The past, present, future, and sideways of shared universes

Started by Stupot, Tue 22/08/2017 03:13:34

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Stupot

Marvel's MCU shows no signs of slowing down. I'm going to see Spiderman Homecoming tomorrow. On one hand I'm really looking forward to it. I'm not a big comic-book geek and I'm not a snob when it comes to just sitting down and enjoying some pure mindless Hollywood superhero nonsense. But on the other hand, it's almost a chore. Am I going to see Spiderman tomorrow because I want to or because I feel like I'd be missing out on some peice of the jigsaw, if I skip it?

I already don't bother with any of the TV shows (watched Agents of Shield for a bit but something about it - maybe the dialogue - stopped me from continuing).

Now DC have got their own cinematic universe but I haven't even got started on those films and I don't know if I want to.

On top of that we've got the Universal "Dark Universe" coming out (I quite enjoyed The Mummy, but do I really want to get involved if this blows up?) aaand I beleive they're also planning a whole Kaiju universe with Godzilla, Mothra, King Kong and all the big city-destroying monsters.

Is this the future of cinematic storytelling or is it just a fad?

A lot of films have little Easter eggs or touches to indicate that they are set in the same world. Most of Quentin Tarantino's films are connected (I think most people know that Vic Vega (Mr. Blonde) from Reservoir Dogs is supposed to be the brother of Pulp Fiction's Vincent Vega and that's just the start of it). But this is very subtle and really just a game Taratino plays to amuse himself and his eagle-eyed audiences.

Something I saw recently made me think there are still some cool options about 'sharing' a universe. It involves a recent movie starring James McAvoy (but not X-Men). If you know what I'm talking about you can carry on reading:
Spoiler

It's about Split. If you haven't seen it but want to, I recommend not reading further.
Spoiler

So, M. Night Shyamalan has made his best film in several years. His signature twist ending was great because it was kind of a meta-twist in that it really had nothing to do with the plot of the movie itself. But when we see Bruce Willis as his character from Unbreakable and you realise that, at the very least Split and Unbreakable are set in the same universe.

The great thing about what Shyamalan has done was make a good standalone film that introduces essentially a superhero, then wait 15 or 16 years, then make another film that works perfectly well on it's own to introduce a villain. And with the flash of Brucie at the end we realise that we could possibly get a third film which is in fact a direct sequel to two seperate standalone films. I'm not sure if that's ever been done before and I think it's brilliant.
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So that (in spoiler tags) is a wonderful way to play with the idea of a shared universe. BUT... it's still a gimmick. I worry that it will always be gimmicky and Hollywood will struggle to find new ways to keep us excited about these ever-growing univeses.

Mandle

I've pretty much given up on watching superhero movies, especially Spiderman as it has just been rebooted too many times in a short span of time for my taste.

I did watch Logan on the plane back from Australia as I heard it was very different, and it was awesome!

Spoiler
One interesting thing about Logan I noticed was that the X-Men comic books exist in the world the movie is set in, we even see Logan looking at the cover of one comic showing him dressed in the classic yellow uniform and saying that what is depicted in the comics about the X-Men is complete fantasy invented by a writer and incredibly loosely based on "real" events.

This could also mean that the previous movies were also fantastic inventions only very loosely based on what really happened in the "real" world that Logan is set in...
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Stupot

Yeah, Logan was superb. Great send-off for a great character. Even if they keep the X-Men franchise alive I really hope they don't bring back a new Wolverine or at least 10 years.

Regarding your spoiler. I noticed the thing you noticed too and had a similar thought but I wasn't convinced that it was actually the case.

On a slightly different note, I actually had a great idea that there could be a film universe based on all the old tv shows of the 70's 80' and 90's. Starsky and Hutch, Airwolf, A-Team, Baywatch, Knight Rider. All the classics. Some of them have had film versions in recent years, but what if they were all In the same world and their characters interacted in interesting ways.

What other possible shared universe ideas can you think of?

lorenzo

Quote from: Stupot+ on Tue 22/08/2017 03:13:34
Is this the future of cinematic storytelling or is it just a fad?
As someone who doesn't like superheroes films and is tired of the constant stream of sequels that Hollywood is putting out, I really hope it's a fad. I can understand why they're doing it, it's a good way to keep people watching all those endless sequels and spin-offs. But I really don't like it and after watching the first Spiderman and Batman movies, I've had my fill with the genre.

If it's just a small reference put there for fans that doesn't get in the way of the story (as in your Tarantino example), it's all right.

Spoiler
But for me, the gimmick in Split didn't work. Being the first Shyamalan film I saw, at the end I was left dumbfounded. "What the hell is Bruce Willis doing there? Is this some kind of reference I don't get?", I thought, until my girlfriend explained me the meaning of that scene.
And after the comic book style transformation of the villain, to me that was the final nail in the coffin for the film.
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Quote from: Mandle on Tue 22/08/2017 05:36:34
I did watch Logan on the plane back from Australia as I heard it was very different, and it was awesome!

Spoiler
One interesting thing about Logan I noticed was that the X-Men comic books exist in the world the movie is set in, we even see Logan looking at the cover of one comic showing him dressed in the classic yellow uniform and saying that what is depicted in the comics about the X-Men is complete fantasy invented by a writer and incredibly loosely based on "real" events.

This could also mean that the previous movies were also fantastic inventions only very loosely based on what really happened in the "real" world that Logan is set in...
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Mandle:
Spoiler
That's what really happened to Kit Carson, the American frontiersman. During his life he became so famous that people began to write dime novels about his (exaggerated or completely invented) exploits, completely unbeknown to him. In fact, he discovered about those novels only by chance, when searching for a missing woman: they found her dead, and she was carrying with her a book about his (imaginary) feats.

And when Carson went to Washington, people were pretty disappointed in seeing that the Herculean hero described in all those novels was just a simple and unassuming man.
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Stupot

I thought I'd just mention here that I saw Spider-Man on Wednesday and I actually really liked it. It slots nicely into the MCU while also allowing the film to work on its own. There's nothing about this film that relies on the other Avengers movies, except maybe...
Spoiler
The fact that Tony Stark is his mentor and that the weapons used by the villains are made from alien tech salvaged from the Battle for New York in Avengers 1.
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That's the thing at least about the Marvel universe. The films are quite good. But I can't help feel that the money they spent to have Downey Jr. just to show up and read a few lines could have been used to improve the CGI a bit (some of it was a bit sketch and will not age well).

Mandle

Quote from: Stupot+ on Tue 22/08/2017 08:55:00
Baywatch, Knight Rider

Hahaha... Michael Knight is shocked to find his unknown twin brother working as a lifeguard but solving crimes all the time. They do say that seperated twins often end up in similar lines of work. That could be awesome!

Gilbert

Quote from: Stupot+ on Tue 22/08/2017 08:55:00
What other possible shared universe ideas can you think of?

X-Files, Millennium, The Lone Gunmen, Alien franchise, Terminator franchise

Lemme explain (if you cannot get that), the first three shows are already in the same shared universe (well, the awful endings of the latter two shows were actually X-Files episodes...).

The Millennium Group later becomes Weyland-Yutani Corporation and they create androids based on their once ally/enemy/whatever(depending of the season) Frank Black.

In X-Files, the FBI agents come across alien artificial shape-shifters which are the same damn things as the T-1000 (when I watched the show I just called them T-1000s). Skynet later designs the T-1000 model according to those alien leftover technology and let it assume the form of a certain FBI agent called John Doggett who totally isn't a temporal replacement of Mulder :grin:. (I know, I know. In T2, T-1000 actually takes the form from a police officer, but let's not be too serious about this, and given it's Terminator with its mind-screwing time travel excuses, you can do whatever retcons you like...) Amazingly though, I think(i.e. not sure) of all the many forms the T-1000 shape-shifters have assumed in X-Files, they never assume the form of John Doggett. Maybe John Doggett is THE T-1000 sent by Skynet afterall.

Not to mention, obviously, X-Files is about aliens and (occasionally) killer robots.

AND there are high profile cross-overs between the Alien and Terminator franchises, so they could consider somewhat sharing a universe officially already.

Stupot

Haha. I like it. I love the idea that Doggett actually has been T-1000 this whole time.

Blondbraid

While I did love the first Avengers movie when it came out, it was just epic to see several movies build up to a big team battle,
I can't help but feel the whole shared universe trend have gotten a little overboard to the point that none of the movies that try this are able to tell a satisfying standalone story, and it perpetuates the mentality that it's ok for a movie to be pretty mediocre, because it's just there to set up the next movie in the franchise. Like I mentioned, Marvel managed to make it work out OK, but I can't think of any other shared universe that I actually liked.

Now, I do think Easter eggs is fine, as long as they are that, Easter eggs, and not whole scenes that grinds the rest of the movie to a halt just to advertise coming movies from the same studio.
Now, I know these movies aren't popular amongst everyone, but I kind of liked the Van Helsing movie with Hugh Jackman, The Brothers Grimm by Terry Gilliam and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie,
and all those movies managed to put many characters from different stories into the same film, but they also worked as self-contained stories that didn't rely on the audience coming back for a dozen sequels.


Mandle

Quote from: Stupot+ on Fri 25/08/2017 01:03:49
But I can't help feel that the money they spent to have Downey Jr. just to show up and read a few lines could have been used to improve the CGI a bit (some of it was a bit sketch and will not age well).

Oh God... I saw the TV commercial for the movie and there was some CGI in it that looked like pre-2000 effects. The animation of the costume was awful. I've seen better cloth animation in Playstation 2 games.

If they can't find better shots for the trailer then I shudder for the rest of the movie.

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