Rolling Marvel Cinematic Universe thread (+ a poll: Classic or Dud?)

I mean, I was mainly saying comic books /= Marvel.

xpost - Brubaker only gets domestic royalties at all because he's currently signed exclusively to Marvel. They don't pay them as a matter of course, and IIRC haven't paid foreign royalties since the 1980s.

Meyer didn't create Khan, of course (character pre-exists the Wrath of Khan)

sic, do you read Marvel comics?

With all the talking Feige does about the decades worth of stories they have to draw on, the original comics being the perfect storyboards etc. you'd think he's find a way to get the original creators some cash (even just an appreciation cheque)

I've seen Iron Man and The Avengers, didn't really see the fun in either. I'm fine with dumb action if it's done with a bit of style. These movies have huge visual effects but never anything really cool going on style-wise.

Stan Lee cameos are horrible

the loudest manifestation of mass-culture lobotomy

sic, do you read Marvel comics?

I've read Marvel comics.

But in North America last year I bought comics by Oily Comics and Yam Books and Desert Island and USS Catastrophe and Traditional Comics and Study Group Comics and Retrofit and Picturebox and Drippy Bone Books and Floating World and Paper Rocket and Mille Putois and Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics and Adhouse Books and Alternative and Knockabout and Tundra and Last Gasp and The Overlook Press and Escape and Aardvark-Vanaheim and Bergen Street Comics and A Fine Line Press and Blank Slate and Eat More Bikes and Copra Press and Buenaventura Press and Pigeon Press and Look Mom, Comics and Space Face Books and Revival House Press and Koyama Press and Fontanelle Press and Jackie No-Name Books and Matrix Graphic Series and Igloo Tornado and Perfect Day Publishing and Tugboat Press and Hic & Hoc and Cartozia Press and Art & Soul Comics and Hidden Fortress Press and Catastrophe Comics Group and Hotel Fred Press and Robin Bougie and World Protector and New Reliable Press and Red Ink and Secret Prism and Kilgore Books and Thuban Press and Iamwar Pubs and Breakdown Press and Rotland Press and Sequential Artists Workshop and Wishbone Studio and Penguin Books and Marlowe & Company and Harper Collins and Coach House Books and Henry Holt & Co., and five by Marvel (four early-90s reprints of 1964-1972 Doctor Who comics, and a Paul Tobin quarter-bin back issue [it was bad].)

Cool, thanks for the clarification.

classic. these have definitely contributed to the high standard of children's movies we're currently experiencing.

Stan Lee cameos are horrible

Topped only by the most unworthily self-congratulatory rounds of applause to be endured anywhere.

Happily, Stan Lee will be 105 in 2028.

DC really needs some Funky Flashman cameos to mock them

Noah was better than all the DC comic movies but worse than all the Avenger Marvel comic movies but about the same as the X-Men/Skateboard Spider-Man Marvel movies.

Dr Morbius, I don't suppose you named yourself after Morbius The Living Vampire? He was a doctor before he was a vampire. I think the comics code insisted on "living vampire" because a regular vampire was deemed too scary for children.

I lean very far towards DUD, for the reasons Charles Hatless (who I'm assuming is Charles Hatfield)and others listed.

I very much agree with Jmm that superhero films are visually lacking in the extreme. I like Sam Raimi but I thought that was the main glaring flaw of his Spiderman films. I think Del Toro's Hellboy films and some stuff in the Burton Batman films are the only exceptions I can think of.

I'll admit that a lot of the reasons I dislike these films are not really to do with the film's themselves. I hate that they are motivated mainly by IP farming and that you can't really escape the franchises. Adverts when I turn on my kindle or go into my email inbox. Products in the supermarket. Seeing litter of sweet wrappers and wet discarded socks with Spiderman on them is horrible. As if James Bond and Star Wars weren't enough. How did Lord Of The Rings turn into a merchandise powerhouse? I thought the Tolkien family controlled everything and hated that stuff?
I do think of that story of Kirby turning pale at the mention of going to a toy shop, but I mainly just hate how inescapable all this stuff is.

I was kind of interested when I heard the possibility of Del Toro doing Dr Strange and Kirby's Demon but I don't think those are happening for him anymore. I'm glad Mountains Of Madness never happened. Joe Pulver said he'd like to do a Dr Strange book and that sounds interesting too but I'd rather he just did his own thing.

Isolating the films: I liked Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, Devito as Penguin, Nicholson as Joker, Ledger as Joker (my fave is still Bruce Timm/Mark Hamill Joker), Hardy's Bane, Dallas as Fandral The Dashing; but I don't like the film's all that much aside from moments here and there. Although I'd say Nolan's Batman and Raimi's first two Spiderman films are pretty good.

There is a problem with supervillains, in making them believable. There has been a fair number of costumed vigilantes in real life but costumed criminals I've never heard of apart from rapists in Malaysia who dress as the oily orange man of their folklore.

One thing that bothers me about the general approach to superheroes today is that it seems like it's all motivated by fanboys in denial about superheroes being silly(not necessarily a bad quality). Superman and Captain America have been made increasingly about certain concepts because people have trouble reconciling that they are historically important to the genre but not very interesting characters.
Fanboy says "oh my God it's so serious, iconic, relevant. This new event where loads of characters die and get raped is so fucking serious, it'll change everything forever! These heroes are so iconic, I need lots of statues and collectables to try and convince myself I haven't been wasting my time; these hardback collections aren't obscenely priced at all, these are important iconic modern myths. There's nothing wrong with Stan Lee's writing, people used to talk like that and state the obvious repeatedly. Blah blah blah iconic blah blah blah serious blah blah iconic super relevant modern myths that say so much about our times, blah blah blah iconic iconic iconic".

Bloody comic fandom overrun with an equivalent of rockists a hundred times worse than in music fandom. I weep and yearn for a day when I can be excited by comics industry again.

Richard Nixon in Days of Future Past might be the breakout villain everyone was hoping for.

the enterprise is notable for its audacity and scale, but in general I don't really care. I've seen a handful and they were okay, nothing I would really want to watch more than once.

sic otm in general

If they made an Adam Warlock movie, then I might go full fanboy.

It would take an uncommonly stylish Creeper, Silver Surfer, Namor, Ghost Rider, Man-Thing or Dr Strange film for me to get excited. That old Catwoman script with her fighting superheroes in a beach town sounded fun but also like a negative parody of superheroes which DC probably wouldn't appreciate. Maybe Swamp Thing, Sandman, Metamorpho, Shade The Changing Man.

Maybe great films based on DC and Marvel stuff would annoy me more because I'd rather talented people focus on new ideas.

dunno if this is still happening but it could be cool

Rumors in November 2012 suggested that Guillermo del Toro was working on a Justice League Dark film titled Heaven Sent. It would feature Deadman, the Spectre, Swamp Thing, Constantine, the Phantom Stranger, Zatanna, Zatara, Sargon the Sorcerer, and Etrigan the Demon.[28] Del Toro later confirmed in January 2013 that he is working on such a movie, with the working title, Dark Universe, and is hiring a screenwriter for the film. Del Toro revealed Swamp Thing, Constantine, The Spectre, Deadman, Zatanna and Zatara were characters in the story.

I heard about that a couple of years ago and it does sound quite exciting (damn them) but I assumed it was just another thing heaped on the pile of things he's optioned but will never do. I'm genuinely worried he'll end up doing far more adaptations and remakes than original films (looking forward to Crimson Peak), but of all the adaptations/remakes, Dan Simmons' Drood sounds the most promising. He seems to have his heart set firmly on Frankenstein but I just can't get excited about that.

I do think that all the fan-service crap Marvel is beholden to really constrains and limits what's possible with this material.

What would be possible otherwise?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7f/Howard_the_Duck_(1986).jpg/220px-Howard_the_Duck_(1986).jpg

Dare to dream the impossible dream.

I know, can't bite the hand that feeds

but it's not really that hard to imagine alternatives is it? keeping everything tied into a single continuity unique or unusual takes on characters

Another thing that would revert me to geekish excitement is a film starring Fin Fang Foom, Groot, Gargantus, Grogg, Rommbu, Gorgolla, Goom, Orrgo, Shagg, Scarecrow etc.

It'd be extremely unlikely but if it did happen there'd be no excuse for no money to Kirby's family. Because those monsters are about as Kirby as it gets.

DC should make a Fourth World film and pay the Kirby estate, just to fuck with Marvel (also it would rule).

xp I seriously do wonder, though. I feel like the shared universe is actually giving us more opportunities to see stuff like Ant-Man or Guardians of the Galaxy that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Whether they'll be good, I don't know, but they can't be worse than Elektra or Ghost Rider at their general competence level now.

I can see what you mean if there was something floating around like an adaptation of more serious/non-superhero stuff like Preacher, Y: The Last Man, Sandman, and so on, but nothing is coming to mind in the MU (lol thanks for reminding me of Howard the Duck - I had no idea it was even a Marvel comic for years after the fact).

aldo: Are DC and Kirby's estate on good terms? I wonder if the family was paid for their use in (for example) the various DCAU series

I'd say Marvel, quite justifiably, doesn't care what hardcore comics fans want to see tbh. They can't make blockbuster money off the 5,000 people who buy a non-X/Spider-Man/Avengers-related graphic novel.

yeah these films are consistent if nothing else

at the same time, wouldn't it be cool if there was room for non-continuity pitches, like, say a heist movie starring MU supervillains

xp

Are DC and Kirby's estate on good terms? I wonder if the family was paid for their use in (for example) the various DCAU series

they're definitely on better terms than Marvel and the Kirby estate (but I'll defer to the more knowledgable sic here)

one of those DCAU episodes was dedicated to Jack fwiw

and they clearly (affectionately) modeled Dan Turpin after him in the Superman TAS. man that was a great show.

Marvel will put the mid-tier and oddball stuff in TV pitches.

Every month is a new single-character series from Marvel (I'm getting in 50 copies of the All-New Doop series tomorrow, pretty sure I over-ordered), in part I'd guess it's orders from Disney/Marvel Studios to test the waters.

Not sure about Kirby in particular, but DC aren't any better in general as Al Plastino's recent death showed.

There's a Doop series now? Wow.

Thor IV: Thor Is Not Dead
Thor V: Asgard Is for Real

I was thinking about this earlier, how it's a small miracle that by and large these movies are not terrible. Things they have to contend with:

1) decades of comic stories/mythology/continuity
2) several interlocking films and their shared mythology/continuity
3) The devil's bargain that is Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking
4) the prospect of several more films continuing plots/characters set in motion
5) A hunk of major characters owned or permanently leased or however it works to other studios
6) Hyper-nerd, detail-minded fans who, who knows, maybe could kill one of these movies, if they could resist.

That's a lot of juggling to do, a lot of constraints. The addition of Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch to the next Avengers as (maybe? likely?) non-mutants in a world without Magneto and/or mutants, might be the biggest muddling yet to the canon, which ironically, in the name of convenience, could make things even more convoluted.

Is there really a Doop series in the making, or was that a joke? Because I would so watch it, especially if all of his lines were incomprehensible.

Marvel wouldn't have the rights to Doop anyway seeing as he's a mutant

Speaking of Howard The Duck, there is quite a few screen DC and Marvel properties that nobody talks about anymore... Nick Fury (Hasselhoff), 90s Fantastic Four (I think this was filmed without the creators knowing it was never going to be released but I'm sure it was eventually released), an old cheap Dr Strange film, 70s Spiderman, Japanese Spiderman, Supergirl, Swamp Thing on tv and film, Man-Thing, I'm sure there is more (animation doesn't count)

Those all take place in different, stand-alone universes.

The addition of Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch to the next Avengers as (maybe? likely?) non-mutants in a world without Magneto and/or mutants, might be the biggest muddling yet to the canon

IIRC Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver being mutants wasn't really a big thing for years after they debuted in The Avengers comic. This was before mutants became a hot commodity, so they weren't really connected to the X-Men, and even the fact that Magneto was their father was retcon that happened years after their introduction. I'd say even today they're still considered to be more "Avengers characters" than "mutant characters".

That's true, the Magneto reveal came later. Though of course Quicksilver is in the new X-Men movie, one assumes as a mutant.

Seriously, though, that's something I like about these things. All these characters have been drawn and written so many different people, over the years, in different ways, different titles, through different storylines, that it's kind of neat to see the movies approach them in a similarly constantly reinventing manner.

Also, the stinger at the end of Winter Soldier seemed to hint that in the movie universe they were genetically engineered by HYDRA, i.e. not the same sort of mutants as the X-Men.

(xpost)

I think that sometimes giving the hard-core fans what they want is often a terrible idea. You'd maybe get what is sometimes referred to as "jacking off over a longbox" (continuity fetishism). That has to be my favourite comics term I've heard. Another is "Swamp Thing envy" (people trying to redefine a character in a major way that doesn't just stop at fresh reinvention).

If one has to do these characters, I think reinvention is the best way to go but what "Swamp Thing envy" criticizes is calculated attempts at making the new interpretation becoming the dominant version or something looked on as an important version.

And to be honest, Scarlet Witch has one of the least feasibly "mutant" powers in the Marvel comics... It was her mutated genes that made he a magician?

It was only topped by Longshot's power: it was his genetical mutation that allowed him to always have luck on his side... Because that's what genes do.

Probably a good idea!

I’m on Zing and idawanna

I did it. Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase 4 & Beyond (and a chance to chance your vote)