The Marvels – First Impressions
Yeah, it sucks.
This was a failure that was fifteen years in the making and started the day Bob Iger walked into Ike Perlmutter’s office to discuss a possible merger.
The problem was that Perlmutter appears to have been fundamentally incapable of not seeking mega buyout ultra riches at the expense of long-term achievement.
It was basically the story of his business life or at least it was until he and Ari Arad bought out Marvel in the mid-nineties. Sure that deal started life as just another business decision, but this was something that Arad built up from zero –minus 1 when he and his partner bought it up. By the mid-2000s Marvel was the gold standard of superhero franchises. Marvel was something he had built up from a failed company over the course of ten years. It wasn’t just another failed toy company to him. It had to have felt like something special because it was.
Disney did have a relatively hands-off approach at first.
But then Iger decided that Perlmutter had to go. Bob Iger’s official story is that he backed Kevin Feige’s play to create a Black Panther movie in the teeth of Perlmutter’s opposition. Except that Perlmutter had been pushing hard to get a Black Panther off the ground for years. He wanted Wesley Snipes for the part. So that was clearly utter bullshit.
As far as I can tell Ike Perlmutter had become something of an obstacle in Bob Iger’s plan to turn the entire Disney company into a platform that would support his presidential ambitions. I admit I could be wrong about that but it fits better than some ludicrous story about Perlmutter not wanting to make a Black Panther movie when he already had a star picked out for it.
I used to believe that Fiege was great at his job, but there is no getting around it, the more power Fiege gathers the worse Marvel gets. The Marvels constitutes a low mark in Marvel theatricals. Yes, it’s even worse than Antman 3.
I was able to steal time to see it today but then my afternoon and evening blew up. The review is half done and will go up sometime tomorrow.
Yes, I’m actually doing a weekend post. What will the children think?
