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From the Vault: The Tragedy of the Lion King

Is THIS Your King???

The oversimplified definition of a “tragedy” in entertainment refers to any work that does not have a happy ending for a majority of the characters, including the hero. Back in the day, the master of telling these stories was none other than William “Mothafuckin” Shakespeare (experts say that was indeed his middle name). Shakespeare’s work is so influential that I don’t really need to give you a history lesson, odds are that anyone reading this is familiar with at least one or two of his tragedies from high school english classes.

It is also a tragedy in entertainment when a classic story that was already told gets told again almost verbatim, invoking nostalgia and breaking the box office, and taking away attention from new stories that are the product of rigorous original work. So why do I bring this up?

My high school english teacher ruined The Lion King for me. Don’t get me wrong, he was amazing and is still one of the best teachers I’ve had in my lifetime, but man did he make The Lion King weird. When we were studying Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he guided my imagination to a world where the “Circle of Life” was instead a ring of sex, existentialism, madness, and death.

It is pretty common knowledge that The Lion King is based off of Hamlet. A dead king, a conflicted prince, a murderous uncle, exile, and revenge? Disney is remaking The Lion King!…by which I mean, quite literally just remaking it. Many reviews are criticizing the CGI update of the classic tale as essentially a copied & pasted version, in terms of both the story and major beats. Obviously I’m still going to see it for the same reason I saw Solo: A Star Wars Story despite bad reviews (the reason being Donald Glover), and because it’s still The Lion King, but it is somewhat of a bummer that there isn’t anything different about this updated version…right? I’m glad you agree.

Now I could sit here and write about my ideas to flesh out Scar’s backstory, or emphasize what Simba/Nala were doing between childhood and adulthood, or even go into the politics of Pride Rock and why Mufasa had a grip on the situation whereas Scar didn’t…but then I thought: “Why don’t I just repackage a classic story and market it as something different too?”

As my english teacher did in 2012, I have taken it upon myself as the people’s champion (as long as “the people” means a few strangers on the internet that have nothing better to read than soggzblogs…for which I adore you all very much) to provide an idea for an updated and different version of The Lion King. Since Disney has acquired all of Fox’s film assets, including the rated-R Deadpool franchise, and since they seem hellbent on running the entire film industry…let’s work in the space of a hypothetical reality where Disney’s The Lion King (2019) actually is the tragedy of Hamlet beat-for-beat. Not this lazy “oh well it’s based off of Hamlet” thing. No folks, today we shall pretend that instead of literally remaking their own version, Disney instead copied & pasted Shakespeare’s Hamlet itself into a CGI version of an African jungle with the characters we all know and love from 1994 (and some added soggzblogs garnish). We will do this in three steps: Emphasizing the elements of a Shakespearean tragedy, Matching every Hamlet character to a Lion King counterpart, and finally summarizing the story (leaving the reader’s wild imagination to burn the imagery of things like lion-incest in their head). Let us begin:

THE ELEMENTS OF A SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

Tragic Hero – Pretty self-explanatory, Hamlet is pretty flawed and it almost feels like he’s cursed. He’s never happy and is also not going to be alive at the end.
Struggle Between Good and Evil – This one is also obvious. Even if the character’s actions are morally grey, you’re still pretty aware of where Hamlet and Claudius are coming from.
Hamartia – This refers to the fatal character flaw of the hero. For Hamlet, it was his indecisiveness that left him too paralyzed to act. Even if literally no one said literally anything, Hamlet was still out there pressing “X” to doubt.
Tragic Waste – Good, neutral, and evil characters alike all die. A lot of them.
External Conflict – There is all of the craziness with Claudius, and there is still some other external conflict that Hamlet has to deal with. At one point when I was reading this in high school, I think I said “Denmark be fucked, yo” to my friends out loud in class.
Internal Conflict – Hamlet just can’t figure out how to overcome his hamartia, but he tries and there comes the internal conflict. You feel bad for him for sure, but hey it makes for some beautiful soliloquies that you get to perform for your theater class final.
Catharsis – Audiences should have an emotional connection to the story via empathizing with the characters.
Supernatural Elements – There needs to be some form of magic, usually portrayed via witches or ghosts.
Lack of Poetic Justice – Shakespearean tragedies aren’t as simple as “good guy wins”. Again, things end badly for everyone.
Comic Relief – While you’re over here immersed in all of the juicy drama and the constant crisis and conflict…you get to enjoy a few laughs!

THE CHARACTERS

Hamlet = Simba: This one is obvious, our main protagonist and Crown Prince of ~~Denmark~~ Pride Rock. What’s changing here is that we’re not getting goofy, lovable, and adorkable Simba anymore. This is a tragedy, Simba will be pulling a Hamlet and basically overthinking himself to death.
Ophelia = Nala: The female lead, easy. Although it should be noted that Ophelia is more timid and less of a “get your shit together” presence for the hero, so I have to apologize to Nala fans in this hypothetical.
Claudius = Scar: Another easy one, our main antagonist who has taken the throne of Pride Rock due to his alleged murder of King Mufasa. Scar himself was a total dick, but Claudius genuinely did show some semblance of compassion & potential guilt. Granted, he was also known for being a huge horn-dog…horn…cat? I’ll figure it out.
Gertrude = Sarabi: The Queen of Pride Rock formerly married to King Mufasa, now married to Scar. Sarabi didn’t really get much to do in the Disney story except basic “mom things”, but Gertrude is an interesting character herself. We’re gonna have fun with this one! Well not too much fun, because #tragedy
Polonius = Zira: Okay so here is where I have to start getting a bit weird. Polonius is Ophelia’s father and a pompous old douche who is the Lord Chamberlain of Claudius’ Court. In nature itself a pride of lions tends to have only one male, and if there is another then that means competition. Scar killed Mufasa for that “alpha-male” title, and Simba is younger and is still on the come-up, so it really doesn’t make sense for another old male Lion to be in the picture because he would’ve either been king or been killed (infanticide itself is pretty common among male lions). THEN I remembered in The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride, the antagonist Zira was this crazy lady that worshiped the ground Scar walked on and tried to take back Pride Rock in Scar’s name…so that makes the most sense? This does, however, mean that we have to retcon Nala into being Zira’s daughter.***

***Biologically speaking, male lions usually tend to mate with multiple females in the pride. So Zira’s kids have to come from somewhere, right? We’re assuming Mufasa was a right proper lad (faithful to Sarabi) and it is established that Scar has quite the sexual appetite. While not outwardly mentioned, in THIS version it will be implied that Nala might be Scar’s daughter (through subtlety in interactions between Scar and Zira)…making Nala and Simba cousins. If Disney is so obsessed with live action realism that these CGI lions can’t show emotion when they sing or talk, then I feel like they have to respect the actual behavior of lions in nature! Plus, we’ve all seen blood-related-lions bang in live action anyway, they just had the last name “Lannister” (I’ll be here all week).
Horatio = Zazu: A loyal friend and political ally to the Prince that follows him around giving him advice that he won’t listen to? Yeah, Zazu’s got big Horatio energy.
Laertes = Kovu: Remember this guy, again from the sequel that people apparently forgot? Well he’s the only character in the canon that fits the bill of a younger male rival for Simba to have a fight with at the end. Plus, he actually is Zira’s son (and looks enough like Scar to be his son too) so that makes sense, which also retcons him into being Nala’s brother. Look, no one gives enough of a shit about the sequel to care anyway (I mean I personally liked it, but you know how it goes).
Fortinbras = Shere Khan: I can explain. Fortinbras is basically the leader of another Kingdom (Norway) that’s making his way over to Denmark to conquer it. If we have to keep it within Disney and go with the fact that “king of the jungle” goes to an animal of the feline variety…we can substitute Norway with the Indian Jungle that The Jungle Book took place in, and install this scary ass tiger as the leader there. If you’re wondering how a tiger is going to make his way from India to Africa…I am too and I have no answer for it, so just insert some Disney magic here (for the record, The Jungle Book is still my favorite Disney live-action remake).
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern = Timon & Pumba: Two dingbats that follow the hero around? Duh. It is implied that they are old friends with Hamlet, but they’re tasked by Claudius to spy on Hamlet so we’re rolling with that here as well.
The Ghost = Mufasa: Dead father of the hero that appears in a supernatural fashion.

THE STORY (AKA DOING MY BEST TO SUMMARIZE A COMPLICATED WORK OF ART)

We open on a dark night in an African jungle, with a scene of two elephants keeping watch as guardsmen for the king. They’re having a small conversation about the threat of an attack on Pride Rock by the vicious Shere Khan, before they are alerted to the presence of an intruder. They discover this trespasser to be none other than a ghost that strongly resembles their late King Mufasa. Zazu arrives on the scene, who then goes off to find the Prince Simba (a grown lion, no cute cubs in this one). The ghost speaks to Simba and confirms that he is indeed Mufasa, and that he was murdered by Simba’s uncle Scar who now sits on the throne and is married to Simba’s mother Sarabi. After a heavy conversation, Mufasa orders Simba to take the throne back from the usurper and then disappears.

Simba agrees to do this, but because he’s naturally contemplative and the whole deal is a bit overwhelming, he instead starts saying and doing some really weird shit. This should feel like Simba is pondering if he should quickly accept what the ghost said and act decisively against Scar out of duty, or if he has free will to do this his own way, or if he shouldn’t do it at all. He takes this idea even further when he starts to question if anything that anyone ever does even has any meaning. This puts our hero in the position of him being unhappy, his family in shambles, and also Shere Khan is on his way to fuck shit up. Zazu voices concern as Simba decides he’s going to delay his revenge, but Simba’s going to do it anyway and wants to screw with everyone in the process.

Rumors start to spread across Pride Rock that the Prince has gone mad. Worried about her son, Sarabi brings these concerns to her new husband. This leads Scar to send Timon and Pumba to hang out with Simba more often and keep an eye on him (making for some comedic moments). Zira arrogantly starts to claim that Simba’s madness stems from him being madly in love with her daughter Nala, but we also see that Simba’s been making subtle jokes at Zira’s expense when he talks to her. At this point, Simba’s craziness is incorrigible. Scar himself is concerned and decides that he himself would pay extra attention to Simba and Nala’s conversations in the future. When we get there, Simba seemingly definitely seems out of his mind, but gives Scar some concrete evidence that he isn’t in love with Nala, going as far as to being a misogynistic jerk to her in conversation. Nala is heartbroken, Scar is kind of scared, and Zazu is worried about Simba as he decides on some rather dramatic steps to get evidence of Scar’s crime.

Simba employs a group of monkeys (led by Rafiki, because Rafiki is awesome and I have to put him somewhere fun) that are famous for putting on grand performances throughout the jungle, and he essentially stages a play in front of all of Pride Rock that somewhat resembles how he imagines Scar’s murder of Mufasa. He does this to test if Scar feels any sort of remorse and has any reaction to what is being played out in front of him. When the actual murder scene happens, Scar leaves the scene, giving Simba and Zazu some sort of confirmation that Scar is guilty. Zazu advises this is the time to attack Scar, but Simba instead goes to confront his mother because he’s overthinking it again. After Simba confronts Sarabi about this and starts going crazy in the conversation, accusing Sarabi of co-conspiring with Scar to kill Mufasa, he hears something moving behind him. He believes this to be Scar and immediately attacks to kill…which makes it awkward when it turns out to be Zira. It is now incredibly confusing if Simba is still screwing with people, or if he’s actually insane. It’s also confusing if Scar/Sarabi are trying to calm Simba down because they’re guilty of what he’s accusing them of, or because they’re concerned about his insanity and the danger that comes with it.

For his “accidental” murder of Zira, Scar exiles Simba with Timon and Pumba (also giving those two secret orders to kill Simba). In the aftermath of Zira’s death, Nala is overwhelmed with grief and her brother Kovu returns to Pride Rock (pissed off as all hell). Word eventually reaches Scar that Simba has returned, claiming that hyenas attacked his party and that Timon and Pumba are dead (which is also unclear because there’s a possibility Simba knew of their secret and killed them himself). In an attempt to get rid of Simba, Scar prompts Kovu to kill Simba when he has the chance. These feelings are amplified when Simba arrives at Nala’s funeral (its implied that she took her own life, because #tragedy) and Kovu accuses him of being the cause of Nala’s death in front of everyone. Simba attacks Kovu in a rage claiming that he always loved Nala, and that Scar is responsible for everything wrong as of late.

The fighting breaks out and it is an absolute riot between animals loyal to Simba (moreso Mufasa, really) versus those loyal to Scar. Kovu is more of a fighter and fatally wounds Simba, but in the madness Sarabi is killed, making Simba angry enough to overwhelm and kill Kovu. Simba goes straight at Scar and finally murders him, and before we can actually get some closure on the ambiguity of all of Simba’s words and actions…he dies, tasking Zazu to tell his story. Shere Khan shows up to a horrifying bloodbath of a scene, and we fade out slowly after we see that Zazu has started telling Shere Khan the story of Simba.

It all makes sense now, doesn’t it? THIS is the version Disney doesn’t have the balls to release! Why change or do anything else when your movie already sells, right? They can repackage their stories and keep giving us movies that we don’t need but will pay for anyway, and they most likely will!

In the process, however, let it be known…THAT SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF HOLLYWOOD.

From the Vault: So Low-A Box Office Story

I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This

Let’s wind our clocks back to December 17th, 2015. This was the day that I, and fans everywhere, would finally see Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which would soon become the highest grossing domestic film of all time (not adjusted for inflation). As of this piece being written, the top 10 in that list also includes Star Wars: The Last Jedi at #8, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story at #10. All three of these films were distributed by Disney after their acquisition of Lucasfilm and its assets in 2012. It was safe to say that, at least in terms of revenue and popularity, all was well.

So what the hell could’ve possibly happened for it to end up like this?:

If you haven’t heard by now, Solo: A Star Wars Story was a huge box-office bomb. Even if you want to say that the movie has barely been out for a month, Look at those opening weekend numbers! It performed so poorly that Disney and Lucasfilm have, allegedly, put all other anthology films on hold. This includes, most notably: the slated Boba Fett film (set to be directed by James Mangold who helmed Logan, a fantastic film which I’ve reviewed here), and the highly anticipated (depending on the involvement of Ewan McGregor) Kenobi film.

I will repeat the question: What the hell happened?

Many have tried to answer it with some of the lazy criticisms you would expect: about the actor playing Han, about the directors quitting, about how “they’re doing it like Marvel”, etc….but it can’t be that simple. You mean to tell me even with Donald Glover and Emilia Clarke doing TONS of press beforehand, after post-red carpet reviews seemed vaguely positive, and after the Tomato-meter never went rotten, that a STAR WARS MOVIE would open this badly on Memorial Day Weekend? Before continuing, I’d like to take this time to briefly summarize my thoughts on the movie.

It was very okay. I think it was fun, had cool elements, and nothing stood out as glaringly negative, but it held no importance. I KNOW this story because I’ve seen The Empire Strikes Back more times than I can count. We know Han was a smuggler, we know how Han meets Lando, we know he is the way he is because he was betrayed, we know he won the Millennium Falcon from Lando in a game of sabacc. Any of the extra stuff (i.e. how Han got his dice or his blaster)…I didn’t really need. If I DIDN’T use my moviepass and actually paid full price for a ticket, I would’ve had some buyer’s remorse. I think if this movie was instead released as animation or a book, it would’ve been more appropriate, had more room to expand, and maybe even more praised.

Regardless of how I feel, this is still a Star Wars movie and those numbers are preposterous. So, once again, what the hell happened? We can look at this from a few angles:

THE LACK OF A TARGET AUDIENCE

When discussing Star Wars in any capacity, I believe it is fundamental to acknowledge the generational aspect of the franchise. By that, I mean the idea of “what was YOUR Star Wars“, a concept often used in discussing the 007 franchise or various Batman actors. Presumably: The Original Trilogy (OT) was first enjoyed by younger Boomers and mostly Gen-Xers, The Prequel Trilogy (PT) was prominent when Millennials like myself were growing up, and the Sequel Trilogy (ST) has found their solid fan base in Gen-Z. It also should be noted that everyone eventually becomes very familiar with the OT, as it objectively contains the quintessential installments of the franchise. Millennials went to Blockbuster (RIP) to rent the older films on VHS (also RIP). Gen-Zers have their Gen-X parents showing them the OT to catch them up, as the ST contains the 3 main characters from the OT anyway.

Rogue One had the appeal to all fans: it promised that we would see a major point in the Rebellion’s effort that wasn’t expanded on yet. We know the Rebellion got the Death Star plans, but we had so many questions. What was the war like before that? Where was most of the fighting taking place? Why was there such a convenient hole in the Empire’s space station? Who stole the plans? Rogue One answered all of these questions and more, and since the characters didn’t have as much depth as the ones in the saga films, we could focus more on the conflict at hand and connect it to the OT easily.

A Kenobi film with Ewan McGregor would bring out the Millennial audience in full force. It could also bring out the other crowds because whatever Obi-Wan was doing between the PT and OT isn’t common knowledge (it is briefly touched on in the Star Wars Rebels animated show).

Similarly, the OT crowd will live and die as Boba Fett fans. When you ask me, the dude had roughly five lines and fell into the Sarlacc pit like an idiot. He could’ve been replaced by a talking flying bantha for all I care. However, a Boba Fett film still appeals to various markets because the OT crowd will be nostalgic and the PT/ST crowd will see something new.

So who was Solo meant for? They alienated the OT crowd who wont accept anyone but Harrison Ford as the character, the PT crowd doesn’t feel much nostalgia towards Han, and the ST crowd knows Han as old, defeated, and more of a plot device than a main character. On top of all of that, they made a movie that all three crowds already know the main events of. It only adds irony to the fact that Han’s son is now famous for his “Let the past die” line.

MISLEADING MARKETING

This disappointed me like crazy, and I know it all too well (remember when we thought Joker was going to be the primary antagonist of Suicide Squad?). The public was meant to believe that this movie was going to center on Han, Qi’ra, and Lando, with a lot of screen time for Chewbacca. Instead, it was more about Han and Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), and the others just felt like part of the larger setting for Han to be himself and be “mentored” by Tobias.

Word eventually got out that Glover and Emilia weren’t that prominent in the film, most likely Because of The Internet. The problem with that is that they were the “aces” the project had. I myself went on opening weekend almost entirely out of support for Glover, and when Lando had one cool scene, about 7 other lines of dialogue, and ends up being the biggest loser in the end, it pissed me off.

Qi’ra was just reduced to “Han’s girl”, despite being a new character with more backstory than Lando, Chewbacca, or Tobias. However all of this resulted in a few moments where the audience is forced to connect extremely vague dots, and the last time we see her on screen just ends up more confusing than anything. I suppose they weren’t in it for your character development, ~~Princess~~ Khaleesi.

BACKLASH AND FATIGUE

Unless you’ve been living under a rock since December 2017, you probably know that The Last Jedi was an extremely divisive movie. I’m not going to get into it because it isn’t even fun to talk about anymore, and fans have gotten toxic to the point of negatively impacting those who worked on the film (a topic further discussed in this episode of the “Overrated” Podcast).

The point here to be noted is that the ST films were slated for the Decembers of 2015, 2017, and 2019, giving fans ample time to digest each one and properly anticipate another. While the MCU releases films only months apart, it changes its setting, characters, and conflicts with every movie and simply connects them to each other, Star Wars has always been more of a “previously in our story…” type of deal. Many fans were opposed to the idea of anthology films such as Rogue One in the first place.

Regardless, Rogue One came out in December 2016, a year after The Force Awakens and a year before The Last Jedi. Solo came out in May 2018, and the fans are STILL processing The Last Jedi. I don’t understand why anyone thought it was a good idea to release Solo at that time, especially with trouble behind the scenes, and the clash against both Infinity War and Deadpool 2. Delaying Solo until December 2018 would’ve made perfect sense to me.

A MISSING SENSE OF WONDER

For most people, Star Wars has always been about the characters, the idea of the Force, the larger conflict, and the vastness of the Galaxy. Han himself barely got any development throughout this film, I can’t even exactly point to what he learned or if there was a major change in personality. So when a Star Wars film ignores characterization, has no mention of the Force, doesn’t connect to a larger theme or conflict, and barely explores the planets it takes place on…well, you get the idea.

The point is: Maybe someone should’ve told them the odds on this one.

From the Vault: The Thing about Cinematic Universes..

Let’s ignore the fact that I disappeared for a few months because life is crazy and just go into a deep dive on Cinematic Universes. So I recently, like a few optimists out there, watched the movie known as “Justice League”. I also, like a majority of the population, saw “Thor Ragnarok”. Additionally, me and a few other nerds on r/marvelstudios spent weeks praying for a trailer for “Avengers: Infinity War” that was given to us last week and blew all of our minds…and just happened to break the record for most viewed movie trailer on Youtube.

I know that not writing reviews for either Thor or Justice League were very out of character for me (although not as out of character as Batman was…), so just to be really quick about it:

I loved “Thor: Ragnarok”. It was unexpected, the improv feel made me happy, I got to see more obscure comic book things I never thought I’d see on the big screen, sure it was pretty weightless on the universe when compared to the Ragnarok comic book but I’m fine if we goof off with Thor and Hulk before we get real for “Black Panther” and before the potential for a major shake-up in the next two Avengers movies. Lastly, Jeff Goldblum is a national treasure and I won’t accept anything less.
“Justice League”…I’m not mad, I’m just frustrated. There is a decent movie in here bogged down by unfortunate tragedy behind the scenes, bad production decisions separate from that, and absolutely horrible executive decisions. However, the more I think/talk about it, the more I actually do get mad because it finally became very obvious that whoever is making the decisions behind the DCCU doesn’t actually care about the characters and what they’ve done for people (there is an entire generation of us that grew up on the Justice League Animated Series). I’m sick of being an apologist about it, this thing was a mess and frankly I’d be okay if they cancelled the DCCU.

Between the overwhelming success of Marvel Studios (coming up on their 10th anniversary) juxtaposed with the potential $500k loss on “Justice League” for the DCCU, the laughably bad attempt at a “Dark Universe” by Universal, Sony literally making a deal with Disney so that Spider-Man can be better, and the upcoming X-Force from Fox that spawned from the success of “Deadpool”…It’s becoming obvious that studios are struggling and scrambling to achieve what Marvel Studios has. In this post I’ll attempt to limit being an MCU fanboy/gushing over my idol Kevin Feige to try and pinpoint why studios that are trying this “Universe” thing are failing.

(P.S: Vanity Fair published this article for the MCU’s 10 year celebration, I’ll be referring to it quite a bit.)

Making a Franchise Before Making a Good Movie

Take a good look at that picture. That was a promotional image released by Universal for their “Dark Universe”. Objectively it looks cool, especially the inclusion of A-list celebrities, so what’s the issue? This thing was circulating the internet BEFORE the first film in the franchise, “The Mummy”, was even released. Universal jumped the gun to announce and plan this multi-billion dollar list of movies…and the box office revenue/critical reception to the first film speaks for itself. Here we are now with rumors of the thing possibly being cancelled due to top members of the production teams wanting out.

It was pretty gutsy of them to go for the power move, but now it just looks silly. Its even more embarrassing than that scene in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” where Harry literally walks down the aisle of Sony’s slated “Sinister Six” movie that we now know never happened and never will.

It’s great that you want to be ambitious and bold, even Feige took a huge risk with the initial phases of the MCU. Still, we come back to the fact that that first Iron-Man movie was absolutely amazing and is still the gold-standard for superhero origin movies, not to mention that the Avenger initiative wasn’t brought up once in the movie until the credits rolled. In some of these other franchises…the first movie wasn’t exactly great (“Man of Steel”, “The Mummy”, “The Amazing Spider-Man”) and felt the need to rub their non-existent franchise in your face. It was a “start smaller and build” strategy for Marvel, versus a “We have a Franchise coming up, the first movie will be out in a year” strategy for the others, and that is a HUGE difference when it comes to building fans as well.

Overreacting and Overcorrecting

If you’ve been paying attention, you might remember that a very common theme in production for the DCCU movies included extensive re-shoots and even re-writes. Justice League had to go through so many changes that they had to use CGI to remove Superman’s mustache that actor Henry Cavill needed for another role. The “Suicide Squad” script was heavily revised after the accidental enormous success of Fox’s “Deadpool”, and a ton of movies were announced and had casting rumors after response to “Batman vs Superman” and “Suicide Squad”, notably an Affleck directed Batman movie and a possible Gotham City Sirens movie starring Margot Robbie. At some point, it felt like DC was making it up as they went along and that isn’t on accident.

By changing their scripts, movies, and production plans on a whim, Warner Bros. showed us that this giant narrative they’re trying to accomplish wasn’t being given much thought. Rather, they were being extremely reactionary to the criticism and little praise their movies got. Now obviously things change for studios and it is good to cut what isn’t working and what is, but it’s like they would open up Facebook the day after their movie showed, compile every stupid comment they could find, and make huge executive decisions off of those.

For example: Suicide Squad’s reception was bad > but people liked Margot as Harley Quinn > Let’s announce “Gotham City Sirens” > What about all the issues about this movie? > They wont care once we announce “Gotham City Sirens”, we’ll seem progressive and it’ll be fine.

Similarly, think about the X-Men movies and “Days of Future Past”. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a damn good comic movie, but it arguably did seem like a response to the frustration behind “The Last Stand” and the success of “First Class”. If that doesn’t seem odd to anyone, think about “Apocalypse” (yikes) and the hinting of a very obvious intention to re-start the Phoenix Saga in a future movie…even though it would make more sense to do something new rather than to keep fixing Brett Ratner’s screw-up.

Interfering with Creators

It’s such a shocker that the most successful movie DC had was the one where Warner Bros hired a good director and gave her a lot of creative freedom! That was sarcasm, that isn’t shocking it all. It also isn’t surprising that the less-than-successful MCU movies were the ones where Feige was least involved and Ike Perlmutter was still making huge decisions. I really don’t have to emphasize that the most successful comic-book movies had talented directors with creative freedom, that should be obvious. Yet somehow, bad decisions kept being made and in 2017 I got to see Batman suck in a movie for the first time since I watched “Batman Forever” (so many regrets).

Actually Caring

It warms my heart to read the Vanity Fair article and find out that Feige, like so many comic-fans/movie-nerds, is just an innocent fanboy with a desire to see his favorite characters represented properly on the big screen. That is the kind of person that should be in charge that rarely ever gets to be. What needs to be realized is that a lot of these characters that studios can “build a universe” around are all unique and can hold a lot of significance to a lot of people. Often times, people don’t even want to see a character in a live action movie because they’re scared it’ll be ridiculous (such is the case for me and Batman Beyond). So when executives view these characters as simple cash cows or good PR for their corporate image, it feels a little insulting to the fans. Again, this should be obvious, yet here we are.

Well that’s enough rambling about comic movies for now, see you soon for my review of *inhales*…THE LAST JEDI!!!!