Marvel Cinematic Universe comes a full circle with the upcoming release of Avengers: End Game.
It is the most anticipated cinematic event of the year. The question of what happens after the snap is
of much greater involvement than the famous- “why Katappa killed Bahubali?”. MCU and its Infinity
saga has taken a shape of a huge popular culture phenomenon. It transcends all expectations, in terms
of revenue, critical success, popularity and so on. The creators and fans of a once bankrupt comics
company had the ambition of seeing their favourite characters on screen decades ago but it is unlikely
that even that core circle in their wildest imaginations had foreseen the distance that the MCU has
travelled in the last decade. The earliest adaptations of Marvel’s material did not create much fuss but
the superhero genre, although slowly, matured nonetheless. The X-Men series (Fox 2000) and the
Spider-Man series (Sony 2002) are manifestations of a journey of a genre getting modified and
matured. For example- (explain the journey of x-men to Logan) After these films, the superhero
genre’s potential is better recognised and we see more and more superhero films in the list of
Hollywood Blockbusters every passing year.
Superheroes originally belong to the medium of comics- a form of sequential graphics designed and
arranged in a certain way. Not all comics are superhero comics. Comics is an art form and superheroes
are a genre. Thus when it comes to film adaptations of comics, one must not confuse all comics
adaptations with superhero genre. Until recently, the ‘more serious’ comics have received
considerably more compelling scholarship. (the superhero reader) However, it has changed now.
alongside, in the field of adaptation studies also, comics to film adaptation has also started catching
up with novel to film adaptation. (source lost) Overall, the gathering of attention around these graphic
works could be attributed to the recent popularity of superhero films and more recently, MCU. That
being said, the practice of adaptation from sequential art of comics and film is not very new. Some
of the earliest actuality films were such adaptations (liam burke). Both the public projection of the
Lumière brothers’ Cinematograph and the appearance of the first newspaper comic strip Hogan’s
Alley happens in 1895. (page to screen) Their contemporaneous origin may suggest that these two
mediums are intrinsically very compatible to adapt into each other. (Pg to scr) would consider it to
be “our collective desire to experience the same stories and characters in more than just one form.” It
is to be stressed that the underlying argument in the above-mentioned text is that this adaptation is
not one directional as in only cinema adapts comics, rather it is a give and take relationship between
the two mediums.
Some of the earliest comics had cinematic inspirations and it continues to this day. For example,
Batman was inspired from noir films. (burke) burke goes on to explain the exact cinematic devices
employed by Marvel Studios to adapt the comics “the marvel way” (how to marvel way chapter).
Many methods to achieve the marvel image are enlisted in the chapter. With the help of it, one can
notice where the aesthetics from comics are merging into the films. Within this translation of graphic
media to film, the noise caused by medium specificity is to be explored in this research. To further
complicate it, it has been argued that the sharing of materials between the two mediums, in the case
of MCU, “is not adequately explained by the traditional logics of adaptation or transmedia storytelling
alone; rather, the Marvel Cinematic Universe primarily embraces a logic of transfictionality” (The
Worlds Align) where the characters, stories and other elements are shared from one medium to
another as different iterations or versions. The version might not connect with the original in its
narrative in the sense that Marvel Cinematic Universe is although very much similar to Marvel
Comics Universe, but it is another universe and they follow different narratives. In the current
scenario, Marvel fans are contributing equally into the making of the Universe. The transition of Iron
Man as a B list character in the comics to the carrier of a whole saga in MCU hints towards many
more complexities at work within this relationship which are yet to be explored. Within the interplay
of the two mediums, the third force, i.e. the fans shall not go unnoticed. Although Marvel readers
have always been actively integral to the formation and the development of the comics universe but
in the case of MCU, it has reached another level with the help of web 2.0.
There are thousands of videos on Youtube around Marvel Cinematic Universe, which includes, film
criticism, fan fiction, fan made trailers and concepts, spoofs, predictions, and so on. The newly
emerging form of online video essays has been quite vocal about marvel. These derivative contents
speak of newer consumption cultures around the globe, explored in its early phases by Lev Manovich
as a trend towards the acceptance of amateur content. The form of video essay is located somewhere
between a documentary video and a video art by Ursula Biemann. however, both of these works does
not deal with the more recent content hosted on Youtube. Most of the derivative content there contains
copyrighted images originally owned by film studios, in this case Marvel. The content is reedited,
remixed and added with some narration. Since a complete picture of MCU can not be drawn without
recognising the online content which is not original, it raises questions regarding authorship,
originality, ownership of intellectual property and so on. While the content created by the producers
is legally protected by the copyright laws, the fan made content which is seemingly equally crucial
for the universe building is always at the mercy of the producers. Jenkins’ "Transforming Fan Culture
into User-Generated Content: The Case of FanLib” is a case study of such a fan space being shut
down due to legal reasons which further explores the vulnerability of the fan’s distribution network
online. Abigail De Kosnik’s “Should Fan Fiction Be Free?” complicates it a bit more1 by comparing
the fanatics with hip hop samplings and so on. Jenkins’ “Superpowered Fans: The many worlds of
San Diego's Comic-Con”, an account of San Diego Comic-Con establishes that the fandom has not
transcended online completely.2 In fact, events like Comic-Con act like a ritualistic gathering of fans.
The sheer number of people attending such events is awe inspiring. In this line, Nicolle Lamerichs’
“Fan Membership: Traditional and Digital Fieldwork” advocates for a mixed method approach to fan
studies within convergence culture3.
Other than what the fans add to the MCU, another interesting dimension to explore is, how do they
contribute? The traditional lettering between the readers and the creators has now been foreshadowed
by the online content generated by the people involved in MCU in different capacities. Two of the
most popular being reddit discussion pages and Youtube videos. The user generated content affects
both creators and consumers alike. The anticipation or prediction theories keeps the audience
involved and the creators informed. The development of Marvel Cinematic Universe is directly linked
to the user generated online content. The global expansion of MCU may be directly proportional to
the magnitude and the circulation of the user generated content. Such online content transcends
national boundaries and makes the content accessible to the audiences around the globe in different
degrees. The international fans that may not have even heard of Iron Man before watching the MCU
version can access the memes and fan theories online and brainstorm along with the American fans
who grew up reading Marvel Comics. There is a rush to catch up before the upcoming Avengers: End
Game. however, the journey may not have always been so well informed all the way. The
international success of MCU although can be attributed partially to the fan culture online, especially
the growing fan base in recent years, but the success of earliest of MCU films cannot be explained by
the online fanatics only. It can certainly not explain the reception of the pre MCU superhero films.
In a globalised market, other than being superhero films, these films also belong to the class of
Hollywood blockbuster cinema. The reasons behind the good reception of this kind of cinema are
well listed by Scott r Olson (globalisation of hollywood). The methods employed to attract a global
audience includes the use of a circular narrative, archetype characters, open ended plots and so on.
The tension between the local films and the Hollywood films are always there but more than half of
the box office revenue of the Hollywood blockbuster films is generated overseas. When cinema is
1
De Kosnik, Abigail. "Should Fan Fiction Be Free?" Cinema Journal, vol. 48 no. 4, 2009, pp. 118-124.
2
Jenkins Henry (2012), “Superpowered Fans: The Many Worlds of San Diego’s Comic-Con,” Boom: A
Journal of California , 2 2, 22–36.
3
“Fan Membership: Traditional and Digital Fieldwork.” Productive Fandom: Intermediality and Affective
Reception in Fan Cultures, by Nicolle Lamerichs, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2018, pp. 47–
58.
supposedly shifting to smaller screens it makes sense to create huge cinematic events that are best
experienced in a cinema hall. Projects of such magnitude require huge budgets but if they can tap a
global audience, they are much more viable economically. (stephen prince) These films are generally
fantasies or science fiction or action films with simple narrative tropes that can transcend the
boundaries of culture and language to a certain extent. Dick tomasovic’s work groups the films of
James Cameroon, Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson as more spectacle oriented than narrative. The idea
being, films like Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 are designed as an amusement park ride, not as a
theatrical performance. In the sense, such films are a revival of Tom Gunning’s cinema of attraction.
It is to argue that spectacular action can produce an eye arresting visual on screen which is much
easier to consume for different kinds of audiences beyond national and ethnic boundaries. In the thrill
of the spectacle the narrative can often be ignored and the body genre would still do its magic. The
unprecedented global appeal of superhero genre can partially be attributed to its spectacular image.
How does marvel employ the devices of spectacle within such an intricate and dense narrative is still
a mystery to be solved in this work.
Adaptation
Liam burke
Blair Davis
Stan lee
Mark axelrod
Ancillary
Jenkins
Matt yockey
Sean howe
Michael graves
Lev Manovich
Ursula Biemann
Abigail De Kosnik
Tony Zhou
Nicolle Lamerichs
Transnational
Stephen prince
Scott r Olson
Guy debord
Tom gunning
Dick tomasovic
Vanni codeluppi
Kevin hatch
Dorothy b. jones
