0:01

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0:44

She's

0:59

not just a TV person, she also loves herself some

1:01

movies. She also loves Marvel movies in particular.

1:04

Which is my long wind up to say Joanna Robinson has

1:06

co-written a new book. It's called MCU,

1:09

the reign of Marvel Studios. Welcome back, Joanna.

1:11

Oh my gosh, thanks for having me. I love talking to you

1:13

about dragons and superheroes.

1:16

And sort of drag you down into the genre dirt

1:19

with me, Peter.

1:19

I don't like the implication that I'm above

1:22

the genre dirt. I love genre stuff. But

1:24

I am often confused by it. Which

1:26

is why in particular I wanted to talk to you about

1:28

Marvel. Because we talk

1:30

a lot about the business of Marvel and the business

1:32

of Disney. And occasionally

1:34

I think I tend to sort of forget why people

1:37

like the stuff. And I wanted to talk to

1:39

you about that. But tell me what the book is supposed

1:41

to be. Is it for hardcore

1:43

Marvel fans? Or people who don't spend a lot

1:45

of time thinking about Marvel? Is it for business-y

1:47

people?

1:48

This is the question I was asking the entire time we

1:50

were writing the book. Perfect. I was

1:53

having this sort of identity crisis. I was like, who is this book

1:55

for? Is constantly what I was asking my co-authors. And

1:57

eventually what we decided, maybe for our own piece of

1:59

the puzzle.

1:59

of mine was that it's for everyone. I

2:02

know that sounds like a really slick

2:04

sales tactic, but I really do think so. There's

2:06

definitely juicy tidbits in here for people

2:09

who think they already know everything about Marvel.

2:11

I have heard that from a number of people who thought

2:14

they knew everything

2:14

about Marvel on their own. There was so much in here I didn't

2:16

know. So you love to hear that when you're an author.

2:18

So

2:18

check on that department. If

2:21

you are a Marvel skeptic, if

2:23

you think Marvel is ruining Hollywood,

2:26

or if you think Marvel is having

2:29

a big stumble in 2023 and you're curious

2:31

as to why, I think there's a lot of stuff in

2:33

there for how did they take over

2:36

this industry? A film industry book.

2:38

There's definitely business for the business

2:40

mind. There's definitely a business book in there because

2:42

we've got chapters on their

2:44

collaboration with China and how that impacts the

2:46

global box office. Or we've got

2:48

the

2:50

long-running battle between New

2:52

York Marvel Entertainment and West Coast

2:54

Marvel Studios. And then for people

2:56

who don't know anything at all, it really is like a soup to nuts

2:59

sort of examination of the whole phenomena.

3:01

So I really do like to think there's something

3:03

for everyone. And what helps me

3:06

sell that at the end of the day is

3:09

the fact that I wrote this with two other

3:11

people, Dave Gonzalez, Gavin Edwards. Gavin

3:13

is a very seasoned writer.

3:16

And when we put all the pieces together, I

3:18

did all the interviews. Dave did a lot of the research.

3:20

We all wrote it together. But Gavin gave it this really

3:23

lively page-turnery, that

3:27

I've heard from a ton of people. They just zipped through

3:29

the book, that it was fun for them to read. Which again,

3:31

you love to hear it as an author. Many people are

3:33

saying, Peter, that this book is quite fun. Many

3:36

people are saying. And it's for everyone. So

3:38

what more could you want in a book? All right, we'll

3:40

just end the podcast there. Go buy the book. Done. Don't

3:43

you want to happy? We are talking roughly though, just to

3:45

put this in context, this is sort of the era

3:48

in movie making that kicks off with Iron

3:51

Man, which was made before Marvel was

3:53

acquired by Disney. And then obviously Disney

3:55

acquires Marvel. And then

3:58

changes culture.

3:59

changes the movie business remind

4:02

us these people did not make

4:04

the first superhero movies they didn't make the first modern

4:07

superhero movies why why why

4:10

is Marvel such a big

4:12

deal in modern movie making

4:15

there's a couple elements at play here Iron Man 2008

4:19

Iron Man is not even the

4:20

first Marvel superhero movie

4:23

right there's you have great

4:25

films like Blade that's a Marvel

4:27

movie that Marvel Studios didn't exist

4:30

to make you've got less well-received

4:32

movies like Ben Affleck's Daredevil

4:34

or the spin-off Electra you know you've got the

4:37

X-Men at Fox you've got Spider-Man at Sony

4:39

all of that predates Marvel Studios existing

4:42

but at a certain point and believe it or not

4:44

it all happened at Mar-a-Lago there

4:47

was a conversation between

4:49

someone named David Maisel and someone named Ike Perlmutter

4:51

who's the head of Marvel Entertainment at

4:53

the time the whole Marvel at the time

4:56

saying hey

4:56

what if we made our own movies right what

4:59

if we form our own studio and instead

5:01

of licensing out our characters to other people

5:04

to either

5:05

make

5:06

more money than we're making off of our own characters

5:09

or fumbling in a way that it sort of damages

5:11

the brand why don't we take control take all the money

5:14

let's do that so a comic

5:16

book company being their own

5:19

studio is something that's like somewhat

5:21

replicated with DC over at Warner Brothers but not

5:24

quite in the same way and then

5:26

that interconnected universe

5:28

is of course Marvel's calling hard into

5:30

the world of franchising that they

5:33

say okay what if we make Iron Man and we're

5:36

gonna make Donnie Robert Jenkins

5:38

Jr. is Iron Man Edward Norton is a Hulk

5:40

but guess what they're gonna be related and

5:43

then there's gonna be a Thor movie and a Captain America

5:45

movie then we're gonna make Avengers and it all becomes

5:47

sort of must-see TV to steal

5:49

from NBC in the 90s and you have to

5:52

watch everything and then it becomes a sort

5:54

of interconnected can't

5:56

miss a single

5:56

installment ongoing

5:59

soap opera

5:59

And so that interconnectedness

6:02

that really ramps up after Bob Iger has

6:04

bought Marvel and then really juices it up,

6:06

right?

6:07

Well, I mean the Avengers of the concept

6:09

existed before

6:10

right, right? This was sort of in motion, but it

6:12

wasn't gonna happen without Disney's clout

6:14

and It definitely would have been

6:16

that would not have been as successful without Disney

6:18

as like a distributing partner and then as the

6:21

full Muscle backing them for sure So

6:23

my question is why does Marvel Madeleine it met matter

6:26

and you sort of get too well All those stories

6:28

are interconnected and that matters and I've heard

6:30

people say that for many years and I understand

6:33

it but I also I'm

6:35

always feel a little unsatisfied with that answer because

6:38

I know there is a subset

6:40

of Moviegoers who are also

6:42

big comics fans and Marvel's

6:44

fans who? Understand the

6:46

connections and the characters and also what's

6:49

in the movie versus what's in you

6:51

know Issues 68 of whatever

6:53

the comic series is and I've seen

6:55

a lot of movies But I'm I'm you know, I'm not I

6:58

like comics, but I'm not that person I can't

7:00

imagine them looking around the theater That

7:03

the majority of people in the theater

7:05

are those hardcore fans who know all

7:07

the stories and so I Just

7:10

I'm still sort of unsatisfied about why these

7:12

things took off in a way that other comics

7:14

movies didn't is it just that? There

7:16

is enough of those fans that guarantee

7:19

sort of a base level success for all the movies

7:22

Or did they tap into something? I mean, I can't like

7:24

I I remember taking people

7:26

who are older than me See

7:29

the last the last two Avengers movies,

7:31

right? Yeah, and they definitely had not watched the 16

7:33

prior to that Sure, and they could follow along.

7:36

They got the general idea what was happening. So

7:38

why why did it work for

7:39

so many people?

7:41

Yeah, I think the key to that the key

7:43

figure throughout all of this the

7:46

soup to nuts Marvel stories is

7:49

Kevin Feige head of Marvel Studios and Something

7:52

that you know, we really get into in the book is

7:54

this concept of Kevin not

7:56

being a comic book guy He did not grow

7:58

up Collectively in comics deep

8:00

into the comic world. He's a blockbuster

8:03

cinema guy. He grew up, he loved Richard

8:06

Donner's Superman movie, right? But because

8:08

it was a big blockbuster, he loved Back

8:10

to the Future, he loved All Things Spielberg,

8:13

that's who he was growing up.

8:14

The kind of movies that Hollywood made

8:17

all the time. All the time.

8:19

But they weren't necessarily connected to IP.

8:21

Some of them were, but some of them weren't.

8:22

Exactly. And so basically what he does is he

8:24

kind of skins these Marvel

8:27

movies. They're secretly just these

8:29

late 70s, 80s, early 90s blockbusters

8:32

that he grew up loving. There's some apocryphal story about

8:34

him skipping his prom to be, go line

8:36

up for Back to the Future or something like that. You know,

8:38

like that's who Kevin Feige was. And

8:41

once he got involved in Marvel

8:42

at a sort of lower sort

8:44

of assistant level through,

8:46

he goes to work

8:47

for Richard Donner, who made Superman, Lauren

8:49

Shuler Donner, he goes in through that door

8:52

into this world. He studies

8:55

and he learns comic books and he just, and now

8:57

he knows them better than almost anyone else.

9:00

But it's not how he grew up. And so what that allows

9:02

him to do, I believe, is make

9:04

a film that is friendly

9:05

to you or

9:07

people who are even more casual than you are when it comes to

9:09

comic book knowledge,

9:10

because he's not looking at it from

9:12

like too deep inside the culture.

9:15

He's looking at it from the outside, from like

9:17

a blockbuster point of view, from a character

9:20

point of view. And I think that's a real key

9:22

thing for Marvel. You care in their

9:25

best examples. You care, you get

9:27

emotionally invested in the likes of

9:29

Steve Rogers or Tony Stark

9:32

or Natasha or Clint or

9:34

all these characters. And it sets the

9:38

story apart from some of these other

9:40

stories that wind up just being CGI

9:44

soup at the end of the day, because you don't

9:46

have a human or human-esque

9:48

character to emotionally latch

9:50

on to. So is Kevin Feige

9:52

more important than the Marvel IP

9:54

itself?

9:55

Because one of the stories about Marvel,

9:57

right, is that a lot of these... which

10:00

became huge, huge movie

10:03

characters, right, were not major

10:05

comic book characters. A lot of them are subsidiary

10:08

characters.

10:09

Yeah, they had sold off, you know, I mentioned earlier

10:11

that Fox had X-Men and Sony

10:13

had Spider-Man, you know, back

10:15

in the earlier days of Marvel Comics when they're trying

10:17

to dig out of bankruptcy

10:20

in the 90s. They start

10:22

licensing their characters off to all these other studios.

10:24

And that means when Marvel Studios itself,

10:27

after this luncheon at Mar-a-Lago,

10:30

after when they start to establish their studios, they have

10:32

what all the headlines screamed at the time, like

10:35

the B-list. The B-list heroes

10:38

like Iron Man, everyone's like, who's ever heard

10:40

of Iron Man? Thor, right? You

10:42

know, Thor, Captain America, who are these, who

10:44

are these, Captain America's a silly, silly

10:47

boy scout with, you know, wings on his helmet,

10:49

you know, Thor is this weird Shakespearean Norse

10:52

god and Tony Stark in the comics

10:55

was a sort of alcoholic, abusive, you

10:57

know, just strange character necessarily

10:59

to latch onto. But

11:02

a reason they started with Tony Stark, not just because

11:04

they didn't have every single character in

11:06

their arsenal to start with, but they

11:09

tested these characters with

11:11

kids. And the kids loved

11:13

the Iron Man toy. They loved

11:15

that. So from a toy making

11:17

point of view, which is a big part of, like,

11:19

Promoter and his legacy at Marvel,

11:22

they were like, this is a hit. Iron Man's going to be a hit

11:24

because the kids love that action figure. And

11:26

that was the old way of thinking about

11:28

those blockbuster movies that were definitely I

11:30

remember from being a kid, right? You went and saw

11:33

Star Wars and then you, or really your

11:35

parents, spent several mortgages

11:37

acquiring toys connected to that.

11:40

And that was, and I worked at a toy store for a while, and the idea

11:42

was the toy rollout always accompanied

11:44

the movie. And that was sort of where the,

11:47

if the people were smart, that's

11:49

where they were really going to cash in. Yeah. And

11:52

for a while, Marvel Comics was really content to

11:55

make that their profit from these other

11:57

movies that they had farmed out to other people. Fox,

12:01

Hugh Jackman as Wolverine makes all these X-Men

12:03

movies and they say, okay, well we get all

12:05

the toy sales Or if you think back to the

12:08

90s, this is my entry with sort of X-Men

12:10

the animated series Which was a big deal in the 90s the

12:13

plot lines of those Stories

12:17

were dictated by what toys they wanted to

12:19

make, you know in conjunction

12:21

That's classic Saturday morning cartoon

12:24

logic But I think that bleed definitely

12:26

bleeds into at least early MCU

12:28

is that toy eddic Toy minded

12:31

approach to to storytelling

12:33

toy eddic is an awesome word. I'm gonna use that again.

12:35

So Kevin Feige is instrumental

12:38

to Disney and Marvel success in the

12:40

movies again Like we've said there's other

12:42

people who've got access to movie

12:45

characters and try to

12:47

cartoon superhero characters superhero

12:50

characters Superheroes and

12:52

turn them into movies with with varying

12:55

degrees of success none of them nearly as successful

12:57

as as Marvel and Not

13:00

original point this out DC has

13:02

now owned by discovery

13:05

Warner Brothers has You

13:07

know better known characters

13:09

obviously Batman and Superman and they for

13:11

a while They were trying to sort of fashion

13:14

those characters into their version

13:16

of the DCU. Yeah Why did

13:18

that not work compared to Marvel?

13:21

So I think the moment that

13:24

you know, Christopher Nolan is

13:26

making

13:26

these incredibly successful Batman movies Standalone

13:29

that just there's just Batman and related

13:32

just

13:32

Batman changes the way that

13:34

you know The Oscar best

13:36

picture category works like seismic

13:39

for the culture That's the environment

13:41

that Marvel is launching, you know so they're sort of running

13:43

to catch up to Nolan

13:45

and what he's doing over Warner Brothers with

13:47

like how important culturally a superhero

13:50

story could be So they start chasing

13:52

that a little bit but something that Feige

13:55

and and you know, he would say he would

13:58

not take the credit by himself. So I want to be careful with

14:00

that. There's a lot of other people at Marvel doing making

14:02

great moves, but he likes to talk about,

14:04

for some reason, he's very diplomatic,

14:07

so he would never say that anyone else had failed. That's

14:09

not something that he would ever say on the record,

14:12

but he would say walk

14:14

before you run, and when you look at early Marvel,

14:17

like we said, you get an Iron Man movie, a

14:19

Hulk movie, you get another Iron Man movie, you get

14:21

a Captain America movie, you get a Thor movie, then

14:23

you get Avengers. Zack Snyder,

14:26

for all his great virtues and all his myriad

14:30

potential sins, like he started with Man of

14:32

Steel, Henry Cavill is Superman, he wanted

14:35

to make another Superman movie, and

14:37

they said, now let's bring Batman, let's go,

14:40

let's go, we got to catch up to Marvel. Now Marvel has

14:42

outpaced us.

14:42

Let's hit the gas, we got to accelerate, we have to

14:45

do what they're doing fast. We

14:46

have to get to Justice League first, we're

14:48

not going to bother introducing

14:50

the Flash 2 first, we're

14:52

not going to bother what Aquaman, Cyborg,

14:55

all these characters, they're just going to be there and

14:57

everyone will catch up. And it was

14:59

just sort of a, I think they fumbled the

15:01

ball on that franchise because

15:04

of their desperation to catch up now

15:07

to what Marvel was doing when Marvel did a slow

15:09

and steady trickle at the beginning of their

15:11

franchising. So I think that's, among

15:14

other things, that's a

15:15

big misstep that DC did. Because the other

15:17

thing you would hear as well, DC is too

15:19

serious and gray and grimy

15:22

and Marvel is intentionally more colorful

15:25

and poppy and fun. I mean,

15:27

it sort of makes sense to me, although on the

15:29

other hand, there's still kind of all the same stuff to

15:31

me. It's still men in tights

15:33

doing, and then with CGI battles, do

15:36

you think the tone really matters or comes

15:39

through that difference? I

15:40

think the tone isn't nothing, but I think you can

15:42

have something like the first Wonder Woman movie, which was a

15:44

huge hit, and that has like a

15:47

lightness of tone to it. So

15:49

I don't think you're without sort

15:51

of being as maybe MCU

15:54

bubbly as some of the

15:56

Marvel Disney installments. So

15:59

I think you can have... definitely have the DC characters

16:02

and you can have a grittier, like DC's

16:04

comics have always been grittier than Marvel

16:06

comics. So you can have that grit without

16:09

getting into, to quote Will Arnett

16:12

as Lego Batman, like the darkness, no parents,

16:14

sort of like really, really dark side

16:18

of DC, you know? And so tone matters

16:21

and definitely Marvel very intentionally,

16:23

you know, um, Blade

16:26

was kind of hard edge, uh, Deadpool,

16:29

Deadpool, who was a Marvel character over at Fox,

16:31

that's, you know, that's a, for

16:34

more adult audiences and, and MCU,

16:36

the MCU very intentionally said,

16:39

let's try to hit all quadrants. Let's make it

16:41

something kids and adults can watch together. Absolutely.

16:43

That was on their plan. I don't think like, I

16:45

don't, that's not even like necessarily a Disney

16:48

mandate for Marvel. That was something that was on Marvel's

16:50

mind. Again, I think from a toyetic

16:53

point of view, from the start,

16:54

when they made their movies, we'll

16:56

be right back after a word from a sponsor.

16:58

It's not just

17:00

sci-fi anymore. Virtual reality

17:03

for work is here. Mixed reality

17:05

for work is here and companies everywhere

17:07

are using them both to transform how they operate.

17:11

Architects are able to walk through buildings and mixed

17:13

reality before they're even built. Coworkers

17:16

from opposite ends of the earth are working shoulder

17:18

to shoulder in VR spaces and

17:20

all sorts of workers from pilots to underwater

17:22

welders are getting trained in a virtual environment

17:25

that's safer and more cost-effective.

17:28

That's Meta for Work, giving you VR

17:30

and MR tech to work smarter, closer,

17:33

safer, together. Learn

17:35

more at forwork.meta.com.

17:41

And we're back. Let's talk more about, about

17:44

the Disney-ification of this. We talk about

17:46

Kevin Feige, how important he is to all this. Bob

17:49

Iger, who has been the CEO

17:51

of Disney for forever with a quick, quick,

17:53

quick pit stop. And now he's unretired

17:55

himself. When he came on to

17:58

run Disney, he was not considered a... creative

18:00

executive and now and now

18:03

in the telling is considered a creative executive.

18:05

He considers himself a creative executive.

18:08

What kind of role did he have in shaping the overall

18:11

Marvel universe and specific

18:13

movies? Is he weighing in? Is he giving Kevin Feige notes

18:15

about, you know, someone about

18:17

dialogue or costumes?

18:19

In the

18:20

book, what we

18:22

discovered through all the interviews that we did is that

18:25

the main

18:25

sort of, given Kevin Feige notes,

18:28

oppressive overlord type of

18:31

role belonged to Ike Promutter, who was

18:34

Marvel East Coast. Which

18:36

again was originally the comic book company that

18:38

he bought. Right.

18:39

So he's over on the East Coast. There's something called the

18:41

creative committee that's formed out of Marvel

18:44

Entertainment in New York. And once

18:47

Iron Man's a smash-all a hit and

18:50

they understand that this is going to be a thing,

18:53

then they form the creative committee. And there's a few

18:55

members on the creative, one member in particular who sort of gets

18:57

roasted, especially in our book, who

18:59

start giving

19:02

some increasingly ridiculous notes.

19:05

And some of the comments

19:07

are two of my favorites, all time favorites are

19:10

telling James Gunn that nobody wants a

19:13

sort of 70s soundtrack

19:16

to Guardians of the Galaxy. Nobody wants to listen to that music.

19:18

Right. And the soundtrack of Guardians of the Galaxy

19:20

is one of its fans love that

19:22

thing. It was a best-selling record. Or

19:25

with Captain America Civil War, which is the

19:27

movie where, if you recall, all

19:30

the heroes are lined up facing

19:32

each other on an airport tarmac and they go to

19:34

battle. Marvel

19:36

in New York says, who wants to watch

19:38

heroes

19:38

fight each other?

19:40

Everyone? Everyone in the world

19:42

wants to write that. Have you ever

19:44

been a kid? Of course you want Spider-Man to fight

19:46

Batman. That's the whole story. It's the actual

19:48

action figures together. That's what you do, Marvel,

19:50

East Coast. So that was the battle

19:52

of control that dominated the first

19:54

few phases of Marvel. And

19:57

Iger was actually, whether

19:58

or not he likes to... fancy

20:00

himself a creative exec, what Iger's

20:03

superpower is in this Marvel story

20:05

at least is relationships, right? And managing

20:07

relationships and sort of trying

20:09

to make broker peace between

20:12

East Coast West Coast Marvel and then eventually

20:14

cut East Coast

20:16

Marvel out and say, Kevin has made

20:19

us conservatively a gajillion dollars.

20:21

So guess what? Kevin gets to call the shots

20:23

at Marvel. And when they first bought Marvel,

20:26

their whole pitch to Marvel was, this

20:29

is going to be like Pixar. We left Pixar alone

20:31

creatively. We'll leave you alone creatively. Like

20:33

we want to help you, want to boost you. We don't

20:35

want to control you. We're here to, you

20:38

know, we want to expand our brand

20:40

beyond princesses. We want the,

20:43

you know, the young male market, you know, and that's

20:45

why they acquire Lucasfilm, Marvel,

20:47

etc. But we will not strangle

20:50

you creatively. That's not, there's

20:53

never been Disney's role in all of this.

20:55

So even prior to the,

20:57

we can talk about whether it's a lull or

20:59

a descent or whatever it is, whatever Marvel

21:01

is going through now, there was

21:04

the wobble. So sort of see where you're headed there.

21:06

But prior to that, there was still a pretty

21:09

significant, at least loud group of

21:11

people saying, hey, these Marvel movies that make

21:13

a gazillion dollars, they're also the worst possible

21:15

thing for art, for

21:19

culture, for our industry. You

21:21

know, it's, there's nothing wrong with comic book movies,

21:24

but we can't only make comic book movies.

21:26

And you love them, obviously, but you love

21:29

all sorts of stuff. What do you make of that critique? That

21:31

they were sort of crowding out the cultural and business

21:33

land? Right. The Marty

21:35

Scorsese, Fright Before Coppola, etc, etc.

21:38

You're talking about, you know, Martin Scorsese in particular had comments saying

21:40

it's not real cinema. And I think that's a silly

21:42

debate. But I'm, I'm, I'm

21:45

certainly open to like, there should be other things in

21:47

theaters.

21:48

And I wholly agree. Like, to your

21:50

point, I, I do love

21:53

superhero cinema. I love the good ones,

21:55

right? That's, it's not everyone,

21:58

but I love the good ones. And And

22:00

I love thinking about

22:02

how this Marvel interconnected universe

22:05

changed the way that we think about storytelling. It's kind of

22:07

bringing television into

22:09

the movie theater to be like, here's an episode,

22:11

here's an episode, here's an episode, you got to watch.

22:13

So from a, I've studied

22:15

Hollywood my whole life, this is a really interesting

22:18

story to me, but I wholeheartedly agree.

22:20

I miss the

22:22

variety of cinema

22:25

we used to get. And is that

22:28

holy Marvel's fault? I would not say

22:30

so because what it's reflective

22:32

of is how cinema going

22:34

has just changed. How people

22:36

go to the movies less and less, how people stay

22:38

at home and watch on

22:40

their big screen with their surround sounds, they don't

22:42

have to pay for babysitter, et cetera, et cetera, all

22:44

the things that people have been perseverating. But it's

22:46

all intertwined, right? They're making those Marvel

22:48

movies because they know it's one of the few things that people

22:50

will go to see in a movie.

22:52

Get butts and seats, right? And so

22:55

once the window

22:56

narrows to we're only watching

22:58

a couple of movies a year, and then yeah,

23:00

we're only going to watch the Marvel movies

23:01

because A, you can't miss a single one, you

23:04

got to watch them all. And B,

23:06

it'll feel like our dollars are going

23:09

somewhere because we can see them in the big, loud CGI

23:11

booms, you know? And that goes for other

23:14

things as well. Oppenheimer to

23:16

very good example from this year, Dune,

23:19

even though that came out during the pandemic, I

23:22

was packed into an IMAX theater with my mask on

23:24

to watch Dune. There are certain

23:26

big spectacle things that you feel like you have to see

23:28

in a cinema or you're not really

23:30

seeing them. I think it's heartbreaking

23:34

what has happened in our film-going

23:38

habits. I miss, I often

23:40

talk about missing the monoculture. I miss when

23:42

we were all watching not just superhero

23:44

movies, but all kinds

23:47

of movies that we all watched together and then we could all

23:49

talk about and have the same shared cultural

23:52

references. But I

23:54

thought that was going to be forever when I was growing up and

23:56

it turns out that was just like a phase of our culture

23:59

and now we're in a different. thing where say

24:01

memes or you know depressingly to me

24:03

memes or tiktoks or some other thing that

24:06

becomes the monoculture so it's

24:08

connected to marvel but it's not as if

24:11

marvel muscled out

24:13

all these things in

24:15

a sort of super villain kind of way

24:17

yeah i mean i guess the other thing i'd add to that is that

24:20

eiger specifically when he took

24:22

over at disney said you know we make all

24:24

kinds of movies and we're gonna stop

24:26

doing that we're only gonna make giant

24:29

tentpole movies many of them are gonna be marvel

24:31

movies some will be locusts but whatever they are we're

24:33

not taking risks on things people don't

24:35

know about and we're only going to try to make movies

24:38

that only are considered successes

24:40

if they're like a billion dollars in box office

24:42

do you ever fire up an old movie and

24:45

um the touchstone logo

24:47

comes across the bottom which

24:48

is you know disney brand and then you watch

24:50

the movie you're like i cannot believe this was a disney

24:52

movie you know like it was for a

24:55

while yeah yeah

24:56

your term for what marvel is in right now is the

24:58

wobble it's a bunch of different

25:00

things going on at the same time i think so

25:03

they were on this run with the avengers which ended

25:05

right around the pandemic right before the pandemic

25:08

pandemics changes everything they also

25:10

launched disney plus and so a lot of marvel

25:12

stuff starts showing up on

25:15

tv for streaming it's supposed to be connected to

25:17

the mcu and then eventually some

25:19

of the marvel movies come out after

25:21

this and some do

25:23

okay by marvel

25:25

standards some are flops a

25:28

lot of them are are critically reviled

25:30

unpack sort of what's happening there

25:32

and are those just three random things

25:35

happening at the same time or are they all connected

25:37

i think unfortunately for marvel post endgame

25:40

was a really critical moment for them because they lost

25:42

some of their heavy hitters uh

25:44

in their stars and

25:47

um robert downey jr chris han with those guys

25:49

were all signed on for long deals and now they're no longer

25:51

garland and chris evans and downey

25:54

all decide to leave uh

25:56

scarlet scarlet is one more movie but like

25:58

they're effectively Exiting that's

26:01

the seniors graduating. That's the varsity team.

26:04

They're they're moving on and what

26:06

had happened was Marvel had seated

26:08

a number of players in to sort of rise up and

26:10

take their place. They knew that was coming They were gonna keep

26:12

these people forever Part of the

26:14

premise the conventional wisdom's

26:16

of modern stardom, right? Is that iron

26:19

man is more important than Robert Downey

26:21

jr And that's what we don't have stars

26:24

now because it's the costumes

26:25

right Evan said that in a recent GQ

26:27

interview He was like yeah, Captain America

26:30

is way more famous than Chris Evans is absolutely and

26:32

you know what was interesting about what

26:35

Marvel did is they hired downy who was

26:37

More notorious than he was famous at the time that

26:40

they hired him But they hired downy and

26:42

then when they make iron man to down he's like, okay

26:45

a lot more money Please and they

26:47

hired Edward Norton who was had

26:50

a lot of prestige coming off of the American history

26:52

acts But he was huge

26:54

problem. These were one of

26:55

the most

26:56

Contentious relationships

26:58

ever in Marvel's history is between Marvel and Edward

27:00

Norton and so after that happens They're like, what if

27:03

we hire these Chris's who aren't really

27:05

anyone and we'll make them and we'll mold them

27:07

into something, right? So that's if you get Evans

27:09

and Hemsworth, etc But the point being they

27:11

they hire these other people Like

27:14

Betty Cumberbatch is dr. Strange

27:17

Paul Rudd is as Ant-Man and

27:19

then really very Crucially

27:21

to their future Chadwick Boseman in

27:24

Black Panther Brie Larson

27:26

for Captain Marvel Tom Hollis or

27:28

Spider-Man, right and like That's

27:31

the plan and on paper that seems like a great

27:34

plan, right? They're like we got this. They're

27:36

gonna leave. Here's the new stars. I Don't

27:39

think they saw what happened to

27:41

Captain Marvel and Brie Larson coming

27:43

in terms of this minority toxic

27:46

fandom being so I

27:49

Think a lot of people missed missed

27:51

what

27:51

absolutely happy to spell it out. Um To

27:54

be clear Captain Marvel they

27:57

Brie Larson fronted a solo

27:59

adventure made over a billion dollars.

28:02

That is a successful film. But what

28:04

is also true is that it got review

28:06

bombed by a bunch of people who

28:08

were

28:08

upset that a

28:10

woman was leading a superhero film. That

28:13

happened. And we've seen those same trolls attack.

28:15

Yeah. Star Wars. Right.

28:17

When they've got a non-white guy

28:19

there, they freak out.

28:20

And so Brie herself

28:23

has said in interviews that made

28:25

her uncertain about her future with Marvel. She's like, why should

28:27

I put my, why should I put up with this essentially?

28:29

You know, why do I, why would I want to do that? Chadwick

28:31

Boseman passes away. That is tragic

28:34

on a number of levels. And then, you know, low

28:36

down on the list of tragedies is the fact that like Marvel's like,

28:38

oh no, we had sort of considered him a

28:41

linchpin of the franchise going forward.

28:44

Dr. Strange lands, man, man, man. It doesn't feel

28:46

the same anymore. And so this is all 2019 is

28:49

when game comes out to your point. COVID

28:52

hits us all in 2020. So

28:54

like Black Widow comes out and it's COVID,

28:57

Eternals comes out, COVID. Then

28:59

the Disney Plus stuff, which Iger

29:02

left Disney and a lot of

29:04

people

29:04

blamed

29:05

the diminishment of the

29:07

brand via the Disney Plus

29:09

flooding on Bob Chapick. But it was

29:11

Iger's plan

29:12

before he left Disney. That was his thing.

29:14

He said, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna launch this new

29:16

streaming service with Marvel stuff. We're gonna

29:19

make a ton of it. Let's put that

29:21

in the motion. And then he, then he walked away from it. And

29:23

then

29:23

he came back and he was like, after

29:26

he replaced his own replacement,

29:28

he said like, oh, we need

29:30

to focus on doing less and

29:33

higher quality as if he was

29:34

not the one who opened the gaps

29:36

in the first place. Exactly.

29:37

So, um, you know, I

29:40

think that's been bigger even than the

29:42

pandemic is this idea that the

29:44

Marvel Studios model,

29:47

which throughout the book, you can see them hone

29:49

it and develop it really

29:52

relies to our earlier conversation

29:54

on Feige as this central

29:57

creative figure, this almost director,

29:59

producer

30:00

over all of these stories. He

30:02

can do that when they're putting two max three

30:04

movies out a year, but can you do that

30:06

when you're making three or four movies

30:09

a year plus

30:10

three or four TV shows at the same time? Bread the peanut

30:12

butter too thin.

30:14

Yeah, too much bread, not enough peanut butter. So,

30:16

you know.

30:16

So it's a Valley reference from the Yachts' days. Yeah,

30:18

yeah, yeah. So, because Feige is the consistent thing,

30:20

right? Because you were mentioning, well, they moved

30:23

to the second tier of actors, but a lot of those movies

30:25

that you were mentioning, with those actors, obviously Black

30:27

Panther, the first Ant-Man, those were

30:30

all super successful movies on their own. Yes.

30:33

With, again, characters that were not major

30:35

characters, with people that you didn't associate. So

30:37

it seemed like the plan was working just

30:39

fine, that it really is

30:42

just the volume.

30:44

The volume and just, you know, Wakanda

30:47

Forever, there has a lot to

30:49

go, you know, a lot going for it, but

30:52

it's missing a key component

30:54

that a lot of people responded to in the first Black

30:56

Panther movie, namely Chadwick Boseman. It

30:59

has been years and years and years,

31:01

and we're about to get The Marvels, which is the

31:03

next Brie Larson-led film, but

31:06

it's been a long time

31:07

since we watched Captain Marvel,

31:08

you know. Ant-Man Quantum Media, unfortunately,

31:11

that's the movie that really was a

31:13

tipping point with

31:16

the fans at the beginning of this year, because like, what

31:18

happened with The Eternals? What happened

31:20

with Shang-Chi? People were like, no, maybe

31:23

not top tier, but I'm still hanging with Marvel.

31:26

4-Eleven Thunder, people were a little

31:28

curious about, but when Quantum Media came out

31:30

the beginning of the years, that felt like a real turning of the tide

31:32

of people saying, are these movies

31:35

good anymore? And then Guardians 3 comes out,

31:37

and a lot of people like it. So that's why I call it The Wobble,

31:40

because I don't think it's been just a

31:42

steep decline

31:43

downhill. I think it's

31:45

been inconsistent, whereas before,

31:48

however you felt about Marvel movies, you

31:50

at least pretty much

31:51

made it even better. It's all kind of working. Yeah.

31:53

It's all kind of working. You know, you could debate whether

31:56

it was great art or not, but people like them,

31:58

fans like them.

33:54

is

34:00

it now feels like there's too much homework. And

34:02

the do less is part

34:04

of that, a partial solution. But

34:07

I think what they're heading towards, not

34:09

to turn

34:11

all your listeners to sleep and get super nerdy,

34:13

but there's a comic book

34:15

event called Secret Wars, and

34:17

that's something that they're planning to do in the future. And that

34:19

might wind up being

34:20

a soft reset for

34:22

the whole universe. So you don't need

34:24

to feel like you have to watch all of the movies and all

34:27

the TV shows in order to understand what the heck

34:29

is going on. It is funny, my producer, Jelani,

34:31

is listening to this. As

34:33

new Marvel product comes out, and we're like, do we want to talk

34:36

about this show or this movie? And so as I say, Jelani,

34:38

you're really into this. Is this important? So

34:41

there's something with Samuel Jackson that's on streaming

34:43

now, or ran around. Secret Evasion. Yeah.

34:45

Secret Evasion goes, well, it's going to be connected. And

34:48

I just clicked off. I'm like, I cannot believe

34:50

that.

34:51

It's fine if you want to have

34:53

the plot, but asking me to

34:55

engage in it because there's

34:57

going to be some payoff, X

34:59

number of years, and a dozen movies

35:01

down the road. I was like, no. Just tell me it's a good movie,

35:03

and then I'll watch it.

35:05

Here's the deal with Secret Evasion. I'm not saying

35:07

you've got to stay tuned because, or you have to watch everything

35:09

so you can understand Secret Evasion. Secret

35:11

Wars, which is what they're hoping in the future

35:14

is going to be sort of their version of Avengers

35:16

Endgame. They're going to bring in a bunch

35:18

of characters that those of us

35:20

who have been here for a long time are

35:22

very familiar with. So Tobey Maguire,

35:24

Spider-Man, or Hugh Jackman's Wolverine.

35:27

There's going to be something that's going to feel familiar

35:29

to everyone at every level.

35:32

And that's going to feel potentially

35:35

worth tuning in for, more so than me

35:37

promising you, Peter, that the storyline

35:40

is going to be interesting. They're going to have some flashy

35:43

lure for you in the cast.

35:44

And then the

35:46

hope is that fallout

35:49

of that quote, unquote, event is

35:51

a new Marvel

35:54

that we can all come into

35:56

fresh. If we decide we want to. Or

35:59

if the superhero era. is over, what an

36:01

incredible run. And that's why I mean, not

36:04

to get too nitty gritty on the book title

36:07

front, but the book title that it

36:09

was originally MCU, The Rise of

36:11

Marvel Studios. And it was in early 2023,

36:14

when the wobble

36:17

felt more and more inevitable that

36:19

we changed it to The Reign of Marvel Studios, which is not

36:22

the rise and fall of Marvel

36:23

Studios necessarily. I'm not ready

36:25

to go

36:25

away, but it's like, this

36:28

is a moment in time when

36:30

Marvel has supremacy in Hollywood.

36:33

Is it over? We're not sure, but it's certainly

36:35

like you cannot deny that this

36:37

was their reign, you know?

36:39

Oh, this is so helpful. So useful. Thank you. I'm

36:41

not going to let you go without pivoting quickly into TV.

36:43

You mentioned peak TV. So I have two

36:45

questions for you. What are you watching right now?

36:48

Yeah, that's great that I should watch.

36:50

Do you watch reservation dogs?

36:52

No, I know I'm supposed to.

36:53

Okay. Does that sound like too much homework? I mean,

36:56

reservation dogs is incredible. What

36:58

we do in the shadows, the FX comedy,

36:59

speaking of John Landraff and

37:02

peak TV,

37:02

like I just I love what FX

37:04

does. They've got a lot of great stuff on the horizon. There's

37:07

a new season of Fargo

37:09

coming, they're doing Shogun the following

37:11

year. FX did not pay me to say any of this, even

37:13

though they are owned by Disney. But I think,

37:16

keep an eye on FX. I'm definitely on FX.

37:18

What we do in the shadows, we're like midway

37:20

through season three, I can't recommend it. So good.

37:24

Super great. It's a comedy, by the way.

37:26

And then I'm wondering how you think

37:29

both the, you know, we've

37:31

solved the writer's strike, we meet in Hollywood,

37:34

the actor's strike is supposed to get solved relatively soon.

37:36

Yeah. Those things are going to happen to

37:39

the writers and actors credit, they're going to receive,

37:41

they're going to get paid more than they would have to make

37:43

those that means costs go up. And then

37:46

concurrently, we're also for other

37:48

reasons have reached seem to have reached the end of peak TV

37:51

era, that a lot of the companies that are funding

37:53

this stuff saying, we're no longer going to make as

37:55

much stuff. And we're, you

37:57

know, we're not we're not going to flood our streaming.

41:44

or

42:00

they're even built. Coworkers from

42:02

opposite ends of the earth are working shoulder to

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shoulder in VR spaces. And

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42:09

welders, are getting trained in a virtual environment

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