Not Comics: Marvel’s Film Slate Firms Up

Today sees twin announcements on Marvel movie projects, basically attachments of directorial and writing talent: Hollywood Reporter notes veteran superhero movie scribe Zak Penn will write a screenplay for the Avengers concept; while Jonathan Mostow will re-write the existing Sub-Mariner screenplay with plans to direct that endeavor. This seems to indicate that Marvel will pursue the moderate-blockbuster path: expensive movies but not so highly budgeted that the cost and resulting expectations for mind-blowing success become part of the story. More Fantastic Four than Superman Returns.

This strikes me as having more to do with comics than usual. It's the contrast between the two properties that makes this worth exploring. Marvel's Sub-Mariner, although mostly a popular guest star for the last 40 years, may be the company's most historically important character. Created by Bill Everett for the initial rush of Marvel's books in 1939, back when comics characters still mirrored the idiosyncratic personalities of their young creators and their crazy, throw-it-against-the-wall production schedules, the underwater super-powered character had an appealing, abrasive way of conducting himself and operated in a cynical world of rotten deals and broken promises -- factors that when combined can be said to lay the groundwork for the modern superhero comic. It's also an easy to understand concept: half-breed prince of an underwater kingdom in conflict with mankind.

In contrast, the early 1960s Avengers title was more of a classic comics industry stab at manufacturing a hit by stuffing popular characters in the same title in the hopes that their respective fan bases would overlap. Kind of a Marvel title for Marvel fans over the decades, it has become one of the titles of emphasis for the current editorial regime. They've enjoyed a great deal of sales success within comics for the title. What Avengers doesn't offer is much in the way of conceptual strength borrowed from the comics that Marvel films have used to sell themselves to audiences unfamiliar to the characters. They don't avenge. They're not a family. They're not given over to cultural or psychological metaphor. If the Avengers movie brings the box office and the Sub-Mariner film doesn't, it would be a different type of success for the company than what they've experienced so far, and one that could have a direct impact on the generally insulated publishing side of things for maybe the first time.
 
posted 2:59 am PST | Permalink
 

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