A lot of writers out there put down the “movie industry” for their lack of originality with sequels and adaptations, and sequels to adaptations, over the last several years. These have been the big franchise players for the summers. But should we mind it?
Right now, the movie industry is becoming a great provider of serving fans of other mediums, and introducing the properties to new, more accessible, audiences. No doubt, the recent crop of comic book movies may be the one thing that is helping keeping the ailing comic industry afloat.
So that brings us to Iron Man. Once this film was announced some two years ago, I had no expectations. Let’s put it this way, I had Elektra, or X-Men 3 level expectations. I worried about how deep Marvel was digging into its properties, and didn’t expect much out of it. The closer it got to Iron Man’s release, the more psyched I became. This was a properly handled comic book movie. Now, granted, I don’t think I have ever read a sole Iron Man comic book, though I loved tyhe ’90’s cartoon. Now, I find that Iron Man was possibly the highest rated super hero movie (if not movie of the year), yet!
I had a chance to see the film with a Crew of Mayhem (Chachi, Will, Remedy, Jen, Norm, Missy, etc, etc). Oh man, this was the most fun, solid super hero film I’ve seen, for sure. Even Spider-Man had some issues in my eyes. Iron didn’t seem to have any large omissions. Actually, it was ten times better thant he recent Iron Man cartoon movie that came out last year. (The previous Ultimate Avengers seemed only slightly satisfying, as well.)
And on that note, I came to find that this is the first movie to be handled under the newer “Marvel Studios” marquee. Perhaps this is the reason that it seemed so tight in representation. Now, it has been announced that the little teaser we got at the end of Iron Man will be, indeed, setting up some great things in the future. Iron Man 2 and Thor will be a month apart in 2010, and Captain America and Avengers will be in 2011. The one-two punch aspect of these movies is really interesting for strategy. We’re seeing a preview of this with the Iron Man/Hulk deal this summer, that are rumored to tie together, and setup for these future movies. Kudos to Marvel for blowing away thier fans so far! There were also promises of Spider-Man 4 (I fear), Hulk continuing, and Ant-Man still in the works.