In the past 5 years, Marvel Entertainment has been on an amazing roller coaster ride in the movie entertainment business. With their debut mega hit Iron Man…and subsequent releases Captain America, Thor and the third largest grossing movie of all time, The Avengers. Marvel has been riding a wave of hits and sequels that have grossed over 5 Billion dollars…that’s right 5 Billion! But there in lies the rub. With each movie release, Marvel seems to be separating itself from the formula that has made its foray into movies, TV and animation highly successful. The grand formula of the first eight films was the tie along factor to each other film which then culminated in The Avengers. A feat many insiders said could never be done, but was executed perfectly. So much so that other movie studios with comic book properties are now using this same method to release their films (Fox with X-Men/Fantastic Four, W.B with Man of Steel/JLA, and Sony with Spider-Man/Venom). But Marvel seems to be deviating from this highly successful formula. Iron Man 3 didn’t really have an exciting after credit scene to tie in to up coming films like Thor 2 or Captain America: Winter Soldier. Or for that matter, the highly anticipated Guardians of the Galaxy movie. (To be fair, Thor 2 did feature a Guardians snippet) This brings us to the TV side of the Marvel Universe. It also seems to be a running theme through the current Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show. This show was eagerly awaited and promised as pure connection to the

Marvel Universe on the smaller screen. With the hopes of tie ins to the movie universe Marvel has created… a weekly outlet for the TV universe to merge with the Movie Universe and the hopes of showcasing some of Marvel’s vast library of characters that might not be suitable or viable for movie exposure but ripe to be featured on Television. Lo and behold everyone’s disappointment when not only did S.H.I.E.L.D. not really connect with the Marvel movie-verse (for the exception of an occasional 1 minute guest appearance by Nick Fury or Maria Hill) the show scantly featured any characters from the Marvel Universe. Graviton was featured in one episode and a current episode featured the character that will become Blizzard. But these villain appearances were origin based ones and who knows if the show will last long enough to have these characters develop into costumed characters, which I’m sure Marvel will be hesitant to do…costumes that is! For whatever reason, the powers that be on Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Joss Wheadon and siblings) thought that S.H.I.E.L.D. could be stand alone entity and become a self contained series with no serious direct connection to the Marvel Universe, like The X-Files or LOST. It seems that Marvel has now backtracked on this idea as ratings have plummeted and every article on the inter-webs has stated “Can ABC save Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.?”Metalmachine.net was one of the first out of the gate to mention what was lacking on the show and what was going to eventually happen…(Looks like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.s first episode sucks) Marvel now seems to be fast tracking some Marvel Universe heavy tie – Ins and direct Marvel character developments on the show. Lady Sif from Thor is guest staring in an up coming episode and it has been announced that the character of Mike Peterson will now be come Deathlok. Will this be a case of “Too Little, To Late?” This is where it seems Marvel is showing cracks in the Armor. Going back to the Marvel Movie – verse, the recent announcements about the Ant-Man movie are extremely disturbing (in a comic book sense) as they deviate away from the Marvel Universe completely. Paul Rudd has been cast as not Henry Pym…but as Scott Lang. No, the role of Henry Pym is being given to none other than Michael Douglas??? And it is rumored that Pym will be the villain of the movie. Don’t get me wrong, Michael Douglas is one hell of an actor, but to make Henry Pym a non factor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Michael Douglas is 70 years old) and the bad guy… and Paul Rudd? We know where this movie is going. This looks like it will be some kind of adventure/comedy…and we all know how those work for comic book movies (Green Lantern anyone) This movie has always felt very detached to the actual Marvel Movie – verse. I will predict that this will be Marvels first non $100,000,000 release and will be the film in the beginning/ middle of the downward spiral of Marvel releases. And for those that will jump at the chance to say things like “Who cares if Ant-Man makes $100,000,000, as long as the story is good”. Well that would be a naive statement as Disney paid $4,000,000,000 for Marvel! Do the math. Other signs that Marvel is veering off there own formula is the way the comic book division is now mirroring the movie-verse. It’s not supposed to be that way. The reason the movies are so successful is because of the comic books, not the other way around. They have changed many of their character appearances to reflect what they look like in the movies. The repeated launchings of #1 issues every six to twelve months is mind boggling and frustrating to current readers. The theory is that potential new readers are more susceptible to picking up a book if it has a #1 on it. Says something about what Marvel thinks about all the loyal geeksters that have been reading comic books for as long as they have and supported the industry all these years. Hopefully the powers that be will begin to see the drifting away from the core principles that made this adventure extremely successful for Marvel Entertainment…and as the old Marvel saying goes…Nuff Said!