The Big Picture: Too Many Villains

[Bruce]

The reason why multiple villains tends not to work in comic book movies tends to be because the movies tend to try and provide their origin stories.

Which means essentially you end up having to cram a lot of stuff into two hours.

With action movies normally, you don't have that same issue For example. Hans Gruber and his merry men were already pretty deep into their villain careers, they didn't particularly need to be established that way.

This is also why the the first two Nolan Batman movies managed to pull off having multiple villains, and why the third didn't. For the first two, the only real villainous origin story was Two Face. In the third we got filled in on Bane, Talia and really Ras.

 

[twosage]

The reason they are making these spiderman movies is the "use it or lose it" clause of the contract, IE they have to turn out spidey movies within X years of eachother otherwise they lose the rights and they revert back to Marvel (Disney)

And we have to suffer for it. Fucking lawyers and their shit.

"Suffer" by having a minimum of 1 movie per 5 years made about our favorite pop culture icons?

Kids today don't know how good they've got it. Try being a comic book fan in the 1980's or 1990's. In the "good old days", all we had was rumors about movies that never got made and abandoned script treatments and occasional screen tests and concept art. The few comic book movies that were being made were either low-budget schlockfests or Batman (which was pretty much a big-budget schlockfest).

One day the Hollywood "comic book boom" will fade, and WB executives will decide to put their characters on ice for a while out of fear they are overexposed (except maybe Batman). Maybe Disney will fold up Marvel Studios because "we can always turn to Bruckheimer if we want to do superheroes". But Sony and Fox will still have a vested interest in trying to keep comic book movies alive, out of fear they will lose the rights.

Do you really think we would have gotten 4 Spider-Man movies (at least 7 or more if the planning holds), 6 X-Men movies (9 or more if the planning holds), 3 Blade movies, 2 Punisher movies, 2 Hulk movies, 2 Fantastic Four movies (3 or more if the planning holds), a Daredevil movie, an Elektra movie (and probably a few I'm forgetting) if all of those properties had stayed exclusively with Marvel? What has DC done with their consolidated control over their stable in the same 15 years? 3 Batman movies, a Superman movie (2 if planning holds), Green Lantern, Jonah Hex, and a prospective Justice League movie maybe.

Sure, many of those Marvel-by-other-studio movies weren't great, but at least they exist. There is a limit to how much money and effort one studio can spend on blockbusters. If Marvel had retained all of their character rights, they would still likely be comfortable with a two-movie-per-year schedule, and that means we would never get something like Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant-Man, and maybe not even Thor or Captain America franchises (Wolverine and Spider-Man would be more reliable quantities at the box office), and most likely we'd never see anything done with Fantastic Four at all. Call it "suffering" if you want, but you're living in a golden age for nerd culture in Hollywood. I, for one, appreciate that.

 

[Stabby Joe]

My first thought to attempting keeping up with the Avengers-verse was DC's sad attempt recently with Wonder Woman but this and the first time hearing about it here with the X-Men, I see the Avengers has been both a blessing and a curse. I just hope this needless saturation doesn't turn people off super hero movies period, especially since I want to see the end of the Avengers phase 3.

With Bob and his automatic prejudice against this run of Spider films, it doesn't matter when the review comes around, even if it turns out to be really good for all we know.

As a small side, why did you flash up an image of a retro style wind up robot toy when you said "boring"? I would relish a boxy design amid all the pills of twisted scape metal these days.

 

[tzimize]

-snip-

Alright, you got me there. Dont get me wrong, I AM thrilled beyond measure to see my childhood heroes jumping about on the silver screen as something more than a garbage b-movie.

I still just cant help feeling a bit miffed when we actually get movies like Thor, Avengers, Batman Begins/TDN or Iron Man...and then still get garbage like the amazing Spider Man. If you're gonna make a movie to keep whatever paper-rights you're sitting on, why not make a bit more of an effort?

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Props for bringing up how well Begins handled its various villains. I don't see how this one can do that though, since they're all big-name costumed baddies given enough trailer time that they will require background established to go with it.

Or maybe not, since many of Spidey's rogues have never really had as much detail or consistent background (Electro's had at least 3 wildly different origins) as others to begin with. They can just go full Sinister Six (or rather someone deliberately creating them one by one) and develop the more popular ones more later on. Spectacular Spider Man sort of did it that way, with 3 of the 6 being engineered from vengeful ex-cons that Spidey arrested. When Dr. Octopus takes the helm, he changes their overall objective from distracting/destroying Spider-Man to placing all of New York under the dominion of freaks/super-criminals... with himself at the head of course.

Not saying I'm hugely looking forward to this after the first Amazing Spider Man, but it would be interesting to see it go down that way, particularly if the Six fell apart the same way they usually do in the comics- clashing personalities between members leading to them fighting each other.

 

[Something Amyss]

While it's a very sad truth that absolute turds can still be financial successes in this world where critical thinking is not only not a survival skill, but not considered overly valuable in general . . .

I'm sorry, I'm now too sad to remember how I was going to finish that sentence.

I dunno, but you lost me at calling the first ASM an absolute turd.

Sorry, that level of hate towards a perfectly adequate movie strikes me as hyperbole almost to the point of histrionics.

Yeah I know and I think at this point studios have at least figured out how to avoid that level of a mess up. I mean Origins and X3 weren't good at all but they weren't a complete divergence from the series original style like Forever and Robin were and if Fox can survive that I'm sure they and Sony can survive anything so long as it isn't over the top stupid. I feel like an awful person for saying this but I do hope both studios run into that problem so Marvel can get their toys back. If nothing else can be said about the X-men movies at least they have a pretty legit cast. Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and Ian McAllen (spell) are the only people who can play Wolverine, Prof. X, and Magneto in their "old" forms anyway.

I bet if they did put out a B&R level movie, millions of hipsters would make it successful by watching it "ironically."

But yeah, there have been a decent number of mediocre movies, but nothing quite so bad as to tank the franchise involved.

I dislike Jackman as Wolverine, but I mean, yeah, I take your point. It's especially going to be hard to do Xavier without Picard. Err...Patrick Stewart.

I really would like Marvel to get their rights back, though. I think we'll get better movies from ALL these franchises if they do. Plus, think of the team-up possibilities.

 

[omega 616]

Wait, why is the first amazing spiderman considered a bad film? Is it something to do with messing up some lore?

I liked the newer spidey film, I am not a huge spiderman follower but it seemed more in line with his character from the cartoons. In the newest film he was making jokes and cracking wise while beating up the croc guy, which reminded me of the cartoons, in the original trilogy he was more serious ... not to mention had a serious case of emo when venom struck.

I would like to see a venom and carnage film though 'cos I like those two.

 

[Disthron]

No one remembers any of the henchmen from Die Hard.

I don't know anything about the rhino, but his costume looks incredibly stupid. At least having it be a mech suite makes some kind of seance.