Batman & Superman vs ANTMAN!

Disney just moved up ANT-MAN's release date, making it a summer release and putting it two months after Avengers and just three weeks after Batman vs Superman. It was scheduled for November, I wonder if things are going that well, or if it's just a case of Whedon getting into the Avengers film, solidifying the Ultron story, and involving Hank Pym enough that the Ant Man film might come across more as an Avengers 2 spin-off?

I heard a rumor it was going to be Stark that invented Ultron to streamline the film. Maybe Pym works for SHIELD and creates Ultron after all?

They just cast James Spader as Ultron. A cool choice possibly, but won't the character be CGI? Maybe Spader will do all his scenes in a green leotard.

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/notyetamovie/news/?a=86749

As a huge fan of director Edgar Wright, I want his movies to do well. I want this to be a good movie, and I want it to do huge box office, something that has continued to elude Wright, despite the cultlike love that his fans show for his movies. His movies usually do respectable but unspectacular numbers in ticket sales.

It's usually a bad thing when studios start to mess around with a director's control of a movie, and one thing is that Wright is not a fast film-maker. He just about always takes 3 years from one movie to the next. But ANT-MAN is a project that he has now had on his agenda for 7 years already, since at least 2006! So the script is already done, and maybe the pre-production and filming can now proceed at a more rapid rate.

Maybe Wright needed a bit of a kick in the pants to get down to work. And so far, the Marvel movie behemoth has been pretty friendly to individualistic directors, letting them do some of their best work. I'm hopeful that this will be the case here.

This is where comic books have superseded movies. Without having seen any of the "Avengers" prequels, or anything new, or having any interest in seeing the next batch of movies leading to "Avengers 2", I am - for reasons surpassing human understanding - confident that "The Marvel Method" will lead to an entertaining movie for those who care to watch it. Fanboys in 1965 didn't have Wikipedia and had to track down every new release on every newsstand within walking distance to keep up. But they did, and helped make Marvel Comics into a success.

I think Marvel has figured out a similar pattern to their old 'Stan plotting and scripting, giving more and more authority to the artists, becoming increasingly epic, then finding good fallback artists when Kirby and Ditko leave' and applied that to movies. There are probably people paid a good salary to think seriously about how an Ant-Man sequel will affect future Avengers movies, and the "Avengers" sequel hasn't even been made yet.

In that sense, DC is making the same mistake they did 50 years ago, assuming that Superman and Batman were all they needed. I'm certainly not making any projections, but it wouldn't surprise me if "Ant-Man" wipes the floor with a 'World's Finest' movie, at least for net profits. If nothing else, because you'd expect Supes and Bats to crush Ant-Man like, er, an insect.

I think the novelty of Batman and Superman together in one movie might really play well with the general public. A very easy sell, especially if there is a couple of classic villains involved as well. Brainiac, Metallo or Bizarro, would be fun. I hope they don't go Joker/Luthor. If they do, I want to see Harley and Mercy too!

Ant Man might be a harder sell to most folks, unless Whedon introduces him really well in Avengers2. If not, if it's just a cameo after the credits, it might do well enough to hold it's own but the folks at Disney wouldn't have moved it up unless they felt Whedon's film was going to help Ant Man significantly.

I hope they are both good films and do well.

The possibility of a Avengers/Ultron film setting up an Ant Man film, with huge big budget expectations would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Well, barely twenty years ago, we were all reeling at the notion of Bruce Wayne having a perm. How were they going to do Batman without Biff Bam Boom! sound effects? In hindsight, it worked out pretty well.

That's why I think Marvel is pushing the "Guardians of the Galaxy" movie the way they are. The characters are stupid - I think; I only know them from one single "Evolutionary War" annual appearance - but it's taking the "Marvel Method" and saying they can make a fun space opera movie with people you've never heard of, and Thanos plays a role as well... Just as the "Thor" movie provided most of the plot for "Avengers", so will these new movies about characters no one cares about provide an incentive to see "Avengers 2." A remake of "Howard the Duck" would have worked as well.

ChrisW wrote:

That's why I think Marvel is pushing the "Guardians of the Galaxy" movie the way they are. The characters are stupid - I think...

I thought they were trying to introduce a franchise that had little or no public preconceptions, y'know to avoid the whiners, the ones you mentioned who were, "reeling at the notion of Bruce Wayne having a perm."

ChrisW wrote:

A remake of "Howard the Duck" would have worked as well.

If George Lucas could screw it up so bad the first time, I don't have a lot of faith in a new attempt.

Plus, I don't think Howard he Duck can be done. Some things are just so keenly suited to their medium, they just don't work in another. Plus, I'd have hard time going to see it if Steve Gerber didn't get some appropriate credit.

Basically my point. Introducing the "Guardians of the Galaxy" to a mass audience in 2014 isn't all that different from re-introducing the "X-Men" in 1975. Sure, you [the 1975 version of you] knows that there's a Marvel reprint title, but the 2013 version of you has Wikipedia and is far more informed about the "Guardians" than any 1975 fanboy ever was about the "X-Men."

I'm optimistic about "Guardians" (even though I'm sure I'll never see it.) For all intents and purposes, they are utter nobodies Trademarks owned by Disney, but utter nobodies. If Marvel can make a cool movie with them, they can make a cool movie with anybody. And it will avoid preconditions like "Bruce Wayne has a perm." Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne could fight his way up a clocktower and beat up Jack Nicholson. "F*ck our preconceptions, that's exactly what Batman would do!!!"

I agree that "Howard the Duck" isn't possible, it's just an example. Marvel could pick "Man-Thing", "Power Man/Iron Fist", "Brother Voodoo", "Power Pack", "Sabra" or "Captain Britain" and they'd have roughly the same chance of making a decent movie out of it. When it comes to making movies, the secret isn't as simple as Stan giving Jack a story and publishing the words and art. Are you capable of imagining how much money and effort would be required to bring Fin Fang Foom to life?

ChrisW wrote:

When it comes to making movies, the secret isn't as simple as Stan giving Jack a story and publishing the words and art. Are you capable of imagining how much money and effort would be required to bring Fin Fang Foom to life?

Is that why they wrote out all the fun characters in FF2 like the Watcher and Galactus?

Speaking of Dragons, I'm interested to see if they do a good job with Smaug. So far all the peeks look ok.

The Watcher and Galactus were written out by the FF2 makers because the movie-makers suck. I say this as someone who actually enjoyed FF2 more than FF1. But then, I enjoy Secret Wars II more than Secret Wars I, so your mileage may vary.

Below is a link to sn article explaining how Whedon had to rewrite some scenes in Thor 2, i believe this suports my theory above...

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/09/18/joss-whedon-was-called-in-to-fix-some-scenes-in-thor-the-dark-world/

I have to admit that I really have no idea why some movies do well and some do poorly. Even the question of what makes a movie good or bad is kind of a toss-up; although I feel like I can appreciate quality, there are plenty of movies that I enjoy even if they stink on various levels, and also there are movies that everyone likes that do very little for me.

So, the run of pretty-good-to-very-good, extremely successful Marvel movies stands as one of the great mysteries of the last decade or so, in my mind. How did that ever happen?

Joss Whedon is good, but not every time, so it's not like he's a magic bullet. Robert Downey Jr. is good, but he wasn't involved in every movie.

So when will this run of good luck end for Marvel?

And will DC ever have any success in creating a similar streak of good movies? I just don't know.

In a more limited sense, the run of pretty-good-to-very-good, extremely successful Marvel COMICS stood as one of the great mysteries for quite a while.  Marvel had generally been known for bad art, and even in the late-60s, DC considered Marvel comics examples of bad art.

I have no basis for this - nor any idea where it will lead - but at least up 'til now, superhero movies have created a renaissance analogous to the Marvel Age of Comics.  Considering the company was in bankruptcy not too long ago, the MARVEL brand is now a sign of an entertaining action-adventure movie.  The recent Superman movie was successful, but it seems to have already receded into the past as just another movie.  So has the last Batman movie.

A year or so ago, I read a political article about movies, describing how Hollywood liberals make big-budget movies to hammer their political beliefs home, and they bomb, while "Thor" (which the article cited regularly) was just a movie doing what it was supposed to do, make back its costs and earn a profit while not bothering anybody, and was more translatable to the international market.  Christopher Reeve, the first Michael Keaton movie and "Dark Knight" are still more prominent to the movie-going public, because of the strengths of their movies (or, in Reeve's case, the actor and the character.)  Honestly, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but it looks like the upcoming "World's Finest" will at best be an entertaining Superman/Batman flick, but the "Ant-Man" movie will present an interesting superhero that kids will like and fill in new puzzle pieces into the overall Marvel Movie Universe.  We can re-watch "Avengers" and say 'hey, *that's* where that came from!'

Marvel has brought comic-book continuity into movies, and it works.  The "Spider-Man" and "X-Men" movies helped bring this into being, and now the audience has a chance to see what it's like when certain movies are all connected, just as Stan/Jack/Steve foresaw so long ago.

Of course, yesterday I read another article called "The Lone Ranger Murders Jack Sparrow" which says that the age of the blockbuster is coming to a close, quoting Steven Spielberg's projection of the implosion of the film industry, which could mirror DC as it attempted to compete with Marvel in a changing marketplace. Just a thought.

Peter Urkowitz wrote:

Joss Whedon is good, but not every time, so it's not like he's a magic bullet.  Robert Downey Jr. is good, but he wasn't involved in every movie.

True, but I think that RDJ as Tony Stark, was that lightening in a bottle Hollywood is always talking about. It worked, and it was engaging. And he had a great rapport with Gwyneth Paltrow.

Whedon strengths lie in gratuitous character moments. He works well with group dynamics. He happened to be the right guy at the right moment to take that lightening in a bottle and not screw it up.

I think the other successes Capt America and Thor benefited from the momentum where The Incredible Hulk coming out the same summer as Iron Man, was out just a little too soon to get the same benefit. Watch all three, Thor Cap and Incredible Hulk, they are all about the same quality but they are missing that magic that RDJ gave to Iron Man. He's the Charlie Sheen of Superheroes. Iron Man has never been so popular. The combination just works. The momentum helped with the success of the Avengers, feeding into the huge success of IM3, etc...

It'll be a sad day when RDJ quits the Marvel Universe. But it won't be as sad as it could have been. The interconnectedness of these films strengthened the appeal of them all. Marvel is smart to keep introducing other supporting cast members, giving each an Avengers feel. Nick Fury, Black Widow, and The Falcon in the Capt. America, The Winter Soldier, is now a chapter of the Avengers. The next Thor has Loki, one of the most engaging elements of the Avengers film. I think they've built a pretty strong franchise just by weaving them all together, they all benefit from the strongest elements of each.

ChrisW wrote:

Of course, yesterday I read another article called "The Lone Ranger Murders Jack Sparrow" which says that the age of the blockbuster is coming to a close

The critics killed The Lone Ranger, just like they Killed John Carter.

Home Theaters and Video Games are killing the blockbuster. Or at least cutting into their profits.

Terry M (Ditko Fan) wrote:

The critics killed The Lone Ranger, just like they Killed John Carter.

  

Welcome aboard, what made you change your mind?

There's this guy I know who goes on and on about it. He's one of them conspiracy theorists so I just ignore him usually. But I happened to read more than a few credible people online agreeing with the idea.