Well, this is slowly getting good. I think Marvel underestimated the loyalty an artist can create amongst his collaborators and even people who don't directly know him but enjoy his work.
Well, this is slowly getting good. I think Marvel underestimated the loyalty an artist can create amongst his collaborators and even people who don't directly know him but enjoy his work.
I'm impressed by how many people have signed this
https://www.change.org/p/marvel-re-h...ombo_share_abi..
I was impressed until I learned Selma Blair and Sarah Silverman tweeted a link to it. Once they did that, naturally every two-bit entertainment outlet "covered" the story.
Some napkin math:
Silverman, Blair, Variety, and Entertainment Weekly each, one way or another, promoted the story. Collectively, they have ~20 million twitter followers. Right now, the petition has about 300,000 signatures. That's a 1.5% response rate, which in other marketing contexts would be low-to-normal. Of course, I don't know the actual reach of those four accounts, so my little percentage is highly theoretical. But I'm also discounting other social media, like Facebook and Reddit, as well as hundreds of individual websites like Slashfilm and Screen Crush.
But it's likely that if you followed the original story, you heard about the petition, i.e.: the message got to the people most likely to act on it. I'd call that a successful campaign.
Meanwhile, on change.org:
There's a petition to give teachers a discount at Amazon.com; one to tell Bank of America not to end their free checking accounts; another to close a dog racing track in Macau.
Each of them has 300,000 signatures, too.
Meh, Bank of America has 20 million customers. So that sounds about right.
Let's not forget about the Chinese dogs!
I signed that petition and CBR led me to it, not a celebrity instagram or anything.
Besides, so what if it did? The point of these campaigns is, like you say, to reach the maximum amount of people who could support the guy.
My point was more that signatures on an internet petition aren't remarkable, or newsworthy, and even less so when that petition has been highly publicized to a targeted demographic.
So this has been my long winded way of disagreeing with Duke: It's not really impressive at all.
What would be really impressive would be if more of the actors of the MCU sided with the guy. Pratt and Saldana supported him somewhat shyly - I hope more people do what Bobcat Goldthwait did and demand Disney remove their performances for the studio.
We need a major player like Robert Downey Jr. to voice his support.
That'll never happen because none of those people want to create career suicide.
I did think it interesting that, outside Bautista and Rooker, major cast members very obviously dodged the question.
Yeah. It's really sad but money rules above convictions. Good for Bautista and Rooker.
I just want this betrayal to not be completely free for Disney.
Actors are in a precarious position and they want to protect the jobs they have. Can't blame them. Gunn's old idiocy made it hard to back him and his recent graciousness made it easy to walk away.
As for Disney ... betrayal? Really? Taking Gunn's firing that personally is too extreme.
Disney won't face any repercussions because they understand something the fans don't: That it doesn't matter who directs these movies.
Aside from losing a talented director, this is the second worst outcome. Dude's a fucking hypocrite.
https://www.thewrap.com/mike-cernovi...f-rape-tweets/
They knew about the tweets before they hired him. Gunn has already apologized once for this.Quoting Irish (view post)
Except that it does. You want proof, look at the DC universe. Marvel took a bet on Gunn and Guardians (a bet they were later unwilling to take on Wright and Ant-Man) and it paid off for them. I don't think a generic director like, I dunno, Peyton Reed could have pulled off those movies as well as he did. Do you?
And I don't know how to refer to it other than a betrayal. I'm almost 100% convinced that the pedophilia stuff is a convenient excuse for Disney because they got cold feet on allowing Gunn (or any other star director) too much leverage on the studio. Otherwise the firing makes zero sense, even on this climate. That's a betrayal.
Last edited by Grouchy; 07-25-2018 at 07:32 PM.
I'm 99% positive Guardians 3 is not gonna happen anymore.
Sure why not?
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Rian Johnson) - 9
STRONGER (David Gordon Green) - 6
THE DISASTER ARTIST (James Franco) - 7
THE FLORIDA PROJECT (Sean Baker) - 9
LADY BIRD (Greta Gerwig) - 8
"Hitchcock is really bad at suspense."
- Stay Puft
That would only happen if part two failed financially. Major studios don't give a damn about anything other than m o n e y.
Yeaaaaah. Gunn apologized for homophobic blog posts when GLAAD called him out in 2012. That incident had nothing to do with his twitter account.
I'm not convinced Disney knew about his tweets. (Why would they?) I've seen posts elsewhere repeating this claim, and curiously always without support.
But: Let's say they did know. I don't think it matters. They were publicly embarrassed by the alt-right goon squad and didn't have any choice but to fire Gunn.
DC has a different problem. It isn't that they haven't or can't find good directors. It's that they've never had single, consistent producer working across all their properties. In short: Their ongoing bullshit is because they don't have someone like Kevin Faige.
We can debate the merits of an Edgar Wright over a Peyton Reed or vice versa, but I'm not talking about the kind relative quality that nerds care about.
I'm talking about mass marketability, whether a movie meets a certain commercial baseline so it can be sold in 20,000 theaters across 150 territories. At that level, the director doesn't matter as much as the producer, and anyone competent can get the job done.
So it's either a cover-up or a conspiracy? C'mon, dude.
I think you have it the wrong way around. Disney churns through directors like nobody else. Outside the Russos, most people don't last more than 1-2 films. (And that relationship destroys the idea that Disney is worried anyone has "too much leverage.")
ETA: Disney didn't really take a chance on "Guardians." Nicole Perlman created the project while working an in-house writer's program. The movie was in development when Gunn was hired.
Last edited by Irish; 07-25-2018 at 08:03 PM.
But the only reason why a Guardians of the Galaxy movie has mass marketability is Gunn's writing and direction. Nobody outside hardcore nerds knew those characters. Had the first movie not been surprisingly good there wouldn't be any franchise revolving around them.
Also, I don't think DC just overlooked the need for a Kevin Feige type of producer. I think their mistake was giving that role to Zack Snyder.
I don't think it's a conspiracy. I just think the alt-right attack came at a convenient time for Disney because, like you say, they're used to churning through directors.
You mean Gunn's co-writing, right?
The level of discipline exhibited across Marvel movies isn't coming from individual directors. It's coming from Feige. It's not like any of these dudes have script and cast approval or final cut. Disney doesn't cut them a $200 million check, pat them on the back, and yell "Good luck! Let us know how it turns out!"
Fans like to think franchise directors are like Bob Ross standing in front of his easel, talking to himself and chirping away as he paints happy little mountains and trees. But it's more like a kid with a coloring book, kept after class, with the teacher standing over them to make sure they don't color outside the lines.
ETA: Agree with you about Snyder, mostly.
You think Perlman had any presence in that final script??You mean Gunn's co-writing, right?
I didn't know there was a previous script by Nicole Perlman. That's good to know, but it doesn't make me respect Gunn any less. Yeah, I mean co-writing now that I'm more informed.
I'm not naive about how a studio like Marvel works, man. But I'm betting the reality is more of a compromise between those two situations you're describing. And the reason I'm betting that is that it is possible for a director to put his brand on a big studio movie and we've seen countless examples of it. Iron Man 3 was not a good movie but it was distinctly Shane Black-ish.
You seem to dislike Gunn and you're obviously entitled to dislike anyone you like. But that is leading you to side with right wing buffoons and corporate hypocrisy over an interesting filmmaker being ostracized for no reason.
EDIT: According to Wikipedia there's very little of Perlman's material in the finished film.
Last edited by Grouchy; 07-25-2018 at 09:24 PM.
Gunn rewrote the whole movie and because Hollywood is one giant union, she got credit for 2 or 3 drafts she submitted years before Gunn was brought on.
If you want to give co-writing credit for one or two lines of dialog or names of planets that were left in fine. But that movie is 99.99% Gunn.
Well it's nice to know number8 is reading the site even though he doesn't post. Wonder why doesn't want to join the conversation.
It doesn't matter who wrote the first two films. Disney has the the formula now.
Based on both films, I'd hazard a guess that the structure, most of the characters, and general plotline all came from Perlman. The awkward backstories and "edgy" humor were definitely Gunn, though.
That's not how WGA rules work. She literally needed to contribute at least 33% of the final script to get the credit she did. If Gunn really did a page one re-write, as some claimed, it would have gone to arbitration.
The reason this is up for debate amongst fans is because Gunn tacklessly shit on Perlman's contribution while doing press for the first movie. He worked that whole "writer-director" angle to death, and purposefully.
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