Fox apparently opts for ‘non-suck’ model of comic book adapations…

Updated on September 28, 2012 By Ken Begg 17 Comments

20th Century Fox is one of the several major studios that managed to buy up the movie rights to Marvel Comic characters back in the days of yore, before Marvel started making their own successful movies and then was bought for a tremendous sum by Disney.

By all rights, this should have meant that Warner Bros., who owns DC Comics, had a huge cinema advantage. After all, they owned the rights to ALL DC characters, while Marvel had fielded out the rights to several of its most iconic properties; Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Wolverine, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, etc. These rights also include a host of supporting characters for each property, including villains. Marvel, for instance, presumably can’t put Dr. Doom, Galactus or the Silver Surfer into an Avengers film, because they are included with Fox’s Fantastic Four rights.

The rights to Daredevil, I think, finally went back to Marvel / Disney this fall when  Columbia was unable (after years of sitting around) to get a film into production in the specified period. Obviously Disney will be VERY diligent in reclaiming the rights to whatever characters they can, although it’s hard to see rival studios ever giving up the rights to Spider-Man and the X-Men, etc. Those franchises are cash cows.

The stumbling block for Warners’ seems to be that, while Marvel made their own movies since Iron Man, and thus the films were made with heavy input from the ‘comic book’ people. However, surely the movie people at Warners think they’re much smarter about movies than some dumb little comics people at DC could ever be.

So DC’s input isn’t given much account, leading to awesome stuff like the amazingly popular Green Lantern and Johan Hex movies, and that critically acclaimed David E. Kelly Wonder Woman pilot. Not to mention their amazing ability to not get into production about a dozen different high profile projects over the last five years.*

[*How long until Disney also decides it knows better than the small fry at Marvel? We’ll see. Marvel has surely bought itself some time with it’s amazing success. Even so, you know that across the vast gulf of corporate halls, the Marvel films are being scrutinized by Disney intelligences, cool and unsympathetic and which consider themselves far superior in all things.]

Just as important, Marvel knew their films would be a connected skein, and one guy in charge of them. That meant there was an overseer to keep the ‘universe’ humming along as a whole. Warners’ has failed to do that. Indeed, they had to. Christopher Nolan was making his wildly successful Batman movies, and while he is purportedly helping to produce the upcoming Superman movie, which I believe will likely suck, he’s also made it clear he doesn’t intend to live his entire life making superhero movies.

So putting him in the mix for Superman is probably counterproductive, since that means there won’t be one person in charge of the entire DC cinematic universe. They could still appoint someone like that, to oversee things and work (very carefully, one imagines) over Nolan, but there’s no sign they’re planning to do so, and again, if they do odds are it will be the wrong person doing things the wrong way with the wrong goal in mind. See Warners’ hiring of the wildly inappropriate Ryan Reynolds to play the Green Lantern, because they thought they needed a ‘star,’ whether he fit the role or not.

Back to Fox has a highly mixed record in this sphere. They made the generally successful and artistically OK X-Men movies–the best being X-Men First Class, the worst by far being the horrendous Wolverine movie–while utterly screwing the pooch on the Fantastic Four movies. I gave them a mulligan on the first one, but they made exactly the same mistakes on the second one, which is unforgivable. Seriously, what the hell. Learn a lesson or two, why don’t you. (Speaking of ‘needing’ a ‘star’–Jessica Alba as Sue Storm? What the hell was that about.)

Anyhoo, Fox has at least attempted to learn from Marvel’s good example and Warner’s bad one, and hired one guy, comic book writer Mark Millar, to oversee what could be a very promising slate of upcoming Fox movies bases on Marvel properties; another Wolverine movie (not exactly hard to raise the bar there), X-Men: Days of Future Past, one of the classic X-Men stories that could, if done right, end up being a simply dynamite film.* Finally, they will take another bite at the Fantastic Four, this time a complete reboot. Hopefully they will get it right this time.

[*Of course, look at what Fox previously did with the Galactus saga, the greatest comic book story ever.]

Now, this isn’t a slam dunk. You can do things the right way and still fail; it’s just that the right approach increases the chances of things turning out well. Meanwhile, it could be that Millar’s sensibilities will be wrong. One thing that apparently nobody can figure out is that Marvel’s comic book movies have been fun. Everyone seems to be hypnotized by that whole ‘gritty’ thing (of which Millar is an exemplar of in his comic books, all ‘mature’ sex and ultra-violence), which basically has worked for Nolan’s Batman movies and not anywhere else.

Can it be done? Sure. But if Fox believes the problem with the FF wasn’t that it was just poor sitcom-level writing (including typical ‘not getting it’ stuff like completely revamping seminal villain Doctor Doom for no apparent reason) but that it wasn’ t all, you know, dark and bloody and stuff like the kids like it today, they will hose it again.

If they do fail, I hope they fail spectacularly. Then the FF will end up back with Disney, which I wouldn’t mind at all.

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  • Brandi

    I’m not at all sure Mark Millar’s a good pick. Yes, Kick-Ass and Wanted were successful movies, but they also had to be toned down considerably from the nastiness of the original comics (Wanted, in particular, had a finale telling the audience what losers they were for reading about Wesley, ending with a full-page panel of him saying “This is my face while I’m fucking you in the ass.”)– and one of his recent comics, Nemesis, had the oh-so-edgy plot device of the anti-hero kidnapping a politician’s children to force him to reveal family secrets (his wife had an affair; his son is gay; and his daughter had a secret abortion) and then releasing the children but having the daughter impregnated by the son, with her womb rigged to collapse if an abortion is attempted, preventing her from ever again having children.

    Yeah, you read that right.

  • Ken_Begg

    I can’t argue with any of that. And Marvel was still doing something different; they had an overseer because they intended their films to be interconnected; if not directly so, then at least taking place in the same universe.

    I don’t think (maybe) that Fox is attempting to tie the X-Men and FF together into the same world, although that would be neat. The questions are a) what is Millar’s exact portfolio–I don’t think he’s meant to be writing the scripts or anything–and b) does he have enough flexibility to realize that an FF movie should have a different, lighter feel than an X-Men movie, especially one as grim as Days of Future Past?

    We’ll find out. Right approach, but right guy? Time will tell.

  • Who would you have cast as Hal Jordan? I’m not really that versed with the current crop of actors, so I don’t know who would fall into that range. (I can be slow on the uptake, was Reylonds really hired for his name value? I’m not sure I’d heard of him prior to seeing the film.) As to THE GREEN LANTERN itself, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit (clichéd scripting and character development aside). I didn’t think it a bad movie, but it was scuttled by its lackluster ad campaign.

    As to the Marvel movies (I just the night before last saw THE AVENGERS), they’re doing something right. I couldn’t give one iota of care about Thor, really, but they made him an extremely cool character in his two films (not counting THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS, although that wasn’t a bad picture for what it was). They’re colorful and fun, not dreary and gritty. Ultimately, THE AVENGERS was everything I could ask for in a Justice League of America movie, which is sad because I know there will never be a JLA movie anywhere near as good (assuming DC/WB could even get one to the screen).

    Basically, the DC/WB properties are victims of their owner’s aggressive push for political correctness, something that just doesn’t work with the kind of white-hat-black-hat, good vs evil, very basic formula that comic book heroes are all about. Batman works to some degree because he’s a vigilante, and therefor something of an anti-hero. Superman, though, is all about moral character. How can an industry allergic to moral uprightness possibly do justice to such a character? Or, I should ask, studio, since Marvel is getting good results from not pandering to the ever-changing whims of PC standards (that’s not to say the characters are completely outside it’s influence, they wouldn’t even let a cigarette be shown in a story about GI’s in WW2!) and focusing on the motivations of their characters instead. It really meant a lot to my family to hear Captain America tell a woman “There’s only one God, Ma’am…” That’s an incredibly powerful thing to hear from a comic book superhero in a modern movie. They have Cap say it because he’s out of his own time, yet in the end, he’s exactly what we need. DC would never let Supes say anything like that. They don’t even let him fight for The American Way anymore.

    I guess what it boils down to is, Marvel/Disney occasionally displays a little backbone and gives the movie-going public what it likes to see, and DC/WB could never conceive of such a thing, instead pandering to their peers rather than the audiences who see their films.

  • GalaxyJane

    Since Millar represents pretty much everything that drove me from comics in the first place and has kept me (much to the relief of my wallet) from going back, I just don’t see this working out so great, though he could *maybe* do justice to “Future Past” if he could keep the self-righteous liberal politicking out of it. Admittedly no telling what the extent of his influence as overseer would be, but I can’t really see him turning out anything like “The Avengers” and its associated brethren.
    I like movies where there are good guys and bad guys and the good guys win, even if they take their losses along the way. That may be a pretty outdated notion these days, but if so, no one has told the moviegoing public yet.

  • Toby Clark

    “Who would you have cast as Hal Jordan? I’m not really that versed with
    the current crop of actors, so I don’t know who would fall into that
    range. (I can be slow on the uptake, was Reylonds really hired for his
    name value? I’m not sure I’d heard of him prior to seeing the film.)”

    Yeah, I’m kinda skeptical of the idea that Reynolds is any more of a “star” than Christian Bale was when he was cast as Batman. My experience of Hal Jordan is limited to a few DC animated movies, but I personally thought Reynolds did justice to the character, and there was much more that I liked about the movie than there was that I didn’t.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Warners already has a tremendous talent on board, who has shown he knows exactly what to do with the DC characters. If they were serious about making great live-action films, they would promote him immediately.

    Bruce Timm.

  • fish eye no miko

    Reading through the Wiki entry, I’d say the character in “Nemesis” is less an anti-hero (that term implies that they actually do heroic things), and more of a villain protagonist (“protagonist” in the sense of main character and person who drives the narrative).

  • Petoht

    I thought Reynolds was picked because he was a huge Green Lantern geek and was a driving force behing the movie being made in the first place.

  • Petoht

    “her womb rigged to collapse if an abortion is attempted”
    WHAT?!

  • Wish Marvel had gotten Galactus back from Fox.

  • Darkward

    Re: Ken’s point about DC/WB not getting it right/not putting comics guys in charge:

    Check out the new CW show Arrow. Among the producers is comics writer Mark Guggenheim. I was at a panel on it at the Paley Center in LA, and it was pretty clear these guys, while doing a new-ish take on Green Arrow, also know their comics front to back. Yes, Arrow is a little “dark” and “edgy,” but it fits that character well (better than it would Superman, e.g.)

  • Toby Clark

    Ironically, that’s the same Marc Guggenheim who co-wrote the Green Lantern movie.

  • Are you sure you’re not describing abandoned ideas from the Saw series?

  • Fox should’ve been doing this in the first place instead of following after Marvel’s coat tails after the fact. I don’t wish them any success at this point. I’ve but given up on the X-men franchise but I really hope that Marvel can get the rights back for F4. So to the OP don’t give up hope, the supposed director “Josh Trank” has a lot on his plate due to the success of Chronicle. WB and Sony have also shown and interest in him as well. So hopefully Fox wont make the deadline.

  • MarshallDog

    If Marvel really is doing it the “right way” I have little hope for the future of comic book movies. I liked Iron Man and Thor and Captain America (haven’t seen The Incredible Hulk) but the sequels, Iron Man 2 and The Avengers left me underwhelmed. To me the shared universe is quite a detriment, because the movies wind up looking the same. I can’t remember any of the plots beyond “villain appears, fight scene, boring introduction scene, Tony Stark is an ass, fight scene, tepid “character arc” scene, Tony Stark is still and ass, grande finale fight scene.” I thought The Avengers would be the first movie in the series with some real depth, but it was just as shallow as the others. I like most of these characters, but I feel like the movies are mostly constructed to take few chances, give them only the most basic growth, and then reset everything in the first five minutes of the sequel.

  • Toby Clark

    His comments to MTV News suggest otherwise: “I’ve known about “Green Lantern” my whole life, but I’ve never
    really followed it before. I fell in love with the character when I met
    with [director] Martin Campbell.”

  • I’m no Millar fan, but he DOES know comic books. I am not particularly a comic book fan – i was once, but it has been drummed out of me by many years of betrayal and perfidious behavior (er … on the part of the comics, not myself). But I am happy to see a good superhero story as much as anyone. I am just not willing to cut it any slack because it includes a beloved character I guess because, to me, there are no longer any beloved comic heroes. I thought both Iron Man movies were okay but not great. For some reason I really hated Iron Man 1, but I am willing to believe the problem was with me. Green Lantern actually offended my intelligence as the only decent actor and character in the show that was cool was Hector. while a captive audience on an airplane, I was unable to watch Thor past the first few minutes. It was just too stupid. I have heard it picks up later on but wasn’t able to pay the cover charge.