I saw Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend, and spent the entire movie giggling with pure joy. I so seldom get that from movies now that I literally see only three to four new pictures a year. Sometimes you want something more dour or intellectual or a bit slice of life. Generally, though, I want to be entertained, and to leave the theater having had a great time. Marvel Studios films that do that, again and again and again.
They, especially their chief executive Kevin Feige, knows that in the long run taking chances is that safest route. This year alone, they released not only their most serious (yet still extremely fun) movie, but followed it with the closest thing they have made to an outright comedy. And both films were fantastic, among the very best of their efforts so far. Indeed, I’d say the best, barring The Avengers.
They’ve made 10 films in total. When solid if unspectacular films like The Incredible Hulk* and Iron Man 2 stand as the worst of them, you’re doing something right. Their success is so complete that I think you can only compare them to Pixar at its height. They have been mind-bogglingly successful at building a shared universe, sketched in and illuminated by endless little moments that they don’t push in your face; SHIELD agents wondering if the Destroyer in Thor is “one of Stark’s,” Bruce Banner reaction upon meeting Captain America, the legend whose existence inadvertently destroyed his life, etc.
[*The Hulk is a difficult character to hang a film on. At best he’s like Godzilla; you can only have him smashing stuff for so much of a movie before boredom sets in. Therefore the secret is to make the rest of the film work too, rather than make the audience feel like they are treading water until they get to the good part. One obvious technique would be center the film on the bad guys, ala the Batman movies. However, the Hulk just doesn’t have that good of a rogue’s gallery.
The other essential ingredient is a more relatable Bruce Banner. Marvel’s got a better chance now, if they want to try it again, because Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner is more entertaining than Ed Norton’s or Eric Bana’s was. Ruffalo’s Banner is just as cursed, but has a pretty funny gallows sense of humor, which is necessary to cut the gloom. Indeed, I would be entirely happy if Marvel just made a road trip buddy movie with Ruffalo’s Banner and Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark. That would be fab, if impossible to imagine coming to be.]
Then I look at Warners’ strategy for their DC Comics films, and how they want to (they think) play it safe by making every one of them as grim as Nolan’s uberpopular Batman movies. I just can’t help thinking this is a disaster in the making. People are come out of Marvel movies exhilarated. They leave Warners’ movies unsatisfied, at least those people actually buy tickets for. See Green Lantern or Jonah Hex. Or rather don’t. Why should you be the only one?
Man of Steel made money, a lot of money. Not crazy The Avengers money, but a very nice amount. But how many ticket buyers really liked it, much less loved it? The fact that Batman and Superman—and to a far less degree, Wonder Woman—is in the next one will put butts in seats again. So they are already nearly assured of another success, for at least one more movie.
What if, however, that film proves as unsatisfactory as the super grim Man of Steel? (Pa frickin’ Kent suggesting to a young Clark that he should have let his classmates die!) At that point they will have a far harder time getting people to see a Justice League movie. Even a ten or twenty percent drop-off in ticket sales could be disastrous.
And a Justice League movie will cost a fortune; Man of Steel itself cost $225 million, which is a tad more than Marvel spent on their big mega team-up film, The Avengers. Also, Warners’ will have blown their wad by using the Big Three in this precursor film. What’s the inducement the next time? “Oh, but now we added Cyborg and Aquaman.”
Joel Schumacher once made a Batman movie. Riding on the coattails of Tim Burton’s movies, it made a lot of money. Seeing that, the studio ordered up another film just like it; ignoring the fact that nobody liked the film. The subsequent movie tanked so badly it brought down the entire franchise.
If you’re going to make a grim superhero movie, it better be a masterpiece like The Dark Knight. And for God’s sake, know your characters. Few people go to see a Superman movie to watch as hundreds of thousands of people are thrown miles into the air and then plummet to horrible deaths.
Captain America has always been Marvels’ Superman, the moral center of their respective universes. (And I would argue, Cap is a better fulfillment of this, because he doesn’t have anywhere near Superman’s level of power. Indeed, traditional Cap is a Batman-level athlete, not even having the low level of superpowers he has in the movies.) Warners keeps insisting that modern audiences won’t accept such an earnest, corny hero, or, for that matter, one who forthrightly champions the American way.
Warners: Please see Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Then there’s the fact that if you’re intending to put all your characters together in a movie, maybe they should, I don’t know, have different personalities that contrast with and illuminate one another. Hell, if you’re making your Superman all emo and stuff, make your Batman more jolly. But a glum, violent Batman and a glum, violent Superman and a glum, violent Wonder Woman…boy, there’s a recipe for success.
Captain America has a sense of humor, and can issue a quip with the best of them. In essence, though, he’s a serious (not glum, serious) individual, a man born and awakened from a world of polio and the Depression and World War II. He’s self-aware and doesn’t take himself too seriously, but he takes the world and his responsibilities seriously.
Tony Stark tries to take his responsibilities seriously too. However, his sense of irony is itself a suit of armor. When Cap asks Stark what he is without the armor, Starks quips “a billionaire genius playboy philanthropist?” And although he’s right, none of that makes him a man. “Put on the suit,” Cap responds, challenging him.
Tony Stark would never try to take on Cap; he’d be woefully overmatched. And he knows that Cap will never attack someone who can’t put up a fair fight. That’s why Stark dicks with him. (Well, that and Tony’s daddy issues.) Cap, however, will take on Iron Man, and never doubt that he can beat him. You can see Stark pause as that realization sinks in. In sum, that’s the difference between the two.
That’s probably my favorite moment in all the Marvel Studios movies, by the way. But then, I’m a Cap guy. Always have been.
So if Tony is trying to be a better man, then Cap is a role model by example, even if Stark sometimes resents it. Cap is the guy who makes all the people around him better, by being better himself. Not because it’s easy for him, but because easy has nothing to do with right and wrong.
That’s who Superman is supposed to be. That’s not who this Superman is. This is a gritty, ‘realistic’ character full of rage and fear and doubt, a character who stood by as his own father died when he could have saved him. A character, we’re told, made ‘relatable’ by dint of these flaws. Who wants that? Who is he inspiring? Who is this Superman making a better person by example?
Marvel will eventually have a misfire; it’s inevitable. When they do, they will get past it through the vast reservoir of good will they’ve generated with all their previous films. Warners, however, has no such reservoir. Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies are a discrete entity from what they’re making now, nobody connects them. And they are, in fact, Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies. They aren’t Warners’ films, in the sense that Marvel’s movies are the studio’s.
I might prove wrong, but I really don’t think so.
