The great Terry Gilliam Critiques Marvel Studios

[DA_Champion]

Excellent, extended interview with Terry Gilliam (Brazil, 12 Monkeys) here:
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/19/ter..._frightened_people”_holding_on_for_dear_life/

SATURDAY, SEP 20, 2014 07:27 AM AEST
Terry Gilliam: Hollywood is just “gray, frightened people” holding on for dear life
The godfather of dystopian cinema on the death of Hollywood, why he gave up U.S. citizenship and his new movie
ANDREW O'HEHIR

You made “Time Bandits,” “Brazil” and “Baron Munchausen” in the ‘80s, long before the rise of CGI, and now we find ourselves in an era where every Hollywood movie is either a dystopian science fiction vision or a fantasy film. Do you feel like you explored the territory first and nobody remembers that?

Well, I don’t know. I think, yeah. I keep thinking I would like to have a chance at those kinds of things, because that’s what I’ve always wanted to make and that’s what I did back then. I just don’t know what they are anymore. They’re films — fantasy without substance and sci-fi dystopia without intelligence. I don’t know really what to comment except that they all seem to be clones of each other. And people are so happy to go back and see the same thing again and again and again. And that, to me, makes me sad about the state of the world. We want reassurance now rather than being challenged, and that’s sad.

This is what I always say when people ask me about the difference between watching 300 films a year and watching just a few, like ordinary moviegoers. Ordinary people seem largely OK, or at least historically OK, with seeing the same films over and over again, for whatever reason. Maybe with technical innovations or improvements in execution …

Technically they’re brilliantly done. They’re beautiful things but there’s nothing in them. There’s nothing new. Nothing to make you think or look at the world in a different way. It’s just the same thing going on and on and on. It really is bread and circuses these days. It may be a sign of people’s impotence, that they can’t really change anything so let’s keep going back and have that McDonald’s burger because we know exactly what we’re about to get and let’s watch another Marvel Comics film because we know exactly what we’re going to get.

 

[Drizzle]

Should we be surprised he feels this way? Hollywood's been ****ting on him for years. Of course he's sour about it.

 

[Hurm...]

Excellent, extended interview with Terry Gilliam (Brazil, 12 Monkeys) here:
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/19/ter..._frightened_people”_holding_on_for_dear_life/

SATURDAY, SEP 20, 2014 07:27 AM AEST
Terry Gilliam: Hollywood is just “gray, frightened people” holding on for dear life
The godfather of dystopian cinema on the death of Hollywood, why he gave up U.S. citizenship and his new movie
ANDREW O'HEHIR

Agree with him completely.

 

[DA_Champion]

Should we be surprised he feels this way? Hollywood's been ****ting on him for years. Of course he's sour about it.

There's a lot of political correctness in Hollywood, some sort of mutual respect among artists, you virtually never hear anyone criticise anybody else, Joss Whedon and Wally Pfister being rare exceptions who speak their mind (sometimes).

Even though he's estranged from the boss, he still spent time in the culture of professional courtesy, so yes I'm a little surprised.

I'm also surprised to see something worth reading on salon.com, often they just publish superficial ****.

 

[Mrs. Sawyer]

Should we be surprised he feels this way?

Of course not. Honestly I wouldn't even call this attacking Marvel Studios as much it is attacking Hollywood.

There's honestly nothing new that hasn't been said already. Cronenberg has said it. Spielberg and Lucas has said it. And now he's saying it.

Hollywood, along with Marvel, is a business. They're not in it to reinvent the wheel and change cinema. At the end of the day they're a major Hollywood Studio whose goal is to creates accessible movies for mass audiences in order to create a money making franchise.

Also, many people just watch movies to entertained and forget about their worries. They sometimes watch it for deeper reasons, but at the end of the day you seldom get that out of Hollywood movies. Hollywood doesn't make that much high art. They make movies for Pop Culture to digest for the aforementioned reasons above.

When it came to 70s and 80s, directors and writers were able to get away with more risky movies because even more so than today, Hollywood didn't know what worked and what didn't. In fact, movies like Brazil and Blade Runner did poorly at the Box Office.

This just sounds like jealousy, and I wouldn't blame him for feeling this way. He's been trying to make some of his movies (most famous Don Quixote) for decades only to get turned down for funding by Hollywood for movies that he perceives has less substance to them. It's very easy to feel frustrated and blame the flavor of the moment.

 

[:eek:]

Hollywood makes the movies they think will make money, and when they make money they continue the same way. Nothing will change unless people stops going to see all these sequels, remakes and reboots.

 

[Mrs. Sawyer]

People complain about these sequels, remakes, and reboots, and yet they will ignore original movies except for 1 or 2 for see more sequels, remakes, and reboots.

I'm not saying it's wrong, but I find the concept of complaining about sequels, remakes, and reboots rather hypocritical.

 

[BETArayBill]

I've never watched a movie of his that I liked so to each his own.

 

[metaphysician]

*shrugs* Just because he wants to make movies of a given type, doesn't mean there is an obligation for people to go watch them.

 

[Lord]

I agree with him, Hollywood is now running in circles, and i realy don't like this future of "super-franchises"

 

[DA_Champion]

*shrugs* Just because he wants to make movies of a given type, doesn't mean there is an obligation for people to go watch them.

That's not his point nor his argument.

He points out that the mass market consumer is interested in having the same uncreative experience over and over again: McDonald's burgers and Marvel movies. That part is clearly true and beyond debate.

He suggests that people are like this, that they crave the familiar, due to their feeling of powerlessness and impotence. Accessing the familiar then yields a feeling of control.

 

[Lord]

I think some people take criticism to what they like way too personaly, franchises are now becoming more and more common among the best selling films because people like what is familiar, that's why we constantly get the "shut up and take my money" meme.

 

[Donnie Darko]

I guess I just don't see "familiar" as necessarily a bad thing. How many seasons/episodes do we watch of our favorite shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, or even The Simpsons? Every episode is a continuation of what came before, therefore very much "familiar." Why is it ok for TV, yet viewed as a bad thing for movies?

 

[jmc]

Familiar is fine, the problem comes when there's a disproportion of marketing towards it. The issue isn't the audiences, it's the studios not willing to go into bat for something different the same way they would an existing property. Edge of Tomorrow is a good example, got great reviews and most people who saw it seemed to agree, yet you wouldn't have known the film even existed for the most part such was the lack of marketing push behind it. If the studios aren't willing to back a project and spend X-amount of dollars marketing it of course the audience isn't going go see it, the audience will only see what's made to look polished. There are some great examples I've seen of fan edits of dramatic oscar-type movies made to look like awesome action films, it's not that hard to make a film look great, it's equally not that hard to put in the effort to market it, the problem comes down to studios being lazy. It's easy to drum up hype for a Superman movie because there's already name value towards it, with something like Edge of Tomorrow it requires work, it requires hard work to get people to want to watch it. It's all about making easy money, and familiar does that, easy to make trailers for, easy to make marketing campaigns for, easier to make look polished even if the film itself is garbage.

 

[Victarion]

Good job, Feige. You enraged one of the great minds of Cinema by peddling your fastfood films. In doing so, you have proved Gilliam's point exactly! I hope you all read this post with a bit of sardonicism.

 

[Brother Jack]

Gilliam does make a valid point here and there is a lot to criticize not about the whole rising climate of cinematic universe franchises. But I still think Marvel has put out some fine films and some not so fine films, same as any other studio. I mean everything is derivative to one degree or another if you really want to get in depth with it, including Gilliam's own movies. What you say is much less important than how you say it and though there is truth to the complaint about the uniformity of many studio products I am a believer that a good movie is a good movie no matter how its produced, its marketing, or whether it was based on an existing property. The issue for is less that there are so many adaptations, sequels, and reboots and more that a lot of those films just aren't that great.

 

[Raiden]

I understand that because Marvel Studios movies are very hot in Hollywood at the moment, so they naturally become an easy target for Terry Gilliam to criticize and vent his frustration toward. But although Marvel Studios have made some not-so-great movies (Iron Man 2, Thor 2), they have yet to make a true stinker and they're enjoying probably their best year of movie-making, with TWS and GOTG becoming a huge success both financially and critically, I don't think Gilliam picked the right target to made his points across imo.

 

[DeadPresident]

Great article. The guy is spot on about movie-going and society in general.

 

[DA_Champion]

I understand that because Marvel Studios movies are very hot in Hollywood at the moment, so they naturally become an easy target for Terry Gilliam to criticize and vent his frustration toward. But although Marvel Studios have made some not-so-great movies (Iron Man 2, Thor 2), they have yet to make a true stinker and they're enjoying probably their best year of movie-making, with TWS and GOTG becoming a huge success both financially and critically, I don't think Gilliam picked the right target to made his points across imo.

That's exactly his point, that movies with middling stories like TWS and GoTG can be huge successes both financially and critically.

 

[Lord]

I guess I just don't see "familiar" as necessarily a bad thing. How many seasons/episodes do we watch of our favorite shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, or even The Simpsons? Every episode is a continuation of what came before, therefore very much "familiar." Why is it ok for TV, yet viewed as a bad thing for movies?

The thing is, Movies are not TV shows, Confused Matthew also gave some good points about how Serial shows stoped existing partly because writers found a better format for that on TV, but now we're trying to bring that back to cinema, constantly hyping what's going to happen next, instead of focusing on the Present and just making a closed one-shot film, now everything seems to need to be connected, it's not just about making movies, it has become massive cross-promoting.

It was a different thing when you only had a Star Wars, James Bond or Back to the Future thing now and then, but now it has become the vast majority of the high budgeted films.

And i disagree about Marvel being the wrong target, take the Marvel connection away from films like Avengers, Thor, Iron Man 2 and Captain America, looking at them only as single films, they only get weaker.

Phase II has for the most part been better in this regard, but i wouldn't even point to the acclaimed Guardians of the Galaxy as the best example of what you can do with films, or blockbusters, or space adventures, or even with "fun films". Some are getting a bit too extreme with their views of the MCU, it's good that you enjoy it so much, but stop forcing the taste on everyone else, it's getting to a point when a person inside the industry like Rourke and Gilliam start pointing out faults in that system, everyone starts criticising the person and their opinions.

 

[DyeLorean]

He might be right, or at least he has a point. But also, maybe I don't want to be always challenged when I watch a movie. Not all films have to be deep. Sometimes I just want to be entertained, evoke some basic emotions that I like when I watch a film like 'Iron Man', you know?
Also, what's the problem? Why can't we have both type of films? I watch a lot of films, and my mood dictates what I want to watch. It could be an indie drama, or a low budget sci-fi flick, or a big budget studio movie. I like them all.

 

[DarkSovereignty]

The problem is that people don't want to see his movies because they're weird and alienating. So he's a teensy bit butt hurt

 

[Lord]

Maybe he also thinks old entertaining films used to be more imaginative overall, which is an opinion i frankly agree with.

 

[Persona]

I mean, he's not wrong.

I enjoy GotG as much as the next living, breathing person, but even it is built on the Marvel formula for success, and that's a formula based more on pleasure principle for the masses, slick standardization for the Hollywood industry, and inter-movie/source material plotting mechanics for the comic book fanbase than it is on strong, provocative thematic elements or auterist vision. there's nothing inherently wrong with the former vs. the latter, just Gilliam (and myself and others who personally value film higher as art than entertainment) prefers the latter. and this is why i'll take something like TDK over any Marvel movie seven ways to Sunday, in a heartbeat.

i think GotG is my favorite Marvel movie simply because it's the movie where you can see the most influence from its director, even more than you can with The Avengers since Whedon has no visual style to speak of. GotG is a fun, pulpy romp and that's basically all it aims to do, though i do appreciate the heart it shows for the outcasts and disenfranchised, even if that's hardly anything new in rag-tag team flicks.

 

[chamber-music]

Considering how Hollywood has treated Gilliam it isn't a surprise and he makes some valid points. Gilliam's story about when he met execs in Hollywood about directing a harry potter made me feel bad for him.

There has been a battle between the art and commercial side of cinema since the dawn of the medium. Blockbuster popcorn flicks is where the major studios make most of their money. Franchises and sequels are big cash cows for the industry.

Personally I dislike sequels that are just a rehash of the previous movie. I want to see the story and characters develop as well as move forward.

The flip side is some indie films are just and offbeat for the sake of it. Some directors are pretentious and think their films are challenging but they really aren't.

I do hope guys like Gilliam and cronenberg continue to make films because cinema should be diverse and those guys have brought some unique things to movies over the years.