The Marvels | November 10, 2023 | Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter

[Porthos]

Against my better judgment, wading into this.

 

The ***ONLY*** reason to be at all concerned about the Final Edit of this film is the dual strikes.  The dual strikes can plausibly, and I use that word after much reflection, have an effect on post-production with everything from ADR to pickups to minor rewrites followed by said ADR and pickups. 

 

Everything else is bullshitty panicking and/or motivated reasoning.

 

Films can be short and epic.

 

Films can be long and drag.

 

Any correlation between film length and quality is... probably more coincidence than actual underlying reason.

 

Even pulling in recent Marvel movies/shows is far too small of a sample size to really comment on.

 

Maybe the film has been hacked to pieces.  Or maybe the underlying fat has been excised and it's what's there flows from start to finish without any "look at watch and yawn" gaps.  None of us know.  None of us has any possible insight which it is, or if it is somewhere in the middle.

 

As such, y'all really ought to just take a deeeeeep breath and maybe just, I dunno, wait and see a bit.  It's a crazy idea, I know, but it might just work.

[Porthos]

11 minutes ago, Porthos said:

Films can be short and epic.

 

Films can be long and drag.

 

Any correlation between film length and quality is... probably more coincidence than actual underlying reason.

 

I want to add a bit to this.

 

When it comes down to it, when looking at the edit of a film, probably three things matter more than others.

 

Do the character motivations and actions make sense?

Does the narrative structure of the movie make sense?

Is there enough time to tell the story you want to tell?

 

That last one even sets aside "whether or not the story is interesting/compelling" as there are too many films to count that have overstayed their welcome.  And while I'm sure there's other points to the edit, those are the main three I can think of and a lot of other things flow out of it.   @TwoMisfits pointed out how in Morbius there was clearly signs of, shall we say, over-editing when it came to how scenes flowed and how characters acted.

 

Really, I suppose the only question mark here is "is there enough time to tell an interesting/compelling/fun/worth-plopping-down-dollarinos story".  And when it comes right down to it, none of us know.  And won't for a while.

[DInky]

For me alarm bells go off when I see a short run time for a CBM. I honestly can't think of a CBM that had a short run time (under110 minutes) and was good.

 

X-Men Origins Wolverine - 107 minutes

Fantastic Four (2005) - 106 minutes

X-Men/X-Men The Last Stand/Catwoman/Morbius - 104 minutes

Punisher War Zone/Daredevil - 103 minutes

Fantastic Four (2015) - 100 minutes

Elektra/Venom Let There Be Carnage - 97 minutes

Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance - 96 minutes

The New Mutants - 94 minutes

Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer - 92 minutes

Jonah Hex - 81 minutes

 

Out of all of these the first X-Men movie is the exception.

Edited August 29, 2023 by DInky

[misterpepp]

From what I was able to find, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Big Hero 6, Birds of Prey, The Crow, Deadpool, Dredd, The Mask, Men in Black 1&3, Teen Titans Go to the Movies, TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, and X-Men are all theatrical comic book movies that are under 110 minutes (some are even under 100, 90, even 80) and rated fresh on RT, most being certified fresh.

 

I'll admit that it seems to be the exception and not the rule, so a short runtime for this does give me some pause. However, I've been hoping for the past couple years that these tentpoles would get shorter, so personally I'd be happy with more big movies at shorter runtimes.

Edited August 29, 2023 by datpepper

[Porthos]

21 minutes ago, datpepper said:

From what I was able to find, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Big Hero 6, Birds of Prey, The Crow, Deadpool, Dredd, The Mask, Men in Black 1&3, Teen Titans Go to the Movies, TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, and X-Men are all theatrical comic book movies that are under 110 minutes (some are even under 100, 90, even 80) and rated fresh on RT, most being certified fresh.

 

I'll admit that it seems to be the exception and not the rule, so a short runtime for this does give me some pause. However, I've been hoping for the past couple years that these tentpoles would get shorter, so personally I'd be happy with more big movies at shorter runtimes.

 

Tempted to cite Sturgeon's Law here, FWIW.

 

(90% of everything is crap, is the popularized version of it)

[TheDude391]

3 hours ago, DInky said:

For me alarm bells go off when I see a short run time for a CBM. I honestly can't think of a CBM that had a short run time (under110 minutes) and was good.

 

X-Men Origins Wolverine - 107 minutes

Fantastic Four (2005) - 106 minutes

X-Men/X-Men The Last Stand/Catwoman/Morbius - 104 minutes

Punisher War Zone/Daredevil - 103 minutes

Fantastic Four (2015) - 100 minutes

Elektra/Venom Let There Be Carnage - 97 minutes

Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance - 96 minutes

The New Mutants - 94 minutes

Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer - 92 minutes

Jonah Hex - 81 minutes

 

Out of all of these the first X-Men movie is the exception.

Punisher War Zone is great!

[Squire]

3 hours ago, datpepper said:

From what I was able to find, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Big Hero 6, Birds of Prey, The Crow, Deadpool, Dredd, The Mask, Men in Black 1&3, Teen Titans Go to the Movies, TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, and X-Men are all theatrical comic book movies that are under 110 minutes (some are even under 100, 90, even 80) and rated fresh on RT, most being certified fresh.

 

I'll admit that it seems to be the exception and not the rule, so a short runtime for this does give me some pause. However, I've been hoping for the past couple years that these tentpoles would get shorter, so personally I'd be happy with more big movies at shorter runtimes.

A lot of those examples are pre-2000 or animated films, and in both cases I think the expectation about the length of the movie during the development phase was different compared to your typical MCU movie in this day and age. 
 

Still, this doesn’t mean a short runtime for Marvels means it’s bad. 

Edited August 30, 2023 by Squire

[toutvabien]

I'd dig a short & sweet Marvel Studios joint. It's not like Love & Thunder needed more minutes of runime to be better. More like more months in pre-production.

[poweranimals]

9 hours ago, toutvabien said:

I'd dig a short & sweet Marvel Studios joint. It's not like Love & Thunder needed more minutes of runime to be better. More like more months in pre-production.

I completely disagree. I think there were plot threads ie: a) Jane becoming Mighty Thor b) Gor the god butcher; that could've used more fleshing out.

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

42 minutes ago, poweranimals said:

I completely disagree. I think there were plot threads ie: a) Jane becoming Mighty Thor b) Gor the god butcher; that could've used more fleshing out.

 I was going to say something similar.

 

If anything I'd say Thor Love and Thunder issue was that it should have been two films (or at least choose one between the two films) of Gor the God Butcher and the other worlds of gods on the one hand, and the Mighty Thor storyline on the other.

 

We never saw or felt enough stakes of god butchering for the first to be impactful, and we didn't spend enough time on Jane's story for the latter to be impactful.

 

Although in fairness we did get 10 minutes of Guardians and shenanigans stuff that didn't need to be there or indeed have anything to do with anything.

[poweranimals]

10 minutes ago, Ipickthiswhiterose said:

Although in fairness we did get 10 minutes of Guardians and shenanigans stuff that didn't need to be there or indeed have anything to do with anything.

But that was the best part of the movie. I'm still bitter we never got an Asguardians of the Galaxxy movie tbh.

[Willowra]

25 minutes ago, Ipickthiswhiterose said:

 I was going to say something similar.

 

If anything I'd say Thor Love and Thunder issue was that it should have been two films (or at least choose one between the two films) of Gor the God Butcher and the other worlds of gods on the one hand, and the Mighty Thor storyline on the other.

 

We never saw or felt enough stakes of god butchering for the first to be impactful, and we didn't spend enough time on Jane's story for the latter to be impactful.

 

Although in fairness we did get 10 minutes of Guardians and shenanigans stuff that didn't need to be there or indeed have anything to do with anything.

I think they've removed cringy dialogues from the movie which could be a good thing. For example, there was a dialogue: I used to change your diapers, Lieutenant Trouble, which was in the D23 trailer of the movie but was then removed from the teaser trailer

Edited August 30, 2023 by Willowra

[Arlborn]

48 minutes ago, poweranimals said:

But that was the best part of the movie. I'm still bitter we never got an Asguardians of the Galaxxy movie tbh.

So what you are saying is that Thor4 was actually 3 movies...

[poweranimals]

1 hour ago, Arlborn said:

So what you are saying is that Thor4 was actually 3 movies...

I don't know if I'd go that far. I just think those plot threads could've all been fleshed out more. A longer runtime could've certainly helped with that. Not sure it would've been enough but maybe. I do think at least a separate movie with the Guardians would've been nice before going into Thor 4 and Guardians 3 respectively.

 

And Eternals should've definitely been 2 movies. The first movie could've covered their history and then the sequel covers the present day storyline.

[toutvabien]

4 hours ago, poweranimals said:

I completely disagree. I think there were plot threads ie: a) Jane becoming Mighty Thor b) Gor the god butcher; that could've used more fleshing out.

Well, I'm just saying they should have been fleshed out before they started rolling these cameras. I don't think that required a longer runtime necessarily. I already thought they found a pretty compelling thematic way of crossing these two plotlines over (Gorr going after the Gods, Jane is a mortal who chooses to become a God to delay her dying). The ideas were there, they just didn't do much with them.

[TwoMisfits]

2 hours ago, Arlborn said:

So what you are saying is that Thor4 was actually 3 movies...

 

Tonally, it completely was...

[Mr Terrific]

I wanted to like Thor 4 so much. It just failed. 
if you’re talking mashed-together plot lines in CBMs, you’re talking X-Men 3. It’s about a mutant cureNO WAIT. IT’S DARK PHOENIX. And we don’t have Cyclops so we overuse Wolverine. 
AHHHHHH

[WittyUsername]

Are they not going to move this up a week? 

[SpiderByte]

20 minutes ago, WittyUsername said:

Are they not going to move this up a week? 

They might be hoping to do a marketing blitz if the strike lifts, which would be a decent reason for keeping it where it is since that means they can use that week for promo instead. That's probably the best argument for why they haven't moved it up yet, especially since nobody else really seems to be moving into that spot either.

 

As for the runtime, I think the Dark Knight movies are really where this "if it's under two hours it must suck" thing comes from, and especially with the justice league Snyder cut shit where now everyone thinks any longer or early version is a secret masterpiece that was gutted in post and that only the 4 hour version must be good, with people already claiming that frigging Blue Beetle has a Snyder cut

Edited August 30, 2023 by SpiderByte

[WittyUsername]

3 minutes ago, SpiderByte said:

They might be hoping to do a marketing blitz if the strike lifts, which would be a decent reason for keeping it where it is since that means they can use that week for promo instead. That's probably the best argument for why they haven't moved it up yet, especially since nobody else really seems to be moving into that spot either.

 

As for the runtime, I think the Dark Knight movies are really where this "if it's under two hours it must suck" thing comes from, and especially with the justice league Snyder cut shit where now everyone thinks any longer or early version is a secret masterpiece that was gutted in post and that only the 4 hour version must be good, with people already claiming that frigging Blue Beetle has a Snyder cut

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single individual argue that ZSJL is better than the theatrical cut because it’s longer.