Marvel is run by genuises

This weekend, we went out and saw Marvel's second attempt at cinemizing The Incredible Hulk, and I found it incredibly entertaining. We saw Iron Man just last month (also great, by the way), and there are striking similarities among the look and feel of these two films. And this is clearly intentional. At the end of Iron Man (after the credits), a mysterious figure played by Samuel L. Jackson presents Tony Stark (Iron Man's alter ego) with the proposition of a team of superheroes. At the end of The Incredible Hulk, Stark presents the idea to the general who created the Hulk. It seems that Marvel is building up to a S.H.I.E.L.D. film, based on the comic of the same name, which will pit a team of very different superheroes against a team of supervillians (notice how both Hulk's and Iron Man's arch-nemises fail to die at the end of their respective movies?). As one can only imagine, S.H.I.E.L.D. will be an action-packed montage of one intense battle scene after another. And personally, I can't wait.

The Incredible Hulk was great. While it lacked the quick, near-perfect pace and the dynamic protagonist of Iron Man, and while the interactions between Edward Norton and leading lady Liv Tyler seemed a bit stilted at times, the action sequences were really hard-hitting, and the final battle between the Hulk and his super-hulk nemesis was an incredibly satisfying payoff. The battles were beautifully coreographed (do you call it coreography if it's computer-generated?) and had me literally on the edge of my seat as I suspended disbelief and clung to the hope that the Hulk might be defeated. I also enjoyed Bruce Banner's explanation of what it was like to transform into the Hulk: a furious hallucination, like a gallon of LSD had been poured into his brain, leaving him with little recollection afterward of what took place. When Banner realizes that the only hope for saving humanity is to transform into the Hulk and fight the monster that is ravaging New York City, he concedes that he lacks control over the beast that he becomes, but hopes that he can at least "aim" it in the right direction. I like this hero: a vicious monster, in both brain and body, occupied by the heart of a timid, caring human who struggles to aim this deadly power toward only those things that would harm his fellow humans.

In any case, I marvel at Marvel's ability to transform a business based primarily on a dying commodity, the comic book, into a flourishing, growing enterprise based around films (and, no doubt, action figures and the like). While the RIAA has helped to demonstrate to America the copyright monopoly's potential for abuse, Marvel has, at least in this sense, painted a picture of the social and economic benefits of copyright. By taking their characters and building new works, new worlds, and new stories in motion pictures, Marvel has adapted its business to the realities of a changing media landscape. I personally possess more than a little nostalgia for the comic book stories that I grew up on, but I'm impressed and pleased that, through its films, Marvel is continuing to create new and exciting stories out of its great characters. As the Marvel universe grows into an ever-larger world of interconnected characters and films, it is likely that the films' values will increase, as the stories build on one another and fans seek out past films to better understand the new stories. I look forward to following these stories, and I'm grateful to the creative minds at Marvel for enriching our artistic landscape with these rich, dynamic, and bombastic films.