I spent quite some time yesterday flipping through the complete schedule for all upcoming films they're planning on releasing. Like, all of them (Warner Brothers already has a release date for the third Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them!) Bleeding and breathing Box Office Mojo as I have done recently allows me to see much of the logic behind film release dates; what remains beyond me is why some films are not only conceived in the first place, but made and subsequently distributed. I'll just never understand people, and I'd thought we agreed that.
I'd originally going to have this discussion on upcoming films only be a tangent to the main subject of this post, whatever it would have been, but turns out I've a lot to say, as I've thought about this more than I'd, thought, I'd thought...
Warcraft (already out in foreign markets and doing quite well for itself) up till now looked like one of those movies that looks pretty dumb but actually turns out to be relatively smartish. Like, a Nic Cage movie or something, you know? Turns out it was directed by Duncan Jones-- and not just directed, but co-written. Source Code was pretty good, Moon was awesome; Source Code was only directed by Jones while Moon was also written by him. So. Clear correlation here between level of his involvement and quality of a film. And then along comes this interview on Engadget, where Jones cites Once Upon a Time in the West as one of the film's inspirations? The next upcoming film that looks even vaguely interesting gets shifted up by months. I'm still, probably not going to catch it; I mean, I've been meaning to see Kung Fu Panda 3 since it came out but always kind of lacked motivation for it.
Universal are making a horror franchise cinematic universe; old news, but still super awesome, since theirs was, if not one of, but the original cinematic universe(s), with all the crossovers between, the Invisible Man, and, Frankenstein's monster, and, Dracula, and, the Wolf Man, and, the Mummy, and, and, Abbott and Costello... makes you wonder what their remake of that is going to be...
Kaye and Peele? Rhett and Link? Fry and Laurie? Webb and Mitchell? And one of those would be way far out. Ooh, ooh, I vote Keenan and Kel!
As more franchises head this route, it's going to be interesting to see how each company handles theirs. We know how the MCU is doing it, and though we've got a taste of the DCEU we're going to have to wait till Suicide Squad to see how it really handles itself. I suppose that with the Fantastic Beasts trilogy coming out Harry Potter is turning into a cinematic universe, and we've all heard about the Hanna Barbera thing. We'll see how those get handled as well. Our other best example of a cinematic universe, then, remains the Universal Horror films.
And the old Godzilla movies of course- which they're also remaking and turning into a new cinematic universe, with a Godzilla 2 and a King Kong movie, then a film in which we finally get to see them fight.
The old Universal horror flicks are tough to use as an example though- they didn't give much of a crap if any about continuity (altering the lore of the Wolf Man between films to include mention of full moons; having Frankenstein's monster speak in one installment, but regulating him to a mute again in the next; changing character's names completely between films, etc) but that approach wouldn't amount to anything more than an interesting social experiment in this age of mass communication and information dissemination... It WOULD be an interesting experiment, though.
Then again, X-Men prequels barely seem to give a crap about continuity... Then again again, that's gotten way better in the more recent installments...
Gosh darn it; I did not expect to turn up so invested in this. I really hadn't intended this post to be long at all, and now, and now I sound like a major nerd, going on about popular culture like this. I'm not whining about anything, at least. I view these franchises as a good thing- studios willing to make really weird projects (Guardians of the Galaxy, Suicide Squad) but give them awesome casts and massive budgets, experiment like mad but stay financially secure just by fitting the experiments into something more established. We can branch out! Or, you know, homogenize, but, like I said, we'll see how each franchise handles it.
You know what cinematic universe I'd really like to see, MSPACU...
But in the meantime, films to get excited about, Spider-Man: Homecoming, coming 7-7-17!
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