The New Yorker Daily – How Marvel Swallowed Hollywood
How Marvel Swallowed Hollywood
Robert Redford, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Rudd, and Angela Bassett now disappear into movies whose plots can come down to “Keep glowy thing away from bad guy.”
If you find yourself distressed by the ubiquity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe—thirty-two superhero movies and counting, with handfuls of streaming shows, all with stories that are interconnected in increasingly complex ways—be thankful, at least, that you aren’t responsible for creating visual effects for the studio. “Effects artists have been seen crying at their desks during eighty-hour weeks,” Michael Schulman writes, in his deeply sourced new reporting about the company in this week’s issue, “tortured by Marvel’s immovable deadlines, last-minute rewrites, and too-many-cooks indecision over, say, Thanos’s exact shade of purple.”
That’s just one striking scene among many in this remarkable story, which explores how Marvel has amped the theatregoing experience up to what some critics have likened to a carnival ride, and locked some of Hollywood’s brightest stars into years-long contracts to play superpowered characters arranged in different formations across screens large and small. And, even if the name Thanos means nothing to you (he’s the giant bald supervillain with a wrinkled chin), there’s much to learn from how a small, beleaguered comic-book company managed to become the leading force in global entertainment—and why its Hulk-like grip on the culture may someday come to an end.
What Does the Debt-Ceiling Agreement Say About the U.S. Political System?
The relief of the debt-ceiling deal between the White House and congressional Republicans obscures an ongoing crisis, our columnist John Cassidy writes. The ratings agency Fitch has put the U.S. government’s debt on negative watch for a possible credit downgrade, and it’s not reversing the decision following the compromise in Washington. As Cassidy explains, “Fitch is essentially arguing that the U.S. political system is suffering from slow rot.”
Editor’s Picks
Did This Writer Actually Know Tennessee Williams?
James Grissom says that he met the playwright and his famous muses, and quoted them extensively in his work. Not everyone believes him.
Culture Dept.
HBO’s “Burden of Proof” and the Problem of the Passive Mother
The true-crime miniseries paints a frightening picture of a familiar dynamic that it fails to fully explore.
In the News
How Picasso’s Muse Became a Master
Françoise Gilot, who died today at the age of hundred and one, was the artist’s lover and pupil. Then she wanted more.
