The Summer of the Superhero
by Philip Chien
If you're a fan of comic books or action movies 2011 has been a blockbuster summer. Four movies are based on comic book superheroes - "X-Men First Class", "Thor", "Green Lantern", and "Captain America". The summer has featured other action and fantasy movies making 2011 a truly action-packed season.
"X-Men First Class" is a reboot of the X-Men franchise. After "X-Men", "X-Men 2", "X-Men Last Stand", and the "Wolverine" solo movie the moviemakers decided to start over from when the team was first formed. The movie is set in the timeframe of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 but takes many liberties with history.
The team consists of characters familiar to moviegoers like Professor Charles Xavier, Beast, and Mystique, and less familiar characters like Havok and Banshee.
Magneto is portrayed as he's usually portrayed in the comics - a persecuted minority who at first works with Charles Xavier but eventually decides to go his own way with a more violent approach. Many have compared the Magento - Charles Xavier approach with Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr., all advocating for the rights of an oppressed minority. Xaiver and King encourage a peaceful approach while Magneto and Malcom X have come to the conclusion that they have to use violence - but are not necessarily villains. The best Magneto stories are the ones where he's using violence to protect mutants instead of ones where he's just a criminal or evil villain.
There is an amusing cameo by Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. When he's asked to join the X-Men he rejects them with a rude three-word response. It's legitimate to have Jackman play the same role in a movie set over three decades before the first X-Men movie because it's been established that Wolverine ages very slowly because of his mutant abilities.
In one case the technology in "X-Men First Class" is much more realistic than the comics. The Danger Room in the comics, where the team trains in realistic simulations, has extremely sophisticated 3-D holographic technology and machines which can create equipment on demand. In the movie the training facility is an ordinary bomb shelter the team's uses for dangerous activities and simple mannequins are used as targets.
Many X-Men comic books, animated series, and movies include the X-Men's private supersonic aircraft. It's usually called the SR-71 and drawn in the comics, painted in the animateds, and created through special effects in the movies to look like the actual SR-71 aircraft. But the X-Men version can hold far more passengers with a giant crew cabin similar to a luxury business jet and occasionally has been depicted with helicopter-like vertical takeoff and landing capabilities. The real SR-71 Blackbird barely holds two pilots and needs long runways and very specialized ground support equipment.
According to the producers "X-Men First Class" is a prequel to the previous X-Men movies, but there are many contradictions to the storylines in the existing movies. The producers have stated that since they're rebooting the franchise they aren't too concerned about continuity mistakes with the other X-Men movies. While many comic book fans have been offended by these statements, it's important to note that many times in the comics new writers have decided to reboot long established characters and rewrite their stories. In addition most long term comics, like any other long-running stories, have lapses in continuity.
There is one very glaring place in "X-Men First Class" where continuity was intentionally ignored. In all of the comics Moria McTaggert has a very lovely Scottish accent. (Yes, you can have an accent in comics dialogue balloons!) It is very noticeably absent in the movie.
Fans have enjoyed "X-Men First Class" and it's made money. There's little doubt that there will be sequels with the same characters.
Thor is a relatively unknown superhero to the mainstream public, but popular among comic book fans. In its simplest stories Thor is the Norse god of thunder (the day Thursday was named after him) who has come to Earth to fight for truth, justice, and the Norse way - or something like that. In deeper stories Thor is a cocky son of Odin, the king and head of all of the Norse gods. Thor expects to have the throne handed to him and Odin decides to teach his son a lesson by knocking him down a couple of pegs and having him learn some humility before he can regain his birthright. The movie is very faithful to the Norse gods version of Thor's legends.
Thor's the god of thunder and lightning. He wields a hammer, named Mjolnir, to control the weather. In the comics Thor's secret identity is Doctor Don Blake and his human female friend, Jane Foster, is a nurse. In the movie Jane, played by Natalie Portman, is a physicist studying lightning.
Loki's Thor's brother and they were best friends growing up. It's true that Loki's jealous that Thor's his father's favorite son and the one who's destined to inherit the throne. But Loki's not an ordinary villain - he's the trickster. Occasionally he's performed positive acts when it suits his needs. Thor, Odin, and Loki may be gods, but they're very human characters.
There's a subtle inside gag in the movie. New Mexico's motto is "Land of Enchantment." In the movie there's a tourism billboard which calls the state "Land of Enchantment - Journey into Mystery". Thor first appeared in the comic book "Journey into Mystery" issue #83.
If Thor's story sounds like Shakespeare's "Henry V" it should; what would you expect with actor Anthony Hopkins as Odin and director Kenneth Branagh?
Green Lantern stands out from the other 2011 superhero movies because it's from DC comics while the rest are from Marvel comics. DC Comics also owns the extremely popular Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman characters but far more movies have been made recently about the Marvel characters. Certainly Green Lantern is not as well known as Superman, Batman, or even Wonder Woman (at least he's better known than Aquaman), so the movemakers had to introduce him to the audience, most who are not comic book fans.
Partially because of his unfamiliarity Green Lantern is the weakest of this summer's superhero stories. The first third of the movie is filled with exposition to get the audience up to speed about the character. Comic book fans already know Sinestro is going to go sinister at some point - and the name's pretty much a giveaway to viewers who haven't been exposed to the characters. Unlike Magneto and Loki who have many layers, Sinestro's just a good guy gone bad and a pretty two-dimensional character.
In the comic books Green Lantern's gone through many variations. Alan Scott was the "Golden Age" Green Lantern from the 1940s. His powers were magical in nature and his vulnerability was anything made out of wood. The modern Green Lanterns started in the 1960s and are a galaxy-wide police corps with many different alien species. Dying Green Lantern Abin Sur instructs his power-ring to seek a worthy replacement and it finds test pilot Hal Jordan. There have been a couple of substitute Green Lanterns on Earth, most notably Guy Gardner and John Stewart. Stewart, introduced in the 1970s, was one of DC comics's first black superheroes.
John Stewart appears in the Justice League cartoons and many who grew up with those cartoons were confused that a white Green Lantern appears in the movie. There have been a couple of direct-to-DVD animated Green Lantern movies but they aren't anything special.
In the current Green Lantern lore it's the will power of the individual who controls the "green energy" which can be used to manipulate objects and energy. Instead of wood, the color yellow is the green energy's vulnerability. Every 24 hours the Green Lanterns have to recharge their rings from a power battery.
The Guardians of Oa, an oversight organization, controls the Green Lanterns and trains them. The movie features a handful of Green Lanterns from other worlds, generated with computer special effects. Kilowog and Tomar-Re have appeared in many comics and it was enjoyable to see them interacting with Hal Jordan in the movie. In the comics Tomar-Re is usually portrayed as parrot-like, but in the movie he says his head resembles a fish. The movie does not include Ch'p - arguably the most adorable, but implausible, of the thousands Green Lanterns in the Milky Way galaxy.
Captain America stars Chris Evans who's already familiar with playing superheroes; he was the Human Torch in the recent "Fantastic Four" movies. That's Evans's real body in the scenes as Captain America and it took a much smaller body "double" and computer special effects to convert him into a 98 pound weakling for the scenes before he's transformed into the World War 2 superhero.
This isn't the first Captain America movie, but the earlier ones were not well received at the box office or by fans.
The new movie is set in World War 2 when the character was created. The first issue of Captain America was dated May 1941 (seven months before the U.S. declared war on Germany) and features a red white and blue colored hero punching out Hitler. The comic's cover is misleading; Captain America does not fight Hitler in any of the stories!
At that point most Americans wanted to stay out of Europe's war. Prominent isolationists, like Charles Lindbergh, lobbied heavily to keep the U.S. neutral. Most Americans were pro-British and anti-Hitler but didn't want to be actively involved. There were notable exceptions, like Henry Ford and Helen Keller, who supported Hitler's views.
The publicity materials for the movie claim that creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were a significant influence on encouraging anti-Hitler attitudes among the American public, but in truth they were more likely the effect rather than the cause. Americans were more and more being convinced that they needed to support England and the political and military leaders felt that war would be inevitable at some point - the only question was when and what would be the trigger.
In the movie 98 pound weakling Steve Rodgers is finally accepted into the Army where he goes through training with a group of specially selected recruits for a top-secret Army project to create a super-soldier. One of the recruits is named Gil Hodge. In real-life Gil Hodges (with an "S") was a famous baseball player for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was in the Navy during World War 2, but he served in the Pacific Theater and was never part of any super-soldier project.
Munitions manufacturer and technical genius Howard Stark is clearly modeled after Howard Hughes. A 1960s version of Howard Stark, played by a different actor, appears in flashbacks in the "Iron Man" movies. It's nice to see this level of continuity among the various Marvel characters in their movies. Of course it's intentional, part of the lead up to the ultimate superhero team up movie, "The Avengers", scheduled for release on May 4, 2012.
"Captain America" is filled with anachronisms, in particular weapons and aircraft that are barely plausible in the 21st century much less World War II. Hydra's giant super-bomber aircraft appears larger than any other aircraft which has ever flown and has implausibly large gas turbine engines. It would have been less unbelievable if it was just propelled by propellers. The piloted superbombs were an interesting concept, but it would have been more realistic if they were based on actual weapons like the more advanced versions of the V2 rocket which German engineers were working on during World War II. What is most amusing is seeing English labeled controls on the German aircraft!
Other out-of-place items included multi-racial characters on Captain America's team - something which would have never happened in real life in that era. In one way it makes sense - since it's a high-tech science-fiction version of World War 2, it can also be an idealized world where segregation didn't exist.
Because Captain America is so much a United States character it's going to be interesting to see how well this movie performs in other countries; whether it's English-speaking countries with similar cultures, or countries like Germany and Russia where World War II brings back very different memories.
Marvel Comics hypes Captain America as the "First Avenger" because he was created in 1941; well before the modern superhero era. This is only true for their company though; Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were all published before Captain America.
Captain America is frozen in suspended animation for decades before his body is discovered (1964 in the comics, 2011 in the current movie). Because of the super-serum in his body he's survived, bringing him into the present. Future Captain America stories are the ultimate ‘fish out of water' situation - a man with 1940s morals and beliefs who's barely been kissed by a woman suddenly propelled into modern society.
Most comic book movies include a quick bonus scene after the movie's climax, during or after the end credits. While much of the audience is leaving the theater the diehard fans hang around wondering what the surprise is going to be. For example, Nick Fury was introduced at the end of "Iron Man" and Thor's hammer made a cameo at the end of "Iron Man 2." Early prints of "Captain America" were missing the post-credits scene which teases the "Avengers" movie.
Fans have suggested that a more appropriate post-credits scene would be Steve Rodgers in 2011 looking up a 90-year-old Peggy Carter and dancing with her - keeping his promise to go dancing with her.
Because of the way the franchising rights were sold X-Men and Fantastic Four are in their own "universes" and no crossovers are possible with the other Marvel characters at the present. Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and others have licensing agreements where they can appear in each other's movies. (For example, Iron Man has a cameo in the Hulk movie). Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson, has made small appearances in these movies, helping tie them all together.
If the four comic book movies in 2011 are not enough for you then wait another year. "The Avengers", directed by legendary cult director-writer Joss Whedon, will feature a whole gaggle of superheroes including Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Hawkeye (a minor character in the Thor movie), Black Widow, Captain America, and Nick Fury all together.
And if that isn't enough 2012 will also bring a reboot of the Spider-Man franchise and the third Christian Bale Batman movie.
Collage copyright 2011 Philip Chien, all rights reserved.
Megacon photo copyright 2009 Philip Chien. All Rights Reserved.
X-Men photos provided by 20th Century Fox Entertainment. Green Lantern photos provied by Warner Brothers. Thor and Captain America photos provied by Paramount pictures. All used with permission.
Links
Read an online copy of Captain America #1.
How to build your own Green Lantern lantern.
Order X-Men
items from Amazon.com.
Order Thor items from Amazon.com.
Order Green Lantern items from Amazon.com.
Order Captain America items from Amazon.com.
About the author
Philip Chien has enjoyed comic books most of his life.
copyright 2011 neatinformation.com. All Rights Reserved.
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