There have been many mistakes throughout comic book movie history. Some have resulted in good things....and most have resulted in the inverse. Some piss people off. Some are random. Some just make you want to scratch your head and say 'Why?'
Early on, when Marvel was near Bankruptcy, it pulled a last-ditch effort to save it's ass, in what has eventually been shown as a really, really bad idea.
Marvel decided, since they didn't have the money or time to make their own films, they'd sell several of their major properties on seven-year lease deals. If the studios they sold the rights to didn't use the properties within a seven year period, the rights would revert. The only way to reset said countdown would be to put a film in production, with a budget, cast, and etc. Some of these properties reverted back to Marvel after lack of use, most recently Blade and Punisher, but some properties were never used, so they returned to the company, such as Iron Fist, Captain America, Thor, and Black Panther which were sold to Artisan Entertainment, which also came back when the company died in 2004. Iron Man's rights was also bounced around, from Universal who sold it to Fox who sold it to New Line, and reverted back to Marvel in 2005. Nicholas Cage and Brad Pitt were cast around as potentials for Tony Stark.
At first, all seemed well. Sony was bringing 800+ million numbers with Spider-Man, and Fox was doing...competently with the X-Men. There were a few bad films during that timeframe (Daredevil, Elektra, Blade Trinity), but overall things seemed fine.
But then, all hell broke loose.
2006 was met with X-Men: Last Stand, in which it's characters were clearly being wasted. Marvel still waited, though. After all, sure fans despised this one, but there was still potential in other franchises, right?
Oh, well...um...there's still Spider-Man! Spider-Man and it's sequel were met with praise by fans and critics alike, and certainly raked in the cash. With the third installment prepped to make even more, Marvel seemed confident in what they were doing.
Until the film came out, and the fans reacted. And it was not. Good. At. All.
If you think that the flaming on this site can get out of hand, it's nothing compared to this. Spider-Man was one of the highest-profile failures of the decade. Even Superman Returns was following two disasters. But Spidey was a massive success, and, at that point, the first installment was highest grossing superhero film of all time (beaten out by Dark Knight in 2008). Seeing Spidey reduced to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRPoiTHMuzc
Made a lot of fans unhappy.
This, it seemed, was the last straw for Marvel. Their characters were being done horribly wrong, and it was their own damn fault. Mind you, they still had one very, very risky option to pull: Making their own film. They had enough money now, but it was still their last chance.
Early scripts were developed, and some were abandoned (There's still an old 2007 Thor leaked script floating around, but it bore little resemblance to the film that came out earlier this year). Eventually, they started on two projects:
The Incredible Hulk, who they had gotten the rights back for, and
Iron Man, an A-Lister in comics but a B-Lister to the public. Given it's current position, these dreams seemed impossible. Especially when they announced the main lead of Iron Man.
You see, when Robert Downey Jr. was cast as the Shellhead, he was met with about as much sympathy as those early rumors of Lindsay Lohan playing Lana Lang. And was pretty much in the same position. RDJ was then known primarily in the public as a former drug addict, who said he was cleaning up but kept falling back in. To quote the man himself:
"It's like I've got a shotgun in my mouth with my finger on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gun metal."
RDJ was suffering relapses because his father, Robert Downey Sr, had been giving them to him since he was eight years old. As you can imagine, his father was also an addict.
Coincidentally, around the same time, Heath Ledger had been announced as the Joker, who was also met by harsh criticism. Both DC fans and Marvel fans were complaining about casting, and both Marvel and DC fans were also saying: "Wait till you see them act before you judge." Downey was much more justified in his criticism, since most of the hate against Ledger was based on jokes about his role in Brokeback Mountain (and that pretty much covers it), while Downey's was for his addiction.
Marvel also had a very, very risky plan in motion, and were going to attempt something had never been done in the genre before: Connecting films together, which at the time was viewed as being one of those things that would be awesome, but would never happen. For example, one user at
SuperHeroHype,(formerly
Spider-Man Hype!), who later went on to become a forum Moderator,
hippie_hunter said in 2007 along the lines of:
"A live-action Avengers movie will never, ever happen."
When Iron Man came out in 2008, fans and critics loved it. Iron Man is commonly referred to as Marvel's best film (although recently X-Men: First Class and Captain America have slipped their way into that spot in people's lists). Iron Man is currently rated at
94% on Rotten Tomatoes, tied for highest-rated superhero film of all time with The Dark Knight, which also disproved those people who thought negatively of Ledger, who would later win an Oscar (posthumously, unfortunately) for his performance. However, the Incredible Hulk wasn't so lucky: Since Marvel had spent so much time promoting the hell out of Iron Man, Hulk got left in the dust with his marketing. But the message sent from the studios was clear: They intended to embark on what would become the biggest project ever seen in a superhero franchise: they were going to unite their largest characters (that they had access to) under one universe, which would later be coined the
Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Iron Man 2 came out in 2010. Considering how views on the film are pretty divided, I'll leave it out of this, and just say it made 600 million dollars. However, the big event of that timeframe wasn't Iron Man 2's release, it was what happened a few months before.
http://imgur.com/2u21Y.jpg
On December 31st, 2009, before the New Year was rang in,
The Walt Disney Company bought Marvel Entertainment, having announced this move some months beforehand. Marvel had attracted the eye of Disney in the years before, no doubt because of their film project. This, of course, since this is what we do, resulted in a very, very split community for a month or so. Many were afraid that Disney would 'Disneyfy' the characters, and feared the end of more hardcore characters, such as the Punisher. Other fears were that Disney would be controlling of Marvel and get too involved in Marvel's projects, as Warner Bros does DC, which resulted in films like Catwoman and Green Lantern, which got less than positive remarks from fans and critics alike.
This video shows pretty much the story here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyYb_r4cZHE&feature=channel_video_title
As you can see, it seems the second scenario is what occurred, since it seems that the only affect Disney has is making money directly because of it, as well as promotion.
For now, this concludes the story. Marvel went forward with Cap and Thor, and next year, The Avengers, which shows the beginning of Disney distributing the film.