Iron Man (2008)

I just read a post on my friend Arthur's blog titled "Comic Book Movies They Won’t Make (But Totally Should)." It involves his reflections upon seeing the Marvel film Thor (2011). If you read this post, you'll notice he mentions the "Nerd Herd," and unless the timeline is incorrect in my mind I was part of that group. I believe that Thor was the last thing I did with a large group of friends before departing from Texas for the great white North. I digress. The point was that Arthur points out the fact that Marvel Studios is following the lead of Marvel Comics in the early 1960s. In order to compete with the Justice League, Marvel wished to create their own team of superheroes, so they grabbed a superhero here and a superhero there and created The Avengers. In order to keep ahead of DC's films, and to prevent losing to series such as Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight series of Batman origins, Marvel Studios decided to introduce Iron Man, then the Hulk, and eventually they had Black Widow, Thor, Hawkeye, and Captain America. And now, in 2012, we are all dying to see The Avengers, partially because Joss Whedon is directing it and it does not appear to be canceled yet, but partially because it's kind of awesome that this whole Marvel Cinematic Universe thing is still working. While I know that titles like Iron Man and Thor will sell the movies better, connecting better with the wider audience, the geek in me wishes that Marvel Studios would give us another call back to the 1960s Avengers. Instead of Thor we'd have Journey into Mystery, and more importantly, at least as it pertains to this post, instead of Iron Man we'd have Tales of Suspense. Of course, considering the fact that Iron Man and Thor are probably my current favorite comic book movies, I think I'll let it slide. I'll let it slide so long as they continue to make great films, so long as Iron Man 3 is better than Iron Man 2 and Thor 2 is good despite losing Kenneth Branagh.