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Welcome creatives! These are discussions, thoughts, case studies, interviews, and lessons about how our creativity relates to life. The host, Mr Benja, is a former video game programmer / designer for Rockstar Games, Sony Santa Monica, The 3DO Company, and others, as well as a fine artist. -- Be sure to check out the website for more.
Before we begin, let me make a disclaimer.
I actually liked The Marvels.
Shocking for some of you
to hear, but it's true.
I thought it was a good fun romp.
I thought it was short and enjoyable, I
thought it was a fun piece of hero movie
action with some interesting characters.
Nevertheless, I'm here to
use it as a case study.
A case study on people caring about
what you're creating, why you're
creating it, and who you are.
It's not gonna be a terribly long 1.
I didn't mean to do this 1 tonight,
But nevertheless, we continue
here on Creativity Threads Life.
It's my new podcast.
Going strong in January.
Gonna keep it going through
the rest of the year.
If you wanna know more about the
story behind the podcast, you can go
check out the website, see some of my
other So it's and I'll be doing some
more work with it here and there.
And as always, you can catch it on Apple,
Google, Spotify, and all that jazz.
But anyway, That's not important.
What's important is we didn't care
about the marbles for some reason.
I actually have a theory about that.
Not too deep of a theory, but
A pretty simple basis, a pretty
simple premise on why people
really didn't care for the Marvels.
Now, First of all, with any Hollywood
movie, you have to have something
that somebody's gonna care about.
I shouldn't even say Hollywood movie.
I should say any type of Entertainment
property or especially a property like
this or any any creative thing you're
doing if you wanna go even broader.
You have to care.
Not caring the creation, which is another
thing, but people have to care about your
product, your service, your offering.
And with the marbles, I'm gonna
tell you why it just wasn't there.
No matter how much you spend on it, no
matter how impressive it is, no matter
what message you're telling, No matter
how you market it or position it, all
these things can build up to different
elements of having people care about it.
But there's this magic
amount of do I care.
And this is hard for a lot of creators to
understand because they care about what
they're creating, but they're not looking
out of what other people are looking at.
So what I wanna do is look at
the the main concepts and ideas,
and there are There are 4 of them
here that I'm gonna look for.
And I could go deep with this,
but as I said, it's late.
I wanna keep it light.
I'm gonna keep it simple.
First of all, These characters
are all I don't wanna say second.
Uh, we've seen these characters before,
and they're not doing anything new.
So this is a sequel of sorts
to a lot of different ideas.
Now I don't know how many sequels have
worked when the original 1 didn't work.
If we're talking about the sequel
working and the individuals
didn't, what are we talking about?
Well, we're talking about Captain Marvel.
Captain Marvel worked, did okay,
but it's not something that made you
think I wanna see the sequel to that.
Miss Marvel.
I once again, I thought
it was a wonderful show.
I thought it was fun,
lighthearted, good vibe, good
introduction to a new character.
This is part of mar Marvel and Disney's
experimentation, though, and they
released it on Disney plus to not
much fanfare and, Quite honestly,
not a lot of people watching it.
So when you ask somebody to watch a
sequel to that, you got a problem.
And then, of course, you've got Monica,
who was essentially a I don't even know
what type of character to call her.
She was a side character in
WandaVision and didn't make
much of an impression there.
No 1 said I wanted to go see the sequel
to That side character in WandaVision.
Then you got Nick Fury.
Everybody loves Nick Fury.
Right?
You should.
But in this in in this incarnation
of Nick Fury, he's a lot more
Soft than we had come to expect
from him in the previous movies.
Something about his Captain Marvel
persona is soft, And people are still mad
about the reason why his eye is missing.
But he's just coming
off of secret invasion.
So after he's coming off of
secret invasion, People had
issues with Secret Invasion.
A lot of issues.
They really and it just didn't hit.
So nobody wanted a sequel to that.
So you've got captain captain Marvel,
miss Marvel, The side character
from WandaVision and Nick Fury.
And then you're gonna throw in
there a villain who doesn't seem
to be very interesting on its face.
Doesn't seem to be very strong at all.
So right off the bat, with
just the characters or just
the setup of this ensemble,
there's nothing people wanna see.
And you'd figure somebody would
have stopped the process and tried
to make something that, Like, hey.
Listen.
These characters aren't
doing a certain thing.
But when you're in a company like Disney
or Marvel, you've got this big machine
going on, and no individual stop it.
And if no 1 stops it, they're just gonna
watch it roll down the hill, building
up momentum, causing an avalanche,
and crashing into people's homes.
They're just gonna watch it happen.
So you may say to yourself, well, we
know these are we know these characters
come from these other properties.
Is that the only issue?
Of course not.
The fact that all these characters
are coming from other properties, It
means you need to put in homework to
actually understand and know them.
You can't just know them out of the
blue and and expect to be a hit.
And if you're thinking about guardians of
the galaxy, I'll get to that in a moment.
But first of all, these
characters need homework.
If you add it up, I think it's about 12
hours of of Complete watch time between
Secret Invasion, WandaVision, Captain
Marvel, and, um, and miss Marvel.
People seem to think that they
need to watch all of this, and
that's not a bad assumption.
It's like, yeah.
These these characters came
from these other shows.
I might wanna see those first.
And so that little bit of hesitation
causes people not to care about it.
They're like, uh, I
don't wanna see it now.
They got all these characters.
Everybody's gonna know what's
going on except for me.
Even if they tell the story well, They're
still gonna have that feeling, and this
is part of the Marvel problem right now.
So that's another reason
why people don't care.
They don't care to see the continuation
of something that they kinda don't
want to go through the process
of seeing in the first place.
They'll go do something
else with their time.
And then Each of these characters
these characters have no story.
At this point in time, these
characters have no story.
Monica Rambeau, what is she fighting for?
When you when you just look at
her character, it's like, okay.
She's cool.
What do I care about her for?
Why would I why would I want
to invest time into this?
If you know there's a, you know, a shark
hunter or something, it's like, okay.
Um, that guy's gonna go hunt sharks.
I wanna see what he does with this
Other crazy shark or something silly.
I don't know.
But Monica Rambeau, we never
really got her origin story.
We got a little bit in WandaVision,
but then they tried to make the
Marvels her origin story as well.
You see what I'm saying?
It's already kinda tough kind of
explaining, well, who's that person?
Why should I care?
Why should I go see this?
So and then let's look at miss Marvel.
It may have been really cool to see
a character from a TV show come up
and make a movie exciting, But this
is what they call going from the
small screen to the silver screen.
It it usually doesn't play out.
Very rarely do you see stars from the
small screen Go to the big screen.
I want it to have a name for the
smaller screen, like people watching
it on their phones and iPads instead
of watching it on large TVs at home.
Puny screen puny screen, the small
screen, and then the big screen.
I don't know.
But that's where miss Marvel fell in.
And for whatever reason,
her show didn't pop off.
Once again, Why wouldn't
why would I go see this?
Captain Marvel.
Well, let's go to Nick Fury first.
Nick Fury, Secret of Devasion.
The story what is the story there?
Why do I need this to continue?
Who am I even thinking about?
We still kinda don't know
Nick Fury's motive outside of
putting the Avengers together.
He put the Avengers together,
that was a whole thing during its
era, but now it seems like he's
literally kind of lost in space.
That's what it seems like to the
outside view, and I have ideas for what
they could have done with this later.
So Captain Marvel.
After after doing her thing, We just kinda
know that she's floating off in space,
and nobody has any idea of what she's
going through, kind of problems or issues.
It it just It's so far
removed from everybody.
So now we have these 4 characters.
Nobody really cares.
Now some of you may say,
well, wait a minute.
What about, And they could care
about Captain Marvel, by the way.
They just didn't set it up.
And some people may say, well, hey.
What about Guardians of the Galaxy?
Well, Guardians was an
origin story for for 1.
And 2, You know, with the origin story,
you always have the you always get to get
the benefit of the doubt because, hey.
We don't know who you are.
Part of the reason why we're interested in
you is because we don't know who you are.
So you're good into something like
Captain Marvel who had her origin story.
Now her sequel is Kind of bringing
along a bunch of other people.
I see the idea they were going for.
Maybe we could have a pseudo sequel
that's not just about her And bring miss
captain Marvel and miss Marvel and Monica.
I'm actually mad I have to stop
saying Stop and keep saying Monica
instead of Photon or Spectrum.
I don't know why they didn't
give her 1 of those names.
I think there's some legal
stuff going on, but anyway.
You know, and Nick Fury is
just kind of this ensemble
cast of people with no story.
Guardians of the Galaxy, on the other
hand, was an introduction, an origin.
You got to see all these
different characters.
And speaking of different characters,
these are characters people
are kinda interested in seeing.
There's a whole ecosystem behind the
marketing of a movie like that, where
you've got James Gunn, Zoe Zaldana,
Chris Pratt, Digimon, Dimon, Honsu.
Uh, in there, you've got
you've got Vin Diesel.
You even had a you even had an
appearance by Nathan Fillion, and
he they snuck him in there somehow.
I didn't even realize that.
Getting people talking, and James
Gunn's doing his thing on the circuit.
Everybody's discussing this
and that, and Twitter's lit up.
That really didn't
happen with the Marvels.
So there was that ecosystem wasn't there.
And in Hollywood, you need it really
helps, I should say, to have this
ecosystem of characters, personalities,
Famous people really getting into
the whirlwind of this whole thing.
And with the with miss Marvel I mean,
the Marvels, I just didn't see it.
I wish I would've.
I think they could have retooled
the script a lot to to really
hammer some things home, and maybe
I'll just offer some suggestions.
Like, that's necessary, but maybe I'll
just throw some things out there later.
So Now you got these characters no
1 cares about that don't really have
too much of a story on their own.
And then on top of that, instead
of giving them a strong story, we
we're plopped in with this villain.
And we know they say Marvel has has a
villain problem, and this is 1 of them.
First off, This character seems
second rate and badly dressed.
Something about this
character just doesn't pop.
Like, the shoulder pads are too big.
Maybe you think I'm nitpicking,
but the character just didn't have
that oomph And didn't strike fear
in anyone's heart for any reason.
Like, who's this with the gold teeth?
Who's this with the grill that
that needs to be dealt with.
And why does she have a hammer of a loser?
I'll get into power levels in a
second, but her weapon is a weapon
that we remember from guardians
of the galaxy that a loser held.
That already just paints the
this character as somebody weak.
The Guardians of the Galaxy should
be weaker than Captain Marvel just
in terms of pure power and energy.
So you have this character going up
against a character stronger than
the guardians of the galaxy who is
who looks like to be weaker than the
villain in guardians of the galaxy.
So you've got 2 levels of
power differentiation going
in 2 different directions.
The villain's weaker, And the
protagonist is stronger than what
you saw in guardians of the galaxy.
And somehow, This weaker protagonist
I mean, this weaker antagonist and
the stronger protagonist are gonna
go up against each other, and the
stronger protagonist even has They're
friends and buddies with them.
It it doesn't add up in
terms of power levels.
So maybe this whole thing would
have worked if it was a little
more a cat and mouse game.
If maybe right off the bat, You know,
come they were coming after Kamala,
and it was like chasing Kamala down and
that whole thing of trying to save her.
And she doesn't really understand
her powers, But she keeps escaping
somehow because, I don't know,
the bangle's shooting her off
in the different dimensions.
I don't know.
That seem that seems more
straightforward, but instead
they replaced it with a gimmick.
A gimmick that was interesting
and fun, but it didn't really
add to the Plot and story.
And you need plot and story to really
make people care a little bit more.
Like, why should I go see this?
Well, they switched places.
Oh, okay.
Why would I go see this?
Well, this is where this character
Really has to fight, and they might
lose their powers and this and that.
And you start getting them interested.
It's like, oh, wow.
That's interesting.
Switching places isn't as
interesting of a Plot wise
premise that you're going to push.
It just becomes a
gimmick, a laughing point.
People were making comparisons to the old
movie Parent Trap, Which is unfortunate.
As I said, I mean, they
did what they wanted to do.
It was fun and, You know, kinda campy,
cute, whatever, but I'm just pointing
out why people didn't care about it.
It was hard to Describe why
you should care about it.
It didn't keep you on
the edge of your seats.
As I said, it was a fun romp.
It was relatively quick.
And then they threw I wasn't
actually mad at the musical.
I usually don't like musicals, But
that was a risky move too, putting a
musical in there with the k pop star.
And once again, we know
why they're doing this.
They're trying to build up their
Younger female demographic.
The older male demographic is 1 thing, but
they, Disney slash Marvel that is, They've
been trying to build up their younger
female demographic to kinda balance
this whole thing out and get more money.
Um, I'm not mad at that.
I'm just pointing out what it is.
So instead of growing the audience from
the The typical dominating perspective
of what hero movies already are.
You know, the older male nerd guy
getting in the more, I would say
more socially outgoing, but, yeah,
a little bit more family friendly,
younger, more female audience.
And that was that was apparent
from the movie, I thought.
And that was another reason
why people didn't care as much.
It just wasn't directed at them or
at the at the usual Group of people.
Not that it has to be, but you're fighting
against a lot of numbers at this point.
And don't forget, this is all
happening while COVID is going on.
We're having a COVID slash theater
relapse of sorts where Theaters are
just bombing, coming off of a strike.
I'm not trying to get into
all the different reasons.
There were a lot of different
reasons why it behaved as it did.
I'm just talking about The
buzz within the people.
Why wasn't that buzz there
of people talking about it?
There's a certain natural
buzz that a lot of a lot of
movies have, and this 1 didn't.
In fact, 1 thing I really wanted to
see is if you if you figure Captain
Marvel and we'll get to a little
bit more into power levels here.
Captain Marvel is so powerful.
I expected to see at least the
trailer hinting at some Really
over the top crazy stuff.
I mean, we've seen Man of Steel, so we
know what Superman level powers are.
And captain Marvel comes in, and
she's getting thrown through a
teenage girl's bedroom closet door.
And it's just not marvelous.
Your character has the name of the
the entire, you know, company on on
this character, and Nothing extremely
marvel nothing marvelous was done.
Like, I didn't see crazy super
speed, superpower Being exhibited,
it was just very interesting
how it was it was presented.
And they're trying to Actually,
limit her power, make her a little
more believable and friendly.
I get that.
So these were decisions
they had to stop and make.
And I don't know how exactly
I would have answered that.
All of these questions have take a lot
of time and a lot of Angles to look at.
So I'm not knocking it for what it did.
As I said, I liked it, But I can
tell you that they didn't care
about it, and these are reasons why.
Also, speaking of villains, the
villain Herself didn't have any there
was no real draw to the villain.
And the story premise,
I mean, it it added up.
It made sense, But it wasn't alluring.
Like, the she was talking about
saving a group of people that
I'm not sure the audience really
cared about or understood anyway.
So where where are we supposed
to go with this character, This
this villain, what are we supposed
to learn from this villain?
At no moment was I ever concerned about
the villain And what the villain might do.
Once again, uh, you know, there
was the attack on the scrolls,
I suppose, but It's like, do you
really care about the scrolls either?
We kinda played them off and really
didn't endear the world to them.
I don't know.
Once again, that requires you kind of
really investing in secret invasion
and maybe, um, the original Captain
Marvel's Characters from the scrolls.
I don't know.
I don't know what you think about
the marbles or why anybody didn't
care about it, but Anytime you're
making anything creative, you
gotta have people caring about it.
You gotta put those hooks in there so so
peep not people should go, they would go.
Like, there's a lot of events
that you it's like vegetables.
It's like, yeah.
This has vegetables.
It's fun.
It's Citing has a well thought out story.
There's some inconsistencies,
but who cares?
It's for a good cause.
We're getting A new demographic
in here, vegetables.
Nobody cares about all that, man.
There are some very simple, basic
Entertainment values that they missed.
They would get people to care.
Introduction of, you know, a new
character that really gets to shine,
some crazy competition that The main
character needs to overcome some
extravagant show of Of of force and power.
I mean, this is Captain Marvel we're
talking about once again, But we'll see.
We'll see what happens in the future.
And, yeah, as I said, all
these require homework.
The villains and characters
weren't very strong.
The world wasn't very strong.
Like, they didn't go anywhere
that I kinda cared about.
It was all just boring
from that respect too.
And speaking of which, um, at this point,
I think I'm, like, done talking about
miss Miss Marvel, Captain Marvel, the
Marvels, Nick Fury, Flerken, whatever.
Actually, I'll throw
in 1 little side point.
They literally made
Captain Marvel a cat lady.
I don't know how how they thought
about Putting this together.
But when you make someone a cat lady,
it's like no 1 cares about cat ladies.
Like, that's kind of the trope that
somebody doesn't have any friends,
nobody cares about that person, and
they're living alone with their cats.
And they kinda made her a cat lady.
So I'm sitting in a theater thinking, wow.
Um, as much as I like this
film, That's I don't know.
It's a little too too on the nose for me.
Did that make sense to you?
Didn't totally make sense to me,
but I was I was good with it.
But as I'm creating, as I'm trying to
build anything, I've started to get
into the habit of stopping myself,
whether I'm creating a painting, a
podcast, An event plan or even just
planning a lunch with somebody.
You know, there there's an element of do
they care that started to creep into the
way I think about building things, Or
why would people want to get into this?
Why would people want to
engage with what I'm doing?
And as I said, this is for anything.
You're making breakfast.
If you're putting beans and
onions And your kids scrambled
eggs, they may not go for it.
They don't care about that.
You may wanna call them down and say, hey.
We have pancakes, and then slide them the,
You know, onion onion bean omelet on the
side to see what they say, but that's not
gonna be the thing that they care about.
They care about the pancakes instead.
This is a hard lesson I had to learn.
Really stop and put my project
down, Walk away from it.
Close my eyes, turn back around, open my
eyes as if I had never seen it before.
This is actually a talent thing
you can that you can develop,
a skill that you can train.
Being able to stop think Stop thinking
about whatever you're building.
Put it down to the side.
Go do something else.
Intentionally meditate away from that
thing, And then come back and pretend
like you've never seen this before.
Pretend like you've never seen
your own creation before and start
wondering, What is it about this?
Not not that it's good or bad.
Why should I care about this?
Who's bringing this to me?
What's it supposed to do?
Who made it?
You start having all these marketing
type of questions, and it's really hard
to Ask these questions from the outside
in when you know all the answers.
1 obvious way to do this is to
make sure you're talking to people.
The more you talk to people while
you're developing and kind of seeding
your ideas into the public, If you're
a painter and you really wanna go crazy
with with turquoise, like, hey, man.
I think this year for turquoise.
If If everybody tells you, I don't
know about the year for turquoise.
I'm not saying that you should
change your vision for anybody.
I'm saying you might need to
understand a little bit of what
you're doing, what you're going for.
The typical artist mantra is don't
worry about what anybody thinks
you create what's inside of you.
And you know how many broke
artists, uh, go by that advice?
And you're looking at
their work like, wow.
You made all these paintings
of, uh, of orange cats.
You know, Black cats are the thing
that are working this year, and
they'll just get upset with you.
It's like, there's a lot of things
you can create that won't disrupt your
vision, But can be accented and improved
by public opinion, by getting outside
air, By touching other perspectives.
It's really hard to do though.
It's like if you've never heard yourself
speak recorded and then you listen back
to your voice, you're like, holy crap.
That's me.
You should know that feeling.
Or if you don't know what you look like
on camera from all different angles
and you start recording yourself or
somebody records you, then when you
look back, you're like, holy crap.
That's me.
And it's funny.
Sometimes people will see themselves
or hear themselves and not recognize
right away that that's them.
It's kind of an interesting
phenomenon, but we do this with
our creativity all the time.
We assume that someone sees
in our creations what we
see And what we've created.
And it's a completely different viewpoint.
Completely.
Over time, you get better at it.
You get better at understanding
what you're creating and what
you're putting out there.
And the only thing I can say for
this is, You know, reps, you start
getting in the habit of trying things
out, learning to listen, finding out
what the people are talking about.
And it almost seems like it wouldn't be
Good art, I should say, or powerful art.
That's the word I'm looking for.
Really powerful art is an expression
that channels A certain feeling from
the people, whatever the people is.
Certain artists just resonate
with a lot of people.
If the people are going 10 steps in
the direction, That artist that is
expressing that certain feeling or that
certain mood, if that artist is doing
it powerfully, they will have started
Going way past those 10 steps ahead.
They'll have gone 20, 50, a hundred steps
ahead, 200 steps ahead, and they just
see where the where the energy is going.
1 of the greatest artists, uh,
to do good timing is Jay z.
Jay z had incredible timing Where
he was just ahead of the population.
So by the time his songs came out, they
seemed like they were right on time.
Like, yes.
I need to hear this right now.
And when it hits somebody in
their fields right then and
right now, You're like, yes.
I need this.
So he's 1 of the few
that can really do that.
He can hear beats.
He can hear where the where the
mood of the public is going.
And, you know, we don't like to talk
about, uh, Kanye West a lot of times.
A lot of us don't.
But for the people that rock
with him, he's expressing a lot
of what they're feeling, and for
that, he'll continue to resonate.
Lot of great artists.
I don't know.
Maybe you have some examples of
those those people that just resonate
with their audience In amazing
ways, that just works consistently.
It's in and to the point where they
resonate with it so well that they bring
the rest of the crowd along with them.
So that's just something to think about.
As always, I wanna leave you with
a little creative thought here.
It is late for me.
I don't wanna stay too long on
these, um, too late at night.
But I did wanna go ahead and get
this 1 out because February, we're
gonna be getting into some other
things I've had piled up in the in
the queue that I need to get rid of.
We'll do some black history ones.
Um, any ideas for topics,
as always, send them to me.
Post them in the comments.
Let me know.
Wanna do some, um, wanna do
some anime based reflections.
I just finished watching attack
on Titan, so I may have to
talk about that a little bit.
But as I said, this is all
about creativity and building
out What's in your mind?
You're true creative.
Whatever you create.
Paintings, arts, tax forms, happy homes,
a well landscaped lawn, A clean kitchen,
whatever you're creating, a good time
at your job, a happy job, whatever.
All of it can be done with creativity.
So everybody, make sure you check out
the podcast if you're not following.
Uh, I do these most nights of the week.
Always talking about a different topic.
You can go to creativity threads life
dot com and see all the different
episodes that I've done so far.
You can also search through them.
Um, I'm gonna be updating
that website soon.
And be sure to follow along on Spotify or
Apple Podcast Or whatever you listen to.
But in fact, if you're not listening
on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, I'd
like to actually know what podcast
player you listen on Or if that's
just YouTube for for many of you.
But, yeah, that's gonna do it for this 1.
Uh, as I said, I'm not
gonna belabor the point.
I will see you all later.
I do not have a set schedule for
these, but just look for me in the
evening sometime on the weeknights.
And maybe once I get into the groove,
maybe sometime in February, I'll
have a definite schedule for these.
But in the meantime, let
me know what you think.
Holler at me.
Appreciate it.
Goodbye.