The Four Color Media Monitor

As if the first - and downright awful - Civil War crossover wasn't enough, now Marvel's got some kind of sequel in the works for next year to double every unwitting buyer's expenses:

It seems that Secret Wars won't be the only comic book event that Marvel Entertainment revives in 2015. In a pair of new images released over the past couple of days, the publisher has additionally teased returns for Civil War, Age of Ultron and Marvel Zombies.

[...] The original Civil War was a storyline which ran from 2006 through 2007 across a number of series, with Iron Man and Captain America leading opposing factions of heroes and villains over the issue of whether or not superheroes should register their identities with the U.S. government. The best-selling storyline, which may form the basis of 2016's third Captain America movie [10], led to Tony Stark becoming director of SHIELD and Captain America's temporary "death."

And that's what they think makes a great premise for a movie? Again, I honestly think any moviegoers who buy into the finished product will be making terrible mistakes. I certainly wouldn't want to give products of Brian Bendis a stamp of approval.

The Inquisitr says a movie drawing from Civil War probably won't be the same as the comics. But what if it is? And even if it isn't, the emphasis on heroes-vs-heroes isn't very appealing. They say at the start:

If you’re a longtime reader of Marvel’s comic books, the announcement of a coming cinematic Civil War might have made you pee a little. You’re right to be excited, but you’ll want to dial it back a bit: Marvel’s movie Civil War will not be the Civil War from the comics.

But I'm not excited, haven't been for a long time, and I'm sure there's some people by now who aren't very excited either. And there's more who might be turned off further if they knew the story synopsis:

Reports emerged over the weekend that Robert Downey Jr. will make an appearance in Captain America 3 in 2016, and the initial report held that Marvel would be trying to translate its 2006-2007 Civil War crossover storyline to the big screen.

That storyline saw the Marvel Universe’s superhero community split in two by the announcement of a Superhero Registration Act. The Act spun out of a tragedy which saw a group of young heroes’ irresponsibility result in the deaths of hundreds.

That would be the New Warriors he's talking about, IIRC. But why is the audience at large supposed to be impressed with a story where a bunch of heroes unintentionally leads to the death of several hundred people? It's supremely embarrassing, and no way to find an audience for the New Warriors.

As a result, Congress required that all superpowered individuals register with the government and join what was essentially a national police force. It had the backing of Tony Stark, who drew a ton of heroes to his side. Captain America, though, resisted and went underground, taking a good group of heroes along with him.

This, of course, resulted in a number of battles and some deaths here and there. Eventually, the rebel heroes actually wound up standing down when Captain America, astounded over the damage the two sides’ fighting had caused, surrendered himself to authorities.

It was one of Marvel’s better multi-comic crossovers, with more than 100 single comic issues from different series crossing over.

This is where they really blow: if the readers must spend tons of money to get every possible link to the crossover and can't understand it without doing so, is that a good thing? "Better" is a lie - it was one of the stupidest and disrespectful, yet there's only so many lemmings out there who bought it out of disturbing addiction.

And I just thought of something else: the plot is vaguely reminiscent of X-Men's Days of Future Past, where a disaster involving mutants led to a war-ravaged future with Sentinels. But even that wasn't built upon the kind of cynicism this new balderdash drew from.

And you’re very unlikely to see anything resembling it on screen.

That’s because of a couple of reasons. The biggest one is sheer number of heroes involved in the comic version of Civil War. The original brought in Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the New Warriors, the Avengers, Namor, X-Factor, the X-Men, the Young Avengers, the Runaways, the Punisher, and more.

Half of those characters – X-men, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man – Marvel doesn’t even have the movie rights for. Many of the others haven’t yet been introduced on screen, and Marvel seems unlikely to introduce a vast wave of characters without having the time to explore them.

Oh, that could all change if they feel like it. They only mention it fleetingly in a caption, but Civil War was also the miniseries that laid out the groundswork for One More Day in Spider-Man, one of the worst excuses for erasing a marriage no sane person was objecting to.

One thing does seem almost certain, though, it will have to end in a way totally different from the comics. Whereas the comics saw Captain America turning himself in and a new order established in the Marvel Universe, Marvel seems to have mapped out a different plan for its movie universe. With current speculation pointing toward a Guardians of the Galaxy crossover with the Avengers, we’re probably likely to see Civil War ending in the way that most big comic crossovers do: the heroes have to put aside differences to fight a world-ending threat – Thanos, the Mad Titan.

Oh sure, that could happen. But any emphasis on hero-vs-hero still takes away impact, and could take up too much time in a movie that would probably be nearly 2 hours long. And it could signal how a PC idea of what superheroes are all about is now finding its way onto the silver screen under the flawed perception all audiences really want to see that instead of heroes fighting villains.

Labels: Avengers, Captain America, crossoverloading, Fantastic Four, golden calf of death, Iron Man, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics, Spider-Man, X-Men