When comic book based movies first started coming out and got big, with X-Men, I was happy to see any and every movie that came out based on a comic book because, well, most anything beats the latest rom-com or tween flick. Finally, it was something to get me to the movies (or at least the DVDs). And then Marvel changed from a different studio to using their own Marvel Studios. By doing this, Marvel took on the rights to their own properties so that they could all appear in the same movie, side by side, to form The Avengers.
While watching Thor I found myself rather bored and just not into it on the level that I should have probably been. I was watching this movie mainly because it built up to The Avengers, and as I told my wife before we watched Captain America: “We’ll watch it even if it’s bad because it builds to The Avengers”. But has Marvel done wrong by seemingly put all of their eggs into one basket?
In the complex and often flooded world of comic book movies, which movies are and are not made should be subject to some sort of discretion. The two major publishers of comic books- Marvel and DC- seem to only want to do what best fits their personal needs or some other hidden agenda they don’t want the general public to know about.
Movies not made by the big two have done rather well in my mind—Hellboy, V for Vendetta, Kick-Ass, Ghost World, American Splendor, Constantine, and the list goes on. So why wouldn’t studios greenlight more of those movies, the sort of unique stories, as opposed to more of the same?
Since the first X-Men movie struck it so big, it has had two sequels and two origin movies (Because really what was X-Men First Class if not a Magneto origin story). That is a total of five movies based, more or less, on the same characters. Meanwhile, characters like Bishop and Cable have had no big screen time. Why? Do people really care that much about Iceman?
We all know that DC is banking on the Batman series by Christopher Nolan, and when that’s finally done they’re going to be screwed. Why do you think Superman is in hiding? But my question for all the DC fans out there is who the number three superhero in the DCU is? Is it The Flash? Wonder Woman? I definitely don’t think that it’s Green Lantern because as I sat bored through his movie it just proved that sometimes we don’t need to know every single character’s back story to every detail to figure out what’s going on. I was totally left in a comatose state at the stale sense of plot in the movie. Wow, a good character turns bad... When has that ever happen before? That’s not even a comic book movie trait, it sometimes happens in other movies. So why not give me something different, like Hellboy?
Marvel is a mess on top of itself. If this Avengers movie doesn’t really pay off, then they’re going to be in a lot of trouble and all of this other movie watching will be for naught. The fact is, aside from comic books (their homes), we have had origin stories on the major players in both Marvel and DC within other movies, television shows, animated shows, etc. If you wanted to know the origin of Superman, for example, there are probably twenty different ways to go about having it explained to you. This will probably soon include a stage show on Broadway.
Even just recently, Marvel released an animated series called Avengers: Earth Mightiest Heroes. The first few episodes were each dedicated to the origin of a specific character. So after seeing Thor as a side character in animated feature length movies, on other animated shows and, well, even just recently on Avengers: EMH, why would anyone think that a story driven out about twice as long about him would make anyone anything other than bored?
Despite my recently seeing a different origin episode of Avengers: EMH for Captain America, I still found the Captain America: The First Avenger movie to be one of my favorite of recent memory. Mainly since this whole Avenger-hype started at least. In a sea where overkill is king, why do you think that is? I would partially have to say that the storytelling, acting and overall writing of the movie is in part to be credited, but there has to be something more to it. There are certain characters- like The Punisher- who I could watch the origin story of nonstop in different ways. But Thor, to me, seems to be overdone. Why not the Cap? I don’t know, maybe having the director of The Rocketeer and the time period it was set in worked in its favor. All I truly know is that comic book movies need to either start introducing comic book fans to either new characters or simply play to the favorites. Again, how Green Lantern got a movie before The Flash is beyond me. The Green Lantern isn’t even Shane Helms’ favorite character—he only got that tattoo because he was drunk. True story.
Do I have confidence that Joss Whedon can pull off the Avengers movie? Yes, yes I do. And for all of our sakes I certainly hope that he does. But it is a lot of pressure. And more so, after The Avengers movie, I hope we start to see some more variety in our comic book movies. And I’m always in favor of movies that seem like they’re based on comic books but really aren’t. (Hancock comes to mind) Seriously, Hollywood, you’re Americanizing both Oldboy and Akira. If you’re really running out of ideas, you have my email and, well, I’ve got ideas.
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