The World Is Your Marvel

Last night I went to see the biggest movie so far in 2013. No this is not an Iron Man 3 review. I have to think a little more on that. Decide if Ben Kingsleys performance was brilliant, or whatever you want to determine is the opposite of that.

No no. Before Iron Man 3 started, I stated on twitter that I was about to head into the most important movie in the Marvel universe. Not the biggest. Not the best. At this point those two honors go to The Avengers in my opinion. No, Iron Man 3 is going to be the most important film in this universe because it's going to determine if what Disney and Marvel has on their hands here is a potential Bond-like franchise, or if it's going to sputter into The Avengers 2 on an empty tank of gas.

Since the first Iron Man, Marvel has had a plan. They planted the seed at the end with the introduction of Nick Fury and mentioning the Avengers initiative. This obviously could have turned into nothing more than a fun Easter egg if Iron Man performed poorly. Of course things didn't happen like that. Iron Man became a hit that I don't think anyone could have predicted. Up until that film I had never known a damn thing about the character, but I still loved that movie. I assume that I wasn't alone in that statement.

Now, with the movie a huge critical and financial success, and the mention of the Avenger initiative thrown out into the air and gobbled up by every comic book loving fan-boy (and girl) out there, where next?

Obviously you go up. Build your stepping stones as you climb and hope for the best. Comic book movies had finally found a formula with the success of X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman Begins and Iron Man. People seemed to finally know how to make good, critically acceptable comic book movies, that the people wanted to see. It becomes a bit of a safer bet now to throw a few dollars into Thor and Captain America and see where it goes. It's a well calculated gamble at this point.

After Iron Man, we got bombarded with as much Marvel as the studio could throw at us and it was all good. None of the movies were spectacular but they were all good adaptations of their source material. More importantly though, the pieces were slowly being put into place. Hints in one movie about the next. One characters items showing up in another movie. We all knew what was coming at this point and that was a part of the draw. I know I personally stayed behind with all these movies to catch the short post-credit scene that hinted at things to come. But how would they tie it all together. How do you have all of these larger than life characters share the screen together and not have it turn into a bloated mess of CGI and over the top action?

Joss Whedon is how. He took what could have easily been a glorious mess and turned it into one of the best comic book movies to ever grace the screen. The humor was there. The epic scale was there. All the characters, even those who never had their own films, got their share of screen time and glory. And to all of us who waited so patiently since 2008 when Iron Man came to life, we were rewarded far beyond what we ever thought was possibly in a comic book movie.

This is the gigantic success that is The Avengers. Never has a studio put that much time and effort into developing a cohesive universe where all these characters lived together. The scale of this was huge. Just from the build up alone this movie was going to be a hit. But when the movie ended up being as good as it was and as big as it was, then it became more than a hit. It became a new way to look at how to bring comic book characters to the screen.

Now we live in a post-Avengers world. It's exciting and it's full of great, revolutionary ideas that weren't available to us before. But it's also a dangerous place. With The Avengers we've climbed to the top of a mountain, and as we are about to break the clouds to see what's in front of us, hopefully (I hope, you hope, Marvel hopes) that there will be more mountain to climb above it. Maybe not so steeply, but at least somewhere to go up. Because the other option is that it's a rough ride down.

With Iron Man 3, we're going to see how Marvel and the cast of characters can live in their newly created universe by themselves again. We'll eventually get another Avengers film but between now and then we have Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and quite possibly Marvels riskiest endeavor yet to date, Guardians of the Galaxy. How do all of these characters (Guardians aside) go back to the lives they lived before and deal with perils that may pale in comparison to what we saw in The Avengers. How are all of these new adventures going to make sense when we now know that they all know each other exists? What's stopping Iron Man from giving the Hulk a call when shit hits the fan? Why would S.H.I.E.L.D ever risk their own agents in the field when they have Captain America on their side?

These are all questions that Marvel needs to deal with along with adding a slew of other new characters into the mix. Are the original Avengers eventually going to be replaced by them or will they fight side by side? Along with these questions they also have to build up to another planned Avengers sequel and more after that. They've already planned for an Ant Man movie and from what I've read we can expect Dr. Strange and Black Panther movies as well. Not to mention the fact that they have a S.H.I.E.L.D TV series in the work. And who's to say that we'll actually care about any of this in a couple years. We don't have the longest attention spans after all. Our society and culture gets saturated with one thing and then before long, who really cares about it all anymore? Will the Marvel universe have enough to tell us to make us all want to come back and see some more? Will it be able to stay profitable after having one of the highest grossing movies ever?

Obviously only time will tell. I think that it's a safe bet to say that we'll be seeing Marvel movies well past the Avengers next outing. Marvel has the foundation laid for potentially the most successful franchise in the history of cinema. The hard work is done. Now they just need to keep it up. Not reboot a character every five to six years when they can't get an actor back. Not try to get bigger with every instalment. Be smart about the story lines they adapt from the comics. There's a few decades of material for some of these characters so it shouldn't be too hard to avoid the shitty ones. And what I would most like to see, finally start creating some original superheros and villains in the cinematic world.

So with Iron Man 3 now playing we should soon see how life is for everybody after The Avengers. It's already breaking records overseas so it's almost guaranteed that the financial success is going to be there. The reviews seem to be good so far. It all seems to be pointing towards another string of hits for Marvel.



*Obviously I've seen the movie at this point but I wrote this without any of my own personal thoughts on how it turned out. I'll have a review up for that in the next few days.

**HINT: It's better than Iron Man 2!