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shadowkatWell, I got a release date finally for the Fantastic Four movie, courtesy of Vulture (in New York Magazine).
Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four: First Steps (set to release, respectively, May 2 and July 25).
About the shooting of it? LOL! They had to do reshoots, because Ford's character (a villain) bore too close a resemblance to well...the thing in the White House.
According to a technical crew member on Captain America: Brave New World who was present on set and has knowledge of the film’s postproduction process, Disney is all too aware of its potential liabilities — on the heels of disastrous test screenings last year that necessitated a lengthy 22 days of reshoots, the 11th-hour addition of a new supervillain played by Giancarlo Esposito, major sequences being cut, and the film’s release date being punted from February last year. In particular, Harrison Ford’s Red Hulk/Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross character created uncomfortable political resonances. A demagogic military leader who transforms into a rampaging, orange-skinned superhuman, the character shares certain unmistakable traits with Donald Trump. To be sure, the reshoots took place last summer, long before the 45th president was certain of becoming POTUS 47. But in recognition of what one insider calls an increasingly “politicized” environment, Disney changed the sequel’s original title from Captain America: New World Order to the comparatively anodyne Brave New World. (Indeed, in July, the studio altered a theatrical trailer featuring footage of an assassination attempt on the Ross character out of sensitivity around a deadly attempt on Trump’s life earlier the same month.)
Moreover, this source (who has worked on several Marvel television and film projects and spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to comment publicly) described a high degree of difficulty on the reshoots and action set pieces that ran up the budget. Compounding matters, Ford (now 82) lived up to his reputation as a legendary curmudgeon on set, according to the source, making matters more difficult for Onah — an acclaimed independent filmmaker but one, like so many hired by Marvel, with zero experience directing within the trappings of a nine-figure budget. Marvel and Onah declined to comment; a representative for Ford did not respond to Vulture’s request for comment. A source close to the production said there is “no truth” to allegations that Ford’s behavior was unusually challenging.
And well...here's the skinny from the individual who did the reshoots on Brave New World - which was a headache and a half to shoot.
I worked on the reshoots. I think everyone on the crew knew this is probably not going to be a good film. Some of the action sequences were not believable. We had a lot of frustrations on set. After principal photography was finished, it was like, “Oh, we’re going to introduce the leader of the Serpent Society.” It was on, then it was off, then it was on again. That’s very expensive to do. My co-workers who spent more time on Brave New World than I did said, “Yeah, this has been a really rough production.”
When the studio had its test in front of an audience, it didn’t respond. Maybe they don’t want to see anything political in an election year? Maybe they were divided on who they were voting for? General Ross reads as an allusion to Trump. He’s this very powerful general who becomes kind of a fascist and turns into a raging Red Hulk. This is my opinion, but I think Disney was realizing, Hey, we’ve been bleeding for a while. Let’s try not to piss off our core base any more than we have been over the last couple of years. They know you’re going to lose a lot of your audience that way.
People are conspiracy theorists. Some people think the original title New World Order means “Jews run the world” — and now there’s a war going on. It’s like, all these things that were not predicted [when Cap 4 was given the production green-light] were coming to fruition: Trump, the war in Gaza, the tension in America right now.
Harrison Ford was one of the crankiest performers I ever dealt with. Which was sad. I’m a fan. But he was very much a diva. I don’t know if you remember, but he got in a plane crash. He couldn’t even raise his left arm above his chest. We have to suit up 80-something Harrison Ford in these motion-capture dots. To me, it seemed like he hated it and didn’t want to do it. And when Harrison was done, he was done. Everyone was trying to scramble to make him happy. That made for a very awkward work environment.
Reshoots are a part of making any movie like this with a big budget. But this isn’t Marvel’s first rodeo. Entire sequences we shot won’t make it into the film, and that’s very expensive. I’m not going to say the director was not equipped to handle that production. Basically, dealing with A-list egos was the issue. It was mainly just Harrison Ford. So that was a little disappointing. At the end of the day, it was the most tense Marvel shoot I’ve ever worked on. Everyone kind of felt their buttholes tightening a little bit. It’s like, Ugh.
And apparently The New York Reviewer did not like Captain America: Brave New World.
You’re not Steve Rogers,” snarls newly elected President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) to our newly anointed Captain America, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), during a particularly dramatic moment in Captain America: Brave New World. The line is meant to really cut deep. Sam worries that he won’t measure up to the legacy of Rogers, the former Captain America. One assumes that all this pro-forma emotional blather about our hero’s fear of inadequacy came with the initial script, but it also wouldn’t be shocking to learn that it was added later, as a way of acknowledging that the new film itself lives — and wilts — in the shadow of its mostly beloved forebears. “Steve gave them something to believe in,” Sam is told. “You give them something to aspire to.” Brave New World, alas, is not a movie anybody would aspire to make, at least in its current condition.
This is technically the fourth Captain America movie, and the first starring Mackie (a very good actor and a standout in previous entries such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Ant-Man). Sam Wilson has inherited the mantle (and the shield) from Chris Evans’s Rogers after he bowed out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Avengers: Endgame. (Evans himself did come back in Deadpool and Wolverine, because nothing in these movies ever stays gone.) Sam was, of course, Steve’s pal Falcon in previous films, and he was also one of the heroes of the Marvel television series Falcon and the Winter Soldier, alongside Steve’s other best bud, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). Sam might be the new Captain, but he’s refused to take the special serum that turned the once-scrawny Brooklyn boy Rogers into a beefy, brawny super-soldier, which just adds to the impostor syndrome. Luckily, future congressman Bucky Barnes himself (long story, probably) is there to buck our guy up: “He gave you that shield not because you’re the strongest, but because you’re you,” he tells Sam. (Don’t worry: As is traditional, the phony sincerity is then undercut with a lame joke. “Did your speechwriters help you with that?” Sam asks Bucky.)
The notion of the self-doubting hero is nothing new. Still, it might have been interesting to pursue, had it been handled here with anything resembling wit, or intelligence, or depth. It would have certainly made a compelling role for Mackie, an actor who has proven his ability to convey tension and inner turmoil. But amazingly, he’s been left in the lurch by his own movie. The script pays lip service to Sam’s anxieties, but does little to explore or dramatize them. It also skims over another potentially interesting moral dilemma, in Sam’s decision to do business with Ross, the obsessive general who spent a lifetime pursuing the Hulk and another lifetime trying to pound the Avengers into submission. (The character was played by the late William Hurt beginning with 2008’s Edward Norton-starring The Incredible Hulk, an underperforming entry that seemed to have been jettisoned from the MCU cosmos but which powers a startling number of callbacks here. Like I said: Nothing stays gone in this universe.)
“I know Ross will never change, but he is the president,” Sam tells Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), an aging Black vet whom we learn was “the Forgotten Captain America”: Bradley fought in the Korean War and was injected with the super-soldier serum; he was also imprisoned and experimented upon by the U.S. government. Understandably, he can’t quite grasp why Captain America is now making common cause with Ross, a man who has done some monstrous things in his career as a Marvel nemesis, including (as the film reminds us) blowing away much of Harlem in his quest for the Hulk. Again, characters sidling up to their former enemies is nothing new in these movies (hell, Bucky Barnes used to be a villain, too), and interesting stuff could be done with the question of aligning oneself with institutional power. At their best, superhero stories can make solid vessels to explore such ideas. But dear god, not like this — not with such shallowness and obsequiousness. It’s hard not to feel like this whole idiotic subplot is a little nod from the honchos at Marvel and Disney about their own willingness to suck up to certain real-life recently-elected presidents. Ideas stop being ideas when they become excuses.
Even at the level of base genre pleasures, Brave New World feels more obligatory than exciting. It seems hard to remember now, but once upon a time these Marvel movies staged action in fast, funny, creative ways, utilizing cutting-edge visual effects to realize their superheroes’ unique abilities. Nowadays, more often than not, we get dull, derivative drudgery — a symptom perhaps of familiarity (there have been 35 of these movies so far) but also an overwhelming sense of box-checking that’s settled in over the past few years. Is it that they’ve all just done every move, every kick, every punch, every launch to death? Last year, Deadpool v. Wolverine provided Marvel with a much-needed mega-hit, but even that felt like a knowing nod to the fact that the studio had run out of ideas. That film succeeded by poking fun at its very existence. So, uh, what do the other films do now?
Admittedly New York is ever so slightly pretentious in its tastes, so I'd take it with a grain of salt.
Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four: First Steps (set to release, respectively, May 2 and July 25).
About the shooting of it? LOL! They had to do reshoots, because Ford's character (a villain) bore too close a resemblance to well...the thing in the White House.
According to a technical crew member on Captain America: Brave New World who was present on set and has knowledge of the film’s postproduction process, Disney is all too aware of its potential liabilities — on the heels of disastrous test screenings last year that necessitated a lengthy 22 days of reshoots, the 11th-hour addition of a new supervillain played by Giancarlo Esposito, major sequences being cut, and the film’s release date being punted from February last year. In particular, Harrison Ford’s Red Hulk/Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross character created uncomfortable political resonances. A demagogic military leader who transforms into a rampaging, orange-skinned superhuman, the character shares certain unmistakable traits with Donald Trump. To be sure, the reshoots took place last summer, long before the 45th president was certain of becoming POTUS 47. But in recognition of what one insider calls an increasingly “politicized” environment, Disney changed the sequel’s original title from Captain America: New World Order to the comparatively anodyne Brave New World. (Indeed, in July, the studio altered a theatrical trailer featuring footage of an assassination attempt on the Ross character out of sensitivity around a deadly attempt on Trump’s life earlier the same month.)
Moreover, this source (who has worked on several Marvel television and film projects and spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to comment publicly) described a high degree of difficulty on the reshoots and action set pieces that ran up the budget. Compounding matters, Ford (now 82) lived up to his reputation as a legendary curmudgeon on set, according to the source, making matters more difficult for Onah — an acclaimed independent filmmaker but one, like so many hired by Marvel, with zero experience directing within the trappings of a nine-figure budget. Marvel and Onah declined to comment; a representative for Ford did not respond to Vulture’s request for comment. A source close to the production said there is “no truth” to allegations that Ford’s behavior was unusually challenging.
And well...here's the skinny from the individual who did the reshoots on Brave New World - which was a headache and a half to shoot.
I worked on the reshoots. I think everyone on the crew knew this is probably not going to be a good film. Some of the action sequences were not believable. We had a lot of frustrations on set. After principal photography was finished, it was like, “Oh, we’re going to introduce the leader of the Serpent Society.” It was on, then it was off, then it was on again. That’s very expensive to do. My co-workers who spent more time on Brave New World than I did said, “Yeah, this has been a really rough production.”
When the studio had its test in front of an audience, it didn’t respond. Maybe they don’t want to see anything political in an election year? Maybe they were divided on who they were voting for? General Ross reads as an allusion to Trump. He’s this very powerful general who becomes kind of a fascist and turns into a raging Red Hulk. This is my opinion, but I think Disney was realizing, Hey, we’ve been bleeding for a while. Let’s try not to piss off our core base any more than we have been over the last couple of years. They know you’re going to lose a lot of your audience that way.
People are conspiracy theorists. Some people think the original title New World Order means “Jews run the world” — and now there’s a war going on. It’s like, all these things that were not predicted [when Cap 4 was given the production green-light] were coming to fruition: Trump, the war in Gaza, the tension in America right now.
Harrison Ford was one of the crankiest performers I ever dealt with. Which was sad. I’m a fan. But he was very much a diva. I don’t know if you remember, but he got in a plane crash. He couldn’t even raise his left arm above his chest. We have to suit up 80-something Harrison Ford in these motion-capture dots. To me, it seemed like he hated it and didn’t want to do it. And when Harrison was done, he was done. Everyone was trying to scramble to make him happy. That made for a very awkward work environment.
Reshoots are a part of making any movie like this with a big budget. But this isn’t Marvel’s first rodeo. Entire sequences we shot won’t make it into the film, and that’s very expensive. I’m not going to say the director was not equipped to handle that production. Basically, dealing with A-list egos was the issue. It was mainly just Harrison Ford. So that was a little disappointing. At the end of the day, it was the most tense Marvel shoot I’ve ever worked on. Everyone kind of felt their buttholes tightening a little bit. It’s like, Ugh.
And apparently The New York Reviewer did not like Captain America: Brave New World.
You’re not Steve Rogers,” snarls newly elected President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) to our newly anointed Captain America, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), during a particularly dramatic moment in Captain America: Brave New World. The line is meant to really cut deep. Sam worries that he won’t measure up to the legacy of Rogers, the former Captain America. One assumes that all this pro-forma emotional blather about our hero’s fear of inadequacy came with the initial script, but it also wouldn’t be shocking to learn that it was added later, as a way of acknowledging that the new film itself lives — and wilts — in the shadow of its mostly beloved forebears. “Steve gave them something to believe in,” Sam is told. “You give them something to aspire to.” Brave New World, alas, is not a movie anybody would aspire to make, at least in its current condition.
This is technically the fourth Captain America movie, and the first starring Mackie (a very good actor and a standout in previous entries such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Ant-Man). Sam Wilson has inherited the mantle (and the shield) from Chris Evans’s Rogers after he bowed out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Avengers: Endgame. (Evans himself did come back in Deadpool and Wolverine, because nothing in these movies ever stays gone.) Sam was, of course, Steve’s pal Falcon in previous films, and he was also one of the heroes of the Marvel television series Falcon and the Winter Soldier, alongside Steve’s other best bud, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). Sam might be the new Captain, but he’s refused to take the special serum that turned the once-scrawny Brooklyn boy Rogers into a beefy, brawny super-soldier, which just adds to the impostor syndrome. Luckily, future congressman Bucky Barnes himself (long story, probably) is there to buck our guy up: “He gave you that shield not because you’re the strongest, but because you’re you,” he tells Sam. (Don’t worry: As is traditional, the phony sincerity is then undercut with a lame joke. “Did your speechwriters help you with that?” Sam asks Bucky.)
The notion of the self-doubting hero is nothing new. Still, it might have been interesting to pursue, had it been handled here with anything resembling wit, or intelligence, or depth. It would have certainly made a compelling role for Mackie, an actor who has proven his ability to convey tension and inner turmoil. But amazingly, he’s been left in the lurch by his own movie. The script pays lip service to Sam’s anxieties, but does little to explore or dramatize them. It also skims over another potentially interesting moral dilemma, in Sam’s decision to do business with Ross, the obsessive general who spent a lifetime pursuing the Hulk and another lifetime trying to pound the Avengers into submission. (The character was played by the late William Hurt beginning with 2008’s Edward Norton-starring The Incredible Hulk, an underperforming entry that seemed to have been jettisoned from the MCU cosmos but which powers a startling number of callbacks here. Like I said: Nothing stays gone in this universe.)
“I know Ross will never change, but he is the president,” Sam tells Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), an aging Black vet whom we learn was “the Forgotten Captain America”: Bradley fought in the Korean War and was injected with the super-soldier serum; he was also imprisoned and experimented upon by the U.S. government. Understandably, he can’t quite grasp why Captain America is now making common cause with Ross, a man who has done some monstrous things in his career as a Marvel nemesis, including (as the film reminds us) blowing away much of Harlem in his quest for the Hulk. Again, characters sidling up to their former enemies is nothing new in these movies (hell, Bucky Barnes used to be a villain, too), and interesting stuff could be done with the question of aligning oneself with institutional power. At their best, superhero stories can make solid vessels to explore such ideas. But dear god, not like this — not with such shallowness and obsequiousness. It’s hard not to feel like this whole idiotic subplot is a little nod from the honchos at Marvel and Disney about their own willingness to suck up to certain real-life recently-elected presidents. Ideas stop being ideas when they become excuses.
Even at the level of base genre pleasures, Brave New World feels more obligatory than exciting. It seems hard to remember now, but once upon a time these Marvel movies staged action in fast, funny, creative ways, utilizing cutting-edge visual effects to realize their superheroes’ unique abilities. Nowadays, more often than not, we get dull, derivative drudgery — a symptom perhaps of familiarity (there have been 35 of these movies so far) but also an overwhelming sense of box-checking that’s settled in over the past few years. Is it that they’ve all just done every move, every kick, every punch, every launch to death? Last year, Deadpool v. Wolverine provided Marvel with a much-needed mega-hit, but even that felt like a knowing nod to the fact that the studio had run out of ideas. That film succeeded by poking fun at its very existence. So, uh, what do the other films do now?
Admittedly New York is ever so slightly pretentious in its tastes, so I'd take it with a grain of salt.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-15 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-16 02:14 am (UTC)I agree - I'd have gone younger - with someone like Cruise or Brad Pitt or George Clooney, but they are harder to get. I think what appealed to Ford is the chance to well satirize the demon in the White House. Which he apparently did so well, that they had to reshoot it. LOL!