Doctor Strange and the Monoculture of Madness
The universe is so much smaller than we realized.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness made bank over the weekend, and the takes are bad:
It’s increasingly clear that movies have been divided into two camps: spectacle-driven fare based on existing intellectual property that warrants a trip to the multiplex and quote-unquote serious pictures that most folks wait a few months to watch at home. That this has created an endless loop in which smaller films are deprioritized because they make less money and make less money precisely because they’re deprioritized is equally clear. More money flowing into theaters is obviously a good thing for those of us who care about (read: are obsessed with) the theatrical experience — and yet. Conventional wisdom suggests that cinema is even more dead than usual, and the pandemic’s deleterious effects on the box office over the last two years lend credence to the idea that the status quo has been irrevocably altered. The Cinerama Dome still hasn’t been rescued, for crying out loud, and if that bastion of moviegoing can’t survive then what are we even doing here?
The problem with that tweet in particular and the Marvel effect in general isn’t that Doctor Strange is bad (it’s fine, like most of them) or that we shouldn’t be excited about what looks to be a very big summer at the box office; it’s not even the sneering condescension toward a genuinely original film that’s likely to become A24’s most successful release in North America. It’s that far too many eggs have been placed in one basket and we’re even in the position of being relieved when yet another Disney-owned tentpole is insanely profitable. Have things really gotten so bad that we’re meant to sigh with relief when an Avenger swoops in to save the box office rather than wonder how many of these 70 screenings at a single AMC could have been devoted to Everything Everywhere All at Once or Happening?
They obviously have, and yet it still isn’t enough. Elizabeth Olsen gets “feisty” when Marvel movies aren’t fawned over, commentators and late-night hosts alike were in their feelings when the latest Spider-Man failed to score a Best Picture nomination, and there’s a general sense among devotees that this franchise, which has earned $26 billion and counting, doesn’t get the respect it apparently deserves. For these fans, it isn’t enough for Marvel movies to be massively successful — they have to be the only successful movies. The proper response to any and all complaints about Thor: Love and Thunder and its ilk not dominating the pop-culture landscape even more than they already do is probably just to quite Don Draper — “That’s what the money is for!” — and be done with it, but sometimes you have the willpower to turn the other cheek and sometimes you don’t. (Doing so would certainly be easier if Guardians of the Galaxy hadn’t annexed Tower of Terror, but I digress.)
The last few years have seen no shortage of dudes on the internet defending billionaires and faceless corporations from valid criticism while casting aspersions at movie grandpa Martin Scorsese for daring to say that Marvel movies aren’t on the same level as L’Avventura. I wish I could say the evidence points to things getting worse before they get better, but at this point there’s little reason to believe they’ll improve at all. It would take more than a Heaven’s Gate–style disaster to effect a change to Marvel’s assembly-line approach, which is no coincidence: the death of that style of filmmaking was a necessary condition for this ever-expanding universe to exist in the first place.
As someone who's completely lost interest in Marvel movies, I'd say that I've really made peace with the fact that I'm just not the target audience for many if not most of today's big new movies.
Yes, wide releases have absolutely become a franchise-driven monoculture, but I'd say that today's streaming-dominated film landscape has one massive silver lining: much greater access to international/older films than ever before. I guess what I'm saying is that at least today's consumer has a lot of options.