Did Feige Get the Stallone Treatment?
I think there is no question he did.
But the big question is was it deliberate?
For those who don’t know what the Stallone Treatment is. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone had a feud going in the 1980s back when they were fighting it out for the title of King of the Blast Flicks. They officially kissed and made up but the underlying rivalry was still very much there, but they were pretending to be friendly in the early 1990s.
One day Arnold is thumbing through scripts, looking for potential projects. And finds the worst one to ever cross his desk. It was a hideously unfunny comedy called Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. He couldn’t believe how thoroughly bad this thing was. He thought the script was a joke until he found out it wasn’t.
A couple of days later he runs into Stallone in a restaurant. Since they are now in the ‘pretend we’re friends even though we’re not’ phase of their relationship, they make small-talk. Stallone asked him about future projects he was doing.
Arnold sensing some major fun in the offing immediately starts praising this new script he had just run across to the rafters. It was going to be mega-huge. This unbelievably great project was called, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. He hadn’t secured the script yet but he would buy it up as soon as he got back from New York.
Stallone nodded in a freindly fashion and wished his “good friend” luck. Then immediately called his people and ordered them to buy that script.
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, was fairly serious career fuckage for Sylvestor Stallone, he didn’t recover from it for years. It was a trap that he rushed into when Schwarzenegger barely waved the bait in front of him.
When DC Films made public their coup of securing A Wrinkle in Time director Ava DuVernay to helm a New God’s film, Marvel annouced Eternals to be directed by Chloe Zhao three weeks later.
The difference between these two films that were based on more or less the same story by Jack Kirby was that Marvel spent $200 million plus on their movie. Whereas, DC clearly had no intention of ever producing their film. No resources were directed towards it. No casting decsions were ever announced. No real work was ever done. In hiring Ava DuVernay, DC was indulging in a vanity project whose only purpose was to impress members of the Club. The Club was in love with a Wrinkle in Time because it was the first of the super Woke movies (they were heroically ignoring the fact that it was utter crap).
No it doesn’t make sense to us but like New Guienna tribesmen, members of the Club are only too happy to destroy their own wealth as a way of counting coup on their competetors.
Regardless, Eternals is now offically a disaster for Marvel and Kevin Feige has egg on his face when he least needed it after having gone to war with his boss and lost.
The big question is, was this all just an accident or did DC deliberately set out to give Marvel the Stallone Treatment?
