It’s refreshing to a studio head telling you that you don’t have to see one of his films to enjoy another one of his films. It doesn’t happen often, but it appears that is just what Kevin Feige did.
The Marvel boss spoke with British science-fiction magazine, SFX, for their March issue (on stands in the UK on Wednesday, presumably in the US and other countries not long after) and the mag decided to tease its readers with two items that came up on the talk.
The juiciest tidbit, in my opinion, was when the magazine asked how Guardians of the Galaxy related to Avengers 2:
Will Guardians Of The Galaxy prove as integral to Avengers 2 as each Avenger’s solo film?
“I would say that it does not. It’s much more of a standalone film. It takes place in the same universe. And when we’ve been on the other side of that universe in other movies, you might see those characteristics in Guardians, but the Avengers are not involved with what’s happening out there at this time.”
I don’t know if Feige misunderstood the question or viewed in a different connotation than I am, but it sounds like Feige is saying that Guardians of the Galaxy is not integral to Avengers 2. This comes as a shock, because it reached the point of common knowledge the the GotG will be fighting Thanos in their film, and that Thanos will be the big bad for all Phase II. So, it would be almost impossible for the Guardians of the Galaxy to not be integral to Avengers 2, if only to show how dangerous Thanos really is.
At the very least, it appears that Feige is putting a stake in the heart of the rumor that Iron Man will go into space with the Guardians at the end of Iron Man 3. Of course, if you want to argue semantics, Feige said “the Avengers”, and not “all of the Avengers,” so technically Iron Man could be appearing in that film and Feige not be lying. But it looks like Shellhead making a trip to space might not happen.
In the other interview excerpt, SFX asks about the “cosmic” feel of Marvel’s output to this point:
SFX: Phase 2 of Marvel Studios’ films has been described as “cosmic.” Is that a fair description?
Kevin Feige: “I wouldn’t say that in a broad sense. The Thor film and the Guardians Of The Galaxy film certainly are cosmic. Guardians and Thor will take the brunt of the cosmic side of the universe, particularly Guardians, which is 95% in space. I think Iron Man 3 shows the other side of Phase 2, which is delving deeper into the characters. Throwing them on a much more personal journey. And Captain America will showcase… What’s exciting to me about Cap – sort of about Iron Man 3 too if you look at it – is it’s tonally almost like a different genre. Shane Black’s described Iron Man 3 as a Tom Clancy sort of political thriller, which I like a lot. We hired our directors on Cap because they loved our explanation that we really want to make a ’70s political thriller masquerading as a big superhero movie. Just like with the first film – we got Joe Johnston because we said, ‘We want to do a ’40s World War Two movie masquerading as a big superhero movie.’ I love that we’re doing a sequel to a film that’s a completely different genre than the first film. I think that’s fun. And the comics do it all the time.”
I find it interesting that Marvel is brave enough to change the concept from film to film, from original to sequel, and that Feige takes pride in that fact. When you think about it, Thor: The Dark World appears to be tonally different from Thor, yet within the same genre. The first film was a glitzy Hollywood sci-fi epic. From what I’ve seen of the sequel, it appears to be a grittier, Game of Thrones/Lord of the Rings-like fantasy.
This means every film has to be resold to its target audiences, but it makes it so the franchises never get stale or boring.
Once again, if you want to read more of the interview, it will be in SFX #233, on newsstands starting Wednesday.
