My understanding is Marvel is trying really friggin hard to get Spiderman back.
That’s what I was wondering. In my opinion, the Marvel movie universe doesn’t have the depth of characters to sustain a story like this. The civil war aspect isn’t going to work when you’ve only got four or five characters on each side.
They’re also going to be missing Spiderman and Reed Richards, who were two of the main characters in the story.
I have a strong feeling that it’s going to be a Civil War in name only.
BUT, If you take ONLY the bare bones of the storyline, it actually is a very bankable and clever idea.
Iron Man and Cap are on opposing sides, other supers and SHIELD and associated heroes choose sides, certain people die off, and the others are left behind to build something new from the ashes, fight new huge threats, and try to rebuild trust in each other.
So - their most bankable stars are Cap and Iron Man, they just put them both in a movie facing off against each other: supposedly Cap 3. You thought that Team Peeta and Team Gale were irritating from Hunger Games? That’s beans on Team Steve and Team Stark. That movie will make SCADS of cash.
You’ve got aging or irritated stars who want to move on to other things, or have characters who are difficult to work into good money-making movies: now you have a storyline that easily kills them off, shoots them into space, or forces them into retirement/hiding.
You’ve got a stable full of characters in an already-over-full lineup that could be made into new bankable stars: see above where the old guard is gotten rid of and now there is lots of room for the newbies.
You’ve got a whole lot of stories that are running in parallel with the characters in each not doing much (or anything) with each other, but audiences are noticing (the ‘where was Hawkeye’ questions for Cap 2, the long drawn-out procrastination on season one of SHIELD that bored some people into leaving): now with a ‘Civil War’ storyline of sorts, there is a great reason to have them all show up in each others’ films (or be pointedly absent) but still to get back together in mass for Avengers.
I just wouldn’t expect any sort of adherence to anything other than the broadest strokes of the existing Civil War.
Lasciel, I think you have the long and short of it.
It’s not going to be about “reveal your secret identity” most likely. If I had to guess, I would say it would have more to do with “work for the government or else.” Maybe the problem will be solved by the re-legitimization of SHIELD, which will overwatch all the supers, perhaps under the eye of new director Steve Rogers?
Didn’t Iron Man basically turn into a cryptofascist asshole in Civil War? I’m really not sure they’d do that to what’s currently probably their most beloved character…
That’s only because of the moral and intellectual laziness of the writers. Initially, they were supposed to treat the subject in a balanced way, not saying who was right or wrong, and let the reader decide. Then they abruptly decided “fuck that!” and turned well known and beloved characters like Reed Richards and Tony Stark into evil caricatures of themselves to the extent that they later had to retcon most of them as secretly being Skrull agents instead of the actual characters.
Except that Stan Lee doesn’t own the rights to any Marvel characters.
But there’s a major difference in context. In the comic books, the civil war storyline came after Captain America and Iron Man had been around for decades. There was therefore a major impact when we saw them as enemies. But in the movie universe, Captain America and Iron Man have a common history that consists of one movie - and they were arguing for a good portion of that.
It’ll be the same thing with the idea of government registration. In the comic book, it came after decades of seeing these heroes fighting for what they believe in. The government program seemed like a huge betrayal. But in the movie universe, the individual heroes were opposed by the government in their own movies, the Avengers have just been formed and have fought one battle, and superheroes have just barely been given any kind of official recognition. So where’s the impact of having the government turn against them when it’s never really been for them?
I missed this part - what?
EXACTLY. It didn’t make any sense in the comics, but in a movieverse that is already less-than-trustful of supers, Civil War makes perfect sense.
actually - it could work better - since teh government is outright “against” them - forcing them to register becomes similar to modern day issues of “papers please” and privacy, etc… add in some NSA level spying and drones - then you have the supers against the government pretty fast.
Exactly my point that the broad strokes will be there, but none of the context.
For your first point, in movie world, instead of being a terrible loss of friendship/partnership between the two men, it’s perfectly set up to be a deepening divide between two strong-willed alpha males with very different ideas of what is best to do - that’s very strongly set up in Avengers and partially in Cap 2. That’s a perfect surface-level motivation for the movie universe to have, and makes sense with the characters and relationships as they are already shown onscreen.
For your second point, I think that Rik has it pretty close - it won’t be the same issues as in the comic. To be blunt in movie terms the nature of the problem and the relative positions of the characters don’t matter, just that the two men are on opposing sides in the argument. If they’re starting this up from scratch, what’s stopping them from having Steve be on the side of establishing essentially an open and non-secret superhero military branch, and Stark losing his shit that he’d either have to ‘retire’ or work under military chain of command, or be prosecuted/jailed for being a vigilante?
But he appears in all the movies! So even though Stan Lee doesn’t own any character rights, in a way, everyone owns character rights to Stan Lee. Or something.
Well, he missed X-Men: Days of Future Past, but he has appeared in Agents of SHIELD, which should be somewhere in the red circle, though arguably on a tangent by virtue of being a television license, though it is deliberately in the same fictional cinematic universe as the Avengers.
Speaking of which, Nick Fury should really be on the chart in the red circle. He’s certainly a well-enough established comic book character, had his own series and everything.
In the Civil War arc, Hank Pym creates a Thor clone that kills Black Goliath and is basically a good little fascist for the whole series. It’s later revealed that he was one of the numerous superheroes kidnapped by the Skrulls and replaced with Skrull mimics in the Secret Invasion storyline.
Ah, thanks, I didn’t know any of that background. Still, I’m not sure I see the ambiguity being pulled off in a movie, either—those siding with the government, pro-registration etc., will obviously be the bad guys, they always are. The heroes need to stand up against the faceless oppressor, speaking truth to power, and so on.
Poor Falcon. The only black hero to show up in any of the movies. Now here comes Civil War. He’s deader than [del]Bucky[/del] Black Goliath.
Looking at that chart, Spiderman’s made an assload of money for Sony. I’m really sad but it doesn’t look like they’re giving him up, especially not for cheap. If Marvel asks nicely, maybe they’ll sell him back for a billion dollars. Is Spiderman worth that much?
Yes. If Sony asked for only a billion, Marvel would be stupid to say no. The merchandising rights to the movie alone would be worth that much.
I thought everybody in the entire world and most of the other planets in the Marvel universe hated Civil Wars. The comments on Twitter today were corrosive.
I know Marvel made its rep on its characters fighting each other for reasons even Stan could never make convincing, and that’s actually better to watch than fighting a billion faceless aliens. Maybe it could work.
Nah. It’s a horrible idea.