As a fellow geek, I try to keep myself on the pulse of current geek events, culture, and controversy. ONe of the biggest events in recent memory would be the announced Avengers film. Geek icons from Moviebob to Linkara have all announced their anticipation for the film, as it marks the culmination of a huge compilation of the finest Marvel superheroes to date and their respective film franchises: The Huk, Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, and recently Captain America. Ten long years of ups and downs for the Marvel film franchise, it looks like this should be the defining moment of the comic film genre....
...one that I'm not looking forward to at all.
First, let me make my biases apparent: I'm a DC fan, primarily for Batman. My first cartoon was Batman: The Animated Series. My first comic was Legends; I consider The Dark Knight to be the best film of the first decade of the new millennium. You're in full right to call me out on having my biases blind me from something great. However, I'm also looking at it from a critic point of view. I prescribe to Murphy's law, and it applies to Marvel's goals and aspirations for the Avengers project.
First, let's look at Marvel Studio's track reccord. For every Iron Man we have a Fantastic Four or a Ang Lee Hulk or even a Spider-Man 3. The track record is 1 good film for every 3 bad ones. Now to be fair, DC has had its share of duds (Batman and Robin, etc.) But what DC has over Marvel is better quality control thanks to the fact that DC is a subsidy of Warner Bros. With one studio overseeing the whole thing, there's better management as opposed to several different studios working from the same source material. Marvel Studios' main collaborators have been Paramount, Universal, Fox, and Sony. With so many different production companies, quality control is going to be inconsistent. I wholeheartedly blame Sony for the mess that is Spider-Man 3, as it was Sony who wanted to cram Venom and Gwen Stacy into an allready stuffed film and not Sam Rami. With Batman and Superman, it's all being distributed by Legendary Pictures and produced by the genius that is Christopher Nolan. Even the Green Lantern film is being directed by Martin Campbell who has serious directing chops. Too many cooks spoil the stew, and when you have too many distributors working on your films, it's a lot harder to keep an handle on your firms.
The second and final point is that the Avengers is an ensemble piece. Murphy's law dictates that the individual films will be rushed in order to accommodate the big film. We have a new film, X Men, Thor, and Captain America films debuting this year. Next year will be the Avengers and the Spider-Man reboot sans Sam Rami. Now the reason Spider-Man is getting a reboot is because of Sony's own Executive Meddling and the result was that Spider-Man 3 bombed. It's clear that with three films in the same year Mavel's rushing the prodject in order to get the big show on the way. When you do that, the individual parts become weak as less time is given to flesh out each individual character. I have to agree with Nolan's stance on no Justice League film. Batman's strengths lie in his solidarity; this is the Dark Knight who fights and works for the most part alone. He doesn't need a Robin or even Superman to help him fight crime. Likewise, the Superman franchise is very much a wild card. The previous effort was mediocre at best while others (III with Richard Pryor and IV with a heavy handed nuclear Aesop) were particularly bad. Superman needs time to fully develop, and any move to rush him for an ensemble piece would only make things much worse than they already are. We can see a similar predicament with Captain America: his previous films have all been bad, and Marvel's move to speed up an Avenger film a year away from Captain America's reboot spells disaster.
Despite my criticisms, I am a firm believer of giving others the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Marvel can pull it off and produce well made self-contained films and an ensemble piece within the span of two years. I, as always, will remain skeptical of the final product. In the meantime, I'll look foward to what a proven director and a proven cast can do come '12...
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