ST The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s impact on new Star Wars films

That's a great point. The "regular" people have limited function in the larger arcs of Marvel. Marvel is about regular people becoming superheroes and then moving up almost to a higher plane of existence where only all the other superheroes and villains reside. The humans are meant to hide, run or act scared while the super heroes protect them from the super villains. Pacific Rim and giant mech stories are more directly insprired by the old Kong vs Godzilla monster movies with the humans still running away as buildings and cars get wrecked in movie after movie but on a certain level a lot of the Avengers films feel more like that too once the action gets going. The Marvel films still have the advantage of getting more into the personalities of the superheroes than what was ever possible with Kong vs Godzilla obviously. A strength that Pacific Rim and others also have over the original inspirations. Star Wars, more than Marvel though, still shows regular humans without powers as key players as both the heroes and villains. It's been more of a chess match with each side having a Queen (Jedi or Sith) and King to save or lose and the non-powered humans and technological weaponry available functioning as the other chess pieces.

Marvel focused on individual superhero origin stories first -- each with their own branding and visual aesthetics -- and then brought them all together. Even if you dislike Doctor Strange or Black Widow seeing Hulk and Blank Panther and Spider-Man all together might get you to spend. It's a genius business model and a lot of fun for people. So, the characters were sold to the public first and are better branded and more easily identified with and connected with by kids IMO.

Star Wars instead focused on the war first and then expanded on each of the key players involved in that war more and more and is trying to basically improve the branding and connection even more with some of the key players for the next generations. Up until recently everything was branded under "Star Wars" (and it still kind of is) but now Lucasfilm is trying to increase the brand awareness of the other titles and names more by showcasing them and having the "A Star Wars story" become the subheader.

The issue is that because a lot of Star Wars characters that aren't Jedi or Sith are mostly just likable beings or droids their origin stories might not be all that extraordinary when positioned opposite something like Thor. And that's a direct result of Star Wars wanting characters that don't feel all that extraordinary initially becoming key players in big wars through their choices.

What I feel Star Wars needs most of all soon is a brand new trilogy, set into the future where the fates of the characters aren't known featuring brand new characters, and a title different than Star Wars as the promoted title, with some powerful and well-designed visual designs (including several non-human characters) that kids want to play with and who don't die after only 10 minutes of screen time.

Going waaaaay back to the origins of the Jedi in a way and getting into more of a fantasy focus and feel with maps and a quest and more Force lore and magic and the beginnings of technology and the reliance on beasts more to travel and fight could be an interesting time period to move to next.

 

The problem I see with Marvel (and that I don’t want for Star Wars) is that I feel they are too of our time and won’t age well. The dominating irreverent humor and pop culture references are fantastic but not something that will make a durable classic. At best, these will make for good nostalgia. Thankfully, Star Wars being a period piece of sorts, in a setting far away from our own, avoids things like Spongebob jokes. However, even as fan TLJ, that irreverent humor was dialed too high. Poe’s first scene with “General Hugs” is arguably Star Wars’ most Marvlesque moment. The vibe felt so similar to Thor’s exchange with Satur in Ragnorok.

It fits better with Thor because Thor proudly disregards it’s own origin story and has changed the character to fit with the more laissez-faire Marvel vibe. Any changes to Luke’s character are arguably minor and more natural compared to Thor. The Thor in his separate two movies and Avengers was serious; if he was funny, it was usually unintentional, fish-out-of-water type humor. Even the romance setup in prior movies is casually disregarded in a throwaway, expositional joke. Why should we take anything too seriously?

This carefree attitude makes Marvel fun, but it doesn’t make it moving or enduring like an modern epic should be.

 

As much as I love the MCU, it's going to get rebooted in 2029 anyway.

Feige has hinted as much.

So it being too "our time" doesn't hurt me at all.

Unlike the OT, which still has stories based around its continuity 40 years later.

 

See, I think it fits better in TLJ because at least his joke serves some purpose. He isn't just talking to himself and amusing himself. He's doing it to embarrass the enemy in front of his subordinates and inspire those who can hear him doing so on his own com link line while he stalls. And Hux, oddly enough, is trying to do the exact same thing for the exact same reason.

I think this is probably the biggest reason why Poe's line seems better utilized than humor like this so often does. Most of the time this kind of thing can feel like it's exclusively for the audience (Why are these people cracking jokes when there's no one around to hear them, laugh at them, be embarrassed by their own leadership for falling for them, or to reminisce later on the lunch room about -- "You should have see what Poe said to him!?") but the setup here at least makes the other humans listening on the com links the reason why BOTH men are grandstanding in their own ways.

 

Absolutely... and it will all be planned and mapped out meticulously ahead of time, and be an enormous success again.

 

I think you make a good point about the humor serving more of a function here (it does fit with his character in TFA when he asks Kylo Ren who talks first, but in that case it was more for the audience). I just feel it’s little too strong due to its length. I understand it’s necessary for the stalling plot, but then I would argue the plan should also involve a little more cunning and rely less on humorous distraction (not saying to cut it completely).

 

I agree with the idea that Marvel won't age well, with a few exceptions. My current theory is that after Avengers 4, IW will be the ESB of Marvel and I think it will age fine. I also predict that BP will age incredibly well. It's actually imo groundbreaking in a different way than ANH was but still in a way that will make it timeless and change cinema for years to come.

Not based on comedy, but on representation and ideas I think a lot of Marvel is forgettable in the same way TLJ will be. Marvel started out very cliche in its portrayal of women and poc imo. That made it very unappealing to me. It's now evolving and I think that's wonderful, but as an example, that Avengers movie where Captain America has some silly love interest that tanks her career because he's so cute just annoys me. When characters are depicted in these kinds of shallow, tropey ways, I'm bored. TLJ is very inspired imo by modern YA dystopian fiction, which resulted in a similarly shallow, tropey depiction of its female "protagonist" as earlier Marvel films. Even by current standards, dystopian YA has already not aged well. I think KK and LF made a huge mistake looking to that genre in order to modernize and have a female lead.

 

I personally don’t see how TLJ is inspired by the dystopian YA genre, beyond the most basic level of having a young female protagonist.

Also, KK isn’t the one writing and directing these movies, so I’m not sure why you’re assigning blame to her for creative decisions.

 

I think the problem with the MCU in terms of aging is its intense focus on style. Its subject matter, the hook that makes all the special effects interesting, is hyper contemporary and might feel un-relatable or alien 20 years from now.

Each MCU hero is grounded in a mass-cultural moment that has the illusion of permanence but is actually fleeting. Tony Stark is an amalgamation of our fascination/worship/anxiety/disdain for the disruptive influence of technology and his persona is an anti-heroic reflection of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg, Elon Musk, and all the faceless advertisements that built their corporate brands. He’s not a saint but he’s ours, answerable to we the consumers, and he always wins.

Thor represents a renewed interest in the male body’s violent/sexual potential, which went out of fashion after the Schwarzenegger/Stallone/VanDamme hey-day but was heralded back in by 2006’s 300 and the commercialization of gym-culture. However, while the steroid movies were essentially anti-feminist, Thor is particularly “safe for consumption” like a turkey burger. It’s no coincidence that Chris Hemsworth is not American and never uses guns in the MCU.

Captain America channels the nostalgia for the US’s Golden Age, the national glory of WW2 and the decade of prosperity that followed. Or maybe, he represents the fear that we can’t remember it, that maybe it never existed at all? The constraining factor is that he is allowing us to live a dream we know is not real, that America can overcome any crisis and the virtue of the Greatest Generation is permanent. I was surprised that IW didn’t have more scenes with Cpt America and Black Panther together, as those two characters are the most similar in the MCU.

The other MCU characters are entirely forgettable/interchangeable with BP and Spiderman being the exceptions. Out of all the MCU movies thus far, the only ones I see aging well are CP: Winter Soldier and Black Panther.

 

If the Fox purchase happens, it really opens endless possibilities for Marvel Studios.

 

Agree to disagree on the first. As far as KK, I think strategic business decisions are run by her, including the basics of how they wanted to approach their trilogy with the female lead she says she wanted. I always suspected that TLJ was heavily heavily influenced by YA dystopia because it mirrors that to the letter, and now that I’ve seen that TFA auditions used Hunger Games scripts I know I didn’t imagine it and that was present from the beginning. Honestly, I can see the strategic decision behind it. YA dystopia was a crazy huge fad that really took off with female teenage protagonists, which was the direction KK wanted to go from jump.

 

After appreciating BP in the cinema, I decided to give it another look at home. And I was really disappointed. It's certainly a film with a significant cultural impact, and I applaud that to the heavens (about time the MCU addressed their persistent white male bias), but it's a really overwrought, clumsy and ugly (cinematography-wise) mess of a film. I could barely get through it. Lots of great ideas in there, but for the most part, poorly executed.

Thor: Ragnarok is the only exception among the MCU films for me (the only one I will watch again), and that's because it goes all-in with the self-parody and is just straight up delirious fun.

Self-parody is not, however, what I want from Star Wars.

This all leads to my thus far elusive point. I think Star Wars shouldn't take any lessons from the MCU, apart from what they are already doing. And that's including small bits and pieces of interconnectivity. No team ups, or anything. Just some fun and narratively-coherent interconnections.

 

Hm, I actually felt like BP brought what I saw as TLJ's shortcomings into even sharper relief. Particularly with respect to creating a compelling villain and serving up potent family drama. And while the political message certainly wasn't subtle, it still felt more thoughtful than whatever Canto Bight and the Holdo vs Poe mess was supposed to be.

Actually all of that holds true for Ragnarok as well, now that I think about it.

That's not to say I think SW needs to be more like the MCU in general, given that I still find most of the MCU entertaining yet forgettable. But it is interesting to see the newer MCU films excel in some areas that I used to consider Star Wars' bread and butter.

 

We just showed BP to my MIL who never watches superhero movies and she's kind of openly, with self-awareness, a bit on the racist side as a non-American with almost no exposure to American black culture. She got really into it and loved Killmonger. I just think that movie is so well done in terms of story and characters.

The one thing I will agree with, though, is that the visuals are at times ugly. Some of the special effects have a cheap, cartoony feel and Wakanda really could have used some better world building (but not in terms of art or costumes, they were crazy gorgeous. I just mean in terms of giving it that huge, authentic lived-in feel. It's got nothing on Tatooine or Jedha, just for example). I don't agree that it's ugly throughout at all though. I think there are some really beautiful visuals in that movie as well.

But in relation to SW, I actually think BP demonstrates with real skill the lessons of the OT. It's built on authentic family bonds between characters that aren't stereotypes. I'll never understand why LF chose to abandon that timeless theme, but LF's loss is BP's timeless gain.

 

I completely agree that there are very thoughtful and nuanced issues brought up by BP. Much more thoughtful and nuanced than in any MCU film before it. I just don't think they were that artfully executed. The film's a bit of a messy clutter, both visually and narratively, and that really hurt my second viewing. That said, I'm really glad it exists.

 

I wish the ST would have kept the themes that the MCU has been using, such as camaraderie and familial bonds. I feel nothing for the characters so far and I am wholly against the treatment of the original characters. They should have been revered and passed on the torch to the next generation. That is what the MCU has been doing recently, honoring the ones who started it all, while then segueing into the new characters who will take the helm. I wish that the ST had done that as opposed to setting them up as failures who had become disillusioned without leaving a real legacy behind.

 

But the MCU is doing the same thing. The MCU mentors like Odin, Black Panther's father and the Ancient One and the like, ARE the equivalents to the older OT characters like Luke, Han and Leia in the sequel trilogy.

While the new sequel trilogy heroes are the equivalent to the current Marvel heroes.

 

But they actually DID mentor, two days of trying to tell Rey why the Jedi need to end is NOT really being a mentor. The others actually believed in what they had been doing and wanted to instill their ideals on to their replacements, while also acknowledging how their replacements have exceeded them or have desires for them to be better than them. We didn’t get that in the ST in regards to the original characters.

 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has truly evolved in the last 10 years and it is great to see the culmination with Avengers: IW. Cleary the number 4 movie worldwide in the box office. It is amazing that each movie: Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Guardian of the Galaxy, and to an extent Avengers with the third movie so far show improvement over the last film of there series. This is something that before was not truly something that happened. The first movie would be great and the sequel's suck. Kickboxer, American Ninja, The Godfather, Jaws, Friday the 13th, Superman, etc.

IW was a big improvement over the second one Age of Ultron. Currently at $1.820 vs. $1.459 worldwide, domestic $598 million vs. $459 million, and both are still going up. I am one that will tell you that Kevin Feige did right, regardless if they reboot the stuff in 2029. Didn't star wars just get re-booted with the Disney purchase? New canon vs. Legends? Spiderman currently has the Sam Riami trilogy, and then you have the Amazing Spiderman duo logy, and now we have the third incarnation of Spiderman. All 6 of those movies have made more than $700 million at the box office worldwide.

I get it, we don't want anything to tarnish or bring down star wars, and to an extent, regardless of all the posts on this thread the Marvel Cinematic Universe is currently at the top right now. Star Wars is also up there and the Disney movies have made more than the GL unadjusted. I don't do adjusted cause the variables don't add up. A movie that had a lot of ticket sales in the past does not mean that the very same movie being released today in the same format would make the same amount of money.

Do I want star wars to be like the Marvel Universe? No, I want it to be its own thing, and what is its own thing? Every star wars movie is an event not just a film. What makes Star Wars a big thing is the big event.

Too much time is spent downing the Marvel Cinematic Universe than praising it for what it has done. I don't think any of the Fox Marvel Cinematic Universe movies can amount to what the Disney Marvel Cinematic Universe has done.

Disney Star Wars is being treated like its on a downward path and it is not. So TLJ was divisive and people thought it went in the opposite direction. Heck, I don't need to talk to people about that issue, we got it here on the forums with the different threads. The conversation pops up...."They messed with Luke"......"Leia flying"......."RJ ruined the movie and only J.J. can save it" there is enough of that around.

Bob Iger and Kevin feign are geniuses for what they have been able to accomplish with the super hero franchise. The movies may be forgettable, but as of right now, if you look at the top 100 movies both domestic and internationally you are going to se a slew of Disney Marvel movies in there and that is not stopping anytime soon.

 

I have to disagree on the OT heroes. As @powerfulforce says above, the OT heroes don't mentor anyone (not that I remember the MCU folks mentoring anyone either but I haven't seen all the movies).

While Odin is blamed for a lot of the problems in Thor (working off an admittedly weak memory) and Black Panther's dad and elders screwed up a lot of things, I never saw them do things RIGHT. I never saw them change and grow and bring a galaxy to the light by their efforts. I saw them old and saw the results of what they did. If you brought Luke, Han and Leia out of nowhere and dropped them into the ST, I could buy that story, because I have no history with them. For new fans, until they go back and see the OT, they probably have the same reaction to them as I do to Odin.

But for this older fan, what the ST has done is say these heroes we saw in the OT screwed up so badly that we're in the mess we're in in the ST. Nothing they did stayed or stuck, even themselves. I'm supposed to buy this - with a few lines of exposition and a ton of clickbait articles telling me that I should buy this because of X, Y or Z in the OT. Which, frankly, none of is true. It's either "people change after 30 years" or "Luke tried to kill Vader therefore..." often in the same sentence.

Then again, I'm no big fan of the MCU or DC's universe or any of the eleventy billion superhero movies that have come out since Superman in 1978. For every one like it or Superman II or Burton's Batman Returns, there's The Dark Knight, which made me never want to see a superhero movie again. I don't get them, I don't care to.

But I will say this - there is a care in the way they're made, how they fit together, how they treat fans. I don't see Feige telling people upset about IW that they're sexist or racist or manbabies because they don't like.

 

How? You’re restating your opinion but you’re not actually defending it.

I haven’t seen Rian or Kennedy generalize all critics of TLJ as sexists or racists. That’s a strawman.

And let’s not act like the two are directly comparable. There have been many racist and sexist attacks on TLJ- there’s a “defemenized cut” out there, for goodness sake. People haven’t accused IW critics of being racist or sexist because IW has not been subject to racist and sexist attacks on nearly the same scale.

 

There are a few elements that are definitely seen within the YA dystopian genre. Such as a ragtag group against a tyrannical entity. The reluctant hero/heroine that gets dragged into the conflict. A conflicted "bad boy" who may or may not become good. The thing is that we've seen this in the OT, but it is the execution that is the issue and it makes it feel more apparent. TLJ feels more in line with dystopian series like the Hunger Games and Divergent, while some may argue those are decent series they are still quite different from Star Wars and there really is no need for Star Wars to follow their formula.

 

Literally all of these things were present in Star Wars before the YA craze. Some of these elements (such as the David vs. Goliath conflict or the reluctant hero) are common across genres and are in no way markers of the YA genre.

Again, you’re just saying that, but not really defending it with an argument. Tell me how TLJ like the Hunger Games and Divergent.

I’ve read both books (though I see the former as something of a guilty pleasure and absolutely loath the latter), and I’m not seeing similarities beyond basic things that are common in many genres.

 

Kennedy, directly, no. Johnson, yes. And various and sundry associates and fellow travelers. And yes, they do lump all the critics together. It's not a strawman. There's any number of articles on how toxic SW fandom is that, at best, say there might be a few legitimate complaints while screaming about how everyone who doesn't like the movie is a knuckle dragging troglodyte, basically, or a bot. I'm not saying that there aren't racist and/or sexist critics because I've seen them. But not every critic is. However, it makes a convenient narrative to blame six people in their parents' basements, or racists/sexist, or bots and ignore criticism.

It also feeds a narrative of "oh those crazy Star Wars fans hate everything so you can ignore them." While I don't see that from the MCU side if people don't like a movie from its universe.

 

I didn’t realize I had to defend it. You said you don’t see it after I said I do. It didn’t sound to me like you wanted the discussion and that’s fine.

But okay. For the record, I’m not just talking about dystopian movies. I’m talking about the genre of books, of which I’ve read a number. So many things in Rey’s story, TLJ much more than TFA, I’ve seen before multiple times in them. For example, Luke’s characterization is classic YA dystopian. A weird, white male mentor with unconventional views that our girl protagonist follows and ultimately self-righteously schools on some thing. Ripped right out of the pages of YA dystopia.

And just because there are too many parallels to list individually, I’ll leave a few links to common YA dystopian tropes. If you don’t see Rey’s story there, cool, but I can’t not see it.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/io9.gi...timate-generic-dystopian-ya-no-1685296266/amp

https://hobbylark.com/fandoms/Overly-Used-Tropes-in-YA-Fiction-and-What-To-Write-Instead

http://inkandquills.com/2015/02/04/10-worn-out-ya-cliches/

And my favorite because it makes me laugh:

 

@AhsokaSolo
That comic strip might as well been a parody of every other fanfiction. It only lacks the mandatory “super sad backstory” for main character (slavery in 70% of the times, because imagination is overrated). I am at least glad Rey wasn’t “clumsy”. That is like, 99% of the times the default description for a female protag.