Fine lines are in overabundance: good and evil, clever and stupid, love and hate.
As distressing as it is to see people walking around with incompatible opinions, it’s equally distressing to never explore the depths of such differences. Much like how a superhero needs a supervillain, there’s a great need for “lovers” to absorb a little vitriol, for “haters” to get a little sunshine.
Each week, Sebastian Torrelio and Tony Huang take sides on a new topic varying across the realms of entertainment. In a pros-and-cons battle of the columnists, most of the spitefulness (and Facebook message bashing) is set aside for the benefit of pop-culturing the masses.
This week, they agree to disagree on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which currently has six movies in various stages of production, leading up to another gathering of the Avengers. Six. Due to the massive success of its franchise, which culminated in “The Avengers,” the comic-book universe grows ever more intricate, for better or worse – Torrelio argues better, and Huang emphatically disagrees.
Shawarma’s no good without friends. And the Marvel Cinematic Universe, now the fifth-highest grossing film franchise of all time, has plenty of friends to go around.
Since 2008, Marvel Studios has released six critically and commercially successful movies under this franchise, the most recent of which, “The Avengers,” became the highest-grossing movie of all time, aside from those directed by perpetual “king of the world” James Cameron. The additional six planned for release start with “Iron Man 3” in May.
As a child who was cultured enough to read comic books, unlike my colleague, superheroes satisfied the inner fantasies that other forms of media couldn’t. Sometimes it was a collection of new Captain America stories. Sometimes it was reruns of “Batman: The Animated Series.” All of it was a hyperbolically written spectacle.
One thing that comics have a talent for is twining all their stories together. Crossovers allow fans of any individual superhero story to feel satisfyingly connected to a bigger picture. And what’s cooler than having Spider-Man intervene in a fight to help Wolverine? Nothing, that’s what.
Nick Fury’s cameo at the end of “Iron Man” remains one of my favorite after-credits scenes of all time. Seeing a character straight out of the history (comic) books make a surprise appearance that foreshadowed so much to come couldn’t have gotten much better if Samuel L. Jackson had pulled out a handgun and began citing the Bible.
Marvel has found a film scheme so brilliant that even DC Comics, still undergoing talks to make a Justice League film, is trying to cash in on it. It may seem like a lot of films to take in at one time. But if it means a more rewarding experience when the Avengers re-assemble a couple years from now, count me in.
Email Torrelio at storrelio@media.ucla.edu if you’re on the “love” side.
Nick Fury, I cordially invite you to get out of my movie.
Don’t get me wrong, I mostly enjoy the Marvel superhero movies, and even have enough room in my admittedly inhospitable heart to love “Iron Man” unreservedly. But the phenomenon of awkwardly tying movies together for a big box-office finish comes off to me less like intelligent filmmaking and more like an especially bad game of Tetris where none of the pieces fit together.
Take “Thor,” whose mythology is most explicitly expanded upon in “The Avengers.” We’ve got the one agent dude who – spoiler alert for the untainted masses – dies, the Tesseract that drives the plot of “The Avengers” showing up for a cameo, and oh hey, how’s it going Jeremy Renner, showing up for one scene to distract everybody with your outdated weaponry. None of the fan service links to “The Avengers” improves “Thor” in any way, and in fact detract from the movie, making it sillier than it is already. They distract and pull focus away and, most irritatingly, disrupt the escapism – “This is a movie! A movie that is tied to other movies!”
It’s the same shtick for every one of the links – it transforms perfectly entertaining popcorn flicks into feature-length trailers for the “real thing.” “Iron Man 2” was derailed into the next universe by Nick Fury. “Captain America: The First Avenger” had its main storyline cheapened by the reveal. It would be better if the result was worth it, but I guess I should confess, and please don’t kill me, I found “The Avengers” good but not really mind-blowing. Just perfectly fine – and the moviegoers from my small comic book-geek-deprived town seemed to agree.
I’m still curious to see how the future will pan out for this ambitious linkage. But for a non-fan like myself, I want good movies, not annoying fanfiction.
Email Huang at thuang@media.ucla.edu if you’re on the “hate” side.