Since Marvel Studios released Iron Man in 2008, they've found a great balance of paying homage to the comic books while also doing something new with these characters.
Staying true to the spirit of the source material has allowed Marvel Studios to deliver some of the least faithful adaptations we've seen, all while earning the love of fans and heaps of praise from critics. Now, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever producer Nate Moore has shared one of the secrets to their continued success.
While you might think hiring hardcore comic book fans to write their movies would be a smart move, it turns out that's a "red flag" for Kevin Feige and company.
"One thing I think is interesting, and specifically for writers, I would say, a lot of times, we're pitched writers who love Marvel," Moore explains. "And to me, that's always a red flag. Because I go, 'Oh, I don't want you to already have a pre-existing idea of what it is, because you grew up with Issue 15 and that's what you want to recreate.'"
"I want somebody who's hard on the material, who goes, 'What is this? I think there's a movie here, but maybe we should be looking at it in this way.'"
"The best example of that for me was Markus and McFeely, who weren't comic guys coming up, but were like, 'Wait, Captain America, this seems a bit weird. What if we kinda looked at it in this way?'" he continues. "And they weren't married to anything, nothing was, you know, there was nothing sacrosanct."
As for why Marvel Studios feels that way, Moore would go on to say that he thinks it's important to find someone who acknowledges the greatness of the comic books but isn't determined to adapt them frame by frame.
"I think that's important to be able to go, 'Look, the source material is great, and I love it, and comics work in the medium they were built in, but that's not a direct, one-to-one translation to the best version of the movie.' And sometimes it takes someone who's out of this culture to go, 'Hey, I know you think it should be this, but maybe it should be this other thing.'"
There will be those who recoil at what Moore is saying here, but you need only look at the success Marvel Studios has found over the years to see that he's not wrong. Not all the decisions they've made have been great (Spider-Man really didn't need to be Iron Boy), but for the most part, our favourite heroes and villains have been translated to the screen in a near-perfect way.
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