Films roughly fall into four separate categories.  There are the ones that we love, the ones that leave us conflicted or indifferent, or the ones that just plain suck.  Ninety percent of all movies fall into these three categories, but there’s that last ten percent that make up a whole different category.  These films are the ones that defy all categorization and are mainly there to leave us wondering how in the world they exist at all.  And this is by far the most interesting class of film out there.  We all know what they are; movies that are so bizarre and defy all logical explanation.  You would be led to believe that movies such as these are usually terrible and some of them certainly are, but their awfulness is also what makes them entertaining to audiences.  Sometimes, this fourth class of cinema can even carry more of a devoted following than something that was competently made.  How and why this happens is almost impossible to predict.  Sometimes it’s the discovery of the unusual that drives their popularity and helps to carry their legacy on long after their initial release.  Most cult movies start out as low budget failures and end up finding their audiences through word of mouth, and usually the odder the movie, the more appeal it will have with audiences who are attracted to that sort of entertainment.  Such is the case with something like The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), which opened small, but has continually been running now for 40 years as a staple of midnight screenings across the world.  But Rocky Horror is just one of many movies that have left their mark on cinema and not by being the best made or the most moving, but instead by being the most unexplanable.  And if there is anything that most of these movies have in common, it’s that they came from the minds of ambitious yet eccentric people.

Probably the most notorious creation in recent years from a truly unusual mind would be 2003’s The Room; one of the most bizarre movies that has ever been made.  The Room is a movie that really defies all reasonable explanation.  On the surface, it doesn’t seem like much; just a small budget drama about selfish people falling in and out of relationships within the backdrop of San Francisco.  But what makes the movie notorious is the fact that every film-making choice, whether it’s the editing, the music, or the staging, is absolutely wrong.  Scenes exist for no purpose (like the famous flower shop scene), characters pop-up out of nowhere with no context or set-up, and the dialogue is completely tone deaf (“I got the results of the test back.  I definitely have breast cancer.”)  Normally you would think that a mess of a movie like this would make the film forgettable, and yet the sum of all these bizarre film-making choices makes The Room one of the most unintentionally funny movies ever made.  It’s especially entertaining to watch this movie with a full audience, just to hear peoples’ reactions to what they’re watching.  This is why The Room has now become one of the most popular cult hits of the last decade.  Anybody could have made a bad movie, but it had to take a very special, twisted mind to have made something as hilariously inept as The Room, and that special person was writer, director, and star Tommy Wiseau.  Tommy was a struggling actor with no film-making expertise.  Yet, he had endless ambition and The Room was his pet project from start to finish.  I think that part of the reason The Room succeeds where other bad movies fail, is that no one stood in Tommy Wiseau’s way and made him second guess himself, leading to a finished product that thinks it’s a movie but really ends up becoming a fascinating enigma.

With films that come from unchecked egos like Tommy Wiseau’s, we are able to get a fairly good insight into the mind of a director and how they view the world and tell it’s story.  Film-making is a trade based mostly around compromise, but the more you strip away outside influences, like studio heads and focus groups, you begin to see stories told on a more personal level, especially when the director has full control.  There are many different kinds of directors, but the most celebrated are the ones who have completely control over their voice and their style.  Usually, these types of directors write their own scripts and do their own editing, and in some more extreme cases (like Steven Soderbergh or Robert Rodriguez) do their own camera work and scoring.  For many of these celebrated directors, it usually takes many years to refine their craft, whether it be by apprenticing on film sets or attending film schools.  But, with the democratizing of media and the wider availability of film-making tools, we are seeing more people today taking it upon themselves to create their own movies, whether they have the know how to do so or not.  Sometimes you have people who have natural talent as filmmakers, and then you have people like Tommy Wiseau, who are ambitious amateurs in the most extreme sense.  The charm that comes from Wiseau’s folly is the fact that he put so much money and effort into the movie, spending his own fortune buying camera equipment and renting studio space, without ever trying to learn the language of film.  People might see that as lazy, but there is something endearing about Wiseau’s desire to create, even if he’s not the most qualified to do so.

Tommy Wiseau isn’t alone in this field, because he does come from a long line of failed filmmakers with vision but no skill.  The B-movie craze of the 50’s and 60’s was an especially strong time for amateur filmmakers.  Many would prove to be forgettable, but some had such unusual visions, that even their failures have withstood the test of time.  One such director was Edward D. Wood Jr., who’s responsible for making what many consider to be among the worst movies ever made.  His notorious filmmography includes bizarre movies like the cross-dressing comedy Glen or Glenda (1953), the schlocky Bride of the Monster (1955), or his magnum opus Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), each one crazier than the last.  Critics of course decried the amateurishness of Wood’s films, but audiences who rediscovered the movies years later found his flicks to be peculiar little oddities that carried their own charm.  They are horrible, of course, but almost to the level that they stand out from all other movies of their kind.  Like Tommy Wiseau, Ed Wood was driven by the sensation of creating a movie, and his ambition was unchecked by the limitations of his skills as a filmmaker.  In a sense, the reason why we enjoy Ed Wood movies is because there’s no pretentiousness to them.  They are what they are and in the end we only see the zaniness of Wood’s vision.  Director Tim Burton perfectly captures this creative drive from Ed Wood in his 1994 biographical film about the director.  That movie helped to craft the image of Ed Wood as a hero for any aspiring filmmaker hoping to fulfill their dreams, while also warning them to refine their skills and avoid Wood’s mistakes.  But, at the same time, you also needed a filmmaker with a twisted mind like Burton to tell the story of someone like Ed Wood and stay true to his spirit.

A directors’ vision ultimately determines whether or not a film can connect with it’s audience.  The reason why Wiseau and Wood are celebrated even despite their faults is because their movies are unforgettable.  Yes, part of why they leave an impression is because we marvel at just how bad they are, but even still that’s something that can ultimately keep a movie alive for generations.  The movies that usually fail in the long run are the ones that are bad and forgettable.  Even with all the cinematic tools at their disposal, Hollywood filmmakers can still create some truly horrible films that burn out just as quickly as they are made.  Case in point, Roland Emmerich; a man who’s become synonymous with big budget disaster flicks like The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and 2012 (2009).  His movies are almost always mired in ham-fisted sermonizing about politics and the environment along with high-quality visual effects that ultimately all just looks the same in the end.  They lose their punch quickly and end up being more laboured than fun.  Contrast this with the movie Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010), directed by former tech salesman James Nguyen, which has the same sermonizing but with far more amateurish visual effects and storytelling.  Emmerich’s films fall by the wayside while Birdemic has since achieved cult status.  But, why is that?  It seems to be the fact that Emmerich’s movies try too hard to connect with it’s audience, while Birdemic just doesn’t even try.  It’s the movie that James Nguyen wanted to make, regardless if he was qualified to do so.  Like Wood and Wiseau, Nguyen’s vision is on display and it’s charmingly naive.  And that’s what ultimately makes Emmerich’s movies fall short; the lack of charm and the insistence that it be taken seriously.

But, even though most strange movies come from amateurish filmmakers, it doesn’t mean that it’s always the case.  Even some of cinema’s greatest minds have found themselves in the middle of creating some truly bizarre movies, and all with the backing of the studios as well.  Who would’ve thought that someone as skilled as Stanley Kubrick could have made something as out of this world and undefinable as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or take a radioactive lightning rod of a novel like A Clockwork Orange and make it into a work of art; but he did just that.  A director’s vision can ultimately take on any form, even in the realm of the bizarre.  The 1970’s was a particularly big period for oddball films, and many button-pushing filmmakers made a name for themselves in these years, like Ken Russell with his gonzo condemnation of religion in The Devils (1971), John Boorman with his oddball sci-fantasy Zardoz (1974),  or the many art house, free form pictures made by Andy Warhol.   But, even interesting cinematic experiments can come from great artists who cross into a point of insanity when creating a high profile movie.  Such a thing happened to Francis Ford Coppola, who had to be dragged away from the set of Apocalypse Now (1979) because he wouldn’t stop filming, and was desperately trying to make sense of a project that was driving him crazy.  Martin Scorsese likewise made Taxi Driver (1976) in a haze of delirium, fueled by his then addiction to cocaine.  Luckily for both men, those crazed states helped them create long lasting works of cinematic art, but it’s not without consequences.  Hollywood let these big projects go too far many times and ultimately had to pull the plug when director’s egos got out of hand, which is what happened to Michael Cimino and his mess of a movie known as Heaven’s Gate (1980).

Whether strange and twisted movies happen by mistake, or by design, it is ultimately up to the audience to decide.  Usually it isn’t just the movie itself that builds the legend around it, but rather the story behind it’s making.  We are fascinated just as much about the creators as we are about the creations and by watching the movies themselves, we get to see just a little bit of the madness that drives them.  That madness is what we ultimately find fascinating.  Tim Burton’s Ed Wood found the story of a dreamer who wanted to tell stories in unusual ways in the background of it’s subject, and that helps us modern viewers see movies like Plan 9 in a whole new way.  The same is holding true for The Room, which itself is gearing up to have it’s creation chronicled in an upcoming comedy starring James Franco as Tommy Wiseau.  That’s a true indication of how fascinated we’ve become with these strange, oddball films.  Even great filmmakers with complete and competent visions can develop a cult status by taking some very unorthodox routes and become legendary as a result.  There are stories within stories of the origins of these movies, especially when you study the  strange and sometimes dangerous film-making techniques of directors like Stanley Kubrick or Werner Herzog.

But, the things that really set these movies apart is that they defy explanation.  Their existence is so baffling that it makes each of them a minor miracle, which in turn leads them to be celebrated.  They are even more special if they are rediscovered many years later and completely out of the blue, like Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) or Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964).   These are the Outliers of cinema and they ultimately reinforce the power that the medium can have.  By embracing the bizarre, we can see the limitless potential of cinema, and how no vision is too strange.  Even if talent behind the camera exceeds the likes of Tommy Wiseau, he still managed to do what most filmmakers have always dreamed of doing and that’s to have their movie be seen by audiences around the world.  Of course, part of The Room’s success is because we watch just to laugh at it, but still that makes it more entertaining than most of the junk that Hollywood usually puts out. In the end, it helps to be the oddball in an artistic world.  That’s why we hang paintings of a Campbell’s soup can in the same gallery as a Rembrandt or play a Beatles song in the Royal Albert Hall in London.  We gravitate to what entertains us, and it’s just fine if it’s from the mind of a spirited yet not completely normal creative mind.  And sometimes the crazier the mind is, the more unique the end result will be.

As discussed in my review of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Marvel has enjoyed unprecedented success with their cinematic universe.  However, it took many years and a lot of conviction to make it happen.  Up until the start of Marvel’s master plan, there was no connected universes when it came to Super Hero movies.  Every comic book adaptation stayed within it’s own cinematic worlds, with the main hero being the sole focus.  But, that all changed when the post-credits scene appeared at the conclusion of Iron Man (2008).  For those who waited patiently for through the end credits of the film, they were treated to a groundbreaking moment when Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) walked into his palatial mansion and found Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) waiting in his living room.  This was a surprise to audiences, because not only did it introduce another major character from the Marvel comics, but it also established the idea that Iron Man’s story was not only going to continue in his own movies, but also in something much bigger.  As Nick Fury puts it in the movie “you’ve become a part of a bigger universe, you just don’t know it yet.”  And with that promise, Marvel did expand on that bigger universe, establishing even more new characters and having every story-line come to a head in the first and monumental The Avengers (2012).  The momentum continued on in each superhero story thereafter, creating a cinematic universe that has become the envy of all of Hollywood.  Because of Marvel’s success with their cinematic universe, now many other studios are trying their hand at building their own, making it the newest trend in the film-making industry.  Unfortunately, not all the best laid plans by these other studios has worked as well as Marvel’s.

What Marvel has at it’s disposal are decades worth of story-lines on which to draw from within the comics themselves.  Thankfully most of them have shown how to cross over characters many times, giving the current film adaptations a workable blueprint to adapt from.  But, even still, part of Marvel Studio’s success has been in the casting of the right actors, and keeping them committed to the process over multiple movies.  This is especially difficult for some of the side characters in these Marvel movies, like Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), both of whom have not headlined their own movie, and yet have big parts to play in the larger cinematic universe.  Getting commitments from these actors and having them see the larger picture is important to the process and so far, Marvel has kept it’s team mostly intact (only The Hulk and War Machine needed to be recast, and Marvel handled those transitions splendidly).  Being able to know the ultimate destination is also important.  For Marvel, the plan has always been to lead up to the Infinity War, which is currently where Phase 3 of their cinematic universe is meant to conclude.  The Infinity War story-line involves supervillain Thanos (voiced by Josh Brolin) collecting the all powerful Infinity Stones and placing them on his gauntlet, which ultimately grants him God-like powers and makes him a threat to the whole of Marvel’s cinematic universe.  So far, this has been built up in the movies by establishing each Infinity Stone within the story-lines of select Marvel films, showing that the studio is clearly keeping the endgame in focus and using the stones as a way to tie everything together.

But, commitment has it’s own risks too.  For one thing, with all this build up, Marvel’s two-part Infinity War had better live up to the hype.  Otherwise, all this build-up would seem pointless in the end.  As grandiose as it might be, Marvel could easily fall under the weight of it’s own mythology, and alienate much of the audience by choosing to stick to the larger plan in detriment to the entertainment value of the whole enterprise.  A little bit of that hampered Age of Ultron, but the movie itself managed to survive thanks to clever writing and charismatic performances, which helped guide audiences through the convoluted plotting.  But, in less capable hands, the overwhelming weight of the cinematic universe could prove overwhelming.  Not only must each Avengers movie carry it’s own story, but all the continuing narratives of each individual character as well.  And you have to fit that all in a tight 2 1/2 hour package.  In that sense, it’s amazing that Age of Ultron didn’t turn into an incomprehensible mess as a result.  It’s not as neatly plotted as the first Avengers, but it still got the job done and was entertaining in the end.  In fact, it’s amazing how long Marvel has kept this train going without loosing momentum.  I think that the big reason for this is because Marvel puts just as much emphasis on the individual story-lines as it does on the big picture.  The standalone movies are just as good as the crossovers, and maybe even better.  You could even do a standalone universe with just the Guardians of the Galaxy  (2014) setting alone.  And that really has been the key to Marvel’s success.  Every team member has their own story to tell, and Marvel is committed to telling them all.

Though Marvel has established new ground with their Cinematic Universe, it’s not exactly the first time that Hollywood has tried to do this either.  In fact, crossovers have been common in film-making for many decades before, albeit on a much smaller scale.  Began with matinee serials during the early days of Hollywood, which themselves were inspired by comics of the day, the idea of having some of literature and cinemas most famous characters interact together has always been an appealing concept.  Sometimes crossovers could happen in the unlikeliest places.  Weirdly enough Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein (1948) could be seen as an early precursor to modern crossover movies, because despite being a screwball comedy, it did feature horror icons Lon Chaney Jr. (The Wolfman) and Bela Lugosi (Dracula) playing their individual characters once again, knowingly referencing their past films.  Crossovers were also a popular concept for television for many years (remember when The Jetsons crossed paths with the Flintsones).  But, it wouldn’t be until the rise of New Hollywood in the sixties and seventies that we saw the idea of telling stories set in an interconnected universe emerge.  Planet of the Apes almost discovered this idea by accident, as parent studio Fox tried to stretch the original premise of their franchise out in order to get more sequels made. With the movie Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), the story reveals that apes Cornelius and Zira (Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter) escaped their planet before it’s destruction in the previous film and landed on present day Earth.  There, Zira gives birth to a son named Ceasar (also McDowall), who leads the Ape Rebellion and creates the titular Planet of the Apes.  By stretching this premise, Fox managed to change the franchise and showed that you could break from the main story-line and film any plot you wanted in this established cinematic universe.  This concept has continued on in the current Planet of the Apes movies, which are far removed from the movies that started the franchise.

But, if there was a franchise that really began to define the idea of larger cinematic universes, both literally and figuratively, it would be Star Wars.  When Star Wars was released in 1977, it was a phenomenon unlike anything Hollywood had ever seen.  But, it was just the beginning of the story that creator George Lucas wanted to tell.  The story continued with two equally popular sequels, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), but even with the trilogy complete, it still didn’t even scratch the surface of the story that George Lucas had envisioned.  The reason why Star Wars has become such a massive universe on it’s own is because Lucas plotted out the whole mythology of his universe before ever writing his first script.  His back-stories for the characters and the worlds of Star Wars are incredibly detailed (almost Tolkein-like in their intricacy) and could fill the narratives of their own movies, which is in fact what George Lucas did eventually do.  He took the notes that he made for the original trilogy and crafted what would become the prequel trilogy.  Unfortunately his grand vision far exceeded his talents as a writer and director, and the prequels didn’t nearly succeed as well as the original trilogy did.  But, the vision of this galaxy far, far away still has inspired fans across the world, and Star Wars lives on even beyond what George Lucas planned for it.  With the acquisition by Disney a couple years ago, Star Wars is now entering a new phase where it actually will be able to live up to the promise that the original trilogy held for audiences.  They will continue the main story-line this Winter with the release of Episode VII: The Force Awakens, but there are also standalone movies also planned, which will gives audiences the chance to see more of what the cinematic universe that Star Wars can be, un-teathered to what George Lucas had imagined.  What Lucas created was other-worldly, but the potential of a Star Wars cinematic universe that could be set anywhere and be about anyone is boundlessly exciting.

For the most part, building cinematic universes can be a costly but still a rewarding enterprise for most filmmakers.  That’s why so many studios are trying to follow Marvel’s lead and do the same with some of their prized characters and franchises.  But, while some seem like natural bases for larger cinematic universes, others are a bit more puzzling.  For one thing, does anyone think that a cinematic universe could work for Ghostbusters.  Sony Pictures plans to take their Ghostbusters brand and build it into a interconnected universe inhabited by different teams of Ghostbuster troops.  This started with the announcement of an all female Ghostbusters remake last year, which led to an unhappy fan-base reaction, saying they felt that it was changing too much of their beloved franchise in order to appeal to a whole different demographic.  In order to appease those fears from fans, Sony revealed that this planned movie was not a reboot or a remake, but rather one in a new cinematic universe that they were planning, which itself became a controversial position.  It’s not a question of whether it should be done, but rather one of if it can be done.   Sure, you could take the Ghostbusters brand and build a whole mythology and universe around it, but is it something that Sony has enough ideas for?   Sony is going to have to build it all from scratch, which could prove challenging.  Marvel rivel DC comics has the benefit of having all their comics to draw from as they begin their own push for a cinematic universe.  Unfortunately, they do this in the shadow of what Marvel has accomplished, and the danger for them is that they’re plans are all based around playing catch up, which could hurt the momentum of what they ultimately want to get to.  Also, building on a shaky foundation could also hurt DC.  Man of Steel was not a widely beloved film (though I didn’t seem to mind it as much), and that negativity could cloud the rest of the universe as a whole.  Time will tell if DC can compete with Marvel’s cinematic universe.  My fears are less with the quality of the films (which to me look just fine) and more with whether or not DC has the right master plan in place.

DC’s Cinematic Universe could certainly learn a thing or two from the disastrous attempt at a Spiderman universe from Sony.  When Disney acquired Marvel, they made an effort to gather all the properties and characters they could in order to make the plan for a cinematic universe work.  Unfortunately, for years Marvel had signed licenses over to other studios, all of whom were content to keep making their own features outside of Disney and Marvel’s control.  Sony held onto the rights for one of Marvel’s biggest names, Spider-Man, and defiantly refused to let him play a part in Marvel’s planned Cinematic Universe.  This became an issue once they made the decision to abandon the story-line of the original, Sam Raimi directed Spider-Man’s and instead reboot the series as a whole from scratch with a new cast and new story-line, just as an excuse to keep the character away from Disney.  After seeing the success that Marvel Studios had with their Cinematic Universe, Sony thought they could do the same with Spider-Man, and plans were set out not just for more sequels to their re-titled The Amazing Spiderman series, but also spin-offs planned around the popular Venom character and a team-up film based around Spider-Man villains called Sinister Six.  However, The Amazing Spiderman (2012) opened to modest box-office and mixed reviews.  The even more ambitious Amazing Spiderman 2 (2014) fared even worse.  The big problem with the planned Spiderman universe was that it tried too hard to match Marvel.  There was more thought put into planting the seeds of a larger universe than actually crafting a compelling story, with way too many characters introduced that have no impact in the film, but were meant for bigger things to come.  That’s ultimately what sunk the Spiderman universe at Sony and now the character has finally returned back to Marvel, where he will again be rebooted, only now connected to the Cinematic Universe.  What Sony’s failed experiment proved was that you shouldn’t craft a cinematic universe just for the sake of having it.  Sony served up an under-prepared buffet platter, while Marvel has given us a three course meal with everything cooked to perfection.

Planning out a cinematic universe is the key in the end.  Marvel knew that with the first meeting between Iron Man and Nick Fury, and we are now seeing that potential realized to incredible lengths with each progression in the larger narrative.  But, what makes Marvel’s Cinematic Universe stand out so well is not the high points where the different characters team-up in the Avengers.  It’s the individual stories in each phase that really makes the Cinematic Universe so special.  Audiences are enjoying the progression of Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor’s story-lines just as much as they do the Avengers narratives; perhaps even more so now.  That’s where Marvel’s success has come from and where other like-minded cinematic universes have failed.  It’s not where the Universe is going that audience find so intriguing; it’s where it’s at now and how these moments all tie together that we find so interesting.  Yeah, of course audiences get excited when they get a brief glimpse of Thanos on his throne near the film’s end, or a passing mention of a future member of the team (like the brief mention of Doctor Strange in Captain America: The Winter Soldier), but these are only treats presented to us after watching a satisfying, standalone story.  That’s often why these teases appear at the end of the movie, and not within the plots themselves; so that each movie can stand on it’s own.  That’s why Sony failed with Spider-Man, because you can’t fill your entire movie with teases for the future and have characters with no purpose (like with the horrible shoehorning of The Rhino).  My hope is that the potential that we’re seeing in the emerging Cinematic Universes from other studios pays off, and that they understand the key factors of how to build these universes the right way.  Because, when you’ve established a cinematic universe that lives up to it’s potential, than there’s no limit to the stories that can be told.