W.There is no greater humiliation a grown man can see than being the director of a big-budget superhero franchise. Not even working as a person who had to clean the weapons of a medieval king. Sometimes “poop boyfriend” is a more desirable credit than “driven.” As even the most intrepid talent agent will tell you, both guarantee you'll get shit in the end.
But it's confusing because shouldn't directors be divine capes? That's what I thought when I started as one of the writers of The Franchise, a new HBO comedy set behind the scenes in the world of superhero movies. Marvel and DC – and we talked to a lot of people – except for the fact that we talked to a lot of people in the comic book movie machine – the movie that came out of it was pretty dysfunctional.
A director told us about the time when the studio was filming the big scenes that were actually going to be included in the movie, like a door opening and the second unit was somewhere else with the main actors, and they realized that They were busy. Another told us about individual stars who hired individual writers to write their characters' lines and everyone else's lines. We hear about limousines pulling up to the set, windows rolled down, and new pages of scripts for the day that passes. The directors, those lords and mistresses of the universe, were surprisingly eager to redeem these insults. His movies have become a thing do they don't By them. They talked about the best survival strategy: “go fast.”
And confusion! We said many times in the writers' room, “Yes, I know that really happened, but we can't really explain it. People won't believe it. This is very stupid. The idea of starting a $300 million movie without a third act seemed crazy, but it was almost common practice. Actors were filmed with amorphous green props that had to be VFX applied later because no one could agree on what they were supposed to be, or an ad hoc section of the fanbase deviated slightly from the comics and mutinied or murdered by its design. Behind the scenes, the movies that have become the dominant cultural product of our time turned out to be more chaotic than the proxy conflicts of the Cold War. And often fewer increases.
In addition, cracks opened in disconnected developments. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), once the most stable profitable franchise in the entire history of Hollywood cinema, suddenly stumbled and became one or two. Even as studios catch wind of DC's supposed reboot (a dangerous new cultural epidemic), “superhero fatigue.”
But wait, because I'm getting ahead of myself. Like many late superhero franchise films, I started in the wrong place. So let's get this back to the origin story…
bTo represent the scene. You are the director of a superhero franchise movie. When the studio hired you to great fanfare, they gave you a budget that could buy a million water wells across Somalia. You know, you don't want to brag. But it's a pretty interesting way to remember how important your film is. Once again, you loved movies above all else, so what you did with your life was always important. You grew up idolizing Marty, Francis and Quentin. Mr. Spielberg. At 17 years old you accepted that you shared his destiny. At the age of 19 you decided to call your autobiography My Auteurbiography. At 21, girls have sex with you so they don't tell you another hour about Mulholland Drive. The next morning, all you have to say is, “I think you'll understand structurally, it's a Mobius strip…” and they'll do it again.
At 26, you had just graduated from film school and were eager to establish yourself as a die-hard superhero who was also willing to film fragrance commercials. At 27 years old, you read the phrase “Sundance-to-Spandex Pipeline.” DJ, recently selected his own antidepressants.
At age 31 you made Breakfast Serial, a low-budget satirical film about a restaurant chef who takes advantage of unfavorable TripAdvisor reviews. A mild anniversary hit, it debuted at Sundance, and you appeared before an audience that critics had already called “a slow-burning funeral landscape, as deliberately indigestible as a human femur.” Barry Tiller sent peonies.
And at age 31, you married a model and were formally designated a power couple. Sure, right, paper magazine? To you, it's just noise that won't let you go to work. Still, you bought a $2,000 sore jacket. You started calling watches “watches.”
Then, at age 32, a comic book studio seeks you out. They loved you the same way you always loved them, maybe even your wife. They wanted you to spend your time thinking about it, but they wanted to announce your movie at Comic-Con next week. You told reporters what an honor it was to put a new spin on a character that defined your childhood. (Do they? It doesn't matter. No one can verify it.) The studio said they wanted your uncompromising vision, so you knew you could convince them to go dark and brave. You know you won't get trapped in the machine.
Needle incision. Cut to now. Now, at 36, you're sitting in a trailer an hour before dawn on a shoot in a semi-democracy, and the studio sends you to take advantage of tax credits. You're reading an article in The Hollywood Reporter about how Christopher Nolan has complete creative control over Current, his new film about Nikola Tesla. Before that, you read an article by Yorgos Lanthimos about creating an intensely complex and disturbing story about a power struggle within an unrelated tribe. And you? His film is about a man who grows his extremely strong hair very quickly and turns it into makeshift weapons and life support. It feels very lonely for him, and when he was a child some people killed his parents.
Your movie was supposed to take nine months to shoot, but you've already been working on it for two and a half years. It's in second takes and has more script revisions than Wikipedia. And writers can be overwhelming. The lack of an ending is a shame, but now they're revisiting the beginning. Thematically, he is both for and against the idea of war. You vaguely remember that he once had a weather report. The filming has produced more than 10,000 tons of CO2 (so far).
Ninety-seven days into filming, you developed a nervous vibe, a compulsive buzz that often gets ruined. Or maybe improve them, it's hard to say. The crew liked you; Then they hated you; Then they showed you mercy. His wife now lives with Chris Pine. You want to quit, but if you do, the studio will silently tell the entire industry that you're tough. But today your jailers will let you choose the name of the space parliament which will then be removed from the movie. Wouldn't that be fun?
No, it seems like the obvious answer. Then, as you smile at the premiere, you'll see what else they cut at the last minute. As for the things they added… your movie sucks. A group of vulnerable people (you) were manipulated by studio forces who wanted to use you to advance their own companies. They generated a lot of last-minute production space, random artifacts, and meaningless scenes whose sole purpose was to create and serve characters and plots in many other major films in the universe. You realize that the movie you sold your soul to is some kind of straight man for hire. You've created a $250 million content steward. Marketing will increase that figure to $400 million.
Your studio producers keep telling you that directors who thrive in the franchise era “know what they don't know.” You finally understand that this is a better way of saying that your role is more formal than active. You're always just a frothy sports mascot or a regimental goat. For now, you hide in your trailer and accept your true place in this comic universe. You are the greatest and most important cultural unit that has ever existed. you are a Film director of the superhero franchise..
Or… are you? That's when the real twist hits you. Only then will you understand what is really happening. That's when you realize you're M Night Shyamalan. Suddenly you realize that what you are actually creating is another horror: a story about someone, in the most grotesque way, killing your beloved cinema. And who? It can't be, right? But I can. God, man, you're someone! You killed cinema! You are all together!
Roll credits. And no, you can't remove your name from them.
Franchise October 21, Sky Comedy and Now.
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