While the hot days of summer don’t officially start until June 21st, IRON MAN 2 ushered in the season early last weekend. And Hollywood is happy to bring on the heat! But IM2’s success inevitably means that more Marvel Comics’ properties will be brought to the screen. Just how they will be delivered is in doubt.
If you stayed through the end credits of IM2, you were “treated” to a scene in which Thor’s legendary hammer is found crash-landed in a New Mexico desert. Having never read the THOR comic, I have no idea if this story thread can be squared with the source material. But frankly, the anti-climatic scene was just a wee bit cheesy if you ask me.
The THOR movie, scheduled for a May 2011 release, is being directed by none-other-than Kenneth Branagh. The gifted Shakespearean thespian and director was responsible for reinvigorating the Bard’s work on screen with 1989’s HENRY V. Branagh’s bold delivery of one of the rousing speeches in that film capped off an Oscar nominated performance and ensured that he would never go hungry again. “We few, we happy few…” Branagh lilted beautifully. It was a transcendent moment to be sure.
Now that IM2 is all the rage and the nature of comic book adaptations seeing a cutesy and shall I say softer family friendly approach, can Branagh deliver a literate and mature THOR narrative? Can Branagh give us a credible THOR that moves the viewer in an emotional way aside from thrills and g-force pulls?
I said last week in my IM2 review, that it is not likely that Marvel Comics’ adaptations would be the type worthy of say Oscar Best Picture consideration. THE DARK KNIGHT was a shocker—a thrilling comic book adventure that based its story in film noir and crime movies that made it an undeniable classic. While I’m sure many kids saw THE DARK KNIGHT with their parents, the film worked on a mature level, challenging viewers as few films of its ilk had before.
IM2 however is an easily digestible bridge to the future hinting at how Marvel properties are to be handled. Intelligence and riveting pathos will be sacrificed for fast-paced thrills and broad family-friendly entertainment. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I liked the Fantastic Four movies that managed their PG rating well. But comic purists will grumble. The stories from comic pages are more than formulaic action sequences and colorful one-liners. The conflicts are real metaphors of the time in which they were written. Think about how the non-Marvel graphic novel WATCHMEN handled an alternate universe in which the Cold War never ended. Of course, not all comic book movies are right for THE DARK KNIGHT approach. And it was hard for me to pick apart IM2 to the point of not liking it.
But as the Marvel universe is moved more into the movie world, story and character development has to be the priority. Audiences will tire of the action taking the “been there, seen that” opinion.
The main failing with IM2 was the failure to utilize Mickey Rourke in a way that created a full villain. Rourke was expected to play Ivan Vanko/Whiplash through a series of grunts and often unintelligible comments that summed up to little more than a violent pursuit of revenge. I saw IM2 twice and caught small subtleties in the set and prop design that hinted as to Vanko’s identity and backstory, but I was only able to pay attention to them because it was my second time through. Upon a single viewing, I doubt that any viewer would come away with any appreciable understanding of who Vanko was let alone why he decided to carry out his revenge in such a haphazard and inefficient (as well as ineffective) fashion. Tony Stark gets closer to his father but learns very little about Vanko who as we briefly come to understand is a true representation of the younger Stark’s dark side. This was a huge miss because while Tony Stark bonds with his father through watching old movies of him, he isn’t shown understanding how someone as brilliant as Vanko can become so twisted. Ironically, Vanko’s anger may not be unwarranted. Such complex character traits are just out there undeveloped.
So then as THOR looks to take the same date in 2011 that is now occupied by Iron Man, how can the Thor character be developed in a way that audiences will believe and pay top dollar to see? I gotta tell you, and to disqualify myself admitting that I’m a non-Thor reader, I think that it will be quite a tall order. But the classically schooled Branagh might be the right man for the job. With IM2, director Jon Favreau proved to have the right kind of swagger to make the second tier armored super-hero a hipster for this gadget crazed generation. But the comparatively low tech Thor presents a massive challenge. And if the performance of PERCY JACKSON is any indication, the Thor story will need to rely heavily on the good will generated by Iron Man.
By changing the way Hollywood thinks about the beginning of the summer movie season, IRON MAN 2 might also have a dramatic effect on the future of comic books as movies. The mold now appears to be lighter and more family friendly over darker and more credible. May 2010 belongs to Iron Man, but will May 2011 be Thor’s?
