The great Terry Gilliam Critiques Marvel Studios

[DA_Champion]

Parker Wayne, you hit the nail right on the head . I want to highlight this point especially:



This entire topic is really just another form taken by a specific myth that exists in our society...what I call The Myth of the "good ol' days".

We could talk about Hollywood all we want, but the essential message is "things were better back then". And it's not just limited to movies. There's an entire misconception held by many today - and in many other previous generations - of the past being this ideal place. "Ideal" in the sense people were so kind, so much more intelligent, so much more motivated and social, where teen delinquency didn't exist, where sex and drugs weren't as common, where the media had no bias and Hollywood was turning out films that pushed far greater boundaries, etc. Now the world is going to hell.

Except it isn't really going anywhere. It's all simply our nostalgia and selective memory at work, painting a distorted figure of the past and making it seem more utopian than today. It's why we propose these topics not taking into account some 70's/80's classics' initial receptions, why we forget the numerous book adaptations that helped shape Hollywood into what it is today, why we label issues like teen pregnancy and crime rates as more recent phenomenons despite them being higher in the 50's and 80's respectively, why we see the 60's as more peaceful while forgetting the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam.

To quote Alan Moore: “I'm 65 years old. Everyday the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, well, it just keeps on getting brighter all the time.”

There are no "good ol' days". The world's been in "hell" for a long time, and it's just the wisdom of age that makes us more aware of it. I'm sure in 30 years from now we'll look back on the 2010's and comment on how everything went downhill after them. As I'm sure some movie buffs in the 70's picked apart all the "unoriginal" homages in Star Wars to Flash Gordon the same way we did in Guardians to Star Wars.

A myth unsupported by history is the idea that all eras are equal in the quality of their cultural ouput. That's simply not correct and we can see it easily when we use measures less prone to bias, such as scientific advances or the art of ancient societies.

There are in fact both good old days and bad old days depending on where you look.

 

[Lord]

Some films have become more highly regarded now, but most of them were loved back when they were released, Citizen Kane and others are the few exceptions, and Blade Runner only started to be looked as a masterpiece once it was released the way it was supposed to, the original cut was realy weak.

Star Wars was no more panned than something like Avatar, so in the end, it was almost universaly liked. People seem to like taking one or two critics to make it seem as if films like Jaws, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc had been regarded the same way as a Transformers movie. If you want films that were successes back then and were truly criticaly disliked, then take a look at the Rambo sequels or Blue Lagoon, despised by critics, yet after decades they still have a relatively strong following.

I wouldn't compare what star wars did with what Guardians did now, SW took old ideas and overall gave a living universe people hadn't seen before, and that after more than 30 years are still fantasysing about, Guardian's universe realy didn't seem all that fresh or original, it did well what it wanted to do, but not nearly on the same league as the best the 80s had to offer, hell, i actualy expected something less obvious, the 80s references always looked a bit too forced to me. I actualy think Super 8, even with its flaws, did that more naturaly, but then again, it was a different type of movie, even if both were inspired by the 80s.

 

[Steamteck]

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

I like his films mostly but there's more than one type of creativity and I dislike that sort of film snobbery. then again I find most heavy dramas very cliché formulaic and predictable probably because they don't interest me I lose the nuances.


I'm pretty happy with What I'm getting from Marvel and while time bandits was fun, I 'd pretty much choose any marvel studio film.

you guys seem to have a serious case of it was better in the old days. I remember the same arguments 20 years ago.

 

[Lord]

I was mistakenly impressed with GoTG and James Gunn because I inferred based on the story that the main character was one where the mother had more of a lasting impact than the father. This is rare in CBMs, normally it's the father that defines the hero, and so I saw in GoTG that at least it was original from other CBMs even in this very small thing.

[An exception, villains like Darth Vader, Elektro, and Magneto, tend to have deeper relationships with their mothers over their fathers.]

Then I read online that one of James Gunn's top priorities for GoTG 2 is to make Peter Quill's father as interesting and important as possible, just like Bruce Wayne, Hal Jordan, Tony Stark, Kal-El and the new Spider Man. I sighed and laughed.

Well, it's the guy who made a "hottest marvel female characters" list, which featured some realy weird comments, and had his only female character in the movie the target of various sexist quips in part of the surrounding characters. Up until now, while they haven't given any female character driven film yet, Marvel has actualy made a good job at having a strong female fandom, but i think Guardians was kind of the oposite of what they had built in that regard.