OH JOY

[trinityvixen]

He's back!

A large part of me realizes that, if reports from the parties involved and rumors about the production are true, it's a goddamned miracle that Iron Man ended up being so good. They had like nothing scripted, and stuff that was scripted was constantly revised, changed, and added to by just about anyone who had an opinion to offer. So, yeah, Jon Favreau's presence doesn't guarantee greatness, but if someone is capable of pulling good stuff from that creative process, hey, more power to him.

There's some grumbling about how he got re-signed, though. Some people think he played dirty outing the negotiation process on his blog or whatever. I say more transparency is always better in job hunting whether you're a kid out of college or a major Hollywood director. The important thing here is that he was right: the fans balked at the idea of an Iron Man franchise without Favreau. It settles my worries some after they announced a start date before anything else relevant to a sequel. At least I know that Favreau has discussed where the film is going with the cast/crew. So if they only have less than two years to pull a film out of their asses (and is that with taking into account the possible actors' strike?), it's good to know the people involved will at least be familiar with the material.

Comments

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

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.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

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.

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

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

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

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.

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

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.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

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.)

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

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.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

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.

[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".

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

::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.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

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.

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

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

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

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.

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

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.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

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.