Mission impenetrable: are Hollywood blockbusters losing the plot? | Film | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/ju ... terminator

It's certainly something I experience. And yes, it's especially noticeable in Marvel movies where there's usually a weak villain purely as an introduction to the heroes they wanna franchise or use later... Just 15 minutes longer and Ant-man probably would have been terrible, because you'd have noticed a hundred tiny cracks.

There's absolutely no need for a two and a half hour film in most cases, and especially not when they've been artificially dumbed down or inflated. And FFS, if you're gonna do that anyway, chill the hell out with the trailers. Even the tentpole blockbuster directors are raging about spoilers now.

Is there any pressure from the big cinema chains over this or something? Does it suit or hinder them? It must certainly suit Hollywood in some way, when even ropey thrillers have silly running times.

I guess the cinema chains would prefer shorter films - make a 2 hour 15 minute film into a 2 hour one and you can get one more showing in a day, but I suspect the cinemas have next to no influence on this. They're pretty much reliant on the big Marvel & etc blockbusters to stay in business and the studios know it.

Much as I like the “Save the Cat” theory of how modern films are structured and scripted, the problem with a lot of them is that it’s like watching a row of dominoes being toppled. One inevitably triggers the next, and so on. Those dominoes are pretty much set piece spectacles, and there’s not much space between each either.

I gave up on Marvel films a long time ago. I found that I had seen them all, and that repetition had just made me weary of them. I watch them when they come aorund on the TV, but, really, Avengers Assemble was such a mess of a film, with far too many major characters requiring a share of screen time, that it ended up being so contrived that if I was meant to care for the characters, or believe in the reality of that particular universe, by the end I really wished that the whole sodding lot of them would just implode into some black hole never to be seen again. I also wonder who the hell is going to pay for all the damage to property that band of people caused, but that’s another discussion.

Blockbusters are getting bigger, faster, and seemingly more complex because that’s what the audience seem to want, and as long as “your favourite characters” are there, people will pay to see them. That’s the business model.

^^^I felt a bit like that about AoU. It's almost like there's too much exposure to characters. The single movies were better in telling a focussed story, but the Avengers films both lost it a bit. Having said that, AA was much more enjoyable than AoU.

I don't mind the Marvel films overall, but I do share many of your concerns. There's so many of the films that the property damage you wouldn't have thought twice about is now really noticeable. And you really need to have seen them in order, not that that helped when Marvel went mental with AoU's foreshadowing of future films.

I think you all know my opinion on blockbusters. Especially those featuring superheroes or Tom Cruise

Let go of your hate!

Now that Blockbuster I love! Gimme a P please Bob!

Good lord.

And C_W's a raging alcoholic