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Zero Woolfe
Приєднався 26 тра 2013
I'm Zero. I make videos about things I'm interested in. I like art and civics and comic books and cats.
Grief, Catharsis, and Spider-Man
Given how much I talk about Spider-Man movies, a lot of people wanted to know what I thought about 2021’s No Way Home. And as a movie, I would overall describe it as fun but lazy. I thought the whole thing felt a little thrown together, but I also have no huge critiques from either a filmmakers or audience members perspective. It’s an MCU movie: the themes are relatable and inoffensive, the compositions are aesthetically passable if not particularly groundbreaking and the characters have been focused grouped to have enough cute dialogue to fill twitter and tumblr’s appetite for gifsets.
But given my oft stated love for Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of Spider-Man, a lot of people also wanted to know how I felt about his return to the big screen seven years after his last appearance. And while it was certainly good to see Garfiled in the suit again after so long, and vindicating to hear a resurgence of appreciation for his portrayal of the character, i had, to put lightly, grievances. Andrew Garfield is only half of what made this character what he was, and the absence of Marc Webb’s writing is palpable. Now there isn’t anything specifically wrong with what he says or does, its just that this character is antithetical to the content of this movie. Fictional characters don’t exist in a vacuum, and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man comes from a story who’s morals are in direct conflict with this one’s. He is a refugee from a genre deconstruction of the exact kind of movie he’s now in, a movie that indulges in the same toxic avoidance of proper grieving that Marc Webb spent two movies criticizing. Let me explain.
Part One: Patterns
The MCU is not particularly interested in complex emotions. That’s not to say they aren’t emotional, (I’ve seen your fanfiction and angsty fmvs) but Kevin Feige is interested mainly in big, operatic, cathartic emotions. Revenge, and self sacrifice, and rage and true love. Characters do have emotional problems, but they’re more often than not solved with magic keys. The Magic Key is one of the primary ways that hollywood likes to deal with human psychology. People’s psychological problems have a single obvious, often freudian source, and a simple, often very literal solution. In Iron Man Three, for example, Tony’s PTSD and paranoia manifests in the form of him obsessively building new Iron Man suits. Over the course of the movie he regains his confidence in both his engineering skills and his ability to protect his loved ones and symbolically lets go of his paranoia by blowing all of the suits up. This is not a knock at Iron Man Three I actually think its one of the stronger MCU movies, it definitely benefits from being a largely standalone story and having a director with a distinct singular creative vision, but thats a different video. The MCU likes simple emotional problems with literal dramatic solutions.
But not all emotions have magic keys. Like, for example, grief. Dealing with the tragic loss of a loved one doesn’t have a simple solution that lends itself to the structure of a popular narrative. It’s just a feeling that sucks, that demands to be felt, and that there is no real escape from beyond time. So the MCU just doesn’t deal with grief. It flat out refuses to acknowledge its existence, because grieving doesn’t sell popcorn. Now you may be saying “But Keane! The MCU has so many tragic character deaths! How could it have made it though 27 movies without ever getting into the subject of grieving?” Well, by distracting you. Lets go back and take a look at the sympathetic characters that bite it over the course of this franchise, and how the aftermath of their deaths are dealt with.
In the first Iron Man movie, all the way back in 2008, Yinsen acts as a sort of mentor figure to Tony while he’s trapped in a cave with a box of scraps. He teaches tony to be less of a shitty person, he helps him build the first Iron Man suit, and then boldly sacrifices himself to buy tony precious time. He dramatically imparts some inspiring words then dies, inspiring tony to go storming out of the cave and kick some terrorist butt in a kick-ass action sequence. Then this action scene is immediately followed by a comedy beat, and we forget about how sad we are and move on with the rest of the movie. Yinsen is never mentioned in the movie again. Actually aside from a brief cameo in the flashback prologue of Iron Man 3, he’s never mentioned anywhere in the franchise at all after his death. The guy who’s sacrifice inspired Iron Man is never memorialized or thanked or even just brought up in passing. Because that shits kind of a bummer and we’ve got quips to make!
In Captain America Erskine acts as a mentor figure to Steve, teaching him to see the innate goodness within himself. Then he’s shot by a hydra mole and has a dramatic death scene in front of steve which inspires steve to go kick some hydra butt in a kick-ass action sequence, and then he’s hardly ever mentioned again.
But given my oft stated love for Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of Spider-Man, a lot of people also wanted to know how I felt about his return to the big screen seven years after his last appearance. And while it was certainly good to see Garfiled in the suit again after so long, and vindicating to hear a resurgence of appreciation for his portrayal of the character, i had, to put lightly, grievances. Andrew Garfield is only half of what made this character what he was, and the absence of Marc Webb’s writing is palpable. Now there isn’t anything specifically wrong with what he says or does, its just that this character is antithetical to the content of this movie. Fictional characters don’t exist in a vacuum, and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man comes from a story who’s morals are in direct conflict with this one’s. He is a refugee from a genre deconstruction of the exact kind of movie he’s now in, a movie that indulges in the same toxic avoidance of proper grieving that Marc Webb spent two movies criticizing. Let me explain.
Part One: Patterns
The MCU is not particularly interested in complex emotions. That’s not to say they aren’t emotional, (I’ve seen your fanfiction and angsty fmvs) but Kevin Feige is interested mainly in big, operatic, cathartic emotions. Revenge, and self sacrifice, and rage and true love. Characters do have emotional problems, but they’re more often than not solved with magic keys. The Magic Key is one of the primary ways that hollywood likes to deal with human psychology. People’s psychological problems have a single obvious, often freudian source, and a simple, often very literal solution. In Iron Man Three, for example, Tony’s PTSD and paranoia manifests in the form of him obsessively building new Iron Man suits. Over the course of the movie he regains his confidence in both his engineering skills and his ability to protect his loved ones and symbolically lets go of his paranoia by blowing all of the suits up. This is not a knock at Iron Man Three I actually think its one of the stronger MCU movies, it definitely benefits from being a largely standalone story and having a director with a distinct singular creative vision, but thats a different video. The MCU likes simple emotional problems with literal dramatic solutions.
But not all emotions have magic keys. Like, for example, grief. Dealing with the tragic loss of a loved one doesn’t have a simple solution that lends itself to the structure of a popular narrative. It’s just a feeling that sucks, that demands to be felt, and that there is no real escape from beyond time. So the MCU just doesn’t deal with grief. It flat out refuses to acknowledge its existence, because grieving doesn’t sell popcorn. Now you may be saying “But Keane! The MCU has so many tragic character deaths! How could it have made it though 27 movies without ever getting into the subject of grieving?” Well, by distracting you. Lets go back and take a look at the sympathetic characters that bite it over the course of this franchise, and how the aftermath of their deaths are dealt with.
In the first Iron Man movie, all the way back in 2008, Yinsen acts as a sort of mentor figure to Tony while he’s trapped in a cave with a box of scraps. He teaches tony to be less of a shitty person, he helps him build the first Iron Man suit, and then boldly sacrifices himself to buy tony precious time. He dramatically imparts some inspiring words then dies, inspiring tony to go storming out of the cave and kick some terrorist butt in a kick-ass action sequence. Then this action scene is immediately followed by a comedy beat, and we forget about how sad we are and move on with the rest of the movie. Yinsen is never mentioned in the movie again. Actually aside from a brief cameo in the flashback prologue of Iron Man 3, he’s never mentioned anywhere in the franchise at all after his death. The guy who’s sacrifice inspired Iron Man is never memorialized or thanked or even just brought up in passing. Because that shits kind of a bummer and we’ve got quips to make!
In Captain America Erskine acts as a mentor figure to Steve, teaching him to see the innate goodness within himself. Then he’s shot by a hydra mole and has a dramatic death scene in front of steve which inspires steve to go kick some hydra butt in a kick-ass action sequence, and then he’s hardly ever mentioned again.
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Відео
How Tenet Uses Nested Objectives
Переглядів 2,4 тис.3 роки тому
Full disclosure, upon checking the plot summary on Wikipedia, I have realized that I mixed up certain elements of the plots of Mission Impossible and National Treasure. Whoops. This doesn't actually affect the argument at all. But it's kinda funny.
The Amazing Spider-Man is Therapy for Gifted Kids
Переглядів 8 тис.3 роки тому
Alternate title: why are you booing me I'm right. The amazing spider-man is a story about a boy named peter who wants to help people but lacks the power to do so. Every time he tries to stand up for the weak and helpless he ends up on the receiving end of a beat down. After being bitten by a genetically modified spider, he’s suddenly given more power than he knows what to do with. His first att...
The Deceptive Colors of Guardians of the Galaxy
Переглядів 19 тис.4 роки тому
A lot of people asked about how color theory applied to the famously colorful guardians of the galaxy so here we go.
How Guillermo Del Toro Embraces Genre
Переглядів 7 тис.4 роки тому
Output might slow down since school has begun but heres a nice fat 20 minute long essay in the mean time. Lately it feels like modern movies, especially genre movies, are obligated to be critical of their own premises. I’ve already made a video about this, but essentially, unless your making a serious, gritty, grown up deconstruction, you can’t make a superhero movie or a spy movie or a space o...
The Ethics of the Audience
Переглядів 3,5 тис.4 роки тому
This video is a lot less fun that what I normally upload. Sorry about that. I'll talk about superhero costumes next week, I promise. I personally think that if you went back in time and stuffed Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan and Jean Luc Goddard in a gunny sack and chucked it into a lake, film as a medium would not be any worse off. It would be different, but other equally o...
What Batman Movies Could Learn From Jackie Chan
Переглядів 3,9 тис.4 роки тому
JUST LET BATMAN BE A DAD. So there’s a new batman trailer out. It looks… interesting. I’m gonna be honest, I’ve never been fully satisfied with any live action Batman Adaptations. A big part of this is that they almost always leave Robin out because (the concept of a child crime fighter is ridiculous. It ruins the intense realism of a man fighting crime while dressed as a bat!) To me, Batman is...
Why the MCU Turned Grey (And How They Fixed It)
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A while ago, Patrick H. Willems put out a video asking why MCU movies looked so grey and desaturated. He concluded that it was because the newer marvel movies were shot digitally and not being graded properly. It was a good question, but both I and a lot of other people found his conclusion that this multi billion dollar studio just didn’t know how to properly grade LOG footage to be a little b...
Spider-Man is Twilight for Boys
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I forgot to put this in the credits bit but the song over the titles is Stomps and Claps by Scott Holmes. I make my thumbnails while the video is uploading. The longer a video is the longer it takes to upload and the weirder the thumbnail will be.
Avatar and the Historical Value of Monuments
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For the last few years theres been an ongoing debate about certain historical monuments of certain terrible people. Some people argue that tearing them down would erase history. What do I think? I think this topic sounds super heavy so instead I’m gonna talk about a totally unrelated childrens show. In the fifth episode of the second season of Avatar the last airbender, the gang arrive at a vil...
Why Stanley Kubrick was Wrong About Classical Music
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Stanley Kubrick liked to use classical music in the place of soundtracks. He believed that nothing a contemporary composer could come up with would ever be as evocative as the symphonies that had already been written. And on this point I agree. Hans Zimmer is never gonna top Beethoven. But I think that using classical music in the place of a film score is a terrible idea, and demonstrates a fun...
How Skyfall's Ending was Hamstrung by Its Franchise
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NOTE: I'm not disparaging the quality of any of the movies discussed. Something can be morally inconsistent and still a good movie. I'm not calling you dumb for liking any of these things. Skyfall is my favorite James Bond movie. Admittedly I’ve only seen three James bond movies. I tried to watch Goldeneye and I just got, like, so bored 20 minutes in that I turned it off. Sorry Pierce. I liked ...
Why Riverdale is Better Than Sherlock (sort of)
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I swear I'm going somewhere with this just bear with me.
The Wachowski Sisters - Suspense Without Subversion
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More and more in the film and TV industry, I’m seeing a focus on the subversion of expectations. Clips. On twists and reversals and big shocking swerves to pull the rug out from under the audience. And along with this style of storytelling comes the everpresent, looming spectre, of spoilers. Keeping these twists under wraps becomes essential to the sale of these properties, because without the ...
Perfect Adaptation is a Bad Idea
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In this video essay i discuss what makes a good adaptation, and why slavish adherence to the source material makes for bad storytelling.
Everything Wrong With- Everything Wrong With The Greatest Showman
Переглядів 3,6 тис.6 років тому
Everything Wrong With- Everything Wrong With The Greatest Showman
Theory this theory that, it's still ugly 🫤
They didn't, these movies always looked like balls and still do! Perhaps the grade got better on some of them but they still have flat lighting.
It sounds like what you're describing is really just a director who is kind of lazy and makes this overriding rule instead of carrying how these scenes actually look. There's really nothing worse than a blanket filter that filters everything in a particular color. I don't know why they started doing that. If your superheroes look too garish then maybe just tone down the costumes a bit. Just pay attention to the scene that you're doing have one look a little darker than the other. I think this is how most of the movies DC makes does this. This is probably how Zack Snyder works and a lot of his superhero movies look fine. I think Gun's movies look great. There's lots of color in Guardians of the Galaxy.
Wow
They should have stayed with the vibrant conflicting colors for the superhero designs. The whole point of The Avengers was to put all of these main characters in the same setting and have them stand as equal partners. In addition, the diverse colors really helped in distinguishing the heroes and creating different personas for each one of them
I think I can offer my $.02 as well. It absolutely is probably due to color theory alone, but thematically, having every movie slowly become more and more grey as the first saga went on, with the first films being very easily bright and noticible, but slowly turning more and more grey and dark is thematic to the movies as well. The Avengers assembling was supposed to be a heroic hope inspiring thing. in Civil War, the Avengers crumbling is supposed to be a sad, depressing thing. They nailed it with the colors. And in End Game, everything was becoming the darkest possible. Because as everyone knows, it's Darkest before Dawn, ending the film with natural colors during daytime again during Tony's Funeral, and the next few movies being bright again, Like No Way Home being another Spiderman romp, Shang Chi had some Gorgeous bright colors scenes thrown around within all the dark and drab scenes. Multiverse of madness had huge spashes of colors all vying for attention. Thor Love and Thunder and Guardians Vol III (As depressing as thse movies were it still was very hopeful). The Colors are coming back as they try to move on from the dark days. I think Deadpool and Wolverine are going to be the peak of "flash and bright colors" and we'll be getting more dark and dreary until Doomsday.
Not so sure, even Deadpool 3 felt more grey than 1 and 2 in comparison. I think its just a core problem with MCU's editing
I hated this. I don’t think you understand colour theory or how the MCU is superior to everything. And don’t even get me started on those new Star Wars movies. I know you didn’t talk about them but I have a lot to say about them. 😡😉
1:26 shinji get in the fucking eva
The Rami trilogy has always had a very juvenile undertone to me, thank you for putting those feelings to words - and, as a bonus, also articulating a big part of why TASM movies feel far more mature to me
To say the MCU movies look bad is absurd
Explain?
Most of them look extremely cheap now and for a brief period most of them looked gray and bland.
Wow, now looking back at Avengers 1 I'm realizing that part of my issue with the look of the movie is the color oversaturation. The scene of them standing in a circle really points it out for me. It like makes green screens more obvious too
Peter beating up Flash in the first Spider-man movie is not seen as something good, after he does MJ and other classmates look scared of him, and Peter runs away. It was something bad and it was framed as such. When saving Mj it looks like its all good for Peter and beating up the bad guys gets you the girl but at the end of the movie Peter rejects her, just like he rejects joining the Green Goblin. He rejects the easy way, which ties to the main theme of responsability.
what’s up with the youtube captions
"except for black widow" was so mean 😂😂
You have completely transformed my understanding of colour theory. I always hear people say "do this, not that" and "remember this thing and this terminology" but I never understood *why*. Why it was the way it was. This is probably a life changing moment for me in my art journey. Thank you.
OH DAMN color clashing is good now
Just make them bright and colorful. Don’t try to make them too serious. They’re superheroes
I adore you videos man, I wish you'd come back and start posting again, Hope you're doing well
Thank you for making this video. This movie is one of my favorites and I absolutely adore it, but even after loving it for so many years I somehow never realized the abandonment point of view, but you blew my mind! I really appreciate you for doing this deep dive into this movie the naunces of which often gets missed by people, somewhat also owing to imperfect communication of them through the movie by Mark Webb, although the studio intervention is to be blamed at the end. Amazing video overall!
What I like the most about Avengers 1 is how cartoony it looks, these characters were born as drawings, can't run away from that
These is why super hero movies work best animated im sorry but realistic creates more issue than its worth
He literally said this was a short and fixable issue, tf you mean
Amazing video! Such a great breakdown and explanation
spider verse
The airport scene looks so much better with the saturation restored
"I can't believe he's gone..." "There wasn't anything you could have done" "Come on buddy, we're not out of this yet" POW PEW PEW
I much believe the greyish look on some of the marvel movies are visual choices related to the movie's atmosphere. In Civil War we saw all the heroes fighting against each other and getting injured, it wasn't supposed to be colorful, but unsaturated and morbid instead.
Fix your captions
9:13 So beautiful. Make a shirt.
8:51 The topic isn't "completely subjective." What someone personally likes is subjective, but whether or not something makes a positive impact on the majority of it's viewers is objective. And, "how," is a valid topic for a lesson. This video should be shown in classes teaching color theory.
I feel like deadpool and wolverine saturation was so high but it was cool seeing them like that straight off a comic book page
i see no issue. later movies with thor and stuff has cartoon like high saturation colors which i don't like
To be frank i love the grayish color palette of civil war it makes it look like more realistic with a serious tone
Missing in this entire conversation is how the assembly-line, workman-like production of these films means there is less emphasis of filmmaker vision, artful cinematography, or filmmaking fundamentals in general. The filmmaking, fundamentally, is done faster, cheaper, and more in the style of television by inherent design. The result is a more TV-oriented, cheaper, blander, less artful approach and end-product, all color theory aside. Plainly: The filmmaking is just worse and more-cheaply-produced across-the-board.
Underrated
I think it’s a bit much to degrade the raimi’s film into purely narrative given that it’s highly visual and aural. You compared it to the reality of people being horrible for no reason and then set aside the fact that it is clearly intentional for it to be that way. The way the actors portray their malice and ill intent is apparent. While I agree that it is a power fantasy as evidenced by its simplicity, to say it can only be a revenge movie at its worst does hurt my biased childhood memories. I won’t deny it, but its not as if Peter felt he had better uses for his power other than to jump into a burning building that happened to have been caused by a gobbers. (Edit: okay I finished the video and was already planning to rewatch all raimi and webb films but defo gonna start with webb’s now. I think in an in depth character narrative I would choose garfield’s spidey. Going with the flow is nice, but being too passive can allow destruction to thrive, and change happens by choosing to leave the comforts in said flow)
lisa frank is gonna see the title and think to herself, yes they need more color and click your video only to be roasted for 3 minutes
It's hard to analyse Bond without even trying to understand the character. Yes, you can rely on "pop culture" to get him, but the pop culture perception is completely warped and misunderstand a character that is flawed and damaged. You might as well believe in the travesty of the so-called code-name theory. If you get bored by one of the highest points in the series (and I'm not even a big Goldeneye fan) you might as well shut up and enjoy the many ripoffs that try to pass as ***deconstructions*** of the franchise. The point of Skyfall is to finish a character build-up from Casino Royale, the 3 original reboot films were operatic and very different from the usual 'Bond formula', from a rookie to an experienced agent, it was meant to be a reinvention. Bond novels exists since de 50's, in post-war Britain and during the Korean war. by the time The Spy Who Loved was adapted in '77, Roger Moore was already talking about how thing had to be done differently. In fact, that was the thing everyone was expected from Skyfall's sequel: we got this new Bond ready and shiny, so let's give him an simple adventure to see what this new Bond can do. In the end Spectre and No Time to Die only served to show that EON had no idea what to with Bond in the '00s. In retrospect, Skyfall turned out to be the 'last Bond film' that happened 2 films before its time. It could've bee great to be the last scene before a new Bond shows up. But no, they had to fumble the whole thing, trying to to catch up to film trends at the time, Spectre was a weird Avengers rip-off, NTTD felt like an abridged Netflix mini-series. It could've been great, it was not "Bond's brand" that ruined the ending of Skyfall, it was the producers and screenwriters. Since it's been 4 years since this video was posted, let me give you an update. The original novels are being republished with censored text, new books are being produced by writers who hate bond, and the films are on hiatus which, I hope it's to clean house and make new (and good) bond.
To say one Tumblr show is better than the other is like saying Idi Amin was a better politician than Francisco Macías.
Oh this aged like milk and like wine in the span of 4 years. Not until deadpool 3 did it age like wine
The real question is why are the captions stupid
ok, i'll rewatch marvel up to endgame
I mean it's a movie so.......
Sehr Interessant
"except for Black Widow" IS CRAZY 💀💀💀
what a solid video
but is it actually that bad? if Riverdale kept inside its formula of season 1 it might've been an okay show, for me it only got bad on 2nd season
I ate my breakfast to this video and I thought it was very interesting. 10/10
this video is genuinely great, i wish you'd post more often
they didn't fix it, current MCU is grey as f
I feel like most people don’t realise that if you want to see a comic book accurate movie you should just read the comic.