Ten years of mighty Marvel

All I really wanted as a kid was to see a movie based on characters from Marvel Comics on the big screen. Growing up there were movies based on DC characters like the Superman and Batman but none from Marvel.

And it wasn’t like Marvel wasn’t trying. Their first movie in theaters Howard the Duck (1986) seems like an odd choice now but for a time the character was extremely popular and seemed like it could be a crossover hit but instead was a colossal flop. And there were a few more attempts shortly after with films like Captain America and The Punisher that went direct to video and Fantastic Four that went direct to nowhere and has never officially been released.

Still, reading the back pages of the magazine Comics Scene which each month teased that a James Cameron directed Spider-Man movie was in the works and Tom Cruise was set to star as Tony Stark in Iron Man –– movies based on Marvel characters seemed to be closer than ever and further away too.

In 1998 my prayers were answered with Blade and then in quick succession X-Men and Spider-Man. Over the following years some of these movies would be good, mostly sequels to X-Men and Spider-Man, and some not so good, Ghost Rider, Daredevil, Elektra, another Fantastic Four… Which is kind’a how I thought comics based on comics would be, a few gems mixed in with the dung.

But all that changed ten years ago with the release of Iron Man on May 2, 2008. This movie wasn’t just based on a character from Marvel, it was also produced by Marvel too which meant the people working on Iron Man actually understood how to translate the character to the big screen. Iron Man was great, quickly becoming a fan-favorite film and was one of the biggest movies of 2008. The Incredible Hulk would follow that same summer and while not attaining anything near the box office of Iron Man was still a good movie none-the-less.

In quick succession Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger would follow over the next few years. And while I don’t think any of these three movies are great, I still think they’re good. And, more importantly, they all made loads of money at the box office.

In fact, Marvel went from a company in the 1990s that was on the verge of bankruptcy to one that was bought by Disney for a reported $9 billion dollars based on the strength of the characters and movies alone.

What would change everything was the release of The Avengers in 2012. That movie was well-written, acted, had amazing action sequences… that I think from The Avengers on audiences would no longer accept mediocre comic book movies, or just about every comic book movie released prior to this point, and would only accept great ones.

Great movies like Iron Man 3 and Thor: Ragnarok would follow and would be embraced by audiences. Not-so-great movies like The Amazing Spider-Man and yet another Fantastic Four would also follow and would be condemned by those same audiences.

Which is a double edged sword. When a movie can’t be just “good” anymore and has to be groundbreaking and “great” it sets an artificially high standard. I thought films like Suicide Squad and the condemned Fantastic Four were good, but since they’re not great it means that fans of the genera feel safe openly deriding them.

Still, this artificially high standard has produced a lot of classic movies over the last decade that I think people will still be talking about generations to come.

And now we enter another decade of movies based on Marvel Comics with more than ten films featuring their characters due out over the next few years. I don’t see any sign of movies based on Marvel comics slowing down anytime soon — they make way to much money at the box office to do that. Still, I can’t imagine if there was some way I could magically send a message to myself as a kid wishing for these movies that I’d actually believe my older self that there would one day be so many good Marvel movies out there.

After having spent so much time wishing for a good Marvel movie such an embarrassment of riches these days wouldn’t seem to have been possible.

2015 Summer movie preview

With three movies due out it seems as if Marvel Entertainment has bought and now owns the naming rights to summer. The first of which is The Avengers: Age of Ultron on May 1. Really The Avengers Part 2, or is it Iron Man Part 5…, Age of Ultron has the whole team back together again battling the robotic Ulton, one of the most iconic Avengers villains. Much like with the first Avengers flick, the fate of the very Earth will hang in the balance in this film!

Except since there are two more Marvel movies out this summer and a whole slew of Marvel films scheduled for theaters all the way up until 2019, I think the fate of the Earth has already been decided in a corporate board room.

mad_max_fury_road_ver2Mr. Road Warrior himself Mad Max returns to the hellish highways of the apocalypse on May 15 in Max Max: Fury Road. This fourth outing for the character, with Tom Hardy in the title role and co-starring Charlize Theron, has Max trying to rescue a group of fellow apocalyptic travelers from the clutches of a crazed outlaw gang of motorheads.

In other words: More merry Mad Max mayhem!

A remake of the family-scarer Poltergeist is out May 22. I’m interested in this one, if just because the original 1982 film about a girl vanished into the guts of a family’s haunted house gave me the heebie-jeebies as a youngster. I mean, Poltiergeist has one of the kids in the movie being practically eaten alive by a tree one minute and terrorized by a clown doll the next. C’MON!

It helps that this new Poltergeist is being produced by Evil Dead horror auteur Sam Raimi too.

A fourth Jurassic Park movie, Jurassic World, is set to bring a little chaos to theaters June 12. While this is being billed as a sequel to the first three films from 1993 to 2001, to me Jurassic World looks to be an reboot of the Jurassic Park franchise as a whole. The trailer for this one has a slew of people visiting Jurassic Park when something goes wrong that turns loose the dinosaurs to chomp on some unsuspecting folks. Or, it’s a bigger version of Jurassic Park sans the guiding hands of Steven Spielberg.

Terminator: Genesys, the fifth film of that franchise, will “be back” in theaters July 1 with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Due to the vagaries of time travel, this time he’s joined by a young Sarah Connor (now Emilia Clarke) as the two along with Reese (now Jai Courtney) fight off a bunch of different and deadly terminators out to put an end to the Connor timeline once and for all. Or at least until the next movie.

Marvel movie #2 is Ant-Man out July 17. There’s not too much known about this one other than it stars Paul Rudd in the title role of a superhero who can turn incredibly small. But if Ant-Man follows the Marvel Mold™ of late it’s no doubt that the fate of the planet will be in Ant-Man’s teeny-tiny hands.

poltergeist

A fifth Mission: Impossible movie, simply titled Mission: Impossible 5,  is out July 31. Even though I probably shouldn’t I’ve enjoyed the Mission: Impossible movies since the first one was released in ’96. Even if the missions the M:I teams have gone on over the years/sequels have gone from impossible to impossibler to “there’s no way in heck they’d be able to do any of this stuff whatsoever!”

The final Marvel movie out this summer, that’s really a Sony one, is Fantastic Four. A reboot of the Fantastic Four films from 2005 and ’07, this version looks to put a new, darker spin on the big four. Or, if it works it could be the dawn of a new age in the tone of comic book movies but if it doesn’t we might just have another Catwoman on our hands.

Premiering on TV screens before Mission: Impossible in 1964 was Man from U.N.C.L.E., the first series to take inspiration from the James Bond films to a TV series. Now a film version of U.N.C.L.E. is set to close the summer movie season August 14. This 1960s period piece seems to be equal parts Jason Bourne and Austin Powers.