Marvel Universe (Thar be spoilers ahead.)

[HaemishM]

I think the latest Spider-Man's biggest problems have been the reboot. It was simply TOO DAMN SOON. And as much as they changed, the movies really weren't all that different from the three earlier films because they had to start over with an origin story. They'd have done better to just replace the actors and move the story forward from where they had it - though that wasn't a good spot to start from either as Spider-Man 3 was worse than this ASM2.

[Fordel]

Spider-Man's stories are kinda shit for the movie format, they would be much better served as some kind of on going series. His stories are at their strongest when he is managing his 'day to day' stuff, which doesn't translate terribly well to the movie format.


His powers though, they need the movie budget to do them justice.

[Velorath]

If you go with the numbers that say that ASM2 cost around $250 million to make, and then look at the marketing around it, and then you look at GOTG which brought in more money with less cost on characters nobody recognized, you really have to wonder how much power Spider-man has as a brand. Is that the best return Sony can get on investing a quarter of a billion dollars? It really doesn't sound like it.

If they made a Spider-Man movie that was as good as Guardians of the Galaxy they would print money.  It isn't a brand issue, it's just that the movies have been garbage.

Making a movie as good as GOTG is the tricky part though, and my point is if they made a really good movie and spent the same amount to market it as they did ASM2, it would likely make money whether it's a Spider-man movie or not. I'm not entirely sure at this point why they bother to keep the Spider-man licence. It's not a strong enough brand to make a ton of money regardless of quality, and Sony doesn't even really get to make much off the character in regards to merchandise either.

I do think it's a brand issue though in the respect that Disney/Marvel Studios and the MCU are established to be generally high quality brands. If GOTG had come out from a different studio and wasn't part of the MCU it might not have got the attention it did. Even a lot of people on this board expressed some skepticism in Marvel making a movie with those characters but were willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and go see it based partly on Marvel Studio's track record. Sony Pictures hasn't established a brand like that though. I think if they had happened to release GOTG instead, and did so following ASM2's release they would have had even more of an uphill battle than Marvel did.

[jgsugden]

If in the MCU and used effectively, a well done Spider-man series of movies would be the top single character movie property.  There is a reason Spidey has historically been the most beloved Marvel character for decades.  You see what Sony has pulled in despite messing up the series repeatedly.  Both of the recent versions had massive problems (although each got a few things right).  If they nailed the character, the spirit, the entire deal ... it'd be insanely huge.  Sony has been idiotic not to offer to hand over creative control to Marvel with an agreement that pulls in most of the revenue from solo films for Sony.

[Maven]

Well, you know, Sony has been in the news recently for idiocy. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

Spiderman is just an odd duck because it's still making sony a lot of money even if it could be making an assload of money in other hands.  So for sony, it's not worth selling at anything but a premium price but for marvel with their already profitable stable, it's not worth buying spiderman at anything but a discount.  Now I'm sure talks are going on and have been for some time but it's just going to be ridiculous demands from sony and marvel simply keeping the dialogue open for the future. 

[jgsugden]

It seems simple to me:

* Sony hands over all creative control to Marvel.
* They agree to have a new Spider-man feature movie every 24 to 36 months where Sony gets the lion share of the studio revenue.  No movie, or if the movie fails to perform well, the deal ends and Sony gets the character back (with a one subsequent movie option for Marvel to work the character out of the MCU).
* Marvel gets to use Spidey characters in any of their films or TV they want, but Sony gets compensated on a sliding scale based upon amount of usage.

Basically, Sony gets to sit back and collect revenue while Marvel takes on all the risk - which are much smaller risks when the character is in their hands.  Both studios recognize there is a bigger pie to split if the character is in the MCU... and the Sony backlash is going to force their hands at some point.

On another note: Speculation out there is that

[Tannhauser]

Could you spoiler tag any speculation on the plot for Avengers II?  I'm wanting to go in fresh.  Thanks.  I mean specifically spoiler tag stuff that shows up in Latino Review or other sites like that.  Your own wild ass speculation is still fine of course.

[jgsugden]

Could you spoiler tag any speculation on the plot for Avengers II?  I'm wanting to go in fresh.  Thanks.  I mean specifically spoiler tag stuff that shows up in Latino Review or other sites like that.  Your own wild ass speculation is still fine of course.

If it helps, the above speculation was people connecting dots from different sources ... not from a single source.  It is closer to wild ass speculation right now.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I just don't see what would be in it for marvel to jump through hoops to get spiderman back nor for sony to lease out spiderman and have marvel take a small cut.  The spiderman brand is big enough to make money for sony as is and while it would make fans gasm all over to have him in the MCU, the MCU is strong enough to not need spiderman and if it got a benefit, would likely be minor. 

That's not to say I'm predicting it will never happen, in fact I think a cameo may be likely but anything else just seems like a bridge too far.

[Evildrider]

I would rather they bought the rights back to Spider-man then have to deal with Sony.  They have more than enough stuff to make up for not having him in the MCU at this point.

[Velorath]

It seems simple to me:

* Sony hands over all creative control to Marvel.
* They agree to have a new Spider-man feature movie every 24 to 36 months where Sony gets the lion share of the studio revenue.  No movie, or if the movie fails to perform well, the deal ends and Sony gets the character back (with a one subsequent movie option for Marvel to work the character out of the MCU).
* Marvel gets to use Spidey characters in any of their films or TV they want, but Sony gets compensated on a sliding scale based upon amount of usage.

Basically, Sony gets to sit back and collect revenue while Marvel takes on all the risk - which are much smaller risks when the character is in their hands.  Both studios recognize there is a bigger pie to split if the character is in the MCU... and the Sony backlash is going to force their hands at some point.

So basically Marvel would make next to no money on Spider-man movies, and would have to give Sony money if they use the character in something like the Avengers which already makes more money without Spider-man in it than pretty much any movie that doesn't have James Cameron's name on it. There is literally no benefit in that deal for Marvel, while at the same time they have to devote top talent, money, and manpower to trying to build a successful Spider-man movie which is either tied to a largely unsuccessful series (ASM) or would be the second reboot in around a decade and a half. And they would have to be devoting all those resources to this, while at the same time working on their already increased workload of three movies a year, and trying not to have any sort of dip in quality from focusing on this many movie projects at once (not even taking into account all the TV stuff they're working on these days).

But hey, the more characters Marvel has the rights to, the closer they can get to doing better adaptations of every shitty crossover they've done in the comics.

[jgsugden]

I just don't see what would be in it for marvel to jump through hoops to get spiderman back nor for sony to lease out spiderman and have marvel take a small cut.  ..

If the pie doubles in size, but you have to give up a third of it, you're still ahead.  That is why.

Velorath, Marvel would make *some* money on the Spidey films, and their other properties would benefit more from comingling with Spidey.  As their own movies and the Spidey movies would both be expected to do better as part of the MCU that alone, there would be more pie to split between the studios.  Obviously, they would not make a deal where they give up more than they expect to earn.  But all the Sony docs on the topic and all the analysis I've seen seem to agree with my beliefs - there is more opportunity for Spider-man to make more money in the MCU than if he has to stand alone.

Their other option is to watch Sony make mediocre Spider-man movies forever and a day - all of which Marvel gets minimal direct funding benefit from and all of which pull audiences away from the MCU efforts.  There are four superhero movie worlds in play right now - MCU, Spidey, X-men/FF and DC.  Uniting the most vulnerable (Spider-man) back under their banner gives them a lot more control and more ability to shape the competition.

[HaemishM]

I don't see any indication that Spider-Man is "pulling audiences away from MCU movies." None. The market is quite clearly big enough to support them all, and the best movies are making the most money.

[Velorath]

So far outside of Avengers (and the upcoming Cap 3), they've used guest stars pretty sparingly and only when it made sense (Black Widow in IM2 and Cap 2 being the main ones). The last thing I want to see them do is try to cram Spidey into movies in the hope that it will boost up the box office numbers for those movies like it's a 90's comics Wolverine guest appearance.

Marvel has plenty on their plate for the next several years. Let Sony keep fumbling the license for the next few years. They're only going to get more desperate.

[Maven]

But when do we hit Peak Superhero? The market is big enough, they keep swapping out properties instead of a Harry Potter / Hunger Games / Assassin's Creed / Battlefield / CoD "ONE A YEAR" strategy. They can keep it going awhile. Spider-man can fit into their docket.

[Lakov_Sanite]

TAspiderman2 made 200mil, the premise that somehow just by fitting spiderman into the MCU that those profits would double is ridiculous.  Of course sony documents value spiderman highly, it's a 200mil property they are negotiating and they want as much money as they can get.

-Spiderman is not a 400mil property and while TAS2 may be a bad movie, good/bad does not translate to money, ask transformers.

[eldaec]

Increasing the number of characters in the MCU does nothing to increase the creative capacity of the team managing it.

Spending that limited capacity on a character they would not get 100% of the revenues from doesn't seem clever.

[jgsugden]

Haemish - Marvel has spoken about the need to be strategic in the timing of their movies so that Superhero movies do not compete with each other.  If you release a few good movies in a row in the same genre, the later ones tend to get better box office than the earlier ones.  There is a lot to read on the topic on the interwebs.

Maven - I think Marvel is doing a good job countering the peak issue by making the different properties - and even the different movies in the same series - quite different, but good.  I do not think we hit a point where people say, "Not ANOTHER Marvel movie..."  I think the machine chugs away for well more than a decade...

Eldaec - Limiting the characters forces the MCU to work around and change elements when they want to draw upon stories that have worked for them in the comics and that have instant buzz when discussed.  Civil War had a lot of buzz surrounding it outside of the comics world when released.  It was an obvious option for them to revisit in the MCU because it allows them to focus on hero versus hero (which means not needing to pay for villains and giving each of their heroes more screen time).  However, eliminating elements of the Civil War storyline because they do not have access to Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Spider-man, etc... creates a perception in the media and amongst hard core fans that they're giving us an inferior version of the story.  Perception prior to the film release has an impact on box office.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Civil war WAS an inferior story. It's a great idea and as an idea it's quality is not affected at all by the minor plot details.

[jgsugden]

Civil war WAS an inferior story. It's a great idea and as an idea it's quality is not affected at all by the minor plot details.

Opinions differ.  http://www.comicbookquest.com/news-reviews/top-ten-storylines-and-events-of-the-marvel-universe/

[Slyfeind]

Bear in mind also perception of the property and public reaction. Money is great and all, but if Spider-Man is bring in big bucks while damaging public perception of Spider-Man, it's going to sour the franchise. "Hey Marvel," says Sony, "Our Spider-Man movies are still profitable, but your fans are starting to hate Spider-Man, and he's not gaining any new followings. But it's still money am I right?"

There's some long-term issues at work there; not necessarily damage, but Marvel has been handing Spider-Man for 60-some-odd years. Then Sony comes along and makes him look like shit, all the while saying "But it's profitable!"... it's bound to raise a few eyebrows.

[jgsugden]

There are spoilers floating around for Avengers II marketing materials right now that reveal a lot about the storyline... if you do not want to be spoiled as to the exact origins of the villain, how they changed the origin of one of the three new Avengers, etc... you need to be careful....

[Merusk]

  Civil War had a lot of buzz surrounding it outside of the comics world marketing money shoved behind it and the political climate when released. 

Do not doubt that if Civil War were anything but an allegory for Gitmo and the issues of 2006/2008 it would not have received the attention it did. You'd have heard as much about it in the news as you did Infinity Gauntlet or the last Wolverine/ whatever crossover.

Any time comics make the news it's because of a political agenda it's being used for. Hispanic, Gay Spider man, Female Spider Man, Female Thor, etc. Not due to the public's interest in comics or the story itself.

[Velorath]

Civil war WAS an inferior story. It's a great idea and as an idea it's quality is not affected at all by the minor plot details.

Opinions differ.  http://www.comicbookquest.com/news-reviews/top-ten-storylines-and-events-of-the-marvel-universe/

Because why wouldn't you trust a website that seems almost entirely devoted to selling comics and merchandise to tell you what the good stuff is...

[jgsugden]

Timely issues being discussed play a part, obviously.  However, they shoved about the same marketing money behind it that they did for any of the other 'events' you listed.  It is still the most widely recognized event in the recent past, and likely second most well known all time next to Secret Wars.  There were obvious flaws in it, but it received a lot of appreciation, praise, and attention.  There are always bashers, but the voice of the majority sees it as one of the most significant Marvel events ever.

When combined with the obvious financial benefits of doing a film where you can capitalize on multiple heroes and not need to pay for a big time villain....

And Velorath - you're right.  We should go to a entomology site for comic news, obviously.  Why look at this, or any other, comic site for discussion of comics?  How silly was I.... (There are multiple lists like this one that put it at the top of the list - the majority of voices are in agreement on the significance of Civil War - including, obviously, the Marvel movie team).

[Velorath]

And Velorath - you're right.  We should go to a entomology site for comic news, obviously.  Why look at this, or any other, comic site for discussion of comics?  How silly was I.... (There are multiple lists like this one that put it at the top of the list - the majority of voices are in agreement on the significance of Civil War - including, obviously, the Marvel movie team).

 

You might want to go to a comic news site for news, or possibly a comic reviews site. The website you linked to is literally a store. The homepage is entirely stuff for sale with zero editorial content. It has a grand total of 30 news or reviews stories going back to 2011, which seem to be almost entirely made up of (badly written) movie reviews. Let me guess, you googled "civil war top marvel story" to find this place and then once you got the result you were looking for you didn't bother to actually check out the site itself (or you're the guy that sends these people these shittastic reviews and articles). Clearly this isn't one of the sites you regularly visit for comics news or discussion so kindly stop being a fucktard about it.

[jgsugden]

I absolutely Googled it - and this was one of many similar lists.  I did just grab the first of many.  Absolutely. 

However, the point remains - there are many similar lists that put Civil War at, or near, the top of the list of Marvel events.  There are countless comments out there.  Objecting that the list I used was not up to snuff when there are so many fricking similar lists is kind of weak sauce.

[Khaldun]

Ack.

Look, Civil War is all at once a 9/11 thing and not at all. The basic idea of a government deciding, "Fuck this, enough is enough, we're not letting gods and aliens and mutants just run around and do what they want" is a fundamental storyline for all comics after the Silver Age ended. Civil War came after Watchmen, it came after Miracleman, but it also came after just a bunch of more ordinary stuff where the government in both major comic-book universes rattled its sabers about monitoring supers more closely. Mark Grunewald, who was about as worshipfully fanboy a comic-book writer as there has ever been, wrote a story where the government revokes Steve Rogers' right to be Captain America because they own the intellectual property, basically.

If you strip away some of the Mark Millar dick-stroking awfulness of the actual Civil War storyline--the callous asshole version of Reed Richards that he offered, the dumb pandering to right-wing sentiment, the "we need to kill someone, how about the giant black guy" stuff, you have the same basic story: what human government would tolerate gods, aliens and mutants making their own decisions about what should happen next to any given nation, or humanity as a whole? None, that's what.

If Avengers 2 features a world that suffers serious consequences because Tony Stark and Bruce Banner got busy in the lab one day, I can totally see a vaguely-CW inspired follow-up where Stark agrees it's time to submit to democratic or collective guidance and Steve Rogers doesn't (partly because of the events of CA2). That's a better version of CW, because both of them will have perfect reason to think what they think without Millar having to make one or both into douchebags.

[HaemishM]

Mark Gruenwald handled the consequences of super-powered beings better in just about every story he ever wrote (especially in the Squadron Supreme) than Civil War. God, Civil War was just fucking awful and anyone that says it is one of the top 10 comic stories of all time is a complete and utter clownshoes twat who thinks that Bendis' Avengers Disassembled is the height of edginess. It was so fucking bad, and it's that bad before you ever consider how it completely ignored decades of characterization on foundational characters like Reed Richards or Tony Stark.

[Evildrider]

Mark Gruenwald handled the consequences of super-powered beings better in just about every story he ever wrote (especially in the Squadron Supreme) than Civil War. God, Civil War was just fucking awful and anyone that says it is one of the top 10 comic stories of all time is a complete and utter clownshoes twat who thinks that Bendis' Avengers Disassembled is the height of edginess. It was so fucking bad, and it's that bad before you ever consider how it completely ignored decades of characterization on foundational characters like Reed Richards or Tony Stark.

But some random comic site said so!   

[Lakov_Sanite]

Thing is, MCU has been altering comic canon since the first iron man, before the MCU was a thing and guess what? NO ONE GIVES A FUCK.  You don't need spiderman for civil war any more than you needed any other thing they've cut,  let them cherry pick, they are really fucking good at that, as they have shown.

[Khaldun]

I cannot think of a change the MCU has made that I thought was obviously inferior to the original source material. Even the stuff that's been kind of dubious in the MCU (Whiplash, say) sucked worse in the comics. What, you wanted a mobster who dresses like a man-whore stripper pirate and tries to kill the guy in the armor with an energy whip instead of whatever the fuck Rourke was playing? Or you wanted a blatantly dumb Yellow Peril fourth-rate Fu Manchu as the Mandarin?

Even when they've gone balls-out comic books (talking raccoons w/guns) they've gone for the essence of the thing and discarded the shit that doesn't work in a cinematic context with ease and confidence. As opposed to, well, Sony and Fox and WB, who are mostly struggling to figure out what to keep and what to throw away.

[MahrinSkel]

What, you wanted a mobster who dresses like a man-whore stripper pirate and tries to kill the guy in the armor with an energy whip instead of whatever the fuck Rourke was playing?

I thought that was obvious, Whiplash was Stark if his dad had been broke and broken instead of rich and distant.

Just as brilliant, just as don't-give-a-fuck about the rules, but where Stark's daddy issues all centered on never feeling like he had measured up, Rourke played a guy who had spent a lifetime watching his father wallow in his own bitterness and bile after Howard Stark stole his greatest achievement (and then didn't do shit with it).

I mean, they spent half the movie with Stark playing Memory Lane in the film vault. It couldn't have been more obvious.

--Dave

[Tannhauser]

Dave, get with the zeitgeist.  IM2 sucked!  Suuuuuckkkkeddd!  My friend was up in arms "Why is IM scratching on a turntable and giving his company away?"  Because he's dying, that's why.  IM2's a good movie. Tony Stark faces his mortality and the poorer version of himself.

As for Civil War; I didn't read it and don't care to.  The version they put on the screen will be fine I'm sure.  In fact it may be great.  No villains to speak of, just Thor vs IM, Hulk vs. Cap let's say. That's some good superhero fightin' AND will should be great drama as former friends pick sides.

Stop bitching about CW from the comics.  It doesn't matter.  The MCU will do it right I'm sure.