The Dark Herald shares an insider’s description of the Marvel method of movie-making at Arkhaven.
Like Matt Shakman and the writers of #FantasticFour, I’ve sat in the ‘creative meetings’ at @MarvelStudios. They’re horrible.
You basically sit in a room with Kevin Feige and Lou D’Esposito and try to pitch your movie while realizing Kevin just wants you to dictate his rushed thoughts. Victoria [Alonso] used to be in these, but Kevin and Lou had so mistreated her that in one of my #Blade meetings she just showed up with sugar cookies she’d baked to improve morale.
You’re told NOT to pitch ideas from the comics because Lou isn’t a big comic guy and it’ll turn him off.
You talk about craft, story, and characters only for Kevin and Lou to say ‘yeah well, all we need to do is make sure it’s fun.’
There’s no spark. There’s no vision. Marvel is a slaughterhouse factory where you watch fresh meat get spoiled as it slowly makes its way through the assembly gears of mediocre thinking — and this weird hatred for their own product.
It’s become increasingly obvious that they only got lucky with the original Iron Man – which really was only a great movie for the first 15 minutes – because Disney wasn’t involved at the time. It’s really remarkable how far they’ve been able to coast on less than 45 minutes total of genuinely good movie-making.