So the Marvel Cinematic Universe has completed its Phase Two with the release of Ant-Man, and they seem to be doing everything correctly, from a business model at least. Superhero movies are in this decade, in part because the special effects in film are sophisticated enough to convincingly portray literally anything, but also because in the 2000's out society really stopped feeling comfortable on a daily basis, due to due to the economy and the echoes of 9/11. In much the way that the MGM musicals gave our grandparents escape from the Great Depression, the superhero genre has granted us the jolt of hope that we've needed.
And when I say that, I don't mean any of us really think Thor is going to pop up at Denny's and defeat a giant robot (or whatever that was) for us. I mean it's given us something to talk about. Passionately. Optimistically. Our fiction doesn't change our problems but it may very well change our feelings about those problems and as such our approach to dealing with them. That's kind of powerful in a way.
Now I could be wrong, but it feels to me like the despair we've been having over the early years of the twenty-first century is getting better out there. Maybe not where we'd like it to be, and of course there are still major problems, but the feel of the world has gotten better. And that's obviously good. But I'm not inclined to talk about important things, because I'm a nerd. I've never connected to the world through reality. If things continue to get better, I'm wondering how much life the superhero genre really has left in it.
Sure the movies will always be there in the way that westerns are still made today. But westerns haven't been the in thing since, I don't know, Blazing Saddles? The fourth Fantastic Four movie (not Fantastic 4 4 sadly) has failed to attract an audience, demonstrating how the superhero film is no longer a sure bet. Case in point, the first Jessica Alba vehicle that nobody liked still tripled its 100 million dollar price tag at the box office.
So maybe we're starting to see the sun set on this period in cinema, which is really bad news for DC as they're getting to the party just as people are leaving. Marvel has plans through 2028 (no kidding), and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of those get abandoned after Marvel's Phase Three, because I suspect we're all going to be a little superheroed out.
But we're here now and the celebration is still going on. So let's have a look at how we got to this point.
Iron Man (2008)
Yeah, I'm not doing MAD magazine spoof titles for this blog like I usually do, there are only so many ways you can abuse the word 'iron'. But this was the one that got the party started. Technically Blade unlocked the warehouse for us and X-Men set up all the tables, but the music didn't start playing until Downey Jr. came through the door.
Now let me confess this, I don't read comics. I don't keep up with them. The comic book industry doesn't embrace the casual reader, they expect you to commit. So I never got into them; one, because I can't afford the investment, and two, my brain just doesn't naturally go to the next panel it's supposed to focus on and that always keeps me out of the story. So I knew nothing about Iron Man. I thought, okay. He wears armor and uses the colors of the Tara High School Trojans. Whoop-dee-shit.
But of course, the first Iron Man did exactly what it needed to do in order to win the masses over, which was get the character of Tony Stark right. And Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark. There could never have been a more perfect casting choice. Downey Jr. is an incredibly talented actor, with no training as an actor (so kids, stay out of school), and all things being equal he never needed the nonsense of a silly superhero movie. But all things weren't equal. His personal life had gone into some really dark places, and this role was the equivalent of the phoenix rising. Going into the opening weekend, Iron Man had respectability.
And it was great! It was one of the best origin stories ever filmed. And the funny thing is, the third act REALLY wandered off somewhere, and it didn't hurt the movie, because our final image was Samuel L. Jackson introducing himself as Nick Fury. And Jeff Bridges played a great villain, which again didn't add up to much in the third act but that was still not the point. It was a great movie!
How many movies can really drop the ball in their final act and still be great? That's pretty damned impressive.
The Incredible Hulk (2008)
So it's a month later and we're still on a Tony Stark high when this movie happens. And I can already hear one of my friend's voices in my head going "Aw, come on, it's the Hulk man!" And yes, I'm sure if you look hard enough you can find something in this movie to get behind. Usually the proponents resort to "Well, it's not the Ang Lee movie."
The Ang Lee Hulk has its supporters as well, and it always entertains me seeing the back and forth about which movie was better. These are some really in depth, detail-centric conversations, that I can't help but admire. But I don't take a side, because the real conversation on the table is, which movie sucked less?
The bottom line is, the Hulk is just not suited to carry an entire movie by himself. He's good in bursts, or in the three act timing of a 45 minute TV show, like in the late seventies (still great, by the way. It's on Netflix). Probably what Marvel could have done differently was bring in Hawkeye for this movie in kind of a Jack McGee role, except he's following S.H.I.E.L.D.'s orders. That gives us a chance to get to know Barton before The Avengers and creates a little more good guy vs. good guy tension to feel like something actually matters for this film.
But hey, Downey Jr. makes an appearance at the end. So there's that.
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Wow! Two years! Can you imagine Marvel pulling off a gap like that today? And I can just see Kevin Feige thinking, "Shit! We've got nothing until until next summer! Somebody get an Iron Man movie out the door!"
I get it. The MCU was a massive undertaking, and missteps were bound to happen, and when they did they were on the screen in front of millions. In retrospect though, this would have been the ideal placement for Captain America.
But that didn't happen. If this were a D&D campaign, Iron Man 2 would be the moment the Dungeon Master was out of ideas and randomly threw a powerful monster at the party just to create a battle. Apparently Mickey Rourke is a wandering monster. I was actually digging his character in his opening scene, but then he just started 'doing stuff' and sending out robots to attack (which is not something I've ever thought was interesting) and then entering the battle himself because we need to wrap this up.
But you know who was really great in the movie? Sam Rockwell. My God he was having fun playing Justin Hammer, trying SO HARD to be the main villain and not succeeding. It may not make for good cinema, but this is the true underdog story.
So let's talk Black Widow. I think she's a great character and her scenes in this movie are honestly what make it unskippable if you're hosting a Phase One Marvel weekend at your local library. There's recently been a lot of discussion about Marvel's spotlight on their female characters (as well there should be) and the lack of attention the traditionally 'boy's show' seems to be sharing with them. Black Widow merchandise is very hard to find, and I don't understand why. There's a damned market for it!
But the other topic that comes up is the lack of a Black Widow solo movie. I find myself a little mixed on this one. Marvel doesn't seem to want to do a Black Widow movie, and Venom's appearance in Spider-Man 3 is a pretty accurate depiction of what happens when the production team isn't on board with something. Unlike when Joss Whedon was really pushing for a Wonder Woman movie (which DC rejected), I haven't heard of anyone else in Hollywood really adamant about wanting to make the movie themselves. Nothing would be more frustrating than if Marvel gave in to the fans and gave us another Elektra. Basically, it's probably not going to happen, and it's unfortunate why. But other positive steps are being made elsewhere, such as the hit show Once Upon a Time and Marvel's Jessica Jones (in which I have the utmost confidence).
Thor (2011)
The whole MCU concept was only going to work if the character of Thor was believable, because this was the point of 'most likely to become silly'. Fortunately for half of Hollywood's bankroll, Chris Hemsworth went into acting.
Ken Branagh is a talented director. He's the only person who could ever have gotten me to sit through four hours of Hamlet. And he brought so many wonderful elements to this movie, from Tom Hiddleston's performance as Loki to the whole look and flavor of Asgard. Of course I'm not entirely convinced said elements ever came together into a fully defined whole.
I certainly remember liking Thor but not really remembering much about it. Something about frost giants? And Jane is an astrophysicist? And Agent Coulson found Thor's hammer? Or wait, that was at the end of Iron Man 2. But there was that bit where Loki possessed a robot or something.
I guess it just wasn't a solid movie. A fun one, certainly, but if it wasn't part of the bigger picture I'm not sure I'd really understand what the hell I'd just watched. Thor on earth felt like a TV show pilot. Thor in Asgard came across as deleted scenes from another movie. It was like it was trying to be Richard Donner's Superman and Superman II at the same time. Not bad, just not amazing either.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Get to the damn Avengers already!
Like I said before, if Captain America had come out in 2010 and pushed Iron Man 2 into the following year, the pacing of the MCU would have been much stronger. As placed, Captain America comes off as "We HAD to make this movie before we got to the good one, so here it is".
The movie make for a decent period piece, and it might even be an entertaining one if it hadn't recycled sequences from Iron Man, Spider-Man, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine to get there. The biggest problem of course is with the character of Steve Rogers. It's hard to make him interesting. Much like Superman, Cap is a boy scout; a hero to aspire to but not really relate to. The ideals he stands for are positive ones but they don't make for good conflict unless they go up against a grey area where they're really challenged. Here, they go up against Hydra, basically the Nazis of Nazis. So, no grey area then.
Don't get me wrong, Chris Evans really is a fantastic actor. Out of all the Avengers, he's probably got the hardest job because his character is so inherently bland. How do you find your beats when going up against Downey's Tony Stark? Evans manages to find those moments without ever becoming not Captain America.
Perhaps the lesson here is that being a hero really is thankless.
Marvel's The Avengers (2012)
The fact that this movie holds together at all is an impressive feat. The fact that it's awesome is a testament to Joss Whedon's ability to handle ensemble casts.
I was most worried going into the movie that it was going to be the Tony Stark show, and while Tony drives the movie, he's still only one part of the whole. The core of the movie is S.H.I.E.L.D., even if they don't get the action in the third act. We'd seen the agency's involvement with world affairs, but we'd never seen the heart of it. The Avengers shows us S.H.I.E.L.D. working, failing, thriving, failing again, and finally being rescued. It's a pretty epic journey.
Man, Loki held his own against six superheroes. Marvel is hit and miss with its villains, but Loki is their home-run. It was a vital decision to give Loki at least one scene with each Avenger, and his conversation with Stark is as riveting as an of the action scenes. But of course Hulk steals the show.
Perhaps the big problem with the past two Hulk movies was that Dr. Banner ultimately didn't matter. It could just as easily have been Dr. Richard Kimble on the run from the government, the Hulk was what mattered to the story. In The Avengers Bruce Banner is more important than the big guy, which means that when the Hulk finally shows up it really counts for something.
The MCU was an ambitious project that racked up a total of one billion dollars in production costs over six movies. Of course when you see how the franchise took in 3.8 billion in the first phase alone it seems like a no-brainer, but that's a lot of cash changing hands on an untried model. It's always nice to see the powers take a risk that pays off, just like it's sad to see them overtap the well. Phase Three will be a sure bet, but after that it's anyone's game.
Be back here next week for my retropesctive of Phase Two and in 2019 for Phase Three.
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