stuff about stuff
22 Jul 2017 11:13![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
domarzioneNerd Prom (aka ComicCon) is thus far a bit more professionally terrifying than fannishly interesting. D23 was last week, so Star Wars and Marvel both got their big news out then, generally saving the smaller stuff for SDCC so they can get a participation trophy without needing to share the spotlight. Both arms essentially chose to keep the movie stuff at D23 and do the television and toys at SDCC, which is utterly sensible as well as more traditional. SDCC is the better marketplace for merchandise and Marvel's complicated development rights situation makes San Diego neutral ground for the other studios (Fox, Sony). But I still think it's a little bemusing because of the historical antagonism between Marvel's movie and television sides, especially in a year when Marvel used D23 to launch the Avengers: Infinity Wars promotion machine, aka The Movie Where Everyone Shows Up.
The Defenders trailer doesn't look terrible, mostly because they seem to understand that Jessica Jones is the most interesting person there. Also do note that the kingpins here are queenpins -- Madame Gao and Sigourney Weaver's character -- and that Elektra is back in a key role. Plus Trish and Colleen and Misty and Claire and Jeri Hogarth is around as well. Could the TV side have a better understanding that there is more to success than the Males 18-25 demographic?
The Inhumans still looks like a train wreck, btw. Game of Thrones by way ofAsgard Atalan and we apparently do not yet have the technology to make Medusa not look ridiculous. You can see the bones of something interesting -- the same sort of debate over elitism and isolationism that bleeds into a leadership struggle that's probably going to be handled better in Black Panther -- in the bit where Maximus argues for preemptive war as the only way to survive. But it's buried under CGI and bad wigs.
Speaking of other studios... Fox is making yet another attempt to retain the Fantastic Four rights by floating a Doctor Doom movie. I have no idea how they pull this off; my original hope was to flip the script and make the FF the bad guys -- canonically, Ben and Reed are not exactly blameless -- but I was belatedly reminded that that is probably a terrible idea in the HydraCap era. What I fear is that they'll aim for Wicked or Maleficent territory and wind up with that version of Dracula with Luke Evans because they can't figure out how to handle that their anti-hero protagonist is actually a bad guy who does unforgivable things and that he occasionally does good things or that his bad things come from a not-entirely-evil place doesn't change that. Every villain is the hero of their own story, but that doesn't make him the hero outside of it.
The Defenders trailer doesn't look terrible, mostly because they seem to understand that Jessica Jones is the most interesting person there. Also do note that the kingpins here are queenpins -- Madame Gao and Sigourney Weaver's character -- and that Elektra is back in a key role. Plus Trish and Colleen and Misty and Claire and Jeri Hogarth is around as well. Could the TV side have a better understanding that there is more to success than the Males 18-25 demographic?
The Inhumans still looks like a train wreck, btw. Game of Thrones by way of
Speaking of other studios... Fox is making yet another attempt to retain the Fantastic Four rights by floating a Doctor Doom movie. I have no idea how they pull this off; my original hope was to flip the script and make the FF the bad guys -- canonically, Ben and Reed are not exactly blameless -- but I was belatedly reminded that that is probably a terrible idea in the HydraCap era. What I fear is that they'll aim for Wicked or Maleficent territory and wind up with that version of Dracula with Luke Evans because they can't figure out how to handle that their anti-hero protagonist is actually a bad guy who does unforgivable things and that he occasionally does good things or that his bad things come from a not-entirely-evil place doesn't change that. Every villain is the hero of their own story, but that doesn't make him the hero outside of it.
