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The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter films?

Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

Gaith said:
It'll be interesting to see if, now that the Avengers are assembling, there'll be any subtle nods to other Marvel heroes. Granted, they can't actually show Spidey, but surely Sony's lawyers wouldn't/couldn't totally flip out if they merely obliquely referenced him in a throwaway line, or if Stark mentioned competition from OsCorp?
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I guess it depends on what specific characters or names are licensed by other film studios.

Not quite the same thing, but there was an episode of the Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes cartoon a few years back in which the FF were tailed for a day by a photographer named Peter Parker (I'm not sure if they used the full name, but that's who it was and how he's credited on IMDb), but there was no indication in the episode that he was anything more than a photographer.

But if there's any other 8-film series that doesn't have a single American character or even reference the US, I'd be intrigued to hear about it. :p
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Well, Star Wars is seven films if you count The Clone Wars... nine if you count those Ewok TV movies... ;)
 
Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

Regarding the Universal Monster cycle (which wouldn't quote for some reason):

Gaith said:
Huh. And those movies really (more or less) made sense alongside each other?
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I don't know. There was a loose continuity between the films, with the monsters usually turning up where we saw them last. GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE WOLF MAN lead right into FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN, which segues into HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, when Dracula joins in, and so on. HOUSE OF DRACULA and ABBOTT & COSTELLO have some continuity glitches, but who says the Marvel crossovers won't have piled up a few inconsistencies by the time they get to AVENGERS IV?

And, really, don't Dracula and the Wolfman go together just as well as, say, Thor and Iron Man?
 
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Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

Christopher said:
Hound of UIster said:
Also SW Christmas Special.
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I'm only counting movies. That was a variety show.
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But STAR WARS was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, so one can hardly expect a reference to America. Harry Potter supposedly take place in contemporary times, so I guess the real question is whether there are any other big blockbusters series set in modern times that pay so little attention to what's going on in America.

Bond comes close sometimes, although he sometimes visits the States or gets a little help from his buddies in the CIA.
 
Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

Gaith said:
Is it just me, or has the ambition of the MCU so far been rather under-appreciated? So far as I know, only one "cinematic universe" has really preceded it - that being the View Askewniverse -
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Why doesn't the Star Trek universe count? Is it because that universe is shared by small-screen TV shows? How about the James Bond movies before the Daniel Craig reboot?

In any case, I'd like to see this Marvel Universe continue on indefinitely. As long as the individual movies also work well on their own, I don't see why they couldn't continue sharing the same continuity for decades to come.
 
Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

Greg Cox said:
But STAR WARS was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, so one can hardly expect a reference to America. Harry Potter supposedly take place in contemporary times, so I guess the real question is whether there are any other big blockbusters series set in modern times that pay so little attention to what's going on in America.

Bond comes close sometimes, although he sometimes visits the States or gets a little help from his buddies in the CIA.
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Nah, Bond is always meeting Leiter, bedding American chicks, fighting American villains, or some combo thereof.

And while Star Wars is indeed set you-know-when-and-where, Luke and Anakin are about as American as one can get in such circumstances.


Argus Skyhawk said:
Why doesn't the Star Trek universe count? Is it because that universe is shared by small-screen TV shows? How about the James Bond movies before the Daniel Craig reboot?
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Trek I don't really count because it's a pretty straight narrative line from TMP to XI, albeit with one big time jump in GEN. In that sense, it's more like one long series a la Potter than a shared cinematic universe, though you're quite right that it's a shared cinematic/television universe.

As for the Bond movies... pretty much any series that follows one protagonist only also doesn't really fit into my understanding of the term "cinematic universe"; again, it's a cinematic series of (since the end of the SPCECTRE days) mostly unconnected stories, with ridiculous inconsistencies in Bond's age.
 
Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

Another reason Trek and Bond don't compare to HP and Marvel is that the first two came out intermittently, planned and produced one film at a time and released only every few years, while HP and the Avengerverse films are the result of systematic master plans with successive films being made back-to-back and released in quick succession.
 
Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

Gaith said:
Trek I don't really count because it's a pretty straight narrative line from TMP to XI, albeit with one big time jump in GEN. In that sense, it's more like one long series a la Potter...
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Okay. In your first post I thought you were also counting Potter as being that type of universe. However, if you're talking about specifically about shared universes like the Marvel studios universe, you're right; Star Trek and James Bond are not quite the same thing.
 
Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

Gaith said:
Trek I don't really count because it's a pretty straight narrative line from TMP to XI, albeit with one big time jump in GEN. In that sense, it's more like one long series a la Potter than a shared cinematic universe, though you're quite right that it's a shared cinematic/television universe.
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So then obviously the Marvel movieverse isn't America's answer to the Potter films, it's a unique thing in its own right (though perhaps not the first because of the Universal horror films). Potter's part of the same category of stories as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings (which will have 5 movies when all's said and done), and other stories told over multiple films.

The better question might be what's the British response to the Marvel movieverse?
 
Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

WTF? This is an odd thread considering that Marvel has been around since before many (any?) of us were born and is showing no signs of fading whereas Potter is over and dead now, as of this final movie. A franchise dies if it can't keep sustaining material indefinitely over time.

I have no interest in the Potter crap, but I've loved Marvel since childhood (although my interest dropped off precipitously post-high-school).

Marvel is more like Star Trek and (possibly, if George continues to do things right) Star Wars, in being an entity that has no foreseeable end in the amount of material - worthwhile and otherwise - it can spew out. And, assuming George has a succession plan, they are also franchises that aren't beholden to any given author but can be created by many different creative teams over time.

Hound of UIster said:
Gaith said:
The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter films?
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No that would be Twilight aka Mormon Housewife Masturbatory Story Porn.
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You're right on target that those two franchises are far more comparable. They really aren't sprawling, open-ended universes that can keep going for decades and transcend the writers who originally created them. I think they'll both fade pretty quickly and be replaced by some other fantasy/supernatural obsession du jour.
 
Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

The Marvel movies work on a totally different scale and target demographic and really can't be compared to Potter.

Marvel movies in general make a nice to good profit and are generally well received with few exceptions but they are niche products, even if the niche has gotten quite large over the last 10 years they still don't appeal to everybody. Go into a big Marvel movie and have a look around at the audience.. mostly male, mostly teenager to mid-late 30s and that's enough for a good buck but it won't launch you into the top 10 most profitable movies ever.

Potter movies appeal to a far wider group of people.. from kids to grandparents and it reflects both in the audience and in the financial success of the movies and books who both regularly have destroyed their competition when released.

Superhero movies are ultra-american (not in the patriotic "Team America - Fuck Yeah" kind of way) in that they are loud, colorful and entertaining 120 minutes with common design elements and everything else that modern western audiences expect from such movies but i never felt they competed intentionally (or unintentionally) against Potter as their focus is so different.
 
Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

What percentage of Marvel movies have actually made a profit? Daredevil, Elektra, and the Punisher flicks have all under-performed....the first Hulk did okay, but didn't it have some crazy high budget? Ghost Rider did only so-so, right? They're not rushing to make FF 3, and then there's....

.....Howard..... ;)

Seriously, though...on the whole, have Marvel movies made enough dough to call them a Really Big Success (TM)?
 
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Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

I though the first couple X-Men and the Raimi Spider-Man movies were huge hits?
 
Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

Temis the Vorta said:
WTF? This is an odd thread considering that Marvel has been around since before many (any?) of us were born and is showing no signs of fading whereas Potter is over and dead now, as of this final movie. A franchise dies if it can't keep sustaining material indefinitely over time.
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He's referring to the film franchises. So, unless Marvel has been making it's unified movie universe before you were born (spoiler: they haven't), you're point is misguided.

Also, the Potter films didn't "die", they concluded. There is a difference. For a film series to "die", that suggests it was run into the ground, critically panned, and/or became unprofitable (see. Star Trek, pre-reboot). Despite your distaste for them, the Potter films were far from that.

JD said:
I though the first couple X-Men and the Raimi Spider-Man movies were huge hits?
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Nah, those were just small time, art house films. No one went to go see them.
 
Re: The Marvel Cinematic Universe: America's answer to the Potter film

Python Trek said:
What percentage of Marvel movies have actually made a profit? Daredevil, Elektra, and the Punisher flicks have all under-performed....the first Hulk did okay, but didn't it have some crazy high budget? Ghost Rider did only so-so, right? They're not rushing to make FF 3, and then there's....

.....Howard..... ;)

Seriously, though...on the whole, have Marvel movies made enough dough to call them a Really Big Success (TM)?
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JD said:
I though the first couple X-Men and the Raimi Spider-Man movies were huge hits?
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Well, the question is, what do we mean when we say "Marvel movies?" We should make a distinction between movies that other studios have produced under license from Marvel Comics -- which includes 100 percent of the movies you two just mentioned -- and movies produced "in-house" by the production company called Marvel Studios, which is what we're referring to when we discuss the Marvel Cinematic Universe (i.e. all the interconnected films leading up to The Avengers). Sony/Columbia has the Spider-Man and Ghost Rider rights, Fox has X-Men, Daredevil/Elektra, and Fantastic Four, Lionsgate has Punisher. The Ang Lee Hulk was from Universal, though Marvel got the rights to the character back. Marvel has also just gotten the rights to Blade back from New Line, which produced the movies to date.

And actually Fox does have Fantastic Four and Daredevil reboots in development. The way these licensing deals work is that the rights revert to the owner if the licensee doesn't use them within a certain amount of time. So it's in the licensees' interest to keep making films based on these characters so that they don't lose the rights. That's why Sony is rebooting Spider-Man so soon after the Raimi films ended.

So since we're talking about different studios here, the success or failure of franchises like Spidey, X-Men, and FF don't necessarily reflect on the profitability of the Marvel Cinematic Universe itself, i.e. Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, The Avengers, and any further sequels or spinoffs to follow. Those films, other than TIH, seem to have performed consistently strongly to date.
 
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