A couple weeks ago, the new Thunderbolts movie came out. As per usual, I did not watch the film due to lack of interest. And then they did a thing for the sake of marketing because… I don’t know why. But they did it. I was still not compelled to watch the new movie in theaters.
But you know what I did watch? The Avengers. The first movie from 2012. Sweet Sassy Molassy, that’s a great movie. And it still holds up. But more than anything, as I was watching this movie, it just sort of clicked that they tried a thing with this movie and it worked. It simply worked. To the point where others have tried similar things and those didn’t quite work.
And I got to thinking… why? Well, here’s my thought on that.
So once upon a time, there was a movie called Iron Man. Based on the comic book character of the same name, it was a good little action flick that did a good job of selling me on a character that I had, otherwise, little to no familiarity with. All this boiled down to the performance of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man/Tony Stark, who pretty much nailed it and was complimented with a great cast and a good, solid origin. Those who left the movie during the credits were satisfied with a great movie.
But for those who stuck until the end got a little extra something; an extra scene where Stark would first encounter Nick Fury, director of SHIELD, played by Samuel L. Jackson – a solid choice given that when Marvel first began their Ultimate Universe, they redesigned Nick Fury – originally a causasian super-spy dude – and made him similar to Jackson in appearance (which he did approve, by the way, so this cast makes even more sense.) And as if that wasn’t enough, he mentions something called the “Avengers Initiative.”
At that point, the first seed was planted. The build had begun. Iron Man was essentially the first piece laid down and would be followed by a new Hulk movie, a new Captain America movie, and the first movie to feature the Mighty Thor. And all of these would eventually be the building blocks towards the eventual main event feature; the teaming of these characters to form Earth’s Mightiest Heroes – the Avengers.
What is now described as Phase 1 of the eventual Marvel Cinematic Universe had to do a lot with its pieces. It not only needed to sell you on these characters who were somewhat known, but not necessarily heavy hitters. It not only needed to make you care enough to watch all these movies and get invested in these characters and their plights. But it also needed to make you pay attention to all the nooks and crannies scattered throughout, because they could play a role at a later time, if not a later chapter in the overarcing storyline.
This eventually became the formula for the cinematic universe, where all these seemingly unrelated movies were actually connected to each other in some way and the end result was to take these individual pieces, bring them together, and have them overcome one final challenge in the eventual team-up movie. Naturally, Phase 1 became a success and others tried to copy the formula… and they didn’t quite get the job done.
Obviously, there was the DC Extended Universe, where they gave us Man Of Steel and that became a hit. Then they wanted to do the team-up movie for their second shot before jumping ahead to their big Justice League movie and it didn’t quite work, not matter how much the Snyder nuts try to convince you otherwise. Universal attempted a cinematic universe of their own with their monster properties and that failed miserably. But then there’s one other failure that’s worth mentioning.
Marvel themselves.
So after the Avengers, the build continues. The end of the movie teased the appearance of Thanos, giving us something to look forward to down the road. The road getting there was a little rough; the movies that came along didn’t quite hit as well as the first wave did. You had some standout movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier – for my money, one of, if not THE best MCU film ever made – but for the most part, these were just sequels to better movies… but they’re sequels you had to see because it continued the stories of these characters that we were invested in. And these movies would be used to introduce other characters who would eventually get their own movies.
And then there’d be movies featuring characters seemingly unrelated to the current scene, but would eventually play a part in a later chapter and if you didn’t catch the movie, you would have no clue who they were. It was at this point where catching all these little points connecting these films together no longer became a fun little activity that rewarded the most observant viewers. It became necessary to understand what was going on. It’s routine. It’s formulaic. And as the Marvel movies continued, some of them… simply weren’t all that interesting.
In the beginning, I had no problem watching all the Marvel movies because I wanted to get up to speed on all these characters. As time went on, I becam less interested when that became mandatory viewing. To this day, I have yet to watch Captain Marvel, despite the fact that she’s an integral part of the current MCU line-up. It just boiled down to a lack of interest. By the time Endgame came and went, putting a bow on the stories of most of these characters that have been around since the beginning, I had no interest in continuing onwards. I might have seen one or two Marvel things at most, but that’s about it. Nothing else in the horizon has me interested in what’s to come.
So I guess that brings us to Thunderbolts… or I guess we’re supposed to call it The New Avengers now because of some hair-brained marketing gimmick. That’s all it is. A marketing gimmick. They did the name change as soon as the movie hit theaters and… look, I haven’t seen the movie. I’ve heard good things, but again, it’s not like I’m in any hurry to watch this thing. There’s only a couple characters in there that I could remotely care about; the rest of them… not so much. That’s not a knock on the cast or anybody; it simply boils down to a lack of interest.
Also, calling it the New Avengers shortly after release and marketing under a different name? Way to spoil the movie… we’re not calling it that, by the way. We’re sticking with the original Thunderbolts title.
The Avengers was a thing that happened where everything fell into place and the whole thing simply worked. Everything else that came afterwards is just part of the routine and nowhere near as special. Having an Avengers movie was one of those things that still felt like an event. At no point did Thunderbolts feel like an event; it just felt like another chapter in the long running Marvel Cinematic saga. And now with this gimmick, you’ve sort of devalued the Avengers name by sacrificing it for the sake of a stupid gimmick.
Whether you like the film or not, whether you were excited for it or not, Thunderbolts deserved to stand on its own. It deserved to succeed or fail on its own merits.
Oh well… I guess I won’t be making mine Marvel or something.
Later.
dtm666 