It happened again, I wrote a whole post and then the post disappeared right before my very eyes - gone from this earth, like the snows of yesteryear… Sigh. I suppose this is the universe telling me to be more concise, dammit. To get to the point before the platform falls apart beneath me. (Or to employ better practices when it comes to how I draft my blog posts).
In either case, I listened to a WGAW interview with Robert Eggers yesterday and found myself very much in agreement with his position on the Marvel’s-Not-Cinema debate.
You can listen to the interview (and many other good ones) here.
Eggers states that ultimately the presence of an authorial voice qualifies something as cinema. A superhero movie can be used as a genre vehicle, as with any other genre, for a director’s voice. Eggers cited Nolan’s and Burton’s Batman films. Whether you liked them or not, they had a clear and unique voice and style. But for him, the Marvel series (and Star Wars too, mostly) prioritized other things over authorial voice - and I think we’re all in agreement that the individual films lack specific authorial voice in service of creating a broader, unified series. It’s entertainment, absolutely, but without the authorial voice it is not cinema.
The fascinating sidebar that Eggers brings up is that Marvel is still extremely important - because it has become the modern-day “pagan pantheon” for the world. He didn’t explain that further but I think I take his point. Religion is not a viscerally important thing for many people today. The stories we tell again and again, that make us feel connected to something larger, have shifted to pop culture entertainment — and the stories of these uber-people, the Avengers, etc., has taken on this ritualistic, communal aspect. We all line up for the midnight screenings, we dress up, we cheer together in the audience, we feel catharsis, and so on. They’re grand mythic tales of individuals using god-like powers for good or for bad and there are inherent moral societal lessons imbedded in these tales. It serves the same function as the Norse gods did for the Vikings, essentially, telling us how to behave (and Thor is among the Marvel pantheon too, of course). Eggers distinguished Star Wars by saying it has a slightly more Judeo-Christian bend, but I take his point altogether that important storytelling that connects a vast swath of society in a ritualistic, cathartic way serves a sort of pseudo-religious purpose nowadays.
Total sidebar, but there’s another podcast in that series with Steve Conrad. Dude, has the coolest voice (and way of speaking) in the universe. Hearing him delve into the artistic/musical/spiritual nature of working on Patriot is totally engrossing. So, I highly recommend.
Final sidebar: yesterday apparently was a big day for me listening to successful writers talk - I attended a panel with Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander who talked about their process of mega-in-depth research for their biopics (Larry Flynt, Margaret Keane, Ed Wood, Rudy Ray Moore, etc.) It was fascinating and also terrifying how long they will research. They said on average a first draft takes them about a year to write, after at least 6+ months of research. One of the most interesting facets of their process is that they collected trivia, organized by theme, and just constantly try to find ways to put it into their scenes when they’re actually drafting the first draft. They only do it if there’s a real character vehicle to put it in as a colorful punctuation point (like Bela Lugosi, in Ed Wood, telling Ed that he could’ve been Frankenstein as they’re in a shitty situation on set one night in Griffith Park). The trivia is that Lugosi could’ve been Frankenstein. The character moment is one of desperation, Lugosi is looking back on his choices with regret. The plot is that they’re in the middle of a horrendous filming of a bad movie. Good stuff - it makes me want to see Ed Wood and also Dolemite Is My Name!
