The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had a lot of issues going on off screen that damaged the narrative, the version they set out to make was a less cluttered, more tighter story but Sony demanded more and more. A lot of people who were involved with it were very disappointed by how Sony managed it, such as the late James Horner who left production, Marc Webb, and Andrew Garfield.
The first Transformers movie was made before Kurtzman and his usual collaborator Roberto Orci became bigger players in the mainstream entertainment industry, their word was not the final one and they only had a few opportunities to visit set and talk things out with higher ups if they say deviations made from their current draft. From what I've read they felt restriction in certain areas like character progression and story structure and tone and x number of robots they could use. As things are the first Transformers is still considered the best one, has the closes to a fresh rating on RT, and was a proven crowd pleaser, the sequel which is easily the worst entry to date suffered issues from the writer's strike at the time. Kurtzman and Orci were so strapped for time and desperate they actually borrowed the corporation from their show Fringe Massive Dynamic and gave it a cameo in a very early story beat. According to one performer on the film almost all of that movie was written from scratch, a point a to point z wasn't even developed yet.
I won't say Kurtzman has a squeaky clean resume, its pretty mixed but he's certainly diverse and has been involved in some pretty good stuff before, I was a dedicated Fringe fan when it was on and liked the direction he helped steer Mission: Impossible towards, and I loved 2009's Star Trek though its sequel was underwhelming in more than a few places.
My biggest concern with Kurtzman's involvement is that he and buddy Orci can start something off fine to well but have problems getting it to the finish line. Fringe is an example of this, they were pretty involved the first few seasons then later brought in other people including Akiva Goldsman to finish the show properly. So if a first phase is completed for the Universal Cinematic Monster Universe, I wouldn't object to somebody else taking over from there. But personally speaking I think they go forward with the idea that they do share similar continuity I figure certain elements of the originals would be retconned to keep new iterations of the characters consistent, not dissimilar to how Marvel brought in Captain America in the 1960's and retold a lot of his stories from WWII( Red Skull became a legitimate character and not a ruse like he was in the original Timely publication).
COOKIES AND MILK!-Ed
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8 years ago
[deleted]
Modern-Prometheus
8 years ago
Interesting point regarding the origin stories. I maintain that it's possible to introduce these characters to a new generation without rehashing those, however. Today's generation may not be all that familiar with those films, but with superheroes it's been shown that they don't have to be familiar with their source materials either. Doctor Strange has been a pretty decent success and yet for many people he's a discovery. This was true even more with Ant-Man and especially Guardians of the Galaxy which wound up being arguably Marvel's best film.
What's important in the end is hooking the audience with good characters and good stories, and cool visuals don't hurt either.
Warning! The Monster is loose!
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GomezAddams666
8 years ago
Thank you, MP.
No, they don't hurt.
But to set an example, Superman Returns was made as a sequel of Superman II, a film that an an entire generation had not seen, it wasn't well received. Another Example is Star Wars, that they to return to the cannon with the prequels but before that they re-mastered the original trilogy and released them to the theaters. If you think about it, Episodes I to III were well received at the Box Office by a combination of die hard fans and newfound fans who watched Episodes IV to VI juts a few years back.
And while it is true that people don't have to be familiar with characters to embrace them we are now talking about an entire Universe that lasted almost 2 decades, 80 years ago. New generations will not understand who is Doctor Frankenstein or why are the events of the characters so different from the books... we know it' because those characters have evolved since we last saw them 3 generations ago but people need an explanation. If they are bring the stories to our time, do it right and give very character their origin story so people leave the theater amazed and not with home work.
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Darwinskid
8 years ago
Speaking of Star Wars, saw Rogue One earlier, after seeing how they actually brought back Grand Moff Tarkin into the story despite the original actor having been deceased since the early 90's through CGI and another actor pulling off a cunning imitation I'm curious if Universal would try this in the UMCU...Assuming they would want to stick to their guns and keep all original films canon. Say, when we get to meet Javier Bardem's Frankenstein Monster his flashbacks could see original sequences from the original 1931 film from a different perspective with motion capture and effect filters used to make it seem right out of the old one, almost photo real.
COOKIES AND MILK!-Ed
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Modern-Prometheus
8 years ago
This is, of course, assuming that only the events up to Bride of Frankenstein are canon. If all the Frankenstein films are canon he wouldn't be able to remember anything past Ghost of Frankenstein at the very least since he got a brain transplant at the end.
Warning! The Monster is loose!
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Darwinskid
8 years ago
You bring up a good point, but my suggestion was more of just an example of what they *could* do effects wise if they wanted to reference earlier films without having to completely reinvent the wheel if you know what I mean.
COOKIES AND MILK!-Ed
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