MARVEL’S Kevin Feige Explains How To Avoid POST-AVENGERS Letdown. (Psst, You Can’t.)
Marvel’s Kevin Feige is essentially the Nick Fury of their movie department, overseeing all of the irascible pains in the asses at once. Dude has got the coup de grâce dropping soon in the Avengers, and everyone is thinking “what the fuck happens next?” Feige attempts an explanation.
io9:
[Here’s a few] questions with Feige on the general future plans for our comic book heroes.
After The Avengers, a lot of Marvel’s movies will be sequels. Other than rolling out more origin stories for lesser-known heroes, how do you avoid sequel-itis?
I’d love to say we’ve cracked a great formula and we have a big secret for it, but the truth is, we have the comics. The best of our characters have had great stories, and not just one great story, but multiple great stories. When you’re producing a story a month for 45 years, there are going to be good ones, bad ones, and great ones. And there are enough great [stories] that a 2, a 3 or a 4 after a movie shouldn’t hinder people from seeing it.
They take risks with characters in the comics, they change them up, they take them to unexpected places, the trick is to have the guts to do that in the movies as well. And that’s how we made the first Iron Man film, and that’s all of these movies. Making Captain America a period piece wouldn’t have been very popular in the general Hollywood logic. But we believed that was the way we had to make that movie. We’re continuing that with the Iron Man 3 with the next Thor movie in ways that I think will prevent sequel-itis… We won’t use 2s, 3s and 4s on all of them. The notion of Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan – I think that’s cool, I like those kinds of titles, Captain America: The First Avenger. I assume the next Captain America film will be Captain America: To Be Revealed.
All of the Marvel movies have been building up to The Avengers, now that this is rolling out, what’s the next big thing you’re building up to?
The next thing is proving we can prevent sequel-itis. The next thing is proving that taken away from a juggernaut of a movie like Avengers, that Tony Stark/Iron Man has a different story to tell. That Thor has different worlds to go do. And, frankly, explore Steve Rogers’ life in the modern world. And taking him to unexpected places, and doing it in ways that we hope will surprise people.
Who are we fooling here? Feige can’t come out and say what’s friggin’ obvious: it’s all down hill from here. The plans they’ve been laying since 2008 are finally coming together, and there will never be another “first” Avengers flick. Not even a second flick will live up to the culminating megaton of this first experience.