Fired MCU Exec Told A Director That Marvel Directs the Movies

I had a good laugh reading about a scoop from a recent Puck podcast.

I’m not interested in Former Marvel executive, Victoria Alonso, not to mention her controversial firing. That’s kiddie stuff as far as I’m concerned. But I absolutely love how she let the cat out of the bag by berating an unnamed Marvel filmmaker.

The recently-fired Alonso reportedly told the Marvel director, who helmed one of the biggest movies the studio has ever put out, that he did not direct the movie, but that we (MARVEL) direct the movies.

Lee: Marvel systemically harvests directors from the Sundance Film Festival, someone whose directed some cheapo movie that got a lot of buzz, that has a lot of heart, a lot of originality. And then they suddenly prop them up with a nine-figure budget for the first time. These people by and large do not have any experience with VFX. I'm talking about Taika Waititi, Chloe Zhou, Ryan Coogler.

Bellomi: Fleck and Boden. All these filmmakers that they bring into the MCU, they do so knowing that they are not technical wizards.

Lee: Yeah. Around the time of Victoria Alonso's dismissal, I was DMing with an extremely well-known director who works on a Marvel film, and she was relating some remarks that Victoria said to her about anotherfilmmaker who directed -- let's just say it was one of the biggest movies ever put out. She was talking about this guy and she said 'They don't direct the movies, we direct the movies.' Meaning, the filmmakers we hire don't have creative control over the look of the films.

Gee, ya think? I won’t even speculate on who the berated filmmaker might be here.

It’s no secret that, in every Marvel movie, the bigwigs take control of the creative process, but you still need a director to direct the various crews, units, cinematographers to do their jobs. Alonso is probably not lying here.

Sure, there’s the post-production VFX people. It's a “collaborative” effort, but the director doesn’t really “direct” in the purest sense of the term. He or she just overlooks and hopes for the best.

It is known that Marvel has a tendency to tell the directors what needs to happen in the movie. I guess there’s a bit of wiggle room for the director to add a few things here and there. The CGI fight/battle scenes are ALWAYS pre-planned ahead of the time, even before principle photography begins. The Previs team also sets up all of the shots that Marvel wants.

You’re basically adhering to the Marvel brand, that’s why all these films look so much alike, at least in terms of photography, framing, shot-selection. It’s a brand and it is run as such.

Which is not to say that I’ve disliked all of the MCU movies, there are exceptions where the blueprint just works very well, but it’s not really what you might call filmmaking, it’s mass-marketed content-making.