JOSS WHEDON SIGNS FOR THE AVENGERS 2 - Page 2

Yeah, just make a series out the Single Green Female run.

As someone who read tons of comics as a kid, I'm not ashamed to say I love watching tons of comic book movies. I can completely understand the burnout for some, but this aging nerd ain't burned out yet.....

Um, I'm pretty sure Whedon could come up with something more interesting to do than Dr. Horrible 2. That's not why I want him to be free to do other stuff. He's a creative dude, and I'd like to see what he can do now that he has clout. Among other things, he's been hinting for years that he's got a big musical in him.
 

Now that he has clout he will do what he always wanted to do, geek stuff, only with a bigger budget.

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Originally Posted by Paul C 

 

I don't think that's true. Genres like sci-fi are all but limitless, and even more restrictive genres like gangster movies and westerns have a lot more freedom than the 'costumed good guy stops the costumed bad guy' narrative of just about every superhero movie in existence, which means they're able to let ideas and themes drive the story content. Superhero movies by definition are only ever going to be about outlandish super people fighting crime, and there are only so many ways to explore that idea.

It's interesting that you bring up the Western genre. In it's heyday, there was a glut. Some good, many terrible. Just to satiate the youth culture's lust for cowboys and Indians. It was the superhero analog of its day. But the better ones came along eventually. Some classics even. And not just classics of the genre, but of film history. And some DECADES after that initial heyday.

*shrugs* I'm not going to get bent out of shape over superheroes owning the big screen right now. I like the genre. And there are thousands of films in every conceivable category I haven't seen yet that are already made and available. I'll never see them all.

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Originally Posted by stelios 

Now that he has clout he will do what he always wanted to do, geek stuff, only with a bigger budget.

Yeah, I mean, that's why it's a win-win.  We're going to get another deluge of superhero movies anyway, and he does them better than most (actually any, in my personal opinion).  And he'd be doing geeky genre stuff (Marvel comics were a huge touchstone for Buffy and Angel) anyway, because that's where his interests lie.  I'd rather he gets the big budget to do stuff with the real Iron Man than to be off on his own doing stuff with an off-brand version of Iron Man and an off-brand budget.

Nuff said, Schwartz.

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Originally Posted by DARKMITE8 

 

It's interesting that you bring up the Western genre. In it's heyday, there was a glut. Some good, many terrible. Just to satiate the youth culture's lust for cowboys and Indians. It was the superhero analog of its day. But the better ones came along eventually. Some classics even. And not just classics of the genre, but of film history. And some DECADES after that initial heyday.

 

*shrugs* I'm not going to get bent out of shape over superheroes owning the big screen right now. I like the genre. And there are thousands of films in every conceivable category I haven't seen yet that are already made and available. I'll never see them all.

True, but before that didn't the Western genre basically die off because of that glut? 

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Originally Posted by Ska Oreo 

True, but before that didn't the Western genre basically die off because of that glut? 

Yes, but look what it gave us during the glut: High Noon, the Searchers, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, etc. I think that's the point a lot of people are trying to make: this is the current big-budget fad, those of us who like it will continue to enjoy it while it lasts, but rejecting superheroes as a genre makes about as much sense as rejecting westerns as a genre. There were a lot of terrible westerns, and a lot of middling, formulaic ones. But you don't want to miss out on Red River or Rio Bravo just because you don't like Gene Autrey.

I'm not writing off all superhero movies. Of the 00's batch I kind of love Spider Man 2 and The Incredibles (if that counts), and have a certain respect for how The Dark Knight took superhero tropes and used them to explore ideas quite intelligently. If anything my point is that it's basically been done and there's little left to achieve now but recycling, repetition and minor variations on the same old ideas. The trend should be winding down, not ramping up.

Have to say I'm no great lover of generic Westerns either, most of the ones I like came well after the commercial heyday. But to their credit Westerns are essentially about humanity, stripped down to the essence. Superhero movies aren't automatically vacuous, but at their core they're always going to be escapist fantasies about men as gods. Fun as it was, I can hardly think of a movie where the heroes are further removed from relatable human beings than The Avengers (the emphasis on Agent Coulson seemed to be a tacit acknowledgement of that).

I disagree pretty strongly. The Avengers came off as a hell of a lot more human than the cast of Battleship or Transformers or the Star Wars prequels. I think you're fixating on the superficial "people with powers" thing.

It's not that I don't get where you're coming from, Paul, but there really are a HUGE array of things that can be done with superheroes, especially now that so many of the origin stories are out of the way. Again, the problem is more the Hollywood mentality that stories need to be repetitive and simplistic. If you look at the actual comics there are some great stories (and some great IDEAS for stories that produced mediocre comics) out there that are much wilder and trippier and more imaginative than anything you'd get in the movies.

My argument is, in many ways we've been getting the same two or three blockbuster movies over and over again for the last couple of decades, it's just that the people weren't wearing costumes. What does it make a difference if they are?
 

The difference is they are higher profile movies, so the outcome has more of an effect on the industry as a whole, which trickles down to other genres, usually negatively, as Hollywood does not know how to handle success.

Though I enjoyed The Avengers, one of the biggest hurdles for me was its Saturday Morning Cartoon plot, which I just could not engage with. It comes as a concession for having to juggle so many characters, so from a screenwriting standpoint, that makes perfect sense to me, but not once did I ever care about what Loki was up to (I really didn't even understand exactly what Loki's powers were or were not and how the staff thing worked - I guess it just hypnotized people? I can't remember, I've only seen the thing once). Before Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers I was pretty dismissive of Whedon, but I'm willing to give credit where credit is due. The Avengers biggest accomplishment is that it didn't collapse in on itself and managed to be an entertaining bucket of popcorn made by people who at least gave a fuck about what they were doing.

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Originally Posted by The Prankster 

I disagree pretty strongly. The Avengers came off as a hell of a lot more human than the cast of Battleship or Transformers or the Star Wars prequels. I think you're fixating on the superficial "people with powers" thing.

Well they're 'human' in the sense of having personality, but they're still basically invincible gods fighting other invincible gods.

Just for the hell of it I'm going to change tack and say a couple of things I think are good about superhero movies. One is that unlike a lot of blockbuster cinema they always have characters at the centre of things and there's a lot of focus given to getting the right actors and the right tone etc, and they actually give opportunities for good performances. I mean, Iron Man is pretty much the definitive showcase for RDJr doing the RDJr thing. It's fairly rare for them to have a faceless generic lead and then rely on throwing incoherent noise and bullshit at you, Transformers style. And also the whole Marvel shared universe thing is kind of interesting just because it's never really been tried on that scale before.

But I *am* kind of hung up on the costumes and powers thing, just because... are they really necessary? Bond and Indiana Jones are basically superheroes but I like them because they're at least somewhat grounded in reality, albeit a pulpy heightened reality. I'm not sure Star Wars really benefited from its gradual shift away from a rag tag band of misfits towards gangs of super space wizards.

Well it's kind of hard to do, say, a Spider-man movie without a costume and powers, and people wanted a Spider-man movie (in 2001, at least. Now they may be thinking, "OK, enough.") so in that sense, obviously, they are necessary.

Don't get me wrong, it is getting a little overwhelming, and I'm risking getting burned out on superheroes along with everyone. But by the same token, I think Marvel is keeping it interesting...there was a stretch there where it looked like they were going to fall into pure formula filmmaking, but I think all their recent stuff has tried to give us something increasingly wild and original, from Thor's berzerk art direction to the surprisingly heartfelt nostalgia of Captain America to the whole meta-universe thing in Avengers. And their future plans seem pretty cool, too--Guardians of the Galaxy seems like it might be the first true heir to Star Wars we've had since the 80s, and Edgar Wright making a comic book movie is pretty exciting. I'll agree that there's the potential to get burnt out on Thor, Iron Man and Cap--though Shane Black has my attention for IM3, and the Winter Soldier storyline definitely seems like an intriguing tack for Cap. Even Thor 2 is supposedly a big, balls-out fantasy epic set mostly in the Nine Realms, apparently. This is part of what I mean when I say you can do a lot of different stuff with superheroes--essentially, each of the five movies I just described would be a different genre (though I don't deny they could push it further).

Honestly, if it was just Marvel Studios, I'd be up for years more to come. The presence of all these other half-assed superhero movies like Green Lantern and ASM are what's making the genre seem a little played out.
 

I think Marvel's output is what has me worried the most. They produce generic products, not films. I don't think there's anything to the original Iron Man, and Captain America has one of the most soulless second-halfs of any action movie I've ever seen. The promise of their Phase 2 is what has people excited, not the actual quality of their past films. 

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Originally Posted by BigMcLargeHuge 

I think Marvel's output is what has me worried the most. They produce generic products, not films. I don't think there's anything to the original Iron Man, and Captain America has one of the most soulless second-halfs of any action movie I've ever seen. The promise of their Phase 2 is what has people excited, not the actual quality of their past films. 

That makes a degree of sense, since superhero movies are the only genre where the second movies are consistently better than the first.

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Originally Posted by Schwartz 

 

That makes a degree of sense, since superhero movies are the only genre where the second movies are consistently better than the first.

I agree. A lot of people would complain films like Batman Returns or Spiderman 2 are too episodic, but I like them because they tell nice contained stories that aren't hindered by origin stories. The problem I forsee with the Marvel films is that they'll get bogged down in continuity (Which we already saw with Iron Man 2 and Thor), much like the comics.  Captain America 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy being the most likely, given the material.

I'm guessing this will be based on the 90s series. In that case, it will probably be more of a comedy than anything.

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Originally Posted by BigMcLargeHuge 

I'm guessing this will be based on the 90s series. In that case, it will probably be more of a comedy than anything.

For Guardians of the Galaxy, part of me is hoping...at least tonally....for a bigger-budgeted (and better written) Masters of the Universe: The Movie out of this, with Thanos in the Skeletor slot.

I'm just curious to see how heavy a hand he'll have with the other Marvel properties. Weren't there rumors he clashed with Johnston on Captain America?

All in all great news though. I see the complaints about the simplicity of The Avengers plot, but I don't think you can deny that it got those big moments just right. Watching it in a theater opening weekend was one of the best movie experiences I've had in a while. I think everyone walked out grinning.
 

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Originally Posted by Paul C 

Well they're 'human' in the sense of having personality, but they're still basically invincible gods fighting other invincible gods.

Ya mean like Greek myths? So glad those unrelatable metaphorical educational and escapist tales haven't lasted eons. ;)