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State of the (Marvel) Universe
May. 26th, 2014 05:36 pmSo, the Friday before Memorial Day weekend was obviously Marvel's "take out the trash day." I already mentioned that Edgar Wright was leaving Ant-Man (here are the gory details), but soon after, it was announced that Drew Goddard was stepping down as showrunner of Netflix's Daredevil series, to be replaced by fellow Whedonverse alum Steven S. DeKnight.
(Goddard is writing and directing the Amazing Spider-Man spin-off film, The Sinister Six, so he's still in the Marvel family, albeit one of the unruly cousins.)
This has, naturally, sparked concern about whether the era of good Marvel movies is over. Which...on the one hand, I never cared about Ant-Man to begin with. The guy's superpower is an ability to shrink to the size of an insect. (And people think Hawkeye is lame. Good grief.) They have a good cast assembled, but I'd be seeing the movie 90% for the MCU continuity and about 10% because I was actually interested in the story. (Which, for the record, is about where I started out with Agents of SHIELD.) So I'm not too pressed about whether Ant-Man succeeds or fails on its own. If it's a bad movie, it's easy enough to ignore.
But if this is indeed the way Marvel is going to run from here on out, if this is coming from Disney execs who don't have the love for the comics that Kevin Feige has (and if Feige is indeed going to be replaced after Age of Ultron), that would be a shame, because it feels like Marvel is really hitting its stride right now. Okay, Thor 2 was a hot mess - and some are taking that as the first sign of bad things to come, because Marvel took control away from director Alan Taylor - but IM3 and Winter Soldier took some much-needed departures from the established "superhero movie" formula, and Guardians of the Galaxy looks like a lot of cracky fun. If they just kept making movies like that, I'd be a happy camper.
My vain, desperate hope was that Marvel would be the ones to finally recognize that "superhero movie" or "comic book movie" does not automatically need to equal "action movie." Captain America seemed to be leading them toward incorporating other genres (the first one was basically a WWII period film, the second borrowed heavily from the '70s political thriller). Now I want the Steve/Sam roadtrip-bros movie, the Natasha/Pepper/Maria Hill buddy cop team-up, the Hawkeye screwball comedy (featuring Kate Bishop, obvs), the Peter Quill/Darcy Lewis rom-com... You get the idea. The last thing we need is for Marvel to go back to formulaic, safe action films.
(Goddard is writing and directing the Amazing Spider-Man spin-off film, The Sinister Six, so he's still in the Marvel family, albeit one of the unruly cousins.)
This has, naturally, sparked concern about whether the era of good Marvel movies is over. Which...on the one hand, I never cared about Ant-Man to begin with. The guy's superpower is an ability to shrink to the size of an insect. (And people think Hawkeye is lame. Good grief.) They have a good cast assembled, but I'd be seeing the movie 90% for the MCU continuity and about 10% because I was actually interested in the story. (Which, for the record, is about where I started out with Agents of SHIELD.) So I'm not too pressed about whether Ant-Man succeeds or fails on its own. If it's a bad movie, it's easy enough to ignore.
But if this is indeed the way Marvel is going to run from here on out, if this is coming from Disney execs who don't have the love for the comics that Kevin Feige has (and if Feige is indeed going to be replaced after Age of Ultron), that would be a shame, because it feels like Marvel is really hitting its stride right now. Okay, Thor 2 was a hot mess - and some are taking that as the first sign of bad things to come, because Marvel took control away from director Alan Taylor - but IM3 and Winter Soldier took some much-needed departures from the established "superhero movie" formula, and Guardians of the Galaxy looks like a lot of cracky fun. If they just kept making movies like that, I'd be a happy camper.
My vain, desperate hope was that Marvel would be the ones to finally recognize that "superhero movie" or "comic book movie" does not automatically need to equal "action movie." Captain America seemed to be leading them toward incorporating other genres (the first one was basically a WWII period film, the second borrowed heavily from the '70s political thriller). Now I want the Steve/Sam roadtrip-bros movie, the Natasha/Pepper/Maria Hill buddy cop team-up, the Hawkeye screwball comedy (featuring Kate Bishop, obvs), the Peter Quill/Darcy Lewis rom-com... You get the idea. The last thing we need is for Marvel to go back to formulaic, safe action films.
