|
Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2022 10:06:52 GMT -5
From elsewhere: Yeah--you'd think that DC would want to avoid a costume that people could easily see as an extension of another company's flagship character. I honestly believe most people seeing that picture would immediately think "teen girl Captain America," not "legacy character intertwined with Star-Spangled Kid and Stripsey, Starman, Skyman, etc. " Now maybe. But in 1999, not so much. At that point Captain America was far from Marvel's flagship character. That would have been Spider-man and the X-Men. Sure Cap was better known that the Star-Spangled Kid, but he was a decidedly second-string character in 1999. So much so that Marvel wasn't able to sell off his media rights like they did Spider-Man, The X-Men, The F.F. and The Hulk. Slam makes a good point, and I feel it’s worth exploring more. What do you think? I often wonder if there was a perception (among bean-counters, not fans) that Captain America’s gimmick/attire was considered old hat. I don’t believe that, as I think concepts such as the American Dream are timeless and beautiful, but what I think doesn’t count; in any sector, not just comics, the ones running the show might have a different view. For me, Cap is timeless - or should be.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2022 10:54:44 GMT -5
Cap may have not had the solo title sales appeal of say Spidey or the X-Titles at the time, but he was REALLY prominent still.
He was front and center for the Avengers for the Heroes Reborn era in '96, plus his own solo title, and then yet again for the Avengers with Heroes Return around '98 plus again another solo title launch.
Plus he was part of the team (pulled out of different timelines) for Avengers Forever in '98/'99. And then Alex Ross had a pretty important role for him in Earth X in '99/'00.
I don't recall there being any sense his image was somehow old-fashioned, at least from what I remember around that time. But I always preferred him a bit in the group titles. A good solo hero, but THE classic Avenger if you will.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2022 11:13:43 GMT -5
Plus, who can forget from this era, one of the greatest Marvel "live action moments", the Marvel Got Milk ad? Cap is yet again front and center!
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Aug 14, 2022 11:22:46 GMT -5
The 90's weren't a good time for any of the Marvel Characters . Iron man was a c lister also. The company was in such bad shape that Liefeld and Lee were hired to bail them out.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2022 11:33:15 GMT -5
I also wonder how long cold feet lasts as far as Hollywood is concerned. Is one reason his media rights weren’t sold because of the memories of the two 70s TV movies and the 1990 movie?
I often wonder if we haven’t had a He-Man film in 35 years because the Cannon Films debacle (and it is in some ways) might still resonate.
Proposed/aborted projects aside, did Hollywood have cold feet about Superman due to the negative reaction to Superman IV?
All guesswork, of course…
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Aug 14, 2022 14:03:30 GMT -5
I also wonder how long cold feet lasts as far as Hollywood is concerned. Is one reason his media rights weren’t sold because of the memories of the two 70s TV movies and the 1990 movie? I often wonder if we haven’t had a He-Man film in 35 years because the Cannon Films debacle (and it is in some ways) might still resonate. Proposed/aborted projects aside, did Hollywood have cold feet about Superman due to the negative reaction to Superman IV? All guesswork, of course… Captain America's rights were tied up, for a while, with that 1990 movie. There was an attempt, in the late 90s, to develop a cartoon series around him; but, the WW2 aspect was a problem. They wanted to sell it internationally; but, didn't want the Nazis involved or were trying to downplay it. If you look at the film and the Avengers: Eartth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon, they substituted Hydra for the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS. There was also a bad legacy with Captain America, in live action media. There were two pilot films in the 70s and the budgets weren't up to quality effects and the production wasn't creative enough to compensate. They also went for a bulkier actor, rather than a more gymnastic type, to better allow for acrobatic stunts. They mostly did rip-offs of Six Million Dollar Man stunts. The shield effects were beyond terrible. The 1990 movie was done on the cheap and never released theatrically, in major markets. It looked and sounded terrible. That didn't help. Now, it wasn't the property that was terrible it was the production companies who were cheap and did crappy jobs. However, Hollywood views properties based on what they have done in the past. Captain America presented problems for effects and stunts that required higher budgets and the name value didn't match that, compared to something like the X-Men or Spider-Man. Iron Man was supposed to be introduced in a Hulk movie, then a pilot and was never done, again because the budgets couldn't rise to it and the name value didn't justify the potential expenditure. Same with She-Hulk. Sugegsting that Marvel couldn't sell the rights, in the 90s, because he wasn't popular enough isn't entirely accurate. The problem was that Marvel had sold a whole bunch of media rights on the cheap, in the late 80s and early 90s, in a desperate attempt to get movies and tv shows made, to generate revenue. DC was making far more money on licensing and media productions and they wanted some of that. Marvel, from 1986-1989, was owned by New World Entertainment. That company had been started by Roger Corman, the low budget film empresario and director, though he sold his stake in 1983. New World licensed a bunch of properties, during that period and most to bottom feeders, like Cannon, aka Golan & Globus. That was why so many key properties were not available when Batman hit it big, in 1989, and suddenly studios are optioning every comic book under the sun. The end result was Spider-Man in years of litigation, crappy direct-to-video Punisher and Captain America movies and a the unreleased Corman FF, done solely to retain the film rights to the property. It took 8 years from the time I heard about Richard Donner directing X-Men (it was actually his wife producing it, though he was initially attached to direct), in 1991 until the Bryan Singer film was released, in 1999. The Tim Burton Batman took a decade to come to the screen. Throughout the 90s, Comics Scene magazine had listings of comic properties in development in Hollywood and most never got made. Meanwhile, sales of 100,000 comics had become spectacular, rather than average. So, without that media boost, there was nothing to sell those properties. As a comic, Cap had a long, if fairly flat run under Mark Gruenwald. It was not a top tier title, but was a reliable seller. It got shook up a bit, when Mark Waid and Ron Garney came on, then Marvel made the deal with Lee and Liefeld and they got booted off the book in favor of Liefeld, who tanked the book enough they came back to Waid and Garney, after the post-Liefeld salvage operation and the end of the deal. Even after that, Cap was an average title, until Brubaker and Epting came on, with the Winter Soldier arc. You have to remember the technology available. captain America is one that could have been done with the right stunt team, though the shield was a problem. The 1990 film did a couple of scenes that were mostly just sped camera footage of a smaller disc being thrown. The Reb brown pilot films did it in slow motion. neither worked well. CGI allowed the boomerang effects, high speed and such. Otherwise, you could do shield stuff, like bullet hits, but that required squibs and such. It all starts adding up. I think it was doable, but it needed the approach that Toei used for the Power Ranger and Kamen Rider tv shows, where they had creative stuntmen in spectacular fights and just embraced the lunacy of that kind of action. The rest of it was down to writing and a patriotic hero was not something that came easy to a cynical Hollywood. Either you get a Right Wing thing, ala a John Millius script (like Red Dawn or The Wind and the Lion), a corny tongue in cheek thing, like the non-Donner Superman, or something generic that doesn't sound like Captain America. Look at the Republic serial; it has plenty of action; but, the hero could have been The Masked Marvel or Copperhead, or even Spy Smasher (and it was probably written to be a Mr Scarlet serial). There was nothing that made it Captain America, except the costume. The Reb Brown tv series was pretty much just the 6 Million Dollar man, in red white and blue spandex. The first film gave a tiny bit of lip service to patriotism (in talking about Steve Rogers father, who developed the FLAG serum and fought crime in the 40s, as captain America), but not the second (though it had an international terrorist, played by Christopher Lee, as a villain). In both cases, you could have called the character The Champion, or The Guardian, or Hero Man or Captain Do-Gooder and it wouldn't have mattered.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2022 14:54:23 GMT -5
I think a lot of that shows how short-sighted many were with the creative properties over the years as say the MCU success of Captain America has demonstrated (including being a key character in two $2 billion dollar plus sales Avengers movies, plus the 9th highest grossing superhero movie of all-time with Captain America: Civil War).
Sure, you could argue the technology now is better, but I think a large degree of success has been the much better creative vision and likeable character treatment (with good casting). Plus, the CGI was really fully there by the 2002 Spider-Man movie. And it's not like they fully avoided the WWII background since that was prominent in the first MCU movie. And while this goes back about a decade prior from the late 90's with the Last Crusade coming out in 1989, it's not like say the Indiana Jones movies avoided the Nazi theme.
The 70's pilots to me were ancient history, and the 70's Spider-Man TV show could not boast much better. So again, I think any association there was very short-sighted. Not saying I love all things MCU by any means, but it has definitely proved the strong commercial viability of many supposedly "secondary" properties like Captain America.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2022 15:21:41 GMT -5
For me, the 1990 movie is okay-ish. I could pick apart a dozen aspects of it, from the rubber ears to the fact that it lacked a little heart and soul. It’s mediocre. But is it all bad? I quite got chills the way Ronny Cox’s U.S. President looked up to Cap. There are some good action scenes in there. It tried to be true to the comics (as did the unreleased FF movie), but there is SO MUCH that could have been better.
As for the two 70s TV movies, I know they both predate Knight Rider and Street Hawk, but when I think about their storylines/execution, it’s like watching the exploits of Michael Knight or Jesse Mach. I could imagine either of those taking on the villains from those two Cap movies.
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Aug 14, 2022 15:26:49 GMT -5
I think a lot of that shows how short-sighted many were with the creative properties over the years as say the MCU success of Captain America has demonstrated (including being a key character in two $2 billion dollar plus sales Avengers movies, plus the 9th highest grossing superhero movie of all-time with Captain America: Civil War). Sure, you could argue the technology now is better, but I think a large degree of success has been the much better creative vision and likeable character treatment (with good casting). Plus, the CGI was really fully there by the 2002 Spider-Man movie. And it's not like they fully avoided the WWII background since that was prominent in the first MCU movie. And while this goes back about a decade prior from the late 90's with the Last Crusade coming out in 1989, it's not like say the Indiana Jones movies avoided the Nazi theme. The 70's pilots to me were ancient history, and the 70's Spider-Man TV show could not boast much better. So again, I think any association there was very short-sighted. Not saying I love all things MCU by any means, but it has definitely proved the strong commercial viability of many supposedly "secondary" properties like Captain America. Yeah, but, Indian Jones is Spielberg and Lucas, the biggest money makers in Hollywood. They could greenlight a picture about paint drying. We are talking about selling a comic book property. In Hollywood terms, it was a passe character who wasn't even a top draw in his own medium. Marvel wasn't pitching him; they were pitching the top sellers, just as DC was pitching Batman and Superman and little else.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2022 15:51:45 GMT -5
I think a lot of that shows how short-sighted many were with the creative properties over the years as say the MCU success of Captain America has demonstrated (including being a key character in two $2 billion dollar plus sales Avengers movies, plus the 9th highest grossing superhero movie of all-time with Captain America: Civil War). Sure, you could argue the technology now is better, but I think a large degree of success has been the much better creative vision and likeable character treatment (with good casting). Plus, the CGI was really fully there by the 2002 Spider-Man movie. And it's not like they fully avoided the WWII background since that was prominent in the first MCU movie. And while this goes back about a decade prior from the late 90's with the Last Crusade coming out in 1989, it's not like say the Indiana Jones movies avoided the Nazi theme. The 70's pilots to me were ancient history, and the 70's Spider-Man TV show could not boast much better. So again, I think any association there was very short-sighted. Not saying I love all things MCU by any means, but it has definitely proved the strong commercial viability of many supposedly "secondary" properties like Captain America. Yeah, but, Indian Jones is Spielberg and Lucas, the biggest money makers in Hollywood. They could greenlight a picture about paint drying. We are talking about selling a comic book property. In Hollywood terms, it was a passe character who wasn't even a top draw in his own medium. Marvel wasn't pitching him; they were pitching the top sellers, just as DC was pitching Batman and Superman and little else. Good point!
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2022 16:01:33 GMT -5
Didn’t Lucas do paint drying? It was called Star Wars: Attack of the Clones…
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Aug 14, 2022 16:42:54 GMT -5
Didn’t Lucas do paint drying? It was called Star Wars: Attack of the Clones… I'd say Phantom menace was more paint drying; Attack of the Clones was like a bad high school romantic play, mixed with a kid's fantasy with his toys.
|
|
shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,709
|
Post by shaxper on Aug 14, 2022 21:17:41 GMT -5
Growing up in the late '80s and early '90s, there was no question in my mind that Captain America was one of the core Marvel heroes. I had a wooden puzzle when I was younger, grew up with the Secret Wars and later Toy Biz figures, and even owned a Captain America comic or two, even if he was as far from hot as a Marvel property could be at the time. I wasn't excited about him; I didn't really care about him, but I absolutely understood his place in Marvel Mythology. Heck, the Marvel Superheroes trading card sets taught me about Avengers #4 in 1991.
That being said, the Fantastic Four were similarly uncool at the time, and people were flipping out over the prospect of their getting a film released. I think the idea of any costumed hero getting realistic cinematic treatment was thrilling at the time. For five seconds in 1989, wasn't everyone a Dick Tracy fan? It absolutely would have worked for Cap too.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 15, 2022 11:14:52 GMT -5
I hated 90s Rob Liefeld Captain America and wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.
|
|
|
Post by coinilius on Aug 15, 2022 16:37:18 GMT -5
I hated 90s Rob Liefeld Captain America and wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. I’ve always had a soft spot for those issues - even bought the ‘follow up’ Fighting American mini-series that repurposed some of the unused later material!
|
|