In which I revisit a previously explored topic with fresh eyes and an open mind.
It only took them four years and five "prequels" to pull it off, but in 2012 we finally got Marvel's money shot: an superheroic, cross-franchise team-up that everything up until that point had been doggedly building towards. And today, on Ultron Eve we finally get to answer the question that this entire series has been building towards: was Avengers really that good?
In the wake of the New Mexican incident, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s main concern has been harnessing the limitless power of the Tesseract for the good of mankind. The problem is, however, that that kind of power tends to attract unwanted visitors. When Loki arrives on the scene, he steals the Tesseract and brainwashes top S.H.I.E.L.D. agents into becoming his loyal servants. Fury needs a response team - a collaboration between Earth's mightiest heroes - regardless of whether they actually want to, or can, work together.
Let's get something straight from the get-go. The Avengers is nothing more or less than the apotheosis of blockbusters. It's big, loud, splashy and designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It's a party thrown in its own honor to commemorate somehow managing to tie together four action franchises into a cohesive shared universe: a series of over-long action scenes strung together with the barest semblances of plot.
And yet, when all was said and done, it was unquestionably the best movie of the year. Between Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Tom Hiddleston, it had the most absurdly well-crafted cast that money could buy. With Joss Whedon helming the camera and penning the script, the comic book titans were brought down to our level: throwing out witty quips and intelligent dialog in favor of yet another action scene.
The movie understood what it was: not a heavy-handed treatise on the Human condition, but a light-hearted romp to pass a lazy afternoon with. That is why Joss Whedon was the only man for the job behind the camera. He knew that the heart of the story was the Avengers interacting with one another, not on Loki's invasion of New York. Sure, the invasion was the perfect action set piece to end the film with, but it was hardly what the movie's ultimate success (or failure) was riding on.
Despite its bloated size and unwieldy cast, there's a shocking amount of character development that happens in its 2 1/2 hour run time. We see the weight of time acting on Captain Rogers: how he struggles to come to grips with a world that he sacrificed his life for and yet is entirely alien to him. We watch Thor struggle with his conflicted feelings toward Loki - the love he bears his brother and the hatred that he harbors against his enemy.
We're shown the darkest depths of Banner's soul - how the Hulk incessantly tears at him from the inside to degrees we'd never imagined before. Stark's character arc that began in Iron Man comes to a head when he has to come to terms with a friend's death and the part that he played in it. Natasha, who was given very little in the way of a developed character in Iron Man 2, is fleshed out as a shrewd, calculating and surprisingly vulnerable person. And even if Hawkeye ended up drawing the short straw for screen time, his relationship with Black Widow is developed vividly enough in their few scenes together that most fans were demanding to see the duo's origin story on screen.
Although narratively simple, The Avengers is unquestionably the best possible version of the movie that it was trying to be. It was better shot than it ever deserved to be and better realized than we ever could have reasonably hoped for. With its balance of character and action, it remains the absolute standard of summer blockbusters
Rating: 10/10
Buy on BluRay: Unquestionably
So what did you think of the first Avengers? Was it worth four years and five movies worth of anticipation? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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That’s
right. After five films, two lackluster franchises and over a decade of
exclusive Sony control, everybody’s favorite wall-crawler will finally bereturning home – kind of. Son certainly didn’t give up a multi-billion
dollar franchise without a fight, and the admittedly complicated arrangement
between the two studios keeps Sony in the picture, even if Peter Parker
will now suit up with the other Avengers in future Marvel Studios films.
So what does this deal mean for Marvel moviegoers?
Captain America: Civil Waris the likeliest candidate to include him
in at least somecapacity. Peter Parker played a
monumental role in the comic’s narrative: revealing his secret identity to the
world and having to deal with the fallout of that decision. But while he
will invariably be threaded into that film, it might not be where he is
initially brought into fold.
Since Iron Man, Marvel Studios’ post and mid credit scenes
have just as highly anticipated as the films themselves: filled with in-jokes,
teasers and world-building events that excite everybody from die-hard comic
fans to action fans introduced to the characters through the films. I
wouldn’t be shocked in the least if a quick casting call and some last-minute
reshoots lead to an Age of Ultronpost-credit scene either showing Peter’s
transformation into Spider-Man or presenting him as an already fully formed
hero.
Marvel and Sony will co-produce
future stand-alone Spider-Man films. As expected, Sony isn’t quite ready to
give up on the Spider that lays the golden egg sack. Amy Pascal, the Sony
Producer who oversaw the previous five Spider-Man films, will represent Sony as
a producer on all future Spider-Man films. Kevin Feige, the mastermind
behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will co-produce them, lending his
considerable experience at big screen superheroism to a franchise that has
perplexingly failed to find a lasting place in theaters since 2002.
Sony will have final say over
all things Spider-Man. Although
this is the most saddening addendum to the inter-studio deal, it likely won’t
add up to much when all is said and done. While Son has undeniably
botched their solo efforts with the wall crawler, they have had their share of
success with him as well. They aren’t completely inept, despite what
popular opinion on the matter might be.
But
let’s face it, while the studio has face-saving veto power with the character,
they will in all likelihood take Marvel’s lead in the matter. With Kevin
Feige on board as a producer, and with his genre redefining success with the
MCU, Sony – ever mindful of their dwindling film prospects – will invariably
heed Feige’s suggestions on where to take both the character and the franchise.
Marvel’s Phase 3 is going to
look a lot different than it was shaping up to be. Why exactly does July 28, 2017 ring a bell
to Marvel fans? That’s because it used to be Thor: Ragnarok‘s release date. Thor 3 got moved to November 3rd, which used to
belong to Black Panther. Black Panther, in turn, was delayed until Captain
Marvel’s July 6th date. Captain Marvelwas moved back to The Inhuman’ November 2nd slot and The Inhumanswas pushed back until afterAvengers: Infinity War Part II.
Although some fans will
probably be miffed that they have to wait longer to see Thor smash in Loki’s
face or that there’s now pretty much no chance of the Inhumans showing up in
either Infinity Warinstallment, these changes are pretty
minor in the grand scheme. No film was axed from Phase 3 entirely and no
film was really delayed for all that long.
Marvel
wants to keep to their “3 films per year” plan to keep from oversaturating the
market and spreading their talent too thinly. I for one couldn’t be
happier at their restraint in the matter. It’s far better to do things
slowly and well than to hurriedly rush half-baked films into production
(rememberIron Man 2?).
The Character is going to be rebooted (again).
While no
mention has officially been made of Amazing Spider-Mandirector Marc Webb or current Peter Parker
actor Andrew Garfield, all signs point to them being out of a job.
Neither have ever been especially well embraced by the community at large
and the current franchise would never fit into the MCU as is.
While
some have speculated at the possibility of casting a black actor in the role of
Spider-Man (which is, oddly enough, not entirely without precedent), that
doesn’t seem like it will be the route that the studios will go. In fact,
rumor has it that they’re already looking at Logan Lerman (from thePercy Jacksonfilms) and Dylan O’Brien (from Teen Wolf) to replace Garfield in Spider-Man’s next
big screen appearance. While I would prefer a web-head that wasn’t quite
so tweeny, the writing’s already on the wall that Garfield is out of the
picture.
So do you think about Spider-Man joining the MCU? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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In which I detail upcoming changes to Filmquisition.
This is an exceptionally weird week for me. My work schedule has increasingly changed due to the fact that I now qualify for lead shifts and my training for my third job is coming to a close. This means two things as it pertains to this blog: this week will be a tad more irregular than I would care for, but I should soon be back to a more normal posting schedule.
Everything should be taken care of by the end of the week - including last week's Revisited that I neglected to post - but the dates that their posted might be a bit jumbled. As of right now, I plan on posting two Revisiteds on Thursday (one from last week and one from this week) and two Unreality Companions on Friday (a review of Furious 7 and something for this week's article). Everything else might be shifted around a bit, but should show up by Sunday at the latest.
I'll keep up with my normal posting schedule as much as possible, but some things will naturally have to be pushed back. Starting next week, though, I should be back on track with my usual routine. Absent that extra training and now getting few (but longer) shifts at my day job, I should have a lot more time for posting.
So I apologize for my infrequency this and last week, but know that it's coming to and end and everything's getting back on track. Beyond that, have fun at Age of Ultron this weekend (I know I will) and expect my review to be posted on Monday.
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In which I make the case for film and TV adaptations, sequels and remakes.
You had to have figured that it was only a matter of time before I returned to potential video game adaptations. The medium is a vast and virtually untapped source of any number of movie franchises, shied away from by studios because of how God-awful initial attempts at adapting them panned out. For every somewhat decent Silent Hill or Tombraider, there seem to be a dozen more Super Mario Bros and Resident Evils.
Video games are ripe for adapting right now. There haven't been any especially good adaptations of them yet, and only a scant handful even worth choking down. And while several promising projects dangle just beyond the horizon, it's going to be years before the first of them hits theaters, and years more before studio executives catch on that it was more than just a fluke.
Starting in on a big-screen adaptation now would get the franchise in ahead of the curve. A Metroid movie would face far less competition when it comes out than it likely will in a few years, meaning that it can establish itself as a must-watch franchise long before Halo and Bioshock attempt to do the same
Hell, we're getting an Adam Sandler movie where Pac-Man is a bad guy. Samus has a far larger profile and fan base than a hungry, hungry hockey puck, especially when you consider that video game nostalgia has already shifted away from arcade gaming and into early console gaming (ie, NES and Super NES).
In a day and age where gender representation is becoming a big enough issue that studio executives are actually willing to greenlight a Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel movie, Metroid would fill a specific demographic need. And besides, between the Terminatorand Alien franchises, science fiction has a long history of badass women shooting scary things.
Consider the plot of the first game (thin though it is). A group of alien pirates steal an monstrous-looking bio weapon that is highly intelligent, can reproduce a-sexually, can effortlessly fly and is capable of draining the life force of any living creature within a matter of seconds. While this could play out like a fairly straight-forward action piece, it doesn't take a lot to imagine it as an action-horror film (like either of the aforementioned series to which I compared it to already).
The Space Pirates themselves are already a pretty gruesome sight: equal parts human and reptile, often colored dark green or red, with toothed pincers for hands that can discharge electric bolts. The Metroids themselves are even worse: embryonic spheres with rows of gnashing, over-sized teeth. Going into her mission, Samus is already outnumbered, outgunned and in unfamiliar territory. All you'd have to do is lower the lighting and show her fear and you'd have moments of drawn out tension punctuated with high-end action.
Besides, look at her power armor. It would unquestionably be the coolest piece of cinematic hardware since the Iron Man suit: probably even cooler. Combine that with its wide variety of built-in weapons and Samus' natural combat abilities and you'd have something to write home about.
With action movies increasingly going toward superheroes, a futuristic bounty hunter in deep space would fill a largely unaddressed niche for something different. Sure, Guardians of the Galaxy kind of struck that nerve already, but that's one franchise out of Marvel's current eleven MCU titles, and DC doesn't have anything even remotely similar lined up. The market is wide open for what Metroid would be selling.
In which I report on the latest entertainment news.
With everybody's attention turned decidedly on either Age of Ultron or Dawn of Justice, a lot of X-Men: Apocalypse news has managed to sneak its way under the radar. And that's really a shame, because at virtually any other time, this would have been some pretty exciting stuff. There's the matter of its rapidly expanding cast (which includes series newcomers Jubilee and Psylocke), our first look at the impressive Archangel and, now, our first look at the revamped Nightcrawler.
I'm definitely a lot happier with this rendition of the character than I was with X2's. That other version always seemed too thick for me: where you could pretty much tell that the the actor was wearing a prosthetic to achieve his wildly alien look. I was never unhappy with his appearance - it was, after all, a very good prosthetic - but it was never quite as convincing as I hoped it would be.
It was the same basic issue that I took with the original Mystique, although her constant shapeshifting considerably lessened this effect. This Nightcrawler seems to have taken its visual cues from First Class' Mystique, however, as he is smaller, lither and considerably younger.
That's not to say the the original version was necessarily lacking, just that whatever makeup technology that they were using back then doesn't hold up as well as whatever they're using now, which really shows off the physical abilities of these superhuman characters.
It probably helps that they chose to go with a much brighter shade of Blue, which makes him visually pop in a way that the duller hues of his original version couldn't quite manage. It also shows of his distinctive scars a lot better than the first time around, which further highlights his incredibly distinct appearance.
X-Men: Apocalypse's Archangel
If there's one thing that I dislike about this particular version of the character, it's his emo bangs, but I doubt that it'll bother me too much when I finally get to see him in action. Visually, at least, X-Men: Apocalypse is probably my most anticipated movie to come out in the next couple of years. As long as these reveals keep coming, I see no reason why that should change.
So do you prefer the new version of Nightcrawler, or the old version? Why? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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In which I review a selection of last weekend's entertainment.
As you may already be aware, Ex Machina is a movie that had been on my radar for quite some time. The trailers promised a dark, cerebral sci-fi thriller. The premise was about as trippy as the best of science fiction. Throw in Alexander Garland - the man behind the scripts for 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Dredd - and I knew that I simply had to see it when it hit theaters stateside.
When Caleb is selected for a cutting edge research project, he doesn't know what to expect. Nathan is a programming savant who invented the equivalent of Google when he was still a teenager. But after being flown to Nathan's remote estate, Caleb is informed that over the next week he'll be administering a Turing Test to the world's first artificially intelligent machine. But as he begins his tests, he realizes that nothing is as it seems, and that Nathan has an insidious agenda of his own.
If Oscars were awarded based on the strength of a movie's premise, Ex Machina would unquestionably be this year's best picture. While the dark implications of AI are hardly new, this particular twist on the idea has never been filmed before: somebody testing and giving serious thought to the idea that a machine has the same level of sapience as a human.
When you combine that with Alex Garland's intelligent and stalkingly patient direction, you end up with an exceptionally cerebral, aesthetically measured film. Seriously, if I didn't know any better going into Ex Machina, I would have thought that Alex Garland was an experienced director with decades worth of experience in that regard, rather than a screenwriter tackling is directorial debut.
The film is one of the most methodically staged and paced films that I've seen come out in my lifetime. For Ex Machina, Garland adopts a Kubrickian style of photography, in which every shot has a deliberate, pre-ordained purpose to the film as a whole. While some frustrated movie-goers bemoaned how it it dragged, I never thought that it moved any slower (nor faster) than it needed to.
That's not to say that Ex Machina wasn't without its flaws, just that none of them were visual. Caleb is a poorly fleshed out character, especially when contrasted with the only other human of any narrative importance: Nathan. Nathan was an incredibly interesting, nuanced and unsettling character: the kind of person that looks perfectly fine on the surface but feels all sorts of wrong at his core.
Caleb was given a disproportionate amount of screen time compared to the amount of development he was afforded. While I understand that Garland's focus was always on Ava and the question of her personhood, there were more than enough quiet, isolated moments that could have been repurposed to delving further into his character. Or when Ava reverses the Turing Test on Caleb, she could have probed further into the idea of who he was and the validity of his personhood (like a sci-fi Hannibal Lector).
There was also a moment near the end - involving Ava and an exceedingly minor Human character - that fails to hold up under logical scrutiny. I won't reveal exactly what happens, but the unquestioning ease at which this other character goes along with the situation at face value doesn't make sense. This would have either blown up into a physical confrontation or dissolved with a simple refusal to go along with Ava's request.
While this doesn't diminish what Ex Machina actually was able to accomplish, it does keep it from taking its place among the greater pantheon of science fiction. It's basically a more commercially-minded - and worse - take on Under the Skin with a few painfully obvious script issues. If you can get past the movie's deliberate pacing, its mind-bending premise and its occasional scriptural shortcoming, you owe it to yourself to check out one of the best sci-fi movies to come out in years.
Rating: 7.5/10
Buy on BluRay: Probably not (if only because I have my doubts about its rewatchability)
So what is your favorite cinematic take on artificial intelligence? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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In which I run down the big winners (and losers) at the box office this weekend
As predicted, this week looked a Hell of a lot like last week: with Furious 7 leading the pack, Paul Blart not falling too far behind, and everything else fall in line behind them. Everybody's pretty much just waiting around for Age of Ultron to hit theaters this week, and we just might have an inside look at what that might look like.
Age of Ultron debuted overseas this weekend and its preliminary take is absurd. It took $201 million in 30 countries, most of which constitute relatively small movie markets. It hits stateside on the first, in China about two weeks later and in Japan well after that.
It's undoubtedly going to be a much bigger cash cow than The Avengers was, with some industry insiders predicting that it could make as much as $2 billion in its theatrical run. Theaters are predicting opening-day crowds for three weeks after its actual opening day. It's going to be an absolute monster at the box office.
The Age of Adaline's reasonably impressive take this weekend really shouldn't come as any surprise. The only new release competing against it was Ex Machina, at that had an international release back in January and a much lower profile. Age of Adaline had a somewhat unique premise, a cast that includes Harrison Ford and something that you really don't see every day: a female protagonist.
All the same, I was hoping to pass this one up, since it looks, for lack of a better term, boring. It marketed itself as a second-rate Benjamin Button with a decent enough cast and that's exactly what I expect to find going into it. But Becky wants to see it, so I'm going to have to sit through it at least once. Then again, it may end up surprising me.
Ex Machina was something that I was looking forward to for a while, and something that you can expect a review for later today. It had a trippy premise, a great, understated cast and some real directorial umph behind it in 28 Days Later's screenwriter Alex Garland.
The movie is part of a proud resurgence of challenging and intelligent science fiction to hit theaters in recent years. Between this, Snowpiercer, Predestination and Under the Skin, "serious" sci-fi is alive and well (if still a little obscure). This is the kind of movie that will mess with your head as much as it does its characters, so whether that's the kind of experience you want in a movie will wholly determine how much (or if) you enjoy Ex Machina.
So what movie did you see in theaters this last weekend? Share your thoughts in the comment section below. Join the Filmquisition on Twitter (@Filmquisition) or by subscribing to this blog.
In which I expand upon the content of my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.
This might seem like something of a contradiction given my lingering doubts over Batman vs Superman, but I am still excited for a lot of projects that are coming out of the DCCU. Seriously. They can't all be directed by Zack Snyder, which means that they can't all be over-the-top, needlessly dark versions of DC's pantheon of Superheroes. Murphy's Law dictates that some of these have to feel like they're supposed to feel.
The project that I'm most excited for right now is actually Suicide Squad: DC's companion piece to next year's Dawn of Justice. It features a team of C and D-list supervillains - including Harley Quinn, Deadshot and Captain Boomerang - conscripted by the US government as deniable assets in exchange for reduced prison terms. And no, I'm not joking about this. It's going to be awesome.
But why am I more excited about a no-name property of admittedly low-grade Batman villains than the two titans of DC duking it out for the first time on the big screen? Well, you already know my concerns about Batman vs Superman. It's hilariously too dark (both tonally and aesthetically), it completely ignores the context of the two fighting in the first place (irreconcilable political ideologies between old friends) and absolutely no part of it strikes me as being even half of a Superman movie. It took an awesome premise and seems to be doing nearly everything wrong with it.
Can you guess what part of the trailer actually was awesome though? Every single shot with Batman straight up worked in a way that it never has for Superman, a fact that I was quick to address in my Unreality article:
Ben Affleck has the grim, brooding look of a haunted man trying (and
failing) nightly to somehow undo his parents fate. Jeremy Irons' voice
over as Alfred comes off as the perfect cross between Gotham's Sean Pertwee and Michael's
Caine's "some men want to watch the world burn" speech from The Dark Knight. This may
very well be the best version of the Batman costume ever put to film, and
that's not even touching on how awesome-looking the robotic versionis.
The one thing that DC has always held over Marvel was the absurd quality of their villains. Marvel struggles with their every antagonist: only occasionally hitting one out of the park. DC, however, specializes in them, and no property more than Batman. His rogue gallery is so strong that even D-listers like King Shark and Deadshot are better than most Marvel efforts. This makes Suicide Squad everything that you love about DC with none of the baggage.
Furthermore, the company tapped who is perhaps the perfect director for this exact project: David Ayer. Ayer has made a career of dark, unromanticised, realistically shot action movies. I saw Furyafter he became attached to the project and it did nothing but confirm in every shot and scene why Ayer was perfect for the movie.
Say what you will about how lackluster a movie Focus was, but I got everything out of it that I wanted: confirmation that Margot Robbie (Harley Quinn) and Will Smith (Deadshot) were going to be awesome together. The rest of the movie was a non-issue. These two had an absolutely absurd amount of chemistry together, which given the semi-romantic / sexual nature of their Suicide Squad hookup, was an absolute must for them. I'm not ashamed to admit that I saw this movie solely for the sneak peak into Suicide Squad that it offered.
And let's not forget Jared Leto's Joker. While we admittedly don't have much to go off of, what has been leaked so far has been nothing short of amazing. He might not be quite as edgy and dark as Heath Ledger's take on the character, but it's the perfect marriage of Ledger's galvanic menace and Nicholson's absurd antics: realized in who is possibly the most unquestionably perfect actor for the job.
The icing on the cake is that we already have the perfect template for this movie, which I doubt will be strayed from very far - Batman: Assault on Arkham. If all we get is a live-action remake of that movie, I'll consider myself happy. If it manages to address the few issues that I took with it, however, it's definitely going to be a movie to beat in 2016.
So what movie in the DC Cinematic Universe are you most excited to see? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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In which I predict the big winners (and losers) at the Box Office this weekend.
So now we enter the home stretch before Age of Ultron hits theaters next weekend. Nothing's really planning on changing this weekend, mostly because nobody's stupid enough to release their movie a week before Avengersis going to run away with everything anyway.
So needless to say, Furious 7 will enjoy one last weekend in the number one slot before it falls down a peg or two. As it turns out, I'll be in theaters to help it along that last stretch. Having finally caught up with the rest of the franchise, it's time to check out movie #7.
The "big" new release this weekend is Age of Adaline, which I think that I can safely skip. It's the new, pseudo Benjamin Button "but now with 100% more female" and it looks implausibly boring. Rather than aging in reverse, its protagonist simply stops aging in her prime and then seemingly mopes about it for the next couple of hours.
Also sneaking into theaters this weekend is Ex Machina, which I am especially interested in seeing. It's a dark, cerebral-looking sci-fi / horror movie that questions what sapience really is and what something inhuman would even do with it. The fact that it's written and directed by Alex Garland (of 28 Days Later and Sunshine fame) is simply added reassurance of its awesomeness.
Other than those two, however, there's not much to really talk about. Furious 7 remains king of the hill, the two new releases slide into the top ten somewhere and everything else stays more or less where it was last weekend.
So what movie are you planning on seeing in theaters this weekend? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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In which I address online news, web content and trending issues.
So I was all set to review the latest episode of Really that Good when I came across a Cracked video that I knew that I just had to address. I figured that I'd already reviewed Die Hard itself this week, so my core thoughts on the matter were already out there. Besides, this was something that I knew that I had to get out ASAP.
As much as I've always loved Cracked's highly addictive articles, I've always felt that their video content was vastly more substantive. Sure, they lost a lot of humor in the medium shift, but they addressed current entertainment issues with a great deal more analysis than the printed content of the site. When it comes to this particular episode, however, I can't help but feel that they're entirely off base.
The issue that they address isn't so much the speed at which the MCU is expanding, but the medium-spanning growth of phase 2. The MCU isn't just about the movies anymore: it's about TV series, one-shots and original Netflix series. They're not upset about the fact that we have far more franchises than the four that made up phase 1, but that in order to stay up to date on everything you need access to theaters (for the movies), DVDs / BluRays (for the one-shots), ABC (for Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter) and Netflix (for Daredevil, Iron Fist, AKA Jessca Jones, Luke Cage and The Defenders). You can't simply coast by anymore on the latest sequel to Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thorand Captain America anymore.
But is this really a problem? The one-shots, while awesome, don't really do a whole lot of substantive world-building. They're fun little throwaways like Coulson thwarting a gas station robbery in New Mexico or the World Security Council's failed attempts to recruit The Abomination for the Avengers. The only one that ever had any larger implications to the MCU was "All Hail the King," and that was made to appease piss-off Iron Man fans who hated the Mandarin twist in Iron Man 3. Besides, five shorts weighed against 12 films - most of which are available on YouTube - doesn't really amount to much of a barrier to entry.
The TV series are even less of an issue than the one-shots. They do more peripheral world-building than anything: developing events or characters introduced in the movies in ways that rarely circle back to cinematic importance. When Thor fought Malaketh in London, the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. were the ones that cleaned it up. In the aftermath of the Dark Elves' assault on Asgard, Lady Siff had to recapture an escaped Asgardian prisoner that fled to Earth. Agent Jasper Sitwell, who appeared in both Thor and The Winter Soldier, developed as a key player within S.H.I.E.L.D. before finally being ousted as a Hydra agent.
I'm not saying that there won't be major blow back from the series in the future, just that there hasn't been any yet. Coulson's continued existence will undoubtedly be revealed by the end of Phase 3, and key characters from the series have been revealed to be the Inhumans. But do you honestly think that Marvel will just sit back and hope that everybody shelling out money for tickets has already seen the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and not need to explain anything to anyone?
The answer that you're looking for it "no." These will be addressed in the movies in due time, but they'll need to be explained to the characters as much as they'll need to be explained to the audience. Coulson being alive will be as world-shaking of a revelation as Fury being alive, and they seemed to handle that reveal just fine. I can assure you that you will never be required to watch a TV series in order to follow what's happening in the latest movie.
The Netflix series are probably the most problematic expansion to the MCU, by which I simply mean that you need to subscribe to Netflix to get it. Really, though, is that honestly any worse than shelling out money to buy a movie ticket or going to ABC's website to get the latest episode of Agents of SHIELD? The majority of MCU fans have access to the streaming service (either through family, through friends or simply because they pay for it) and its hardly an expensive or a narrowly wrought service.
And if Daredevil is any indication, then just like the televised series, they build upon what the movies already establish and not the other way around. If there is a crossover with one of the movies (such as Kingpin squaring off against Spider-Man), then I have every confidence that the movie will take the necessary time to explain his presence to the audience in the same way that somebody's going to have to clue Spidey into exactly who this guy is that he's fighting.
When all is said and done, I cannot endorse the idea that Marvel's developing its cinematic franchises too quickly. The movies are still the core of their business model, they've just found other markets to exploit with their branding. They've proven that they're "big enough to go small:" that they are confident and skilled enough in their properties to make use of less movie-friendly heroes in mediums that highlight their strengths. And even if you just stick to the movies, you're not going to be missing out of anything that you're likely to care about.
So how do you think that Marvel's non-movie franchises measure up against their cinematic ones? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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