With Great Power...

Every week during the Summer of Superheroes, SuperMike Matthews breaks down the ins and outs of a current superhero franchise. Spoilers may follow, so read at your own risk.

                                                           

This week: THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN! 

This is it, guys. After five weeks without incident, we’re finally being forced to address the current cinematic era’s hot-buttoniest of issues. I’m talking, of course, about the Reboot.

I want to start off by saying that ‘reboot’ has easily become one of my least favorite words in the entire pop culture lexicon. Not because of its meaning, but because of the connotation that it’s picked up over the years. I don’t know about you, true believers, but outside of the occasional press release, I know I can’t manage to read or hear that word anymore without interpreting it as an epithet of smug derision. That goes double if the speaker describes the reboot as ‘gritty.’

 Example: “I guess it’s only a matter of time before we get that gritty reboot of the Teletubbies, eh?” 

As a general rule, reboots have the odds stacked against them from the moment they’re announced, with only the occasional Star Trek or 21 Jump Street managing to prove the masses wrong*. I do understand why this is – people have love for things they grew up watching, and that includes me. (I’m sure that when the inevitable Indiana Jones reboot is announced, I’ll hop right off my soapbox here and take to the streets.) But it’s a confusing stance to take all the same: say you met someone who has sworn off of hamburgers simply because he once ate a really great hamburger 20 years ago. You’re going to think that that person is crazy, right? But a man who makes that same declaration in regard to cinema becomes a bastion of good taste, standing up heroically against a mindless army of corporate shills. It’s a pretty vicious double standard. The simple fact is, franchise films make money, and most franchises are not capable of continuing indefinitely. That leaves rebooting as the only option. And be honest: is the idea of a Terminator reboot really that much harder to swallow than the idea of Terminator 5? I’d argue that as far as the integrity of the originals is concerned, the latter could do substantially more damage.

 * Interestingly, both of those examples managed to establish a new continuity without disregarding the old one. Perhaps that has something to do with it? 

What annoys me even more is that you hardly ever hear anyone refer to, say, Batman Begins as a reboot, even though it absolutely is one. If you ask me, that has everything to do with the fact that the film was well received. To call a film a ‘reboot’ in this day and age, it first has to be designated as ‘bad,’ like RoboCop, or Marky Mark’s Planet of the Apes, or, yes, The Amazing Spider-Man.

I may be in the minority here – and the box office reports seem to suggest that I am – but I will go on record as saying that from the very beginning, I thought the Amazing Spider-Man franchise had a lot of potential. Spider-Man is a character whose mythos is as diverse as it is beloved, and the approach that Sony was taking with its latest attempt seemed like it could open the door to a very thorough exploration of that mythos. Instead, a few major missteps on the part of the filmmakers, combined with an audience that was either lukewarm or outwardly hostile, created a one-two punch that doomed Sony’s burgeoning Spidey-Verse before it could even scale its first wall. If this week’s discussion comes across as slightly tinged with sadness… well, now you know why.

Too much sadness, Peter.

I want to take just one more moment here to rehash my earlier argument, and push back against the idea that Sam Raimi’s original trilogy somehow renders The Amazing Spider-Man unnecessary. The first two Spider-Men were excellent, that’s true, and the third… probably isn’t as bad as people think? (It’s been a while.) But you’ll notice that no one ever uses such an argument to say that we should stop writing Spider-Man comics. And those have gotten way crazier than the movies ever could. Comic-book Spidey swapped bodies with Doc Ock for over a year, for God’s sake! No, Spider-Man has endured in the public eye because he’s a fantastic character, and regardless of the medium, there’s no reason to write off new stuff on the basis that the old stuff was good.

So, to those who accuse Sony of using the reboot to play us for fools and hope we wouldn’t notice, all I can say is: what else were they going to do? They legitimately tried to go through with Spider-Man 4, but it had pretty much fallen apart by 2010, and Sony needs to make regular use of the character if they want to keep the rights Marvel sold them. They sure as hell weren’t going to sell ol’ Web-Head back again, which means we were getting a reboot whether we wanted it or not. And if the Amazing series fails? Guess what, we’re probably getting another one.

Yeah. Chew on that.

I will certainly concede the point that The Amazing Spider-Man suffers from hitting most of the same beats as the Raimi original in regards to Peter’s origin story. The film’s detractors believed that if we were really going back to square one, the story should have at least played out differently, and while I don’t know what exactly they were expecting (Peter crash-lands on earth as a refugee from a planet of spider-people? A spider murders Peter’s parents?), the criticism is a valid one. Spider-Man has one of the most iconic origins of any superhero, to the point where they probably could have gotten away with skipping it entirely. Nobody here needed to see Uncle Ben die again, even if he was played by Charlie Sheen’s dad this time around.

For God's sake, get over it.

 The biggest change that the new franchise did make was to add all that nonsense with Peter’s father, resulting in the so-called twist that only someone with Peter’s exact genetics could have gained spider-powers from his accident. It’s utterly pointless, overcomplicated, and easily the worst part of either movie. So be careful what you wish for. –Ed. 

The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t a groundbreaking film, but I think it can be considered a mostly harmless one, and is at its best where it chooses to differ from its cinematic predecessor, as in the way it connects all its major plot threads together via Oscorp, the company founded by Spidey-Verse mainstay – and overall Marvel bigwig – Norman Osborn. Despite the sequel’s revelation that the company’s various projects are all completely stupid, Oscorp's monolithic presence gives the franchise a strong backbone to build itself around, lays some subtle groundwork for the Osborns’ later introductions, and streamlines the overall story. It’s a good idea, even if there was probably a better one out there*.

 * Now that I think about it, that sentence is actually a pretty good way to sum up my feelings on this entire franchise. 

ASM's biggest selling point, though, is its new characters: Dr. Curt Connors, Captain George Stacy, and, of course, Gwen Stacy. Yes, I know that all three of those characters appeared in the Raimi trilogy. You’re very smart. Shut up.

Curt Connors, a.k.a. the Lizard, is ASM’s main villain, and in theory, he poses a bit of a problem. While his human persona is full of pathos and inner conflict, using potentially dangerous genetic research in an attempt to regrow his lost arm, the creature that he ends up turning himself into is spurred on primarily by animal instinct. And, as it turns out, a villain who literally has a lizard brain isn’t the most compelling screen presence. He gets a little leeway from me thanks to a thematic connection – his research is obliquely related to the spider that bit Peter – and being such a straightforward villain means he actually fits quite well into an origin film. At this stage, Peter has enough going on just figuring out how to be Spider-Man; I don’t think he should have to worry about stopping a legitimate criminal mastermind in his first few months on the job.

Denis Leary’s Captain Stacy doesn’t really deserve too much discussion, since he’s basically just a poor man’s J. Jonah Jameson, acting as a mouthpiece for the “more harm than good” half of the city-wide debate over our favorite web-slinger. (He’s not half as much fun as J.K. Simmons while doing it, either.) His biggest scene with Peter is an uncomfortably hostile argument on that exact topic, just in case the point wasn’t hammered home enough, and as a final screw you to the character, his one dying wish is quickly disregarded in a way that, strangely, is meant to come across as a happy ending. The sequel at least makes good on the negative consequences of breaking that promise, but for a while there, it makes Peter border on unlikeable.

George’s daughter Gwen Stacy, on the other hand, is probably the strongest part of the new franchise, and her presence is largely responsible for making the films’ stories feel important. As Peter Parker’s first love, Gwen is a crucial part of the Spider-Man legend, and a Spidey-Verse that starts with her is therefore going to have the potential to boast a lot more emotional depth. It also helps that Gwen was played by the fantastic Emma Stone, that she and Andrew Garfield had great chemistry together, and that franchise director Marc Webb got his start doing romantic comedies. The relationship between the two felt genuine and lived-in – most likely because it continued offscreen – and, for me, at least, the effort invested in their storyline paid off, because I found Gwen’s death in the sequel to be genuinely affecting.

Spoiler Alert

You’ll have to forgive me if I was a bit cavalier there, but Gwen Stacy’s ultimate fate is no real surprise to most Spider-Fans; I mentioned it myself only a few weeks ago*, and as far as the Amazing franchise goes, the question was never ‘if,’ but rather ‘when.’ I do wonder if it was carried out a bit prematurely – two films in a row ending with Stacy funerals makes it seem like Gwen and her family only exist to be crammed into refrigerators – but when you’re dealing with what is arguably one of the most iconic deaths in Marvel history, you can’t blame the writers for hedging their bets by making sure that they got the chance to put it on film.

 * In Mike Overthinks Movies #10! 

I actually think they made the right call in that sense, because whatever else you might say about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – and I’ll have plenty to say about it in a minute, believe me – Gwen Stacy’s death was beautiful. It may sound weird, but it really was. It was beautiful in a way that was impactful even when I could see it coming a mile away. It was beautiful in a way that a snapped neck should never, ever be. I will gladly rewatch this film – and at my earliest opportunity, at that – simply for that moment.

Of course, there’s a very real case to be made that Gwen Stacy’s death should not be beautiful, and that making it beautiful undercuts its meaning in ways that anyone should have been able to realize. Here’s that same moment in the comics:

See the ‘snap?’ No, not the ‘SWIK.’ The ‘snap.’ It’s small. Insignificant. If you’re reading quickly, the balloon placement makes it entirely possible that you’ll miss it altogether. And yet that ‘snap’ marks the abrupt end of one of the most significant relationships that Peter Parker has ever had and ever will have.

It works because of how underplayed it all is. It’s SO unexpected. Even Peter doesn’t realize what’s happened until he’s pulled Gwen all the way back up to the top of the bridge. In a million years, no one would have ever thought that Gwen Stacy would die that way, mostly because no one would have thought that Gwen Stacy would die at all. It’s not Peter’s fault, but it happens in such a way that he still feels responsible, and for that reason the moment has come to be seen as the end of an era; for the first time in a long time, it became possible for superheroes to fail.

Now, Spidey didn’t fail all on his own, of course. Someone had to throw Gwen off that bridge in the first place, and, unsurprisingly, that someone was none other than the Green Goblin.

Meaning this is only the second deadliest scheme that he's ever been part of.

The alter-ego of Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin is Spider-Man’s most high-profile enemy, but that didn’t stop him from apparently dying in the aftermath of Gwen’s death, disappearing for over 20 years. In that timespan, the Goblin mantle was taken up by others, most notably Harry Osborn, Norman’s son and Peter Parker’s best friend. The first ASM, in what felt like foreshadowing at the time, went out of its way to make Norman’s offscreen presence felt, and yet the second film ends up skipping over him almost entirely, having Harry become the first Goblin and incorporating Gwen’s death into the reworked origin story. That’s all fine, being an adaptation, but leapfrogging over half the story means that certain elements feel a bit out of place.

One criticism I don’t agree with is the idea that ASM2 doesn’t make sense. It may stretch credulity at times, especially in little nitpicky moments, but the logistics are all there. For instance, let’s look at Harry’s plotline using the trick we learned from Trey Parker and Matt Stone in MOM #1, shall we?

Ready? … BEGIN!

After inheriting Oscorp from his father, Harry becomes terrified of the rare disease that he just discovered he’s carrying à therefore he looks to Oscorp’s R&D department for a cure. BUT it turns out the only cure is Spider-Man’s blood (because plot device!) à therefore he asks Peter, being a ‘mutual friend’ of both Harry and Spidey, to get it for him. BUT Peter turns him down (because plot device it could be dangerous) à therefore Harry digs deeper into Oscorp’s secrets à therefore he is thrown out as head of the company à therefore he teams up with Electro to break back in. BUT he’s seriously wounded in the attempt à therefore he is forced to make use of the Goblin armor and its healing ability.

GAME OVER

Plot devices aside, it all flows, and works pretty well as a character arc on paper. It even gives Harry a solid motive for targeting Gwen during the climax: he knows he can use her to manipulate Peter (and he also knows that Peter is Spider-Man, because he’s not an idiot). The biggest problem, then, is that it feels extremely rushed, especially since it’s only a subplot. You can see the strain in the fact that the Osborn retrovirus, which took over 60 years to kill Norman, based on Chris Cooper’s age, starts manifesting in Harry just a few months after he learns that he has it. An arc like this would have been perfectly serviceable spread across two movies – and indeed, Sam Raimi got the maximum mileage from the same character by stretching his transformation across an entire trilogy – but it’s so compressed here that crucial elements of the character, like being Peter Parker’s gorram best friend, are lost amidst the chaos. It doesn’t make any sense to me, given that this rebooted universe seemed engineered from the beginning to run much longer than the one that came before. Spider-Man is compelling because so much of what he gets into as a superhero rests atop a web (sorry) of personal relationships, but if you skimp on that foundation just because you want to get to the Sinister Six faster, you’re only going to be doing yourself a disservice.

Am I forgetting something?

Oh, right!

Felicia Hardy. She has a minor role as Harry’s assistant, presumably setting her up to reappear as the Black Cat. I wouldn’t say that kind of character needs setting up, but, whatever. Clearly in this Spidey-Verse, working at Oscorp is a prerequisite for gaining superpowers.

Oscorp worker… gaining superpowers… why does that sound familiar?

Oh yeah. Electro. That guy we all spent a year thinking the movie was actually going to be about. Remember that? Boy, those were the days.

As written, and as performed by Jamie Foxx, ASM2’s Electro is completely different than any other version of the character that I’m aware of, but the writers took him an a really interesting direction. This Max Dillon is someone who’s been pushed around for his entire life, retreating into his loneliness to the point of mental instability. He instantly clings to anyone who’s even remotely nice to him, especially if that someone is a hero like Spider-Man. Because he’s so fragile, his experiences after his electrifying accident drive him completely over the edge, and he decides to use his powers to punish those who he thinks wronged him, whether or not they actually did. Some character choices may come across as disjointed or unmotivated because of the whole ‘mental break’ thing, but I sign off on it. To me, he’s almost a dark parallel to Steve Rogers: the weakling that finally becomes strong.

So, it seems like a lot of this film’s perceived problems come from two very outside-the-box villain stories, but I think they’re both pretty okay. IF you want to have an Electro who is a mentally unstable, obsessive Spider-Man fan with an inferiority complex, and IF you want to have Harry Osborn be the first Green Goblin, well, fine. Those are unorthodox choices, but neither is inherently bad. I’m not sure they belong in the same movie - in fact, they probably don’t, and therein lies the true problem. But IF you want to put them both in the same movie, you might as well do it the way they did it here. That’s what makes ASM2 my favorite kind of movie to think about, but so difficult to write about. It’s like a layer cake of good and bad decisions.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

Basically, the overall concept of the film centers around two villains that have no intuitive reason for interacting, but the story was broken in such a way that justifies it about as well as anyone could hope to do. The script that came from that story outline is hopelessly overwritten, filled with unnecessary twists and turns and lots of questionable decisions. And finally, we have the film itself, shot from that same script, and actually doing a great job with things like performances, characterization*, and little details.

 * I have no shame in admitting that I prefer this version of Spider-Man to Tobey Maguire’s, even if the latter comes from the superior franchise. This Spidey is just so quippy and fun, especially in the opening scenes of the second film. If you ask me, it’s the way Spider-Man ought to be done. 

In short, ASM2 is a largely pointless story, told in an interesting way, starring good actors that are forced to deliver bad dialogue in between more than a few genuinely entertaining scenes. If you can manage to pigeonhole that into the simple categories of ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ be my guest. But I know I can’t.

Anyway, what’s next for the Web-Slinger?

What If?

A few months ago, Sony’s Spidey-Verse had quite a lot on the horizon: a Sinister Six film, a Venom spinoff, and two more ASM films, with release dates reserved as far as four years in the future. After ASM2 underperformed at the box office, though, the future is a lot more uncertain. Roberto Orci, who was supposed to be one of the grand architects of the Spidey-Verse, has stepped away from the project indefinitely, and it’s no longer clear if any of those planned movies will still be happening, let alone all four of them.

I will say that if a Sinister Six movie ever does see the light of day, it will be a tremendously interesting prospect. The Sinister Six, for the uninitiated, is the name for a group of assorted Spider-Man villains, and is basically a villainous version of the Avengers, meant to target Spidey specifically. Also like the Avengers, the lineup is never set in stone, but based on hints left in ASM2’s credits, this version will include (would have included?) Green Goblin, Doc Ock, the Vulture, the Rhino, Kraven the Hunter, and Mysterio. All of those are great villains – Spidey can easily claim the best rogues gallery this side of Batman – but only two would have been established beforehand, which seems like a risky proposition to me. There’s also the question of what exactly a movie starring six villains is supposed to be about. Do they fight Spider-Man? Some bigger villain? Each other? Do they just hang out like an evil episode of Friends? I genuinely don’t know, and like most of Sony’s Spidey-Verse projects, my interest comes mostly from wanting to see what their approach would be.

Hopefully (?) I’ll get the chance to find out. And you’d better hope so too, if you don’t want to have a reboot of a reboot on your hands.

Did I mention that this happened in the movie?
Because this totally happened.
We live in a world where Paul Giamatti jumps at the chance to play the Rhino.
In his underpants.

 Next Week: It’s a bird! It’s a plane! 

Some Assembly Required

Every week during the Summer of Superheroes, SuperMike Matthews breaks down the ins and outs of a current superhero franchise. Spoilers may follow, so read at your own risk.

                                           

This week: THE AVENGERS! 

Into the Woods.

Penny Dreadful. 

Super Smash Bros. 

Alien vs. Predator. 

That episode of Johnny Bravo where Johnny meets the Scooby-Doo gang. 

Crossovers exist in every medium and every genre, and on some level, just about everyone likes them. Honestly, what’s not to like about two (or more!) of your favorite things being smashed together into one big thing? Crossovers are the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of the entertainment world.

This was, and still is, the only thing I have ever wanted.

The candy comparison is especially apt, since most crossovers really are just treats. They usually take place in a different continuity than their source material, and are simply looking to have some fun by playing around with famous iconography. They’re a chance to guess at what might happen if Abbott and Costello met Frankenstein, or if Abbott and Costello met the Mummy, or if Abbott and Costello met the Invisible Man. (A surprising amount of crossovers are Abbott and Costello based.)

Comic book crossovers, on the other hand, are much more than simple gimmicks designed to drum up publicity*. From the very beginning, comic book crossovers have played an instrumental role in both fleshing out and prolonging the worlds they present to their readers.

 * Make that: ‘more than just gimmicks designed to drum up publicity.’    – Ed. 

Think of it this way: Daredevil is one of Marvel’s more insular titles, and could probably run almost indefinitely without external input. All the same, elements of Daredevil’s character – like his close friendship with Spider-Man, or his antagonism with the Punisher – are given immediate weight by making use of established characters, rather than ones created specifically to fill those roles. Seems obvious, right? Well, now apply that logic to every comic-book hero in existence at the same time, and you’ll see that it’s a pretty big sandbox to play in. At their best, comic book crossovers allow writers to tell creative and interesting stories that wouldn’t be possible on a smaller scale, and make the most of each character’s unique personality and skill set.

At their worst, comic book crossovers will slap Wolverine on the cover of an issue that may or may not actually have Wolverine in it.

He gets it.

Zak Penn and Joss Whedon deserve a lot of credit for falling on the good side of that line with The Avengers (the film we’re actually here to talk about today), especially because the film technically belongs to a different class of crossover entirely: the Crisis of Infinite Superheroes.

A Crisis of Infinite Superheroes, besides being a term that I just made up, denotes a threat that is so large in scope that heroes from all across the globe/galaxy/universe/multiverse must be called upon to assemble and save the day. With increasing frequency, these Crises are taking the form of company-wide events that bring most or all of a publisher’s characters together for a year or more. That’s not inherently bad – again, think of the Peanut Butter Cup – but in any such crossover, there is a definite risk that such a large cast will lead to a juggling act rather than a compelling narrative.

 I do realize that the Avengers had only six members, which is, at worst, slightly above average for your basic team-up. But given that those six heroes plus War Machine represent the entire superhero community of the MCU at the time, I think calling it an Infinite Crisis is fair. – Ed. 

There are certainly traces of that juggling act evident in the movie – of the film’s two ‘new-ish’ heroes, Black Widow gets the third most screen time of anyone in the cast, while Hawkeye spends more than half the movie as a brainwashed thug – but the script truly does excel at making each character feel like they genuinely belong there.

The main villain of The Avengers is Loki, continuing his character arc from Thor. He’s decided that if he can’t rule Asgard, he’ll settle for domination of Earth, the planet that his brother loves so much. Naturally, Thor follows Loki down to Earth to stop him. Good.

The tool Loki plans on using to summon his army is the Tesseract, the same item that Cap sacrificed himself to keep out of the wrong hands at the end of The First Avenger. Good.

The Tesseract emits Gamma radiation, the same type of radiation that Bruce Banner devoted years of his life to studying. Good.

Hawkeye is trying to defend the Tesseract when he’s press-ganged into Loki’s service. Not bad.

Black Widow is S.H.I.E.L.D.’s top operative, and has a close enough bond with Hawkeye that she feels the need to help save him. Good.

As it happens, Iron Man is the hero with the least reason to be there, but then, if you honestly believe that Tony Stark would sit back and let everyone else take all the glory, you haven’t been paying attention.

Once all the heroes are in place, we’re given an extended period of time to simply let them bounce off of one another and watch the sparks fly, which – and this is a technical term – is just OODLES of fun, you guys. Seriously. It’s amazing. Iron Man and Cap, for instance, discover that they have an immediate ideological conflict that quickly becomes the core of the movie. Banner’s presence as a wild card keeps everyone on edge – especially Black Widow – even as he and Stark quickly bond over their comparable intellects. And, of course, Thor beats up just about everyone.

Another small touch that I really appreciate is the way that the film has each character square off against Loki at one point or another, but does so on a case-by-case basis, letting each member of the team do what they do best. He gets a beat-down from Cap, a chewing out from Thor, is out-manipulated by Widow, gets his ego deflated by Stark, is outsmarted by one of Hawkeye’s trick arrows, and finishes off by being utterly decimated, courtesy of Mr. Green.

It's really not a strong showing for the puny trickster god.

As a sequel to four different films at once, The Avengers has a lot of ongoing character arcs to deal with. It can get away with leaving some on the back burner – Thor, for instance, doesn’t change much – but it also advances a surprisingly large number of them. Besides Loki’s quest for kingship as mentioned above, we have Tony learning to be self-sacrificing, Cap adjusting to the modern-day world, Banner’s ongoing struggle for self-control… they’re subtle beats, but they’re undeniably there. Most importantly, the film’s climax introduces an earth-shattering event of 9/11 proportions, one that makes the world at large aware of the existence of both aliens and superheroes. Talk about a paradigm shift.

Given all of that, there is one pressing question still to address, and I’m sure many of my newbies out there are thinking it: with so much established in the five films that precede it, does The Avengers work even slightly as a stand-alone movie?

Believe it or not, I think it does; you wouldn’t be experiencing the best version, and would need to take a lot on faith, but all of the truly crucial plot information remains firmly within the film itself. (This guy is bad, and he wants to use that glowy cube thing to make the aliens come.) Still, even something as simple as basic brand awareness of the main characters – something that you now possess, dear reader! – goes a long way. I can certainly picture the unfortunate filmgoer whose expression, upon reaching the action scene on the Helicarrier, finally shifts from glazed confusion to one of understanding. “Ohhhh,” the man exclaims, pointing excitedly at Mark Ruffalo, “He’s the Hulk.”

"Now I get it."

So. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it’s pretty damn close, and it definitely gets my vote for the best superhero film of all time, simply because it’s SO MUCH FUN. All the same, a lot of what’s great about it comes from context that was established elsewhere; yes, this was the film that finally put our favorite heroes together on screen, but the groundwork had been underway for a long time, and still is. The MCU is a web of constant connections that never stops being woven, even if there’s no Avengers film in theaters to make it explicit. We can clearly see that in the case of Black Widow, who has now appeared in just as many films as most of her fellow Avengers, even without a franchise to call her own.

In a way, world building has become the job of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the ABC series that focuses on fan favorite S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson. Besides introducing a number of D-list Marvel characters that never would have made it to the big screen, the series gives us the chance to explore the MCU’s more obscure nooks and crannies once a week. The show's existence hardly means that Easter Eggs have been relegated to the small screen, though - in fact, Agents has frequently stated its commitment to original characters. (Whether or not that's to its detriment is a matter of debate.)

The point is, there continue to be plenty of subtle references hidden throughout the films for attentive fans to pick up on. For instance, did you know that both the Hulk and the Abomination were created using a bootleg version of Captain America's super-soldier serum? Or that the two scientist acquaintances Erik Selvig mentions in Thor are Bruce Banner and Henry Pym, a.k.a. Ant Man? How about the Stephen Strange name drop in The Winter Soldier? Or Ellen Brandt’s presence in Iron Man 3 obliquely confirming that somewhere in the MCU dwells… the Man-Thing*?

 * Before you say anything, he actually debuted two months before Swamp Thing, so he’s not a rip-off. Ironically, Swamp Thing is actually the manlier of the two, whereas Man-Thing is much swampier. 

Which is weird.

That’s all really cool, right? It’s all connected!

Yeah!

Now for the bad news.

We talked last week about the need for franchises to wring as much potential out of their central character as possible, and the shared universe of the MCU only makes that need even more apparent. Every movie in the pipe starts coming with a checklist. Are all of the necessary characters in play? How can they be brought together? If one or more is missing, can the existing characters stick around long enough for the rest to be introduced? It breaks my heart to say it, but sooner or later, the good folks at Marvel Studios are going to find themselves answering those questions in the negative. Chris Hemsworth can’t play Thor until Ragnarok, so the concern becomes one of getting him to stick around until it’s time for Thor: Ragnarok. Whether it’s the result of market oversaturation, or just financial unfeasibility, the MCU’s model is going to have to turn away from expansion and become a system of replacement. As the saying goes, out with the Iron Man, in with the Ant Man.

Or something like that.

What If?

Fortunately for Marvel, the Avengers are no strangers to the concept of replacement. Ever since their foundation, the team has had something of a revolving door policy toward membership, and among their several branches, they’ve built up a massive roster over the years. Two key figures who will soon be making their MCU debut – and thus come sporting some shiny new 6-film contracts – are Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, perhaps better known as Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch*. In this universe, HYDRA leader Baron Strucker has somehow altered their genetics, presumably using the staff left behind by Loki at the end of The Avengers. This makes them two of the first MCU inhabitants to have actual superpowers, though Strucker’s declaration that we’re entering an “age of miracles” means that there might be more to come.

 * Some of you might have seen Quicksilver earlier this summer, stealing scenes as part of the latest X-Men movie. That’s because the film rights to Pietro and his sister are some of the few that still remain up in the air. The situation is complicated by the fact that they’re mutants by birth – Magneto’s twin children, in fact – but Avengers by choice, belonging to the latter group since 1965. 

In any case, the Avengers’ immediate future is easy enough to read, what with Age of Ultron being less than a year away. The plot of the film is still under wraps, but one thing we know for sure is the identity of the big bad, and that means we can make a few pretty safe assumptions.

Ultron, for lack of a more concise phrase, is a killer robot with daddy issues. He’s equal parts Skynet and Frankenstein’s monster, with the three key goals of upgrading himself, proliferating, and destroying his creator. Part of what makes Ultron’s debut so exciting is that he’s one of the few foes who can be considered an enemy of the Avengers as a group, rather than just an enemy of one member whose latest scheme happened to work exceptionally well. And yet, I’m sure there are many who would call his introduction a bit premature, given that the comic book Ultron is created by Ant Man, and that Ant Man is not coming to the MCU until next summer, after Age of Ultron is already out. That means the smart money is on Tony Stark to create the robot in Ant Man’s place, and I, for one, am A-OK with that – it’s just another example of the MCU making the most of the pieces it’s already put in place.

Post-Ultron, things are going to start getting pretty heavy. Some of you may remember this ugly mug from The Avengers’ mid-credits scene.

Hellboy?

That’s Thanos, the Mad Titan, and he means business. He has a long history in the Marvel Universe, but his main preoccupation is the assembly of the Infinity Gauntlet, an ancient artifact inset with six gems that, used at the same time, make the bearer one of the most powerful beings in all of creation. Two of those gems have already been identified – the Tesseract and the Aether from Thor: The Dark World – but neither is in Thanos’ possession just yet. We’re going to see him very soon in Guardians of the Galaxy, and after that, I imagine he’ll become a major player in kicking off the MCU’s first real Crisis of Infinite Superheroes.

Also, he once killed half of all sentient life in the universe just by snapping his fingers.

So there’s that.

 Next Week: We swing into action! 

As it happens, ladies, I have two Giant-Size Man-Things. And only one of them is a comic book.
(The other one is an action figure.)

The Star-Spangled Man

Every week during the Summer of Superheroes, SuperMike Matthews breaks down the ins and outs of a current superhero franchise. Spoilers may follow, so read at your own risk. 

                                                            

This week: CAPTAIN AMERICA! 

If you had asked me five years ago what I thought of Captain America, I don’t think I would have had very much to say. I’d have known who he was, sure, but that’s hardly the same thing as caring about him as a character. At best, I might have said something about Major Glory from the Justice Friends segments in Dexter’s Laboratory. Remember those?

Man, those were awesome.

The point is, times have changed, and today I’ve become a definite Captain America fan, to an extent that surprises even me. Would I go so far as to call him my favorite superhero? Not exactly: that would still be Spider-Man on the Marvel side (as it should be), and Batman overall (AS IT SHOULD BE). But that replica star-and-stripe shield is hanging on my wall for a reason, and you’d better believe that if I’m feeling superheroic on movie night, my go-to pick is gonna be good old Steve Rogers.

All this is to say that I probably won’t be very impartial on this one.

Captain America is one of Marvel’s oldest characters, and actually predates the company’s current name, premiering all the way back in 1941 when they were still called Timely Comics. In a way, he has a lot in common with the DC heroes that emerged at the same time as him, with his ‘everything is awesome’ approach to heroism serving as a kind of pro-American propaganda. Also supporting the propaganda theory: the fact that he was created as a super-soldier for the express purpose of winning World War II.

Yep. I am definitely picking up some subtle jingoism here.

Cap’s problem has never been relevance, in that sense, so much as relatability. See, the lion’s share of his Marvel brethren subscribe to the theory that being a superhero comes with a downside, and Cap didn’t really have any downsides during his Timely Comics years. When he was brought back under the Marvel banner, he was therefore given a second origin story, in which he loses his partner Bucky, gets frozen in ice, and wakes up in the future*. The new background helped him some, and the whole man-out-of-time thing has become a major part of his character, but it’s never quite overshadowed the cheesy, holier-than-thou aspects of his personality, namely his patriotism and unshakeable moral compass.

 * Anywhere between 20 and 70 years in the future, depending on which version of the character you’re dealing with. 

That’s why I give a lot of credit to Captain America: The First Avenger for its work in finally making Steve Rogers seem like a real human. I’ve gathered – to my dismay – that the film may not be a widespread favorite, but I for one really do love it, and that’s only partly because of its undeniable Raiders of the Lost Ark feel.

A complaint I often hear leveled at The First Avenger is that it takes too long to get to the action, ‘wasting’ what is basically the entire first act on pre-Super Soldier Steve. That may be true, but the time the film invests there is essential if we’re going to understand the psyche of our protagonist, and if you’ve been reading this blog, you know that that’s a pretty important thing to understand. The First Avenger achieves this by making it clear to us that Steve Rogers is not effortlessly perfect. In fact, he’s not perfect at all. He’s just a good man who has spent his whole life trying his best, even when his best wasn’t good enough. As Captain America, he finally has the opportunity to live up to his potential, and by communicating what his new abilities really mean to him, the film frees itself from any sense of pretentiousness or hero worship. 

Also justifying all the pre-hero business: The First Avenger elevates the dynamic between Cap and his sidekick Bucky, by not only making the two into childhood friends, but by having Bucky start out as the more capable one. The change adds nice depth and necessary weight to a relationship that could have easily come across as cliche.

I’m going to be honest: I don’t have many bad things to say about The First Avenger, other than that it feels pretty rushed in its second half. And as for this year’s sequel, The Winter Soldier, that film is so recent and so full of spoilers that I don’t exactly feel up to a full discussion right now. What I will say is that it’s a more than worthy successor to the first one, despite belonging to an entirely different genre – appropriate, given that the two films represent two entirely different periods of Cap’s comic book career. The film also continues to humanize Steve by making great use of his culture shock, gives him fantastic secondary characters to bounce off of in the form of both Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow and Cap’s long-time partner Falcon, and includes what is easily my favorite live-action interpretation of a supervillain, EVER*.

 * It’s probably not the one you think. (HERE BE SPOILERS) 

With nothing much left to say about the films themselves, I’d like to take a detour into another thought that I had not too long ago, one that was prompted by this series specifically, but that has implications reaching far beyond it:

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, for all its good points, has got to be the single most unsustainable endeavor ever undertaken in the long course of human history.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

Comic book Jesus Stan Lee once remarked that comic book stories are not actually about change, but only ‘the illusion of change.’ I don’t know that I would agree with him completely, but there’s no denying that as a serialized art form, comic books aren’t able to indulge in a true sense of finality. Certain writers may make an effort to put a nice little bow on their runs of certain titles, and I’m sure they succeed more often than not, but the fact remains that nine times out of ten, another writer is going to come in after them and start writing a brand new set of stories. On top of that, you have flashbacks, spin-offs, and one-offs that intentionally don’t go anywhere. From a statistical standpoint alone, some of these are going to be duds, or simply irrelevant to the big picture. Even when things do change in big ways, there’s always the possibility of backtracking. As the saying goes, nobody stays dead in comics but Uncle Ben*. Also Gwen Stacy, I guess. She stays pretty dead.

Which, when you think about it, only makes being Spider-Man that much worse.

 * The saying used to be “No one stays dead in comics but Bucky, Jason Todd, and Uncle Ben.” It’s been changed since then, because… well, you can guess why. 

Movies, on the other hand, are an altogether different animal. As much as Marvel Studios would like to give the impression of a living, breathing universe that continues even when we aren’t watching, they simply can’t put out 50 or more stories per month, every month, the way that Marvel Comics can. If a moment in the lives of these characters is going to be put on film, it’s being chosen for a reason, most likely because it’s going to have a major impact on the character moving forward. That means that each film carries much more weight than the average comic book story, and that in turn means that the MCU, despite being a teeny tiny fraction of the size of the overall Marvel Universe, already has much more momentum behind it. Allegiances can’t ping pong back and forth, captured villains stay captured, and the dead stay dead, all because of the need to keep moving forward.

 And also, who can afford to keep extending those contracts? – Ed. 

This practice is clearly evident in the Captain America franchise in the way that it leapfrogs so quickly from one milestone to the next. The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier both tackle major events in Cap’s life: the former, his career-defining years in WWII; the latter, the life-shattering reemergence of a familiar face long thought dead. The trick is that these events took place almost 6 decades apart in the comics, while the MCU has now covered that same amount of ground in something like three years. Granted, it’s not as though all the comic book stories that happened in-between are now moot, and the films’ events certainly didn’t happen back-to-back from Steve’s perspective. The Winter Soldier’s opening scene, in which Cap fights Batroc the Leaper, is representative of what he’s been up to all the while, and could probably fill an entire issue in print. Still, a lack of time and money means that we’ll probably never get to see those ‘less interesting’ gaps filled in on screen.

First Volstagg, now Batroc. Why do you taunt me so, Marvel?

This is another reason why I’m so quick to defend The First Avenger. Yes, it’s entirely origin story, but it’s also, out of sheer necessity, one of the only chances the MCU will have to put that early part of Steve Rogers’ life on film. In fact, if anything, we should be mad about not getting to see enough! Look at the Howling Commandos: they were bursting with potential, despite their minimal screen time, but if they were to be brought back now, they would all have to be somewhere in their 90s. It’s really almost beneficial that so much of the war was presented as a montage in the film; Marvel could set an entire movie during those skimmed-over years if they wanted to. And that’s something I can really only hope for, because I WANT MORE DUM DUM DUGAN, MARVEL!

BURN ME TWICE, SHAME ON YOU. BURN ME THREE TIMES… I'LL GET EVEN ANGRIER.

 Fun Fact: According to the official timeline of all his published appearances, Wolverine spent more years living through WWII than there were years in WWII. 

To get back to/recap the point I was making, a live-action series of superhero movies needs to focus on crucial moments, if only to make the most of the actors it has under contract. That’s hardly a problem unique to Marvel, but they’ve definitely made things harder on themselves by committing to a shared universe where the loss of any actor or character will be keenly felt. Again, recasting is always an option, but every new face that turns up is just another crack in the façade. I’ll have more to say about the broader stakes of this next week, but to understand its impact on a franchise level, all we need to do is look at what the future holds for Steve Rogers.

What if?

If it were up to me, I would use this section to speculate hopefully about Steve and fellow Avenger Hawkeye eventually teaming up with Age of Ultron newcomers Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch to finally form the long-awaited ‘Cap’s Kooky Quartet.’ Then we could all have a good laugh and head on home. Unfortunately, a look at the cast list for The Winter Soldier has me making a much more regrettable prediction.

Among the characters introduced in Cap’s second solo outing are Brock Rumlow, a.k.a. Crossbones, Sharon Carter, a.k.a. Agent 13, and, of course, the titular Winter Soldier. Each of them, taken alone, have more than enough significance in the hero’s mythos to justify a part in the film, but ultimately, there’s only one thing that they have in common: all three played major roles in The Death of Captain America.

That storyline, which lasted over a year, served as an epilogue to Marvel’s massive, company-wide crossover Civil War*, and made major waves in both the Marvel Universe and our real one. The MCU as it stands doesn’t include nearly enough characters for a worthy Civil War adaptation, which means that Cap probably won’t die exactly as written, but one way or another, it looks like the writing’s on the wall for Cpt. Rogers.

 * I wouldn’t read that whole thing if I were you. 

Chris Evans’ contract with Marvel will put him in at least three more movies, that’s true, but Sebastian Stan – who plays Steve’s comic-book successor – is still under contract for a whopping seven films post-Winter Soldier. It’s pretty obvious, then, what Marvel’s plans are for the character, and though I’d love to see Cap Classic mined for some more material, I have to admit that it makes a lot of sense. Bottom line, it could be a long while before we have to say goodbye to Captain America the hero, but if it’s Steve Rogers the man that you care about – and I would argue that it should be – you’d best start enjoying the time we have left with him.

Oh… Now I made myself sad.

Let’s all just take a moment and appreciate the Justice Friends, shall we?

Aw, yeah. That's more like it.

 Next Week: Six great tastes that taste great together!