Ok, whatever, It may be my opinion, and the opinion of almost anyone I meet. It might also be shared by a majority of critics on Rotten tomatoes that I've read, various blogs by genre fans I've visited. Hardly accurate sources, and I haven't conducted any scientific surveys or recorded statistics, - and my opinion certainly colors things, but I'm just stating what I see.
Well, if advance opinions on the Internet reflected reality, then every movie ever made would be a disaster. Remember how much people complained about the idea of Heath Ledger playing the Joker, until they actually saw the footage?
People use the Internet to gripe and complain and express doubt. It's just noise until the actual films arrive. As long as studios keep making
good superhero movies, I think people will still go to see them, no matter how much they complain in advance.
I would not be surprised if ASM has mediocre box office reception.
I hope not. I really like what I'm seeing in the trailers, and I feel this new interpretation of Spidey has the potential to be at least as good as Raimi's, and also very different.
I think Marvel's strategy, the way they built it up (not to mention good casting) was what made Avengers so successful.
No, that laid the foundations, but that alone wasn't nearly enough. Sure, all that built up a ton of buzz about the film, but if the film hadn't actually been good enough to live up to those heightened expectations, then the result would've been a fierce backlash. The fact that it's such a huge hit even now, weeks after its premiere, shows that it actually
was good enough to live up to -- and even exceed -- the hype. It is completely misguided to say that the film's own quality had nothing to do with its success.
And on the subject of casting... Scarlett Johanssen was rather disappointing in
Iron Man 2, impressing with her looks but dragging the film down every time she delivered a line of dialogue. And yet in
The Avengers she's one of the most central players and gives one of the best-received, richest performances. And that's because Joss Whedon knows how to write rich, complex heroines and how to bring out the best in actors. The script and the direction made all the difference.
It also felt like a comic book on screen dispensing with the things people didn't want really see again (romance plots, origin stories)
I liked the way that romance
was present but was treated matter-of-factly as a part of life. You had Tony and Pepper's relationship, and you had Coulson chatting with them about his cellist girlfriend just as background texture (which then took on a poignant dimension). And you had the implicit, unvoiced romance between Widow and Hawkeye, two hard, detached people who would only really tend to show emotion in subtle ways.
But they just will keep going to that well again and again. It will run dry.
What "well," really? Movies about colorful heroes fighting bad guys? Has Hollywood ever
stopped making movies like that? Sure, this particular breed of heroes wear costumes and have superpowers, but that's superficial. People like to see action-adventure movies with heroes and villains, and superhero comics are a natural source for that.
And it's not like they're only telling one kind of story.
Thor is high fantasy,
Captain America was a WWII epic, the Nolan Batfilms are gritty crime dramas (although he's saying
The Dark Knight Rises is a historical epic in the mold of
Doctor Zhivago or a Fritz Lang film),
Green Lantern is (potentially) grand space opera, etc. There's plenty of variety, plenty of directions to take it.