By the Hammer of Comic Book Movies!
So in honor of the February 25th home video release of Thor: The Dark World, here's my wild rant.
-Enjoi
Well comic book worshippers, here we are once again and one wonders just how many new tricks can the typical super hero Blockbuster conjure up since we've seen just about everything a live action big budget film can produce that's believable and not goofy enough for both nerds and mainstream audiences to feed on? The answer is, they can't really do much without re-breaking the mold and in 2013, Marvel Studios continues its Avengers saga, now once again following Thor and just when you may sigh at the thought of yet another CGI-ridden super hero story with lots of comical relief, swift action, big bad villains and beautiful damsels in distress, you can rest assured that Thor: The Dark World tackles all those corners and more leaving us unsurprised, yet also slightly moved, ultimately leaving us with a morbidly sad question in super hero movie mythology: Have we spoiled ourselves already?
First, the actual film:
If you, like me, can't get enough of these Avengers, you're going to have a blast because mere minutes into the film, you're going to forget that this is just another average chapter in an above-average series that hot-wires the seven-year old kid in us avidly munching on our Wheaties watching Saturday morning cartoons as if they were on the brink of being canceled.
Drank.
That's the trick to these Marvel Studios pictures. It's why they're so genius and why they make so much money in the bank. Where Nolan tried to develop a dark, gritty universe that we take seriously, Joss Whedon and the boys at Marvel know just what to throw us in terms of nothing more than fun, colorful entertainment and the fact that all of these movies are interconnected makes us obsessed with piecing together the puzzle (and ultimately leaving us disappointed at the piss-poor TV spin-off Marvel's Agents of Shield! I mean seriously, you're gonna try and play off that Agent Coulson faked his own death to make TV sizzle a little bit? How are you going to explain that to mainstream audiences who never even heard of the show when they go see the next Avengers sequel!? GET IT TOGETHER FOLKS).
All that to say is, the movie nails it in terms of what it attempts to do. It's got the big budget CGI action, it's got the cool characters with very comical dialogue, it's got Natalie Portman and Tom Hiddleston's Loki has never been better. It's everything you could want in a Thor sequel while, in my opinion (don't shoot the messenger), isn't as satisfying as the first round when we watched our Norse god be thrown literally from the heavens into an epic proportion of small town New Mexico hijinks that paid homage to Hercules and Sword in the Stone, for the first time. But hey, that's just me.
Yes, the sequel sets more at stake as all good comic book sequels should do. The characters are more threatened, innocent bystanders are killed whether we shrug or gasp, the villain is bigger and badder
Indeed.
And the cliffhangers or more cliffhanger-er. It's everything we want in a good super sequel but as I initially pointed out, is that really enough?
The movie itself is fine and I look forward to buying it on home video to put with the rest of my Avengers collection in my movie mountain but with all that said, I'm starting to fade a little bit and question comic book movies as a whole... Now, I know I'd have to make a whole separate note in itself to truly analyze my beef with it, but nowadays, there's just so much thrown at us a year it's not only hard to keep up, but it's hard to analyze true quality in a comic book flick anymore that feels fresh or original. And that's nothing against the filmmakers but it's a legitimate concern for the future of comic book movies and the people creating them. Let's examine some facts for a moment, shall we?
X-Men launched the superhero missile deep into the cinematic sky of the year 2000 and there's a reason it's gotten so many sequels.
Like writing off your coolest character, for example -___-
The original movie still holds up today even though it's far from flawless but it's scary to think that the movie came out almost 14 years ago and set the bar really high for comic book movies to follow it's super footsteps. And the reality is, comic book movies have never been the same since (all for the better). Let's face it. There are super heroes before X-Men and super hero movies after X-Men, and the fact that Singer graced the screens with his supers in the rise of the new millenium only makes the super start that much more fitting.
X-Men opened the door for terrific follow up heroes like Sam Raimi's Amazing Spider-Man and not-so terrific follow ups like Ang Lee's not-so-amazing Hulk.
And things got out of hand fast.
I've taken way too many film classes and studied way too many film parallels to society to write in this inferior note here so I'll save the big talk for an essay and leave it at this. What is to come? Where will comic book heroes go from here? The Avengers plan to stay alive for years and years to come. With The Age of Ultron on the way, Guardians of the Galaxy coming very soon, we die hard fans are still waiting for Thanos to make his mark on Tony Stark (rhyme intended). ALL IT TO SAY IS, what will it amount to?
For God's sakes, Man of Steel, a no-brainer, should-be the phenomenal comic book movie to end all comic book movies in light of the Dark Knight (that one wasn't intended... Dammit) but instead had a general consensus of being mediocre at BEST! And that's f**king Superman we're talking about!!!
How numb have we become (I should just write a poem...) to super heroes? These are gods amongst men and they are revolutionizing a golden age of cinema that make their stories finally believable for the live action big screen; it's happening right under our noses and we're STILL too blind to see the beauty of it... Either that or there's just so damn much of it at once that we've become immune to this universe of super cinematic escapism.
Granted, these movies still blow up the box office but what's the future of comic book movies going to look like? Nolan broke the mold by making super heroes seem less campy and Whedon arguably broke the mold again by making super heroes so campy that we can't help but be swept off our feet by the action-comedy formula Joss performs so damn well.
But what's next you may ask? Well, no matter how bland or familiar it may seem, I know I'm excited.
Hell, that's why I write these notes
Now stop texting and go see Thor: The Dark World already.
