Marvelous Money

This, like just about every summer for the past several years, will be a summer filled with comic book movies. Thor was released in theaters a few days ago and the Captain America is set to come out in a few months. With Marvel pumping out a minimum of comic book movies every year showing that there is a audience for these types of movies one must ask the question, what is the real point to a comic book movie?


With Thor being the latest comic book movie to hit theaters I find it the easiest one to judge on this subject. I watch Thor opening night and I left the theater just as disappointed as when I heard that I was going to have to go and see Thor. It was a combination of obvious product placement, basic action scenes, elementary comedy, and weak character development. For a superhero that no one really knows all that much about and the ones that do know really don't care about, why make a movie for him? Well as everyone knows Thor is an avengers and will be in the Avengers movie in 2012 so that answers that question. But the even bigger question is what to do with a Thor movie?

When comparing comic book movies today you have to compare each and every comic book movie to of course the Dark Knight. But the problem with this is that every comic book movie cannot hold a candle to the Dark Knight, its too good and they are far too bad. Some people see an issue with this line of thinking. That it is unfair to compare all the other third rate comic book movies to the Dark Knight. I don't see why it is unfair. Don't you compare different movies that are in the same genre of motion picture? Are they not both comic to movie adaptations?

So what is the point of comic book movies? Well let me ask you a question. The months before the releases of Thor how many commercials did you see on television for other products that advertised Thor in comparison to the amount of commercials that were just advertising the movie Thor alone? As I said before throughout Thor obvious product placement was being held. LG smart phones, Southwest airlines, Dr. Pepper soda cans, Seven eleven gas stations and so much more. Now I realize that this is not the first movie to do this sort of thing but I find that in real movies, and of course films, they either don't do this or it is not obvious and few and far between. The point of Thor just as a movie and not to get people to know who the character is before 2012 was to sell as much crap as they could in a hour and 30 min.

So to wrap up these comic book movies are not for the fans, they are for the fans' money. And I know that the point of a movie is to make money but usually there is a underlying theme or point other than profit that makes the writer or director make this movie.