CAPTAIN AMERICA BIRTHDAY |
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CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER Cinema Birthday
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER 2002 - 1998's BLADE (New Line Cinema) was a smash hit. 2000's X-MEN (20th Century Fox) was a smash hit. 2002's SPIDER-MAN (Columbia Pictures/Sony) was a smash hit. 2002 was the same year that BLADE II came out and it was a bigger hit than the first BLADE. Suddenly Marvel had something they never had in their entire history: Two hit Marvel movies in the same year! The cinema age of Marvel was born and it needed to be nurtured. The guiding light of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee, had a vision of a massive motion picture undertaking that would revolutionize cinema. It would bring all of his heroes under one tent, sharing the same universe. Except that he was out of his most popular heroes. They were all locked into their various studios who saw no need to cooperate with each other on a risky venture that had more to lose than it had to gain. And what Stan did have? The Avengers was a poor selling group that was doing little (IRON MAN) to nothing (CAPTAIN AMERICA, THOR) in comics and nobody wanted them. It was all Stan had to work with so this is what he would refashion into... The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)! To make it happen, he needed to start with the most desirable of the least desired properties, HULK.
"It's Spidey and Hulk standing atop Mount Marvel." Unfortunately, not everyone within the Marvel circle was onboard. Those who were ready to give it a cinema shot had their own ideas, "better" ideas, and since they found the money, they were going to be the producers. They were younger! They were with it! They weren't old! So 2003's HULK (Universal Pictures), was directed by, of all people, Ang Lee: a man who directed small and successful romantic dramas enriched with captivating cgi ballet (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Ang had no desire to make superhero movies. Lee also had no desire to turn off the firehose of money Universal was spraying at him if he would only make a freaking superhero movie. So Ang Lee directed, Marvel fans saw it, rightly thought WTF?!?, and for a movie budget around $137 million, it lost money even after global receipts were in. To this day HULK is considered Ang Lee's worst movie. Yet it is, in all ways, an Ang Lee movie. He gave the studio exactly what they paid for: A movie that Ang Lee would make. When you pay for a Paul Schrader movie, you really can't complain when he delivers a Paul Schrader movie instead of a Tim Burton movie. But studios have before and will again. That was it then. Blaming everyone but themselves, Universal and HULK producers decided there was no point in pursuing another HULK movie for at least a decade. DAREDEVIL (20th Century Fox) came out that same year in the Dump Month of February and it too tanked badly, as if presaging the stumble of the summer (June 20) release of HULK. Despite the flops, they didn't wipe out Marvel. X2: X-MEN UNITED came out the same year and was a bigger smash hit than the first! Marvel wasn't washed up yet. Stan went off in search of True Believers (besides Feige), found them, they found the investors, raised over half a billion (no small feat!) and THE INCREDIBLE HULK with new actors got the greenlight along with IRON MAN. The money is in escrow, now let's spend it! Good thing too. While THE INCREDIBLE HULK and IRON MAN were in pre-production and production, BLADE TRINITY was released in 2004 and took a face-first nose-dive into the pavement. ELEKTRA (20th Century Fox) crashed and burned in the Dump Month of January, 2005 and so did the summer release of THE FANTASTIC FOUR (20th Century Fox). To add insult to injury, 20th Century Fox replaced X-MEN director Bryan Singer with, of all people, Brett Ratner (RED DRAGON), who made one of the most reviled X-MEN movies with the 2006 release of X-MEN 3: THE LAST STAND. 20th Century Fox followed that up with their biggest flop, 2007's FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER. It looked to fans like 20th Century Fox was aggressively focused on wiping out any value Marvel could possibly have. Which to Marvel fans meant that 20th Century Fox viewed them with contempt. Combined with their ALIEN and Star Wars Phantom Menace disasters, 20th Century Fox's best days and best franchises were behind it forever. Fox would never rise again.Also in 2007, Sam Raimi's work on SPIDER-MAN petered out (you see what I did there?) with SPIDER-MAN 3. In the face of so much failure, overwhelmingly created by 20th Century Fox, Critics openly believed that Superhero movies were over before Stan had a chance to begin. Up to that point, Marvel movies were being made without his creative input, beyond the studios merely throwing him cameo bones - per contract. Then word got out that problems and fighting on top of fighting plagued production on THE INCREDIBLE HULK. It seems that, despite the poor start with the first one, the endless fighting with the producers of the original - who still owned the rights and, on the surface appeared to not want a successful second HULK - plus the director favoring what Dr. Bruce Banner star Ed Norton wanted over what Stan Lee wanted, and Norton further trying to torpedo the movie for no better reason than a personal snit... EXCELSIOR!
Miracle of Miracles, 2008's THE INCREDIBLE HULK was a modest hit! Not by much but with so much going against it, combined with the unexpected damage of the 100 day Writer's Strike, the Stan Lee Marvel Hulk, plus the smash hit of 2008's May release of the Stan Lee Marvel IRON MAN, assured the investors that the more than half a billion Stan helped raise for his MCU was on steady ground. IRON MAN alone grossed well over half a billion just in world-wide theater sales. Home video sales were pure profit along with all ancillaries. With one Hulk flop and one Hulk hit, the character and franchise was a wash. Worse, because actor Ed Norton and the producers who owned the cinema Hulk franchise were so difficult to work with, there was no way anyone wanted to pursue it. Which left only IRON MAN. IRON MAN was good enough to pursue as its own franchise, but was it enough to launch the MCU? There was no way to tell. The new Marvel investors needed a bona fide second hero hit. Two independent hit Marvel heroes could launch and sustain the MCU. Was Stan Lee's vision true? Was IRON MAN a fluke? The other heroes of the Avengers, THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA were high risk. The story would have to put into place not only the superhero but pave the way for the nascent Avengers. It wasn't enough that THOR or CAPTAIN AMERICA did well, they had to rock. But would they? They hadn't had their own comic book for years. Stan had to hedge his bets so he spread his chips across two. Both THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA would be released in the same year. Both had to be profitable, one had to be a smash hit. This venture started with half a billion dollars. A good portion of that was spent on THE INCREDIBLE HULK. Then This Happened Disney CEO, Bob Iger knew of Stan Lee's plans and was more than intrigued by the idea: he was entranced. The massive pantheon of Marvel's superheroes past and present had endless reboot, re-imagined, and modernized supers that even the mighty Warner Bros. and DC comics couldn't touch. He saw the value in creating Stan's network of movie to network television show, television show to video game, video game to comic book and all interconnected back to theatrical releases. The creative possibilities seemed endless. With such a vast entertainment system in place, the failure of one movie, TV show, any part at all, would have no effect on the rest. And the best thing of all, it seemed that no one else at any of the major studios was GETTING what Stan was going for. If anyone else had, they'd be the ones offering $4.24 billion dollars plus guarantees to the necessary budgets to launch the whole thing. It came at the right time. Stan realized that they were about to tap out that half a billion the investors raised, and with Marvel only now in the race, who was going to add another half billion to give a proper budget to THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA? Well first off, despite what Iger wanted, the buyout money wasn't in his pocket. He had to justify such a cost, the fan base seemed built entirely around Stan Lee, and Stan was 86. Sure the guy was sprightly and dedicated to his legacy, but average human lifespan meant Stan had 10 more active years at best. There was just no human way he could go the distance, right? Kevin Feige on the other hand, was in his 30s. Was he really the loyal acolyte that Stan believed in? Bob Iger had to be sure. There could be no deal if the King stood alone. Did he? It was time for many meetings. December 31, 2009 Marvel shareholders OK Disney acquisition Marvel would be part of the Disney family yet still run independently, like Pixar before it. So who could represent the Captain? What about that guy playing Johnny Storm in those crappy FANTASTIC FOUR movies? It seems that actor Chris Evans was the only shining light among fans, and he was available. And wouldn't it be delicious schadenfreude if Stan Lee Marvel could create a hit with Evans where 20th Century Fox Marvel could not? IRON MAN 2 was in production. Decades of experience and Hollywood false starts and disasters taught Stan that he needed to keep an Iron grip on the franchise if he was going to bring his MCU dream about. Kevin had Stan's trust, now together with Iger, Stan needed Kevin to be the Captain to Stan's Admiral. There was a demarcation line between Marvel Comics and Marvel Entertainment. Stan needed to widen it. It was in this environment that the following happened. After the well-documented, highly publicized decades of trial, error, bankruptcy, bad actors brought on as partners in Marvel, Stan nearly losing everything, and the constant aggravating bullshit with Universal, 20th Century Fox, and hired actors trying to call all the shots on how Marvel movies should be made, you couldn't pick a worse time than this moment to try and throw your weight around. Yet despite how obviously "Wrong Time" such ploys would be, One high ranking executive at Marvel Comics, and one supporting actor in IRON MAN, tried to derail the second movie for their larger than life personal benefit, power, and unbelievably narrow-minded gain. To outsiders looking in, it was all so needlessly unnecessary, especially since the gains were so petty. The actor was easily replaced and the Marvel Comic executive suddenly found himself with the rest of the outsiders, looking in. For the rest of their lives they would never do more than observe from a distance as the highest paying, most successfully profitable and world famous movie franchise the earth's cinema ever had and both men would ever know, left them behind forever. IRON MAN 2 was released in 2010 and was a second Marvel hit, with bigger box office than the first. The team of Stan Lee and Kevin Feige were now 3 for 3, which only made the pressure greater for CAPTAIN AMERICA. May 6, 2011
THOR, directed by Kenneth Branagh (DEAD AGAIN, MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN, SLEUTH) released on May 6, was profitable in the world market, but it wasn't the smash hit that Stan Lee Marvel needed. July 22, 2011 CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER was directed by Joe Johnston (THE ROCKETEER, JURASSIC PARK III, Jumanji, Hildago, THE WOLFMAN): A nice guy, well liked, with solid connections that ran as high as George Lucas dating all the way back to the first Star Wars (You like the Millennium Falcon? Joe designed it). But Joe had a woefully dismal track record as a director. What Joe had in his favor was that he was team player willing to listen and was agreeable to what Stan and Kevin wanted: making his one movie a brick that would help build the MCU. The same is said of the screenwriting team of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (Chronicles of Narnia). Already favored by Disney, they were onboard with the idea of being hired guns for Stan Lee and their teamwork meant they stayed on to the end. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER was a profitable movie, but like THOR, it wasn't the awesome hit Marvel needed. Except with Disney the landscape changed. Both movies were profitable despite their enormous budgets and (excepting Kenneth Branagh) virtual no-name directors, writers, and stars. IRON MAN, with Robert Downy Jr., was the only one with well known actors. Moreover, THOR had Chris Hemsworth (STAR TREK [2009], THE CABIN IN THE WOODS) and CAPTAIN AMERICA had Chris Evans - both no name leads (the FANTASTIC FOUR movies failed to put Evans on the leading man map). THOR at least had Natalie Portman (MARS ATTACKS!, V FOR VENDETTA, BLACK SWAN) as a co-lead, although she clearly wasn't the star, more of an exposition girl. CAPTAIN AMERICA had Hugo Weaving (THE MATRIX [all], THE LORD OF THE RINGS [all], V FOR VENDETTA, TRANSFORMERS [all], THE WOLFMAN) as the main villain, but he was mostly hidden behind his Red Skull mask. The only A-List actor either of them had was Samuel L. Jackson and he was little more than a cameo in a Nick Fury part that didn't matter much more than Stan Lee's walk-ons. To Bob Iger the fact that the movies weren't the megahits Stan hoped for wasn't a major concern. It would have been great, but despite the ruinous non-Stan Marvel garbage that 20th Century Fox was intent on vomiting, the Stan Lee Marvel movies were profitable. Profitable because the fans weren't going to watch their favorite actors, but were buying tickets and over-priced popcorn and drinks to watch Marvel movies with Marvel superheroes. Which meant the theaters LOVED them and wanted more! Marvel, ruled by the fan goodwill focused on Stan Lee was more valuable than non-Stan Marvel farted out by 20th Century Fox, et. al. Iger, Stan, and Kevin agreed: Now that Marvel had profitable movies with a solid fan base, it was time to reward and build that fan base and turn their recently unknown actors into stars. Which meant years of endless work. True to Stan's original vision, no one movie or TV show needed to be a smash hit, the MCU itself needed to be a smash hit. This meant dedicating years to building an indestructible MCU. Between acting in IRON MAN, THOR, and CAPTAIN AMERICA, and being sent on long world-wide junkets to promote the movies before and after theatrical openings, as well as off to major conventions to promote Marvel and the MCU, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, and Chris Evans would not stop working for years to come. They were not alone. Stan Lee was there to meet his newly invigorated and excited fanbase, as well as their children and grandchildren. Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox executives spent the 2000s butchering their brand beyond all hope for recovery and nurtured nothing but an increasingly toxic hatred from Marvel fans. None of that spilled over onto Stan Lee and his True Believers. As for Kevin Feige, he was largely left out of the globe hopping tour group loop. After all, it was time to assemble ... THE AVENGERS.
E.C. McMullen Jr. is the creator of Feo Amante's Horror Thriller, with work published by Easy Rider Magazine, Charles Scribner's Sons, Harker Press, Crystal Lake Publishing, and Feo Studios. |
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INTERVIEWS Matt Jarbo's interview with Feo Amante at The Zurvivalist. James Cheetham's Q&A with Feo Amante at Unconventional Interviews *. Megan Scudellari interviews Feo Amante and Kelly Parks (of THE SCIENCE MOMENT) in The Scientist Magazine. Check out our interview at The-Scientist.com. REFERENCES Researcher David Waldron, references my review of UNDERWORLD in the Spring 2005, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture entry, Role-Playing Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a Moral Panic (downloadable pdf). E.C. McMullen Jr.
*Linked to archive.org |
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