Continuity: Friend or enemy?

io9 has a great article about continuity and/or the lack thereof in the major contenders to the Marvel Universe.

I begin this with the following preface: I did not and do not read comics. As a kid, I was fascinated by the Transformers comics (why? Because fucking robot dinosaurs, THAT’S WHY), but I never internalized them the way others have. It’s only been the tremendous comic book movies and video games of the last few years that I’ve gotten interested. I still don’t know that I’d want to read comic books, but I’ve mulled it over, which is more than I can say as opposed to, say, ten years ago.

I agree with choice #1 being doomed — Spider-Man is a great character, but you can’t build an entire universe around him. The supporting characters are shit. The only way to pull it off would be to give Green Goblin his own movie, having Spider-Man entirely in the background. I just don’t know if people would watch them. Venom is an interesting character, but you’d need an insane slow burn to pull it off properly, as far as I understand. Slow burns don’t work in movies — TV series, maybe, but not movies.

#3 is also a tough sell, but I haven’t seen Man of Steel yet, so I’ll refrain from comment for the moment on Superman. Yet the Batman trilogy was brilliant, and one I can watch again and again (or would, if I had a Blu-Ray player here). And Ben Affleck as Batman…  You’re going to have a nearly impossible time, in terms of pure continuity, trying to connect Nolanverse Batman to Ben Affleck. The only alternative is to treat Batman vs. Superman as a complete reboot of Batman, which runs the risk of losing the very trilogy that made DC Films so profitable, profitable enough to the point where you COULD think about a Justice League film.

So entry #2 — Fox, who owns the Fantastic Four and the X-Men? How doomed are they? According to another io9 article, very.

There’s an inherent weakness to the X-Men, in that it’s pretty much an ensemble cast. The X-Men are about complex interrelationships between lots and lots of people. There’s a core — Wolverine, Magneto, Professor X, Jean Grey, maybe Mystique — but there’s a lot of byplay, people being brought forward and pushed back. That’s all perfectly acceptable. Yet what makes the Avengers work is firmly established characters, with clearly defined roles. That doesn’t really exist, at present, for the X-Men films. Cyclops/Scott Summers — a focal point in the comics and many of the video games — is killed off camera in the third movie. Okay, so let’s make a spinoff, say, about Wolverine? Give him his own movies? Those range from “eh” to “god awful.” The Magneto movie — and if any single character needs his own movie in X-Men, it’s Magneto — never materialized.

Yet Fox has made a decision — that decision is to make continuity out of all of the existing X-Men movies. First Class was really good; I enjoyed it immensely. Then again, I liked the first two X-Men movies also (the third one was a C+, until I saw what the actual story ought to have been; it’s drifted to a low C, high D now). To get any kind of reasonable continuity seems nigh impossible, and given the heavy use of time travel in Days of Future Past, which will make internal continuity difficult? I think it will take a herculean effort. If they pull it off, great; I’m looking forward to seeing how they treat Apocalypse and the Horsemen in the 2016 film.

This brings me to the subject of the Fantastic Four. Those movies I also enjoyed, somewhat. Michael Chiklis was an absolutely brilliant Thing. Jessica Alba was, uh, hot, I guess. Everyone else is more or less forgettable (Chris Evans nailed Captain America in a way he couldn’t the Human Torch). The problem began with how they conceptualized Dr. Doom. Look — Dr. Doom is the key to making the Fantastic Four work. He’s one of the best villains of all time. He’s smart, rich, and has diplomatic immunity; what’s not to hate? The movies made him into a sniveling twerp.

The reboot planned… I really don’t have high hopes. I like Kate Mara. I even like Michael B. Jordan. What we don’t know is who will play Dr. Doom. If a good choice is made, there’s a lot of room to grow there. Use the Silver Surfer/Galactus storyline again, too, but AFTER Dr. Doom is well established. Except — I’ve heard of precisely none of the people on the Dr. Doom shortlist. Okay, you’re going young, so you need a young Dr. Doom also. We can’t have Michael Fassbender play Magneto and Dr. Doom, I guess. (They want to make Fantastic Four and X-Men part of the same universe). Matt Smith, the Eleventh Doctor, wouldn’t be a bad name, to pick one at random, but I’m honestly struggling to think of a great young actor who could pull this off. Everything will depend on his choice. If he works, the franchise will do okay out of the gate (because very few people will watch it based on the name, and there is almost zero starpower right now). If he doesn’t…

Maybe io9 is right.

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