Though visual effects have been a part of cinema since the very beginning, it’s only been in the last 3 decades that we’ve seen huge leaps and bounds made thanks to Computer Generated Imagery (CGI), up to the point where anything is possible on film.  It has been an undeniable driving force of change in both how movies look compared to several years ago, as well as what kinds of movies can be made.  We have visual effects to thank for making worlds like Middle Earth and Narnia feel like they actually exist, and for also making extraordinary events here on Earth seem all the more tangible on the big screen.  But, even with all the great things that computers can do for the art of cinema, there is also the risk of having too much of a good thing as well.  While CGI can still impress from time to time, some of the novelty has worn off over the years as techniques have become more or less standardized.  Hollywood sadly seems to value CGI perhaps a bit too much and their over reliance on the medium has unfortunately had the effect of making too many movies look artificial.  The curious result of this is that it’s making movies that use practical effects and subtle CGI look far more epic and visually impressive than the films that use it in abundance.  Part of this is because more of the audience is able to tell the difference between what’s digital and what’s real today than they have before, and two, because we also admire the work put into something hand crafted.  Using CGI for filmaking is not a bad thing at all; it’s just that there has to be a purpose and necessity for it to work.

The sad reality of the last decade or so is that filmmakers have seen CGI as a shortcut in story-telling rather than as an aid.  Back in the early days of CGI, filmmakers were limited by what computers were capable of rendering at the time, so if they had to use them, it needed to be perfect and absolutely crucial.  Now, anything can be rendered realistically, whether it be an animal, a place, or even a person, and it comes very close to looking 100% authentic.  But, even with all these advancements in technology, filmmakers are still learning the best ways to use them, and sometimes quantity trumps quality in many cases.  Usually it’s a decision dictated more by studios and producers who want to save a buck by shooting scenes in front of a green screen instead of on location, but then there are also filmmakers who have indulged too much in CGI effects as well.  Thankfully, there are filmmakers out there who insist on using the tried and true practical effects, but their impact doesn’t extend to the whole community.  As it is with all of filmmaking, it’s all about story in the end, and whether or not the tools that you have are able to serve it in an effective way.   Would you rather watch CGI bring to life a talking raccoon and his tree monster friend, or do you want to watch two hours of CGI animated robots fighting?  It really comes down to what impresses us the most and usually the quality of the movie itself factors into that.  But, despite the quality of the flick and it’s effects, there seems to be a lot of bingeing going on with regards to CGI effects and it makes you wonder if Hollywood is doing a disservice to itself by not diversifying.

It helps to look back at a time when CGI still was a novelty to see where it’s value lies.  Developed in the late 70’s and early 80’s, CGI saw some of it’s earliest and briefest uses in movies like Star Wars (1977).  A few years later, Disney created the movie Tron (1982), which made the use of CGI environments for the first time in film, albeit on a very primitive level.  But, even with Tron‘s limitations, it still showed the promise of what was to come, and it stood out strongly in an industry that still valued practical effects like matte paintings and models.  Soon after, the movie Young Sherlock Holmes (1984) introduced the first integrated CGI effect into a live action film (the stained-glass knight scene) which paved the way for more digital additions in movies.  And then, in 1993, we got the mega-hit Jurassic Park.  Directed by Steven Spielberg, Jurassic Park was the biggest lead forward in CGI that the industry had seen to date, and that’s because more than any other film before it, we saw the true potential of what CGI could create.  Naturally it helped to have someone like Steven Spielberg at the helm, given his comfortable history of using special effects in his movies, but this was on a level unseen before.  Originally, the plan was to use stop motion animation to bring dinosaurs to life in the film, just because it was the standard in Hollywood ever since the brilliant Ray Harryhausen made it popular.  Thankfully, engineers at ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) convinced Spielberg to take the risk and the result brought us Dinosaurs that both looked and moved realistically.  Only CGI could’ve made those creatures move as smoothly as they did, and since then, it has been the go to tool for bringing to life characters and creatures that otherwise could never exist.

But, what is even more remarkable about Jurassic Park‘s legacy is not just the fact that it was a great movie with amazing effects, but it’s also a film that has remarkably held up over time.  It’s unbelievable to think that the movie was made over 20 years ago at a time when CGI was still maturing.  You would think that time would make the movie look dated now, but no; the CGI still holds up.  This is partly due to the filmmakers who busted their butts to make the CGI look perfect, but another reason is also because the CGI animation is not overdone.  In fact, there are actually not that many computer enhanced shots in the entire movie.  Whatever moments there were had help from practical effects that helped to blur the lines between the different shots.  The only times the movie uses CGI is when the dinosaurs’ are shown full body.  When close-ups were needed, the filmmakers would use an animatronic puppet, or sometimes just a movable limb.  It was a way of keeping old tricks useful while still leaving room for the new enhancements, and the result works spectacularly well.  Filmmaker Walt Disney had a philosophy when using special effects in his movies that you could never use the same effects trick twice in a row between shots because it would spoil the illusion.  You can see this idea play out in many of the amazing moments found in Mary Poppins (1964), a groundbreaking film of it’s own.  Like Jurassic Park, Mary Poppins mixes up the effects, helping to trick the eye from shot to shot.  By doing this with the dinosaurs in Park, it made the CGI feel all the more real, because it would match perfectly with the real on set characters.  It’s a balance that redefined visual effects, and sadly has not been replicated that much in the years since.

Jurassic Park has seen it’s share of sequels over the years, with the fourth and latest one, Jurassic World (2015) making it to theaters this week.  And interestingly enough, each one features more and more CGI in them, and fewer practical effects.  Some of them look nice, but why is it that none of these sequels have performed as well as their predecessor?  It’s probably because none of them are as novel as the first one was, but another reason could be that the illusion is less impressive nowadays in a world inundated with CGI.   Somehow a fully rendered CGI T-Rex attacking humans in a digitally shot, color-enhanced image in Jurassic World doesn’t have the same grittiness of a giant puppeteered T-Rex jaw smashing through a glass sun roof on a climate controlled sound-stage in Jurassic Park.  Sometimes it helps to look old-fashioned.  Some of the action may be impressive in Jurassic World, but you won’t get the same visceral reaction from the actors on screen that you got in the original.  The reason why you believed actors like Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum were in real danger is because they were reacting to full-sized recreations of the dinosaurs on stage.   Chris Pratt may be a charming actor, but you feel less concern for his character in the movie when you know that all he’s acting opposite of is probably just a tennis ball on a stick.  The original Jurassic Park made it’s CGI the glue that stitched together all the other effects, and that made the movie feel more complete.  World has the benefit of having the best effects tools available to it, which is better than what The Lost World (1997) and  Jurassic Park III (2001) had, but it still won’t have the same visceral power of the original, and that’s purely because it’s moved so far in one direction from where it started.

Hollywood in general has abandoned many of the old, traditional effects in favor of more CGI.  Some of this has been for the better (does anyone really miss rear-projection?).  But, too much can sometimes even hurt a movie.  This is especially true when filmmakers, even very good ones, become too comfortable with the technique and use it as a shortcut in story-telling.  George Lucas unfortunately became too enamored with the limitless potential of CGI, and used it to an almost absurd level in his Star Wars prequel trilogy.  Yes, it looked pretty, but nearly every shot in the movie was digitally enhanced, and it only worked to highlight the artificiality of every scene as well as distract from the story.  It gets annoying in certain parts where you can obviously tell that the actors are standing in front of a green screen in scenes that could have easily been shot on location.  For Lucas, I’m sure part of the allure of making his movies this way was so that he didn’t have to deal with location shooting problems like climate and extras.  But, what I think he failed to recognize is that part of the appeal of the original Star Wars was the fact that it was imperfect in spots, which made the special effects stand out that much more.  By trying to make everything more glossy, he unfortunately made his world look fake, showing that CGI is not a fix-all for everything in cinema.  And Lucas wasn’t alone in making this misjudgment.  The Lord of the Rings was also another groundbreaking film series in terms of effects, and that was largely because director Peter Jackson applied an all of the above approach to making Middle Earth appear real, including extensive use of models and location shooting.  When he set out to bring The Hobbit to the big screen, Jackson shifted to rely more heavily on CGI.  While it doesn’t ruin the experience as a whole, one can’t help but miss the practical and intricate model work that was passed over this time around in favor of fully-CGI rendered locations. For both cases, more didn’t exactly equal better.

In recent years, it’s actually become more ground-breaking to avoid using CGI in the crafting of a movie.  Some filmmakers like Christopher Nolan are making it part of their style to do as much as they can on set before having to use CGI for the final film.  When you see something like the hallway fight scene in Inception (2010), you’re initial impression will probably be that CGI had to have been used for that moment at some point.  That is until you’re blown away by the fact that nothing had been altered in that shot at all.  It was accomplished with mounted cameras, a hydraulic gimble machine, and some well-trained actors; a low tech feat pioneered years back by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and implemented to the next level by Nolan.  That helps to make the scene feel all the more real on screen because it uses the camera and the set itself to create the illusion.  Doing more on set has really become the way to make something big and epic once again in movies.  We are more impressed nowadays by things that took their time to execute, and if the finished result is big enough, it will hold up against even the most complex of CGI effects.  That’s why we’re seeing a come-back of sorts in recent years with regards to practical effects.  It’s manifesting itself in little, predictable ways like using real stunt cars and pyro explosions in Furious 7 (2015) or in big ways like having Tom Cruise really hang off the side of a plane in midair in the upcoming Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015).  And J.J. Abrams is bringing practical effects back to the Star Wars franchise, which is step in the right direction as well.

Overall, a movie’s special effects are more or less tied to how well they work in service to everything else.  Too much or too little CGI effects can spoil a picture, but not using it at all would also leave a movie in a bad position.  Today, CGI is a necessary tool for practically every movie that makes it to the silver screen, even the smaller ones.  A small indie film like Whiplash (2014) even needed the assistance of CGI when it had to visualize a car accident halfway through the movie.   It all comes down to what the story needs, and nothing really more than that.  Of course, there are boundless things that CGI can bring to life out of someone’s imagination, but sometimes a film is better served by taking the practical way when creating a special effect.  Watch some of the behind the scenes material on the Lord of the Rings DVDs and tell me if it wasn’t better in some cases to use practical effects like models and forced perspective to enhance a scene instead of CGI.  Sure, some creatures like Gollum and Smaug can only be brought to life through a computer, but it’s only after the animators had the guide of on set performances given by actors as talented as Andy Serkis and Benedict Cumberbatch.  Plus, physically transformed actors in make-up come across more believably than their equivalents in CGI form, with exceptions (Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean series).  I’d say restraint is the best practice in using CGI overall.  As Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) says about technology run amok in Jurassic Park, “you were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that you never stopped to think if they should,” and the same truth can apply to how CGI has been used in Hollywood.  It solves some problems, but it can also reduce the effectiveness of a story if mishandled.  We’ve seen a lot of mediocre movies come out with wall to wall CGI effects recently, and much of the wonder that the technology once had has unfortunately worn off.  Hopefully, good judgement on the filmmakers part will help to make visual effects an effective tool in the films of the future.  The best illusions are always from those magicians who have something you never expected or seen up their sleeve.

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.