By The Avengers is an unparalleled success, and it’s only been out a week. Even though it’s not been officially confirmed, given that the film’s probably going to break half a billion dollars at the box office in the US alone, let alone the pounds of gold it’s making overseas, where it’s already broken that half billion mark and is still rising, an Avengers sequel is basically a foregone conclusion. We’re going to see The Avengers 2: Avenge Harder in probably 2015, maybe as early as 2014 if they really want to rush things. So what can Marvel do to help avoid an Iron Man 2-style sophomore slump?
I’ve got a few things I’d like to see out of the next Avengers movie that I think will let it work just as well as the first one. Obviously, there will be spoilers for The Avengers.
For the love of all that’s holy, keep Joss Whedon on
No one writes an ensemble like Joss Whedon, as his multitude of critically-acclaimed television projects prove. Without him, regardless of the talent of the main Avengers, the film probably wouldn’t have worked nearly as well. He’s got one of the sharpest wits and character senses in the business, he knows how to keep the fanboys happy, and he’s got the love and respect for the source material that’s required to keep these movies interesting. It really goes without saying that Marvel and Disney need to give him absolutely whatever he wants to make Avengers 2, and they need to try and keep their own fingers out of the creative pie, as that’s one of the factors that made Iron Man 2 a misstep.
Just give the man what he wants, give him the time he wants, and try to stay out of his way. I’m always a little wary of giving a creator complete control, as it means no one’s going to be able to call him out on his own bullshit, but Joss Whedon has always seemed like the sort of filmmaker that thrives on the input from his team. He’s about the only man in the world that actually could pull off that level of complete freedom.
The Marvel universe needs to expand
Through all of the Marvel movies, the world has gotten larger and larger. We started off with one man in a power suit suddenly being visited by Nick Fury to a universe that spans at least through the nine realms outlined in Thor. That’s big, but I think the Marvel universe needs to go bigger. We’ve seen snippets of what looks like a destroyed world, floating in space, where the Chitauri came from. What’s their deal? Why are they in league with Thanos, the Mad Titan, as revealed in the mid-credits sequence? If the Chitauri exist, what of the other scores of Marvel alien races, like the Kree or a more traditional version of the Skrulls? There’s a chance to introduce a lot of these worlds and concepts if Marvel goes ahead with their proposed Inhumans and Guardians of the Galaxy movies. A potential issue I see here is that we can’t be sure what characters and concepts Marvel still has the film rights to, after a decade of selling off the rights to X-Men, Spider-Man, and Fantastic Four characters. Would we even be able to see the Inhumans on screen, if they were sold as part of a packaged deal with the Fantastic Four? Are the Skrulls out entirely because Fox technically owns the rights to the Super Skrull? There’s possibly some legal hoops to jump through here, so we’ll have to see how that all shakes out.
Also, and I’ve been saying this for years now, the Marvel universe needs to introduce a magical element. Marvel has such a rich and unique mystical universe, from the travails of Dr. Strange to the entire Iron Fist background, and introducing it in the right way could really bring an insane level of weird possibilities and threats for The Avengers to go up against.
At the same time, things need to come back down to street level as well
Ok, I know this kinda conflicts with the previous point. Just roll with me on this one. The entire point of The Avengers, as a team, is to help fight the threats no single hero could overcome. Very true. However, these are still six people (not counting Nick Fury or the rest of SHIELD) that live in the world, and they aren’t going to have every single conversation they ever have together on board the Helicarrier or in Stark’s fancy office building. Think of the final, final credits sequence in the film, where the six of them are just sitting in silence, eating shawarma. Amazing, right? We need to see these fantastic, larger-than-life characters in some sort of realistic setting to help ground them as not just Earth’s mightiest heroes but as people. Let’s see Hawkeye and Captain America having a chat about whatever while on a basic patrol, just looking out for some street-level crime. Let’s see more of Bruce Banner and Tony Stark in the lab together. Hell, let’s just see these characters interacting in a setting that’s not in reaction to some global crisis. Whedon’s good with that sort of thing, and it’s got a lot of potential for character development and humor.
Don’t be afraid to give someone else the limelight
Who did we spend the most time with in The Avengers? I’d say there wasn’t a single character that had by far the most screen time, but I’d say Tony Stark and Captain America probably had the most face time on camera. Why’s that? Because they’ve become more popular. Everyone loves Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark, and Captain America’s probably got the second best movie of all of the bunch, so it’s no surprise they got more focus. Ideally, Avengers 2 would be able to spend a little less time with these fan-favorite characters and get to know some of the others. I’d imagine we’ll have some new characters introduced either in Avengers 2 or in the films coming between now and Avengers 2, so maybe we can get to know them a little better. Hell, Hawkeye and Maria Hill are reasonably high profile characters, at least from a comic fan’s point of view, and they had nothing to do in Avengers, Hawkeye’s third act badassery notwithstanding.
Maybe if the story was more rooted in one particular character’s history, we’d get a chance to know them a little better within the context of the team. Which reminds me…
The stakes need to be personal this time
What finally got the team galvanized against Loki and his forces was the death of Agent Coulson. Other than that, there wasn’t very much personal impetus for any of the group to band together and work as a team the way they did. Fighting to protect the entire world is a noble cause, but in terms of the actual stake each person had in the fight, when you get right down to it, it was little more than survival and a wish to avenge Coulson. Next time around, if Joss Whedon wants to do that smaller, more personal story he mentioned, the best way to make the slam-bang action finale matter is to make it matter in a more deeply personal way to the characters. You can’t just do the “Oh no, a zillion bad guys are going to take over the world! Quick, let’s function as a team to take them down!” story again without it just feeling like a retread. Make it matter, and all the story and character issues will start to vanish.
Do we really need to do the whole, “Half the world hates us, and half the world loves us” crap again?
Every superteam, in basically every comic going back to the early days, has had multiple storylines where the greater public is split between those that support the heroes and those that think they’re the true cause of the trouble they have to fight. You know what? It’s tired. It’s tired, and it’s not interesting anymore. There was the hint of it happening in the final moments of The Avengers, and even on the euphoric high I was riding after the end of the massive battle sequence, I still groaned on the inside and thought, “God, not this crap again.” Keep the focus tight on whatever threat the Avengers need to face down, and quit it with all the public opinion side stories.
No more superhero-on-superhero fights
An exception can be made if someone’s mind-controlled, or maybe if the Hulk loses all control and goes on a crazy rampage, but we’ve done the portion of the team-up story where the heroes have to fight each other before teaming up. Again, keep the focus on the threat or whatever enemy is going on. If someone new like Dr. Strange shows up? Don’t make him fight the Avengers. Just say, “Yes, this is Dr. Stephen Strange, he’s our magical consultant.” “Why, hello, Stephen, the break room is right this way.”
MORE HULK SMASH
The Hulk stole every moment he was on screen. They perfectly captured the brutality, just barely controlled by whatever part of Bruce Banner still holds the reins, and they found just the right way to pull an amazing amount of both humor and badassery out of the jolly green giant. I want to see Hulk on an absolute tear, whether he’s punching the teeth out of Thanos or rampaging through a city, the Avengers dogging at his heels to try and stop him. It’s breathtaking to watch the Hulk finally, and I want as much of it as I can.
Finally bring Hank and Janet Pym into the mix
I’d imagine introducing Hank Pym, also known as Ant-Man, and his wife Janet, a.k.a. The Wasp, is something reserved for Edgar Wright’s development-hell mainstay Ant-Man. Hank and Janet are a pair of scientists that developed Pym particles, which can either shrink a person down to ant size or grow them to the size of a skyscraper. Don’t ask why it does both. It’s comic science. Also, Hank has a helmet that allows him to control ants via pheromones. An army of a billion ants can do some serious property damage, you know. I want to see these size-changing Avengers-mainstays finally join the team. Imagine how cool it would have been if, in the final act of The Avengers, we had a massive giant walking around grabbing those huge snake monsters out of the sky and whipping them onto the ground like a belt.
Of course, you can’t talk about the Pyms without mentioning the single act that’s defined Hank Pym for decades. In the regular universe, in a moment of weakness, Hank slapped his wife. It wound up demonizing him for twenty years while he tried to atone for it in every action. In the Ultimate universe, he was a lot more sociopathic about it, attacking Janet with ants while she was shrunken down and spraying her with pesticides, so that’s a monstrous action. It would take a lot of care and some careful writing to keep either of these sequences in any Marvel film, but it’s important for the characters, and it should be addressed in some way.
Kill someone truly shocking
At the end of the day, it made sense for Coulson to die. He was instrumental in assembling the Avengers and bringing them all to SHIELD. Once they were together, he didn’t really have that much of a point, as a character. Sure, he was a fan favorite, but his task was complete, so it made perfect sense for him to die. I want to see Marvel, and Joss Whedon, exercise some serious balls.
I want them to kill Tony Stark.
Stark is easily the most recognizable figure in the Marvel cinematic universe, and he’s probably the most recognizable character of all the Marvel movies as well, largely because Robert Downey Jr. plays him like a champ. I want him to die because it will signify a major shake up in the status quo for the entire cinematic universe. Do they try to replace him with Don Cheadle as War Machine? Does Hank Pym take the lead role as super scientist? I know I said to leave the public opinion story out of this, but how would Stark’s death affect the people that so look up to him and the rest of the Avengers? There’s a lot of really amazing potential here, if someone has the guts to pull the trigger.
And hey, it’s superheroes. No one stays dead forever.