It's All About The Benjamins: My Less Than Nerdy Feelings On XMen

Here goes my nerd street cred, right out the proverbial window.

Having now seen "Thor" twice, I figured I may as well venture out and see more Marvel creations:
So I've just returned home from "X Men: First Class". And while you might think I'm about to go on and on about story lines or maintaining the integrity of well-loved comic characters, I'm actually more interested in the business side of things.

In the past, comic movies were sort of a joke. A big joke. Not so much "comic-y" as just goofy, inane, and harmlessly juvenile - these big screen adaptations were (honestly) a poor representation of a maligned media. The upper echelon has loved to hate comics (graphic novels and whatnot) since their inception. A sad fact as comics have often tackled some very serious social issues, often in very dark, very intense, very adult ways. Luckily, for us nerdy children, comics have finally broken into a more respected position and subsequently found their way into more serious, respected film genre.

Despite these leaps, many opportunities still remained on the table. Until Marvel got smart and started leveraging the sheer powerhouse they were seated on; the famed "Marvel Universe".

Let's pause here and talk about the American film industry and its bottom lines. Love it or hate it, the movie industry exists to turn a profit. A by-product of that is that we, as audiences, get the chance to be entertained. I'm not saying that there are not passionate, talented folks out there, within the "studio system", who aren't toiling away because they love what they do. There are. There really, really are. But even those talented folks need to pay their bills.

Accepting that movies are a billion dollar industry and that everyone involved wants a piece of that, it's a wonder Marvel didn't strike sooner: with the wealth of material they have at their disposal, they have a nearly infinite potential to continue bringing in the cash.

Make one movie, make a million - make a never-ending string of inter-connected movies, well... your earning potential is unlimited.

Fucking brilliant.

Comments

The Witch (2015)

You know the drill - there's ALWAYS spoilers. Don't want the movie ruined for you, come back after you've seen it. Also - I'm still without an editor - typos and bad grammar await you! I keep hoping that the cultural obsession with zombies will end; literally every other damn movie that comes 'round seems to feature some sort of shambling, undead being bent on devouring the weak flesh of regular humans. Once upon a time, zombies have have been used as a metaphor for the blind consumerism created by our capitalist society, or the perceived depletion of resources by immigrants, or even the ravages of time and disease on our frail bodies. Now it seems that the deeper social commentary has been lost as audiences mindlessly consume "zombie fiction" in an attempt to keep up with trends. ( How very meta - a film buddy of mine commented on this assessment! ) All of this is just a sideways rant, leading up to my actual point: it seems that zombie may actually...

Mother!

Alright friends and readers–this one is probably doubly filled with typos and grammar errors because I wrote it while angry. Good luck and happy reading. There are unpopular opinions in every realm. As a film student, you can truly strike a nerve when you say things like, "I fucking hate the self-indulgence of independent films and the way people idolize them." Or, you know, "Low lighting and slow pacing does not a good movie make." Or whatever. You can of course, objectively, understand how this happens. When you are creating art–when you are outside the system so to speak–you are free to explore things (subjects, techniques, etc.) that may need to be addressed and that freedom can become intoxicating and go to one's head. While it may seem only right or only fair to respect and accept each creative endeavor that every artist undertakes, it is unreasonable to believe that the world will remain forever patient with the self-obsession artists have. Th...

The Ones Below (2015)

Standard disclosure: there's ALWAYS spoilers. Don't want the movie ruined for you? Come back after you've seen it. And - I'm still without an editor - typos and bad grammar await you! Enjoy! When I was like 12 years old, my young (impressionable) friends and I watched The Hand That Rocks the Cradle ; Rebecca De Mornay is so gloriously evil in that movie that we ended up watching it all the damn time — much to the chagrin of my mother, I assume, who got real tired (real fast) of having to see this movie about a million damn times. What can I say? She was kind of a saint that way. Looking back, unsurprisingly, it's pretty easy to see that The Hand That Rocks the Cradle isn't really a terrific movie — although it's still pretty solid for a 90's thriller. Certainly it boasted some fairly well-known cast ( Ernie Hudson and Julianne Moore — whom my regular readers know that I absolutely hate, in particular.) but, the plot is actually pretty convolut...

i'm kael's ghost

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