Marvel Entertainment – Excitingly In-Stride

I must admit, as a long term Marvel fan, this is an exciting time. The Avengers has just done boffo box-office, sequels to Iron Man and Thor are due in 2013, Avengers 2 is due in 2015 and a S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series is in the works, spearheaded by Joss Whedon himself.

My relationship with Marvel began almost 30 years ago, with this:

A gift from a friend of my father’s, this melodramatic double-sized issue with the highly stylized art forever ended my previous relationship with Archie Comics and ushered in a new era of entertainment for me. I devoured this issue, and it opened the door to all sorts of other new comics. Spider-Man. Daredevil. Iron Man. The Hulk. Captain America. Thor. The Avengers.

That’s not to say I had never been exposed to any of them before. Even before this, I would spend my saturday mornings eagerly watching another episode of the ’67 Spider-Man cartoon series. I thought Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends was vastly superior. I have family photos of my brother and I wearing no shirts, flexing our pre-teen “muscles” in classic “Hulk” poses – in fact, our father once remarked that he always knew when we’d been watching the (Bill Bixby seventies TV series) Incredible Hulk, because couch cushions were alway strewn all over the living room.

But it had never occurred to me to buy any of the comic books. Until that issue. X-Men 186. Then it never occured to me to buy anything else, which I did until about 1991 or so. Then I began to drift.The comics began changing and I was becoming less and less enamoured with the storylines. I guess I changed too. Found other interests, went to school and started in on my career in the world of design.

That’s not to say I completely lost interest in Marvel, though.

I scratched my head in the early nineties at the failed Captain America, Punisher and Fantastic Four movies. I never saw them — I only heard about them, and that they were exceedingly bad.

Then in 98 or so, the first Blade movie hit. I personally didn’t care for it, and I’m not a fan of Wesley Snipes, but to many people it’s credited with helping Marvel emerge as an entertainment force outside the comics world. I don’t particularly agree with that. Blade was a thoroughly obscure comic book that the movie had very little in common with. But, credit where it’s due, it did get people talking about Marvel.

It really begain in 2000. X-Men. Good movie, decent box office, but more importantly, I think it signalled the point where Marvel had proven that its superhero roster had potential outside of comics and animated television series’. 2002 brought Spider-Man. Good movie, didn’t agree with every choice they made, but it was immensely entertaining and like The Avengers this summer past, did massively boffo box office. The vibe was starting to hum. 2003 was a mixed bag. A lackluster Daredevil and an incredibly pretentious Ang Lee’s Hulk scuffed the sheen a bit, though the second X-Men movie, the tragically titled X2: X-Men United was a certified hit. 2004 brought us Spider-Man 2 (yay!) and 2005 saw the emergence of the Fantastic Four, a headscratcher of a movie — so much wasted potential, though Michael Chiklis was spot-on as The Thing, and up-and-comer Chris Evans had the charisma of a young Tom Cruise (without the, ahem, baggage) as Johnny Storm – The Human Torch.

2007 was a crushing year for Marvel fans. Ghost Rider had potential, but it squandered it. Another Fantastic Four movie… meh. The worst offender, though, was Spider-Man 3. Studio interference had pushed Sam Raimi to overstuff the flick with one too many villains (“we think audiences want to see Venom”… in Topher Grace form? Really?) and it was a mess. It really left people wondering about Marvel and its future in movies.

Until this little gem.

Iron Man, 2008. Where Marvel emerged from all the hits and misses of the past decade and declared itself an entertainment force. In the future, it would be financing its own movies (for the ones that it owned the rights to… Sony’s still in a position to make a mess of Spider-Man and Fox is still redeeming itself with the X-Men franchise after the one-two punch of X3: Brett Ratner’s Blah to X-Men Origins: Wolverine), and it would be making these movies to fit together in their own universe.

The Incredible Hulk followed in 2008. While not a (Hulk-)Smash by any stretch, it acquited itself well and expanded the Marvel Universe a little bit more.

2010 gave us Iron Man 2, a quickie follow-up to the first and while not universally beloved, it had pretty similar box-office and in my opinion is much better than people give it credit for. Like The Incredible Hulk, it expanded the Marvel Cinematic Universe a little more. Opened S.H.I.E.L.D. up to us a bit more, gave Nick Fury some expanded screentime and introduced The Black Widow. 2011 was the one-two punch of Thor and Captain America. While not box-office smashes on the scale of Iron Man, they both did well, and put the final pieces in place for 2012.

The Avengers. The movie that I, personally, have been waiting decades to see. Marvel pulled out all the stops on this one, and knocked it out of the park.

And they knocked it out of the park because they took chances, like they did with the movies leading up to it. They let Joss Whedon, beloved to a core group of fans for giving the world Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly, and a well-received run telling stories in Marvel’s comic-book universe, write and direct it. Rather than turn it over to an explosion-porn meister like Michael Bay, they gave it to someone with only one cinematic film under his belt (the underperforming Serenity) but with a pedigree in the comic book world.

Iron Man, Jon Favreau. He got his film start in comedy, writing and starring in Swingers with Vince Vaughan. He’d go on to have a few hits, like Elf, and would direct Zathura, a special-effects-driven critical success and box-office bomb. Nothing that would scream “obvious choice” to direct Iron Man. But it worked. And for whatever reason, Marvel had faith that it would, and it paid off in spades (and gave Robert Downey Jr. a complete career ressurection to boot).

Letting Kenneth Branagh bring his Shakespearean heft to Thor gave this epic tale of fathers and sons and brothers some real weight, but was, again, not an obvious choice for a special effects extravaganza. While having a spate of hits and misses to his resumé, Joe Johnston was not likely anyone’s immediate choice for Captain America. But given his history working on Raiders of the Lost Ark and directing period pieces like The Rocketeer an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and Hidalgo, as well as effects movies like Jurassic Park 3, it definitely wasn’t a bad choice.

There are essentially now two categories of Marvel movies now. In one sits franchises like The X-Men and The Amazing Spider-Man. Owned by other studios who are going to keep making movies so as not to lose the rights to them.

In the other are the ones owned by Marvel Entertainment. Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, The Avengers and the upcoming Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy. All of them set in the same universe, the events of one movie affecting the next to be released. All very hands-on by Marvel itself, the one company who knows best how to take its own franchises seriously.

There may be missteps along the way, and they won’t all be perfect, but if Phase One, culminating in The Avengers, has been any indication, then Marvel has indeed hit its stride and I personally can’t wait to see what the future holds with Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase Two.