Origin Stories in the Marvel Universe, Moving Forward

Since we all seem to be covering a few comic book themed posts this week, I figured I’d jump in with some thoughts on how I think they handled two new characters in Civil War, and what I think that means for the MCU moving forward. I’m going to do my best to keep this vague and try not to spoil anything too much, just in case you haven’t had a chance to see the movie yet.

We know, just from the trailers, that Captain America: Civil War has the honor of introducing two much anticipated characters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Black Panther and Spider-Man. The latter of the two has been the most talked about, considering the negotiations that had to take place for Disney to take over the character of Spider-Man from Sony. After trying to start two separate franchises based on Spider-Man and not succeeding, a lot of people, myself included, were excited to see what was going to be done with the character by the MCU. Black Panther is not as well-known by the general public (audiences who go to see the Marvel movies without reading the comics), and so his introduction to the MCU is, in a way, starting from scratch.

Captain America: Civil War. Now that’s how you make a movie.

We got to the theater yesterday to see Captain America: Civil War, the newest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Holly recommended I write a review… but then we also saw that a lot of other reviews have already been hitting. Have a few links!

• #REVIEW: Captain America: CIVIL WAR

• CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR: AVENGER AGAINST AVENGER – A SPOILER-LITE REVIEW

• CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR IS LESS A MOVIE, MORE THE BEST SEASON FINALE EVER – A SPOILER-FILLED REACTION

Pretty sure there’s more where those came from… I feel surely I have something to add to the conversation, but I’m also still digesting the movie. I also want to avoid spoilers, since the movie is so newly out… although it’s been out overseas, and made so much money over the weekend you all may have seen it once already.

One thing I can do is refer back to previous posts. Like how I predicted that Civil War would be Captain America 3 because of their comics trajectory after Winter Soldier. Or the whole host of stories that came before the Civil War comics and which make it seem derivative. Or polls like Spider-Man or Team Iron Man versus Team Captain America.

But there’s a main post I want to reflect back on: my reactions to a review about Age of Ultron and how it was killing/not killing the “popcorn movie.”

Julia’s Best of 2015

This is a Comp Geek tradition, but it’s my first year partaking! David and Holly have already done theirs, so now it’s my turn. 2015 went by so fast that I had to Google which movies and video games came out this year because most of the ones I was thinking of came out last year (Interstellar, Dragon Age: Inquisition) and I was incredibly confused…It was a busy, hectic kind of year, but it definitely had some awesome geekness hiding in its folds

Genre and Medium and the “Popcorn Movie” and Age of Ultron

So, back when Avengers: Age of Ultron first came out, I read the following review on Wired:

• Age of Ultron is Proof Marvel is Killing the Popcorn Movie: http://www.wired.com/2015/05/marvel-killing-the-popcorn-movie/

I felt that I wanted to see the movie more than once to really know what I thought of it. Because of the Geek Baby, that second viewing only happened recently. I’ve been mulling over the movie, with posts like this one and like this one.

To sum up reviews of the movie, I think that it was alright but nowhere near as good as the first Avengers. It’s not doing something new and different like the first one did (bringing together how many individual movie franchises), it’s not as excellent a dark trilogy sequel as some of the classics (Empire Strikes Back), and it has Too Much Going On And Being Set Up syndrome (but not as badly as, say, Amazing Spider-Man 2). Do these statements seem fair?

I talked about the first couple of things in my prior posts, so let me just say something here about Too Much Going On And Being Set Up. Some of the most hotly debated scenes from the movie – Thor’s vision quest, the Banner/Natasha “monster” discussion – had extended, deleted scenes. That was really interesting to find on the disc. These scenes that the fans saw as particularly troubling were ones that, apparently, Joss Whedon had trouble with too.

Was it because he was trying to succumb to the all-powerful Marvel plan? Yeah, maybe some. But the two versions of scenes like this show me that Joss did his best to work them into the movie in its final form. Successfully? Eh. Clearly debatable. But the theatrical versions were the ones that he meant for us to see… the scenes of lesser evil?

However, my main purpose here is the review from Wired. It says it was picked up from another site, so it was opinionated enough for syndication. It got me fired up before, but rather than a point-by-point rebuttal or some other Nerd Rage, I want to just address the main point of the article.

This. Re: Age of Ultron

A couple of weeks ago I talked about how the YouTube review shows were starting to hit Avengers: Age of Ultron. Well, we watched the one from Honest Trailers and… yep. That kind of sums it up.

What do you think? Too harsh? Or was it inevitably an impossible movie to make everyone happy and do everything? And did they break Joss Whedon? Let me know what you think in the comments below!