Quote from: Local Trouble on Nov 20, 2022, 02:08:45 AMQuote from: ralfy on Nov 20, 2022, 01:56:04 AMThe last point from the quote is important, i.e., from Scorsese, Coppola, and Scott. It's not just in superhero movies but many Hollywood movies: cardboard cutout characters, lack of character development leading to unsympathetic protagonists, a heavy reliance on spectacle instead of a buildup leading to that, and recently a strong emphasis on forcing woke agendas.
But don't you really like Prometheus and Covenant?
I didn't like them because for the first there are problems with writing such that one can't sympathize with the protagonists. The problem with the second is that it rehashes the first and second movies, with the protagonist even looking like Ripley, and with attempts to create the same blue-collar atmosphere, e.g., instead of Dallas, Tennessee, with cowboy hats and early '70s pop songs.
I think what they should have done was retain the grimy atmosphere of the first movies, then figure out how to incorporate the "origin" elements. The second would have probably required a lot of development time, with much of it spent on writing and rewriting.
Whedon can do well as long as he doesn't receive pressure from producers who focus more on audience sweet spots or political agendas. Maybe one can consider his earlier works, like
Firefly, or go back to the older
Alien and
Predator movies and see what made them notable: well-developed characters, blue-collar backgrounds (space truckers, grunts, expendable spec ops soldiers, overwhelmed cops), a careful buildup, vulnerabilities of protagonists emphasized in order to avoid Mary or Gary Sue scenarios, amoral corporate antagonists (with some giving arguments related to amorality and pragmatic ethics), etc.
