Hollywood is searching for icebergs. I don’t mean a pointless sequel to Titanic, but story ideas that have a long, unseen history behind them. I blame The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s massive back story allowed Peter Jackson and Co. to create two vast trilogies. Will we see a Silmarillon trilogy? Not likely, but all those elves and dragons lie behind the films, supplying an unseen “thickness” that other Fantasy pretends and fails to provide. (Eventually we are supposed to get a television show…..)
This fullness speaks to the success of the Star Wars universe as well. George Lucas created (or borrowed) a full universe to make films in. Only Star Trek can rival it for back story and detail. Normally, this kind of “story bible” would frighten off writers and filmmakers. (It certainly kept a creative stranglehold on the Star Trek TV shows for years, finally beginning to crack with the success of Discovery and Picard.). But Hollywood is beginning to see the value of an established, solid canon. James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, anything with a proven track record is good again, allowing new, innovative directors and writers to play in these universes.
And now comics are the new darling because any established franchise will have decades of back story to cull from. It was Guardians of the Galaxy that really brought this home to me. Before the first film was released, everybody was nervous it would fail. It’s not superheroes. It’s not a well-known series. They feared it would be another John Carter of Mars, a good movie that should have been big but wasn’t…. Instead it was the blockbuster of 2014, grossing 775 million. Success, and why? Back story, a vast universe of action and color. And sequel potential. Guardians of the Galaxy was created in January 1969 by Arnold Drake and Gene Colon (who, no doubt, received no credit or money from the films.) The characters appeared in various Marvel titles, never really catching on in their own comic book. Still, there is plenty of material when you consider all the other series they ran through. (Some young’ins may complain that the movie was a rip-off of Star Wars but that’s like saying Twilight is a rip-off of Vampire Diaries.) The Space Opera style that the film uses predates Star Wars by at least forty years.
And that’s my point. Not everyone is aware of the iceberg. If Guardians of the Galaxy is your first Space Opera (or even your second), it will knock your socks off. If you’re an old Marvel comic fan then the excitement is in seeing an old favorite come to the screen. (That’s the guy bitching behind you in the theater that they got the raccoon’s hair wrong, or some such minor detail.) And if you’ve really been around a while, you may even be aware that the Space Opera elements in Guardians began with Edmond Hamilton , E. E. “Doc” Smith, Leigh Brackett (who got to write The Empire Strikes Back with Lawrence Kasdan) and Jack Williamson back in the 1930-1950s. The iceberg goes deeper and deeper…
So whether it’s X-Men or Avengers with 50+ years of history, or Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman with 75+ years, you get the idea: comics offer the same kind of iceberg that made New Line a butt load of money. History sells. Those of us who have been on this Earth for a few decades, just need to smile when some young punk sees the tip of the iceberg and explodes with the “new” idea. Just smile and know that they will have a chance, a little later, to explore the rest of that hidden hunk of history.
