powerpuff Girls, Kim Possible, Totally Spies are all very popular with guys. Hell, Rainbow Bright was popular with guys.
Its a great show. I love it. Nobody made it for me ❤
My Little pony movie came about the same time of The Last Jedi and it was way more epic. So guess what DVD ended up in the shopping list.
Definite Siskel and Ebert vibes here and that is (and should be taken as) a major compliment. Miss those gents on PBS.
With Hollywood being all over the place, going from one extreme to the next, I'm reminded of a quote from Red Dead Redemption. "You keep jumping from one side of the fence to the other, you might just get impaled on it."
I had a 'Dark Vader' lunchbox as a kid. Took me decades to realize it was a knock-off.
Great video. Thanks!
VERY well articulated. Thank you for putting my thoughts into well crafted words.
Madame Web had Spider Woman in it? I had no idea! Make her the headline character and they might have had an audience.
you cant a major motion picture based on a minor character. It happened in the 90's. I would watch a spider woman movie that is made well...
Well they did and they didn't, that was the whole problem. But I won't spoil it
It didn't even have Madame Web in it. She's supposed to be an old blind and crippled woman with mental powers.
And from what I hear, it doesn't really have a "Spider-Woman" in it. "Madame Web" just has brief visions of the future where the girls are superheroines. The clips of them in the costume from the trailer is all that there is.
Yup. I love how eloquently you put what I’ve been feeling about modern Hollywood lately.
Someone also mentioned that Disney changed all the boy brands into girl/princess brands. So the lost both the boys and the girls.
Don't make art that tries to appeal to everyone.
Make art that tries to appeal to someone.
The problem is that everyone is often nobody.
@@aquarius5719 Right. "Everyone" can't be unified into a specific demographic.
There just aren't enough Thumbs Up to click on for this review. SPOT ON man!
I work for a major corporation, not even in entertainment, and we do this all the time with both our customers AND even our own employees. Come up with something "we" think is cool, put zillions into it, and never once ask: who asked for this? Does anyone want it? What are we solving for? Then all Surprised Pikachu when there's no interest.
Fox nobody can make worse Marvel movies then us
Sony hold my beer
The Tom Holland and Riami trilogy plus Spider-Verse outweigh the bad so far. However the mischaracterization of Venom, Morbius now Madame Web really affect the MCU proper in a bad way.
@@Clay3613Andrew Garfield is so slept on.
24:23 Ironically, Pixar can directly trace it's lineage to Star Wars. Once upon a time, John Lasseter worked for Lucasfilm and saw potential in an R&D project called the Pixar computer. He then proposed that Steve Jobs provide capital to purchase the Pixar computer so they could create a start up animation studio. And the rest is history.
This is an excellent perspective. Thank you.
3:21
This is one of the things I really admire about retroblasting: Michael makes an active effort to critique media targeted at specific demographics, without targeting those same demographics. This might sound like a low bar to clear, but I've met too many people who dont understand this distinction, and will cruelly mock those demographics because a bad movie came out that "represents" them
The failure of movies is that the core audiences of these movies are not represented. They are represented when adding what these core audiences want.
The Iger sanction is practically prophetic. I can listen to you talk about showbiz any day of the week.
Pretty much the Retroblasting videos I rewatch the MOST....are Michael's analyses of corporate culture and the decline of quality in modern fandoms! Close to 90% of the material IS almost eerily prophetic! He all but literally warned us over EIGHT years ago, (when even the 'Almighty' MCU was at it's peak), that corporations were going to get rid of all creatives and replace them with executives. He even said during a livestream over 5 years ago something like "Hollywood is so lazy creatively, watch them start considering computers to come up with a way to replace creatives and actors." And what issue was at the core of the actor''s strike just last year? 😮
Welcome to post-market capitalism, where the want of the customer and the product of the company is no longer how these big companies get their funding. The executives aren't chasing an alternative audience like we've all been assuming. They're chasing funding grants and investment from capital management groups. The largest of them, which owns a lot of stake in the entertainment industry says "Contribute positively to society, or you don't get our funding." which sounds great on paper.
Most of the time it just results in a shell-game, or a half-hearted social initiative from the company concerned, and then they go right back to dumping chemical waste into the Francisco Bay as per normal. In the entertainment industry it creates an even bigger problem. How do you move the needle on the ol' "Good-boy-o-meter" when your industry is a non-essential parade of dancing monkeys distracting the populace from their lives? Why use your products as social engineering propaganda of course!
But hey! Why not bake all that wholesome egalitarian messaging into a really good product that people will enjoy, even if they don't entirely agree with the message? That's the gag! If the product is popular, then the studio isn't exactly making a sacrifice for the greater good, now are they? If's more like they're just doing good business. If they want that sweet capital asset investment, the project has to be hated! They want you to hate it. They want you to boycott it. They want you to be very public about that!
Companies like Disney, and Warner aren't making money to make movies as Ol' Walt famously said. They aren't even making movies to make money. They're making movies to attract investors, who don't actually care about the movies. Thats why we have hundred billion million projects being shot entirely just to be shunted into the vault without even so much as a DVD release. That's why we have show runners and producers and actors actively trying to antagonize the audience, and don't even get me started on AI.
we're watching the death of arts and entertainment as an industry. It's going back to the age of Patronage, where the wealthy and powerful decide what gets made and why, and we the slobbering masses just have to be grateful his Lordship wanted is to see this culturally important thing that "He did," and all our boycotts, and consumer advocacy is exactly what the penguins want us doing! We're all... helping them. That's why they smile like the Cheshire Cat when the backlash hits, and throw more fuel on the fire.
Upvoted. Post-market capitalism can be more obviously defined as: fascism. Corporations are your government and at best supreme oligopolies, if not outright monopolies.
That bit about Hollywood trying to make an actor/actress a thing, at 10:54, despite audiences not being interested, happened with Taylor Kitch and Jai Courtney.
In the 1990s it was this one actress, whose name escapes me.
They're "designing" movies by checklist. It's stupid and doesn't put any emphasis on script and character aside from fulfilling the boxes on the list. The "property or brand" being adapted serves no more purpose than fulfilling another checklist item. By their own logic and data the most successful movie I can produce should be a Marvel, Period set, True Crime, Transfomers, Romance, James Cameron production. That will sell all the tickets.
Cameron would make a pretty solid Transformers movie, honestly
So? Basically The Winter Soldier.
The checklist lacks a check for representation of core audience to make money.
Incredible thought piece Michael.
This is the most well reasoned and articulate video I have seen on the state of the current film industry. It should be shared as widely as possible.
Not only does the audience not exist for Madame Web or the Marvels, but I also think that superhero movie burn out is a thing too. Too many comic book movies in a short period of time. Trying to cram like 15 marvel movies into a single year is going to lead to burn out among comic fans.
Marvels has a fanbase, just one that didn't want a team-up movie or go to theaters.
I honestly don't think it's a thing, I think that's deflection and corporate coping.
When you can blame "burnout" you don't need to take responsibility because you don't think there's anything wrong with your process and product.
Crappy movie burnout is a real thing, though. Audiences wisening up to the fact that quality isn't the default with movies anymore.
After endgame it became so hard to follow all the superhero stories or even know what movie goes first.
Love it Michael, well said as always. These things NEED to be said.
Forgive for my juvenile mind, but "Period Romance" sounds hilarious and disgusting! LOL
Hi ... 1965 here .
Watching Anime with Great Female protagonist since the 70's.
Hollywood is just Decades late .... and doing all wrong , for the wrong reasons ....
Michael unplugged, are my favorite videos on this channel.
I call these Anchorbaby movies. Sony just wants to keep the rights to Spider-man when they know they don't deserve to keep them. And they don't put in an effort to make them.
Well, Madam Web was made quite popular in the '90s thanks to the seminal Spider-Man cartoon (1994-98). I have not seen this new film, but from several reviews I've learnt that the biggest problem with the titular character is that she is allegedly nothing like the well-known version from the comics and cartoons.
What? You mean that disabled octogenarian? Were Madame Web action figures flying off the shelves? Do you still have yours?
That's how I knew who the character was from the Spiderman cartoon in the 90s.
She is a suporting character, it'd be like making a Blade spinoff called Whistler where a gimp legged old man is the main character and Blade is a background character with no action scenes.
They made her an old woman in the 90s cartoon because Stan Lee's wife was voiceing the character.
She should have had a role in the Spiderverse films, she would have had a monumental following if they had used something similar to the 90’s cartoon appearance. Even if she was presented as a villain.
Awesome video! You nailed it
I still can’t get my head around someone not having any interests or hobbies.
Is that why sport is so popular?
His hobby was a greed which all have agreed ❤
When thinking about modern Hollywood I’m reminded of that old definition of insanity: insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. When is Hollywood going to finally learn that lesson?
But if we just try harder..😂
when they get rid of the DEI and ESG incentives.... When you believe that you are too big to fail, it actually makes sense for them to keep making products like this. If you are a tool for a centralized power w/ all the weapons in the world to propagate, social engineer and shape culture/beliefs, you just do what the centralized power/ oligarchy tells you to do. Fuck money and the consumer audience, power is much more seductive.
When shareholders revolt and a lot of people get fired.
* Space 1999. They turned the hardcore scifi into the romantic adventures of Mata in season 2.
* Buck Rogers. In season 2 commander Wilma Deering became a secretary.
* Wonder woman. At some point she lost her powers and became a fashionista who loved shopping. It happened in the comics.
* Dungeons and Dragons. In 50 years the made the same mistake 3 times. They tried to force customers to like something. The first time TSR went bankrupt. The second one caused Paizo, the competitor to lure customers towards Pathfinder board game. And we are seeing the third one now.
So trying to force customers is as old as sliced bread.
The other big problem is that the script writer of this film has consistently made terrible scripts from Dracula Untold to The Last Witch Hunter to Power Rangers to Gods Of Egypt to Morbius, which have mostly been box office bombs, and yet somehow they still keep getting work. Why aren’t these writers fired?
Executives are disconnected from customers.
Madam Web's issue had more to do with a studio fumbling a great concept because they wanted to be cheap. You had a mentor like figure paired with THREE Spider characters which is like the easiest of layups and yet they decided to make a movie with comic book characters and didn't even have them in the suits doing heroic things.
lol Just saw Dakota Johnson is Lt Falcon's daughter. I really should brush up my modern pop culture.
What's even funnier is that up until filming Dakota Johnson thought this movie would be part of the MCU, or so she was told. But in interviews she claims she's only seen (in her own words) 4% of MCU movies, and couldn't name even 1 of the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies correctly. She was just there for the paycheck nothing more..
Madame Web is a plot driver character. One that shows up yaps some prophecy or vision to set up a plot for Spiderman. Not a headliner character
Sony simply thought that just because it's a Spiderman related property, then is an automatic box office success. Not realising that the success of Venom was down to Venom having a strong individual fanbase. Unlike Morbius and Madame Web who aren't highly popular characters in their own right. Morbius is.a popular villain yes. But without Blade or Spider-man involved. The general movie-goer doesn't care for Morbius. The same with Madame Web. Without Spider-Man being directly involved, the movie-goer couldn't care less for a Madame Web movie.
Nice video. Speaking of Japanese cinema, what is your take on Godzilla minus one? I'm sorry if I missed your video on that movie if you made it. Thanks for entertaining us over the years.
The "DC never got out of the pits" story is one I'd look forward to hearing your perspective on, if you haven't covered that subject already recently Michael.
Barbie may have known its audience, but any sequel will be a flop. Modern Hollywood will not be able to replicate that success.
Barbie started fine. The first third of the movie captured the essence of women in an imaginary world of wonder. But then it made a dark turn and Barbie girls had to fight soyboy Ken and the patriarchy.
If I was Barbie I would also have friend zoned Ken.
Yet another great video, reiterating and reinforcing what so many of us have been seeing for well over a decade now - the death of the toy and film industries as we knew them. Both industries seem so disinterested in what the majority of us are or were, as kids, interested in. Everything is that much more money driven as well as elitest agenda-driven than ever before that the essence of each brand has been completely drained out in favor of more virtue-signaling themes. It's to the point where you almost feel these companies are deliberately trying to kill off these brands rather than nurture them and respectfully expand on them to produce results that both the original adult audience AND their children can appreciate. The live-action Joe movies were nothing short of awful, Avatar, the Last Airbender, downright ridiculous and so on. Unless the majority of us get together, pool our money and resources and collaborate to make some great retro films and toys to go along with them, we may never see the likes of good, quality toy-based/comic-based films and toys ever again. After all, as you have coined, Michael, it truly seems that the fans really are doing the best work. 😉
I first learned of Madame Web in Spider-Man The Animated Series from the mid-90s... I thought she was an unnecessary and ludicrous character then, and that hasn't changed.
There is no greater example of hitting a target demographic they didn’t aim for than My Little Pony. Everyone wins because they made a good product for a primary demographic and found another one and were massively successful.
They kicked Lauren Faust the author of the popular My Little Pony Friendship is magic show and they redesigned the ponies to make them look ugly, so they do not sell toys.
Lauren Faust dream was to make superhero cartoons but she landed on My Little Pony and this is why it has that super friends feeling.
Great video, Michael. I agree with you 100 percent
22:34 We used to live in a world. "In a world" No! there is no world. "One man" No! " Some where in space" NO! It's not that kind of movie jack...
From what I've seen and heard so far, BY FAR the biggest problem with this particular film is that it is incredibly badly executed. To the point that it is unintentionally laughable and/or baffling.
Your reviews and commentary are always spot on. Thank you for continuing to be a voice for fans.
Thanks Michael.
Very well said.
This is gonna be a fun video
disney is scaling back only because their running out of money they are still looking for that "modern audience".
They scale back to reduce losses and show it like an achievement.
If 10 movies bring $1 billion losses, reduce to 1 movie to lose only $100 million.
Another classic bomb from Sony
50 Shades of "It's Morbin' Time!"
10:50 Jai Courtney, Taylor Kitsch, Sam Worthington, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Kristen Stewart, Jennifer Lawrence, Anne Hatheway, Idris Elba, Mellissa McCarthy, Taylor Lautner, Katherine Waterston, Michael B Jordan, Jan Michael Vincent, Kate Hudson, Reese Witherspoon, and so on.
None of them were huge at the box office, non of them are good actors, but wow did Hollywood ram them down our throats, for a while anyways.
I think it’s more like Sony owns a property and are trying to make use of that franchise’s backlog of characters before they are either forced to sell it back to the owner or sell it off to someone else. This movie takes place BEFORE Peter Parker is even born (which would make sense for Madam Web to be young) and delves into more recent SpiderMan lore than what you and I grew up reading. I don’t think this was a good decision to even make since a majority of the audience wouldn’t know who was who.
This movie was made to keep a license. A work of contractual obligation with all the soul of an office cubicle.
How you describe execs is just that scene on Big from Tom Hawks, where the exec is showing a Transformer that is a building to sale to the kids and Tom that was a kid said nah man, kids wants vehicles not a building to transform into a robot... that is the kind of vibe this out of touch people in Hollywood are, great video man as always.
Really great analysis
In order to introduce a character like this you have to emulate how they were introduced in the comic. You need a spiderman in a spiderman universe.
The Audience Who Wasn't There! spot on sir!
These modern audiences are real. They exist at the end of the rainbow, next to the Leprechaun treasure chest.
You are speaking clear truths about the industry and the failure of the MCU, DCU, and Sony’s Spider-Man less cinematic universe.
My wife was a huge Star Wars fan. She read every book, even wrote her own fanfic novel.
Then two things happened.
1.) The Yuzong Vong (?) happened in the novels which crapped all over the Force.
2.) Disney bought Star Wars and did exactly what she said they would do - milk it for every dollar, dilute it, and destroy the franchise.
Now, she has completely written Star Wars off, and out of her life.
I'll always be a Star Wars fan for life, but ONLY for the first generation of it 1977-1996, before the cgi infested Special Editions started the rot of the franchise. The Prequels only made it worse and then Disney has killed and buried it. But at least I'll never acknowledge Disney Star Wars as official canon, same for the Prequels and the Clone Wars.
As I see it, Yuzong Vong were added to have a Mass Effect doomsday in Star Wars. Dumb idea. They are so not Star Wars...
I wish that every company in the entertainment business would listen to this video. As a Star Wars fan, I've felt for a long time that Lucasfilm has thought "We're not concerned about the hard-core fans because we can crap on a paper plate, write Star Wars on it with a black sharpie and they'll eat it up. The people we want is everyone else. What do those people like and how can we make it appealing to them." The only problem is that those other people don't care anyway and in the meantime the studio ruins the movie for the rest of us in the process. They just don't have any respect for the target audience. This goes for everything. Movies, tv, merchandise, even sports. Ever since Taylor Swift started dating Travis Kelce, they started cutting to her a dozen times a game to try to get swifties to watch the games and increase ratings. All they're doing is pissing off the football fans who want to watch the game and not see her. Your idea can be used as a template for everything out there. All it seems to be doing is getting worse. I honestly don't see it changing.
Hong Kong martial arts cinema is my bag, baby. If you ever start making videos about those, you have a guaranteed viewer here.
Excellent analysis 👍
A new subscriber.
Dakota Johnson is the last person Dakota Johnson herself would think of for a comic book film.
Very well put. Once again, you nailed the the problem. I just wish there were people with your passion in charge of these franchises.
For end game. The females shown. Was interesting and I like it. To me, It show that their minor roles, was very important. And they gave a helping hand. Though Mrs Marval was bore. Her story was such a lost. Great review! As always. Keep up the great job. Madden Webb. Was like watching pancake cook on low heat.
Another excellent video Michael. One of my favorite Jet Li Hong Kong movies is Born to Defense. I am a 22 year US military retiree and combat vet who is an American of Mexican descent. Technically I’m part of the Villain’s side in the movie, so it’s obviously not “made for me”. What I like about it is it’s the pre-communist era Chinese version of Rocky IV. It may not be his best film, but I enjoy it.
Your right I would have take the whole family to spider woman ....no one even mentioned madam web :(
ButtPlug lady was to play female blind Xavier with multiverse sightseeing powers - she was in few episodes of animated spidey - it could have been good to have female Brand Stark as the protagonist creating a team - the same way Avengers were about Nick Furry being on screen all the time with his backstory and creating a team to fight his personal nemesis
As someone who works in the industry, getting work is a nightmare. The people running the show have no clue what they're doing and they are so disconnected that that they are turning down scripts that aren't ready to go into production. If someone reading this doesn't understand why that's a problem, I'll elaborate. No script upon first reading is immediately ready for production. Revisions are made to accommodate, producers, writers and actors during preproduction. I've worked one day this month because studios are holding off on starting projected until the teamster strike. Not the contract negotiation. They are planning on letting them strike. These people are insane. and they do not care as little about the men and women who make films and TV happen as they do the audience.
Great take, Michael
Much of the observation is parallel to the the comic book industry-if-the industry is defined as Disney and Time/Warner…I mean, Marvel and DC
How many billions do they need to lose before the real bosses (stock holders) tell them to just go back to the way they were doing things a decade or more ago?
Disconnection from customers is as old as cinema. Aelita Queen of Mars is a terrible scifi, the Soviet equivalent of woke.
A man who was a terrible husband who mistreats his woman and kills her, wants to know more about space, and manages to discover we are not alone, and finds there is a beautiful queen on Mars.
So he builds a rocket and upon arrival the king is a dictator because of reasons, so he puts up a glorious soviet revolution in place, and keeps the queen and escapes with her, and all this was a dream, so he goes back to his life with a loving wife, and work as an ordinary soviet worker.
This is a silent movie.
Yet again Michael - so right!
The "appealing to everyone motif" is spot on. Once I was told by a younger professor that when creating presentations the presenters must focus on PREVENTING the audience getting bored, pulling out their phones etc. Considering that the audience is more or less of the same field (why else would they participate?) possessing the same sort of "vernacular", this concept is just plain crazy. Of course, not each presentations are tailor made for everyone, nor of the same quality level, but who feels justified to seem VISIBLY bored just making the presenter feel guilty, because either the theme or the form is not of his/her liking?? And hence, the system supports this type of attitude by playing along with it by saying "yes, everyone must feel included etc". And this attitude is, I feel, precisely the same as what's going on in Hollywood.
Looking very sharp today dude! :)
You absolutely nailed it, Michael! “Supreme arrogance” I wish they’d go back to the supreme greed model by pleasing
the target audience and taking my money.
Or "Sheer f*cking hubris", as that old b*tch admiral that was lecturing "Picard" about his white male privilege in that crappy Star Trek Picard show put it.
We don't need Superheroes in fantasy worlds anymore. They're frankly, dull, preachy, samey and done to death.
This makes me fear that Sony will learn the exact wrong lesson and say that woman-led movies don’t make money. This is especially concerning since just a couple of years ago they cancelled the film “Silver and Black,” which would have focused on Silver Sable and Black Cat, two decently popular Spidey supporting characters that could absolutely hold their own in a film, but were just never given a chance. This also goes back to Sony not knowing what characters to focus on as well
This. They'll decide that women, minorities, LGBT, etc. just don't like movies. When actually, we all like movies, we just want, you know, good ones.
@@Fauntleroy. Exactly!
A Black Cat heist film would be cool if I wasn't absolutely 199% sure they would screw it up.
Those people who have no interest or hobbies are usually people who go back to work after retiring bc they don't know what to do with their lives.
I know of Madam Web bc of my older cousin and 90s Spiderman's cartoon. I would have watched it if they made it good.
Dakota Johnson is Antonio Bandera's stepdaughter.
The Madam Web movie looks like the same people who made morbius. Doesn't look good.
I was hoping the female ghostbusters to be good. Went opening weekend. I wasn't content.
I wanted to see Quantumania and marvels, but had no babysitter.
A good example: Paramount showed ugly Sonic The Hedgehog and people bombarded the internet roasting it, then they fixed his design and showed respect for the audiences and guess what?
People really went to see that movie that was set to failure (because of the first trailer reception) and it became a success! But what would happen if ugly Sonic didn´t change at all? I would bomb the movie.
Then we get Super Mario, Barbie and Godzilla Minus One! All big hits!
Because they undestand the audiences that want to see those movies.
Heck, I´m not even the guy that these movies are targetering as audience, but I watched all of those and had a great time. I just can´t say the same for the Marvel and DC movies, they aren´t fun experiences anymore for anyone for quite sometime.
It ain't just Hollywood....
Dear Michael, if it's relevant; the most personally impactful TV shows I've watched in the last few years were Wanda-vision & the Flight Attendant!
Both of those Female Leads were my Protagonists, I watched through their eyes as though it was Me, & the issues of Loss & Alcoholism hit close to home.
The fan-base, of any age, sex, creed, doesn't need to be taught by corporations - I think we were cool before they got here ;)