Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America will be Californicatin’

Posted by Mister Hand (misterhand@filmschoolrejects.com) on October 7, 2008

Over on IGN, you can read the news that Marvel has signed an agreement to shoot its next immediate series of superhero flicks at Raleigh Studios in Manhattan Beach, CA. But the big news is not where they’re shooting, but what they’re shooting.

Scheduled for May 7, 2010 is Iron Man 2, which should be awesome, unless everyone associated with the original Iron Man has decided to take up heavy drug use. That same year, in July, Marvel plans to release a Thor movie. As a Marvel fan from way back when, someone who once owned the original Wolverine Limited Edition comics, as well as The Uncanny X-Men nos. 160-256, and still owns the Spider-Man comic that first introduced the Hobgoblin, I can say that every Thor comic I ever bought ultimately wound up in the trash. This is a really stupid hero, in my humble opinion. Okay, maybe he’s not stupid, but I certainly didn’t connect with the guy at all.

The same goes for Captain America. A film called The First Avenger: Captain America is set for release in 2011. Anyone who knows anything about Captain America has heard the arguments pro and con regarding his worth as a comic book hero. I won’t recount them here. I’ve always regarded him as a jingoistic throwback to the Cold War. I was surprised and intrigued, however, when he took the right side of the argument in the recent Marvel Civil War series–a stance that ultimately cost him his life.

This is all set to culminate with an Avengers movie set for July 2011. And that’s what really has me jazzed. As much as I don’t give a damn about Thor and Captain America individually, I always really dug the Avengers comics. I remember reading those books and thinking that Hollywood could never make a movie out of that series–that it was just too cool to ever be captured properly on the big screen. That was during the days of TV’s Incredible Hulk series, which started out strong in its first season as a serious take on a super hero, but eventually devolved into this.

After the Spider-Man and Iron Man movies, however, that’s all changed, and I’m thoroughly optimistic that The Avengers can happen and that it can be stellar. So I’m a happy man today. What we have to watch out for, however, is that Thor movie. If it’s terrible, and there’s a very good chance it could be, The Avengers movie may never see the light of day. Thor played a major role in the comic, and I doubt Marvel will be much interested in pursuing the film without him. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

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