We got Ant-Man movie

Russos were directors on Arrested Development, directors and exec producers on Community, and had made at least two feature films before

I mean yeah if they have the wright approved script and all the visual aesthetic established this could still be good, but I'm kinda dubious some hires hand thrown in at the last second will show the same confidence and wit when it comes to a footage of character shrinking and growing in the blink of an eye.

hired hand, rather.

The most exciting thing about this movie was that it involved a power we've never seen, and a director whose previous work suggested he could display it in an inspired way

I admit, nice touch from Whedon

https://twitter.com/josswhedon/statuses/470141319831363584

<3

didn't know what that was so i searched and found the lol worst article of all time jfc cinemablend

if you can't trust anonymous reddit commenters who can you trust

if you can't trust anonymous rebutters on latino-review who can you

Not true. AT ALL.

The prep on this film has been forever and it was impossible to be behind schedule because the entire production was out on hiatus by Marvel for duration of the script's rewrite. Families left homes to work on the movie in Atlanta and were now suddenly in limbo.

So about the rewrite...

About 3 months ago, Marvel had notes. The meat of the notes were about the core morality of the piece, must include franchise characters. etc., These notes came from the big four at Marvel. Joe Cornish and Edgar Wright did two drafts to try and answer the notes without compromising their vision.

6 weeks ago Marvel took the script off them and gave the writing assignment to two very low credit writers. One of the writers were from Marvel's in house writing team. Edgar stayed cool, agreed to stay on the project, and read the draft.

The script came in this week and was completely undone. Poorer, homogenized, and not Edgar's vision. Edgar met with Marvel on Friday to formally exit and the announcement went out directly after.

Edgar & Joe were upset by the sudden, out of nowhere lack of faith in them as filmmakers. Fiege had always batted for them but this felt like it came from the higher ups.

Where does this leave the cast? Well, it is believed they don't have the option to walk like Edgar did.

sic where is that from?

latino-review.com

Scratch Adam McKay off the list of replacements for Ant-Man helmer Edgar Wright.

Negotiations began with McKay in earnest on Friday but the Anchorman director abruptly decided against taking the job on the film, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The decision is said to be his alone.

A director search had been underway to helm the Marvel superhero tentpole since Wright officially exited the project on May 23. The film is set to star Paul Rudd as the title hero.

We're the Millers director Rawson Marshall Thurber and Zombieland's Ruben Fleischer were also in contention along with McKay to get the directing job, THR had earlier reported.

probably a good thing, McKay hasn't really done anything effects-oriented ever and has only done as much action as is in The Other Guys. the Zombieland guy seems like a good fit, that movie had a nice visual flair to it.

otoh it sucked

How hard can this be? The dudes who did Captain America 2 were best known for "Community." Thor 2 guy was also TV anono. Just hire some chump and save the budget for the FX team.

Kinda depressingly otm. The Feige/Quesada/Bendis et al brain trust exert more influence on these films than their individual directors. It would be interesting to see what an auteur with a particular visual style would bring to any of these films, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. Maybe a Dr. Strange movie would be more stylized, more Craig Russellesque as it were...

Jim Rash & Nat Faxon should do it

i think we know who the men for the job are

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514sGy2oc3L._SL290_.jpg

Why not?

How hard can this be? The dudes who did Captain America 2 were best known for "Community." Thor 2 guy was also TV anono. Just hire some chump and save the budget for the FX team.

Have you ever seen anything directed by Wright?

also alan taylor is kind of the opposite of a TV anono

Anono in the sense that he is not known as a film director, nor as a selling-point name a la Wright. He's a guy who gets it done, and there are lots of people like him, especially in TV. Hell, anyone who handled an episode of Game of Thrones could likely handle Ant-man. And the unlikely hodgepodge of people behind several of these superhero movies already ranges from genre auteurs like Raimi to competent technicians like Joe Johnston to Kenneth Branagh to fucking Jon Favreau. I mean, jeez, Shane Black directed Iron Man 3. Shane Black! Seriously, if this motley crue could all pull it off, plus the aforementioned, then anyone can.

BTW, Iron Man 3 had 1,834 credited visual effects crewmembers, something like 10 fewer than Avatar. When I saw that movie, it scrambled my brain wondering just what a director actually does when so much of his film is a massively complicated effects sequence. The irony being, I guess, that many of the most notable sequences of Iron Man 3 were those with RDJ just doofing around, sans suit.

and trevor slattery bumbling about

and gwenyth Paltrow consciously unpeppering

does seem that marvel's nu spooreero line is best thought of as the creation of its producers, with the director as a higher-up among an army of hired-hand technicians

he tells the fx ppl what to create. ideally.

there's storyboards, animatics, etc etc

its not like they all just go off by themselves, all 1,834, and vote on what to do.

When I saw that movie, it scrambled my brain wondering just what a director actually does when so much of his film is a massively complicated effects sequence.

It's worth looking at the extras on the Pacific Rim DVD for some insight into this - Guillermo del Toro is super-hands-on with the effects team and it's easy to get a sense of how vital his input is into making the CGI and effects sequences what they are.

I think that Iron Man 3 - again, as an extreme - hired something like 15 different FX houses, spread around the world, working more or less independently. Which is one thing, if you have Del Toro overseeing it. Or Cameron. Del Toro and Cameron geek out on that. I bet the guys storyboard in their sleep. But again, Shane Black? Not sure that guy had a particular vision for Iron Man 3's final melee, really.

Iron Man 3 is probably the only superhero movie of the past 15 years I'd call "fun"

Shane Black did a competent job IMO

I think that Iron Man 3 - again, as an extreme - hired something like 15 different FX houses, spread around the world, working more or less independently. Which is one thing, if you have Del Toro overseeing it. Or Cameron. Del Toro and Cameron geek out on that. I bet the guys storyboard in their sleep. But again, Shane Black? Not sure that guy had a particular vision for Iron Man 3's final melee, really.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, June 1, 2014 5:15 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...why

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000948/

i think this guy might have some experience working on action movies

I just mean he had very little credited director experience, and the other credit was "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," which was awesome, but really script driven and no indication at all that the guy who made it would be the guy for a multi-million dollar effects-driven superhero movie. And no, writing "Lethal Weapon" and "Last Boy Scout," neither of which were FX-heavy beyond practical guns and explosions, would not make me think him suited, either. I mean, I think he did a great job! Better than Favreau, for sure. But I never would have figured the reclusive writer of '80s action staples would pull that off, let alone be tapped in the first place, though I have a strong hunch RDJ hooked him up.

But then, I would have figured the CGI-minded genius behind several Pixar hits would have done OK with a human cartoon like "John Carter," so who knows? Again, H'Wood is stuffed with untapped talents.

Well, Iron Man was always about RDJ, so in a way Shane Black was the completely right choice. And he did an awesome job, though the final setpiece is not good at all. But the sequence with the falling people, that was great!

falling people sequence was turribl. generally not a good movie generally. liked the first one, but that's about it.

Man, I can barely recall these movies. Was falling people where he helped the people falling from the plane and then helped the plane? Or was that Superman?

yet another movie thread taken over by JiC not making any sense and everyone else trying to figure out what the point of any of this is

Do I take over threads? Sorry about that. I thought it was called "posting." You all are welcome to return to talking the ins and outs about a director-less movie currently not being made.

Honestly, not sure what your issue is. Who knew it was controversial to claim these Marvel movies are FX-driven and that the director is not as important as the FX-team? Anyway, point was always easy to discern: given past credits and successes, any competent director could likely helm Ant-man.

Which directors do you think could have directed each of Wright's previous films and have them have the same character?

Josh, where are you getting this idea that directors simply hand over their movies to the FX guys and essentially relinquish control over huge chunks of their movies? It's simply not true that "the director is not as important as the FX team". Directors work in close collaboration with their effects teams to get the results they want. Would you say directors aren't as important as directors of photography because DPs can make a huge decisions on how scenes are lit, framed and shot?

Here's Shane Black discussing his experience with Iron Man 3:

Shane, this is your first film in eight years, and the biggest film of your career. Were you ready for what lay ahead?
Black: I was prepared. I'd been warned in advance that there would be a tutorial involved where people would walk me through a process that had been tried and true. I've learned a lot about special effects in this room and what's required and how desperate they are for us to do what we do so we can turn it over and they can start the process of rendering it. Along the way, animatics and storyboard people would take it to an animatic and then that would be a pre-viz that I could approve and along the way it was the most elaborate storyboard staff at my disposal. Everything we could think of could be rendered. It's not a movie where you can walk onto the set and say, "What are we doing today?" You're collapsing a building. Let's start with floor one. You have to have so rigorously laid out in advance everything you're going to do and that's what these people are good at.

No-one's disputing Marvel movies are FX-driven but given how different the tone of Iron Man 3 is to Favreau's movies you'd have to be nuts to suggest directors don't have an important role to play. Edgar Wright has a very distinct style and I'm 100% sure his Ant-Man would have been a different movie to the one that will be made by Marvel's second choice.

not to mention that Wright and Joe Cornish have been working on the script for a decade (although that's probably mostly out the window now)

I never said the director didn't play an important role (obv.), or that distinctive writers like Wright or Black don't bring something cool to their projects. It's that as far as billion dollar enterprises go, making the movies "good" or "distinctive" or "original" goes second to having them make tons of money. Which, hey, may be why Wright was fired. The Shane Black quote perfectly illustrates my point: he really didn't know much about FX, but they walked him through a "tried and true" tutorial, he learned a lot and pulled it off. And again, I liked his Iron Man 3 a lot, better than the other two! But that's a critical judgement on my part. The studio, I assume, likes anything that makes a lot of money, the more the merrier, and I think they care more about a director who can get the work done on time and on budget than one with any particular vision or voice. Those may be bonuses, and it makes me like the movies more, personally, but my point is just about any competent director could be quickly brought up to speed. I never said a non-Wright "Ant-man" would be as good, or would not be different, just that it could easily be done by any number of directors, which was my response to the apparent difficulty finding a director who can do it.

there's a difference between knowing how FX is done and having a creative vision about how you want it to play out.

The studio, I assume, likes anything that makes a lot of money, the more the merrier, and I think they care more about a director who can get the work done on time and on budget than one with any particular vision or voice.

I don't think there's as much clear water between vision & voice and billion-dollar franchises as you do. Here's some quotes from Marvel's Kevin Feige:

"There are five things I can point to in the bones of this movie that are 100% solely Shane Black," says Feige. "It has as many, if not more, visual-effects shots than Avengers, but at the same time it has this awesome sort of 80s action-movie overlay, especially with some of the action that Tony and Rhodey find themselves in."

I will say that we bring in different film-makers because we want that outside voice, that unique viewpoint to come into each of the movies, so they can stand alone and have a value in their own right. We want directors to believe they can do a better job.

I never said a non-Wright "Ant-man" would be as good, or would not be different, just that it could easily be done by any number of directors, which was my response to the apparent difficulty finding a director who can do it.

Doesn't Marvel's 'apparent difficulty' that suggest that maybe it's not as easy as you think it is?

s1ocki otm

Doesn't Marvel's 'apparent difficulty' that suggest that maybe it's not as easy as you think it is?

Well, I imagine there are a lot of factors at work here at this point, not least schedule.

s1ocki otm

Absolutely! But just to use Shane Black as an example again, if someone told me at any time in the previous decade that Shane Black was going to make a huge superhero sequel, I would have raised an eyebrow. But he did a great job! And he had a vision for the film, at least tonally. But the film's success I think was still largely due, beyond RDJ, to the FX, because if they failed, the film would have failed, and as much as the director oversees their construction, he really can't do more than say "do it again, but better."

Here's another good example. Gary Ross was best known as a writer, then moved into directing with "Pleasantville," which was very visual but still very script-driven. Then he did "Secretariat," which was very traditional. So two movies down, and he gets tapped to direct the first "Hunger Games" movie, a huge property handled by a well-regarded writer/director with no track record when it comes to action movies. The film comes out, it gets good reviews, it's a huge hit - fait accompli. For the second movie they picked a relatively unknown director who did an even better job, but the only thing I remember reading in the lead-up was that the effects were much better. And of course it was a big hit, too. Or the "Harry Potter" movies: huge property, huge endeavor, first two made by a competent hack, third by an auteur, fourth by a guy best known for "Four Weddings and a Funeral," and every one after that, the next four, by David Yates, a TV guy who had never done a huge, FX-driven film, or any theatrical film, afaict. And not only did he do a great job, there was absolutely no drop-off in quality. That the world had already been established so well by books and previous films certainly helped, but probably also that he was not the sort to get in the way. Those last four HP films are great, and he did a great job, but I'm not sure there's anything particular about his approach that helped make them great. Mostly his competence, his ability not to make them worse. Would Alfonso Cuaron have made them differently? Sure. But they didn't leave me wishing Cuaron had made them instead.

the apparent difficulty finding a director who can do it.

it's been five days since they boned the dude that spent eight years working on this, can't believe the movie isn't on VOD yet

Well, I wouldn't exactly say he spent the last 8 years working on it, considering he did manage to write, direct or produce several movies in the interim.