The Avengers

Jasmina Saleh,

Correspondent (Film)

 

Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor and Captain America — each of them are perhaps the most macho, brilliant and unique superheroes that I’ve ever seen work together; they starred in The Avengers. In 2012, I had anticipated this collaboration more than you can imagine. It was my favourite character, Tony Stark — genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist — who began the sequel of the five linked movies when Iron Man launched in 2008. Then we were introduced to the big, green, uncontrollable rage-monster in The Incredible Hulk. Next Marvel…well, marvelled us with Thor, an exiled god from Asgard with a hammer that would only answer to him and who would find himself fall for Jane Foster, played by the beautiful Natalie Portman. Finally, the genetically modified soldier came in to play, literally, and was the final piece of the puzzle, as Captain America was the last to be found. Frozen in ice and lying beside the Tesseract – the central object of conflict that links all the Avengers destinies together.

Marvel only revealed in The Avengers that all the other movies had just been there to lead up to this one great superhero movie and it is needless to say that it was a massive success. The Avengers grossed $1.5 billion worldwide (The Hollywood Reporter, Kit 2014) and the best part was the other studios became envious of this ingenious so-called shared universe. The five studios that are in a franchise frenzy after Marvel’s success are Sony, Fox, Universal, Warner Bros. and Disney.

Sony’s The Amazing Spider-man 2 will be launched in April 2014 but this is only the beginning. In December 2013, the studio called in five writers, including Roberto Orci (writer of Transformers, 2007) and Ed Solomon (writer of Now You See Me, 2013) to expand on more Spider-man movies. The only problem is that Spider-man is not surrounded by fellow superhero comrades, but rather, drowning in a pool of super-villains. The idea is that these baddies will serve as a basis for more conflict with our beloved spidey hero.

Fox StudiosFox plans to further expand the X-Men sequels with their, now, newest addition of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the sequel to X-Men: First Class (2011). There are plans of a potential conflation with the Fantastic Four characters. Fox called in Simon Kinberg to expand on this idea and create an ultra-shared Fox universe.

Universal, however, has a completely different approach and, perhaps, the more original take on the shared universe trend. This is because Universal Studios does not have many superheroes, but a large sum of creepy monsters. Their plan is to pool together the Mummy, Dracula, the Wolf-Man, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Invisible Man and the Gill-Man. Universal is currently working on a new The Mummy produced by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, which could potentially be the first of this planned monster universe.

Now back to some of the most well-known DC Entertainment heroes from Warner Bros. At first, in 2005 and 2006, when Superman Returns and Batman Begins appeared neither of the two had much to do with another. One could almost dub them stand-alone movies until recently when, in 2013, it became known that Man of Steel (2013) would be followed with a Batman-Superman conflation starring Henry Cavill (our abs of steel Superman), Ben Affleck (newly named Batman) and Gal Gadot (as Wonder Woman). There are even whispers that Warner Bros.’ aim is to pull together all the DC heroes into a glorious Justice League film.

Finally, Disney seems to be infected with the franchise frenzy too and is taking advantage of the shared universe that was created around Lucas Films’ Star Wars. As Disney owns Lucas Films, they are set on expanding this franchise, starting with Star Wars: Episode VII, which is currently in preproduction.

It is clear that Marvel has impacted the direction these studios aim to pursue, which is expanding on movies that are capable of creating worlds of characters whose fates are intertwined across their shared universes.

Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons (rwoan, Downtowngal)

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Jasmina Saleh

Jasmina Saleh

Jasmina Saleh is currently an undergraduate journalism, media and cultural studies student at Cardiff University, who has an eternal passion for movies. She aspires to someday contribute to the movie industry in a unique and original way.