We have very different definitions of well-known so we probably won’t convince each other of anything I suppose.
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dont give them any ideas, nextwave is still pure and good in my heart and i dont want it sullied
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youre definitely 100% right on this though
I mean, Iron Man had appeared in comic books since 1963 - books which, by basically any metric, sold well - was the founding member of Marvel’s most popular team, and was a major character in tons of crossover events. Maybe defining well-known according to his popularity post-MCU - “literally inescapable” instead of “in the general cultural consciousness” - is a little unfair!
Huh, Disney likely had a ton of money to float projects on, if they want to. Much like a Microsoft or Nintendo. Its just a matter of doing it, or not.
But…Iron Man probably didn’t have the general public attention which X-Men, Spider-Man, and Batman, did. This then gets back to that stroking of nerd culture, which I mentioned earlier. Iron Man was a bet, which payed off. It was pretty well produced in several areas and the X factor of a “new” hero for the big screen also seems to have been a factor. But actually, I think Iron Man should have done better than it did, considering its production quality.
Actually looking at the box office numbers, Spider-Man did better than I thought and so did X-2 and in particular, X-3. and that’s all mostly because X-Men and Spider-Man are in fact, wildly popular. The most wildly popular, probably. And it was their first real representation on the big screen.
Ang Lee’s Hulk only did ok. Same with Batman Begins. Which is probably partially due to Batman maybe being thought off as “stale”, by that point.
So yeah, I guess I was wrong that superhero movies were general risks, at that point. But…Iron Man’s success was not expected. and while it did pretty well in world wide, the domestic was comparable to Batman. I would never have thought that Iron-Man would be the lead super-hero franchise. But that first movie set a new bar.
The Dark Knight did really well, because its a good movie in its own right (albeit flawed), had critical buzz, and then Heath Ledger died. I would have considered it a risk, based on Batman Begins performance and Batman probably being thought of as a bit stale, by that point. I’m certain its box office doubled due to Heath’s death. Had that not happened, we’d probably have been looking at a small improvement over Batman Begins. Something more like Iron Man’s numbers.
I mean we can both agree that blockbuster film making is not some zone for wild risk taking outside of a few outliers. I still believe that in 2008 being part of a popular comic book team did not mean a whole lot in a time when the aging and narrow audience for any given superhero comic book was a fraction of the audience of any given episode of an unpopular television show.
Iron Man was a bet with something like 1:1.1 odds, at best.
Also I feel like painting the decisions of a bunch of capitalist vultures in oversized suits who sat around an office debating on which character would be best to launch their uber-project to destroy all nuance in western culture as “risky” is doing a lot to launder just how not-risky it actually was.
Making a by-the-books action-adventure movie with an established, four-decade old property that was a core component of Marvel’s line-up is not a risk, unless your notion of “risk” and “popular” are significantly distorted by post-MCU inflation.
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Iron Man had a relatively popular cartoon in the 90s.
Edit: Maybe “relatively popular” is being too generous. I don’t know the ratings. But it had two seasons and I saw it growing up, so it certainly fits your audience criteria of “unpopular television show”
Iron Man was a risk in the sense that some super hero movies had done well both critically and commercially and others had not. I don’t know how many actually lost money, but it’s not like every comic book movie was an automatic franchise starter. Now they are almost all intended to be even if the same ratio of them end up not getting sequels.
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Robert Downey Jr. wasn’t even a bankable star! He was smartly cast, no doubt. But, they couldn’t count on his name. He probably even had a bit of a poor image with the general public.
Iron Man was probably guarunteed to double its budget. But I think tripling like it did, would have been a guess.
I think I’m going to bow out of this mostly because it’s exhausting to be constantly debating the market valuation of marvel franchises when the actual movies are so uninspiring
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I think it depends upon whether you saw it or didn’t see it. Like, I remember a lot of the Mortal Kombat cartoon. But there were like less than a dozen episodes of that…
I def knew who Iron Man was and was happy to see how much they’d based his movie design on his later comic designs (and also MGS’ Cyborg Ninja). But If had asked some family members what colors is Iron Man’s suit or the name of the guy in the suit: they probably wouldn’t have known.
Yeah I think I am too. The weird full-throated defense of the decision-making of studio vampires, because their paint-by-numbers movie made “ludicrous” money instead of “absurd” money, is too much for me.
Instead, I think we can all agree that Martin Scorcese makes much better films and does more to uplift filmmakers than any Disney ghoul.
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I agree with Toptube that Iron Man was not just everyone suddenly magically deciding to follow some obvious superhero formula that was laid out before them. And if you look at the tone of The Incredible Hulk they didn’t even really have it figured out yet.
Like Ant-Man 3 or whatever is gonna be episode 576 of the post post post Joss Whedon snarkfest full of flatly shot mush while we wait for a CG city to be destroyed.
But when Iron Man came out it really did not feel like a Sam Raimi or Bryan Singer or Christopher Nolan or Tim Burton movie or like Blade or Ninja Turtles or anything else that came before it.
If you could have just casually focused grouped up a movie that beloved DC would have done it way earlier too.
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It would be nice if Marvel movies mirrored comic books and all the homework you had to do to enjoy them destroyed their popularity forver
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Is the “homework” for the marvel movies something beyond watch the previous ones?
If not then…boo hoo? That’s kind what happens when you make a cinematic universe with chronology which actually affects later movies. Albeit in pretty simplistic ways. But, this sort of thing is still rare.
With streaming movies now, that homework takes you saying the name of the movie into a mic + 2 button clicks. And then watching the movie.
Its not like in the past, where you had to go out and buy the DVD or wait for it to arrive in the mail. Which is still not a lot of work but…I’m recalling when Lost S2 started and people I knew couldn’t be bothered to watch S1. But whined about how they didn’t know what was going on or didn’t feel connected to it.
I haven’t watched most of the Marvel movies. And would probably feel disconnected from Infinity war or Endgame. But, that’s my fault. Not the fault of the movie.
yes i am saying watching wandavision and ms. marvel and she-hulk and hawkeye and moon knight and falcon and winter solider as individual tv shows in addition 2 dozen other movies is a chore and homework
yes this world is full of people who were very excited to have watched thor 2 to understand a 3 minute scene in avengers: endgame
yes this is the fault of the filmmakers
i’m saying i’m not willing to meet the marvel movies on their own terms because the terms are…homework
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I’m sure someone could and will do the connections between movies thing, better. But, I can’t say that its Marvel’s fault that I didn’t watch the last 12 years of their movies, to be able to understand everything about the most recent releases.
mcu movies are so boring/crushing/all consuming that even a crossover obsessed wiki-head like me can’t even be bothered to read a synopsis of them all let alone watch most of them
i’m sure these things will be the perfect thing to calm down millenials and zoomers in the nursing home
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i mean if you thought they were good you would have watched them?