In a multi-part series, Comic Book Film Editor William Gatevackes will be tracing the history of comic book movies from the earliest days of the film serials to today’s big blockbusters and beyond. Along with the history lesson, Bill will be covering some of the most prominent comic book films over the years and why they were so special. Today, we examine why original superheroes are the best choice for film comedies.

If the Batman TV series taught us anything, adapting a comic book in a humorous way is a dicey prospect. Comic book fans still wince whenever that series is mentioned because it dared to make a joke out of Batman in particular and comic books in general. We comic book aficionados are pretty sensitive when it comes to people not taking the medium we consider sacrosanct seriously.  We don’t want Jack Black playing Green Lantern. We don’t want Bat Credit Cards. And while we don’t mind humor where humor is appropriate (see The Avengers), we don’t want Hollywood to create a comedy out of something that was never intended to be funny.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t a lot of tropes and trademarks in comic books that lend themselves to comedy or parody. That’s where original heroes come in. When filmmakers use original concepts to point out the humor inherent in comic book conventions, not many comic fans get up in arms. If the film is good or bad, a hit or a flop, it doesn’t mean one of their beloved comic book properties is affected in any way.  And the hit to flop ratio typically favors the flop side of the equation with a lot of these comedies.

1994’s Blankman was a parody that took skewered look at the science-based superhero origin. Like Batman, Blankman lost a loved one to violent crime (his grandmother). He, like Batman and also Iron Man, is a technical genius with a skill for building gadgets and gizmos. However, unlike those heroes, he is not a suave millionaire who lives in a mansion, but rather a socially inept appliance repairman who lives in a crime-riddled inner city neighborhood. He doesn’t have hi-tech Batarangs, he has a boot on a stick attached to some rope. He doesn’t have a computerized suit of armor, he has a robot sidekick named J-5 he jury-rigged out of an old washing machine.

While there is humor in the concept and one part of the ads did make me chuckle (the part where Blankman telling his brother/sidekick that he is certain J-5 will come rescue them, then quickly cuts to the awkward robot unsuccessfully negotiating a flight of stairs, sure to be reduced to a pile of gears at the landing below), I have to admit that I never saw this film. Damon Wayans, who co-wrote the movie with J. F. Lawton, plays Blankman in the manner of a more ribald Jerry Lewis. Blankman was more supergeek than superhero, and in the most annoying way possible.

The horrible ex-boy/girlfriend is a film staple, in both comedies and dramas. There is a lot of humor to be mined from a relationship gone wrong, a reminder of a mistake that you made or a messy break up that you repeatedly have to pay for.  But what if your ex was a superhero? What if the aftermath of your break up comes with collateral damage and if your jilted ex-girlfriend says she will kill you, it’s well within her power to do so.

That’s the concept behind 2006’s My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Luke Wilson plays Matt, a man who enters a relationship with a woman named Jenny Johnson (Uma Thurman) after rescuing her purse from a purse-snatcher.  It doesn’t take long before Matt realizes that dating the possessive, clingy and passive aggressive Jenny was a mistake, and he breaks up with her. Big mistake, as Jenny is a crimefighter named G-Girl who has Superman-esque powers, a quick temper, and little or no impulse control. Jenny soon decides to devote every second she is not saving the world to making Matt’s life a living hell.

Your enjoyment of this film would probably depend on how willing you were to overlook the fact that Thurman’s character is composed of the worst qualities of every bad girlfriend stereotype there is. Thurman does do her best to try to make a real human being out of the bundle of neuroses, insecurities, and rage, but even at 95 minutes it gets to be too much. Jenny is less a woman scorned and more a shrewish harridan, and the film would have been much better if she was the former.

Not that it mattered. The film doubled its budget in worldwide grosses, so it might have not been that big of a flop in the long run. Its mixed reaction from the critics didn’t keep people away, although it didn’t do quite as well as our next film, which overcame mixed reviews two years later to earn over $624 million dollars worldwide at the box office.

Hancock was once a dark and gritty look at a Superman-like hero who balances his obligation to protect humanity with giving in to his basest instincts—watching porn, alcohol, the whole nine yards. That was when it was called Tonight, He Comes and before it went through the development hell that left us with the neutered result that made it to theaters. In Vincent Ngo’s original script, Hancock was a character that made Billy Bob Thornton’s character in Bad Santa look like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life.  The original Hancock was a cop-killer and an attempted rapist, not the kind of character you’d expect Will Smith to play. As a matter of fact, it took even more creative editing to keep the watered down version from getting an R rating.

A miniscule amount of Ngo’s Hancock remains. The character is now a self-loathing, amnesiatic alcoholic whose superheroic deeds often come with multi-million dollar property damage. He is pretty much hated by the whole city of Los Angeles, and the city wants a word with him about all the damage he causes. A chance to improve his image comes when he saves the life of Ray (Jason Bateman), a public relations guru who offers work to improve his negative standing in the community as a sign of gratitude.

Being a comedy up to this point, logic dictates that the story should follow Hancock’s path to redemption.  Maybe a couple of positive PR opportunities Hancock screws up either through fate or his own arrogance. Perhaps a few dark secrets from Hancock’s past that Ray would have to deal with. But it would all lead to Hancock facing off against a threat that is a danger to his city and/or world, a threat he has no chance in overcoming, but he faces it anyway to save lives of the people that hate him. He is eventually victorious—at a cost—but ends up winning over the people who once hated him.

Predicatable, yes, and I am anything but a professional Hollywood screenwriter, but that would be better than what we actually received—a turgid 90 degree turn into melodrama.

Ray introduces Hancock to his wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), who, surprise, also has superpowers! Not only that, but comes from the same race of immortals that Hancock does! But wait, it gets better! It turns out that Mary is actually Hancock’s “wife.” Yes, she and Hancock are star-crossed lovers who must remain separate in order to save their lives. Because whenever they get near each other, they lose their invulnerability! That’s why Hancock has amnesia, because he was jumped by a racist in 1928 for daring to be seen in public by his white wife Mary (She left him so his powers would come back and he could heal. Although it seems he didn’t heal completely)!  Now, both of their lives are in danger!

I have no idea why Vince Gilligan, John August and whoever else reworked Ngo’s script tacked on this ending. Maybe they thought it would help humanize Hancock as a character. Or add a bit of social commentary into the mix. Or maybe they sincerely thought the new ending was great. They were wrong on all aspects. No plot points in the second half of the film are properly developed (especially the “becoming vulnerable while being close together” plot point. Don’t get me started on that one).  The second half has a tenuous connection to the first half of the film. So much so, that it’s like Hancock is two separate films awkwardly stitched together, with a garish piece of duct tape put over the seam to keep it together. Hancock could have been a better film, even if they didn’t follow Ngo’s original script to the letter. But as it stands, it is a disappointment. Well to me at least, it has done well enough to earn a sequel, that has been in the works for years.

Speaking of films that are stitched together from other films, let’s talk about Superhero Movie, a 2008 film that parodied the superhero genre.

The film uses Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man as the framework to hang their parody on. It focuses on Rick Riker (Drake Bell) who gains superpowers after being bitten by a genetically altered Dragonfly. He soon comes into conflict with Hourglass (Christopher McDonald), an industrialist who can siphon the life force from other humans to use to make himself stronger.

The film is a step above the typical modern-day parodies such as Meet the Spartans and Epic Movie (not that it’s a high bar to leap over) due to the involvement of Airplane’s David Zucker as a producer and the parody being based around an actual plot. But it pales in comparison to Zucker’s other parodies Airplane, Top Secret and Naked Gun.

If there is an “auteur” of the non-comic book superhero comedies, it is James Gunn. He has been involved in two films that employ a darkly comic look into the superhero archetype in a realistic setting, albeit in two very opposite ends of the spectrum.

In 2000, Gunn wrote The Specials, a film (directed by Superhero Movie’s Craig Mazin)which paints a more corporate world where superheroes are judged less by their abilities that their marketability.

In the film, the Specials are a lower tier super group. They get to fight the crappy villains, they get no movies made about them, and the only toy company who will make dolls of them doesn’t care enough about them to get their costumes, or even their genders, right. On the day their toy line is introduced, the team’s leader, The Strobe (Thomas Hayden Church) finds out his wife/teammate, Ms. Indestructable (Paget Brewster) is having an affair with the group’s most popular member, The Weevil (Rob Lowe). This causes the team to break up right on the cusp of their greatest (by default) achievement.

The film has a pretty good cast for its budget (@ $1 million). Gunn has a role in the film himself as The Strobe’s brother, Minute Man. The film had a brief life in the theaters before moving on to home video.

The Specials might be a cynical look at what the real world might really have to offer a superhero, but it was a cheery Saturday morning cartoon compared to Gunn’s 2010 film, Super, which Gunn wrote and directed.

Super is by far much darker than The Specials, as the black comedy is filled with a world people caught up in the spiral of drug addiction, female on male rape, and where deaths happen in a quick and gruesome fashion. If Gunn has one skill, it would be his ability to get great actors to work with him—at scale no less. This film features Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler, Michael Rooker and Nathan Fillion in its cast. That’s a line up any director would love to have, and the cast raises Gunn’s film to a higher level.

Gunn, of course, is set to direct Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. I am curious to see if Marvel lets him apply his cynical black humor to the property.

Finally, we have Defendor, a film similarly themed and similar in tone to Super.

The 2009 film is a twisted take on the Batman mythos (and also that of Rorschach of the Watchmen). When he was a kid, Arthur’s mother died after an extended period of drug abuse and prostitution. Arthur’s grandfather blamed his daughter’s death on the “captains of industry,” meaning that a society that favors the rich forced his economically poor daughter into her downward spiral. Young Arthur mistook his grandfather and thought he was saying one person, named Captain Industry, killed his mother. Arthur turned that a lifelong quest to bring his mother’s”killer” to justice through vigilantism.

Aided by a strong lead performance by Woody Harrelson, and with a underrated cast that featured Kat Dennings, Sandra Oh and Elias Koteas, the film did fairly well with critics. However, problems with U.S. distributor Sony caused the film to have only a limited theatrical release in the States.

Next, we finally get back into covering films actually adapted from comic books with a look at everyone’s favorite mutants.

If ComicBookMovie is correct, it appears that Jeremy Renner did not learn the lessons of Terrence Howard and Edward Norton and will now pay the price for it.

The website is quoting “Hollywood sources” in saying that the actor who played Clint Barton/Hawkeye in both Thor and The Avengers is being dropped by Marvel Studios, mainly due to negative comments he made about his role in the latter film.

Renner was candid in his feelings about the way his character was portrayed on screen in an interview with Total Film magazine:

“For 90 percent of the movie, I’m not the character I signed on to play. It’s kind of a vacancy. [He's] not even a bad guy, because there’s not really a consciousness to him. To take away who that character is and just have him be this robot, essentially, and have him be this minion for evil that Loki uses … I was limited, you know what I mean? I was a terminator in a way. Fun stunts. But is there any sort of emotional content or thought process? No.”

To be fair to Renner, he does have a point. On the other hand, Hawkeye pretty much serves the same purpose as Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow character, and since Johansson joined the Marvel family first, she gets to play the hero and they had to find something else for Renner to do. That being said, even in the 10% of the film where he WAS the character he signed on to play, he really didn’t make that much of an impression. His quiver had more personality than his Hawkeye did.

But regardless, Marvel has made a point not keeping any actor who is unhappy or unable to work the Marvel way. Terrence Howard was rumored to be difficult to work with during Iron Man. so his role as James Rhodes was minimized in the sequel and he was asked to take a substantial pay cut. He balked and was allowed to walk and Don Cheadle (who was rumored to be Marvel’s first choice originally) took his place. Edward Norton was supposedly so hands-on during The Incredible Hulk that rumor has it he even did script rewrites on set. This didn’t sit well with Marvel or Joss Whedon, so in The Avengers he was replaced with Mark Ruffalo (who was rumored to also be Marvel’s first choice for the role). Hugo Weaving has also been very vocal about  not being excited about his role as the Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger and has expressed not being interested in reprising his role in the future. Well, everyone from Toby Jones to Hayley Atwell to Dominic Cooper will be back for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but not Weaving.

All of this makes the rumor very plausible. And all things considered, this might be the best thing for Renner. He has a burgeoning franchise in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters(which made an inexplicable amount of money overseas), appears to be in line to take over the Mission Impossible franchise in the event Tom Cruise ever lets go of it, and while many view The Bourne Legacy as a disappointing entry into the franchise, it made enough money worldwide that he might be in the mix if they continue with it. While, at Marvel, his next appearance would have been in a similar, low-key capacity in The Avengers 2. Hawkeye wouldn’t be even considered for a solo film until 2016, and there are a lot of characters, concepts and ideas in development ahead of him.

The source also brings up the possibility of the character being recast and appearing on the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series. If the role is recast, it will probably be with whoever Marvel’s first choice for the role was.

In the effort of being honest, I have an admission to make. One that will make the words that follow seem like sour grapes.

I “applied” to work at Cracked.com.

Applied in the sense that I signed up for their developmental workshop message boards, where writers can pitch stories that might one day make the website and get them paid. I haven’t submitted anything yet (and probably won’t after this) because I was trying to come up with the perfect pitch. One that was factually correct, stood up on its own, and made its argument forcefully yet logically.

JF Sargent. No, really.

As it turns out, that wasn’t really necessary. JF Sargent, who just happens to the be the moderator of that above workshop, posted an article on the site last week called, “5 Reasons Superhero Movies Are a Bubble That Will Soon Burst.” In it, he compares the popularity of comic book films to the “New Hollywood” era of film making, the period from 1967 to about 1982 where young filmmakers made a big splash and changed the face of cinema. The five “reasons” are five similarities Sargent thinks he sees between the two eras. His theory is because the “New Hollywood” era of film making flamed out, surely the superhero film era is also on its way there.

On the surface, it seems like it has the makings of a well researched piece of film criticism, one so logically sound that it can not be questioned. I mean, if Sargent proves that  one era hit the same number of landmarks in  the exact same way as another era did, why, certainly if first era dies, the other one will die in the same way, right?

Well, it might, if Sargent hadn’t made any glaring factual errors, fudged facts and history, and used subjective logic and “proof” all along the way. There are so many glitches  that his arguments go from sounding the definitive death knell for the comic book film to being what appears to be a sad bit of “wishful thinking” journalism.

How many? Well, let’s make a list of our own by going through his text. And we don’t have to wait long. It starts with the lead paragraph:

If you’re a lover of comic books, fantasy novels, or sci-fi, you should be in heaven right now. All of Hollywood caters to your tastes. Hell, if you’re under 20 years old, you don’t even remember what it’s like not to have Hollywood throw $2 billion worth of blockbuster movies at you every summer (while the rest of us remember that as recently as 1994 they made a Fantastic Four movie so bad, it couldn’t even be released).

1. The poor quality of the Fantastic Four film played little to no role in the project being shelved.

I explained as much here, but let me give you the pertinent graph:

There are two schools of thought over why the film was not released. One was that Constantin never intended to release the film at all, and essentially lied to all parties involved in the production just so the film could be made. Another says that Avi Arad, who would become head of Marvel Studios two years after the film was due to be released and helped usher in the success Marvel has had in recent years, paid Constantin and Concorde to shelve the movie because he didn’t want such a cheap production to taint the brand. Regardless, the film was never released either here or abroad, and only exists in a popular bootleg version you can find at most comic book conventions.

Granted, the film was shot for $1 million dollars, a sum way under what it would take to make a good FF film. It was cheap and it looked it. But the main factors at play seem to be the ones mentioned above. And Arad’s reason for putting the film on ice, as described on the very Wikipedia page Sargent linked to, seems less about how bad it was, but how little money was spent on it.

This might be splitting hairs, but it goes to establishing Sargent’s bona fides. The fact that he just casually mentions that the ’94 FF film was shelved was because it was awful, without even presenting an existing opposing point of view, shows a tendency to present only the “facts” that support his argument. Not a good start.

And while we’re here:

2. Sargent uses Wikipedia as a source. A lot.

Not long ago I was in college. I wrote a lot of papers. Wikipedia was strongly frowned upon as a source of information. Why? Because it is crowd-sourced. Anybody can edit an article there,and you can have it say whatever you want. Therefore, it’s not always very trustworthy to back up your arguments. Granted, some of Wikipedia”s articles are sourced, but in that case its better to use the original source.

Sargent’s list begins in earnest by stating both eras began with a surprise box office hit out of the blue. For “New Hollywood,” it was 1967′s Bonnie and Clyde. For the comic book era? It was a bunch of films that came out in the early 2000′s that overcame the superhero film-light 1990s. Let me let him tell you:

This changed in 2000 and 2001 when X-Men, Spider-Man, and the first The Lord of the Rings came out. Remember that back then those geek-centric movies were all pretty risky investments for the studios. Not only was this the first time that either of those Marvel superheroes would be seen on screen, but the last superhero movie to come out at that time had been Batman & Robin, which, you know, we’d rather not talk about. As for The Lord of the Rings, the last attempt at an adaptation was a godawful cartoon that was made in the 1980s.

3. Spider-Man came out on May 3, 2002.

Before you call me a nitpicker, here me out. The reason I make an issue out of this is because it is key to Sargent’s comparison that each era begin with a “big bang” if you will–one or more films that were a surprise success. Now, since the “New Hollywood” era is traced back to just one film, it suits Sargent’s argument better if the three “superhero” films came out in quick succession. But they didn’t. It took three years for all the films mentioned to come out.  And really, there were only two that are legit, and they came out two years apart. More on that later. But Spider-Man definitely came out in 2002, even Wikipedia got that right.

4. What about Blade?

If Sargent was looking for a comic book film that fit his analogy to a T, Blade is it. It was the first film where Marvel took a more active role in the production of the film, marking a new attention towards fidelity to the source material that Sargent marks as a trademark of the superhero film era. It was also an unknown property without a huge built in audience, so it was not a lock that it would be a success. But it was, it debuted at #1 at the box office just like Sargent’s other examples and made a sizable profit. If there was a film that ushered in the era of the superhero movie, it was Blade.

Why didn’t Sargent use Blade as the start of the superhero movie era? Perhaps he just didn’t know that Blade was a superhero. Or, maybe, for his point to work, for the narrative he was trying to create to gel, he had to create some distance the “last” comic book film, Batman and Robin, and the comic book film’s resurgence. Blade wouldn’t work here because it was released in 1998 and Batman and Robin was released in 1997. That would have meant the superhero film bounced back just 14 months after it’s nadir. And that weakens Sargent’s point almost completely.

Some of you might argue that Blade is not a superhero. He’s a vampire who fights vampires with his vampire powers. That is totally different than a superhero who fights supervillains with superpowers! Okay, but what about…

5. Frodo Baggins, Superhero!?!!?

Listen, determining who is and who isn’t a superhero is a popular topic of debate in comic shops across the country. Is the Punisher a superhero? Someone will that because he wears a costume, yes. Others will say that he doesn’t have any powers, so no. Then someone will bring up Batman, who wears a costume but has no powers, is he a superhero? Someone will say yes because he fights super-powered villains. But, the Punisher fought super-powered villains…well, you get the idea. If your loved one goes to their local comic shop and doesn’t come back for hours, it’s probably because they got sucked into one of these kinds of conversations.

But if you were to go into that shop and say that your favorite superhero was good ol’ Frodo, all sides of the argument would stop fighting amongst themselves,unite, and start arguing against you.

I mean, granted, Frodo has a ring that makes him invisible, and he hangs out with wizards, but he resides in the fantasy/sword and sorcery genre, not the superhero genre. And while fans of one genre often are fans of the other, the genres are not interchangeable. It would be a huge stretch of logic to consider them so.

But Sargent needs big films and big franchises to provide the tools to work with. So, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and Star Wars become superhero movies, even though they really aren’t. For the casual reader, this probably won’t matter much. But to fans of the superhero film, the inclusion of these films invalidates Sargent’s argument from the get go. Because he’s not railing against the superhero film, he’s really railing against a larger target–the geek culture film. But I guess that wouldn’t generate as many hits.

6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Crow, The Mask, and Men in Black all came out in the 1990s.

Sargent likes to paint the 1990s as such:

In the ’90s, all of the major money-maker movies were Die Hard knockoffs (Con Air, Broken Arrow, Face/Off), sober explorations of tragedies (Dances With Wolves, Schindler’s List, Titanic), Adam Sandler being a dumbass, and Tom Hanks doing things that usually didn’t involve having superpowers.

First off, not including Speed in the list of Die-Hard knockoffs is a crime. It was Die Hard on a frikkin bus for goodness sakes!

Second, Sargent intends to show that the 90s were a dry period for the superhero movie. But they really weren’t. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Crow, The Mask, and Men in Black all could be considered superhero films (if Frodo’s a superhero, then so is Agent J). They all came from comic books. All their lead characters fought crime in different ways. And all of them were box office hits in the comic book film unfriendly 1990s. Each one had at least one sequel, which is more than you can say for Sargent’s examples. And, lest we for get, Batman Returns, Batman Forever and, yes, Batman and Robin all were released in the 90s and all made a profit (yes, even Batman and Robin, when worldwide grosses are added in).

You got to hand it to the Film News Media. They gave Marvel a couple days to bask in the $174 million domestic opening for Iron Man 3 (which brings the worldwide gross to $711 million) before it started addressing the big humongous elephant in the room. The honeymoon is over, however, because Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline all had articles yesterday speculating on the future of Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man.

Iron Man 3 was the last film that Robert Downey Jr was contracted for, and negotiations are set to begin for at the very least Avengers 2 and 3, if not more Iron Mans as well. But Downey might not be just negotiating for himself. The actor, who supposedly got anywhere from $50 million to $80 million in back-end  money from gross points for The Avengers, might be fighting to get his co-stars in that film, some who made as little as $200,000 for their work, a little better payday.

The reclusive Ike Perlmutter….in 1985

While this might not seem like an unreasonable demand (after all, The Avengers made $1.5 billion worldwide), you have to consider that Marvel is run by the notoriously stingy Ike Perlmutter. Perlmutter’s frugality helped Marvel rise like a phoenix from its bankruptcy to become a vibrant company once again. But he did so by cutting expenses to the bone, including getting rid of everything he deems unnecessary, from booths at comic book conventions (which only came back when the Marvel films started gaining popularity) to extra bathrooms in Marvel offices (only one per gender).

In Downey’s favor is the fact that his three  films earned almost $850,000,000 more than any of the other solo Avengers movies combined, a fact that many pundits attest to Downey’s popularity here and overseas.

However, Marvel hasn’t been shy about replacing troublemakers, especially those clamoring for more money. The studio replaced Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle in Iron Man 2 when Howard asked for more money. And it was rumored that Edward Norton’s penchant for taking a hands-on approach with the script and directing of The Incredible Hulk made him expendable for The Avengers.

Add to this the fact that Downey will be turning 50 by the time Avengers 2 rolls around and 53 if Avengers 3 follows the same release pattern. You figure that Marvel isn’t going to want Downey to play Tony Stark for ever, and if you are going to replace him, why not now?

All this adds up to what sure will be one fascinating contract negotiation. It will probably have more action and excitement than Iron Man 3 (which isn’t saying much).

Developing.

Iron Man 3 is definitely a Shane Black movie. But it’s really not much of an Iron Man movie.

The story begins with a broken Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr), who is still reeling from the events of The Avengers. He hasn’t been getting much sleep and when he is awake, he suffers from the occasional panic attack whenever New York is mentioned. The last thing Tony needs is any more stress. However, The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) doesn’t really care about Tony Stark’s stress levels. The international terrorist has been attacking American interests across the world with bombs that are highly destructive yet leave no evidence behind.

When Tony’s bodyguard Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) is caught in one of the Mandarin’s blasts, Tony decides to make it personal. But the Mandarin doesn’t take threats lightly. It soon becomes a race against time as Tony must find the Mandarin before the terrorist’s genetically enhanced army take away everything Tony holds dear.

That synopsis barely scratches the surface of the convoluted plot , which spans 13 years, involves old flames, secret formula’s that give you superpowers, dramatic transformations and a number of people who turn out to not be what we thought they were. Unfortunately, one of those people is Tony Stark. He bares a superficial resemblance to his appearances the other films of the franchise. He actually bares a closer resemblance to Nancy Drew.

This might be a spoiler that the studio doesn’t want you to know: Tony Stark spends a lot of time out of the Iron Man armor, more than in any other installment. Well, I didn’t have a stopwatch, so I can’t verify that statement, but it seems like it.  There is a valid reason for it–the Mark 42 armor is a bit glitchy and doesn’t bounce back quite as quickly as other Marks. But still…

While he is out of the armor, he turns into “Tony Stark, Billionaire Amateur Playboy Detective of the Appalachians.” Even though he has not shown any aptitude for it in any other movies, Tony is able to develop leads, follow them to Tennessee and then Miami, breaking in to TV trucks and palatial estates as needed to get what he needs. And even though he is established as a rather big celebrity, he does all of this investigating without ever once being recognized. It’s like magic.

I just didn’t buy it. I mean, Tony Stark shares a lot of qualities with Bruce Wayne, but being a master detective is not one of them. The whole thing does not flow naturally from what Tony’s characterization in the franchise up to this point. It appears manufactured to either act as a cheap way to advance the plot or to allow Shane Black room to work in the crime genre he is more comfortable with.

The side effect of all this, for me at least, was that it took me out of the film and all of the film’s plot holes, and there are a lot of them, became all the more noticeable. The villain’s motivation seems to change from scene to scene. Is he after revenge? World domination? Money? A mix of the three? All of the above? One from column A, one from column C?

That’s just one example. There are a lot more I could list, but that would fall into heavy spoiler category. But the main crux of a lot of these other plot holes is the way Black and co-screenwriter Drew Pierce present us with complex solutions to the characters’ problems when it is obvious there was an easier way to get the same results. Instead of going directly from A to Z, they meander all over the alphabet, throw in a couple of numbers, and eventually get to Z 15 to 20 minutes later than they should.

This is a shame because there are a lot of good moments, no, wait, strike that, a lot of GREAT moments in the film. The way the Mandarin is presented might infuriate the die-hard fans, but I thought it was a unique take on the character. And by this point we all know that Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) ends up in a suit of armor, but the way she does is a nice touch. Pepper Potts has a chance to play not only the damsel in distress but also the hero in the film, which is a refreshing change.

And the cast is superb. In addition to the actors I already mentioned, there are especially strong performances from Don Cheadle, Guy Pierce and Rebecca Hall. Too bad they weren’t in a tighter script that fit in better with the franchise as a whole.

1. Iron Man 3 (Disney, 4,253 Theaters, 130 Minutes, Rated PG-13): So, the awesome task of following The Avengers begins, and Phase II startss just like Phase I one did–with Iron Man.

But Iron Man 3 doesn’t just have to rise out of the shadow of The Avengers, it also has to overcome the spectre of Iron Man 2, which has taken on the patina among some fans as being completely awful (I didn’t think it was that bad, but what do I know?)

There’s a new writer and director this time around in Shane Black, and this installment finally brings Tony Stark’s comic book arch nemesis The Mandarin to the big screen. It looks like it might be the biggest Iron Man film yet. I doubt it has a snowball’s chance in South Beach of beating The Avengers (although it has made 150% of its budget Internationally already), but it should be a fitting start to Phase II and the summer movie season.

Even though Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter was only in a little bit of Captain America: The First Avenger, she seems to have made an impression fans. And thanks to those fans, we’ll be seeing a little bit more of her.

Atwell was interviewed by The Age about her possible involvement in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, involvement she is reticent to confirm or deny even though she is included in a cast list in an official press release from Marvel. However, she did reveal that footage featuring her would be shown and a certain comic book convention:

“There’s been an online campaign for Peggy to be featured. People really liked her. So Marvel have made sure that as part of Comicon there will be a little kind of snapshot as to what Peggy’s actually really capable of, which was finished here and which was great fun. Hopefully, it will lead to other things.”

Brendon Connelly over at  Bleeding Cool seems to think that Peggy Carter will be making an appearance in a Marvel One-Shot, a line of short subjects that began with The Consultant on the Thor Blu-Ray, continued with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer on the Captain America: The First Avenger Blu-Ray and  Item 47, a short that was attached to The Avengers Blu-Ray. Even though the last two had at best a transitory connection to the Marvel Film Universe, using these One-Shots to flesh out supporting characters who might not be able to support their own film is a great idea.

However, the way it sounds is that footage being shown will not be as long as the shorts typically run. So what this footage might be might be scenes from Winter Soldier featuring Peggy.

I guess we’ll see in a couple months when Comic-Con rolls around.

Ever since his portrayal of Bruce Banner became the talk of last summer’s The Avengers, fans have been wondering where Mark Ruffalo turn up next in Marvel Studios’ superhero films. The actor put an end to the speculation last night when he tweeted the following -

A lot of folks have been asking about the Next Hulk. The next time you see my Hulk it will be in the Avengers2. No plans for stand alone.

— Mark Ruffalo (@Mruff221) March 7, 2013

I am not giving up on another stand alone HULK. But it’s not in the works right now. One never knows what the future will bring.

— Mark Ruffalo (@Mruff221) March 7, 2013

Bad news for those hoping we would see him again at some point in Marvel’s “Phasde Two” that culminates with The Avengers 2 in May 2015. But, you’ll note that his second tweet doesn’t necessarily preclude him not having more appearances outside of the Avengers films as Phase Three goes forward in 2016.

Of course, I suppose that we could parse his statement as saying that while we won’t see Banner’s alter-ego the Hulk we could be seeing Ruffalo playing just Bruce, but I think that the actor is a bit too straightforward a guy to play such word games.

And as much as I enjoyed his work in Avengers, I think that the old showbusiness adage of leaving people wanting more is a good plan of action for right now.

If The Avengers had a breakout star, it was The Hulk. Audiences fell in love with both the way the Green Goliath was portrayed on the screen and also what Mark Ruffalo brought to the role of Bruce Banner. Fans, myself included, were clamoring for a Hulk film even before the final frames of The Avengers unfurled. Well, it looks like it will take a while, but we might get our wish–in a big way. But the rumor has some kinks that need to be worked out first.

Latino Review’s El Mayimbe posted a defiant video blog early this morning where he rails against Marvel Studios and their “war” with his employer over the website releasing spoilers of Marvel films. You should really watch the video. It has the feel of a wrestling promo.

Anyway, El Mayimbe’s revenge against Marvel is his revealing that the Hulk will become a big part of the studios’ Phase 3, including a sequel to 2008′s The Incredible Hulk, with a major series of Hulk comic book story lines being adapted for the screen. What story lines? Well, I’ll tell you, so here’s your SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!!

So, Mayimbe’s sources say that the Hulk will Hulk out far more violently and dangerously than ever before in The Avengers 2. So much so that Tony Stark and his secret, hidden cadre of superpowered allies called the Illuminati decide it is better that he be banished from the face of the Earth, never to return. This banishment will come in one of the final scenes of The Avengers 2.

Stark intends to ship off Hulk to a peaceful planet so he can live out his life in comfort and safety. Unfortunately, as The Incredible Hulk 2 will show, the ship hits a wormhole and instead of the idyllic paradise, Hulk is sent to a hellish gladiatorial world, a world where Hulk has to fight aliens as strong as him–if not stronger–on a daily basis to survive. Eventually. Hulk fights his way into becoming king of the planet, and quickly sets about making plans for revenge on his former friends.

That revenge comes in The Avengers 3 as Hulk and a small group of his fellow gladiators find a way back to Earth and declare war on the planet. The Earth’s Mightiest Heroes must once again protect their home from an invading force in search of vengeance, only this time the vengeance is justified and they are to blame.

Comic book fans should recognize that synopsis as the same as 2006′s Planet Hulk story line and it’s sequel crossover, 2007′s World War Hulk. It’s definitely one of the most exciting and important Hulk stories in the character’s history, and would make a fairly good series of movies. But there are several roadblocks in the comic story being adapted to the big screen as El Mayimbe describes it. What are these roadblocks? Well, I’ll tell you that too.

1. The Illuminati: In the comics, the Illuminati are composed of well-respected members of the superhero community, typically people in leadership positions, who have banded together to police their fellow heroes from behind the scenes. The team consists of Iron Man and, later, Captain America. No problem there, as both have already been introduced into the Marvel Film Universe. Other members have included Dr. Strange, Black Panther, Black Bolt and Namor. Again, not much of a problem, because Dr. Strange is rumored to have a film in Phase 3, Black Panther and the Inhumans, of which Black Bolt is king of, have films in development at Marvel, and the studio also owns the rights to Namor. However, the comic book Illuminati also included Reed “Mr. Fantastic” Richards, Beast and Professor Charles Xavier. Rights to these characters are owned by Fox. Unless there will be a new era of cooperation between the two studios (and considering the kerfuffle last year when Marvel wanted to borrow Galactus from Fox, that new era is unlikely) , these characters will either have to be left out or replaced. And they are fairly big parts of the story line.
2. The film Tony Stark isn’t really Illuminati material: The film Tony is a man who bucks authority and doesn’t like it when shadowy organizations lie and keep secrets from him. Having him willingly head up a covert organization and using his power and influence to subvert other people’s rights is something that flies in the face of his characterization up to now, and any change to his status quo is something that you’re going to have to establish sometime before Phase 2 ends. 
3. Wither the Bruce/Tony bromance?: Tony and Bruce bonded quite a lot during The Avengers, developing a friendship based on their scientific backgrounds. Tony even encouraged Bruce to loosen up a bit (which could be used as a way to guilt Tony into shipping Bruce off). The friendship is to fresh for this kind of betrayal to have any great weight, yet there is enough of a bond there where you’d think Stark would be the one leading the calls for exile.
4. It’s not called Planet Banner or World War Banner: When El Mayimbe justifies the future of the Marvel film franchise being so Hulk focused by noting that Ruffalo was signed to six-films and he wouldn’t be happy with just supporting roles or cameos, I had to laugh. Because if the planned films are in anyway faithful to the comic book stories, Banner will essentially be a supporting character in this narrative. Ruffalo might have less screen time in The Incredible Hulk 2 than he did in The Avengers.
5. The film Hulk isn’t quite as smart as the comic Hulk is: The comic book Hulk’s intelligence fluctuated greatly over the character’s history, ranging from having Banner’s full intelligence to being dumb as dirt. While the Planet Hulk-era comic book Hulk wasn’t a genius, he was smarter than what has been portrayed on screen so far. Can you see the film Hulk being king of anything? Even leading an army?
6. Cost in comparison to return might not be favorable: Granted, the success of The Avengers probably opened up the purse strings a lot, but this series will be costly. And Disney surely remembers the last time it had a movie where a hero from Earth got embroiled in a war on a foreign planet full of CGI creatures. That was John Carter and it didn’t do all that well. Hulk might be more of a known quantity than John Carter, but if it was the concept that kept audiences away from the latter’s film, then Marvel will have a spot of trouble.
7. There are other Hulk stories to tell: El Mayimbe asks who would want to see Hulk fight army guys again. I would. I’m sure a lot of other people would too. Heck, having Banner on the run from authorities was good enough for five years of a TV show, wasn’t it? But even if El Mayimbe is on to something there, that is not the only type of story Hulk is known for. Look at Peter David’s run on the character. There are at least three incarnations of the character that you can work from which seem a more natural progression from what has come before in the film world. Yes, the Planet Hulk story line was successful because comic creators went back to the “hunted monster” well too often, but the film franchise hasn’t gotten to that point yet.
8.  It would make the Avengers franchise repetitive: If this is true, it would mean that each of the three films featured the team taking on a threat from outer space. Granted, this is based on the assumption Thanos will attack Earth in The Avengers 2, but it still is going back to the same well three times. You have to be careful how you sell that to the audience.
9. There was already a Planet Hulk film: In 2010, Lionsgate released an animated adaptation for the Planet Hulk arc on home video. The film stopped before the World War Hulk crossover began, and wasn’t quite as faithful to the original text as the proposed live-action version appears to be, but even with those differences, Marvel will be competing with itself here.
10. Where would this leave the Hulk after this: In the comic books, where a new issue comes out every month, it is easier to progress from a shocking change to the status quo such as this. However, when  films have years between installments, it’s not so easy to work around a character change such as this. The Hulk as he appears could support a long string of sequels. The Hulk after this series of films might not. It could very well take a valuable property off the table for the sake of one big payoff.

These are not insurmountable obstacles to overcome. But it’s all pretty daunting nonetheless. This could be the road that the Marvel Film Franchise is going down, but I don’t think it’s quite the slam dunk that El Mayimbe thinks it is. Logically, it does have a certain logic to it, and would make a good story, but so would a whole lot of other plotlines. We’ll have to see what develops.

Although it was the highest-grossing and one of the most popular films of last year, Marvel Studios’ The Avengers only managed to snag one Academy Award nomination and, unsurprisingly, that was in the visual effects category.

Take a look, then, at the campaign reel that Industrial Light and Magic has put out for voters in the Visual Effects category to review highlighting just some of their work for the film. It’s an interesting behind-the-scenes glimpse at how a number of effects sequences were put together, especially the tour-de-force single tracking shot of all the Avengers fighting as a unit during the Battle of New York at the movie’s climax.