"Deadpool and Wolverine": The shift from reality to fiction leads to the deterioration of storytelling ability
2024-08-26
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Author: Liu Jian, member of the Chinese Writers Association and director of the Tianjin Science Writers Association
Recently, the only movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) series that was scheduled to be released this year, "Deadpool and Wolverine", arrived as scheduled. However, this new film, which once boasted "I am the savior of Marvel", except for making some loyal fans of Marvel movies ecstatic, could not fundamentally reverse the increasingly collapsing reputation and weakening box office appeal of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since "Avengers 4: Endgame" in 2019. The fundamental reason for this phenomenon is the weakening of the storytelling ability of the American film industry caused by Hollywood's "de-materialization" for many years.
Deadpool and Wolverine poster
Let's start with the movie itself. In essence, Deadpool and Wolverine is the sequel to the comic book adaptations Deadpool and Deadpool 2 released by 20th Century Fox (hereinafter referred to as "Fox") in 2016 and 2018. Therefore, for Marvel Studios, which is now affiliated with Disney, Deadpool and Wolverine is more like a stepchild who has just completed the adoption procedures and is trying to integrate into the "new home" of MCU. What's more, the Deadpool series has been positioned as R-rated films from beginning to end. In the American film rating system, this means that movies are aimed at niche markets. Judging from the presentation effect of Deadpool and Wolverine, it does meet this positioning.
First of all, this movie is highly fan-oriented. To really understand the plot, you must not only know the first two movies in the series, but also be familiar with the plots and characters of comic-adapted movies such as the "X-Men" series and "Fantastic Four" launched by Fox, and understand the relevant stories and settings of the multiverse laid out by many film and television works of MCU in recent years, and even have some knowledge of Marvel's original comics... In short, it is extremely unfriendly to ordinary audiences. If you don't do your homework in advance, it is easy to be confused. Secondly, the film not only contains a lot of tributes to classic movies such as "Mad Max", but also introduces a lot of classic characters in previous superhero movies, playing the sentimental card, but the whole story design is highly stylized, which can easily make the audience fall into aesthetic fatigue. Thirdly, although the whole film uses the multiple action scenes between the two superheroes Deadpool and Wolverine as the main selling point, and based on this, the story framework of the whole movie is unfolded. However, such a plot setting is actually mainly based on the personal friendship between the two leading actors Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in real life. Because, even in Fox's original comic book adaptation movies, there is no intersection between these two characters. Although after being integrated into the MCU, the "multiverse", a "big basket" that can hold everything, can be used to forcibly round up the story, it still seems too deliberate. And at the end of the film, "Deadpool and Wolverine" made another mistake that has been criticized by MCU movies in recent years, that is, the villain's ability was set too strong in the early stage of the film, and in the end, in order to make the superhero side reverse and win, the villain was forcibly reduced in intelligence. In general, if the performance of the MCU after "Endgame" is considered to be a sharp decline, "Deadpool and Wolverine" can only stop the decline at most. As for whether it can become the starting point of a rebound, it remains to be seen.
So why has the MCU, the once glorious "white tower" of the American film industry, now fallen to the embarrassing situation of having to rely on an R-rated film to act as the "Knight in Silver Armor"? To get back to this question, we must go back to 2019 when the MCU was at its peak. That year, Marvel Studios, which had been incorporated into Disney, launched "Avengers 4: Endgame", which once topped the box office in film history with a global box office of 2.798 billion US dollars. What is even more enviable to peers is that since the launch of the superhero movie "Iron Man" in 2008, in the following ten years, almost all superhero series films belonging to the MCU have achieved box office profits. This is a miracle in the history of the American film industry. This also makes the MCU a phenomenal existence not only in the United States, but also in the field of global commercial films, and it is eagerly studied and imitated by the film industry of various countries.
In the same year, Disney acquired Fox, another Hollywood film giant, for a huge sum of $71.3 billion. The most direct benefit of this acquisition for Marvel Studios is that it has regained the film and television adaptation rights of Fox's "X-Men" and "Fantastic Four" and other classic characters that originally belonged to Marvel Comics, and also accepted the intellectual property rights of the comic-adapted film series that Fox has been operating for many years. However, judging from the subsequent development, the addition of Fox did not bring more positive benefits to the MCU except for occasionally whetting the appetite of hardcore fans. On the contrary, after "Avengers 4: Endgame", the MCU also fell rapidly into a downward channel. At the same time, various news about the personnel struggles of Disney's senior management and the differences in the creative route within Marvel Studios have become so rampant that in the eyes of bystanders, the behind-the-scenes stories of the MCU are even more exciting than the movies themselves.
In fact, as long as you remove the information fog composed of true and false news, you can see that a pair of big hands called "financial capital" are manipulating everything - it has made the MCU glorious, but also knocked it off the altar. Here we need to popularize a common sense of the film industry, that is, although box office revenue is the basic means of profit for movies, it is not the only means. In 2019, the global box office was about 42.5 billion US dollars, while the total output value of the global film industry exceeded one trillion US dollars, a difference of two orders of magnitude. Financial capital plays the role of amplifier in the middle. In Hollywood, Disney is the most proficient in this.
When it comes to Disney, many people will think of classic animated characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, the Three Little Pigs, and Snow White. In fact, when Disney was first founded, it was called "Disney Brothers". In addition to the familiar animation master Walt Disney, the person who really controls the direction of the company's development is Walt's brother, Roy Disney, who has many years of experience working on Wall Street. Looking at Disney's century-long development history, the key to its development from an obscure animation studio to a top Hollywood film company and its continued prosperity is to grasp the "superpower" of investment - almost every time the American film industry ushered in a major reshuffle, Disney made investment decisions that were later proven to be correct.
From the end of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century, the American film industry ushered in a digital revolution. In this process, Disney made two strategic acquisitions - on the one hand, it acquired Pixar Studios, which was leading the computer animation trend at the time, and on the other hand, it acquired Marvel Pictures, which had just emerged. Later facts proved that these two acquisitions helped Disney consolidate its leading position in the American film industry. The addition of Pixar and Marvel Pictures did not bring Disney advantages in technology or subject matter, but preserved Disney's ability to tell stories in the capital market - these two companies can not only make box office money and create stable cash flow through their own films, but also develop various derivatives through the IP formed by the movies, which can create almost unlimited profit imagination space.
Before the 1990s, Hollywood film investment was mainly based on the production company's own capital investment, supplemented by listing financing. As the overall US economy decoupled from the real economy and moved towards the virtual economy, more and more Wall Street investments entered the film industry. Film investment gradually shifted from simply raising funds for filming to financial operations, and film projects were packaged as financial products and sold in the financial market. For investment bankers, as long as financial products are sold, it is a sure win, because the risk of the movie box office has been paid by ordinary investors in the financial market. In this wave of operations, MCU movies, which are mainly selling "science fiction visual effects blockbusters", have really reaped the dividends of the globalization of the film market. The "cash power" obtained from the capital market has given Marvel Pictures the space to fully integrate high-quality film production resources and find the "optimal solution" for film presentation. Therefore, it can be said that there is a mutually beneficial relationship between financial capital and MCU.
However, as the global economy shifts from an expansionary cycle to a contractionary cycle, the trend of deglobalization gradually takes shape. Coupled with the impact of the epidemic, the liquidity of the financial market is gradually drying up, and the story of MCU has gradually lost its audience in the financial market. The acquisition of Fox can be said to be another century-long gamble of Disney, hoping to borrow the many classic IPs accumulated by Fox over the past century to further increase its bargaining power in the capital market and regain the favor of the capital market. Obviously, Disney miscalculated this time. Against the backdrop of exhausted liquidity, investors will instinctively hold their wallets tight. Just telling a story of a brilliant "future" cannot impress the financial market. Disney needs to come up with real results. Therefore, around how to increase the revenue of film and television works-whether it is a large-volume sales model or a return to the original intention and a deep embrace of the basic disk of "comic fans", it has become the focus of the internal creative route differences of Marvel Pictures, which has spread to the Disney management and triggered a personnel earthquake at the top. The emergence of "Deadpool and Wolverine" means that turning to the US domestic market and embracing the basic disk of "comic fans" has become the general direction of the future of MCU. Shortly after the film was released, at the 2024 San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel Studios announced that the Russo brothers, directors of "Avengers 4: End Game", would return to direct the fifth and sixth "Avengers". At the same time, Robert Downey Jr., who played Iron Man, would also return to play the villain Doctor Doom, which greatly strengthened this direction.
Of course, after we have sorted out the economic logic behind the rise and fall of the MCU, it is not difficult to find that this conservative path of turning inward cannot allow the MCU to regain its former glory. After all, the liquidity-depleted US capital market is no longer able to provide sufficient capital for the MCU, and the turbulent world political and economic environment can no longer provide the MCU with space to rebuild its influence in the global film market and its box office dominance. However, everything has two sides, and the retreat of the MCU also means leaving a huge market space. This is undoubtedly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the rising Chinese film industry. (Liu Jian)
This article is an original article from the channel. Please indicate the source of the article when reprinting: Guangming Online - Literary and Art Review Channel
Source: Guangming Online - Literary Review Channel
