Catch more from Web Of Stories on YouTube–and no, it’s not a Spider-Man pun
Why am I starting with this video? This was the so-called “Marvel Method”, though I don’t know how many other Marvel writers worked this way. It’s not a method I could go along with, but it seemed to work for Stan Lee at least. His artists I’ve only seen Jack Kirby talk about, and it was describing it alongside Stan. It does call for a lot of trust between your writer and your artist, or at least the penciler. Then you have a separate inker you have to hope he or she goes along with it. This is an odd way to make a comic. That’s with two or three people.
A movie requires many, many more than three people.
Tell that to Kevin Feige. He’s calling what his people have done in recent Marvel Studios productions as the “Marvel Method”, also referred to in the movie business as “plussing”. The short version from Google AI is “In essence, the Kevin Feige Marvel Method is a dynamic and collaborative storytelling technique that uses ongoing script refinement during production to create the best possible film, and it remains a core component of Marvel’s creative process”. This is no way to run a railroad.
Now comes Avengers: Doomsday, made by the Russo Brothers because it was a requirement to get Robert Downey Jr. to return to the MCU as a completely different character instead of the one we want him to play. According to many of the people spoken to, like the actors, there is no set script yet. The movie is already filming scenes…and there’s no script, or at least not one the actors have seen. Many times the actors aren’t even speaking to the other actors in a scene even if the bit isn’t involving some sci-fi communication method. This is no way to run a railroad, and we can already see the train wreck coming.
Again from Google AI (admittedly a source as questionable as Wikipedia), here’s a longer explanation of “plussing”:
Iterative Script Development:
The process starts with a complete script, but daily refinements are made during production to incorporate new ideas and improve the story.Collaborative Input:
Feige values the creative insights of actors, who often have fresh ideas about their characters and storylines, and the studio adapts these suggestions into the script.Continuous Improvement:
The goal of this “plussing” is to continually improve and enhance the film’s narrative, a practice Feige defends as essential to Marvel’s success.
I’m sure the actors love this. It lets them feel like they aren’t just performing the story but are actually part of the storytelling process, thus fueling their ego. It’s possible producers, some of whom love to input stupid things to also feel like they played a role in it (a bad one, usually), love this as well. Instead it makes me think of….
Wow, that cast list is almost as long as the Avengers: Doomsday list. That just makes it worse.
This sounds more like a tabletop role-playing game than making an actual script. Except in a good RPG session you have balances of stats, dice rolls that determine if your character was successful at casting magic missile or blew themselves up, You have something to keep the egos in check. “Oh, my character would totally say this much cooler line than what’s in the script. And she’d just blow up all the invading ships”. “With what, her soft pretzels?” “Exactly, that’s why she’s a cart vendor.” While being a girlboss swap of Condiment King sounds cool to the actor playing the vendor, it’s going to sound stupid to everyone else. It’s also doesn’t have half a city block participating. One of those live-action role play gatherings, maybe, but even that has rules that Marvel Studios doesn’t.
It also says to the screenwriters “you suck at your job and I know better than you what my character would do” even that’s a bold-faced lie and the actor/actress just wants to do something cool or “meaningful” and I am abusing the heck out of quotation marks tonight. I’m not against some input from the performers as one would hope they know their version of the characters, but I hope there’s a system to veto self-serving stupid ideas that might actually hurt the overall story or the chance for one of the other actors to give their characters a moment in the spotlight, especially with a quarter of Hollywood’s actors being in this thing. In Lee’s method there’s just him and the artist. In Feige’s you have enough people to start a football league all putting in notes. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the lighting guy came up with something.
Meanwhile we’re hearing actors say they don’t even know if the script is done. In which case it’s not plussing as Google AI just interpreted it. Remember? “The process starts with a complete script…”, but actors are saying if there is one they haven’t gotten it. They’re also saying that some of them didn’t even shoot a scene with other actors even if they’re supposed to be in the same room with them. That’s really, really stupid, made worse that they don’t even know what characters they’re talking to. Take Vision for example, as Paul Bettany is one of the actors mentioning this. In fact, when I went to get the actor’s name right, Google also told me “(a)lthough Paul Bettany has played Vision in previous MCU productions and is expected to return for the Disney+ series VisionQuest, his involvement in the upcoming Avengers movie is unknown due to major creative changes”. That was back when the next two-part movie was focusing on Kang before Jonathan Majors got in trouble and the last Ant-Man movie made him so pathetic nobody would buy him as a villain anyway they decided he wasn’t Thanos level. The guy in the comics whose life mission is to slowly go back in time and conquer every era. We swapped time travel for the multiverse because anything less than ALL the stakes isn’t enough, but I’m off track.
The way Vision would talk to Wanda, his former love interest (or rather the love interest of the android his programming comes from–long story, but that also comes into the performance), is going to be different from how he’d talk to She-Hulk, a character he’s never met, or Nick Fury, who he probably has some issues with. So which character is Vision Junior talking to? Even he doesn’t know. Another actress theorized—and your actors shouldn’t be having to theorize why you’re doing stupid things–that Feige and the Russos are trying to limit leaks. I’ve seen this before, from false names for a movie, to a twist not being revealed to the actors until the cameras rolled. Henry Blake’s plane crashing on M*A*S*H* or Darth Vader proclaiming he was Luke’s father, which for most actors wasn’t revealed until they saw the final product, are two examples of it working but there’s was proper set-up that didn’t hamstring the actors. Blake’s death was to invoke a certain response from the actors, while Mark Hamill heard the line from David Prowse that Ben killed Anakin (which also was true in the prequels from a certain point of view), still giving the proper response that was needed when Jones in the ADR booth was given Anakin’s real fate to perform.
The aforementioned actress hasn’t seen the final script, either, while other rumors suggest there isn’t one to see. Again, it’s not plussing if you don’t have a script to start with. This is a great way to ensure the performers are going to have performances so bland and nonsensical the critics are going to tear it apart. “Wouldn’t Vision be angrier with this character than the actor’s playing?” Then the actor gets blamed by the general audience who probably isn’t following the backstage nonsense going on and put the blame on the directors and producers for making sure the actor can’t give a proper performance.
Meanwhile, and here’s where yesterday’s rant comes into play, they’re already filming action scenes. Even with practical effects that takes money, and when you throw in the CG, which wouldn’t be the first time special effects laden scenes were sent to the cutting room and replaced at the 11th hour, that costs more money and time if you want to look halfway decent, which Marvel Studios may not care about. This tells me they care more about the action and moments than a full story…because they don’t have a full story and even when they do there’s a good chance half of it will be changed. Actor suggestions are better served at the script reading, not in the middle of filming, and putting that stuff together to be wasted effort just adds to how inefficient Feige’s method really is. That’s not Stan Lee’s Marvel Method. The goal there was for Stan to be la…I mean let the artists be part of what he was doing.
This is all just a total mess. It’s like Feige and the Russos are purposefully trying to fail at this movie, despite how important it is. With the possibility of a reboot, with Doomsday and Secret Wars taking the wrong cue from the “distinguished competition” (that’s how you do an obscure reference for fans, Marvel) and the Crisis level reboots that Marvel’s comics never did until the events that eventually led to the Krakoa era of the X-Men, maybe they don’t care anymore. Beyond the fact that the reboot won’t fix anything, it seems like they want to get rid of all evidence of what the pre-Disney MCU was when there was a committee that actually knew what they were doing and keeping the comics the source material instead of whatever wacky idea the director or showrunner wanted to do. Given the comic hate I can believe it, since the SEECA crowd wants to remake the MCU in their image. James Gunn, on the other hand, insists he won’t start production until a full script is ready for table reading and setting up sets, costumes, and performers. That’s how smart people make movies, and for the many, many, many, many issues I have with Gunn running the DC Movieverse, I have to at least give him credit for that. It might not be any good and is more interested in his prefered method and employing his family while keeping his productions canon, but he knows the script should be ready before starting anything so you know what to start and limit reshoots to necessity.
Stan Lee’s Marvel Method had the goal of making a better comic story and you can decide how well it worked. Kevin Feige’s Marvel Method is about boosting egos and is a disaster in the making. I don’t see this movie doing well, and Marvel Studios seriously needs it to.
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