Broken Frontier

Marvel comics have been made into movies for a while now. Some really should have been left on the printed page; The Dolph Lungren Punisher film comes to mind. While all of these characters share the same universe on paper, on the silver screen they never cross paths. That is until the summer of 2008.

Like previous summers, Marvel released a couple big blockbusters. However, unlike previous years, these films seem to be connected. Iron Man was released in May and actually received pretty great reviews. Even the New York Times called is, "…an unusually good superhero picture." The film held an Easter Egg for those that were patient enough to wait until after the credits: Samuel L. Jackson playing the role of none other then Nick Fury. The nerd world collectively rolled their eyes back and stained the crotches of their pants. Unfortunately I wasn’t told about the scene after the credits in Iron Man. I found it with Spanish subtitles on YouTube shortly after hearing of its existence. Fury walks in on Tony Stark and tells him he needs the multibillionaire for "the Avengers Initiative". They finally started to connect the dots.

But that wasn’t the end of tricks in Marvel’s cinematic hat. Last week The Incredible Hulk was released in theaters. No one really knew what to expect of the film since the last Hulk moive was by and large hated by the geek community. But the reviews for the sequel are decent. And once again, Marvel Studios showed there are big plans ahead. At the end of the film General Ross is drinking in a bar and is joined by none other than Tony Stark. Robert Downey Jr’s appearance in the Hulk was no secret though. Marvel was hoping so much to draw in the Iron Man films bank that they even included the Stark scene in a trailer on television. In the scene Stark joins Ross at the bar and tells him their starting a team, and that’s how the film ends. But the sharp eyed fan would have noticed Stark Industry logos all over everything the military used in the film, and Nick Fury’s name even appeared on a document in the opening credits!

Marvel has already announced four new films for 2010 and 2011: Iron Man 2, Thor, The Avengers, and Captain America. If Marvel asked me how to proceed with their plan (and the most assuredly won’t), I would make Iron Man end with the search for Captain America beginning. I think the first act of the Avengers film should be about the team trying to find the body of Captain America. This of course is after many failed attempts by Bruce Banner to recreate the super solider serum. Then the Avengers film ends with a nice place for Cap to have his own spin-off. But Cap shouldn’t go up against terrorists of Bin Laden or any of that contemporary nonsense, no. It has to be the Red Skull. I don’t really know what they should do with the Thor film, but Fury and/or Stark definitely need to make an appearance. However the ultimate goal here is to get everything ready for a kick ass Avengers film.

A good portion of making this work will also rely on whether or not they can get the same actors from the solo films to appear in the Avengers film. Robert Downey Jr. has proven he has no trouble with playing his role more then once. And not to say Downey is small potatoes in Hollywood, but Ed Norton is a pretty big name as well. The problem is that no one wants to be the next Christopher Reeve. Reeve was in a dozen films, but name one of them other than Superman. Unless you do so many roles that the really nerdy role gets lost in the shuffle like Hugh Jackman has, actors are afraid to get typecast or remember for only one character.

There are a lot of factors at play, and it will certainly take more then just the right cast. You can get all the original actors to reprise their roles and even get Tobey Mcguire to even play Spider-Man in it but if the script is crap then it just won’t work. Fortunately there are plenty of amazing comics to use for starting points. Mark Millar’s Ultimates series would make an awesome movie.

The potential for greatness is pretty high. Then again, the potential for suckiness is pretty high as well. All we can do is sit back and wait and hope Marvel doesn’t screw it up. However, I would have never guessed they would have finally started to make the characters interact with each other the way they are now. Soon fans will be talking about the movies rather than comics when they say "Make mine Marvel!"