#and if from THERE they toddle right back to Sony well that's on them

[inghrafn]

I wrote this a little over a year ago. Burgers 'n' beers will no longer do any good. A Mission Impossible-style exfiltration is the only option now.

One of my all-time favorite bands - literally (for me) the musical equivalent of a port in a storm - went supernova early in their career. The trappings of music-industry fame - videos, press junkets, promo campaigns, high-profile media appearances, hit singles - made them deeply uncomfortable. Their shared mission was to make music and play it live. Everything else was filler. Their response when pushed by their label was to step back, reassess, and recalibrate their chosen course (which was definitely NOT the one their label wanted them to take). Every time they made one of their signature stubborn decisions, it was predicted - threatened, really - that they would lose fans. They ignored the warnings, instead seeking advice from elder musicians, battle-scarred veterans of the music business. They resisted being split into factions, and they stuck with their original manager because they knew they could trust him. And they toured like maniacs. To this day, their shows are legendary-- and when I say to this day I mean they're still going strong after 30+ years. They recently appeared at two festivals where Måneskin was also playing. I wish they'd met. I wish they'd have a sit-down and talk over what's important about music: creating it, touring it, bringing it to the people. Not bullshit awards ceremonies or "influencer" campaigns. Sure, they're not the same genre or generation, but right now Må seem like they could use some decent support from the old folks.

TL;DR: I wish to fuck that Eddie Vedder would invite Måneskin over to his house to shoot the shit over burgers 'n' beers.

[the-desolated-quill]

Venom, Silver & Black, And The Sheer Incompetence Of Marvel And Sony - Quill’s Scribbles

I should warn you that Marvel fans are not going to like what I have to say, which is an opinion. It’s my opinion. It’s my subjective opinion. It’s an opinion. I’m very frustrated right now and I really need to vent it, so if you can’t handle a different opinion to your own, why don’t you toddle off to your private echo chamber and find somebody who does share your opinion instead of sending me your badly spelt death threats (although, to be fair, I’ve said a lot of mean things about Marvel over the years and I’ve received little to no grief from the MCU fandom. It’s the DCEU fandom where I normally get the death threats from, usually when I talk about how utterly rubbish Suicide Squad is. Oh yeah, because that movie is worth threatening someone’s life over).

Let’s start by playing a little game. We all love games, don’t we? Take a look at this GIF of the Marvel logo for me:

And while you’re doing that, play this music over it:

Fun fact: That’s the new Marvel fanfare now.

You may have heard the news that Sony’s upcoming Venom and Black Cat/Silver Sable movies are going to be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Or ‘adjuncts’ to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as Sony exec Amy Pascal put it. Well of course we all got excited, didn’t we? I mean there were rumours that Sony were going to jump ship after Spider-Man Homecoming 2, but this suggests that Marvel Studios and Sony are going to be in an ongoing relationship. Plus this also means that Venom and Silver & Black are going to be the first R rated movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Except what Amy Pascal said completely contradicts what Kevin Feige said a few weeks ago about how Venom and Silver & Black are definitely not part of the MCU. Oh... well, maybe they’ve sorted it out since then. Maybe they had discussions and Feige realised that maybe this is a good idea after all. I mean there’s no way that Marvel or Sony would release this kind of information unless it’s been fully discussed and officially confirmed amongst themselves, right?

Well apparently not because in a recent interview with Pascal and Feige, where Pascal dropped the bombshell that the Sony Marvel Universe would be an adjunct to to the MCU, Feige looked somewhat taken aback:

Yeah! It looks as though this is something they hadn’t even discussed prior to this interview! But how can this be? Surely this MUST have come up in discussions when they were negotiating the rights to Spider-Man within the MCU, right? Well, believe it or not, I do actually have a clip of those negotiations between Marvel and Sony:

So yeah. Everybody is totally confused as to what the fuck is actually go on now and, at the time that I’m typing this, neither Marvel nor Sony have stepped in to offer clarification. Now of course all the Marvel and Spidey fanboys are pointing the finger solely at Sony and Amy Pascal, saying that she’s jumping the gun and trying to put pressure on Feige by putting him and Marvel into a situation they can’t possibly back out from.

Okay. Here’s the thing guys.

I agree that Sony deserve partial credit for this cock-up. And honestly, we shouldn’t be too surprised about this. I mean this is Sony for Christ sake! The same company that expected The Amazing Spider-Man 2 to make a billion dollars at the box office even though there was no precedent for a Spider-Man movie making that much money. It’s the same company that threw millions and millions of dollars at a big budget Ghostbusters reboot in the hopes of turning it into its own shared universe despite the fact that Ghostbusters has never been that profitable a franchise. The same company that want to make a 21 Jump Street and Men In Black crossover movie despite the fact that the two franchises have absolutely nothing in common. Sony are a bunch of dreamers and chancers. Amy Pascal going off script, as it were, and making unrealistic and potentially incorrect promises pretty much seems par for the course for the company.

It’s just... Are we really going to let Marvel and Kevin Feige off the hook? Because let’s be clear here, this is very much Marvel’s cock-up too. In fact I’d argue that Marvel and Feige deserve more of the blame than Sony does. I mean let’s talk about this ridiculous notion that Sony are putting pressure on Marvel. What fucking planet do these fanboys live on? Marvel are owned by Disney, one of the biggest mega corporations in the world. NOBODY puts pressure on them. They’re at the top of the food chain. When Marvel and Sony started negotiating, Marvel were the ones in the driving seat. So if Amy Pascal did go off on one and start making a bunch of statements about the Sony Marvel ‘adjunct’ Universe that weren’t true, then it’s Marvel’s fault because they didn’t make their position clear enough.

And again, we shouldn’t be surprised. It’s Marvel. The bloated, incompetent sequel factory. Say what you like about the DCEU (God knows I have), but at least they hired an actual filmmaker to overlook the franchise. An artist. A storyteller. Okay Zack Snyder may not be very good, but at least he has a basic understanding of how you structure an overarching story. Kevin Feige isn’t a filmmaker or a storyteller. He’s a businessman. Worse, he’s a businessman who clearly doesn’t know how to do business properly. If he did, there wouldn’t be all this confusion about Sony right now. 

Another good example of Feige’s sheer incompetence is in regards to the Marvel TV shows. Feige has been talking for ages about one day integrating the TV and Netflix shows into the main body of the MCU, but to this day there has never been a mention of even their very existence within the movies. This has caused a lot of frustration both from Marvel fans and from within Marvel itself, most notably Chloe Bennet who plays Skye in Agents Of SHIELD. However Mike Colter (who plays Luke Cage and who appears to be the sole voice of sanity within the Marvel TV shows right now) has said that it’s unlikely that the movies and TV shows will ever mix due to logistical problems. In other words, due to scheduling and production conflicts, chances are that the Defenders and Agents of SHIELD and the billion other upcoming TV shows may never appear in the movies. Now I knew this. I’m sure anybody with a certain degree of common sense would have known this. But do you know who apparently doesn’t know this?

That’s right! Kevin Feige! 

You know? The guy in charge of the bloody thing! Give me strength!

See a fish rots from the head downwards. When you put a filmmaker at the top of the chain, while it’s not a guarantee that it’ll be a good, you can at least trust that they’ll be putting the story and quality of the movies first. Feige is a businessman. And what’s the prime goal of any business? To make money in the most cost effective way possible. And that’s exactly what he’s been doing. And for the most part, that’s exactly how the MCU has been constructed. That’s why most of the Marvel movies in recent years have been so shallow and unchallenging, adhering to this cookie cutter formula. That’s why Feige has been adding more and more movies and TV shows to the franchise regardless of whether or not they’re actually wanted, necessary or even worth making. That’s why there has been little diversity in the MCU. Why take the risk of making a movie with an LGBT+ superhero or a POC superhero or even a female superhero when we know straight, white male superheroes sell perfectly well? That’s why, despite the fact that Deadpool and Logan were hugely successful and there’s clearly an appetite for more mature content, the MCU will never risk making an R rated movie. They’d rather play it safe, making the same formulaic PG-13 crap they always make. They don’t have to fit into a cohesive timeline. They don’t even have to be good. So long as they get bums in the seats, they’re considered a success.

That’s why, try as I might, I cannot get excited for Black Panther. And it feels so utterly wrong for me to say, doesn’t it? It’s the first big budget superhero movie to have a black actor as the lead, to have a predominantly black cast and to have a black filmmaker directing. This should represent a major landmark for this genre and despite my misgivings I really hope it does well, but I honestly can’t work up the energy to get excited about this. Why? Because it’s fucking Marvel. The same company that whitewashed the Ancient One in the Doctor Strange movie and homogenised the Asian culture because it was apparently too difficult to write an Asian character that wasn’t racist. The same company that cancelled the Black Panther And The Crew and Black Panther: World Of Wakanda comics just as the marketing for the Black Panther movie started. The same company that have deluded themselves into thinking that the reason people aren’t buying their comics is because readers don’t want diversity. The same company that looked at the Captain America comics and thought ‘Hey, I know what would be a good idea! Let’s make Cap a fucking NAZI!’

This whole situation with Marvel and Sony right now feels like I’m at a secondhand car dealers. No matter how many times the salesman tries to convince me that I’m looking at a Ferrari, it’s still a tired, rusty old banger. And frankly, I don’t trust the clowns at the fucking wheel.