Marvel just released the first Iron Man trailer today, and it looks amazing! Sorry I couldn’t inbed it, but it isn’t on YouTube quite yet. I never like to get a bias about a film based on a trailer, because no matter what they show you, good-looking movies can still be bad (X-Men 3, anyone?) but this one looks really great. It’s evident they’re trying to show us this movie will have the same charm with Tony Stark’s character as the last one, and I sure hope that’s the case. Can’t wait for the film– join us in May for the review!
Sadly, the summer is already over for DC and Marvel, who each only had one big movie going for them this time around, and neither has been nearly as successful as Star Trek, which continues to do big numbers at the box office. X-Men Origins: Wolverine suffered at the hands of bad critical reception (whatever, I liked it) and immediately tanked in its second weekend.
But apparently an 87 million dollar opening is good enough for Fox and Marvel– immediately following news of a big weekend, Fox greenlit a Deadpool stand-alone movie, and another Wolverine film (presumably another prequel that takes place just after this one, possibly covering his history in Japan). And believe it or not, there’s apparently even going to be an X-Men trilogy prequel called X-Men First Class. Although it might be fun to see if someone can pull off an X-Men movie without Wolverine.
More prequels really aren’t what I’m interested in, except for X-Men Origins: Magneto, which was being talked a lot about with the Wolverine movie before it happened, but still hasn’t totally been greenlit. But with Fox’s enthusiasm for making anything with an “X” in it right now, I’m not too worried that it won’t happen. There have also been rumors of a Gambit movie but nothing official. Chances are a Gambit movie, as well as Deadpool, would all still take place after the Wolverine movie but before the X-Men trilogy– stands to reason the whole X-Men film universe for the foreseeable future will be prequels.
And Spider-Man 4 will be coming in May of 2011.
Meanwhile, Marvel’s new movie studio continues the Avengers initiative. Here’s the order all of those films will come out in:
Iron Man 2 (May 2010)
Thor (June 2011)
The First Avenger: Capain America (July 2011)
The Avengers (2012)
So, unfortunately, it looks like the only Marvel film we have to look forward to next year is Iron Man 2.
There have also been rumors and negotiations over the last year about possible Hulk-type reboots of characters Fox has already done for Marvel, specifically Fantastic Four and Daredevil. Sounds like the FF movies made money but Fox didn’t like what fans and critics said about it (which is a little unusual), so they’re thinking of making more but trying it more serious and a little darker, based on the Iron Man and Dark Knight models. I wonder how well that will work out with the success of such a bright movie like Star Trek (or, at least, bright compared to those films). And, of course, Fox is still seriously talking about a Venom movie completely disconnected from Spider-Man 3.
I honestly don’t know if Fox is making a smart move or shooting themselves in the foot. People were excited about Wolverine until critics bashed it and Trek made them forget about it. More X-films could work, but only with the right kind of advirtising– I felt like Fox was too cocky about this one, with an attitude that maybe they didn’t have to hype it because everyone would just go see it. I don’t think there was enough or the right kind of advirtising. That worked for the die-hards, but we saw what happened in week 2– whereas Star Trek assumed no one would see it and advirtised that way.
But I don’t think Marvel Studios has anything to worry about, assuming they make a REALLY good Iron Man 2.
