I have found that as the years go by, the fans that "love" comic book movies are becoming more and more unappreciative and as we move into an era where comic book movies come out in droves and are accepted as "mainstream" I have decided to take a look back (using Marvel movies as an example)and try to remind those who aren't appreciative that they should calm down a little bit and just sit back and enjoy being a comic book fan because these cinematic universes and sagas may not be around forever.
The Start
1986-1999
From 1986 to 1999, there were a whopping FIVE Marvel titles released. Yes, you read that right, just five. Four of the five were laughable attempts at bringing our favorite characters to the big screen while the other one brought to life a character no one knew was even a Marvel character. So, we should stop for a second and let that sink in. Thirteen years passed and only five films were released, two of which were direct to DVD might I add. Here is a timeline:
1986-Howard the Duck
1989-The Punisher
1990-Captain America
1994-Fantastic Four
1998-Blade
Finally
2000-2003
In 2000, Fox took a chance and made the film X-Men and at the time, geeks around the world were left in awe and couldn't believe characters like Wolverine, Cyclops, and Magneto were on the big screen. Two years after X-Men Columbia released a film that left grown men and little boys twinkle eyed. Everyone's favorite wall-crawler was finally put in film and finally, comic books can be taken seriously as a source material that can be made into a compelling film. So what if the X-Men wore all black leather and Spider-Man's first love interest wasn't Gwen Stacy? These characters were finally brought to light in more of a serious tone than previous films like Howard the Duck and the Fantastic Four movie. Saying that, not all films were at the caliber of X-Men & Spider-Man, but it was good to see characters like Daredevil & Hulk on screen none the less. Due to this success, movie companies were okay with using comic characters for films of their own. How okay were they with it? Well, they didn't churn them out in those four years but Marvel films were released. Less years and same amount of movies shows significant amount of progress. Look at the Timeline below:
2000-X-Men
2002-Blade II, Spider-Man
2003-Daredevil, Hulk, X2
Starting to Get the Big Picture
2004-2009
Mainstream audiences are now starting to get behind superheroes and as each movie comes out, the door opens wider for lesser known characters to come in and share their story. Spider-Man 2 at the time of it's release became the highest grossing superhero film and technology finally allowed us to see characters like Iron Man, Ghost Rider, and Silver Surfer. We also got an origin film for everyone's favorite X-Man, Wolverine. Between 2004 and 2009 TWELVE films were released based on Marvel characters alone. This shows the embrace people had for heroes big & small. This also is the star of the genre being taken seriously. So seriously in fact that the Blade, X-Men, and Spider-man franchises all made it to the trilogy phase. This is also the start of a "cinematic universe" that audiences are starting to follow because they are interested in where the story will go. The timeline:
2004-Blade: Trinity, The Punisher, Spider-Man 2
2005-Elektra, Fantastic Four
2006-X-Men: The Last Stand
2007-Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver, Ghost Rider, Spider-Man 3
2008-Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Punisher: War Zone
2009-X-Men Origins: Wolverine
The Big Picture
2010-2013
Marvel's The Avengers is probably one of the greatest leaps of faith ever made in cinema. This leap got them to the third spot on the highest grossing films of all time and this was all from an idea that was conceived in a time where studios were making a story out of one character instead of multiple ones. The connection between Thor, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man & Iron Man 2 was made because people were intrigued in the story that these characters were involved in and these people were comic book fans and non comic book fans alike. Guess how many movies were put out in this four year span? Try about ten. The timeline:
2010-Iron Man 2
2011-Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor, X-Men:First Class
2012-Ghost Rider: SoV, Marvel's The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man
2013-Iron Man 3, The Wolverine, Thor: The Dark World
The Future
2014-
We are now at a point where not only do we get to see our favorite characters on the big screen, but we are getting more comic accurate stories as time goes by. What is coming in the next ten years which ranges from Spidey fighting the Sinister Six, to The Avengers fighting foes like Ultron & Thanos, has me hoping that the world doesn't end anytime soon and instead of smashing or ranking movies, we should be glad they are up there to begin with. Gone are the days of mediocre comic book movies like Howard the Duck, The Punisher, and The Fantastic Four. We should be excited that these movies are interesting to the general public and that serious money now goes into them. We should also be thankful that studio's took leaps of faith to deliver us something truly magical. Oh and this what the future is looking like:
2014-Captain America: The Winter Solider, The Amazing Spider-Man 2
X-Men: DoFP, Guardians of the Galaxy
2015-Avengers: AoU, Fantastic Four reboot, Ant-Man
2016- 2 TBA Marvel films, X-Men: Apocalypse, The Amazing Spider-Man 3
2017-TBA Marvel film, The Amazing Spider-Man 4
That's thirteen Marvel films in four years.