Once upon a time, there were two comic book companies who
turned their comic properties into movies.
Both had stables of well-known and much-loved characters, and both had
giant reserves of creative talent at the ready to do their bidding.
One company was called D.*. Comics (name partially obscured
to protect their identity), and they decided to take a character that was known
by most of the planet and attempt to make a fast-paced space adventure to
launch a series of movies. The other,
called Marvel (name not hidden because they don’t need to hide in shame),
decided to make a space adventure movie as well, but based it on a series of
characters not well known outside of your typical comic shop patron.
Now the trailer for GOTG is out there and I couldn't be more excited.
Flash back to 2011 when DC began showing trailers for Green
Lantern, and they looked OK. The flashy
costume grew on us and the constructs looked cool. This had the potential to launch an awesome
series of DC space movies starring the Green Lantern Corps. Then the movie came out….and it was a massive
disappointment to fans. The studio didn't
have enough faith in the movie to stretch out the story over a few films in
order to avoid the cramped mess that happened (mostly on Earth, by the way and
not much space….for a space cop).
My rants on what Green Lantern should have been are now legendary
and most of my friends can repeat them verbatim so I’ll save it here, but DC
killed the opportunity for any further GL movies.
Go forward in time a few years, and Marvel decides to take a
HUGE risk and announce a Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Now, even some comic book fans are saying “Who?”
because this is a group of not very well known characters even inside the comics
scene. Personally, I hadn't read any of
the GOTG books until they announced the possibility of a movie.
When I say HUGE risk, I mean it. This is more of a risk than when Marvel
announced they were making an Iron Man movie.
Most of us don’t recall that before the 2008 Robert Downey, Jr. movie, Iron Man was not the
massive marketing darling that he is today.
With GOTG, Marvel is banking on 5 generally unknown characters
(including a 7-foot tall tree guy and a talking raccoon) to kick off a
potential new area of the Marvel Cinematic Universe…..Marvel Cosmic as it is
called in the books.
So, last night the full trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy
premiered, after the now obligatory trailer for the trailer which is honestly
an annoying new trend….just show us the whole thing. Luckily it posted online before I was forced
to sit through any length of Jimmy Kimmel, so I watched it…….and watched it….and
watched it again.
It looks incredibly fun, right?? Something that Marvel has excelled at is
making their superhero action movies fun and injecting humor, a talent that DC
has yet to master (no, Batman saying in his Batman voice to himself “So that’s what that feels like”
doesn't count as humor).
The characters look great and Chris Pratt seems like he will
be a solid Star Lord. He definitely
dominates the trailer but we get sneak peeks of Nebula, Ronan, the Nova Corps,
and the Collector as well. Spaceships
and aliens and battles and Marvel characters are all over this teaser and it
has a massive scale that, I hope, stays in space and maybe only comes to Earth
for a flashback or two.
The movie has a Firefly-esque tone to it where space is not
the gleaming high-tech utopia of older sci-fi movies, but a dirty and gritty
place of danger and many different alien species interacting with each
other. The humor is definitely going to
be there, just as it was in the Abnett and Lanning run of the comics, and that
is welcome in my opinion. These movies
should be about fun and adventure, a concept that DC has yet to grasp with
their films.
With every announcement about the Superman / Batman movie I
become less interested, but with every Marvel announcement I become more and
more intrigued with where they’ll take the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
This trailer also shows the potential of the Marvel Cosmic
section of their characters. If this
succeeds, could we see a Nova movie that could be what Green Lantern should
have been? Could we see Quasar and the
Kree and Mar-Vell? How about if they all
tied together eventually into an adaptation of the Conquest storyline? If GOTG performs well, it’s a whole new door
opened for Marvel.
Guardians of the Galaxy has just topped my list of Most
Anticipated Movies for 2014, taking over from Captain America : The Winter Soldier which
is now a very close second. Marvel
continues their amazing run of comic book movies that is leaving the other
companies in their dust and, in my opinion they have yet to take a bad
step. Ten years ago, we would have
laughed at the concept of a cohesive cinematic comic book universe such as
this, and Marvel keeps this train moving at a speed that has fans excited and
that excitement is pulling in the mainstream viewer at the same time.
Will there be a falling out eventually? It seems inevitable, but until then DC can
play catch up all they like. To use a
metaphor from the automotive world (my other fascination), Marvel is screaming
around the track in a Formula One car that is running perfectly and DC is in a
twenty year old Corvette that keeps breaking down and they have to fix it every
other lap.
August can’t come soon enough, and I will definitely be
there for a midnight screening of GOTG.
- Jason
1 comment:
Amen, brother.
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