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    Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
    Except not made with any involvement from Marvel and that's a massive factor. Sony's track record is, with only a few recent exceptions (Spider-verse being the big one), abysmal. Marvel's is exactly the opposite. So no, it's not like Ant-Man or Guardians any more than a toddler painting a picture is the same as some great master just because they both have access to paints.
    I honestly think the Square-Enix game which is coming out is going to be a big deal for Marvel, in that it will show whether or not their brand value really lies in Marvel, or specifically in this incarnation of the MCU.

    Star Wars, for all the stick it gets today, successfully managed to convert its movie success in the late 70s/early 80s into book/videogame etc. success in the 90s. True, there were probably plenty of people for whom Heir to the Empire wasn't "real" Star Wars, but those works were a big success.

    I'm not sure if Marvel's new-found success has been successfully "spun off" yet.

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      It depends on the measuring stick though, Sony's Exec level decision making is certainly abysmal - central to the things that went wrong with Spider-Man 3 and Amazing Spider-Man 2 and nothing has changed there to sway concerns of another repeat in future. Other than that though there's nothing too much of concern, it's arguable that there's never really been a truly bad and unsuccessful Spider-Man film. I know corners of fandom will complain left right and centre about aspects of Spider-Man 3 but it was till recently the most successful entry and nothing in it remotely stopped the continuation of the franchise, that was all Sony Execs winding Raimi etc up. ASM2 was the least successful but it still clocked $708m which is more than all but three X-Men films have ever grossed making it's stumble more one about financing than the film being irredeemable. Really, neither previous iteration died because they were unpopular and opinion mauled films more that Sony is interfering and poor at finance management.

      As things currently stand Spider-Man is more popular than it's ever been and Sony has reason to believe that would hold because even the ropey reviewed Venom cracked $850m. Really for Sony it does all come down to financing but other than that there's not much reason to deviate from the template that's already in place... of course this is Sony we're talking about so they may well do that for random reasons.

      Really, the only real cause for panic is fanbase level of trust in Sony. Personally, brace for it, there are moments in some of the previous five Spider-Man films that are worse than Marvel put in their own films but those moments aside, taking the films overall, I don't think the Holland entries are neither particularly better or particularly different than what came when Sony was riding solo (and Feige will still producing most of those older films as well).

      I'd more compare it to having two master painters but hoping a toddler isn't going to walk into the room and wipe its excrement over one of the paintings

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        [MENTION=5941]Asura[/MENTION] Do you mean that people are more a fan of the MCU movies than the characters in general? If so, I’d probably agree and, in part, it’s a testament to what they are achieving with the movies that is unique to them but also a weird oddity in that they don’t seem to leverage the movies to promote the brand at large, especially comics which is where all their source material is coming from. It’s so weird to me that they don’t end the movies with an ad for the comics. Comics could use the boost for starters but it’s the well that is giving them all this movie success.

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          Originally posted by Superman Falls View Post
          It depends on the measuring stick though, Sony's Exec level decision making is certainly abysmal - central to the things that went wrong with Spider-Man 3 and Amazing Spider-Man 2 and nothing has changed there to sway concerns of another repeat in future. Other than that though there's nothing too much of concern, it's arguable that there's never really been a truly bad and unsuccessful Spider-Man film.:
          I think your measuring stick has way more built-in leeway that mine. Personally I feel there have been bad Spider-Man films and many that don't even come close to standing up to most if not all of the Marvel movies. As you say, the cause for panic is the level of trust in Sony and that level is very, very low (you aside). Now I have no patience for panic over entertainment so personally I would prefer people to chill and, if it turns out they make a bad Spider-Man movie, we can all just move on to one of the millions of other things out there built for our amusement but there is little doubt that trust in Marvel is far, far greater than trust in Sony and that's for one reason: they've earned it.

          I guess the big thing that Sony lack is any hint of consistency. As you say, it's about whether that toddler walks into the room and wrecks it all... that seems to happen quite a bit.

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            Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
            @Asura Do you mean that people are more a fan of the MCU movies than the characters in general? If so, I’d probably agree and, in part, it’s a testament to what they are achieving with the movies that is unique to them but also a weird oddity in that they don’t seem to leverage the movies to promote the brand at large, especially comics which is where all their source material is coming from. It’s so weird to me that they don’t end the movies with an ad for the comics. Comics could use the boost for starters but it’s the well that is giving them all this movie success.
            Pretty much. It'll prove how much of their brand is "the MCU" and how much is "Marvel"; I honestly think nearly all of the value is in the former. Like, take Thor - people like the character, but a big part of the appeal is Chris Hemsworth's incarnation of the character.

            I can imagine situations; take for example buying a kid some Mighty Thor pajamas, and having them look at the character, with the winged helmet, and saying "that's not Thor". Or how someone at Blobcat's workplace (I think it was someone she worked with) joked that she and her female friends were going to see Thor again, and her husband/their partners were not invited.

            This is almost certainly why Marvel have made a big deal about the "passing the torch" elements of the MCU. Much of their value lies in the very specific incarnation they've created. Comic books do all sorts of things to get around this; alternate realities, alternate continuities, retcons... I think mainstream audiences won't tolerate those things so readily.
            Last edited by Asura; 23-08-2019, 10:53.

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              Yep, I'd agree with that. But you can see that play out in just the health of the movies versus the health of the comics. Readership of Marvel comics is painfully low (of all comics - not singling out Marvel). Most people who turn up to the movies are fans of the movies, not necessarily the comics or even the characters beyond these incarnations. So yeah, I'd agree with that. It's probably pretty normal. I mean, The Notebook audience wasn't just made up of people who read the book and I doubt they bought the PS4 game... if one existed which I'm assuming it did.

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                They're definitely scatty in terms of consistency, I think it's that the blind panic over Sony making Spider-Man Homecoming 3 seems currently way over the top when many of the same people will be salivating at the same company making Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse 2 which is a sequel far more at risk of going wrong given Sony already had full reign to mess about with it.

                Hopefully someone at Sony is protective enough of Spider-Man by now to look at both the live action and animated recent successes and are able to say "don't mess with it, just stick to what works here" for future films


                Re: MCU vs Marvel popularity - that's probably the one lesson Marvel could learn from DC who are brilliant at merchandising and consistently selling multiple incarnations of their many heroes... they just struggle to consistently get the films working
                Last edited by Neon Ignition; 23-08-2019, 10:56.

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                  Originally posted by Superman Falls View Post
                  Re: MCU vs Marvel popularity - that's probably the one lesson Marvel could learn from DC who are brilliant at merchandising and consistently selling multiple incarnations of their many heroes... they just struggle to consistently get the films working
                  This might be emblematic of the problem. DC has all these different incarnations going at the same time, which makes their brand evergreen.

                  Marvel might have the problem that...


                  ... in the minds of the mainstream, Iron Man is dead, now. He's dead. Finished. Gone. His story's over. No more action figures, no more kids pajamas, no more videogames. Dead.



                  ... Superman, Batman, they don't have this problem. No matter what happens to any character in a DC movie, the character's brand persists.

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                    I'm not quite sure how this might play out in real terms though. I have no doubt about Superman and Batman's evergreen popularity in many forms. But Aquaman? Ummm... struggling to name others... oh, Flash? Not quite convinced. Popularity yes, but not much to write home about I'd guess. Whereas I would suspect a far wider and more evenly distributed popularity among the Marvel brand now. So I suspect the visuals of this could be skewed in the same way that Gamecube games could routinely top the charts over PS2 games. It may have looked to a casual viewer like the GC was doing better than the PS2 but that wasn't the case - the PS2 sold way more games but they were spread across more titles.

                    I'm totally speculating of course but I think Marvel may currently have a wider brand power whereas DC has a tighter and undoubtedly strong focus on a couple of characters. But it's hard to tell because, in this scenario, unless you have access to all the different figures it's impossible to find a like for like comparison.

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                      Stan Lee's daughter weighs in: https://www.theguardian.com/film/201...ee-disney-sony

                      "No one could have treated my father worse than Marvel and Disney’s executives"

                      And here's really a huge thing in all of this which is totally separate from my lack of trust in Sony, huge corporation, versus me thinking we'd get better results from Disney, huge corporation. The power that Disney have over things we like is unprecedented. They own almost everything. And are buying more. I feel distinctly uncomfortable about that. We're living dystopian future and everyone is siding with their favourite biggest corporation as these things get bought out (not related to this but Hasbro just bought eOne for something like $4 billion) and power gets consolidated.

                      I love fun stuff. I love Star Wars and Star Trek and these Marvel movies and so much more but it's hard not to see geek culture as corporate worship and, sometimes, warfare.

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                        Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
                        I love fun stuff. I love Star Wars and Star Trek and these Marvel movies and so much more but it's hard not to see geek culture as corporate worship and, sometimes, warfare.
                        I've said it here before, but I have a similar opinion about Star Wars specifically. Lucasfilm exploited their market, and knew, in doing so, they were turning Star Wars into something people hold onto in way not disimilar to how previous generations might've clutched to a religion. This is not coincidental; they did this because they know that "the geek market" is full of people who spend a lot of money on stuff.

                        When that market complains they're not being listened to anymore, they can't reasonably say "c'mon, guuuuuys, it's just Star Wars (jazz hands optional).

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                          Yeah, I guess what I won't do with that though is excuse people for being knobs and not being able to control themselves.

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                            Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
                            Yeah, I guess what I won't do with that though is excuse people for being knobs and not being able to control themselves.
                            Yeah, this is the thing, right? Jim Sterling pointed it out in one of his recent videos about the Epic store exclusivity thing - about how there are legitimate issues here, but now some ***** have thrown around death-threats over videogame exclusivity, it casts a shadow over the entire discussion. You always have to tag everything with "... but nothing excuses death threats" or people think you're excusing genuine twattery.

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                              Yep. That's exactly it. I'd probably go even further though in the sense that I won't excuse death threats or whatever but I'm also not going to excuse anything that validates them and usually, when it comes to movies at least, the idea that any member of the public can have "legitimate concerns" just doesn't work for me. Unless you're a producer of that movie, none of your concerns, regardless of what they might be, are legitimate. That's not how it works. I may think Sony could mess up Spider-Man and I might be right but the idea that it somehow should be given weight or I should turn up to Sony with my list of concerns and expect them to do anything about it is laughable. That's entitlement culture.

                              As you say, companies feed into this and, at times, even nurture it but people themselves have built up a vastly inflated sense of their own importance in this process and it does nobody, including themselves, any favours.

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                                I enjoyed seeing how Marvel, Sony and Fox had their own approaches to the Marvel movies. ASM2 gets a lot of flack but I had a lot of fun watching at the cinema in 3D. Electro was a great villain. And Emma Stone was a much better love interest than the current way too sassy version of MJ.

                                If anything they could outsource more. Then itll feel like comics, which vary wildly in tone largely due to the artists.

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