chakkra said:
"The problem is the studios all went chasing this same audience to the exclusion of everyone else and didn't greenlight even projects for other audiences and those other audiences have just stopped going to the theater." Dude.. the whole point of this conversation is that they have not really been making these movies catering to us. I mean, they have been using the "Star Wars" and "Marvel" names, but they sure as hell have not been making these movies for us. So it is quite ironic that you talk about "exclusion" when it is actually men the ones who have felt excluded from these franchises. I mean, they obviously have been trying to attract a totally different audience to these franchises and somehow they just assumed that their original audience was just going to stick around. I guess their train of thought was "Oh, don't worry. These nerd fanboys will watch anything with the tittle Star Wars or Marvel on it. Heck, they will even watch it just to hate on it!" "For theaters to remain viable other audiences need to be catered to, just making Marvel and Star Wars movies the way the same tired audience wants them is not the answer. Like you make those IP less female leaning and so what? You're just doing what you were doing 10 years ago then. That's not a viable path forward either." My brother is Christ.. Those other audiences are being catered to. Just this year Lilo & Stich made more than one billion. Last year they had Moana 2 and Inside Out 2, and the year before they had Elementals and The Little Mermaid. So yes, doing things "the way the same tired audience wants them" is 100% the right way to do things for Star Wars and Marvel. Trying to blend different audiences together is almost impossible to do, as there is VERY LITTLE crossover between the people who enjoy Moana, Frozen, and Barbie, and the people who enjoy Star Wars and Marvel. That is how always has been, and I really doubt that that is ever gonna change. |
There's 37 (!) MCU movies now. There's been what .... 12 Star Wars movies?
We're supposed to believe that the 38th MCU movie and the 13th Star Wars movie with just more penis and less vagina is going to some how be the answer to the problems of declining movie attendance?
I doubt it. That audience has been way overserved to the exclusion of basically everyone else and that's the big problem.
These studios need to take some chances on original ideas and ideas aimed at different demographics, not the same shit done over and over and over again. Even if it's done well, it's choking the life out of the business and alienating huge parts of the audience who are just tired of it.
They've seen Avengers Endgame and they don't need to see 10 more superhero movies even if they're well done. Do something else. Greenlight movies from directors with new voices and new ideas and new genre types. But the studios don't want to take chances on that.
Also maybe the fans of these IP need to understand that there's a time and place for certain things to peak and once that's happened it's never coming back. It's never going to be 1977 or 1985 or 1993 again, you're never going to be a child again, you can't go home and a movie can't deliver that for you. It's OK if kids today don't want to like Star Wars, the property is 50 fucking years old, when I was a kid Wizard of Oz wasn't like the thing to see and that's OK. Things in pop culture have their time and place and when that time is over ... it's over. Same thing with Marvel, it has nothing new or interesting to say or nothing fresh to add to what it's already done. It's just the same thing over and over again from that point (good guy beats bad guy), how many times can you expect a normal person to be enthralled by that? I like the Rocky movies, but I'd understand if by Rocky X or XI some people are like "nah I'm good, I don't need any more of this". That's entirely normal.
If the future of the movie business is just "moar Star Wars and Marvel" as the primary driver of the movie business, then the movie business is cooked. 100%. The business needs a new Titanic type of film phenomenon to break out more than a good Star Wars or MCU film. And preferably something that makes a huge movie star out of it the way Titanic did to Leonardo DiCaprio.
That's the other problem with Star Wars and superhero movies ... they're not really a great launching pad for breakout movie stars because the character is always bigger than the actor in most cases. Original movies that become blockbusters have a much great chance of catapulting a star to superstardom and then said actor can drive box office for other movies but it seems like Hollywood studios just forgot this entire concept. Really and I say this as someone who did collect comic books and has been a big Star Wars fan ... comic book movies and Star Wars movies are the worst thing to have happened to the movie business.
It destroyed the regular model of studios taking chances on and making a wide variety of films aimed at different audiences and instead turned the business into a franchise-hellscape with empty calorie movies that have nothing to say and only exist just to indulge fanboy wish fulfilment. It's completely destroyed the traditional Hollywood model that was working just fine from the 1930s-2008 or so. The movie business would be far better off if the comic book movie boom specifically the MCU and DCU craze of 2008-2019 never happened IMO. It would be better off if Star Wars just stayed dead after 2005 (really 1983 since the prequels were shit too). Yeah you would lose some hit movies, but the end result IMO would be a more balanced movie ecosystem today where other ideas would have been allowed to take root and been to the long term betterment of the business.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 24 August 2025
