The Rabbit Hole

Dont be so sure about this project going ahead, certainly not at anything close to that time, since it would clash rather horrible with The Avengers, due out what, a month or two after that?
Which I believe RDJ is also on board for.

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Even if you had your dates right, the whole point is synergy. If the films had been scheduled that close, that would be the point.

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It would have had to have been very very rushed to get two decent movies out by 2010...

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But he's right: the strategy Marvel is employing here relies on synergy. It's probably how come The Incredible Hulk did as well as it did: they bribed themselves an audience with a promise of 90 more seconds of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. That's how they sold their comics back in the day (and still do!) and became successful--they forced people with an interest in one hero to consume other hero titles to get all of their personal hero's action. And, by cross-exposure, people picked up new comics and heroes.

With movies, you have to put them close together so the narrative and background isn't lost. With The Avengers, it's especially important because they haven't got the exposure these days that other Marvel characters have. I'd say their roster is certainly less famous than the DC equivalent with the Justice League. You'd be hard-pressed to find a person on the street who could tell you who (before the movie) Iron Man was. (Whereas everyone and their mother knows Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman--hell, even Aquaman has more cultural penetration than Captain freakin' America, thanks Entourage.)

There's a good chance you'll get market saturation and exhaustion with too many titles crowding the box office. Generating interest in movies is different than generating interest in comics. Comics can be redundant and are expected to be because they're cheap. Movies are goddamned expensive and we complain about how derivative they are all the friggin' time. In fact, though reviews for Iron Man were overwhelmingly favorable, there was still a sense of weariness over the hero-origin cliches and noticeable benchmarks. Marvel has a better chance of generating interest if they flood the market with their product and keep it in the short, short, short-term cultural memory, but too much and it bites them in the ass.

A year. Who knows? That might be long enough. Only time will tell.

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Lol, true on Hulk bribery.
Pity they cut out the scne with Cap America in that movie, that could have been a few more people watching.

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There was supposed to be a Captain America scene? How have I not heard about this? I mean, I heard about the flash of the Cap's shield in Iron Man but not about the Hulk scene.

To be fair, The Incredible Hulk was entirely decent. It's melodramatic in parts, sure, but that's the character. I STILL think Ed Norton is a weird goddamned choice for Bruce Banner, but he's also oddly perfect in that he a) can look excessively bookish and scientist-y, and b) is convincingly menacing when he tells you that you really, really don't want to fuck with his shit. (If you've seen anything where he's playing to type as a crazy bugger, you know better than to cross Ed Norton. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.)

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Hulk was actually done quite well. It wouldn't have needed iron man to help float it if it didn't have the other hulk moving pulling it down.
Ed Norton did indeed do a good job of this Hulk

As to Cap A.
There was originally meant to be a scene where Banner wanted to commit suicide, but of course anything that got his heart-rate up is BAD. So he decided to pay a trip to the Arctic, and let himself die of exposure.
While there, he meets up with Cap A.

Thats the extent of the info that I have on it.

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Yeah, The Hulk dragged down the prospects of The Incredible Hulk, but it may have helped, too, since anything better than that wouldn't have to be too much better to do better by critics et al.

I like the integration of the plotlines by having Banner research the super serum better. For one thing, it makes a certain kind of twisted sense for the government to dust off a failed project and pump more money into it. It also collapses the number of improbable science incidents into just the one program as opposed to the serum and the gamma ray project.

And it sets up the Captain's return from god-knows-where. I assume they're still going with the WWII hero-frozen-in-time story, given that they've introduced the super serum as being an old project. It would tie neatly with how the serum doesn't change people's personalities, but the success or failure does depend on personality. Boy Scout Steve Rogers = win. Shady Merc Emil Blonksy = not so much.

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avram

Remember the scene where General Ross pulls a sheet of plastic off some old equipment? There was a little plaque on the machine saying "Weapon Plus".

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::nods:: I do remember that. I really loved the super serum mention in The Incredible Hulk. The way it was brought up by Ross is so indifferent, it makes it totally real. I guess it is easier to believe the government might have worked on such a thing when you've already heard they tried to make a homosexuality-inducing bomb.

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The biggest foreseeable hurdle now is an actors' strike and conflicts of schedules resulting from that and from the other actors' commitments. (Not RDJ--he signed on for at least one sequel, and it thereby takes precedence or else Marvel sues.)

But two years is a really, really short time to generate quality material. That's why I'm glad Favreau is back because his creative energy and rapport with writers and cast is why the willy-nilly scripting process actually ended up working for Iron Man instead of against it. You could tell that all involved were having a damned fun time. Shoving different (not necessarily, automatically worse) talent in that slot would shake up the production possibly beyond its ability to find its footing in so short a time. With the same people working towards what they, reportedly, already had thoughts about doing for a sequel, I trust that streamlining makes a decent sequel much more likely than if there was a new person in the director's chair.

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Yeah, loose scripting, yielding more ad-libbing in Iron Man really worked well.

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But it a fairly impossible thing to get right. And to get right twice is more than a little improbable. However, when you get the mix right of personalities contributing, it can be repeated to great success. When you rely on personality cohesion to carry your story, well, it fucks things up major if you destroy that cohesion. Favreau being in means that there's not someone missing while someone else is trying to butt in. This can only mean better things.

Most other times, though, I'd run in horror from movies with the kind of scripting process they had on Iron Man. Many writers, rewrites from anyone with an interest in making one, rewrites/shoots of scenes on the day and days, weeks later? That sounds like a disaster in the making. But Iron Man was a hit, so it's the exception that proves the rule, I guess.

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Dont forget RDJ ad-libbing half his lines anyways.

The bonus of loose scripting is that it removes things like "George Lucas Syndrome" from the script. If 40 people can revise your script afte you write, then the stupid fucked up, out of character shithouse bits have that much more chance of being thrown out.

Still, yes, it's a damned hard thing to get even remotely right.

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RDJ's ad-libs are fucking brilliant, but it takes confidence in yourself and the people around you to mess around with that. And Favreau was clearly game and encouraging because RDJ has a funny goddamned sense of humor. (He doesn't come off as very smart in interviews, but he's definitely funny.) A good director pulls great talent out of his actors, and Favreau did. (Even if all he did was get out of the way while RDJ cut loose.)

Don't forget that too many cooks spoil the sauce most of the time--the more people with opinions on how a thing should be, the easier it is to pull so far in every direction that it shatters. I mean, you go out to a restaurant, and maybe, if it's just two people, you get two different meals. But you get 20? Yeah, I don't see a lot of people with the same thing on their plate. Same idea with the writing. In this case, I think time more than numbers helped with the revising. It's like how Pixar movies are always awesome--they spend so many goddamned years on each movie that they're going to know when a thing works or not if it's still working three years later.

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Wait, repraise that. Avengers is now set for 2011, not 2010

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Yeah, and that's even a rush since it's assuming they'll get a Captain America movie off the ground and make it a major success before 2011. And Thor, too, apparently. I wonder if they'll get Wolverine back from Fox to do him in the Avengers. All signs point to: not in your life, bub.

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Well, theres what?
Iron Man 2 (apparently). 2010
Captain America 2011
Thor 20??
Giant Man/Ant Man 20??
The Avengers 2011 (scheduled to release 1-2 months after CA)

Thats a pretty full schedule.
On the other hand, wouldn't surprise me if they squeeze in bits of filming of Avengers while the rest are filming.

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Part of the scheduling is pragmatic. The lesson of Lord of the Rings has been learned: get your talent together all at once, cut down on the expense of just about everything. (Not to mention you avoid scheduling problems down the road.) Yeah, it's still rushed-seeming, but the benefits are tangible. Plus, being able to cross-over characters as the movies are being shot is a bonus; it makes all the movies, including ones that aren't out or are only being produced seem current. And if there's one thing you want your picture to be it's current.

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Since Marvel is calling its own shots now, I don't think it's up to Fox. I mean, Fox doesn't own the Wolverine character, so what can they do?

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Ah ah ah, you forget how these things work. Sony, recently, purchased the rights to produce Spider-Man movies for another yay-many years. Studios tend to do that when they have what they think is a hot property. This is how come Spider-Man languished in development hell for so long--every time someone wanted to make it, it seems, it was held hostage by another studio.

Now, I know Fox did the X-Men movies, and I'm not sure if that means they're also doing the Wolverine movie that's shooting now, but it does mean that they and whoever is doing that movie have the rights to that character onscreen. Marvel can put out as many TV shows and comics as it likes, but when you sign on to put your character in a movie, the company that bought the rights has them for a while.

It's been, what, three years since X3? Entirely possible that the rights are up for grabs and that Marvel, knowing it was pushing forward its own studio in that time, worked out some kind of deal to get back its characters, but given the deal Sony worked out to keep Spider-Man, I doubt it. In which case, Marvel will have to deal with whoever's got Wolverine if they want him for an Avengers movie.

Honestly, they might be better off not having him. I don't know that Hugh Jackman is going to keep up with that role (though since he's doing a spin-off, maybe it's his franchise and he does want it). And putting someone else into his place would be a laughable failure unless they were really good and Hugh Jackman's movie, I dunno, disappeared into the ether. It's going to take some time before he disappears entirely from that role such that anyone can take it over and not just be endlessly compared to him.

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If Marvel gained traction, they may have altered the deal, licensing all Marvel names and characters to Fox for the extent of the "Wolverine" movie, retaining the rights to do whatever they want with the character.

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Entirely possible, but I'm not sure that it's so given that an equally profitable property (Spider-Man) was just extended. I dunno. It will be interesting to see.

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Actually, only one person thinks that Favreau is "an asshole", and that's Nikke Finke. And Nikke Finke has proven that she is a pretty big idiot, so whatever.

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I'm sure she's not alone, though, yes, that's where I'm referencing it. I'm sure that the Marvel guy who's been dicking around on Favreau is in her corner.

There is something bad about employees bad-mouthing a business online, especially when names and exact grievances are aired. However, Favreau isn't a typical employee and he wasn't even employed at the time. Negotiations weren't closed, so he's free to tell as many or as few people as he likes. The risk is that bad-mouthing the boss will make the boss hostile towards indulging him. In this case, the benefit outweighed the risk because Favreau was right about deserving better. And when I say he was "right," I mean the people who will eventually generate all the profit from the movie--the audience--said he was. Don't piss off the audience, man. They will fuck your shit up.

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ACTUALLY the extent of what Favreau said was "they're announcing all this stuff but I've only had one phone call with them" and that was it. He left it all up to implication. Other websites put the story together, even the part about Favreau wanting a raise; Favreau never badmouthed anyone at Marvel or Marvel itself at all. That's why Nikke Finke is wrong, and stupid.

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Among other reasons...

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hslayer.livejournal.com

How bad is it that when I saw you link to SuperHeroHype with the text "He's back!" I thought you meant Heath Ledger?

It's probably getting to be time to grind down my horns again....

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