For a while I have wondered why Marvel fans are so excited about what Marvel has achieved in recent years. It really puzzles me, the extreme excitement about any of Marvels out put apart from the amazing film The Avengers.
While The Avengers as mentioned above was pretty impressive, it remains nonetheless only amazing, insofar as it was the first to do a Superhero team-up, bringing together some of Marvels greatest heroes. But actually when you look at the individual movies leading up to The Avengers, they were all pretty lack luster.
The most criminal case was The Incredible Hulk with Ed norton. Marvel and Executive producer Kevin Fiege, really demonstrated their true colors in that exchange. While I admit Edward Norton was rather unprofessional in his response to Marvel ruining his movie, it is clear that they brought him in promising that he would have some creative control over the project, then when he actually wrote a quite good script, they deleted all the scenes, so the movie was hardly even intelligible.
If anyone can tell me why they chose to delete this scene apart from an absolute contempt for their viewers intelligence, please enlighten me. It´s a brilliantly acted scene, amidst other brilliant deleted scenes, that would have turned, a cynical, money making, arcade game of a movie into a great comic book movie with a deep interesting lead character. As such it was only mediocre.
Thor was very similar affair, as was Captain America. Again, great performances, but all in all, good but throw away movies. They just don´t have any heart, because their is no artistic integrity behind them.
I will give Marvel props, that they believe in their characters, no matter how silly, and they have faith that we love comics enough to even give an Ant Man film a chance, while DC/WB are still worried about Wonder Woman not translating into film. They - Marvel - believe in their characters and that is why I´ve supported them, and may well even catch a couple of their phase 2 movies. But, I´m getting older now, and I need something a bit more intellectually and emotionally satisfying for me to keep buying tickets, and if Marvel´s past record is anything to go by, I don´t expect to be blown a way by anything in phase 2, not even the second Avengers. The hype is up, you´ve done the Superhero mashup, people will get bored if you don´t mature, that´s my message to Marvel.
Now on to Superman: Man Of Steel. By all intents and purposes, Zack Snyder looks to be making one of the most exciting comic book movies to ever have been made. He´s doing something novel, like his Watchmen movie, he´s placing Superman in the real world, and asking what the hell would that mean. It´s a fantastic grounded approach, that looks like it will be visually imaginative, emotionally stirring and intellectually satisfying for adults and kids alike.
This kind of movie making should be applauded, and I hope he does well. I´ll certainly be watching.
About The Author:
Writer, Script Writer, Comic Book Fanatic