AVENGERS ASSEM... ASSUME THE WORST



2015 is a long way away.

But I'm already a little bit worried.

I heard some news the other day about The Avengers 2 that made me stop and consider. 

It also scared the living hell outta me.

Now first off, I gotta say that I'm an Avengers fan.  A serious Avengers fan.

My Avengers comic collection goes all the way back to around Avengers 160 (that's late 70s for anyone that's counting) and I've been following their adventures every since.

They are my team.  I know them like I know my family.

The movie-version from 2012 was really good and faithful to the comic book roots.  I especially loved how they made Loki the springboard to the origin of the group like it was in the comics.

They respected the source material.

All comic book movies should follow the Avengers lead.

RESPECT THE SOURCE MATERIAL.

Comic book movies get into trouble when they don't respect the source material.  Name any bad comic book movie (or any good comic book movie) and the judgement on whether its good or bad can be condensed down to whether it was faithful to the source material.

Case in point - Iron Man.  Very close to the source material.  Very good movie.

Iron Man 3.  Far from the source material.  Very bad movie. (The Mandarin was an actor?  WTF??)

So, how does this relate to The Avengers 2?

Well, I just found out that the second Avengers movie is gonna be called - The Avengers:  Age of Ultron.

Ok, no problem there.  Ultron is one of the Avengers key villians and I even heard a rumor that Vin Diesel might be cast as The Vision (which seems perfect to me, Diesel's monotone delivery and robotic acting are just right for the monotone and robotic Vision).

However, and here is the fly in the buttermilk, Ultron is not going to be created by Hank Pym.  Instead Tony Stark is going to create Ultron or Stark's butler computer system Jarvis is gonna go crazy and become Ultron.

Uh... NO!

That won't work.

It may seem like a small change but its those small changes that force other changes down the line and then pile up until pretty soon you are stuck with X-Men First Class (a really bad comic book movie that has almost no faithfulness to the source material due to all the changes from previous X-Men movies and then more arbitrary changes made for no apparent reason).

So, all of a sudden I'm worried and my natural pessimism is kicking in big time.

Now, we still have a few movies between now and then such as Thor 2 and Captain America 2 but if these films go too far away from the source material (I'm looking right at you Thor 2) then this franchise is dead before arrival.