Why Can't Studios Understand?

I would like present  Marvel Studios. They have brought us the most recent successful stories in the theaters of recent years.  Even the worst of their films have still brought in a lot of cash.  Why are their movies so much better than say Spiderman. This blog post is going to try and break down that reason. 

Spiderman, is owned by Marvel but they sold the rights to the Spiderman stories to the  Sony Company.  Sony didn't creat the character they just have the rights to him.  This means that their only goal in making movies about him is to make money.  Financial gain is their primary goal.  So this means they  have to come out with movies at a regular intervals or the rights go back to Marvel. 

Sony was rushed into making another origin story because of this requirement. Well, and because Spiderman three was so bad they had to start fresh to get the stink of that film off the character. What ever the reason the new origin story did a good job of keeping the story the primary focus.  They didn't over complicate the story with extra characters they had to start fresh, They inadvertently made the story only about the creation of spiderman. 

They did well, so they thought to take that momentum and take a huge step backwards by trying to include more villains and convolute the story to base the movie around more toy selling opportunities. 

They had three different bad guys in the second film.  I am guessing trying to maximize the toy potential.  But they are not seeing the long term potential.  Instead of cramming as much as you can into three hours.  Look at drawing out the spiderman story out for the next 20 years. 

They should have had just electro and Spiderman start off then introduce the green goblin as Parkers fend , develop more of the relationship between Pete and Harry and Gwen. We become more invested in the characters and when the inevitable happens and Gwen dies at the hands of Harry or Pete because of Harry we are way more effected.  But that happens in its own story,  Not laid over the same story line of Elcectro. In all of those films have a local gagster slowly become the Rhino. 

Look at the way they are drawing out the stories over at Marvel released Captain America : The Winter Soldier. Note this movie introduced one major bad guy and the organization that was controlling him was introduced in pervious films. 

We also get one new good guy because Captain America and Black Widow were also introduced in previous films. There is no need to over complicate this one move because the story threads were laid out in previous movies. 

Marvel continues the story in the universe they have created and have potential to make more movies and continue to do well with toy market because they are not trying to squeeze so much into one film.  

Sony needs to take a step back from the old school thoughts of do as much as you can to get as much as you can out of the viewers. Viewers will always come back for more if you keep them entertained. 

I hope Sony is doing the way I have explained and not just throwing what ever sticks to the wall because they figure they are only doing this for a kid market. That s undermining them in two ways.  The first way is vastly underestimating who will pay for this kind of content.  Secondly they are not writing to an appropriate kid level. Kids are capable of way better stories than that last attempt. 

Getting back to my original point, Movies have been influenced by one thought. The perfect formula in writing stories.  Take a look at this web Page on Slate, it explains it perfectly. Save The Cat was a book by Blake Snyder a Spec writer.  He pend the book as a definitive guide to the perfect blockbuster formula.  So thats why we have a lot of the same thing and we are staved for something  different. 

I watched The Bicycle Thief recently and really enjoyed the journey. I was completely brought into the characters and story. It was an excellent break from all of the same stuff we see on the screen. It was that experience that made me think of what we could enjoy if studios were more focused on telling good stories that made money. What power could we wield of we focused on stories that challenged the stereo types and focused making the future a better place.  

What if we spend 100 Million on funding high school media programs to see what the future Peirce, Lee (spike and Ang), Scorsese and Spielberg had to show us.  That is just one Movie in the Catalog of films that come out each year. 

HUmmmm, more on that on that tomorrow.