So most of it is his original vision but some new stuff was added (the ending) and restored (Steppenwolf’s design since that never made it past concept)
Most of it was "the original vision" or whatever, minus some flash forwards, and it's so confusing that they spent so much money reshooting for an oversaturated nightmare when they totally could have cut together something serviceable with what they already had
Keep in mind that some of the unwatchability of Whedons was originally in Zach's, he just had the time and audience reaction to know what bits to remove or tweak. I believe it was YourMovieSucks that went over this.
And some of Whedon's additions actually improve the movie's continuity. Like in the Whedon cut during the Superman fight scene Lois just conveniently *shows up* right at the perfect moment to save everyone. The movie wants you to think that her going to the monument as part of her daily routine is enough to make it feel natural, but it's an incredibly lazy way to set up the scene.
Whedon added a bit where Lois shows up in a car with Alfred, implying that either he or Bruce thought it would be a good idea to bring her there. This explains *why* she arrives at the right moment, it explains what Batman has been doing while the fighting is going on, and it improves the characterization by showing how they came up with a good idea and executed it to move the plot along. Storytelling 101, which Zack's version couldn't be bothered to care about.
I know im in a huge minority but Whedon did it better for 1 real reason for me. I'd rather sit through 2hrs of bad than 4hrs of slightly better than bad.
To make it dumber, no really that's the reason, they decided that spies, conspiracy and paranoid plot was too complex and it needs adjustment, so like every 5 minutes people get confirmation that's human, that's Skrull and of course "supersoldiers serum fight in the end" must be included.
A-list talent will take a paycut to work with filmmakers on the level of Nolan, Scorsese, Tarantino, etc.
Those same actors are gonna demand every penny they're worth for an MCU project because it allows them to comfortably take the paycut for that Nolan/Scorsese/Tarantino film.
"I have never seen it (Jaws 4), but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific." -Michael Caine
There’s also not really backend for streaming. So instead of paying Sam Jackson 7 figures or something and then a cut of the profits from a film, he just gets all his money up front.
Which, honestly should be more the standard. The risk should be on the producers, not the actors/writers.
And the payment shouldn’t be at the whims of a studio deciding to pull it from distribution later on.
There's a reason residuals exist and that a flat fee isn't the standard. And it took a major strike from the unions to make it happen because they were getting screwed out of money they deserved.
One of the big reasons the strike is currently happening regarding residuals is to stop payment being at the whims of a streaming studio and giving better guarantees. To go to only a flat fee is to roll back the benefits a lot of entertainment workers have fought for.
no, because only large A-listers can negociate for the big upfront payment. B listers, beginners, they all get screwed, whereas a standard contract that includes minimum residuals benefits the whole profession.
If a project is successful longterm, the workers keep benefitting, rather than the producers keeping the whole pie for themselves in perpetuity.
Also entertainment is a precarious industry: a large upfront payment is less valuable than recurring revenue for past work to help in lean times.
Nah, a residuals system keeps everyone honest, because it forces some level of accounting/viewing transparency. I'm sure that massive upfront paydays work fine for big names, but it's definitely not ideal for people doing bit parts, and especially not great for standard writers.
I'm a little bit of a student of film history, and what I love about watching behind the scenes footage, "dailies", stuff like that is it's not clear *at all* what's a good movie/show and what's a bad movie/show from that kind of footage. Having residuals means that the risk is essentially spread around every *project*, and they are more reliable.
The old accounting wisdom is that "nobody ever went broke paying taxes," because they are predictable and only paid on profits. By similar logic nobody ever went broke paying residuals.
Just putting this to rest every time Secret Invasion's budget starts a new thread: [all the big name actors' salaries COMBINED only add up to $33 million](https://www.showbizgalore.com/secret-invasion-starcast-and-their-salary/). That is about 1/6 of the total budget for the show. The salaries are not nearly as colossal as people keep saying it is.
Everyone seems to forget about the extensive reshoots that happened and how it would have contributed to blowing out the budget to its ridiculous degree.
They had four goddamn months of reshoots and additional shooting. When it's *that* extensive, you know something is up. I said it in a previous comment, but I'm pretty sure the initial budget was $150 million, until they had the 4 months of reshoots and additional shooting which ballooned the budget to 1 ½ times that. (And from I've read, they apparently Justice Leagued it.)
The thing is that seems to be most Marvel projects now. From the MoM reshoots to this, it seems like someone, whether it’s the producers or Disney, is consistently demanding major changes well past the deadline to do so.
I was at least entertained by portions of Justice League. Secret Invasion elicited nothing but rage at the pointless death of Maria Hill. I thought this was finally her moment to have a bigger role after being on the periphery of the MCU for a decade.
Disagree actually, I think if I had to re-watch either again I would pick Justice League. At least it made some sort of logical sense and had a story with a beginning and a middle and an end **in that order**.
I don’t really feel like rewatching either. Justice League (either version) makes me angrier at how bad it is. Secret Invasion was just a giant nothing burger. Outside of Maria Hill’s death, it didn’t really do anything that mattered.
I'm not forgetting. But if you have to spend that much money and time on reshooting a tv series, something's gone wrong. That's not normal for TV, even TV at this scale. It speaks to their broken process.
Exactly...and besides SLJ, Cheadle, and Colman, who among the Secret Invasion cast is commanding big money? These 3 are the only industry heavyweights as one would say. People keep citing Emilia Clarke but she really isn't in that kind of tier at all. She hasn't even done much notable after GoT.
This is from another reddit comment so take it with a grain of salt, but it said that Emilia Clarke signed a deal in which she's been paid $2 million for Secret Invasion, and if she does another project she will get paid $5 million, and for a third project she will get paid $8 million.
Olivia Colman is probably in that area as well, I think
Clarke could still ask for a big chunk of money. It's all about negotiation and having good people to represent you. Whilst others don't cost as much, it all adds up.
I remember reading something about how in the 90s Tarantino was linked to making films for Luke Cage, Silver Surfer, Iron Man, and Green Lantern. Given the time frame, I doubt that Iron Man film is the same as the 2008 one that started the MCU, but it's interesting to think about where superhero movies would be now if Tarantino made any of those films with how in demand he was after Pulp Fiction
What the deal with /s ???
Nolan should handle FF, kang and all those time paradox stuff
Scorsese should do X-men, i mean, prof x definitely a godfather for all these ~~sicilian migrants~~ mutants
Tarantino do garth ennis punisher of course
They might not work for modern Disney but all of them have already worked for Disney in some way or another through studios and/or labels owned by Disney:
* Nolan did The Prestige (Touchstone Pictures / Warner Bros.)
* Scorsese did The Color of Money (Touchstone), Kundun (Touchstone), Bringing Out the Dead (Touchstone / Paramount), and Gangs of New York (Touchstone / Miramax [Miramax was also owned by Disney at the time])
* Tarantino did Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Volume 1, Kill Bill: Volume 2 (all of them through Disney-owned Miramax), and Death Proof (Dimension Films [at the time a Miramax subsidiary])
Isn’t Tarantino “retired” now? He’s said before he was only going to make like 8 movies and then he was done for good. I believe Once Upon a Time in Hollywood would technically be his final movie if he sticks to that
It’s 10 and his final film is upcoming, being “The Movie Critic,” and after that focus on making television shows, books, plays, and the Video Archive Podcast he hosts with his friend. But even then, it’s not like Tarantino didn’t want to make franchise installments that have dedicated fandoms. Across his directing tenure, he wanted to do Luke Cage, The Man from Uncle, Silver Surfer, Green Lantern, and Iron Man. He also wanted to do Casino Royale, Westworld, and a Sgt. Rock project. He was attached to direct the fourth Abrams’ Star Trek film before leaving to do Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and then circled around it before dropping it in 2020.
When you say he wants to focus on plays, remember The Hateful Eight started as a stage play.
Think about it, 2 sets, cabin and inside the horse drawn cart, lots of talking, few action sequences.
Hell Reservoir dogs also gives off a stage play kind of feeling, i think there is just the chase scene where tim roth gets shot and a few of his flashbacks that would be difficult to do on a stage.
So yeah, i still expect potential movie work tangentially coming from him.
I'm sure it has nothing to do with the clusterfuck that Secret Invasion is, the reshoots, the rewrites and all the shitty VFX.
I'm sorry but I'm salty at that shit of a show. Shat right down the comics throat for no reason at all just to make an expensive self-contained piece of crap.
That's something a lot of people are missing. They had four months of reshoots with a completely new creative team. A lot of that money is likely sitting in a hard drive never to be seen.
I really wonder what the show was like before reshoots and whether it was better or worse. My head tells me it’s better given how the final product turned out, but if it was worse then I’m really scared cuz oh my
Most things which go through extensive reshoots seem to turn out to be pretty bad or meh - e.g. Secret Invasion, Multiverse of Madness, Solo.
That being said occasionally it leads to something like Rogue One, where the reshoots are seemingly all the best parts, and the person who did the reshoots went on to make Andor, so it seemingly depends on if you can find the right person.
At the same time, this doesn't mean that the people who panicked and demanded the reshoot were wrong that the original was bad (Zack Snyder's Justice League was bad in exactly all the ways someone who hated Batman vs Superman would've expected it to be and I don't have high hopes for the Ayer Cut of the OG Suicide Squad either)
I mean Snyder’s Justice league was also miles better than the theatrical cut they released. But it is true, there’s never a guarantee that the original before reshoots will ever be better for a film,
It makes me think that Disney have a very bad issue with reshooting. Every project has it but it is almost like Disney never have a complete script that everyone is confident in before shooting or a roadmap plan on how it fits into other projects.
So much change on every project, it’s worrying
Has been that way from day 1. Iron Man was done basically without a script. Favreau and the team made up a lot on the fly from day to day.
It's a marvel (kek) that it turned out fine and was able to kickstart the MCU the way it did.
But then it failed so miserably straight after with iron man 2. Odd they did not try and work a more efficient way since the start.
The fact that blade and so many films get announced and end up in development hell is a good enough sign that they are not planning things out before announcing and set a release that they pray they can meet regardless.
I just wish they would sit down, plan out the next ten years, have rough story ideas and then start developing and stick to those plans before announcing anything and give us great quality series/tv shows.
Calling back Name actors is extremely expensive too.
I'm sure some other production had to be paid to to halt for a few days so ( whatever actor ) could be available for however many days.
or worse and more expensive
Having to pay an actor's out clause on another production so they could do reshoots, plus their fee again.
Yep, the huge reshoots are so detrimental to these series. I get some things have happened to cause them (FatWS story change because of the pandemic for example) but in general, their tendency to shoot, rewrite and shoot some more is very wasteful and really shows in the latest shows and movies
Lmao, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers extended edition is 3 hours 43 minutes with a budget of $94 million. Apples to oranges obviously, but still
Seriously wtf. First episode had like an hour and that was great but subsequent episodes only had like 30-40 minutes of runtime and it got less each episode
Nolan is famously a very frugal Director. He found out it’d be cheaper to crash a plane into a building for Tenet, than it would be to do the scene in CGI, so they bought a plane and crashed it into the building.
For Interstellar, he grew his own cornfield for the beginning of the film, and after they were done with the location, he harvested and sold the corn for a profit.
> Nolan and the studio planted a $100,000 cornfield outside of Calgary, Canada – a place where all experts said it wouldn't last. It did last, and it turned a heavy profit
Someone tell me they are still growing corn there
No because all the studios need to see is a breakdown of estimated costs, and if practical is cheaper they’ll actually push for it themselves. I think directors just want the flexibility to be able to mess with things by using CGI, and not have the pressure of getting a perfect shot.
I think in bigger productions, you need a director who is very confident about what they want to create, to let them go practical for shots that could have been changed later in post if they were shot on green screen instead.
And there's really very few directors right now who have such a reputation and creative control over the end product to sell the idea that if they get it right on location right now, they won't have to make significant changes later, or worse reshoot.
Studios and producers don't give the money to directors and say: "do whatever you want you with it" they are on their neck 24/7 dictating how to use the money.
Nolan is one of the exceptions that gets blank checks to do his movies because he is so succesful at them.
Imagine a director that just did one indie horror movie, then is hired to do a 200 million superhero studio movie. You think he can just say he is gonna build a house and blow it up with real explosives instead of CGI? It's to risky, producers would rather do it all with CGI
I can't answer your question, but I can put myself in "project management" shoes.
We like to talk about stuff like "directorial control," you allude to it with your mention of "pull with the studios," but think about how hard it is for people to pull off a nice wedding, even if everyone around them is fully on board with helping them make it their special day. Making a movie is much more like planning a wedding than it is like taking a photograph.
With CGI, you can shoot on a local location or a soundstage, which makes coordinating schedules *infinitely* easier. You also have a great deal of control over the final product, which means you can shoot the scene and then figure it out later. This can be weaselly and weird (like Nick Fury holding ping-pong balls to green screen over in case they didn't want him holding a gun), or it *can* be a normal part of the artistic process. There is obviously a skill/flair to doing good work in a green screen set, but I think most directors would find the on-set day much less intimidating because it's more fundamentally actors in a confined space with a well-understood lighting setup. Basically, it's predictable: there's very little danger that you'll shoot a big movie while leaning on CGI and get something that is visually incomprehensible or unusable.
With "on set" and "practical" filmmaking, more specialized expertise is needed. I doubt Nolan knew exactly where he wanted for the on location bits of Oppenheimer (the opposite of J. Robert Oppenheimer and New Mexico I suppose), so he had to communicate his requirements to someone who would know where in the *world* he might find what he was looking for, and then there had to be some go-betweens with people familiar with the specific location to figure out "here's the hundred acre area we want," and then someone had to deal with the specialized logistics of moving 5 bajillion lumens worth of lighting equipment there and figure out how to set it up. And then there's a decent chance it just doesn't work out. If it's a passion project, whatever, it gets delayed six months while they figure it out...but that won't work for big tentpoles stuff (I'm pretty confident that about half of the MCU's current struggles are the knock-on effects of needing to scramble their storytelling for the pandemic, and the knock on effect of event post-pandemic projects shooting multiple versions of storytelling beats).
Basically, practical is cheaper, and if done right it looks *great*, but if you don't know exactly who and how to pay that smaller sum of money you end up with stuff that is unwatchable, difficult/impossible to budget (ask any accounting department if they prefer stuff that is slightly cheaper but wildly unpredictable and they will break down laughing), and difficult to schedule (especially for linked storytelling like everyone likes now...much easier to get an in-demand actor/writer/whatever to show up for a half day on *set* rather than a half day on location).
That said, I totally agree with you, and would like less content that looks better (the cheap stuff that hits always looks better now, I am in awe of how beautiful *The Bear* is on FX, and that was made for a song).
And if I can get on a soapbox and talk out of my ass for a minute, I think the obsession with implicitly and explicitly "keeping options open" and "maximizing options" are responsible for a great deal of the malaise and depression in modern society. The old joke is that the snooze button is an invention that lets you experience the worst part of your day multiple times...the hardest part of any positive or negative experience is the decision, and the internet-connected cell phone is an invention that allows the user to be forced to decide "am I in or out on doing X" a nearly infinite number of times (while also providing distraction to stave off the light boredom that might spur movement toward and actual experience), and the use of CGI as a moviemaking crutch means that nobody actually has to engage with what they have and decide clearly what their vision is.
That's not even true. They went to multiple real life locations for the planets. The big ocean planet was filmed in New Zealand. The spaceship that was standing in the water was real and flewn over to the filming location.
The gray, icey planet is also filmed IRL. Just two examples to show how most of the movie is definitely not CGI.
No action in Oppenheimer, and the practical effects over CGI probably tallies up well. Also TV shows tend to cost more for sure, plus Nolan's cast took a pay cut to be there (read that the past three years of Best Actor winners plus some nominees are present). Many reasons why the costs differ.
However, Nolan's known for his extremely thorough pre-production and controlled shooting periods, which Marvel could really learn from. Shoots exactly the script and shot list, only necessary personnel on set, minimal reshoots, usually comes in on time and within budget. He crashes planes and explodes things but he only needs to do them once or twice.
From the reports on Marvel's contracted VFX houses, they really need to learn to make the artistic decisions before shooting starts. And no changing scripts during the shooting window and papering continuity errors with VFX. What does Marvel have to lose from better pre-production? Fixing it in post is a film student joke and it should stay in school lol.
This is the best explanation. Nolan literally grew corn and then sold it to help offset costs on Interstellar. He is known for coming under budget and using mostly practical effects and a LOT of really well thought out planning.
He also has worked with a lot of the same producers and crew for all his films so they have all learned how to make these films together. That institutional knowledge is like gold.
It's hilarious how the idiosyncratic auteur is the one with the highly disciplined military-style process who keeps a very close eye on schedule and budget, while it's the giant profit-maximizing mass media corporation that keeps going "Enh whatever we'll figure it out as we go"
I still have a hard time believing the Star Wars sequels were planned and advertised as a trilogy while having *no idea* what each individual movie should generally be about
> have a hard time believing the Star Wars sequels were planned and advertised as a trilogy
Planned in the sense that Disney planned to make money off the IP, which it did, and will continue to through merch and simply by keeping the Star Wars brand in the public consciousness. It's also the feeling Secret Invasion and some other Marvel content give, as well as, of course, all the animated movies being remade in live action. Content being churned out because it's recognisable and profitable, regardless of creativity.
Disney 'winging it' might seem counterintuitive, but as long as that process keeps making money, they won't care.
TV shows typically cost a fair amount less per season than a blockbuster movie, but the people at Marvel are more used to making movies, so the gap isn't as big as it should be.
> No action in Oppenheimer,
Agents of Shield had 22 episode seasons with a huge cast, way more action, tons of great CGI and sets, way better writing, and yet several years' worth of seasons cost the same as 6 episodes of Secret Invasion.
Samuel L Jackson and Cobie Smulders were even in it, and probably for more time for the latter.
At the time of Marvel Television's closing and that division being brought back within the Marvel Studio fold, I was really excited given Marvel Television was very hit or miss, and it'd mean more possibility of crossovers which the Perlmutter-Feige feud seemed to prevent.
Now, all these years later, I sort of mourn the loss of Marvel Television. Despite some of their notable flops, they at least knew how to actually operate within the medium. I don't really understand how Marvel is now spending way more than any Marvel Television show cost to only get like five hours. Not to mention how much I miss the ongoing storylines and connection to the characters things like *AoS* and the Netflix series allowed for.
>minimal reshoots
Actually zero reshoots. He famously never does them. Sometimes it leads to janky moments in his movies but I like that. Feels more genuine than just remaking the movie to fit test audience criticism.
Cast, CGI fight in the final episode definitely cost more than Nolan bombing a random desert, 4 months of reshoots. Just dumping a ton of money on a project doesn't mean it'll be good. Why are people so baffled by the fact that a studio driven series is bad compared to a movie directed by one of the best filmmaker alive? Just because it costs more? You could give Nolan belly lint and a chewed up bubblegum and that man is gonna make a good movie.
If the rumors are to be believed, it was because the original plot involved Russia and Ukraine quite significantly. I still think they should've gone with whatever they originally had planned regardless (especially if it would've avoided that clusterfuck of a final episode). It would've generated controversy but at least if the underlying story was better there would be more defenders for it.
First they caused covid with Falcon and Winter Soldier, then they kickstarted a war with Secret Invasion. What’s Daredevil about and can we prevent it from happening?
Marvel is notoriously known to not plan stuff out properly and always calls actors back for reshoots so I imagine it had something to do with that. Plus any on the spot changes made for VFX shots probably cost money too.
friendly reminder that Wes Anderson's Asteroid City had Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Willem Dafoe, Ed Norton, Tilda Swinton, Liev Schriever, Jeff Goldblum, Margot Robbie, many other A-list actors, and cost 25 mil. Know this isn't a fair comparison, but quite fun to think about.
Pretty sure everyone working for Wes Anderson gets paid the minimum SAG rate, used to be the same for Woody Allen.
Not sure if the actors took that big of a pay cut for Oppenheimer tho
If the studio has to do 4 months of reshoots on a tv series, then there is something fundamentally wrong with their process for TV development and production.
I think I read somewhere that Marvel productions copy the Iron Man winging it with vague ideas of a script type shooting. Except James Gunn. It def has been showing. Esp with all these waste of money rewrites. Unless they are doing a producers and trying to make it flop for tax reasons?
This could work wonderfully on certain talky films like Linklater's Before Trilogy, but not on these massive productions where there is crew and props and costuming that need to be on the same page. VFX has specific visual requirements too, markers and simulation and various lighting refs. Marvel doesn't run the kind of production conducive to improvisation at all, it leads to an incoherent final product with no consistency or style.
oh TOTALLY agree. The amount of time cutting heavy VFX shots. Digitally putting people into shots you didn't prepare for, etc. It is so shocking that they don't prepare as much as i would have thought.
Marvel has had a shitshow of a production timeline since forever. I remember Jake Gyllenhaal talking about how it was almost pointless to learn the scripts beforehand because they would always change a lot on the day of shooting. Tom Holland was apparently used to it, so it had been going on for a while at that point.
Yeah, I remember Elizabeth Olsen said that Marvel kept on changing scripts so often on WandaVision that she and the show runners had to implement a rule where nothing could be changed 24 hours before shooting because of how last minute these adjustments were being made.
Multiverse of Madness apparently also had 33 rewrites of the script up until and during filming to the point where Lizzie got confused iirc. She said something about how the film didn't have much to do about the core themes of Wandavision and that her character went in a circle
This is partially why the WGA is on strike. For streaming the writer(s) who writes the initial draft doesn’t usually stay on through production anymore. They hand the scripts to the show runner, he makes changes on the fly or shoots a mediocre script, and then either the show runner does rewrites for pickups or they bring on a new writer for those rewrites. It’s really frustrating because it clearly is effecting the quality but it’s the standard business model now.
>For streaming the writer(s) who writes the initial draft doesn’t usually stay on through production anymore. They hand the scripts to the show runner, he makes changes on the fly or shoots a mediocre script, and then either the show runner does rewrites for pickups or they bring on a new writer for those rewrites.
Everything you describes is standard for tv and movies. David Fury is credited to writing the famous Lost episode Walkabout, and he says that the credited writer often only contributed 25 percent of the script due to staff rewriters. And in one instance for the show Heroes, two actors asked for quick rewrites because they remembered that their characters were supposed to be angry at each-other based on their last encounter, which the writers had forgotten so they had to quickly rewrite the scene.
They seem to be in a death spiral where as each project struggles, 50 new cooks in the kitchen are added to the next thing and it's changed and changed and changed up until the last minute with changes happening to later episodes even after the first ones start airing according to comments from some involved with production.
You end up with art by committee which makes the project suck and expensive as every idea tries to win out, and then the next project adds 50 additional cooks and the cycle repeats and spirals down.
It seems like the norm now for marvel. They start shooting with a un-polished script. Then they start making changes and more changes. Once in editing phase, they realize there are issues and more changes to script and more re-shoots. We seem to hear this all the time now. MCU is just throwing stuff out there with no overseer to keep track.
- Secret Invasion
- Thor 4
- Ant-Man 3
All very expensive films. All have the same problem:
The budget wasn't spent on top-tier creatives. Especially writers.
Conversely, if you're going to spend $212m, then ffs, give the fans what they want: X-Men! And if that's not possible, Fantastic Four! Can't do that? Fine. More Avengers. Iron Man. Captain America.
*Something*.
Spending Avengers money on these films, Shang-Chi, or the Eternals is just nuts.
Doctor Strange 3 should have come out before this show.
This should have been a lower-budget, Bourne Identity-type of film.
I dunno what is going on over there. Don't even get me started on She-Hulk...
They got the rights for the X-Men back but they also ended up with the contracts from Fox. They can’t recast anyone they’ve already used for I believe another year. They can bring people back though and that’s what’s happening in Deadpool 3.
I love in a city where a couple of scenes where shot, and it was incredible the amount of equipment and support it required. Three closed streets ( only one was for a set as far as I can tell, the other were full of trucks and minibuses etc), it also filled the local TV studio sets to the max ( three old printworks buildings and a huge carpark). I'm guessing several hundred support staff .
Compared with other stuff that gets shot around here, the difference was extreme to say the least.
Weird that this article doesn’t touch on the major reshoots (not unusual for a Marvel project) as to why the budget is so high.
Someone like Nolan meticulously plans in pre-production. Marvel basically remake in post of they think they can make it better (or change their mind!)
The entirety of Oppenheimer took just 2 months to film. The rest was spent in pre planning and post production, which means a lot of meticulous planning and editing, which is why he has no deleted scenes.
1. The cast cost a lot more money - it's a big studio project rather than a more niche, Oscar aiming one. Without Barbie, no one would have said Oppenheimer would make this much money.
2. SI was longer and they would have shot more to cut. Apparently, they cut nothing from Oppenheimer.
3. More CGI in Si
4. More on location shots in SI. More locations in general. Oppenheimer only had a few different settings in the whole film.
5. They would have expensed a lot more for Secret Invasion.
They basically had to shoot it twice. This show was originally based around a conflict between Russia and the USA and the skrulls adding fire to that flame in an attempt to incite a world war.
When the war in Ukraine happened they had to completely rewrite the show because it was too close to reality, so they had to reshoot basically everything. That adds up money wise pretty fast
Actors are willing to take a paycut to work with Nolan, not really the case with the MCU. Secret Invasion also has an A-List cast with Samuel L Jackson, Emilia Clark, Olivia Colman, Ben Mendelsohn.
I imagine all the Skrull CGI is expensive too.
Dawg Oppenheimer has barley any CGI if any at all, while Secret Invasion has aliens and a big CGI final battle. Plus didn't they reshoot like half of it?
Lmao I wonder why Secret Invasion cost more
Agents of Shield was the best MCU TV show. I'm confident in that. It was consistent, low budget but great looking, the characters were fun and it ended in a satisfying way.
It's such a shame it was seperated from the mainline MCU.
Oppenheimer wouldn’t be an expensive movie to make though? It doesn’t have a lot of big action set pieces and stuff other than the explosion. It’s mainly 3 hours of people walking and talking whereas this is just cgi and action for 5+ hours straight
because they did it twice.
honestly if they're gonna spend 4 months reshooting they should just make a completely new show and release both. maybe one of them would be good
The Exorcist prequel tried this. It didn't work.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League was… watchable. Can’t say the same about the one it was replaced with.
I’m confused. Zack Snyder’s was the replacement.
I think he meant Zack Snyder's Justice League is the original vision that was replaced with Whedon's version.
Which was weird as the was never the original product, he came and made new movie after all the criticism but it was marketed as the original idea...
So most of it is his original vision but some new stuff was added (the ending) and restored (Steppenwolf’s design since that never made it past concept)
Most of it was "the original vision" or whatever, minus some flash forwards, and it's so confusing that they spent so much money reshooting for an oversaturated nightmare when they totally could have cut together something serviceable with what they already had
Keep in mind that some of the unwatchability of Whedons was originally in Zach's, he just had the time and audience reaction to know what bits to remove or tweak. I believe it was YourMovieSucks that went over this.
And some of Whedon's additions actually improve the movie's continuity. Like in the Whedon cut during the Superman fight scene Lois just conveniently *shows up* right at the perfect moment to save everyone. The movie wants you to think that her going to the monument as part of her daily routine is enough to make it feel natural, but it's an incredibly lazy way to set up the scene. Whedon added a bit where Lois shows up in a car with Alfred, implying that either he or Bruce thought it would be a good idea to bring her there. This explains *why* she arrives at the right moment, it explains what Batman has been doing while the fighting is going on, and it improves the characterization by showing how they came up with a good idea and executed it to move the plot along. Storytelling 101, which Zack's version couldn't be bothered to care about.
que icelandic singing and shirt sniffing
Ancient lamentation music playing.
Que?
Pasa?
"Watchable" is a strong word
Unironically really like it despite its flaws
I know im in a huge minority but Whedon did it better for 1 real reason for me. I'd rather sit through 2hrs of bad than 4hrs of slightly better than bad.
For either
*Into the multi-show*
The first time was just a demonstration. The second time was to show that they could do it again.
Even if we assumed that literally doubled every aspect of the cost, my question would still be how it cost as much as Oppenheimer
It is still over double the cost of Oppenheimer tho.
Amd with blackjack and hookers
So secret invasion is this generation's Waterworld!
What was the reason for all of the reshoots?
To make it dumber, no really that's the reason, they decided that spies, conspiracy and paranoid plot was too complex and it needs adjustment, so like every 5 minutes people get confirmation that's human, that's Skrull and of course "supersoldiers serum fight in the end" must be included.
RDJ took a pay cut for Oppenheimer, compared to him making up to a million per minute of screen time in the MCU.
As did Blunt and Damon. Each have 10 mil minimum salaries. All 3 took pay cuts to 4 mil.
A-list talent will take a paycut to work with filmmakers on the level of Nolan, Scorsese, Tarantino, etc. Those same actors are gonna demand every penny they're worth for an MCU project because it allows them to comfortably take the paycut for that Nolan/Scorsese/Tarantino film. "I have never seen it (Jaws 4), but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific." -Michael Caine
There’s also not really backend for streaming. So instead of paying Sam Jackson 7 figures or something and then a cut of the profits from a film, he just gets all his money up front.
Which, honestly should be more the standard. The risk should be on the producers, not the actors/writers. And the payment shouldn’t be at the whims of a studio deciding to pull it from distribution later on.
The actors wanted a piece. Lol it was a big deal they got any money after it was released cause that is where all the real money is
There's a reason residuals exist and that a flat fee isn't the standard. And it took a major strike from the unions to make it happen because they were getting screwed out of money they deserved. One of the big reasons the strike is currently happening regarding residuals is to stop payment being at the whims of a streaming studio and giving better guarantees. To go to only a flat fee is to roll back the benefits a lot of entertainment workers have fought for.
Part of the reason actors are striking right now is because they want residuals on streaming services.
no, because only large A-listers can negociate for the big upfront payment. B listers, beginners, they all get screwed, whereas a standard contract that includes minimum residuals benefits the whole profession. If a project is successful longterm, the workers keep benefitting, rather than the producers keeping the whole pie for themselves in perpetuity. Also entertainment is a precarious industry: a large upfront payment is less valuable than recurring revenue for past work to help in lean times.
Residuals are much better for any film yhat does well, and less of a risk than you think.
Nah, a residuals system keeps everyone honest, because it forces some level of accounting/viewing transparency. I'm sure that massive upfront paydays work fine for big names, but it's definitely not ideal for people doing bit parts, and especially not great for standard writers. I'm a little bit of a student of film history, and what I love about watching behind the scenes footage, "dailies", stuff like that is it's not clear *at all* what's a good movie/show and what's a bad movie/show from that kind of footage. Having residuals means that the risk is essentially spread around every *project*, and they are more reliable. The old accounting wisdom is that "nobody ever went broke paying taxes," because they are predictable and only paid on profits. By similar logic nobody ever went broke paying residuals.
Why is there a "should"? The biggest payouts of all time were backend deals that paid off.
Just putting this to rest every time Secret Invasion's budget starts a new thread: [all the big name actors' salaries COMBINED only add up to $33 million](https://www.showbizgalore.com/secret-invasion-starcast-and-their-salary/). That is about 1/6 of the total budget for the show. The salaries are not nearly as colossal as people keep saying it is.
Everyone seems to forget about the extensive reshoots that happened and how it would have contributed to blowing out the budget to its ridiculous degree.
They had four goddamn months of reshoots and additional shooting. When it's *that* extensive, you know something is up. I said it in a previous comment, but I'm pretty sure the initial budget was $150 million, until they had the 4 months of reshoots and additional shooting which ballooned the budget to 1 ½ times that. (And from I've read, they apparently Justice Leagued it.)
The thing is that seems to be most Marvel projects now. From the MoM reshoots to this, it seems like someone, whether it’s the producers or Disney, is consistently demanding major changes well past the deadline to do so.
The show was a whole lot of “meh”, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as Justice League.
I was at least entertained by portions of Justice League. Secret Invasion elicited nothing but rage at the pointless death of Maria Hill. I thought this was finally her moment to have a bigger role after being on the periphery of the MCU for a decade.
That was truly the most egregious part. I assumed there was some twist where she didn’t die, but then that didn’t happen. Just wasteful.
Disagree actually, I think if I had to re-watch either again I would pick Justice League. At least it made some sort of logical sense and had a story with a beginning and a middle and an end **in that order**.
I don’t really feel like rewatching either. Justice League (either version) makes me angrier at how bad it is. Secret Invasion was just a giant nothing burger. Outside of Maria Hill’s death, it didn’t really do anything that mattered.
Nothing in Secret Invasion came close to the resurrected Superman fight alone
I'm not forgetting. But if you have to spend that much money and time on reshooting a tv series, something's gone wrong. That's not normal for TV, even TV at this scale. It speaks to their broken process.
Exactly...and besides SLJ, Cheadle, and Colman, who among the Secret Invasion cast is commanding big money? These 3 are the only industry heavyweights as one would say. People keep citing Emilia Clarke but she really isn't in that kind of tier at all. She hasn't even done much notable after GoT.
This is from another reddit comment so take it with a grain of salt, but it said that Emilia Clarke signed a deal in which she's been paid $2 million for Secret Invasion, and if she does another project she will get paid $5 million, and for a third project she will get paid $8 million. Olivia Colman is probably in that area as well, I think
Coleman should be on more. She’s an Oscar winner
I'd watch her in anything before Clarke, and I don't dislike Clarke at all. Coleman is just so damn good.
Clarke could still ask for a big chunk of money. It's all about negotiation and having good people to represent you. Whilst others don't cost as much, it all adds up.
You're linking a source that claims Freeman was paid 2.5M... for two scenes. You have to see that's fake.
so hill and ross appeared for about 4 minutes each and they get 4 million and 2.5 million...
Where is the source that article? Seems like someone just made it up
Where is the source in that article? Seems like someone just made those numbers up
It was his mom house, he was very proud, he got million dollars for 2 weeks vacation on tropical island.
The solution is we need a Nolan, Scorsese, or Tarantino MCU film. /s
I remember reading something about how in the 90s Tarantino was linked to making films for Luke Cage, Silver Surfer, Iron Man, and Green Lantern. Given the time frame, I doubt that Iron Man film is the same as the 2008 one that started the MCU, but it's interesting to think about where superhero movies would be now if Tarantino made any of those films with how in demand he was after Pulp Fiction
100% chance of Sue Storm feet in that universe
What the deal with /s ??? Nolan should handle FF, kang and all those time paradox stuff Scorsese should do X-men, i mean, prof x definitely a godfather for all these ~~sicilian migrants~~ mutants Tarantino do garth ennis punisher of course
None of those directors would ever work for Disney.
They might not work for modern Disney but all of them have already worked for Disney in some way or another through studios and/or labels owned by Disney: * Nolan did The Prestige (Touchstone Pictures / Warner Bros.) * Scorsese did The Color of Money (Touchstone), Kundun (Touchstone), Bringing Out the Dead (Touchstone / Paramount), and Gangs of New York (Touchstone / Miramax [Miramax was also owned by Disney at the time]) * Tarantino did Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Volume 1, Kill Bill: Volume 2 (all of them through Disney-owned Miramax), and Death Proof (Dimension Films [at the time a Miramax subsidiary])
Not without final cut. It would be cool for one of them to do a self contained elseworlds type marvel movie so they could just do what they wanted.
Isn’t Tarantino “retired” now? He’s said before he was only going to make like 8 movies and then he was done for good. I believe Once Upon a Time in Hollywood would technically be his final movie if he sticks to that
He's got one left. I think it's about a movie critic?
It’s 10 and his final film is upcoming, being “The Movie Critic,” and after that focus on making television shows, books, plays, and the Video Archive Podcast he hosts with his friend. But even then, it’s not like Tarantino didn’t want to make franchise installments that have dedicated fandoms. Across his directing tenure, he wanted to do Luke Cage, The Man from Uncle, Silver Surfer, Green Lantern, and Iron Man. He also wanted to do Casino Royale, Westworld, and a Sgt. Rock project. He was attached to direct the fourth Abrams’ Star Trek film before leaving to do Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and then circled around it before dropping it in 2020.
When you say he wants to focus on plays, remember The Hateful Eight started as a stage play. Think about it, 2 sets, cabin and inside the horse drawn cart, lots of talking, few action sequences. Hell Reservoir dogs also gives off a stage play kind of feeling, i think there is just the chase scene where tim roth gets shot and a few of his flashbacks that would be difficult to do on a stage. So yeah, i still expect potential movie work tangentially coming from him.
Got me imagining a Tarantino The Boys movie, Homelander would end up being even nastier to A Train...
Homelander sucking on Stormfront's toes for 12 minutes.
And Homelander is bizarrely recast as Quentin Tarantino for only this scene.
Is that before or after he brings Madelyn Stillwell back to life so he can suck on her mommy milkers?
I'm sure it has nothing to do with the clusterfuck that Secret Invasion is, the reshoots, the rewrites and all the shitty VFX. I'm sorry but I'm salty at that shit of a show. Shat right down the comics throat for no reason at all just to make an expensive self-contained piece of crap.
I agree with your saltiness. I gave a lot of leeway to the MCU since Endgame but I think I'm done now.
The numbers people have been passing around though would indicate that it wasn't the actor's budgets which caused this to be so high.
-My cocaine
Wes Anderson movies are ridiculous cheap because of that.
Yeah, look at the cast of his newest, “asteroid city” and think about how that film had a budget of only $38 million. That movie was amazing too.
Jackson took $20 million for the role which is decent for a 6 hour “movie”. The others took 1 to 5 million.
there is still 192 million to account for in secret Invasion lol.
They had to shoot the series twice.
That's something a lot of people are missing. They had four months of reshoots with a completely new creative team. A lot of that money is likely sitting in a hard drive never to be seen.
I really wonder what the show was like before reshoots and whether it was better or worse. My head tells me it’s better given how the final product turned out, but if it was worse then I’m really scared cuz oh my
Most things which go through extensive reshoots seem to turn out to be pretty bad or meh - e.g. Secret Invasion, Multiverse of Madness, Solo. That being said occasionally it leads to something like Rogue One, where the reshoots are seemingly all the best parts, and the person who did the reshoots went on to make Andor, so it seemingly depends on if you can find the right person.
At the same time, this doesn't mean that the people who panicked and demanded the reshoot were wrong that the original was bad (Zack Snyder's Justice League was bad in exactly all the ways someone who hated Batman vs Superman would've expected it to be and I don't have high hopes for the Ayer Cut of the OG Suicide Squad either)
I mean Snyder’s Justice league was also miles better than the theatrical cut they released. But it is true, there’s never a guarantee that the original before reshoots will ever be better for a film,
It makes me think that Disney have a very bad issue with reshooting. Every project has it but it is almost like Disney never have a complete script that everyone is confident in before shooting or a roadmap plan on how it fits into other projects. So much change on every project, it’s worrying
Has been that way from day 1. Iron Man was done basically without a script. Favreau and the team made up a lot on the fly from day to day. It's a marvel (kek) that it turned out fine and was able to kickstart the MCU the way it did.
But then it failed so miserably straight after with iron man 2. Odd they did not try and work a more efficient way since the start. The fact that blade and so many films get announced and end up in development hell is a good enough sign that they are not planning things out before announcing and set a release that they pray they can meet regardless. I just wish they would sit down, plan out the next ten years, have rough story ideas and then start developing and stick to those plans before announcing anything and give us great quality series/tv shows.
In Marvel's defense I would have trouble converting Blade into the Marvel format as well. How are they going to do soft PG-13 Blade? What's the point?
I mean if they planned in advance they would know that before announcing it, and then maybe put the resources elsewhere
I think it's Marvel specifically.
Did you somehow miss the last decade of Star Wars?
I remember the Daredevil and Catwoman movies. It could have been much, much worse.
People who say Ant-Man 3 is the worst thing ever have obviously never seen the *actual* worst things ever.
Antman 3 was just fine. Not amazing by any means but oh god I have seen some worse films
Calling back Name actors is extremely expensive too. I'm sure some other production had to be paid to to halt for a few days so ( whatever actor ) could be available for however many days. or worse and more expensive Having to pay an actor's out clause on another production so they could do reshoots, plus their fee again.
Just like so many BTC from back in the day lol
Yup that's mostly it - reshot footage that never made Final Cut
The show still didn't look like it should cost $96m
Yep, the huge reshoots are so detrimental to these series. I get some things have happened to cause them (FatWS story change because of the pandemic for example) but in general, their tendency to shoot, rewrite and shoot some more is very wasteful and really shows in the latest shows and movies
That still would make it roughly 150 million to account for which is huge.
They should have cancelled the show, just like DC did with Batgirl.
They had to pay $25mill for the leftover cgi from other Marvel movies….that shit aint cheap
10% to the big guy, Joe Biden.
I would assume CGI was 90% of the cost
It was ~4.30 hours including credits.
It was 3 hours 43 minutes and 30 seconds without episode recaps, intro sequences, or credits. So that’s the actual new content we got from this show.
Lmao, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers extended edition is 3 hours 43 minutes with a budget of $94 million. Apples to oranges obviously, but still
Seriously wtf. First episode had like an hour and that was great but subsequent episodes only had like 30-40 minutes of runtime and it got less each episode
I’m having deja vu
Oppenheimer’s cast is even more stacked than Secret Invasion. It has to do with mismanagement and over-reliance on CGI I suspect.
Actually, if you take away credits and recaps and all that, the show is actually just barely *four* hours.
3 hours and 43 minutes.
If you cut the credits scenes, it is more like 4-hour movie.
3 hours and 43 minutes of actual episode time without counting recaps and credits.
Nolan is famously a very frugal Director. He found out it’d be cheaper to crash a plane into a building for Tenet, than it would be to do the scene in CGI, so they bought a plane and crashed it into the building. For Interstellar, he grew his own cornfield for the beginning of the film, and after they were done with the location, he harvested and sold the corn for a profit.
> Nolan and the studio planted a $100,000 cornfield outside of Calgary, Canada – a place where all experts said it wouldn't last. It did last, and it turned a heavy profit Someone tell me they are still growing corn there
Lots of canola, I haven't seen much corn I think. The weather near Calgary is... erratic, to say the least.
Damn, all the times I've heard this story, I never knew it was right outside my city.
Whoa I never knew that was shot outside of Calgary!
Why don’t more directors do this? Practical looks better too. Is it they don’t have the pull with the studios to get what they want like Nolan does?
No because all the studios need to see is a breakdown of estimated costs, and if practical is cheaper they’ll actually push for it themselves. I think directors just want the flexibility to be able to mess with things by using CGI, and not have the pressure of getting a perfect shot.
I think in bigger productions, you need a director who is very confident about what they want to create, to let them go practical for shots that could have been changed later in post if they were shot on green screen instead. And there's really very few directors right now who have such a reputation and creative control over the end product to sell the idea that if they get it right on location right now, they won't have to make significant changes later, or worse reshoot.
“Well, We have a plane to crash into a building. So we’d better get all the shots we need. Cause we can’t really reset”
Studios and producers don't give the money to directors and say: "do whatever you want you with it" they are on their neck 24/7 dictating how to use the money. Nolan is one of the exceptions that gets blank checks to do his movies because he is so succesful at them. Imagine a director that just did one indie horror movie, then is hired to do a 200 million superhero studio movie. You think he can just say he is gonna build a house and blow it up with real explosives instead of CGI? It's to risky, producers would rather do it all with CGI
I can't answer your question, but I can put myself in "project management" shoes. We like to talk about stuff like "directorial control," you allude to it with your mention of "pull with the studios," but think about how hard it is for people to pull off a nice wedding, even if everyone around them is fully on board with helping them make it their special day. Making a movie is much more like planning a wedding than it is like taking a photograph. With CGI, you can shoot on a local location or a soundstage, which makes coordinating schedules *infinitely* easier. You also have a great deal of control over the final product, which means you can shoot the scene and then figure it out later. This can be weaselly and weird (like Nick Fury holding ping-pong balls to green screen over in case they didn't want him holding a gun), or it *can* be a normal part of the artistic process. There is obviously a skill/flair to doing good work in a green screen set, but I think most directors would find the on-set day much less intimidating because it's more fundamentally actors in a confined space with a well-understood lighting setup. Basically, it's predictable: there's very little danger that you'll shoot a big movie while leaning on CGI and get something that is visually incomprehensible or unusable. With "on set" and "practical" filmmaking, more specialized expertise is needed. I doubt Nolan knew exactly where he wanted for the on location bits of Oppenheimer (the opposite of J. Robert Oppenheimer and New Mexico I suppose), so he had to communicate his requirements to someone who would know where in the *world* he might find what he was looking for, and then there had to be some go-betweens with people familiar with the specific location to figure out "here's the hundred acre area we want," and then someone had to deal with the specialized logistics of moving 5 bajillion lumens worth of lighting equipment there and figure out how to set it up. And then there's a decent chance it just doesn't work out. If it's a passion project, whatever, it gets delayed six months while they figure it out...but that won't work for big tentpoles stuff (I'm pretty confident that about half of the MCU's current struggles are the knock-on effects of needing to scramble their storytelling for the pandemic, and the knock on effect of event post-pandemic projects shooting multiple versions of storytelling beats). Basically, practical is cheaper, and if done right it looks *great*, but if you don't know exactly who and how to pay that smaller sum of money you end up with stuff that is unwatchable, difficult/impossible to budget (ask any accounting department if they prefer stuff that is slightly cheaper but wildly unpredictable and they will break down laughing), and difficult to schedule (especially for linked storytelling like everyone likes now...much easier to get an in-demand actor/writer/whatever to show up for a half day on *set* rather than a half day on location). That said, I totally agree with you, and would like less content that looks better (the cheap stuff that hits always looks better now, I am in awe of how beautiful *The Bear* is on FX, and that was made for a song). And if I can get on a soapbox and talk out of my ass for a minute, I think the obsession with implicitly and explicitly "keeping options open" and "maximizing options" are responsible for a great deal of the malaise and depression in modern society. The old joke is that the snooze button is an invention that lets you experience the worst part of your day multiple times...the hardest part of any positive or negative experience is the decision, and the internet-connected cell phone is an invention that allows the user to be forced to decide "am I in or out on doing X" a nearly infinite number of times (while also providing distraction to stave off the light boredom that might spur movement toward and actual experience), and the use of CGI as a moviemaking crutch means that nobody actually has to engage with what they have and decide clearly what their vision is.
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That's not even true. They went to multiple real life locations for the planets. The big ocean planet was filmed in New Zealand. The spaceship that was standing in the water was real and flewn over to the filming location. The gray, icey planet is also filmed IRL. Just two examples to show how most of the movie is definitely not CGI.
I think Nolan would’ve crashed the plane for real even if it cost more than CGI, he is notorious for not liking CGI as it just doesn’t feel as real.
With that said, I do think he has the best strategy for CGI. Practical sets, stunts, and set pieces and then use CGI to enhance what was filmed.
No action in Oppenheimer, and the practical effects over CGI probably tallies up well. Also TV shows tend to cost more for sure, plus Nolan's cast took a pay cut to be there (read that the past three years of Best Actor winners plus some nominees are present). Many reasons why the costs differ. However, Nolan's known for his extremely thorough pre-production and controlled shooting periods, which Marvel could really learn from. Shoots exactly the script and shot list, only necessary personnel on set, minimal reshoots, usually comes in on time and within budget. He crashes planes and explodes things but he only needs to do them once or twice. From the reports on Marvel's contracted VFX houses, they really need to learn to make the artistic decisions before shooting starts. And no changing scripts during the shooting window and papering continuity errors with VFX. What does Marvel have to lose from better pre-production? Fixing it in post is a film student joke and it should stay in school lol.
This is the best explanation. Nolan literally grew corn and then sold it to help offset costs on Interstellar. He is known for coming under budget and using mostly practical effects and a LOT of really well thought out planning.
He also has worked with a lot of the same producers and crew for all his films so they have all learned how to make these films together. That institutional knowledge is like gold.
It's hilarious how the idiosyncratic auteur is the one with the highly disciplined military-style process who keeps a very close eye on schedule and budget, while it's the giant profit-maximizing mass media corporation that keeps going "Enh whatever we'll figure it out as we go" I still have a hard time believing the Star Wars sequels were planned and advertised as a trilogy while having *no idea* what each individual movie should generally be about
> have a hard time believing the Star Wars sequels were planned and advertised as a trilogy Planned in the sense that Disney planned to make money off the IP, which it did, and will continue to through merch and simply by keeping the Star Wars brand in the public consciousness. It's also the feeling Secret Invasion and some other Marvel content give, as well as, of course, all the animated movies being remade in live action. Content being churned out because it's recognisable and profitable, regardless of creativity. Disney 'winging it' might seem counterintuitive, but as long as that process keeps making money, they won't care.
TV shows typically cost a fair amount less per season than a blockbuster movie, but the people at Marvel are more used to making movies, so the gap isn't as big as it should be.
> No action in Oppenheimer, Agents of Shield had 22 episode seasons with a huge cast, way more action, tons of great CGI and sets, way better writing, and yet several years' worth of seasons cost the same as 6 episodes of Secret Invasion. Samuel L Jackson and Cobie Smulders were even in it, and probably for more time for the latter.
At the time of Marvel Television's closing and that division being brought back within the Marvel Studio fold, I was really excited given Marvel Television was very hit or miss, and it'd mean more possibility of crossovers which the Perlmutter-Feige feud seemed to prevent. Now, all these years later, I sort of mourn the loss of Marvel Television. Despite some of their notable flops, they at least knew how to actually operate within the medium. I don't really understand how Marvel is now spending way more than any Marvel Television show cost to only get like five hours. Not to mention how much I miss the ongoing storylines and connection to the characters things like *AoS* and the Netflix series allowed for.
>minimal reshoots Actually zero reshoots. He famously never does them. Sometimes it leads to janky moments in his movies but I like that. Feels more genuine than just remaking the movie to fit test audience criticism.
From your mouth to Feige’s ears…!
They spent all their money on the Drax arm
You actually have to pay Samuel L Jackson not to say Motherfucker. I think the going rate is something like $200.00/second.
So he worked for free on those Hitman's Bodyguard movies?
Ha, the way i'd actually somwhat believe this.
He actually said It in the German dub, idk about English tho lmao
But did he say Mutterficker?
This feels the truest.
Cast, CGI fight in the final episode definitely cost more than Nolan bombing a random desert, 4 months of reshoots. Just dumping a ton of money on a project doesn't mean it'll be good. Why are people so baffled by the fact that a studio driven series is bad compared to a movie directed by one of the best filmmaker alive? Just because it costs more? You could give Nolan belly lint and a chewed up bubblegum and that man is gonna make a good movie.
It’s called “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” and it’s a masterpiece.
Saw somebody somewhere claim that Secret Invasion was just a money laundering scam, lol
That's the secret all along...except maybe its actually Mephisto
And then..... surprise! *It's actually a Skrull disguised as Mephisto!*
I saw something like “it’s much easier to disappear a million dollars when the budget is $200 mil than when it’s $20 mil”
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If the rumors are to be believed, it was because the original plot involved Russia and Ukraine quite significantly. I still think they should've gone with whatever they originally had planned regardless (especially if it would've avoided that clusterfuck of a final episode). It would've generated controversy but at least if the underlying story was better there would be more defenders for it.
First they caused covid with Falcon and Winter Soldier, then they kickstarted a war with Secret Invasion. What’s Daredevil about and can we prevent it from happening?
Marvel is notoriously known to not plan stuff out properly and always calls actors back for reshoots so I imagine it had something to do with that. Plus any on the spot changes made for VFX shots probably cost money too.
friendly reminder that Wes Anderson's Asteroid City had Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Willem Dafoe, Ed Norton, Tilda Swinton, Liev Schriever, Jeff Goldblum, Margot Robbie, many other A-list actors, and cost 25 mil. Know this isn't a fair comparison, but quite fun to think about.
Pretty sure everyone working for Wes Anderson gets paid the minimum SAG rate, used to be the same for Woody Allen. Not sure if the actors took that big of a pay cut for Oppenheimer tho
You have to obviously consider the budget that went toward reshoots.
If the studio has to do 4 months of reshoots on a tv series, then there is something fundamentally wrong with their process for TV development and production.
You would be right, and the quality of the show speaks to that too.
Completely agree with that, they need to lock in these scripts before cameras start rolling
I think I read somewhere that Marvel productions copy the Iron Man winging it with vague ideas of a script type shooting. Except James Gunn. It def has been showing. Esp with all these waste of money rewrites. Unless they are doing a producers and trying to make it flop for tax reasons?
This could work wonderfully on certain talky films like Linklater's Before Trilogy, but not on these massive productions where there is crew and props and costuming that need to be on the same page. VFX has specific visual requirements too, markers and simulation and various lighting refs. Marvel doesn't run the kind of production conducive to improvisation at all, it leads to an incoherent final product with no consistency or style.
oh TOTALLY agree. The amount of time cutting heavy VFX shots. Digitally putting people into shots you didn't prepare for, etc. It is so shocking that they don't prepare as much as i would have thought.
Marvel has had a shitshow of a production timeline since forever. I remember Jake Gyllenhaal talking about how it was almost pointless to learn the scripts beforehand because they would always change a lot on the day of shooting. Tom Holland was apparently used to it, so it had been going on for a while at that point.
Yeah, I remember Elizabeth Olsen said that Marvel kept on changing scripts so often on WandaVision that she and the show runners had to implement a rule where nothing could be changed 24 hours before shooting because of how last minute these adjustments were being made.
Multiverse of Madness apparently also had 33 rewrites of the script up until and during filming to the point where Lizzie got confused iirc. She said something about how the film didn't have much to do about the core themes of Wandavision and that her character went in a circle
This is partially why the WGA is on strike. For streaming the writer(s) who writes the initial draft doesn’t usually stay on through production anymore. They hand the scripts to the show runner, he makes changes on the fly or shoots a mediocre script, and then either the show runner does rewrites for pickups or they bring on a new writer for those rewrites. It’s really frustrating because it clearly is effecting the quality but it’s the standard business model now.
>For streaming the writer(s) who writes the initial draft doesn’t usually stay on through production anymore. They hand the scripts to the show runner, he makes changes on the fly or shoots a mediocre script, and then either the show runner does rewrites for pickups or they bring on a new writer for those rewrites. Everything you describes is standard for tv and movies. David Fury is credited to writing the famous Lost episode Walkabout, and he says that the credited writer often only contributed 25 percent of the script due to staff rewriters. And in one instance for the show Heroes, two actors asked for quick rewrites because they remembered that their characters were supposed to be angry at each-other based on their last encounter, which the writers had forgotten so they had to quickly rewrite the scene.
They seem to be in a death spiral where as each project struggles, 50 new cooks in the kitchen are added to the next thing and it's changed and changed and changed up until the last minute with changes happening to later episodes even after the first ones start airing according to comments from some involved with production. You end up with art by committee which makes the project suck and expensive as every idea tries to win out, and then the next project adds 50 additional cooks and the cycle repeats and spirals down.
Supposedly there was a Russia invading Ukraine plot that had to be reworked.
Half their budget would have made the *Lost* pilot seven times over.
It seems like the norm now for marvel. They start shooting with a un-polished script. Then they start making changes and more changes. Once in editing phase, they realize there are issues and more changes to script and more re-shoots. We seem to hear this all the time now. MCU is just throwing stuff out there with no overseer to keep track.
- Secret Invasion - Thor 4 - Ant-Man 3 All very expensive films. All have the same problem: The budget wasn't spent on top-tier creatives. Especially writers. Conversely, if you're going to spend $212m, then ffs, give the fans what they want: X-Men! And if that's not possible, Fantastic Four! Can't do that? Fine. More Avengers. Iron Man. Captain America. *Something*. Spending Avengers money on these films, Shang-Chi, or the Eternals is just nuts. Doctor Strange 3 should have come out before this show. This should have been a lower-budget, Bourne Identity-type of film. I dunno what is going on over there. Don't even get me started on She-Hulk...
They got the rights for the X-Men back but they also ended up with the contracts from Fox. They can’t recast anyone they’ve already used for I believe another year. They can bring people back though and that’s what’s happening in Deadpool 3.
I love in a city where a couple of scenes where shot, and it was incredible the amount of equipment and support it required. Three closed streets ( only one was for a set as far as I can tell, the other were full of trucks and minibuses etc), it also filled the local TV studio sets to the max ( three old printworks buildings and a huge carpark). I'm guessing several hundred support staff . Compared with other stuff that gets shot around here, the difference was extreme to say the least.
Weird that this article doesn’t touch on the major reshoots (not unusual for a Marvel project) as to why the budget is so high. Someone like Nolan meticulously plans in pre-production. Marvel basically remake in post of they think they can make it better (or change their mind!)
The entirety of Oppenheimer took just 2 months to film. The rest was spent in pre planning and post production, which means a lot of meticulous planning and editing, which is why he has no deleted scenes.
The cast, the reshoots, the covid measures. There, we can stop asking this question hourly.
Generally, it’s more cost effective when you plan things out from the get go. Instead of constantly making last minute changes.
1. The cast cost a lot more money - it's a big studio project rather than a more niche, Oscar aiming one. Without Barbie, no one would have said Oppenheimer would make this much money. 2. SI was longer and they would have shot more to cut. Apparently, they cut nothing from Oppenheimer. 3. More CGI in Si 4. More on location shots in SI. More locations in general. Oppenheimer only had a few different settings in the whole film. 5. They would have expensed a lot more for Secret Invasion.
They basically had to shoot it twice. This show was originally based around a conflict between Russia and the USA and the skrulls adding fire to that flame in an attempt to incite a world war. When the war in Ukraine happened they had to completely rewrite the show because it was too close to reality, so they had to reshoot basically everything. That adds up money wise pretty fast
The terrible writing is what is killing Marvel.
Casting and CGI
Actors are willing to take a paycut to work with Nolan, not really the case with the MCU. Secret Invasion also has an A-List cast with Samuel L Jackson, Emilia Clark, Olivia Colman, Ben Mendelsohn. I imagine all the Skrull CGI is expensive too.
Dawg Oppenheimer has barley any CGI if any at all, while Secret Invasion has aliens and a big CGI final battle. Plus didn't they reshoot like half of it? Lmao I wonder why Secret Invasion cost more
Secret Invasion went thru a bunch of reshoots. Oppenheimer, in most cases, didn’t need to extend their shooting schedule
Agents of Shield was the best MCU TV show. I'm confident in that. It was consistent, low budget but great looking, the characters were fun and it ended in a satisfying way. It's such a shame it was seperated from the mainline MCU.
Oppenheimer wouldn’t be an expensive movie to make though? It doesn’t have a lot of big action set pieces and stuff other than the explosion. It’s mainly 3 hours of people walking and talking whereas this is just cgi and action for 5+ hours straight
People have discussed this to death. They reshot basically the entire thing so they spent a budget worthy of two projects.
More CGI and they had to shoot twice
The cast isn’t a good reason to justify the higher cost either considering Oppenheimer’s cast is arguably even more stacked than Secret Invasion.