Even DC, who tried something different and couldn’t get their grosses anywhere close to Marvel, ended up bowing to the ‘Marvel way’ and injecting more colour and humour into Justice League. Terminator Genisys which was an untold disaster, tried with little success to infuse a Terminator film with a lot of Marvelisms. The truth is, these traits largely work because the films are fairly well written. Certainly as far as dialogue there’s a good snap, whilst directors from comedic backgrounds in many of the films have also allowed a level of improvisation to be injected in moments. It requires the right directors, the right writers and the right cast. You can’t just ‘go Marvel’ and hope for the best, which is where many of these copycats have failed dismally.
We are now beginning to see another issue with Disney too. Over-saturation. There are hundreds of Marvel characters and stories they can source from and they’ve been doing this to great success so far. This is now moving over to the Star Wars universe. Okay, I admit that this need for the spinoff is not a new phenomenon within Star Wars. We’ve seen countless cartoons and even a couple of diabolical Ewok films in the past. George Lucas not only, to an extent, pioneered what we know now of as the modern Blockbuster, but also film merchandising and milking a cow to within and inch of its life. He even took what Disney were doing at the time and upped the ante. Granted he didn’t go as far as a Theme park, but the merch linked to Star Wars was stratospheric. Anyway, if Lucasfilm was going to perfectly converge with anyone, it was always Disney. Between Rogue One, Solo, potential Obi-Wan and Boba Fett films on the horizon, as well as a new ‘original’ trilogy in the works from Rian Johnson, there’s no danger of the Star Wars well being left alone. But here’s the problem, is it running creatively dry?
The ‘failure’ of Solo, likely to be one of the least commercially successful and critically successful films of the live action cinema releases suggests that audiences aren’t ready to drop everything and fly their Falcons to the cinema at the drop of a hat for anything with ‘Star Wars’ in the title. I grant you, plenty still did, but given the below par opening and huge drop offs, Solo has come and gone and won’t be remembered much by the time Episode IX comes out. Is there an insatiable demand for Obi-Wan adventures (there has been talk of more than one film)? Is there enough of a cult following for the Fett, that the barrel can be scraped enough to get a whole film out? The new trilogy which would likely introduce entirely new characters is a calculated gamble. Lets face it, these aren’t cheap gambles. Most of these films will cost over $200 million to make. Disney is firing out poker hands with reckless abandon. It could bite them in the behind.
This also boils down to an important cinematic crossroads. Will we see a point where remakes, spinoffs and sequels are ‘so last year’? This trend has been going for well over a decade. We’re being fed the same thing over and over again, with a slightly different packaging. Surely there comes a point at which audiences tire of seeing the same thing? How long before we see a new Wolverine, or Iron Man? Aren’t we due a new Spidey by now? It’s surely time for the bi-annual switcheroo. We even have to endure a new Terminator film no one wants. It’s becoming lazy as everything halfheartedly follows the leader and try to feed off their farts of inspiration. How long has a Crow reboot been mooted? It’s now gone back to the vault again. Even something as fresh, exciting and surprising as Get Out was having sequel rumours. Way to ruin a legacy. Imagine if Martin Luther King makes his famous speech, steps off the podium and five minutes later he comes back. ‘Oh. Just one more thing…’ and proceeds to essentially give the same speech again but slightly less inspiring. Get Out has conventional genre elements (which work brilliantly) with social relevance and importance. A sequel can work as far as the genre bits, but the meaning will be watered down. Still, if it makes money, who cares?
There’s a huge onus on Disney now too. Their ‘originals (still adaptations)’ are failing. Maybe they come up with a Blockbuster that grosses a Billion but is actually original. Not a sequel, remake, reboot or based on comics or kids literature. If they take that gamble and it pays off once, twice, and then beyond, perhaps everyone else will follow suit, because at the moment there are far too many needless remakes being bankrolled where money could be better spent invested in creatively interesting projects or putting more marketing behind excellent independent projects.
Tom Jolliffe
