January 01, 2019
On the Effects of Theatrical Film Releases Upon Market Volatility
December, 2018 saw the stock markets enter a stage of extreme volatility, with multi day crashes followed by all time record gains. Several factors have been proposed as sources of these swings, including the President's tariffs and actions taken by the Federal Reserve. However the introduction of these factors does not strongly correlate with the timing of the market fluctuations.
I propose that this fiduciary phenomenon is in fact caused by the synergetic effects set in motion by an event that has been heretofore ignored by financial analysts.
Spider-Man (Into the Spider-Verse) entered general theatrical release on December 14th, shortly before the market entered its volatile phase.
This film kicked ass. It kicked so much ass that I propose that the resulting national ass shortage led to chaos in ass futures causing a general breakdown of commodities trading which in turn led to ripple effects throughout the larger stock market.
"..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..."
What?
Economics aside, this is a bizarre but immensely enjoyable film that pulls together a bunch of odd, little explored threads from the Marvel Universe(s) to tell a tale of "passing the baton"; one that manages to very respectful of the Marvel canon and did not spit on the fans.
With that alone they exceeded expectations, but the the creators of this film did not stop there. This film is...good. It's really good and is one of the better comic book films ever made.
Once the story gets going, the film keeps the audience on the edge of their seats and the villains...the comic book villains...manage to come off as genuinely terrifying.
The film is very true to the original medium, due in part, to a quirky, experimental art and animation style that shifts throughout the film as needed by the story. This eclectic artistic choice is, on occasion, distracting, but it generally works astoundingly well.
The direction, pacing and characterizations are all solid , however, one thing that really stood out in this animated film was the quality of the acting.
Now one expects good voice acting in a feature length film**. However, there is a difference between stage acting, screen acting and VOICE acting, and animated films in the U.S. generally get big name actors who give perfectly solid performances but don't fully utilize the medium.
The voice work in this movie really stands out as exceptional. The delivery at times is like a '40s screwball comedy or a Howard Hawks film and they pull this off without sounding stilted or dated. Kathryn Hahn, Hailee Stienfield and Liev Schreiber give particularly good performances but the whole cast was exceptional in that regard. I was particularly shocked to learn that Chris Pine can act.
The whole film is littered with little easter eggs that don't distract from the story, but are delightful treats to the audience members who grew up reading these books. In that vein, this last Stan Lee cameo appeared to be one of his best, though I was beset by allergies at that point.
All in all, this was a remarkably good film. It's still in general release so I strongly urge you to go see it before it leaves theaters.
Do sit through the credits.
**************
*All. Of. The. Canon.
** In its original language.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
01:44 PM
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1
My only exposure to Spiderman was the cartoons growing up, I'd never read the comics and certainly had never even heard about the various alternate Spidermen across the multiverse. So when I initially heard that there was going to be a black child Spiderman, my reaction was not positive. The main preview, with the particularly cartoonish face-planted road rash from being towed by a train, among other things, was a turn-off.
Than I started hearing it was actually very good, and not from artsy published commentariat who wouldn't know a good movie if their lives depended on it, but real people. So I bit the bullet and saw it a couple of nights ago. Miles, far from being the SJW-fest I expected, truly earned the mantle of super hero. He paid the prices and had actual growth, very different from Star War's Rey. He also had a couple of unique quirks in his power set, which gave him some differentiation from the original.
I think they also made the right choice of making Porker, Noir, and Penny minor/background characters instead of trying to shoehorn more screen time for them. That helped keep it interesting instead of the possible mess it could have been.
I also liked how they covered each character's origin story while at the same time lamp-shading the concept.
The artwork took some getting used to at first, but ultimately worked well for it.
All in all, I strongly second Brickmuppett's recommendation.
Than I started hearing it was actually very good, and not from artsy published commentariat who wouldn't know a good movie if their lives depended on it, but real people. So I bit the bullet and saw it a couple of nights ago. Miles, far from being the SJW-fest I expected, truly earned the mantle of super hero. He paid the prices and had actual growth, very different from Star War's Rey. He also had a couple of unique quirks in his power set, which gave him some differentiation from the original.
I think they also made the right choice of making Porker, Noir, and Penny minor/background characters instead of trying to shoehorn more screen time for them. That helped keep it interesting instead of the possible mess it could have been.
I also liked how they covered each character's origin story while at the same time lamp-shading the concept.
The artwork took some getting used to at first, but ultimately worked well for it.
All in all, I strongly second Brickmuppett's recommendation.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Tue Jan 1 16:35:10 2019 (TWAZc)
2
Yeah, this was a great movie. My son, who doesn't like superhero movies, liked it, too--his only complaint was he didn't like the art style.
Definitely stay after the credits.
Definitely stay after the credits.
Posted by: Rick C at Wed Jan 2 00:52:28 2019 (Iwkd4)
3
I don't like Spider-Man. I've never liked Spider-Man. I don't like Marvel, much.
I loved this movie. LOVED it. I want more like this.
I loved this movie. LOVED it. I want more like this.
Posted by: Ben at Wed Jan 2 00:55:01 2019 (4TRZx)
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