Wow, what a weekend. It’s only been a few days, but John Wick 4 sure felt like one of the greatest action movies of this decade. I only went to the bathroom once, which was pretty impressive for me. I checked my phone in the bathroom and saw that Jonathon Majors was arrested for assaulting a woman. A counter-story is currently developing, but the damage to Majors’ career may have already been done. Think about it - his upcoming acting showcase is about a violent bodybuilder who attends court-mandated therapy. I wonder how that will go.
On top of all that, John Wick overperformed at the box office, and I suspect the buzz will generate another profitable weekend. In contrast, the superhero genre is up in flames. Of course, Marvel can survive the Jonathon Majors news - they’ll just use PR to fix it. We are watching that happen now in real-time. This isn’t the same as James Gunn making a few edgy jokes, but it may appear that way once the Disney PR Team finishes its work. Majors is simply a symptom of the disease. The disease is a simple classic: Disney is a whore who loves profits over quality. It’s like a shitty version of the MGM Studio model. For a while, this model seemed unstoppable. Marvel came out with hit after hit. The quality was even good at first. Pre-pandemic, every Marvel movie felt like an event. The connections required you to come back again and again, but it didn’t feel like a chore. Fast forward to today, where we just saw Quantumania and Shazam 2 crash and burn after a week in theaters. Am I being hyperbolic by saying the superhero genre is ending? No, I am not. For fuck’s sake, they got Tom Cruise to call the Flash a masterpiece. I wonder if David Zaslav knew that Tom Cruise - the most enthusi-fucking-astic actor in Hollywood - would say great things about the movie? Let’s be honest,Tom Cruise probably thinks the Room is a masterpiece. He’s Tom Cruise.
All of the above got me thinking about Marty Scorsece’s interview with Empire a few years back. You know what I’m talking about - it’s when he said Marvel isn’t cinema. It’s more akin to a theme park. It took me time, but he is 100% correct. I’ve been likening it to those megachurches with the rock music and twangy preachers in leather jackets with Tik-Tok accounts. FYI to any members, it’s just an emotional response to music and group energy ... you know that same energy that brought us to the theaters since the dawn of the 20th century. You can get that same feeling at the movies. Like the megachurches, Marvel found a way to reproduce that feeling over and over. You walk out feeling inspired, but in reality you just watched a movie with less humanity inside it than ChatGPT. By the way, do you think Disney isn’t going to take full advantage of artificial intelligence to make movies? Bob Iger is showing anyone and everyone in his office a film scene created totally with CGI but it looks real. I fear the day that Disney Pepsi-Challenges us into determining which movie has real actors.
Anyway, Marty was right. We were happy with the diet of shit Disney gave us for a decade, but now its time to move on. Nothing is replaceable. Just ask the Westerns.
Because of this, I’m changing the newsletter a little. I may even shift it over to beehiiv. If I do, you won’t even notice on your end. But, I’m changing the purpose of this newsletter. Before, I just wrote bad movie reviews that sounded generic and uninspired. That’s boring. Now, I’m going to help get you guys off Marvel. I’m a victim of this too, by the way. One-fourth of my basement was nothing but comic books and action figures. It took 60,000 gallons of water out a burst pipe to free me of that obsession. And that’s what Disney, and to a much smaller extent, Warner Brothers, is doing to you. They’re manufacturing a product for you to consume. It’s no different from the Marlboro Man. You liked Loki? Well guess what, we’re going to throw his storyline into another show. I know comic books have done this since the beginning, but how’s that industry doing right now? Shifting that concept to a more expensive medium is just going to make things worse … unless you make them addicts or superfans. Then you can hand them all the piss and shit you want to give up and they will gladly eat it.
Anyway, now I want to write about that. I might even change the name of the newsletter to something like Marty’s a Smartie. I’m still playing with it. The newsletter will always include new release reviews but the reviews may focus more on original voices, originality and the like. I’ll even continue seeing Marvel and DC movies, although my reviews will become more unfiltered. I loved the Batman, and I think the Batman II will be great. For heck’s sake, my own flesh and blood currently has creative control over the entire DC Universe. I own more stupid Batman figures than anyone you know. But none of that matters anymore. This newsletter has transformed into something bigger than me. It is now a true arch nemesis to the superhero genre. If you stick with this newsletter, you will learn about richer, more satisfying films to replace the fake serotonin Disney manufactured for you. I’ll keep you updated here.
And don’t forget to take out the trash.
I love the way this newsletter is constantly evolving! If you do end up naming this new iteration after Martin Scorsese, I think you should also go back and give us your thoughts on Scorsese's films. Would love to know what you think of After Hours.