https://www.themarysue.com/avengers-endgame-producer-girl-power-reshoot/
In Marvel producer Trinh Tran’s new book, The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, she revealed that the moment the women of the MCU came together in Avengers: Endgame was seen as “pandering” from test audiences.
Tran was adamant (as were others who were desperate for an ounce of parity from Marvel) that the scene should stay in the movie. Because the scene tested poorly, they added scenes of the women fighting together in smaller groups with reshoots and worked up to that big scene in the final cut. So in the short term, it gave more buildup to the women arriving onscreen together.
To anyone who’d been watching the MCU films for years, though, those additional scenes didn’t make much of a difference in how the scene was ultimately received in its theatrical version. Also revealed in the book is that the idea for the scene came from Thor: Ragnorak co-writer Craig Kyle’s photo of all the women present at the reception of Avengers: Infinity War for his daughter—an image shared to Twitter, too.
I took this shot for my daughter and it’s the coolest picture I’ve ever taken! #BadassLadiesOfMarvel 💪@MarvelStudios @Avengers @Guardians @Antman @theblackpanther @captainmarvel @thorofficial #AvengersInfinityWar pic.twitter.com/u36x1SB0zN
— Craig Kyle (@MrCraigKyle) November 27, 2017
According to Tran, this sparked a conversation about an all-woman Marvel film that some pitched to Feige. Because Marvel/Disney hadn’t done it yet (at that moment) and they plan years in advance, Tran went for that short-term inclusion in Endgame. “Hadn’t done it yet” is a bit light; let’s be forthright and say they refused to have a female-led movie until Captain Marvel and, recently, Black Widow. It also doesn’t help how often the word “empowered” was used in a simple visual context in the book’s quotes, rather than empowerment through narrative.
This doesn’t lie on Tran alone, but a whole industry that devalues women’s work on and off the screen. Let’s also be honest and admit that the “Girl Boss” mindset and culture has had a grip on society for decades. However, this was especially so the last ten years.
The reveal that the idea came from seeing some of the women together in a photo on set reinforces this point. To put a bunch of women together and expect people to take it as a truly empowering moment is absurd. It was literally an afterthought.
Especially when there were significant structural issues with most of the women leads in the showdown with Thanos. In Avengers: Infinity War, a woman’s death (Gamora) was in service to two men’s character arcs (Star-Lord and Thanos). Then, in Avengers: Endgame, despite two original Avengers dying (Black Widow and Iron Man), only Tony Stark gets the onscreen, heartfelt goodbye—even after movie after movie of sexualizing Black Widow for no reason and having her partnership with another hero be the focus of many team films.
I’m just sayin’ … they could have had a joint funeral. Anyone with two birthdays in the same month as their immediate family knows the drill. All this disrespect to the only woman on the first big-screen Avengers team. (I’m not counting the original Avenger, since that “reveal” was almost two decades later.)
This is not new, but worth bringing up because, let’s be real, the last five years (especially the last two) have been a blur. That “girl power” moment felt like the Kylie Jenner Pepsi commercial of the MCU in the way almost every side agreed it was pandering and empty.
Behind-the-scenes drama over the years at Marvel and Disney, with what we now know about writers like Joss Whedon, makes me not even want to say, “Oh, if they’d done a few movies before that, it would’ve worked”—”a few movies before” meaning some majority women-led teams, solo films, etc. With the power of hindsight, we now know it would’ve likely been worse. Back in 2019, Princess Weekes wrote about how Marvel doesn’t know what to do with the powerful women they do write in.
If they couldn’t write most of their very few women well in Phase 1 and Phase 2, how would we expect them to handle a whole team? It took until Phase 3 (the same phase as both of those latter Avengers movies) and really Phase 4 to get complicated, interesting women as leads. Phase 3 was also the first phase featuring leads that are women of color. Tessa Thompson and others spoke out over the years, in their limited capacity, to call attention yet again to inclusion issues. It was Thompson who said she and a group of Marvel ladies marched over to Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige during a Thor: Ragnarok press event and suggested the time had come for an all-female superhero team-up movie.
By the end of the year, we’ll be about halfway done with phases 4 and 5. (It’s hard to see exactly where one begins and ends and pandemic delays don’t help.) Still, we haven’t had enough to warrant a less shallow Girl Power™ moment—though we are hopeful. In this short amount of time, we’ve had six movies/ TV shows with women leads, disability representation, the first woman director for a Marvel film (Cate Shortland), the first woman of color (Chloé Zhao) to direct a Marvel film, a majority Asian cast film, and more. Next year, there will be Muslim representation with Ms. Marvel. Thor will be taken over by two powerful women, and we have nothing but the highest expectations for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Even further down the line with The Marvels, we will be getting a women-centered team (as far as we know). I know representation and seeing oneself and others onscreen alone is a drop in the bucket when it doesn’t feel earned (i.e. the scene that brought about this article), but these are still promising changes—not just because of who we see on the screen, but who is participating behind-the-scenes, as well. Hopefully, like my fellow TMS writers, I won’t feel these conflicting feelings of joy followed by disappointment as these stories play out.
(via ComicBookReader.com, image: Marvel Entertainment/Disney.)
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The post New Book Reveals Endgame’s Unearned Girl Power™ Moment Tested Poorly, Leading to Changes first appeared on The Mary Sue.
In Marvel producer Trinh Tran’s new book, The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, she revealed that the moment the women of the MCU came together in Avengers: Endgame was seen as “pandering” from test audiences.
Tran was adamant (as were others who were desperate for an ounce of parity from Marvel) that the scene should stay in the movie. Because the scene tested poorly, they added scenes of the women fighting together in smaller groups with reshoots and worked up to that big scene in the final cut. So in the short term, it gave more buildup to the women arriving onscreen together.
To anyone who’d been watching the MCU films for years, though, those additional scenes didn’t make much of a difference in how the scene was ultimately received in its theatrical version. Also revealed in the book is that the idea for the scene came from Thor: Ragnorak co-writer Craig Kyle’s photo of all the women present at the reception of Avengers: Infinity War for his daughter—an image shared to Twitter, too.
I took this shot for my daughter and it’s the coolest picture I’ve ever taken! #BadassLadiesOfMarvel 💪@MarvelStudios @Avengers @Guardians @Antman @theblackpanther @captainmarvel @thorofficial #AvengersInfinityWar pic.twitter.com/u36x1SB0zN
— Craig Kyle (@MrCraigKyle) November 27, 2017
According to Tran, this sparked a conversation about an all-woman Marvel film that some pitched to Feige. Because Marvel/Disney hadn’t done it yet (at that moment) and they plan years in advance, Tran went for that short-term inclusion in Endgame. “Hadn’t done it yet” is a bit light; let’s be forthright and say they refused to have a female-led movie until Captain Marvel and, recently, Black Widow. It also doesn’t help how often the word “empowered” was used in a simple visual context in the book’s quotes, rather than empowerment through narrative.
This doesn’t lie on Tran alone, but a whole industry that devalues women’s work on and off the screen. Let’s also be honest and admit that the “Girl Boss” mindset and culture has had a grip on society for decades. However, this was especially so the last ten years.
The reveal that the idea came from seeing some of the women together in a photo on set reinforces this point. To put a bunch of women together and expect people to take it as a truly empowering moment is absurd. It was literally an afterthought.
Especially when there were significant structural issues with most of the women leads in the showdown with Thanos. In Avengers: Infinity War, a woman’s death (Gamora) was in service to two men’s character arcs (Star-Lord and Thanos). Then, in Avengers: Endgame, despite two original Avengers dying (Black Widow and Iron Man), only Tony Stark gets the onscreen, heartfelt goodbye—even after movie after movie of sexualizing Black Widow for no reason and having her partnership with another hero be the focus of many team films.
I’m just sayin’ … they could have had a joint funeral. Anyone with two birthdays in the same month as their immediate family knows the drill. All this disrespect to the only woman on the first big-screen Avengers team. (I’m not counting the original Avenger, since that “reveal” was almost two decades later.)
This is not new, but worth bringing up because, let’s be real, the last five years (especially the last two) have been a blur. That “girl power” moment felt like the Kylie Jenner Pepsi commercial of the MCU in the way almost every side agreed it was pandering and empty.
Behind-the-scenes drama over the years at Marvel and Disney, with what we now know about writers like Joss Whedon, makes me not even want to say, “Oh, if they’d done a few movies before that, it would’ve worked”—”a few movies before” meaning some majority women-led teams, solo films, etc. With the power of hindsight, we now know it would’ve likely been worse. Back in 2019, Princess Weekes wrote about how Marvel doesn’t know what to do with the powerful women they do write in.
If they couldn’t write most of their very few women well in Phase 1 and Phase 2, how would we expect them to handle a whole team? It took until Phase 3 (the same phase as both of those latter Avengers movies) and really Phase 4 to get complicated, interesting women as leads. Phase 3 was also the first phase featuring leads that are women of color. Tessa Thompson and others spoke out over the years, in their limited capacity, to call attention yet again to inclusion issues. It was Thompson who said she and a group of Marvel ladies marched over to Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige during a Thor: Ragnarok press event and suggested the time had come for an all-female superhero team-up movie.
By the end of the year, we’ll be about halfway done with phases 4 and 5. (It’s hard to see exactly where one begins and ends and pandemic delays don’t help.) Still, we haven’t had enough to warrant a less shallow Girl Power™ moment—though we are hopeful. In this short amount of time, we’ve had six movies/ TV shows with women leads, disability representation, the first woman director for a Marvel film (Cate Shortland), the first woman of color (Chloé Zhao) to direct a Marvel film, a majority Asian cast film, and more. Next year, there will be Muslim representation with Ms. Marvel. Thor will be taken over by two powerful women, and we have nothing but the highest expectations for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Even further down the line with The Marvels, we will be getting a women-centered team (as far as we know). I know representation and seeing oneself and others onscreen alone is a drop in the bucket when it doesn’t feel earned (i.e. the scene that brought about this article), but these are still promising changes—not just because of who we see on the screen, but who is participating behind-the-scenes, as well. Hopefully, like my fellow TMS writers, I won’t feel these conflicting feelings of joy followed by disappointment as these stories play out.
(via ComicBookReader.com, image: Marvel Entertainment/Disney.)
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
The post New Book Reveals Endgame’s Unearned Girl Power™ Moment Tested Poorly, Leading to Changes first appeared on The Mary Sue.Netflix is releasing Hypnotic today, a new psychological thriller. Check out the trailer and synopsis below:
Feeling stuck both personally and professionally, Jenn (Kate Siegel), a young woman reeling from a series of traumatic events, enlists a renowned hypnotherapist, Dr. Meade (Jason O’Mara), to help on her road to recovery. After a handful of intense sessions, terrifying events, and mysterious blackouts, Jenn soon finds herself caught in a dangerous mind game. With the help of Detective Wade Rollins (Dulé Hill), Jenn looks to put the pieces together before it’s too late and there are deadly consequences.
Directed by relative newcomers Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote (The Open House, Sick). Written by Richard D’Ovidio (The Forger, The Blacklist: Redemption).
The idea of a therapist getting in your head and controlling you in some way is hardly a new concept. Hypnotic isn’t reinventing the wheel but some of the stylistic choices are good. The script and many of the performances are a little weak, however.
Kate Siegel (The Haunting of Hill House, Hush) puts in a strong performance as Jenn. Her performance is the only one I really believed, everything else felt a little surface level. Her character makes a lot of bad decisions to keep the story going but credit for Siegel for fully committing to a limited script.
The script really hinders the performances overall. Jason O’Mara (The Man in the High Castle, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) as Dr. Collin Meade isn’t as suave or intimidating as he should be. Dulé Hill (Psych, The West Wing) is in a smaller role than I anticipated as Detective Wade Rollins. Hill does his best with what he has, he provides quite a lot of the exposition, which isn’t the most exciting role to play.
I’m surprised at the level of actor that signed on for this film. The writer and directors are inexperienced and the end product isn’t great. Maybe the script read better than it shows on film.
The cinematography is really well done by John S. Bartley (The X Files, Bates Motel). Bartley shoots the film using a few tricks, without making it gimmicky. Hypnotic has some nice shots that add to the tension. The use of a wide lens to get distortion at the edges of the frame creates an unsettling feeling. The production design is also strong, with Dr. Meade’s therapist office being a unique space.
Hypnotic strayed into melodrama quite a few times. The performances occasionally were a little wooden and the tension was lacking. The opening scene of the film is strong and raised my hopes for Hypnotic. It’s a nice setup but the subsequent scenes lose the tension and it falls a little flat. The finale of the film is ok, it’s a little predictable.
The film only lasts 90 minutes yet it feels like a lot of the scenes aren’t adding anything. It could have been an hour-long television episode and may have been better for it. I wouldn’t recommend Hypnotic unless you’re a really big fan of the genre, and even then, it might not be worth it. The cast deserved better, especially Kate Siegel who is owning the thriller genre of late.
Hypnotic is released globally on Netflix October 27th 2021
The post Netflix Thriller, Hypnotic, May Put You to Sleep appeared first on The Nerd Element.
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Greeting, loyal AFROnerdists! Check out the latest installment of Afronerd Radio's Mid Week in Review broadcast airing this Wednesday at 8 p.m. eastern on the BTalk 100 internet radio platform. Listen to the meanderings of your friendly neighborhood AFROnerdist hosts as they wax about the following subjects: much like clockwork, another one of our Black icons has left the mortal plane, 4-star general and former Secretary of State, Colin Powell passes from COVID-19 at the age of 84; picking up where we left off from our Sunday Grindhouse show including revelations from this past weekend's DC FanDome Warner Media pop culture event; the long-awaited DC animated VG translation movie, Injustice, hit the cyberwebs yesterday and we have our impressions:
Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman's Black sister, Nubia finally gets her closeup in a new comic entitled, Nubia and the Amazons:
One thing that Dburt is doing (finally) is investing in cryptocurrency, courtesy of Roundlyx. We would implore our followers to investigate, discern and then explore by using our referral code: afro-87A4BF
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Frank Herbert’s Dune presents a dense world full of political plotting and backstabbing. The Bene Gesserit puppeteer much of that from the shadows, laying out plans that stretch across centuries. Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part One brought that to the screen by showing the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam discussing it in plain text with Lady Jessica. The Reverend Mother scolded Jessica for straying from the Bene Gesserit’s plan to bear Duke Leto Atreides a daughter. Jessica chose to have a son, prompting the Reverend Mother to say, “You were told to bear only daughters, but you and your pride thought you could produce the Kwisatz Haderach.”
The term “Kwisatz Haderach” comes up throughout the film in regards to Paul Atreides. Here’s everything you need to know about the Kwisatz Haderach. And yes, it’s spoiler-free.
Warner Bros./Legendary
Essentially, the Kwisatz Haderach is a messiah and superbeing. In the Dune universe, Kwisatz Haderach is an old Chakobsa term that translates to “shortening of the way.” The Kwisatz Haderach must be male. The Bene Gesserit have been carving the way for the mythical figure for centuries through selective breeding—10,000 years of breeding to be precise. Their plan was to breed the daughter of Duke Leto Atreides to a Harkonnen male (specifically Feyd-Rautha, Baron Harkonnen’s nephew) to create the Kwisatz Haderach and unite the houses. Hence why the Reverend Mother didn’t seem thrilled about Lady Jessica birthing a son instead and potentially bringing the messiah to the universe a generation too early.
Warner Bros./Legendary
The Kwisatz Haderach will help the Bene Gesserit access more knowledge and power. That’s it in a sentence anyway. The Bene Gesserit can use spice melange to access genetic memory—but only maternally. Since Bene Gesserit, who are always female, only have X chromosomes, they can access strictly X chromosome memories. These memories of their ancestors help guide their machinations across the Dune universe.
But a male Kwisatz Haderach could tap into maternal and paternal genetic memories. He could access unprecedented amounts of information and possess wildly powerful mental powers. And then the Bene Gesserit would, of course, have control over this male and could use him to look into the future, among other things. Given that they spent so many thousands of years seeking to create the Kwisatz Haderach, the figure clearly has a lot of importance.
Warner Bros./Legendary
Paul Atreides sure seems to be the Kwisatz Haderach. He shows enough promise that the Reverend Mother visits Caladan to administer the test of the gom jabbar. In the books, that happens when Paul is 15. Dune: Part One doesn’t call out Paul’s age, but he appears a bit older. The point is: Paul showed signs of being the Bene Gesserit’s messiah at a young age. He’s having visions, though some of the visions only show possible futures rather than what will absolutely come to pass. Paul certainly seems to know things he shouldn’t know, too—like how to perfectly put on a Fremen stillsuit.
However, the Reverend Mother tells Jessica they have “other prospects” besides Paul. Whether this is true or is further Bene Gesserit manipulation remains to be seen.
Editor’s Note: Nerdist is a subsidiary of Legendary Digital Networks.
Amy Ratcliffe is the Managing Editor for Nerdist and the author of A Kid’s Guide to Fandom, available now. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
The post What Is DUNE’s Kwisatz Haderach? appeared first on Nerdist.