Anthony Stokes asks whether The Avengers is the worst thing to happen to superhero movies...![]()
Whether you loved it or hated it,
The Avengers was truly an innovation for comic book movies, blockbusters, and films in general. Aside from the fact it was widely considered to be much greater than it probably should have been, it was also a triumph in planning and execution. The concept of a shared universe was something that was always talked about but never put into play. Starting with Samuel L. Jackson's cameo as Nick Fury in
Iron Man, Marvel laid the groundwork that would later influence the rest of the genre.
But is that a good thing? It seems like other studios are taking notes from Marvel. Fox, DC/WB, and Sony have all announced movies and future projects that seem to be trying to bank on Marvel Studios' success. Fox has
X-Men: Days of Future Past, DC/WB has
Batman vs. Superman, and Sony has
The Amazing Spider-Man 2, building towards
The Sinister Six. However, where Marvel's approach was more of making sure all the pieces fit, the other studios just seem to be trying to shove in as many characters in as possible for fan service.
At one point, when it seemed like
X-Men: Days of Future Past casting had slowed down, Evan Peters was cast as Quicksilver. This made me scratch my head because, through grey lines in the contract, it had also previously been announced that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, who are predominantly X-Men villains, would be in
The Avengers: Age of Ultron. I'm not going to pretend like I know what goes on behind the scenes, but I got the impression that out of spite Fox forced Singer to include the character. And my concern is that he'll just be thrown in and conceptually it will make no sense. There's never been so much of a hint at him in the either the original
X-Men trilogy or the
First Class movie (although he did cameo briefly in
X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Either the emphasis with his relationship with Magneto won't make sense in the context of the rest of the series, or it won't focus on the relationship, and in the latter case then why put him in the movie? There's also been a photo insinuating that Scarlet Witch will be part of the movie, which was met with a lot of backlash.
DC is attempting to adapt the shared universe method from Marvel, but instead of doing it the way that worked for Marvel they're fast tracking a
Justice League movie. Not that there's only one way to do a team movie, but the reason Avengers worked so well is that it avoided the pitfalls of other team movies by already having the characters introduced and having some familiarity with each other, which led to some great dialogue and interactions.
Justice League will have to spend its first act introducing whatever characters aren't introduced in
Batman vs. Superman, taking away screen time from the villain and story development which will probably result in it feeling too straight-forward. Simply putting a Batman solo movie in between
Batman vs. Superman and the
Justice League would allow the movies to breathe and provide space for more character introductions and back-story to be established.
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In my mind the most blatant offender would be Sony, mostly because it only has one property. Fox had the foundation to make a shared universe through the
X-Men: First Class"reboot" and DC has the characters to make a shared universe, but Sony only has Spider-Man. So Sony has to stretch out
Spider-Man by making spin-offs. Again nothing wrong with that, but it seems like their strategy is to shove as much fan service in as possible. What really bothered me is when one of the writers for
The Amazing Spider-Man, Roberto Orci, said that a challenge they had when writing the script was making the villains likeable. Villains should be written as an interesting foil for the hero, not to be likeable just so that people will see their spin-off. You'd think after
Spider-Man 3 where there was villain overload they would rethink their approach.
This is all speculation, and there's a good chance all these movies will turn out fine, but I can't help but feel like the studios are being greedy. Yes, every studio's only purpose is to make money, but with studios like Marvel and Pixar it always seems like they also do their best to make a good product for their fans. And it shows that if you make a good movie you'll make more money, Most of the movies that have crossed over a billion dollars have been nominated by the Academy and a few have won. The key to making more money is making a good movie and that's probably why an Iron Man movie made almost twice as much as a Superman movie. Instead of trying to keep up with Marvel, the other studios should try to make a good movie for their fans first and then use it to build upon, after taking a step back and seeing what works and what doesn't.
Anthony Stokes is a blogger and independent filmmaker who also assists with the music blog DopesterMusic and co-hosts the podcast Delusional Losers.
