Marvel Comics At The Movies
Marvel Comics seem to be the most popular place to find movie material these days as the whole of Hollywood keeps jumping on the "lets create a franchise" band wagon.
In 2007 alone there were three big releases of Marvel Comic characters: Spiderman 3, Ghost Rider and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. There are four more films penciled in for next year and a staggering eighteen others in development.
Marvel Comics itself was founded in 1939 and launched characters such as the Human Torch, the Sub Mariner and the first patriotically themed hero Captain America.
Captain America became a very popular comic with circulation hitting one million. But the three founding characters for the comic only lasted until the mid 1950s as sales began to decline.
But with editor/writer Stan Lee at the helm the 1960s brought revival to the comic and most of the characters that are now seen on the big screen were created in this period.
The Fantastic Four led the way and were created to rival DC Comics' The Justice League of America. Before long Marvel began publishing further titles including X-Men, Iron Man, Daredevil, and Spiderman.
The comics and characters grew in popularity and Stan Lee became one of the biggest names in comics.
Since 1944 these characters have been adapted for the television but it wasn't until 1998 that a story was finally adapted for the big screen.
And this came in the form of one of Marvel's lesser know characters Blade - played by Wesley Snipes.
Despite this lack of familiarity Blade, who is half human and half vampire, went on to gross $130 million at the worldwide box office.
It also spawned two sequels 2002's Blade II which grossed $150 million and 2004's Blade Trinity which grossed $130 million.
From this point the floodgates opened and comic character after comic character has been developed and given the silver screen treatment, but with varying success.
Columbia Pictures' Spiderman is often regarded as the jewel in Marvel's crown. Over the three movies they have produced an impressive cast list including Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Alfred Molina and Willam Defoe.
And all three films have grossed more than $700 million with the third film, despite performing the worst with the critics, grossed $890 million.
The X-Men trilogy was also another box office hit boasting one of the greatest ensemble casts which included Patrick Stewart, Ian mcKellen, Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry.
Like Spiderman the third was also the most successful grossing $459 million.
However not all have performed well at the box office Elektra did poorly commercially and critically and this years highly anticipated Ghost Rider starring Nicholas Cage was panned by critics despite doing fairly well at the box office.
But unfortunately, like with animation movies, studios have found a winning formula that is enticing people back to the cinema and are sticking to it. While this is good for the movie industry it's the cinema go-er that is losing out as the market becomes overcrowded and saturated leading to a drop in the standard of movie that we are watching, Elektra and
Ghost Rider being prime examples, which will leave movie fans short changed.
But this has not deterred the big studios investing million of dollars to produce more of the same with The incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton, Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr, and Wolverine, the X-Men spin off starring Hugh Jackman, all set for a 2008/9 release.
And it's Iron Man that is the next character to get the big screen treatment in the character's cinema debut.
Robert Downey Jr is to take the lead role as Iron Man aka Tony Stark. Stark is a billionaire weapons manufacturer who is injured by a landmine. He is captured by Afghan forces and a dying Stark is forced to build them a weapon.
He builds an suit which acts as a life support machine for Stark who escapes and returns to the America. Here he uses the suit to fight crime.
In a bid to break the run of bad luck experienced by the Marvel Comic book movies of late Paramount pictures brought in a talented cast of Robert Downey Jr. Terrance Howard, Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth Paltrow, all of who have been Academy Award nominated, to throw some weight behind the project.
So far the talented cast seems to be paying off as critics have welcomed the critically acclaimed actor in this unexpected blockbuster role.
Iron Man is released 2nd May
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
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