CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR is Marvel at its best

The Captain America franchise has long been the strongest sub-franchise in the Marvel stable. THE FIRST AVENGER was easily the best solo film of Phase One, (yes, IRON MAN fans, Downey is great in that first film and it has a really strong first hour, but the second hour is rather weak and saddled with a pretty lame villain) and the second outing THE WINTER SOLDIER is one of the all-time best Marvel films ever (second only to the first AVENGERS, in my book.) In fact, when you look at it, none of the Marvel series have managed a strong second go-round. IRON MAN 2 and THOR: THE DARK WORLD seem destined to battle it out forever for the title of "Worst Marvel Movie," and even AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON was a pretty solid disappointment.

So to say my expectations were high for this third outing with Captain America, would be a massive understatement. The law of averages seemed to dictate that eventually they'd have to drop the ball. Thus far the only truly great superhero trilogy we've gotten is Nolan's Dark Knight series. Could Marvel pull it off with a film that wasn't just a Captain America story, but the culmination of themes and character arcs that have run through several of these films from the beginning?

Let's just say my expectations were not only met, but surpassed by CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. This is likely helped in great measure by continuity behind the scenes. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo return after directing the previous sequel, and screenwriters Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely are credited on all three CAPTAIN AMERICA outings.

Despite the fact the movie is loaded to the gills with appearances by other members of the Avengers, this really belongs under the CAPTAIN AMERICA brand. It's not a Cap story in name only. Maybe the most logical alternate title would be CAPTAIN AMERICA VS. IRON MAN. This is where four or five films of prior set-up on each of their parts comes to a head. The movie - and the audience - understands these two so well that when they come to blows, it's agonizing because we can see and understand both sides of the conflict.

Let's get this out of the way - yes, this film has a LOT in common with BATMAN V. SUPERMAN, even more than you realize from the trailers. I don't want to waste an entire review comparing the parallels point-by-point, so let's just stipulate to the fact they're there and that CIVIL WAR handily wins every comparison.

Most of you know me to be a DC guy, at least in terms of the comics. The Marvel characters and storylines never held much appeal for me, though for over five years, I lived with a friend who was deep into Marvel. This coincided with storylines like HOUSE OF M and CIVIL WAR, which means it's a rare case of me being VERY familiar with the underlying material. I recall reading CIVIL WAR and being so far on Cap's side that it wasn't even funny. Tony Stark was written almost as a total fascist, a mustache-twirling villain who'd signed onto a sinister plot where every hero had to reveal their identities and register with the U.S. government or be declared outlaws. To side with this would be to side with Bush-Cheney-levels invasion of privacy. When you throw down that gauntlet, how can Iron Man and the government be anything BUT the bad guys?

When it comes to the movie, consider me Team Iron Man all the way. All the way. Things kick off when an Avengers mission results in collateral damage in a sovereign country and the world governments finally decide they've had enough of super-powered types operating unilaterally. The United Nations drafts accords that will force the Avengers to operate with oversight, and anyone who doesn't assign it is benched. Smartly, the entire "reveal your secret identity" issue is sidestepped, mostly because no one in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has much of a private life at all.

It also helps that Tony Stark's advocacy of these measures doesn't play like him losing his marbles, but feels like the earned outcome of him being confronted with the last several years of his choices. In IRON MAN, Tony thumbs his nose at authority and flippantly reveals his secret identity in a press conference. He doesn't have the luxury of such brashness anymore. This is the man who survived the Battle of New York, who's seen his own creations subverted and used for evil, who ends up fighting his own plans gone out of control almost as often as he's fought the bad guys. Time and again, Tony has been shown there's a cost to people like him making their own rules, and he's finally reached the point where he's smart enough to take a compromise, rather than face the full force of what will happen if they REALLY provoke the world governments.

Cap makes some good arguments about how this agreement could make the Avengers the tools of an agenda they don't want to serve. What happens the next time someone wants to send a strike force into Iraq based on dubious info about WMDs? They've signed up to be heroes, not soldiers. The problem is that Cap is an idealist, and while he's absolutely right, it's an argument that reminded me of a favorite quote from Deep Space Nine's Garak, "I live in hope that you may one day see the universe for what it truly is, rather than what you'd wish it to be."

As interesting as all this is, the Accords take a backseat to the real thread for most of the film. The signing of the Accords is bombed and Cap's brainwashed buddy Bucky Barnes aka The Winter Soldier is the prime suspect. Since Cap's refused to sign the Accords, he can't be an official part of the hunt and when he and The Falcon go after Bucky on their own, the collateral damage he causes only further widens the schism between him and Team Iron Man. By this point, the film mostly abandons the ideological debate about the merits of the Accords and mostly uses it as a plot device to turn friend-against-friend.

Along the way, Iron Man picks up allies in Spider-Man and Black Panther. Both do a good job of scene-stealing and it might be the best example yet of Marvel seeding future films inside current films. If you really look at the film objectively, it becomes extremely apparently that both of these characters could be lifted out in a rewrite. Spider-Man in particular is a lot of fun, both in the battle and in his interactions with Tony Stark and it restored my interest in seeing another Spider-Man film after the debacle that was AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2.

Thankfully the other franchise outbuilding is equally unintrusive. The Infinity Stones are only alluded to once, I believe and there's nothing that feels like an unnecessary tangent like "Thor takes a bath" in AGE OF ULTRON, or a misfire like spending an entire movie with Thanos as "Guy who ominously sits on an uncomfortable throne." The real teases towards future films come from character. A lot of relationships come out of this changed permanently.

I'm torn about how much to reveal when it comes to the third act, because that's when we realize the movie has played all of us. We've been misdirected with talks of security vs. liberty, and dazzled by superhero slugfests so when the main event arrives, it's a gut punch. The real endgame here is not about a conflict of principles and pragmatism - it's a personal fight that goes right to the core of one of the characters. Even as the road to getting to this point is revealed as the manipulations of a villain, the clash works because everything about the combatants up to this point tells us they can't walk away from this fight, no matter what contrived to put them at odds.

We've seen how a shared universe can lead to bad creative calls in a film - this time the advantage of that larger world is the depth that it brings to a confrontation like this. Marvel often gets flack because as fun as their films can be, they're often too escapist and surface-level. That's a hard point to deny, but CIVIL WAR is the most ambitious of their films in terms of dealing with weightier issues. (And unlike BATMAN V. SUPERMAN, it delivers on that ambition.)

Some shorter takes:

- I respect Cap's loyalty to Bucky, but there's a point where you wish someone would point out to him that no matter how much a victim he is of Hydra, he WAS a brutal assassin. We don't really get a sense of if Cap is willing to accept that he might have to become a guest of the government, particularly if the brainwashing can't be undone. Knowing what Cap planned to do for Bucky once he caught him might have helped.

- I usually use my non-geek wife as a "control group" for movies like this. She didn't go with me and I really regretted that because I'd love to know how this film plays to someone who's not seen any of the earlier films. It feels like there's enough here to help the film stand-alone, even if the juggling act is the most complicated one in comic book films, save for perhaps X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. (Which my wife DID enjoy, by the way.)

- Didn't miss Nick Fury, though I thought there might have been a chance of him covertly popping up to help Cap.

- I hope the Accords aren't forgotten in future films. Using them again will make them feel less like a plot device here.

- In a crowded film, I was glad to see Emily VanCamp get to briefly kick ass as Agent 13. If AGENT CARTER has to go, maybe there's a place for an AGENT 13 series.

- With the way this film ends, it's gonna be a long two-year wait for AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, which seems to be the first time the most interesting dangling threads will likely be addressed again.

My AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON review

The press tour for Avengers: Age of Ultron has been notable for many reasons, some relevant to the film, some not. Amid the social-media-ready tempests like actors putting their foots in their mouths and interviewers asking inappropriate questions has been the unmistakable sense in every Joss Whedon interview that the writer/director was completely broken by this film. Whedon sounds like a man who's just come back from war. If you've ever had a conversation with someone who's given off a weary, "I am so over this" vibe when discussing their job, you have a good sense of how Whedon is coming off. It feels like a combination of exhaustion from the work and exasperation from dealing with the politics of studio filmmaking.

After seeing Age of Ultron, I totally get it.

In terms of scope and complexity, this is by far the biggest Marvel movie attempted, and in many respects, the biggest tentpole movie attempted. Just to use Michael Bay's Transformers films as a contrast, as big and sprawling and exhausting as they are, as much post-production as they require, the stories are pretty straightforward and they have a much cleaner throughline. You have a human hero, his girlfriend, a wacky sidekick, good robot, bad robot, and usually two or three prestige actors in small "payday roles." And the easy part is, there's little obligation to flesh them out equally.

An Avengers film is a different beast, as it requires balancing the egos of three heroes with their own film series, a further three who've been core members of the team - all of whom generally should be given some equal weight. Add to that a main villain, two additional antagonists AND a number of cameos from other supporting heroes... and you have a character roster designed to drive any writer nuts as he crafts a story that not only gives them each some face time, but also makes them integral to the story. The worst thing would be for the audience to leave feeling like, "I don't think the Hulk really needed to be in this one."

Adding to the complexity is that with most of these characters establish - some of them WELL established - there's less freedom to bend their characterizations to serve the story. Do this sort of thing wrong and you'll be sniffed out as a fraud. Oh, and you have to do it while topping already gargantuan expectiations that this'll be more spectacular than the first film.

How does Whedon manage? For the most part, he gets his lasso around this beast.

The core story - and I'm gonna drop a lot of big spoilers ahead, so be warned - springs from a Tony Stark artificial intelligence project gone awry. Ultron was supposed to be a project to keep the world safe, but due to a combination of poor programing on Tony's part and (I think, this is a bit muddy) some interaction with the gem in Loki's staff Ultron breaks free of his programming, commanders several robot bodies after building himself an imposing new form, and sets out to end war... by ending humanity.

By his side are twins who've gone through Hydra experimentation and emerged with powers. Scarlet Witch has vaguish magical powers and the ability to mess with people's minds to draw out their biggest fears. Quicksilver is superfast, though a secondary power of his seems to be to use his superspeed in less interesting ways than his X-Men: Days of Future Past counterpart last summer.

That's the A-story. Branching out from all of this comes all the various character threads. Many of these draw from what we've seen in the intervening films, such as the collapse of SHIELD in The Winter Soldier. At times, the transition is less smooth. The end of Iron Man 3 implies that Tony has hung it up and is done. Two years later, he's fighting with the Avengers as if it's business as usual.

Tony's whole arc in this is a bit jittery. Even ignoring the end of Iron Man 3, his Ultron project is exposited in a somewhat clunky fashion. We learn about it almost literally seconds before its corrupted, which feels like a slight miscalculation in pacing. It's as if Pandora opening her box was preceded only moments earlier by "Here. Take this box. But don't open it. It's bad."

Even though Tony's mistake is the event that puts everything into motion, it feels like his character is less featured in this film. Near the end of the film's second act, the plot requires Tony to virtually repeat his earlier mistake. This sparks a brief fight with Captain America and a few of the others. It's a point where we have a very, very surface-level understanding of the motivations involved.

Then at the end of the film, Tony ends up driving off into the sunset, leaving superheroing behind. There's just enough for us to connect the dots, but it's not totally satisfying in its own way.

More than any entry so far, this feels not just like a Marvel comic but one of those big summer crossover issues that's just overstuffed with characters and incidents. This is like a House of M or Secret Invasion miniseries, where it's fair game for every character to show up. As with those sprawling storylines, there are moments where one gets the impression that the less-explained moments of the epic get fleshed out in individual tie-in issues.

A good example of this is Thor's storyline, which sends him off on a brief tangent that plays out like an under-explained vision quest. This is one subplot that was more obviously trimmed to the bare bones. When Thor shows up to suddenly move a major chunk of the story forward and bring along a great deal of exposition about the Infinity Stones, it's hard not to imagine an editor's caption "*See more about Thor's vision quest in THOR #239!"

Captain America also gets short-shrift in the drama department. It's fortunate that this is a script from someone like Whedon, who's able to get a lot of character moments wedged into idle banter within the interactions. He and Tony have some verbal sparing, some playful, some not. The main conflict between them feels like a warm-up for the next film, though. Chris Evans makes the most of what he's got, but Cap isn't driving the plot like he did last time.

The good news is that everyone gets screentime and at least one or two great moments that are uniquely theirs. An early highlight is a party in the Avengers Tower filled with cameos and these large personalities bouncing off of each other. It's here where Whedon reminds us he's the master of the set-up and payoff as more than one seemingly-extraneous bit of fun here turns out to be a seed planted for bigger moments later in the film.

(One of them - it's the moment involving Thor's hammer - had its payoff come about in a slightly unexpected way. SPOILERS. The party scene underlines that only someone worthy can lift Thor's hammer. What follows is a display of egos as Tony, Banner and eventually Cap try to pick it up. Cap gets it to budge. Slightly. I assumed this was set-up for a third-act bit where Cap would need to wield the hammer. Instead, it's paid off in a different way. Following the introduction of a new character, the team debates if they should trust this new arrival. That matter is handily settled when this person easily wields the hammer. Perfect instance of "show, not tell." "How do we know we can trust this guy?" "Well, he's able to lift the thing that only really, really good people can handle.")

It's a very full movie, but fortunately it hits more than it misses. The opening set-piece is a lot of fun despite some so-so CGI and the promised clash of Hulk versus Iron Man in his Hulkbuster armor might be my favorite action sequence in the film. It's the perfect blend of tension, comedy and violence.

That sequence also ends up introducing something that is initially refreshing - the notion of the heroes actively trying to minimize human casualties. MAN OF STEEL really got hit for this, with a vehemence that seems out of proportion considering the first AVENGERS barely raised an eyebrow without doing much more to show the heroes going out of their way. And don't even get me started on the total cop-out of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY's "We've evacuated the city" as some kind of quick-fix to make the third-act ending battle more acceptable.

(I almost literally heard Rob Lowe's character from THANK YOU FOR SMOKING in my head during that scene. "It's an easy fix. One line of dialogue...")

The Hulkbuster sequence deals with this by having Tony's armor seek out a building with no people inside. There's also a sequence involving a runaway train where shielding the civilians is a priority. But by the time we get to the final action orgy, there's something very... I hesitate to say... "corny" about the film's insistance on aggressively reassuring us the civilians are taken care of. It called to mind how Saturday morning cartoons adhered to violence restrictions by always making sure that when bad guy planes were shot down, every single one of them was shown deploying their parachutes and apparently surviving.

Don't get me wrong. The goal is laudable, but I wish Whedon had found a way to moderate it just a little bit. more. A nice touch is that we get the impression that the lives lost in that battle haunt Banner.

As the end approached, the comparisons with crossover maxi-series again came to mind, as the finale plays less like the end of a story and more like a launching pad for several new series. Tony going off on his own works, but probably had more material supporting it in longer cuts, and the showcase of who remains in the team for the next film is done pretty well.

AGAIN MORE SPOILERS

But Hulk's fate is maddeningly open-ended. The last we see of him, he's on a quinplane that's flying off into nowhere. He even apparently cuts off communication with Black Widow of his own accord and allows the jet to fly off into the unknown. It's a weird way to set up that loose thread, made even more discordant by a follow-up scene where Nick Fury says they're sure the plane crashed, but they can't find it. His almost nonchalant "He'll turn up" is a weird note to leave that scene on. It might have played better for me if Fury said it like he was trying to be blase about it, but deep down was concerned they might never find him.

Obviously he'll turn up, but the film doesn't seem to know how it wants to play the emotion of him being missing in action. On the other hand, these movies have seemingly killed so many characters who later came back fine, perhaps Whedon's muting of the character reactions is in reaction to the criticism of these fakeouts.

Hawkeye's departure makes a little more sense and I generally like how he's used in this. Fans who were pushing for a Black Widow/Hawkeye relationship are probably going to be thrown for a loop after seeing he's been married long enough to have two young kids. A neat consequence of this is it forces the viewer to revisit the supposed sexual tension between Natasha and Barton in the first film. It's kind of nice to see them showing a functional male/female relationship that doesn't necessarily end in paying off sexual tension.

Pairing her with Banner is one of the film's surprising choices. We're not shown much about this flirtation, which amounts to little more than a tease. Though has anyone noticed that when it comes to dynamics with each of the other characters, Black Widow might be the most fleshed out? Black Widow/Thor might be the only under-explored dynamic in her relationships. Tony is close behind, with only Iron Man/Hawkeye being a total tabula rosa.  Cap really hasn't been given a great deal of interaction with Banner or Thor - two characters who are mostly distant from at least half the ensemble.

It can't have been easy to craft this story in a way that allowed character to shine as much as action and plot. After one viewing, I feel like Ultron was enjoyable, but not quite as good as the first film. However, it's easily the most ambitious and even though it's not immune to the "now our moment of synergy to promote future projects" that's marred several of the films, it feels less intrusive here. The ending tag probably would have been more effective if GOTG had managed to establish Thanos beyond being "Evil Dude who sits on a throne a lot."

Still, I'd put it in the upper 25% of Marvel films. I'm a bit afraid that this movie will pull an Independence Day on me and somehow plummeted massively in enjoyment on a second viewing. For now, this has me eager for next year's Captain America: Civil War. That's being directed by the Russo Brothers, who'll follow that up with Avengers: Infinity War Parts I and II. I shudder a bit to think what a more massive Marvel movie than this will look like. If just one of these movies exhausted Whedon so much, have a few hugs ready for the Russos come 2018.

How Marvel played the game well and how the boom inevitably leads to a bust

With the release of THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON upon us, not only has summer arrived, but the big boom of superhero films is about to explode. Seriously, enjoy 2015 for its mere 3 superhero film offerings because from here on out, things are going to explode. AOU is the eleventh Marvel Studios film, and soon the studio will ramp up from two films a year to three, even as Warners finally begins utilizing the DC Comics catalog for two movies a year as well. (And that's not even getting into the Marvel characters whose rights are still controlled by Fox - such as X-Men and Fantastic Four.)

Slashfilm put together a pretty handy list of all of the comic book-related releases, which you can see here.  The short version is that these are the total number of comic book films set for release each year:

2016: 8
2017: 7
2018: 5
2019: 4

(I'm not counting the Sony Spider-Man spinoffs listed at that link because all indications are those are on ice for now.)

Obviously there's been no shortage of thinkpieces on how long this boom can sustain. Eventually, there WILL be a crash. That's just simple logic at work. It would be naive to pretend that comic book films aren't a cyclical as every other genre that's gone through its hot and cold periods. Sitcoms were dead for years until The Cosby Show brought them back. Drama went through a similar fallow period, but was reinvigorated during the late 90s and early 00s by shows like The Sopranos. Genre TV got a big boost from Lost... until the proliferation of inferior Lost imitators like The Event ended up wearing out that genre.

Honestly, I'm not interested in trying to predict where the bust will happen. Proliferation of product will be a factor, but fortunately, a lot of these WB and Marvel properties can be fairly distinct from each other. In the hands of the right auteurs, these superhero movies don't all have to feel the same. Marvel's best successes have often come from recognizing the distinct subgenres that can make a Captain America film feel distinctly different from, say an Iron Man, or a Thor film. If you're gonna lump all the comic book properties into the same category, it's about as silly as calling THE MATRIX and JOHN WICK the same film.

When Warners announced its plans to roll out 10 superhero films over five years, Marvel loyalists were quick to accuse them of trying to "rush" what Marvel "took their time" doing. It was absurd to them that JUSTICE LEAGUE would be announced before WB saw how any of the standalones would go... but that overlooks that 2012's THE AVENGERS was announced right after IRON MAN opened in 2008. Warner's plan doesn't seem quite so crazy when compared to Marvel's pace. Marvel played the feature game well, but was we go into the big boom, it might be worth revisiting the road that got them here, just to remember they stumbled along the way too.

2008: Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk - Look up Robert Downey Jr's pre-IRON MAN credits. You've got great critically acclaimed roles in Zodiac, Good Night and Good Luck, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but then there's also the completely forgotten A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, a supporting parts in The Shaggy Dog and Lucky You, and then Charlie Bartlett. This is a guy who was on his second (maybe third?) comeback. He was an unlikely superhero lead with a character who was not considered a heavy hitter by any stretch of the imagination.

What I'm getting at is, in the alternate universe where Iron Man bombed, there's more than enough foundation for the "Of course this had no chance of working" post-mortem. But before the film's release, Marvel had already started developing not only Iron Man 2, but Thor, Captain America and Avengers. That was an announcement they had ready to go the weekend after Iron Man opened, which means the plans had been in the works for a while.


It sort of makes you wonder how the script would have gone if Iron Man opened to a whimper and it was The Incredible Hulk that smashed box office records. Edward Norton was about as big a star as Downey was at that point. Would we have seen the Hulk become the pivitol axis of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Fortunately Downey's casting turned out to be one of the most perfect instances of an actor becoming iconic as that particular character. It helps that unlike Norton's turn as the Hulk, he was the first to inhabit the role. Honestly, that might be the key to a lot of Marvel's freshness. On the DC side, we're on our seventh live-action Superman (ninth if you count the two SUPERBOY performers), our eighth live-action Batman, and our second live-action Wonder Woman. The Marvel Universe thus far really only has the Hulk as its rotating chair. (And Nick Fury, if you want to count the David Hasselhoff made-for-TV movie.)

It's Downey who carries the first Iron Man, and the first hour of that film is still one of the true high points in Marvel history. The script knows just how to introduce Tony Stark while giving Downey a chance to strut his stuff. He's a cocky asshole, but he's a charming, funny, cocky asshole and that makes it a lot easier to follow this guy. The goodwill of the film's first half makes it a lot easier to ignore that the second half of the film is a big weak, due in large part to some weak villains. It's an unfortunate Marvel tradition that their villains are generally weak sauce. On the other hand, it's nice to not be in the Burton/Schumacher mold of of the bad guys blowing the good guys completely off the screen.

In contrast to Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk is a serviceable but forgettable film. It's not bad enough to hate, but it's not really good enough to get excited about either. But then, it also came at a time when a comic book film could do all right by just getting on base rather than needing to hit a home run or else be called out for underperforming.

2010: Iron Man 2 - I think Marvel needed a failure like Iron Man 2, if you can call $623M worldwide a failure. (It earned more abroad than the first, but less at home.) Last year I called out Amazing Spider-Man 2 for feeling more like a business plan for future sequels than a story in its own right. After the ending of the first film teased "the Avenger Initiative" I was excited to see more Samuel L. Jackson in this sequel and the introduction of Black Widow looked promising too. What we got was kind of a mess of plotlines that get in each others way and a lot of material involving SHIELD that seems to be there just to keep them on the game board.

Director Favreau opening complained about the compromises he made on the film, which became his last experience with Marvel. It's probably also the weakest of the 10 films so far. Yet, we might owe it a debt of gratitude, as Marvel executives seemed to realize the folly of of this kind of story construction. Subsequent films have been much better about either integrating the larger storyline into that film's particular script, or at least minimizing the impact.

If we take MAN OF STEEL as WB's Iron Man, then Iron Man 2 needs to be the object lesson everyone involved with BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN should heed. BvS has a pretty full cast list as it tees-up JUSTICE LEAGUE, but hopefully most of the other heroes appearing in the former film are mere cameos. The titanic clash of Superman and Batman should be more than enough to fuel an entire film. Iron Man 2 fails because its part in teasing Avengers gets in the way of the presumably core story about Tony Stark. (It also doesn't help that Tony's arc - and the bad guy - are both weak on their own merits. Giving so much time over to Fury and Black Widow seems to have necessitated very surface-level scripting in the A-story.)

The second Captain America film, The Winter Soldier would prove to a be a much more successful instance of a "solo" movie playing with the SHIELD toys and utilizing other heroes well. Everything about that film feels much more organic than Iron Man 2. Let's hope Warners saw that too.

2011: Thor and Captain America - Chris Hemsworth's casting aside, Thor is one of the lesser Marvel films for me. It's another instance of SHIELD cluttering up the story needlessly and the whole enterprise feels like one of Marvel's cheaper affairs. I remember that after my first viewing, one of my strongest impressions was that I had a hard time seeing this as the same world that Tony Stark inhabits. The cheapness of the small town battle bugged me at the time (and reminded me of SUPERMAN II), but I've softened on that since subsequent summers have brought us a steady diet of city-destroying battles.

Captain America is my favorite solo film of Marvel's Phase One and it's probably the first time Marvel really succeeds at setting one of its properties in another genre. Hiring Joe Johnston, the director of cult favorite The Rocketeer, to helm this tale of Captain America's WWII origins has to go down as one of Marvel's savvier moves. Chris Evans probably doesn't get enough credit for how well-rounded he makes a Dudley Do-Right superhero, and part of why the film succeeds is because Steve Rodgers is a perfect contrast to the cockier, more ego-driven heroes Thor and Iron Man.

As much as Marvel gets flack for some formulaic elements in their films and the fact that most of the action sequences are previsualized before a director is even hired, they tend to be pretty good about nailing the characters. They're well-rounded, they're distinct from each other, and even in a weaker script, it tends to be fun to watch guys like Tony Stark and Thor play. Marvel's road to Avengers wasn't flawless at all, but the right elements were in place so that Avengers could galvanize all of them. In turn, this gave all the subsequent films a boost. Lately, superhero sequels tend to do better than their originals, but I don't think anyone would debate that a crowd-pleaser like Avengers did a lot more to draw people to The Winter Soldier and The Dark World than the original Captain America and Thor films did.

We look at Marvel as infallible now and some of that is projected backwards towards the start of their plan. I actually think that does a real disservice to the talent involved, making it seem like it was easy to reach the heights of Avengers and Phase 2 in general. It's foolish as fans - and VERY foolish as storytellers - to think any of this is easy. Marvel became the king of the mountain through trial and error in a time when they were mostly the only game in town.

As WB and Fox ramp up their own Marvel-style shared universes, there will undoubtedly be stumbles. But also, there are expectations now. Let's say that BATMAN V. SUPERMAN is the homerun it needs to be, but SUICIDE SQUAD and WONDER WOMAN do so-so business and don't impress audiences much. Does that hobble anticipation for JUSTICE LEAGUE in a way that the weak three-punch of Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 and Thor didn't become a liability for Avengers?

Here's what Marvel did right - it put their guys on base and then Avengers hit a grand slam. Then it followed up those grand slams with another home run (Iron Man 3) a solid triple, in commercial terms if not artistic ones (Thor: The Dark World), and two more home runs (Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy).

Are DC and Fox playing in a game where they can afford just to get on the base? They're going to take more lumps for doing so, to say nothing of the fact that it puts a lot more pressure on the clean-up batter.

MAN OF STEEL's worldwide take of $668M puts it above the original Iron Man ($585.2M), as well as all the other pre-Avengers releases. Avengers, ($1.5B), Iron Man 3 ($1.2B), Guardians of the Galaxy ($774M) and The Winter Soldier ($714M) are the only Marvel releases to out-gross it. If BvS can hit near a billion, WB is very much a contender.

Let's also not forget to the casual viewers, they don't draw the same Marvel/DC distinctions that most people do. If Marvel has a dud that happens to coincide with some "growing pains" bombs released by WB and Fox, it's probably not great for the comic book brand as a whole. It's one reason why the whole Marvel/DC fanboy clash has never made any sense to me. You can't be rooting for your "enemy's" failure because what's bad for WB's business is bad for Marvel's business. Marvel absolutely wants to remain number one, but I guarantee you they don't want to see WB go broke competing with them.

In the next five years we'll be seeing a lot of comic book films, but there's also a lot of diversity within that genre. Let's all hope for more hits than misses. The studios have already committed to exploiting these IPs over original ideas, so they might as well be GOOD films.

And who knows, maybe if enough of them succeed, a few savvy gamblers might take their winnings and put a few chips elsewhere on the board.

I know. That's probably a more ridiculous notion than anything ever found in a comic book.

Avengers - making introductions and re-introductions more than just exposition

It's been a while since I've discussed the importance of introducing characters in an interesting way.  I think sometimes weak openings comes as a result of the writer's inability to put themselves in the audience's shoes and recall that THIS is the moment that makes the first impression.

After all, the writer has lived with their character for weeks or months, so in their mind, this first scene just has to get the character on-screen.

I couldn't help but think of this during the opening half-hour of The Avengers, which has the task of introducing nearly a dozen major characters who have previously appeared in other Marvel films, either as headliners and supporting characters.  But the filmmakers would be wrong to assume that everyone buying a ticket to this film would have seen all or even ANY of the other movies.

And obviously, it's to the film's financial benefit that the movie appeal to audiences beyond the core Marvel fans.  So that forces the movie to introduce these characters as if it's the first time the audience has met them - without completely boring those viewers familiar with the earlier movies.

It's harder than it sounds, but I think the script did a pretty solid job of telling us everything we need to know for the sake of this movie.

First, there's a scene at a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. research center.  Here we introduce the Tesseract (previously an element in Thor and Captain America) and showcase that it's basically a mysterious and powerful form of energy.  Sure, we could trace the whole history of this thing, but it's really not that important.  In other words, screening the prior two films is unnecessary.

Loki shows up, and it's obvious that he's the villain of the piece.  He puts a few characters under his mind control spell and blows up the base, with Nick Fury and Agent Colson among those who get out in time.

So in the first few minutes we have: Villain, MacGuffin, Heroic Mastermind, Sidekick, and Brainwashed Hero.  Do we know Loki's full history or everything that Fury's got his hands in - but we know enough and they were introduced in a context that allows the audience not to feel lost.

Director Fury decides to activate the Avenger Initiative, which necessitates a series of scenes in which each member is met in turn.

- Black Widow is given a great sequence in which she appears to be a prisoner, only to turn the tables and kick ass without breaking much of a sweat.

- Then, Black Widow tracks down Dr. Banner in India, where's he's been living below the radar.  The exposition here is more dialogue-driven than visual, but the dialogue takes a turn that's either cryptic (if you're ignorant of Banner's "Hulk" alter-ego) or foreboding (if you know what they're referring to.  Either way, a couple important points are made: Banner's being recruited for his smarts, BW is very concerned about his temper, and that concern led her to bring an entire special forces team with her.

- Captain America admittedly gets one of the more mundane introductions, in addition to one of the more dialogue-laden ones.  The exposition here is more than made up for by the time we see him in action though

- And of course, Tony "Iron Man" Stark makes his debut while finishing up some technical doo-dad that we're told will turn his tower into a source of clean energy.  A lot of points are made here, including showcasing Tony's armor, reminding the audience of his relationship with Pepper Potts, and establishing both his "billionaire genius philathropist" persona.  There's also a fair amount of Tony's cocky showboating.  And of ALL the characters, I feel he's the most firmly established via just his intro scene.

Why do I say this? Because while you might argue that some dialogue given to other characters could be easily transposed to another character, there's not a single line of Tony's that could be swapped out to someone else as written.  His "voice" permeates everything he says.  If someone else would have to say something given to Tony, the rewrite would need to go further than just changing the character name above the line.

Other than Captain America, pretty much every character gets a opening scene that either conveys their function in the story, or the conflict that will define them throughout the script.  (In a few cases, we get both.)  Better still, most of those moments are entertaining scenes in their own right, either through comedy or tension.

In the wrong hands, the first half-hour could have been a bore while the viewers of previous films waited for the new audience members get caught up to speed.

Friday Free-For-All: I'm a Marvel and I'm a DC - "Father's Day"

One of my favorite series of web videos is the Marvel/DC comedy shorts done by ItsJustSomeRandomGuy. Whether you're a fan of the comics or prefer the feature film adaptations, you're bound to appreciate the humor in these parodies that use action figures to unite the two comic universes. Their Father's Day tribute gives you a sense of the tone of many of their shorts.




And this is one of their more recent shorts - a musical that takes a few pokes at current comic book movie plans.




This one is one of my favorites. It's a couple years old, so the jokes are a bit dated, but still fun.