The Amazing Spider-Man

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

I would argue that oftentimes the less we know about a character, the better. Wolverine was awesome until they nailed down his origin and made it all dumb.

The problem with these superhero movies is that they are all exposition and very little character development. Every line spoken is just a vehicle to the next battle. That's why it takes 16 hours of film to give us maybe 10 minutes of actual character growth. Superhero comics have always been big fights and bigger explosions. But the best comics had an actual decent story to go along with it.

[Josh]

and yet, Darth Vader was somehow the best movie villain without the Darth Vader setup movie.

In fact, we got the Darth Vader setup movie later and it, if anything, made everything worse.

It made him a sympathetic character.

[MechDeus]

I would argue that oftentimes the less we know about a character, the better. Wolverine was awesome until they nailed down his origin and made it all dumb.

Give enough to let the viewer's mind fill in the blanks. The anticipation is usually better than the reality.

The problem with these superhero movies is that they are all exposition and very little character development. Every line spoken is just a vehicle to the next battle. That's why it takes 16 hours of film to give us maybe 10 minutes of actual character growth. Superhero comics have always been big fights and bigger explosions. But the best comics had an actual decent story to go along with it.

Part of it is the failure between showing and telling. Show us why that random guy is an amazing scientist, don't have the characters announce it as exposition. Like that scene Gohan was describing for Ender's Game that got left out from the book which could've easily been shown as a five minute clip and done so much more for the character. Wouldn't have even needed dialogue at all.

[Space Pirate Roberts]

and yet, Darth Vader was somehow the best movie villain without the Darth Vader setup movie.

In fact, we got the Darth Vader setup movie later and it, if anything, made everything worse.

Yeah, but that was more a function of Lucas dropping the ball than the prequels being an inherently bad idea. Think about in Lord of the Rings, what Gandalf says will happen if he takes the One Ring to use against Sauron. THAT is how Anakin's fall should have played out. Instead it turns out he was just always an asshole, and the Jedi were a creepy celibacy cult even though that was never mentioned in the OT, for no other reason than the narrative suddenly needed them to be. [/tangent]

Anyway. Regardless of how necessary the individual Phase 1 movies were or weren't for storytelling purposes, they were absolutely necessary to get the general non-comic-reading public to care about Avengers.

[Diff-chan]

I agree that the NT sucked just because it sucked, but I think my point was clear enough. If someone watches nothing but Avengers and walks out thinking Loki is a Saturday morning cardboard cutout villain, that's a failing of the Avengers movie.

[YellerDog]

What about the cardboard cutout cannon fodder bad guys?

As just a counter-example from the same movie, I thought the setup for Bruce Banner was exactly all it needed to be. You didn't need two Hulk movies to understand that character.

They kind of cheaped through the control thing, but eh. The cartoon Jujitsu slams made it all worth while.

[A Robot Bit Me]

Look, there's no way you're going to establish character motives as complex as "I'd prefer Earth not to blow up" in fewer than 130 minutes.

[Will]

Easily 3 and arguably half of those movies could have been nixed, and the story of Avengers would not have suffered.
They're clearing milking the fad. Eight movies in five years is Activision numbers.

Considering people slice apart and analyze the inane post-credit sequences, and those are like 10 seconds, you're probably right.

The idea that you need to release a dumb movie just to introduce a villain or framework for the heroes that they will operate under in the Real Movie is insane. Good filmmakers have established these exact things and told the story they want to tell in a single movie for decades. This isn't about good filmmaking, it's about pooping out as many cash-ins as fanboys are willing to go see.

Maybe for the under 10 crowd. Captain America's movie was literally summed up in a flashback during the Avengers movie and conveyed all the same information that entire movie did, not to mention that the Avengers movie told and demonstrated more about the Tesseract than Captain's movie ever did. IM2 did nothing for SHIELD that Avengers didn't demonstrate by itself, and same goes for Loki. IM1 introduced Stark and did a fine job of his backstory, but if they had summed up his heart issue and the building of the first suit in Avengers it wouldn't have mattered either way.

But then, having to explain all of this bit by bit should probably tell me why you feel there needs to be 10 extra hours of movie when 10 minutes will do.

We've discussed this sort of thing before on another thread but nobody is forcing anyone to watch these "lead in" movies and if the Avengers movie did a great job with getting people on board without them then it's a win/win.

Even if you didn't like the previous movies they were made to establish the characters regardless of Avengers but the hope was always there to continue to build out the universe in some form or another. The characters in and of themselves have a huge canon to draw upon so there's always more to use for sequels.

Now some of the individual movies are more blatant and detrimental to their own movie in their set up to the overall Marvel Universe but I think these can still be judged on their own merits and be enjoyed or disliked with or without Avengers with maybe some exception to Cap depending on how 2 handles it. The shared universe idea is really novel and was something people have been wanting to see on-screen for a long time for both DC and Marvel.

As for this Spider-Man stuff, the Venom one makes sense since he has plenty of backstory that can legitimately justify his own movie or set of movies but the Sinister Six movie seems like a dubious prospect if there's no Spider-Man at all so it'll be interesting to see if the movie will be able to carry itself on the villains.

I don't really see much beyond Sinister Six in terms of the Spider-Man universe though, the catalogue of Spider-Man villains and characters are bigger if you go down the list but at some point they're going to hit a dead end since Sony only owns Spider-Man and Ghost Rider I think.

[MechDeus]

but I think these can still be judged on their own merits and be enjoyed or disliked with or without Avengers

I agree, but part of that issue is that they're almost uniformly terrible. Iron Man 1&3 are the only ones I've seen that I haven't regretted so far.

I don't really see much beyond Sinister Six in terms of the Spider-Man universe though, the catalogue of Spider-Man villains and characters are bigger if you go down the list but at some point they're going to hit a dead end since Sony only owns Spider-Man and Ghost Rider I think.

I'm fine with that, and Sinister Six should probably be the end of this run. Maybe one with the Kraven hunt. I certainly have no desire to see 10 Spider-Man movies.

[ChaoofNee]

The only Kraven movie I want is Kraven Goes to Prom

The last few pages of this thread are really painful to read through. Comic book movies and shows used to be terrible and now they're pretty fun and it's a shame I can't see Spider-Man and Marvel's The Avengers™ punching bad guys in the same movie. Why isn't that good enough for now?