Kevin Feige disbands Marvel's CREATIVE COMMITTEE 2 2

[prez]

19 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

The MCC still controls the direction of the TV division.

Given that all the TV shows are tied with the movies, I find it weird that it is not.

[VintageComics]

On 9/2/2015 at 3:24 PM, Bosco685 said:

More Big Changes At Marvel Studios As The "Creative Committee" Is Brought To An End

 

 

 

 

This is as good a time as any to restart this discussion. 

I was going to start a new thread but then realized this thread was here. 

So, it seems that Feige took over as CCO in Sept 2015.

Russo Brothers were hired to do Endgame in April 2015. 

Most people agree that much of the MCU has been drek post Avengers Endgame. This means MOST of the successful MCU movie pre 2020 was done by the committee and not just by Feige alone.

Spider-man Far From Home wasn't an exclusively Feige movie, right? It was co-produced by Sony and Marvel.

That means that almost everything Feige is solely responsible for post 2020 is a bomb. 

Is it possible that the committee was greater than the sum of it's parts, and that Feige doesn't have the right balance to decision-make, and make successful movies by himself?

Or am I seeing this incorrectly?

[Bosco685]

On 8/27/2024 at 6:40 PM, VintageComics said:

This is as good a time as any to restart this discussion. 

I was going to start a new thread but then realized this thread was here. 

So, it seems that Feige took over as CCO in Sept 2015.

Russo Brothers were hired to do Endgame in April 2015. 

Most people agree that much of the MCU has been drek post Avengers Endgame. This means MOST of the successful MCU movie pre 2020 was done by the committee and not just by Feige alone.

Spider-man Far From Home wasn't an exclusively Feige movie, right? It was co-produced by Sony and Marvel.

That means that almost everything Feige is solely responsible for post 2020 is a bomb. 

Is it possible that the committee was greater than the sum of it's parts, and that Feige doesn't have the right balance to decision-make, and make successful movies by himself?

Or am I seeing this incorrectly?

You are in the right ballpark. Tail-end of Phase III is when things started to expand rather rapidly.

[VintageComics]

On 8/27/2024 at 7:04 PM, Bosco685 said:

You are in the right ballpark. Tail-end of Phase III is when things started to expand rather rapidly.

It feels that way.

And it may not necessarily be that Feige is bad, it's just that it takes a certain team chemistry for success, where the checks and balances of the team create a balance or synergy for success. 

Maybe doing away with some of those checks and balances by absolving the committee saved time and money, but it certainly didn't seem to help success much, so which is the better compromise?

I thought this was interesting. 

This is another old quote (this one from 2016), and as I was reading through the thread I noticed that there seemed to be a distinct cultural shift at the MCU around that time. 

On 9/14/2016 at 5:41 PM, Bosco685 said:

Rebecca Hall Confirms Her Role Was Reduced In Iron Man 3

 

The actress’ words match those which Black shared earlier this year. Talking with Uproxx, the director confessed that Rebecca’s character “was bigger at one point and we reduced it.”

 

Rebecca nodded to the intense fan reaction, saying, “Look, (Marvel) is paying for their mistakes right now and I applaud them for casting Brie Larson in Captain Marvel. Hallelujah. It’s about time women started being the heroes of things.”

 

 

[kimik]

Fair points. Any creative process needs differing view points to find the optimal solution. It is just like any workplace. You need to look at a process/opportunity from multiple angles. If Feige is making the calls on his own he is missing that.

[VintageComics]

On 8/27/2024 at 9:35 PM, kimik said:

Fair points. Any creative process needs differing view points to find the optimal solution. It is just like any workplace. You need to look at a process/opportunity from multiple angles. If Feige is making the calls on his own he is missing that.

There's rarely a single person that's solely responsible for their own success. It almost always involves others, as nobody is perfect and we all need a little help along the way.

Spouses play a large role in the success of some people. They provide support or perspectives that you can't see any other way. That's certainly the case with me and I can say without them I wouldn't be as successful as I am today.

In other scenarios, like in politics or business, it can be advisors that can make or break you, but there are always outside voices guiding people as they move to the top. 

I know Feige is the top contender comic nerd movies, and I never thought Feige ever did everything alone, but something definitely changed post 2015, and he's certainly had other birds chirping in his ear, as evidenced by both the quote above and the type of content he's been putting out as the final product. 

 

I unearthed the above thoughts unexpectedly, simply while looking for a thread to discuss it in, but these creative committee points seems to real value to the discussion. 

The reason I started this discussion initially, was to examine and discuss the creative process under Feige in detail because I think it would make for interesting discussion, to pick apart his creative process. I know we even have execs here who worked in the industry, so their perspective would be great to hear. 

I know I could Google all of this stuff if I wanted to, but it's far more fun to actually have the discussion. 

--------------------------------------------

Another thing this thread has taught me is just HOW MUCH influence the top brass have in what goes into a movie. They minimized a female character because their toy sales wouldn't chart as well? 

I've been standing firm for a long time on the point that the higher corporate agenda is responsible for ruining movies and this is just another proof that an external agenda that has absolutely nothing with the storyline actually affected the creator's vision. You grow up thinking people are trying to make great movies, and instead, they're making movies with the sole purpose of selling you merchandise. It's shocking to me to find out how much this sort of medding actually happens and it makes me hate Hollywood and the process. I can understand better now why people gravitate towards indy film and art now. 

 

This was best illustrated to me when I finally watched Zack Snyder's Justice League, and it's a completely different movie than the 2017 release.

Like... Darkseid appears in the Zack Snyder version?!?! 

Mind. Blown. 

It felt aking to something like finding a new Zeppelin song you'd never heard before, it was that great of a surprise.

I didn't follow the discussions previously, because the DC movies sucked so bad that I just ignored everything about them, but now that I've gotten caught up I'm utterly flabbergasted. 

I was watching the Snyder cut, and said to myself "Hey, this guy looks like Darkseid!!" and then realized it was Darkseid, and that he was cut from the theatrical release to shorten the movie. 

So they cut the main villain, that the entire DC universe should have been hinged on like Thanos in the MCU, and inserted Steppenwolf as the main villain and ran with that? No wonder the entire movie felt hollow. It was only half of the movie. 

That certainly helps explain why B v S felt like half a movie, too. 

It's given me such an ick towards Hollywood and the process that I can't even get the taste out of my mouth. 

How people put up with this garbage for so long, I'll never understand. It's truly garbage and they'd learn their lesson if people just told them to stuff it and stopped spending their hard earned money on it.

It's no wonder DC can't get their act together with a cohesive theme and that Marvel has lost their way. Nobody really cares about actually making a good movie!!

 

 

Edited August 28 by VintageComics

[fantastic_four]

On 8/27/2024 at 6:40 PM, VintageComics said:

Most people agree that much of the MCU has been drek post Avengers Endgame.

Two reasons for this.  The first I won't go into depth on, but it's fairly obvious--Feige isn't as good at television series as he is with films.  I wish he'd off-load these to someone else, because most Marvel series seem like films stretched out to take longer.  It's easier to credit Perlmutter for having the best Marvel show to date in Daredevil, so I'm unconvinced that Feige should really be steering the ship on the shows.

For the films I mostly blame bad timing with the Fox acquisition coupled with Covid.  Feige's original plan would have had the post-Endgame B-list movies wrapping up around 2022, but Covid extended the Phase 4 and 5 times dramatically and we're still trying to get through phase 5.  And I don't think you can blame Covid for the delays in 2023 and 2024, yet they still keep happening.  You could say Feige rested on his laurels too much by trying to get the bench players more playing time, i.e. Shang-Chi, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, etc.  Other than Spider-Man there are no A-listers in phase 4 or 5, so one could have predicted them to be a bit mediocre from the moment they were announced--and certainly many of us did predict that and realized Feige was trying to develop the lesser characters following the dramatic success of Endgame.

We'll see what happens with Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Avengers from here on out.  FF would already have come out by now if not for Covid, so maybe we wouldn't have been questioning what's wrong with the MCU so much if it had never happened.  Or maybe FF ends up being mediocre and we'd still be discussing what's wrong with the MCU, who knows, but we'd definitely be heading for Phase 7 by now without that delay.

Edited August 28 by fantastic_four

[VintageComics]

On 8/28/2024 at 4:12 PM, fantastic_four said:

For the films I mostly blame bad time with the Fox acquisition coupled with Covid.  Feige's original plan would have had the post-Endgame B-list movies wrapping up around 2022, but Covid extended the Phase 4 and 5 times dramatically and we're still trying to get through phase 5.  And I don't think you can blame Covid for the delays in 2023 and 2024, yet they still keep happening.  You could say Feige rested on his laurels too much by trying to get the bench players more playing time, i.e. Shang-Chi, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, etc.  Other than Spider-Man there are no A-listers in phase 4 or 5, so one could have predicted them to be a bit mediocre from the moment they were announced--and certainly many of us did predict that and realized Feige was trying to develop the lesser characters following the dramatic success of Endgame.

I think Marvel was also trying to wait out some of the old Fox contracts for them to expire, so that they wouldn't have to uphold them. Isn't that correct?

My understanding was that many of those timed out around now and into 2025, but this was all info I received word of mouth and so I could be wrong. 

@Bosco685 would know for sure. 

[fantastic_four]

The weirdest thing about the faltering of the MCU is listening to critics try to reckon with it.  I've been hearing them celebrate the "fall of superhero movies" to varying degrees for almost two years now, and I chuckle every time I hear it.

The heroic myth will never go away; it just changes forms.  People have clamored for tales of heroism since the beginning of the printed page, and even before that they would get them via live plays.  Superhero films will be here for quite a while, and the MCU only faltered due to short-term issues.

Most critics hate reviewing superhero films, but I have bad news for them--there has been no "fall of superhero films," and in all likelihood Feige will straighten out the mess.  And maybe we'll get lucky and James Gunn cleans up DC Films and those critics will keep having to review films they hate for the rest of all of our lives.  

Edited August 28 by fantastic_four

[fantastic_four]

On 8/28/2024 at 4:17 PM, VintageComics said:

I think Marvel was also trying to wait out some of the old Fox contracts for them to expire, so that they wouldn't have to uphold them. Isn't that correct?

My understanding was that many of those timed out around now and into 2025, but this was all info I received word of mouth and so I could be wrong. 

@Bosco685 would know for sure. 

I haven't heard that.  What contracts are you referring to, and who are they between?  Fox and who else--the actors?

I assumed Feige put the Fox properties on ice after buying them in early 2019 for two reasons--one to give people time to move on from the Fox films since both FF and X-Men had films within a few years of Disney buying Fox, and also to give him time to get the Marvel bench some playing time.  My hope was he'd build up to FF and X-Men in a similar way that he did with building up to the Avengers and later Thanos, but we really haven't seen major teasers of the FF or X-Men in the Phase 4 and 5 films.  Vague, minor references, yes, but nothing like Nick Fury going around and talking to Iron Man and Cap to build a team like he did in building up to the Avengers, and nothing like the 6+ year build-up to Thanos.

I was particularly hoping to see a build-up to Galactus, but nothing at all with him yet.  

Edited August 28 by fantastic_four

[fantastic_four]

I'm pretty sure I said this earlier in this thread, but to re-iterate--the Creative Committee was still better than anything DC studio execs have tried.

Them having input into things like the Guardians soundtrack is just weird though.  That's too heavy-handed, and it's the job of the director, not comic book writers.  I haven't heard examples of Feige doing that.  Whoever is steering the ship shouldn't be giving ANY MCU director that level of input, just character consistency input and film-to-film universe building stuff.  Other than the overall world-building elements for the MCU content curators shouldn't be telling directors what to do, and they would have continued to lose directors had they been allowed to continue with that level of control.

[VintageComics]

On 8/28/2024 at 4:34 PM, fantastic_four said:

Fox and who else--the actors?

Yes, the actors. Again, it was word of mouth so I could be wrong, but bases on the convo I had, we were not going to see anything FF or X-men before 2025 and that seems to be holding true so far. 

On 8/28/2024 at 4:34 PM, fantastic_four said:

My hope was he'd build up to FF and X-Men in a similar way that he did with building up to the Avengers and later Thanos, but we really haven't seen major teasers of the FF or X-Men in the Phase 4 and 5 films.  Vague, minor references, yes, but nothing like Nick Fury going around and talking to Iron Man and Cap to build a team like he did in building up to the Avengers, and nothing like the 6+ year build-up to Thanos.

This is a no-brainer, and what everyone was expecting. For whatever reason, Marvel has lost their long term vision and has reverted back to DC style movies, pouring out junk with no real cohesive plan. It's annoying after what we've come to expect with the Avengers run up.

On 8/28/2024 at 4:34 PM, fantastic_four said:

I was particularly hoping to see a build-up to Galactus, but nothing at all with him yet.  

You saw that they teased Galactus in San Diego with the drone light display, right? They'd be absolutely DUMB not to use Galactus in the same way Thanos was used.

If they're leading up to Secret Wars, couldn't it be that Secret Wars is used in a similar in the way that Civil War was used, as a building block towards Endgame?

I'm not familiar with the 2015 Secret Wars storyline but I can see it used as an arc, to build toward some climax, 20 movies later. 

I can't even begin to wonder why they thought Kang was a good idea.

If we don't see Doom, Galactus and others used in a significant way as they did with Thanos and others in the Avengers saga, it'll prove that Feige has lost his mind. This is really the moment when it has to happen for Marvel. It's make-it-or-break-it time. 

Edited August 28 by VintageComics

[Bosco685]

On 8/28/2024 at 4:17 PM, VintageComics said:

I think Marvel was also trying to wait out some of the old Fox contracts for them to expire, so that they wouldn't have to uphold them. Isn't that correct?

My understanding was that many of those timed out around now and into 2025, but this was all info I received word of mouth and so I could be wrong. 

@Bosco685 would know for sure. 

I think much of the backlog had to do with the VFX service providers getting overwhelmed with all the backlog in content making its way into their shops for final completion. Including films from 2019 being forced into 2020 slots which then had a trickledown effect on all follow-on studio roadmaps. Quite a few articles in the thread below about how this was impacting long-range scheduling.

The contractual commitments for Fox properties prior to Disney acquiring them came up a few times in the Disney/Fox acquisition thread. But I hadn't read this involved Fox/Marvel properties but more the wider portfolio of franchises.

[fantastic_four]

On 8/28/2024 at 4:46 PM, VintageComics said:

Yes, the actors. Again, it was word of mouth so I could be wrong, but bases on the convo I had, we were not going to see anything FF or X-men before 2025 and that seems to be holding true so far. 

Given the first release date for Fantastic Four we got from Feige was November 2024 that seems unlikely for that film at least.  Maybe X-Men though since Dark Phoenix came out in mid-2019 and it's possible they signed some of those actors to future film deals.

 

[fantastic_four]

On 8/28/2024 at 4:46 PM, VintageComics said:

You saw that they teased Galactus in San Diego with the drone light display, right? They'd be absolutely DUMB not to use Galactus in the same way Thanos was used.

I did, but I feared that means no build-up to Galactus and he's just in the first FF film.  Maybe even the big bad, which I hope isn't the case but I fear it will be since Norrin Radd's wife Shalla-Bal is supposed to be in the film as some sort of a female Silver Surfer.

My hope is that Shalla-Bal is just in a post-credits teaser as a part of a long build-up to Galactus, but we'll see.

Edited August 28 by fantastic_four

[Chip Cataldo]

On 8/28/2024 at 4:34 PM, fantastic_four said:

I was particularly hoping to see a build-up to Galactus, but nothing at all with him yet.  

Errr...you didn't see the leaked FF trailer from SDCC/D23, did you?

[Chip Cataldo]

On 8/28/2024 at 4:46 PM, VintageComics said:

You saw that they teased Galactus in San Diego with the drone light display, right? They'd be absolutely DUMB not to use Galactus in the same way Thanos was used.

If they're leading up to Secret Wars, couldn't it be that Secret Wars is used in a similar in the way that Civil War was used, as a building block towards Endgame?

I'm not familiar with the 2015 Secret Wars storyline but I can see it used as an arc, to build toward some climax, 20 movies later.

Secret Wars 2015 is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Read it NOW.

They didn't just tease Galactus with the drone show, Roy. They showed a 2-minute Fantastic Four "trailer" that they cobbled together from what test footage they've shot and some HQ animatics.

It looks, well, fantastic.

[Chip Cataldo]

Spoiler

Edited August 28 by Chip Cataldo

[VintageComics]

On 8/28/2024 at 5:34 PM, fantastic_four said:

Given the first release date for Fantastic Four we got from Feige was November 2024 that seems unlikely for that film at least.  Maybe X-Men though since Dark Phoenix came out in mid-2019 and it's possible they signed some of those actors to future film deals.

 

That's still late 2024, and so it falls into the range of the discussion I had. 

On 8/28/2024 at 6:51 PM, fantastic_four said:

I did, but I feared that means no build-up to Galactus and he's just in the first FF film.  Maybe even the big bad, which I hope isn't the case but I fear it will be since Norrin Radd's wife Shalla-Bal is supposed to be in the film as some sort of a female Silver Surfer.

My hope is that Shalla-Bal is just in a post-credits teaser as a part of a long build-up to Galactus, but we'll see.

This is what I'm expecting. I just can't see them blowing the entire wad on Galactus making a full appearance mid way through the movie and climaxing at the end. That's so 2001. 

I can see those eyes appearing at the end of the movie with the entire movie building up towards that reveal. 

This really is make it or break it time with Marvel.

They now have the keys to the Kingdom, and if they can't make the FF / X-men IP stretch into a 20 movie, decade long run like they did with Avengers it's over. 

There's no other cards to play at this point.