[Snowflakian]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iceman

When I was a kid in the 90's the X-Men cartoon was the biggest thing for Marvel. X-Men and Spider-Man were what succeeded. We didn't know who the Avengers where. The Hulk and Iron Man TV shows weren't has good and didn't do as well (sold a lot less toys too). Cap was barely a c-list guy along with Iron Man. Before Marvel pushed them into onto the nation scene Marvel's biggest names were Spider-Man, The X-Men, The Hulk, and then guys like the Fantastic Four or Daredevil. Iron Man, Cap, and Thor were not very well known to most people.

I'm not saying they were bad characters or that in the realm of comic book readers they weren't big names but they were largely unknown to most. Before I read Ultimates and got into comics I thought of Thor as in Norse mythology and Cap I only knew his origin from appearing on Spider-Man and the Avengers arcade game (had no idea what that was about as a kid).

It's crazy when you get older and see how much of a difference there can be between people born 5 years after you, much less 10 or 20. They just don't know a lot of the things that we did. I find it weird because I was the kid that would watch old movies and try to appreciate old stuff so I figured that more kids would do that today since it's all so easy to access with the internet or Netflix or whatever. Then I realized that kids have too much new content coming at them from every direction (Youtube, social media, etc). A lot of us had a handful of channels and were forced to watch reruns of old shows and movies so we learned that there was cool stuff there. Maybe some day the X-Men will get a reset and proper movies made about the comic or just another solid TV show that kids attach to.

This is an extremely valid point. It's about exposure. (90s Ironman, Hulk, and Fan4 were good, but not until season 2 for each. At that point, they were already shuffled off to 4-5 am time slots and the toy lines were already DOA. That one has more to do with the first initial seasons being such child pandering spoon feeding "they are laughing in your face" crap. Sadly the damage was already done even with as amazing as those season 2s were. That's a different type of media issue though.)

In the 90s because of that toon, the main figure I always wanted for my toybiz X-Men collection was Jubilee, a female figure. She was the initial audience entry way into the show and character universe. She did finally get a figure in the Generation X line, but it was a crap staction figure with an action gimmick. Later her robot fighters figure wasn't much better. They never covered that iconic costume she wore in the 90s X-Men animated series. Demand for that figure was tangible across the board, and because of the archaic view that "action figures are boys toys and they don't buy female figures" she was never made in the same way the others were and that would have sold better than even the 200+ wolverines that were made by toy biz at the time.

Character exposure is everything for kids. If not for the animated appearances and movie appearances that also brings them to the comics, none of the characters would move anywhere near as much as they do. Visibility is a key factor. This exposure tends to dictate taste for decades. Because of the various animated series over the decades and the various movie forays(from the 60s to now, not just the 90s to now) everyone is partial to certain areas. For some it's Pryde of the X-Men, others it's the Gambit Rogue relationship of the 90s TAS, and the list goes on and on. This is why it even filters into the movies. Those animated properties were the exposure many writers and directors had as children too. You can see influences of them scattered across the board like how Raimi had influences of the 90s spidey TAS in his movies(Black Cat was set to be in his Spidey 4, and it may have built up to Morbius too while handling vulture as the villian), while Marc Webb has more influences from the Spectacular Spider-man series besides the ultimate comics mixed with 616.

It's why we're more likely to see a Doctor Strange movie before many other obscure characters from Marvel. His 70s movie still lingers in the minds of many because of that exposure.

It also shows though that any obscure can become a mainstay and popular with the right exposure or film behind them. Any character can become a collector or kid favorite because of how they are presented and it's not limited to already having had past exposure to the public(an example for me is that I was never a black widow fan, the character was boring to me, until ScarJo's portrayal made that character epic and the new comic keeps that perfect sassy flair going). So it's a trade off and balancing act in itself. The key no matter what though is that exposure and visibility to make audiences aware of who that character is and leave a lasting impression that sticks with the audience.

Rebooting isn't the answer though. In fact I still maintain that barring special circumstances (*cough* when you Batman & Robin a franchise *cough*) there really isn't a need for reboots with the films. A lazy writer is the one that starts from a clean slate instead of finding ways to create a good story from what's available and staying true to the history and characters. X-Men as a cinematic universe still has much that can be told and done before a reboot would ever need to be approached. The same can be said of all the current Marvel lineups across the board. Even Amazing Spider-man didn't need to be done, but now that it has been rebooted as such, hopefully they'll stick to this one instead of scrapping plans(Raimi's trilogy originally would have given birth to a Venom spin-off too until the reboot pushed all those plans back again). The same could be said of fantastic 4 as the two stories told finally set up the potential to dive deeper into the characters themselves in a third installment(the original Silver Surfer spin-off plan was decent too and would have corrected the Galactus cloud/Shadow). The third installment of that should have handled a threat from the depths of the earth to counter balance the second movie's depths of space threat. So Moleman and more would have worked wonders there. Instead the reboot will potentially tread on material already covered yet again. The name of the game is serial films that can standalone but also contribute to a larger picture. Straight up standalone features without the serial ties potential hinder the overall development of these as a cinematic universe. Now that's not to say it can't be both. Some characters like Gambit, X-23, Black Cat, Venom, Sinister 6, and more can be standalone and still contribute to the cinematic universe as a whole by showing exactly how diverse and expansive the universe is by itself. These can still be comic accurate in soul while being detached from the mainstay titling by simply being good movies in themselves. At most only small nods of 'yes this exists in this world' is all that's needed. Minor newspaper headlines, news reports, referencing events, and there are many more techniques than that to maintain the canon but still starting fresh with these characters to show it can be done with the comic soul intact yet still in a realistic world that's been defined by previous films.