Good day
and enough of the bollocks,
I’ve been putting off posting on
I’ve A Nuke because of some misplaced sense of duty to my work. Little did I
know that maintaining this piece of webspace is also a part of my work and that
I am, as a writer, obligated to keep it alive. Hence, I’m back with a
vengeance. Hopefully.
So. Operating a film franchise of any
scale is hard work. Setting them up is already a gamble, but how do you keep
them afloat? Whether you leave it all in the hands of a single director or
scores of them, it’s a mad endeavour. Sticking to one director for an entire project
is ideal for the sake of tone, but it’s hard if the director gets involved in
other projects.
Risky as switching directors can be,
it can have its benefits. Here’s where I want to point to Marvel’s big
blockbuster film series as an example of how to do it right. If you’ve been
away on some grand four-year adventure in the Himalayas and have no idea what’s
happening, let me refer you to Google. All read up? Good, let’s talk.
I am in love with these films.
They’re the kind of superhero movies I enjoy seeing. Yes, The Dark Knight
Trilogy is a fun dark romp, but you need to be silly when dealing with cape
comics most of the time. What I enjoy about the Marvel films in particular is
that they consistently embrace the insanity of the Marvelverse by
director-hopping from project to project. You’re dealing with astonishing tales
starring diverse characters whose stories employ a range of tones, so snagging
multiple directors to capture that variety is ideal.
Now, to show you what I mean, I’m
going to drop all pretenses and rant about these films, because I’ve wanted to
for about a year and I finally have the chance. This bus will be short-turning
into Spoilerville now and again, so beware.
Jon
Favreau’s Iron Man is one of the
strongest of the First Wave because it adheres to cartoon logic, running on
convenience, obvious villains and ridiculous physics right from the get-go. On
top of that, Robert Downey Junior plays the socialite warmonger turned
vigilante hero well and has a great double-act going with Gwenyth Paltrow’s
Pepper Potts, who is all at once Tony Stark’s assistant, friend and nanny. This
is an ideal premise to introduce people to this universe as well, because it’s insane
and silly but also grounded enough to be plausible.
Then
we had The Incredible Hulk, where
shit got stranger, especially with Edward Norton turning into a big green dude
and beating up everything in sight. One decision the movie made won me over. Too
many superhero flicks labour over who our hero was before some “incident” transformed
them. Some back-stories are incredibly basic too, so spending too much time on
them can be hurtful to the plot. The
Incredible Hulk took the smart way out: throwing the origin story into the
opening credits and giving us Doctor
Jekyll and Mister Hyde meets The
Fugitive instead. Tonally, it prepares audiences for the future films by
saying that, yes, this is a bizarre universe but it is no stranger to drama and
tragedy, and the loss of one’s humanity is tragic indeed.
It
hurts me to write this, but Jon Favreau’s Iron
Man 2 is one of the weaker ones. I had high hopes for this film and it only
delivered enough to simply pass. One big reason is because it has
eleven-thousand plot threads stapled to the script. All at once, we have to
concern ourselves with Tony Stark becoming a douche again, Justin Hammer and
Ivan Vanko trying to kill both each other and
Iron Man, Pepper running Stark’s company while he tries to keep his heart from
giving out, some subplot about Black Widow making Tony’s trousers tighten to
Pepper’s dismay and Samuel L Jackson reminding the audience about the Avengers movie. No sane human being can
put up with that for two hours.
In
spite of that, I forgave Iron Man 2
on certain grounds. First, it appealed to the part of my brain that unconditionally
loves Mickey Rourke. Second, I felt that all of the plots were connected to a
single concept: Stark shooting himself in the foot over and over again. Seriously,
everything is rooted in Stark’s
inability to see past his own ego. The plot is chaotic because his life is chaotic, and the clutter and
maniacal pace is actually representative of Tony’s own incoherent and self-righteous
mind. And third, because things went boom and I went “Yay” when they did.
Speaking
of weak: Thor. Now, I liked Thor. For all its shortcomings, it’s a
fun action film with great actors and decent aesthetics, and introduced the Marvelverse’s
cosmic side well. It’s just flawed on many levels; namely with the romance. A
friend summarized the (pretentious ahem) relationship between Thor and Jane
Foster well: “He fell from the sky, broke a mug, then they looked at the stars
and kissed.” I also felt the relationship between Thor and Loki was flimsily
developed. I say that, though, because I saw this deleted scene that would have
built on their dynamic a bit more. Sadly, on the surface it contrasted with
Loki’s sinister silver-tongued nature and so it was pulled. A regretful
decision, I say.
Captain America, meanwhile, blew my face off. Acting,
special effects and writing aside, what I enjoyed about it was that the story
was not merely about someone becoming a superhero. It’s about regaining humanity.
Steve Rogers starts off as a wimp who is incredibly human. Then Science happens
and he becomes a monster-man. America’s answer to the super-soldier conundrum
is to turn him into a propaganda piece, and it’s not until he’s sent overseas to
watch his countrymen struggle that he remembers he’s a man first and a symbol
second, that men make mistakes and necessary sacrifices that symbols are not
meant to make.
Come
of think of it, lots of Marvel’s heroes deal with rediscovering humanity. Bruce
Banner battles his Hulk side daily, Steve Rogers tries hard to be an Average
Joe and adjust to a future he hardly understands, and so many others – Iron
Man, Luke Cage, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man – is a troubled man who paid the
price for arrogance and foolishness and redeems himself through costumed
vigilantism. It’s like becoming a superhero is some form of community service,
or the unspoken thirteenth step in an AA recovery program.
Anyway,
all this brings us to Avengers, the
movie that made a billion dollars in a
week. God knows why. Maybe it was the stellar reinterpretation of Avengers
Issue One, the well-rounded cast, the incredible blend of writing, action and
humour, the forty-minute fight sequence, and the mid-credits teaser featuring
THANOS THE MAD TITAN. This is how you pull all these mad ideas together. This
is what the payoff for build-up should feel like. It should feel like a
two-and-a-half-hour nerdgasm. And that was Avengers
for me.
If
this was too long and you didn’t read it, here’s a summary: Iron Man, Captain America, and Avengers
are keener kids with incredible charisma, The
Incredible Hulk is the quick-thinking jock who avoids talk about his past, Thor secretly reads both “The Sword of
Shannara” and “Twilight” in class,
and Iron Man 2 shoves pencils up his
nose for a good cause.
Apparently
DC’s planning to make a Justice League movie in much the same way Marvel made
Avengers. Should be encouraging, seeing as they’ve had such a great track
record with oh wait no. Well, maybe if they look at this model they’ll have
some luck.
See you
next time,
-RWI