I genuinely don't understand when Hollywood decided that its relationship with its audience should become adversarial. For decades, the basic formula was pretty simple, make something people love, listen to what those people respond to, give them more of it, and make a lot of money in the process. But somewhere over the last decade or so, it increasingly feels like major studios stopped asking, “What do our fans want to see?” and started saying, “We're going to tell you what you should want to see.”

Look at what has happened to some of the biggest franchises in entertainment. Star Wars, Star Trek, Disney's classic properties like TRON, the MCU, and now the DC universe have all experienced some degree of audience frustration, while Tolkien's Middle-earth and Stargate are increasingly being subjected to creative decisions that seem disconnected from what originally made those properties beloved. I'm horrified seeing what appears to be happening with the X-Men for their coming. These aren't obscure little properties with five fans on the internet. We're talking about enormous, established fanbases that have spent decades buying tickets, merchandise, books, games, subscriptions and collectibles and keeping these franchises alive. And that's the part I don't understand. Why fight your customers?

There is nothing wrong with changing things, taking risks, introducing new characters, or telling stories with different perspectives. Great franchises have always evolved. But there is a massive difference between expanding a universe and fundamentally changing what people loved about it while dismissing the audience that built the franchise in the first place. When fans repeatedly tell you what they love, what they don't like, and what they would gladly pay to see, ignoring them isn't artistic courage. At some point, it's just bad business.

What makes it even stranger is that Hollywood has access to more audience data than at any other point in history. They can see what people watch, what they rewatch, what they buy, what they talk about, what they abandon and what they refuse to pay for. The information is sitting right in front of them. Yet there seems to be a growing tendency to believe that the audience needs to be educated rather than listened to and maybe that's the real problem. Some executives and creators seem to have forgotten that being a fan isn't an obstacle to making art, it's the reason the art has an audience in the first place. Fans aren't merely consumers waiting to be corrected. They're the people who kept these stories alive between movies and television shows. They read the books, bought the toys, played the games, attended conventions, introduced their children to the characters and spent decades building communities around these fictional worlds.

Hollywood doesn't have to give fans exactly what they demand. Artists should absolutely be allowed to create. But if a studio repeatedly ignores the people who love a property, insults their intelligence when they complain, changes the fundamental character of the franchise, and then wonders why attendance and enthusiasm decline, eventually it has to look in the mirror. The frustrating thing is that I don't think audiences are asking for anything unreasonable. We want good stories. We want compelling characters. We want the worlds we've loved to be respected. We want new ideas that actually feel like they belong in those worlds. And most importantly, we want to feel like the people making these things actually like the things they're making. Hollywood doesn't need to agree with every fan. It doesn't need to surrender creative control. But it might be worth remembering a very old lesson from business, listen to your customers.

Because ultimately, we're not obligated to keep buying something simply because we loved what it used to be.

And if Hollywood keeps treating its own audience like the enemy, eventually the audience may simply stop showing up.

If Marvel or dc give you an option to make a superhero movie

From any comics or your favourite character

You have to make the story and character and the actors by yourself

Which Marvel or dc movie you'll make

Movie One liners would be dope

tell me your opinion in the comments

Some edited photos of "what it would be like if Sam Raimi had made a Superman movie in the past." I mixed in some actors who have already worked with him, actors he might cast.

Bruce Campbell probably would have been Superman;

He's the actor who worked most closely with Raimi.

I chose Sharon Stone to play Lois;

She and Raimi had already worked together on The Quick and the Dead.

Tobey Maguire as Jimmy Olsen;

This one was a no-brainer; he would just need to be Peter Parker except the superpowers.

Liam Neeson was my choice for Zod;

Liam worked with Raimi on Darkman, and his Zod would probably be very similar to Ra's al Ghul.

Disclaimer: The first image of Bruce Campbell as Superman was not edited by me, and I don't know who created it. If anyone knows, please leave a comment.

Hugh Laurie — Reed Richards / Mister Fantastic

He has the ability to portray both the family man as shown in Stuart Little and the genius side Of Reed (House M.D.).

Robin Wright — Sue Storm / Invisible Woman

She already has experience with Adventure/Romance, as seen in Princess Bride. In addition to the fact that she can also play a genius (Blade Runner/House Of Cards)

Freddie Prinze Jr. — Johnny Storm / Human Torch

He spent a large part of his career playing the "Teen Heartthrob" (Last Summer / She's all that), which is basically how Johnny acts in most stories.

Bruce Willis — Ben Grimm / The Thing

His most famous character is a gruff New Yorker guy, which is basically The Thing (Die Hard)

Gary Oldman — Victor Von Doom / Doctor Doom

Gary Oldman is basically a chameleon when it comes to acting; his Victor Von Doom would probably be an ideal mix between his version of Vlad III (Bram Stroker's Dracula) and Norman Stansfield (The Professional).

Just… look at her. How can they mess this up!

She was awesome in The Whale.

I ship this Spider-Man with her so bad.

It should have been a kiss With the “you have me” line.

In Spider-Man 1: the kiss with MJ upside down.. that one should have happened since Far From Home with Sadie Sink as MJ.

Edit:

As for Tom and Zendaya. Zendaya had a threesome in a previous movie so..

Also it can be developed like Phineas and Isabella. Or Naruto and Hinata or whatever. They were in high school too.

Whatever one thinks of the execution, Marvel seemed to be making a pretty unmistakable statement about the future of the MCU after Endgame. The next generation was going to look considerably more diverse than the one that built the franchise:

1. Black Captain America — Sam Wilson
2. Black Iron Man-type successor — Rhodey and/or Ironheart
3. Black Captain Marvel — Monica Rambeau
4. Lady Hulk — She-Hulk
5. Lady Hawkeye — Kate Bishop
6. Lady Black Panther — Shuri
7. A Thor increasingly removed from the traditionally masculine, serious portrayal of his earlier appearances
8. Gay son of Wanda — Billy Maximoff/Wiccan

You could dislike individual projects while still recognising that Marvel appeared genuinely committed to broadening what its superheroes could look like. Black heroes, female successors and LGBT characters weren’t merely background representation; Marvel was putting them in possession of some of its biggest mantles and franchises.

But after the MCU’s box-office and streaming troubles, look at the apparent course correction:

1. Robert Downey Jr. is back at the centre of Marvel’s biggest event
2. Steve Rogers is back as the lead Avenger
3. Thor is being restored to his powerful, masculine presentation
4. Pre-MCU Marvel characters with enormous existing nostalgia and fanbases are increasingly central
5. A male Black Panther — T’Challa II — is imminent with David Jonsson’s casting in the role, cutting short Shuri’s time as Black Panther
6. Sam Wilson’s Captain America doesn’t appear to occupy anything resembling Steve Rogers’ former position at the centre of the universe
7. Some of the most poorly received Phase 4/5 material which were part of this progressive vision — She-Hulk, Secret Invasion, Quantumania, etc. — seems increasingly peripheral to Marvel’s event-level storytelling

And that raises a question that I think is more interesting than the usual “woke vs anti-woke” culture-war argument:

Did Marvel actually believe in its progressive succession plan, or was that commitment conditional on immediate commercial success?

Because if Marvel spent several years telling audiences that Captain America could be Black, Hawkeye could be a woman, Black Panther could be a woman, and one of its important young superheroes could be gay — only to retreat toward familiar actors, familiar male heroes and nostalgia as soon as the franchise encountered serious commercial turbulence — that’s arguably a much more damning criticism than simply saying “woke Marvel failed.”

Was post-Endgame Marvel genuinely trying to build a more progressive generation of Avengers and is now losing its nerve — choosing the quickest route back to $1–2 billion event movies instead?