Category Archives: Marvel comics movies

‘Avengers’ release date set; Daredevil next recruit?

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Considering that “Iron Man 3” doesn’t come out until May, with a string of new Marvel movies to follow, you’d think the news about our favorite big-screen comic book movies would slow down just a bit.

Nope!

In recent days fans have seen a couple of developments:

Release date for “Avengers 2.” Marvel/Disney has confirmed a May 1, 2015 release date for Joss Whedon’s follow-up to this summer’s megahit. That’s on the heels of the announcement that Whedon had been signed not only to direct the sequel but develop a live-action TV series set in the big-screen “Avengers” universe and generally help the Marvel movie process move along through June 2015.

Daredevil likely back in Marvel’s hands: As we’ve noted here before, Marvel’s moviemaking division has big-screen rights to only some of the company’s characters. Others were long ago farmed out to other studios, which is why Fox is making a steady stream of X-Men-related movies and Sony/Columbia rebooted this summer with “The Amazing Spider-Man.”

Well, director Joe Carnahan had been gearing up for a gritty “Daredevil” reboot for Fox that promised to have a 1970s Hell’s Kitchen vibe. Carnahan said this week that his movie isn’t going to happen, leading some to expect that the rights to the blind superhero will revert to Marvel before Fox gets a chance to mount another effort.

Meaning that Marvel can include Daredevil in its on-screen universe now. Maybe even cast Matt Murdock in “Avengers 2” or his own movie.

As Marvel slowly requires some of its characters – apparently the Punisher is already back under the Marvel tent – the possibilities are endless.

Here’s a wish list for new members once Joss Whedon presents “Avengers 2:”

Black Panther. Gotta have the stalwart king of the African nation of Wakanda on the team.

Wasp and Ant-Man. Janet and Hank were original members of the group. An “Ant-Man” movie is in the early stages now. We need them in “Avengers 2.”

Daredevil. Why the heck not? New York is their mutual home turf.

Vision. The rumors flew, shortly after “The Avengers,” that the android Avenger would be included in upcoming installments, perhaps in some way personified by Clark Gregg of Phil Coulson fame. Make it happen, Joss!

Scarlet Witch. The references to Coulson’s cellist girlfriend in “The Avengers” got some people thinking Wanda, longtime Avenger and Vision’s wife, would make an appearance eventually. Yes, please.

 

Whedon to develop ‘Avengers’ universe TV show too

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Well, duh.

In a perfect case of reverse-engineering, Disney and Marvel announced today that Joss Whedon, who got his start in TV and then directed “The Avengers” to good effect – and $1.5 billion in worldwide box office – will not only direct “Avengers 2” but oversee the development of the live-action TV series set in the “Avengers” movie universe.

It makes perfect sense, and some of the people reacting online tonight are sharing the same line of reasoning that had settled, like a fog, into my brain. Whedon, who made great TV series like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel” and “Firefly,” has moved on, we told ourselves. He’s not going back to TV after having directed one of the biggest movies ever.

Well, turns out that way of thinking was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Now I doubt we’ll get Joss Whedon, showrunner, or Joss Whedon, director, or much more than Joss Whedon, occasional screenwriter, on this series.

But the man knows how to make a TV series with wit, action and service to multiple characters.

Turns out that was the strength that made him so right for “The Avengers.”

So here’s to a happy, anticipatory “Well, duh.”

Joss Whedon will be helping create the “Avengers” universe live action TV series.

Of course.

Joss Whedon, Galactus and ‘Avengers 2’

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As some online sites are breaking news that Disney has announced that Joss Whedon will be back to direct “The Avengers 2” – and that’s probably not a total surprise – others are pulling back from recent reports that Marvel/Disney is agreeing to a trade with 20th Century Fox that would allow some “cosmic” characters like Galactus and Silver Surfer – currently part of Fox’s “Fantastic Four” film franchise, and thus outside Marvel’s movie sandbox – to appear in Marvel films.

First, some explanation: Before Marvel was making its own films, the company farmed out the rights to its (at the time) biggest characters to other studios. Fantastic Four and X-Men went to Fox, with very mixed results. So did Daredevil, who turned up in a movie starring Ben Affleck that wasn’t bad. Meanwhile, Spider-Man and his supporting characters went to Columbia/Sony.

The separation of characters has been frustrating in small ways. The reporter character in the “Daredevil” movie worked – in the comics at least – for The Daily Bugle, Peter Parker’s employer. But they didn’t use that paper’s name in the movie because all that Spidey stuff was elsewhere.

There’s been some speculation that the movie rights to some of these characters would eventually revert to Marvel and we might see – as was rumored months ago – Spider-Man in an “Avengers” movie. But that’ll happen only if the competing studios stop making new films.

So Fox has ordered up a new “Fantastic Four” movie and hired “Chronicle” director Josh Trank to make it. Similarly, Sony/Columbia rebooted “The Amazing Spider-Man” this summer in part to keep that character from reverting to Marvel’s control.

But when Thanos, Marvel’s death-loving cosmic villain, showed up at the end of “The Avengers” this summer, it was obvious that Marvel had some cosmic-sized plans for its movies. The announcement that Marvel will make a “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie – whose characters are prime foes for Thanos – for 2014 only confirms the space-bound plans for Marvel’s movies.

While I doubt that more than a handful of people know the real truth, reports are now circulating that although Fox might have wanted more time to get its “Daredevil” reboot going, that doesn’t mean that Galactus, the Silver Surfer or other characters overseen by Fox will show up in a future “Avengers” or “Guardians” movie.

Much as we might hope that’s the case.

If anybody knows who’s coming over to whose playhouse, it’s likely to be Joss Whedon. After “The Avengers” made $1.5 billion worldwide, I’m guessing Marvel offered Whedon whatever he wanted for the sequel. And while there’s no doubt a big paycheck in the deal, Whedon – a lifelong geek who has written X-Men comics – would no doubt like to have some of those cosmic characters to play with.

Maybe he’s even expecting it. He ended “The Avengers” with one of those star-spanning baddies, after all.

‘Birds of Prey’ a model for an ‘Avengers’ TV show?

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While the geek universe is speculating about just what a TV series set in the “Avengers” movie universe might look like, I realized that we’ve already seen an example in the “Birds of Prey” series.

Airing on the WB network in 2002, the series was a small-screen take on DC’s “Birds of Prey” comic book series. The show featured Barbara Gordon in her Oracle incarnation (in other words, after the Joker’s brutal attack on Batgirl in “The Killing Joke” that left her paralyzed) leading a small group of crimefighters including Huntress (daughter of Batman and Catwoman in this scenario) and Dinah, the daughter of the original Black Canary.

“Birds of Prey,” which lasted only a handful of episodes, was a fairly standard police procedural dressed up with rooftop chase scenes and “Buffy” style fighting. Ten years on, some elements of the series look cheesy (the dialogue is particularly rough). But the series was overseen by Laeta Kalogridis, who went on to write and produce “Avatar” and “Shutter Island” and had a properly comic-booky feel.

Although only a few episodes aired, all 13 are available on disc.

How can the producers of an “Avengers” TV spin-off learn from “Birds of Prey?”

The “stars” of the story were off-screen. Nobody expects Iron Man or Thor to show up on a weekly TV series. Not while there are big-ticket movies to be made. “Birds of Prey” dealt with the absence of Batman and Catwoman by deciding the former had stopped patrolling the alleys of Gotham (sound familiar, “Dark Knight Rises” fans?) after the death of his beloved (in this case, Catwoman). Bruce Wayne was never more than a silent presence on the other end of a telephone line during conversations with Alfred.

The show was made on a TV budget, not a movie budget. It helped, probably, that no one flew in “Birds of Prey,” although Huntress did a lot of diving off rooftops. Dark Gotham City streets, a couple of oddball metahuman characters and some futuristic weaponry helped achieve a comic-book feel on a budget.

The show didn’t make major changes in its universe. A TV series set in the “Avengers” movie universe isn’t going to make major changes to storylines or characters, that’s for sure. We won’t see Loki killed off or Iron Man retire. “Birds of Prey” had the same restrictions, of course, beyond the initial killing of Catwoman. With Batman out of town, the most dramatic event the series could give viewers was a climactic battle, in the final episode, between Huntress and Harley Quinn, the Joker’s looney moll. But it made for a nice little payoff for the series. What about how they killed off the original Black Canary in the “Birds of Prey?” Well, did you see a body?

The show didn’t betray familiar characters. It’s safe to say that SHIELD isn’t suddenly going to become a terrorist organization, nor will we hear that Black Widow or Hawkeye have gone back to their previous careers. “Birds of Prey” had to dance around major changes to the core Gotham City characters. One episode featured the return of a Batman protege and apparently the character was originally going to have been Robin/Nightwing. But because the guy goes astray, so a change of secret identities was called for.

Although it didn’t make much of an impression on TV audiences or the DC comics universe in general, “Birds of Prey” did show it was possible to mount a weekly TV series in a thickly populated comics universe without interfering with a big-screen movie franchise.

 

New Comic Con images: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’ ‘Man of Steel’

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The news was coming out of San Diego Comic Con faster than a speeding bullet tonight.

The Warner Bros. panel, according to online reports, included footage of Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel,” the latest Warners/DC reboot of Superman.

The company also released a new teaser poster showing Henry Cavill as Supes:

The Marvel Films panel had some interesting news, including some titles: “Thor: The Dark World” for November 2013; “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” for April 2014 and “Guardians of the Galaxy” for August 2014.

Those follow the previously announced “Iron Man 3” for May 2013.

The “Winter Soldier” portion of the next Cap title would lead fans to expect that Bucky, Cap’s sidekick who “died” in the first movie, will be back. That’s because in the comics, after an absence of several decades, Bucky returned as the Winter Soldier, an assassin trained and maintained in youthful form by the Soviets.

“Guardians of the Galaxy” is an even more interesting turn of events that has, so far this evening, split fan opinion online.

The movie has been predicted for a few weeks now since Thanos, Marvel’s cosmic villain, showed up at the end of “The Avengers.” The Guardians, who have been around in one form or another since the 1960s, are longtime enemies of Thanos.

As another superhero team for Marvel movie-making besides the Avengers, they make as much sense as anything and are a more likely group in some ways than the Inhumans (fan fave characters who might have too many ties to the Fantastic Four for Marvel’s film arm to have the rights to) or the Defenders (which has included, over the years, such off-limits characters as the Silver Surfer and already-familiar ones like the Hulk).

Yet “Guardians” feels like a risk because it is cosmic in scope – a concept that was tested in “The Avengers” but still feels pretty disconnected from the “reality” established in Marvel’s movies so far – and because the characters are an unusual bunch, including Rocket Raccoon.

It’ll be interesting to see who Marvel chooses to helm “Guardians” and what direction the movie takes.

 

New ‘Fantastic Four’ on the way; what we want to see

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Timed in part to generate buzz on the floor of San Diego Comic Con, 20th Century Fox has announced that Josh Trank, who brought a new approach to the superhero origin movie with “Chronicle,” will direct the studio’s reboot of the “Fantastic Four” movie series.

Well, everyone is guessing it’s a reboot. But it’s unlikely that Jessica Alba and Chris Evans will be taking a third turn as the Storm siblings.

I wasn’t bitterly, bitterly disappointed with the 2005 “Fantastic Four” movie and its 2007 sequel, “Rise of the Silver Surfer.” I was just bitterly disappointed. Only one bitterly there.

That’s because the FF are second only to – and maybe equal to – The Avengers as the favorite Marvel Comics of my childhood.

Getting everything about the FF right for a “Fantastic Four” movie won’t be an easy task, especially with so many fans suspecting that the new flick is just Fox’s way of keeping a handle on the characters so the title won’t revert to Marvel and the characters and their storylines won’t become part of Marvel’s born-and-bred movie universe.

But Trank generated some good will with “Chronicle,” and he might be up to this task.

Here’s what he needs to do:

Get the tone of the Fantastic Four right: That just about says it all. The book has always been one of Marvel’s offbeat properties. Most of the characters are related to each other or lifelong friends with all the frictions that entails. That means very different relationships than those among “The Avengers” in Joss Whedon’s blockbuster.

Reed Richards is a genius but not an ass. Not most of the time. The brains of the group is a difficult character, probably the most difficult of the foursome. He’s incredibly smart but remote. Imagine Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark without the quips.

Sue Storm has to have something to do. She’s the Invisible Woman! She can … become invisible! (Okay, and also throw force fields and stuff). Sue’s powers must have seemed a lot more special in the early 1960s. Since she’s married to Reed and the sister of Human Torch Johnny Storm, she’s the glue that holds the family together. But she has to do more than look blonde and say, “Johnny! Reed!”

Look at the recent movies for an example of how to handle the Human Torch. Seriously? Yes. One of the few things that the “Fantastic Four” movies got right was Johnny Storm’s irreverent hot shot. He’s a prankster and full of himself. There’s a reason one of his best friends in the comics is that wiseacre Spider-Man.

Ben Grimm. Ben Grimm. Ben Grimm. The Thing is the heart and soul of the Fantastic Four. He’s a rollicking character, a guy who will “clobber” any creature and hurtle toward a threat as huge as Galactus. But Ben is also the most tender-hearted. He’s been dealt a terrible hand in life. Yet he gets right in there and jokes and brawls and fights the bad guys. And a note to Trank: Ben Grimm needs to be taller than the other members of the team. Maybe he doesn’t have to be as big as the Hulk was in “The Avengers,” but he needs to be bigger than he was in the recent movies.

Big scope. BIIIIIIG scope. The Fantastic Four comic was huge in scope, with Earth-threatening menaces like Galactus, fantastic Reed Richards inventions the size of a house and adventures that spanned space and time. I hope they don’t try to do the movie on the cheap.

While I’d like to see the FF in the Marvel movie universe, Trank and Fox might be able to do a lot with the beloved characters in a self-contained movie. If they respect the characters, the concept and the classic storylines, that is.

You shoulda been a superhero: Some inspired ‘Batman’ casting choices

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It’s a guessing game – a match game of sorts – that comic book fans have been playing for decades. Who should play their favorite superheroes and villains in a movie?

With Marvel Comics movies, the casting game is going on, officially and unofficially, in Hollywood and in Everytown, all the time these days. With a couple of Marvel movies in the works, including “Iron Man 3” and “The Wolverine,” and a couple more in the offing – “Guardians of the Galaxy,” maybe? – somebody’s being cast as a Marvel character every few days.

With “The Dark Knight Rises” coming out soon and Warners and DC Comics planning a reboot for the Batman character, I got to thinking about ideal or almost-happened casting for Batman movies in the past. Only one of these falls into that “almost happened” category, though. The rest are just random thoughts that popped into my head over the past couple of decades.

Michael J. Fox as Robin. Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. Remember the controversy when Michael Keaton was cast as Batman” in Tim Burton’s 1989 movie? Keaton was primarily a comic actor with a receding hairline and not enough chin. But he did a great job.

I know from reading an early draft of the script – more about that another day – that Robin was originally meant to be a character in the movie. So, given the late-1980s period, why not cast 80s star Michael J. Fox as Dick Grayson/Robin? Fox had the right stature, both physically and Hollywood-wise, for the part. He’s quite capable of pulling off a dramatic scene and he might have brought a Burt Ward-style energy to the movie.

Marlon Wayans as Robin. Early in the history of the Tim Burton “Batman” movies, there was talk of a street-wise, “urban” actor being cast as Dick Grayson. There’s a Dick Grayson character in that early script and Wayans, who was 17 when Burton’s movie was released, was set to play the part. Wayans even said in 2009 that he got paid for the role but Burton didn’t include the character. As we all know, Dick Grayson didn’t show up until the third “Batman” movie and by that point was played by future “NCIS” TV star Chris O’Donnell. I wish we’d gotten the chance to see Wayans in the role.

Ray Liotta as the Joker. Liotta is familiar to most of us from “Goodfellas” and other films, but take a look at him above from the 1986 Jonathan Demme movie “Something Wild.” Jeff Daniels plays a mild-mannered guy who falls in with a wild woman played by Melanie Griffith. It’s all fun and games until the woman’s homicidal ex-boyfriend shows up, played by guess who? I remember sitting in the theater in 1986 seeing Liotta’s crazy and scary expressions and thinking, “Damn, this guy would make a good Joker.” He sure would have been more physically intimidating than Jack Nicholson.

Willem DaFoe as the Joker. I liked DaFoe as Norman Osborn in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” movie. I wasn’t crazy about the Goblin outfit, but that’s another story. Anyway. Osborn wasn’t DaFoe’s first opportunity to play a bad guy. Here’s how he looked in Walter Hill’s 1984 action musical “Streets of Fire” as the murderous leader of a biker gang. Look at that face and tell me he wouldn’t be ideal as the Joker.

Armie Hammer as Batman. Or Superman. Everyone knows that DC and Warner Bros. are struggling to get their superhero film franchises off the ground – other than the very standoffish “Dark Knight” movies. They’re planning to reboot the Batman character almost immediately and want to jump-start a “Justice League” movie. (Of course, they’re only about $1.5 billion behind the box office take for “The Avengers.”)

But as fans know, Warners almost got a “Justice League” movie off the ground in 2008. A script was completed, casting had begun and apparently some costume tests were done. I’d like to pause right now to wonder how it’s possible that none of those costume photos have ever been leaked to the web. Anyway. Armie Hammer, later known for “The Social Network,” was cast at Batman before the movie got derailed. Hammer, who’s like seven feet tall, would have worked very well as a young Bruce Wayne. Or a young Clark Kent, for that matter. With Henry Cavill coming next year in “Man of Steel,” it’ll be interesting to see if he figures into future “Justice League” movie plans, if Hollywood will circle back to Hammer or find some virtual unknown for the role. That tactic worked very well with Christopher Reeve.

Secrets of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’

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Granted, “The Amazing Spider-Man” isn’t loaded with Easter eggs and teasers for the greater Marvel cinematic universe like “Iron Man” and every related Marvel movie since 2008. After all, “Spider-Man” was made by Columbia/Sony and is outside the Marvel movie universe. It’s not building to an “Avengers”-style team-up.

But director Marc Webb and the other makers of “ASM” have thrown a few strands of a larger Spider-Man story – as well as some Easter eggs – into the movie.

There she goes: Did anyone else wince at the scene when Peter, getting ready to fight the Lizard, apologizes to Gwen and tells her he’s about to throw her out a window? He does so, zapping her with a web and lowering her lightly to the ground below. He’s trying to get her out of harm’s way.

The scene was very reminiscent of the famous “Gwen Stacy dies” issues of “The Amazing Spider-Man” comic 121-122, in which the Green Goblin throws Gwen to her death, only to have Spidey catch her with webbing. But Gwen is dead anyway. I think the debate in fandom raged for years about whether the fall or the sudden stop at the end – thanks to Spidey’s webbing – was what killed her.

There’s no way that Webb didn’t realize the significance of throwing Gwen out of a building and catching her with webbing. Had to be an Easter egg – and foreshadowing.

Tip of the hat: I’ll have to look for this Easter egg when I see the movie again, but I’m told there’s a photo of “Community” actor Donald Glover in Peter’s room in “The Amazing Spider-Man.” This is neat because, when the reboot was announced, someone suggested that Glover could play the part. The casting didn’t gain any traction, but now that Spidey in the Ultimate world is African-American, why not do a little universe-blending?

Meet the parents: Much more so than in previous “Spider-Man” movies, “The Amazing Spider-Man” teases about Richard and Mary Parker, Peter’s parents. They’re seen in a flashback at the beginning of the movie and some of the marketing for the film teased “the untold story” of Spidey’s origin. I don’t think the movie really lived up to this hype, but Webb and the screenwriters definitely created some aura of mystery about the Parkers and their connection to Oscorp.

After decades in which they were relatively overlooked in the comics – and their deaths were taken for granted as a mechanism to put Peter in his aunt and uncle’s care – Marvel decided to elaborate on the background of the characters, retconing them as agents of Nick Fury’s SHIELD spy organization. If “Amazing Spider-Man” generates sequels, it’ll be interesting to see how the makers explore the past of the characters – especially since SHIELD is part of the separate Marvel movie universe and theoretically not open to the “Spider-Man” movies.

Who’s the guy? I mentioned this in my earlier review, but the movie’s end credits are interrupted by a scene of Rhys Ifans’ Curt Connors, incarcerated and being visited by a shadowy figure. I assumed this was Norman Osborn, the future Green Goblin.

But a number of sites have since theorized that the character was other Spidey villains as diverse as Electro (flashes of lighting? check) and Mysterio (abrupt appearance and disappearance? check).

Maybe we’ll find out in a sequel.

‘Spider-Man’ maybe not amazing, but good

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There’s apparently a pretty crass motive behind the fact that “The Amazing Spider-Man” is playing in theaters around the world this week, and I know that you would be as shocked as I am to learn that money has something to do with it.

Only about a decade ago, of course, Sony/Columbia Pictures started releasing Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” movies and the first two entries in the three-film series are pretty good. Since that time, however, Marvel Comics has gone into the movie business itself – you might have heard about that – and, as Hollywood tells it, Sony decided to hang onto the rights to stay in the Spider-Man movie business so the rights to the character didn’t revert to Marvel.

This means, for the time being, no Spidey in “Avengers” movies.

It also means, because the producers decided against letting Raimi continue his series, that Spidey got a reboot in the hands of director Marc Webb (heh).

Webb’s movie, “The Amazing Spider-Man,” would be closer to amazing indeed if so much of it didn’t feel like the reboot that it is.

That’s because Webb seems to have a pretty good handle on the movie and strikes the right tone. But a big chunk of the movie seems just too familiar, as Webb presents a slightly altered version of Spidey’s origin again.

Can we all agree that we don’t need to see future superhero movies spend quite so much time on the origin of its hero? Especially if we’re seeing a reboot?

Spoilers ahead, by the way.

Anyway, Andrew Garfield stars as Peter Parker, NYC high school student who’s something of a high-school outcast but nowhere near as much of a hapless nerd as Tobey Maguire’s “puny Parker.” He stands up for a kid bullied by meatheaded classmate Flash Thompson and catches the eye of beautiful Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) even before he gets super-powers.

In the new outing, Peter is driven by the mystery of what happened to his parents, Richard and Mary Parker, who left him in the care of his Uncle Ben and Aunt May when he was a child. Peter finds his father’s Oscorp briefcase, which leads him to contact scientist Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), a scientist colleague of his father.

After that injection of mystery, the rest of Parker’s story unfolds fairly normally. Peter gets bitten by a very special spider and gains its powers. His Uncle Ben gets killed (in a manner that seems much more random and less effective than in the comic and Raimi’s movie, frankly) and Peter decides to become a vigilante, hunting his uncle’s killer.

In the meantime, Peter and Gwen fall in love – kind of quickly, really – and Peter helps Connors single-handedly pursues his dream of manipulating genetics.

Of course, things don’t work out for Connors and he turns into the Lizard, a development that was teased throughout the Raimi films as actor Dylan Baker popped up, in a one-armed lab coat, only to never see the conclusion of his story reached.

There are some really good elements in Webb’s version of the story … and some that don’t work out all that well. Here are a few:

The mystery of Richard and Mary Parker: To make this reboot seem a little different, Webb and the screenwriters sow through the movie seeds of a the mystery of what happened to Peter’s parents. It’s implied that something untoward happened to them. But it’s just a tease so far.

Spidey the smart-ass. Here’s one thing that works really well. In the comics, Spidey is a jokester. He quips and hurls insults about as often as he spins webs. The movie does a good job with this aspect of Peter’s personality.

The Stacys are perfect. Emma Stone is perfectly cast as Gwen Stacy, Peter’s first big love in the comics. The Raimi films reversed things by giving us redhead Mary Jane before Gwen. Aside from being adorable, Stone is quite good as Gwen. And comic and actor Dennis Leary is very good as her father, NYPD Capt. George Stacy. True to the comics, Capt. Stacy eventually learns Peter’s secret.

The bad guy is … eh. Movies always run a risk when they make the bad guy a sympathetic character. Raimi danced on the edge of disaster but triumphed with the often-sympathetic Dr. Octopus in “Spider-Man 2.” But there’s not much to Curt Connors here and what there is is sympathetic or even pathetic. He really feels like a minor Spider-Man rogue.

The little things are good. Besides Spidey’s penchant for wise-cracking, one of the nicest touches in the film was bully Flash Thompson’s end-of-the-movie admiration of Spider-Man. In the comics, Flash was Spidey’s biggest fan at the same time he hated his secret alter ego.

The stinger doesn’t work. In Marvel’s owned-and-operated movies, beginning with “Iron Man,” there’s a credits or after-credits stinger, or extra scene, teasing developments in upcoming movies. Those scenes worked perfectly. In “The Amazing Spider-Man” – here are those spoilers I warned you about – the mid-credits scene shows Connors, incarcerated, being confronted by a shadowy figure. I think we’re supposed to assume it was the mentioned-but-unseen Norman Osborn, but the payoff fell flat with a mention of the “secret” about Peter’s parents. Uh, really? You’ve just spent two hours telling us there’s a secret about Peter’s parents, then you tell us, in the surprise secret scene, that there’s a secret about Peter’s parents? I guess the scene is there in case we were out at the  concession stand during that part, huh?

There’s nothing in “The Amazing Spider-Man” that can top the average Marvel movie or Raimi’s first two tries at the character. But there’s nothing offensive either. It’s worth seeing if your expectations are low or manageable.

 

Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy: Marvel movie universe-building

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Somebody asked me the other day if I planned to go see “The Amazing Spider-Man” next and I said, “Yeah, probably.” Right up until the time I saw Sam Raimi’s lackluster “Spider-Man 3” in 2007, my answer would have been much more emphatically positive about the cinematic adventures of the wall-crawling webslinger. The final Raimi film kind of burned me out on the character.

And the idea of rebooting “Spider-Man” yet again, with another origin story, no matter how overstuffed with a “mystery” about Peter Parker’s parents it might feature, makes me suddenly very, very tired.

So I have to say that while I’m sure I’ll see “The Amazing Spider-Man,” I’m not excited about it.

That’s also because I’ve been spoiled, frankly, by Marvel’s universe-building big-screen efforts.

The movie versions of “Fantastic Four” and “X-Men” are owned by Fox and “Spider-Man” is owned by Sony. That means that despite brief teases to the possibility of a cross-over like we heard earlier this year, those movie universes won’t mix with Marvel Films-owned and operated properties like “Iron Man,” “Thor,” “Captain America” and “The Avengers.”

So while I’m looking forward to “The Amazing Spider-Man” and “The Dark Knight Rises,” I’m more excited to see where Marvel goes next with its universe-building efforts.

Rumors circulated in the past couple of days that the long-rumored “Ant-Man” character might end up in “Iron Man 3,” which comes out next May. I’m not sure how some people are authoritatively saying this when so much time remains for last-minute changes, but … well, it would be quite cool to see one of the original Avengers – not to mention his partner, Wasp – finally make the big screen.

Today online sites were lit up with suggestions, primarily drawn from Latino Review, that Marvel is going to release a “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie in 2014. Despite the fact that the characters are little-known outside of comics fandom – they’re even more obscure than “Iron Man” was before 2008 – the diverse group of cosmic adventurers would make for a huge expansion for the Marvel universe.

And as many online sources noted, the “Guardians” also makes sense because one of their regular antagonists is cosmic bad guy Thanos, who appeared in the mid-credits teaser at the end of “The Avengers.”

While my lifelong appreciation of “The Avengers” doesn’t necessarily carry over to “Guardians of the Galaxy” – I’m just not as familiar with them – I would be happy to see Marvel’s movies continue to expand the Marvel cinematic universe.

And I’ll dream of the day when Spidey will bump into Captain America and Iron Man during battle in the streets of New York.