Canadian Politics Today

I thought they were scraping the bottom of the barrel with Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant Man (neither of whom were well-known properties), but they somehow managed to pull it off and make movies that were somewhat enjoyable/successful.

I think that what made Guardians really special is that it was so completely outside the box. It's directed by James Gunn, who also directed The Suicide Squad movie that I was raving about yesterday. The movies have a lot in common. I think they're the two best-reviewed "superhero" movies since Christopher Nolan's Batman movies way back when. I thought Guardians was a risky idea at the time, but it was an amazing success and it kind of laid the groundwork for the Infinity War movies. The Marvel nameplate got people in the seats, but a genuinely endearing group of characters is what made the movie so beloved.

Well, even after Marvel started to release their movies (back in 2009), you still had Avatar, Jurassic World, Fast and Furious films, Transformers movies, James Bond movies, the Hobbit films, and various animated movies from Pixar and Disney, all of which rival many of the Marvel and DC movies. So there appears to be plenty of "blockbuster real estate" that hasn't been taken up by super hero films.

(If people remember the super hero movies more, its perhaps because at least some of them were pretty well done, and Marvel has kept up the quality, whereas things like the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Transformers, etc. have descended into junk.)

I think that even pre-covid, movie economics had changed to favor blockbusters rather than modest-budget movies. Post-covid, almost all of the major theatrical releases have been Disney. I think that right now there's a lot of anxiety about theatrical releases, and a belief that only blockbuster type movies will get people out to theatres at all. On the bright side, Netflix and Amazon Prime are giving venues to movies that might have never seen a theatrical release even before covid.

 -k