So I’ve been watching movies of late. Netflix has dropped a whole bunch of (shudder) Hallmark style holiday romcoms and I (god I don’t believe I’m admitting this. I’m never going to live this down, am I?) have watched pretty much all of them. I could probably come up with a lengthy essay about that all on its own, but that’s not where I’m going with this.
I want to talk about the multiverse. You know, that theory that claims that there are many, many universes out there. All of them just like this universe, only a bit different here and there. Somewhere out there is another universe where you’re filthy rich and Musk is your personal toenail trimmer. Or where you are a small, intelligent duck named Roger who lives in his mother’s basement. Or where you’re a ferret herder in Canada. You get the idea.
Specifically I want to talk about the movie industry and the multiverse.
So let’s get back on track, shall we? One of the reasons why I was watching those romcoms was because I needed to do something to recover from watching the Deadpool/Wolverine movie that I’d watched earlier. After watching two hours of bad jokes, dozens of disembowelings, beheadings, and an eventual body count that that surpassed that of a small war, I needed to do something to get all that gore out of my head.
For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last year or so, the biggest event in the movie industry (arguably) was Marvel/Disney dropping the new Deadpool movie on an unsuspecting public. And if you aren’t a fan of the franchise, you probably don’t know why this was such a big deal.
After the wildly successful Avengers movies, Marvel put out a few flicks that were, to be blunt, stinkers. The Eternals did badly. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was disappointing. Instead of following up the mildly successful Captain Marvel movie with a decent sequel, we got something called “The Marvels”. I’m still not quite sure what Marvel was trying to do with that movie. And as for poor Thor… The last time we saw Thor he’d been partnered up with a 9 year old girl. Seriously. They’re apparently trying to turn Thor into a kids show? The last Dr. Strange movie was – was just odd.
So basically Marvel needed to do something. They needed to do something big. And even more importantly, they needed to do something to make gobs and gobs of money because they got bought by Disney and Disney needs the money. Keeping Walt on ice in the secret vault under the Magic Kingdom ain’t cheap, after all. The only two superheroes whose careers Marvel hadn’t ruined yet and which were pretty much guaranteed box office gold were Deadpool and Wolverine. So, someone said, let’s team the two of them up! Our two most popular characters, the only ones who’s reputations and careers we haven’t driven into the muck yet, together in one massive blockbuster movie? Heck, they could have put DeadPool and Wolverine in tutus dancing in Swan Lake for two hours and a lot of fanboys would pay money to see it.
There was only one problem. Wolverine/Logan was very, very dead. A fact that was abundantly made clear when in the opening minutes of the movie we see Deadpool using Logan’s rotting corpse to dispatch several dozen bad guys in a variety of very entertaining ways.
No problem, though. This is Marvel, after all. Need to replace a hero who was killed off in the previous movie to make people all weepy and sad? Just trot off to an alternative universe and find a new one.
Yes, more “multiverse” crap. Sigh… Kill off your hero? No problem, just pop into a different universe and find the alternative version of said hero. There are apparently an infinite number of them. Just whip out your Walmart alternative universe twiddler and pop off and bobs your uncle. Take your pick…
Sigh… Look, okay, it was kind of neat the first time they pulled this stunt but it got old fast. Both Marvel and DC have been pulling this crap for years now and we’re getting tired of it. It’s hard to get movie goers to invest emotionally in the tragic death of a character when we know damn well that chances are good that in the next film they’re going to whip out another one brought in from an alternative universe.
So stop it. Just stop it. Okay?
grouchyfarmer 
I was a movie fan until somebody started messing with all those special effects that produced such God-awful flicks as “300” and “Tansformers” and the like with those so-real-they-look-phony effects that explode on and off the screen like popcorn in a furnace….I need a movie that has a plot, a beginning, middle and end, and that is tastefully done with what passes for half-way intelligent writing. There are so few of those out there these days. Then there are those that bore me to tears like “Finding Neverland” —puke!
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I agree completely. I think that’s one of the problems with the so-called Marvel Universe, and the DC comics universe as well. Marvel of all companies should realize that it’s the story that’s important, not the special effects. Marvel’s claim to fame as a comic book publisher was that the stories were so good people were willing to overlook the fact that the whole super hero thing was just plain silly. They seem to have forgotten that and instead they keep striving for ever more impressive visual effects to cover up the fact that the stories are crap.
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Thank tuo, John! Agree 100 percent.
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Hallmark romcoms are unrealistic to me….they have nothing in them that relates to reality…..Marvel owned by Disney do I need to say more? chuq
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They are indeed entirely unrealistic. I think that’s the whole point behind them and why they are relatively popular. They are pure escapism. The real world has become so toxic that people find it necessary to escape into these fantasy worlds for an hour or two.
I think we were looking at a sort of existential crises in the entertainment industry. It has become so dominated by the concept of the “block buster” movie that the investors aren’t willing to back the production of a simple, low budget but meaningful, thoughtful and entertaining story about just ordinary people.
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I find the entertainment industry too focused on BS….the world is not blue skies and unicorns…..we need to face it and deal with it. chuq
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I agree, but only partly. I think that stories about blue skies and unicorns are important as well. One of these days I want to talk about movies and this trend towards extreme violence like we see in the Deadpool movies. I admit I find the Deadpool movies funny but they also trivialize death and extreme violence. I’m wondering what kind of effect it has on people, especially young people, to sit there watching a movie that doesn’t just portray in the most graphic way possible the horrific deaths of dozens of people, but does so in a way that makes those deaths funny.
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GF those same young are playing Warcraft and other violent games so the movies are just an extension of their need for cruelty. chuq
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I have problems with that kind of thing as well. I know, I know, studies have shown that there seems to be no correlation between video game and media violence and real world violence, but I still think that any form of media which trivializes violent death is morally questionable.
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I have to agree chuq
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I watch Dark Matter on Apple TV and it’s fairly well done..not all the shoot ’em up and constant fighting as I imagine in those other movies. A more mature movie in my view .
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I’m glad you found something you like. I don’t have Apple TV so I’ve never seen that show but I have heard good things about it. One of the problems with modern media is that it has become, oh, fragmented? Every production company is trying to “maximize our profits” by splitting their content off into their own segregated streaming services I’d have to subscribe to a dozen different streaming services if I tried to watch every show I might be interested in.
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