As Guardians of the Galaxy sets box office and critical success in the month of August (here’s my review), it is an exciting time to be a Marvel fan! In the coming weeks we can look forward to:
- The return of the ABC show Agents of SHIELD. With the climatic changes coming out of Captain America: Winter Soldier into the end of season one, season two has a great deal in store.
- The beginning of the Hayley Atwell helmed Agent Carter, which revisits the formation of SHIELD in the post-World War Two era. Based on the short film, it has a promising potential and buzz out of ComiCon sounds good; they are certainly letting some high-end directors do work on the series.
- The street level Marvel universe shows starring Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Power Man that should culminate in a Defenders series/event. The Netflix “Drop it all at once” model makes each of these looks potentially interesting.
But what is next for the Guardians? Even before the Guardians of the Galaxy movie was released, Marvel greenlit the second film in this series. Having watched the film and recently read the source material, here are some potential ideas on where the series could go next.
- The obvious set-up for the sequel deals with Star-Lord’s father, as he discovers at the end of the film that is only partially a human from earth and there is a passing reference to how he was originally kidnapped from Earth at the beginning of the film as a favor to his father. (He was obviously never delivered to his dad.)
- The moving Rocket Raccoon speech seems to set-up a potential storyline of his desire to both discover his roots and to extract revenge on his “creators”. It has a great deal of potential to be explored.
- With the focus on the Nova Prime story in Guardians, the Marvel Universe could be headed towards the introduction of the hero Nova to the universe. The basic backstory of Nova is that Richard Rider is an average American teenager that is picked and chosen to be one of the intergalactic space police known the Nova Corps. (Yes, this was Marvel’s very thinly disguised version of DC’s Green Lantern Corps). It would be an interesting story because it could allow Marvel to explore the teenage hero in a way that they can’t while Sony has the rights to Spiderman. And that genre lends itself to alot of potential from both story and audience.
- Thanos. Since the grin at the end of Avengers, Thanos looms large as a Big Bad. As the partner with Loki and Centauri, the assistance given to Guardian’s bad guy Ronan the Accuser, Thanos looms as the obvious bridge between the two superhero groups Avengers and Guardians. There isn’t announced movie connecting the two but it is obvious that one of the upcoming unnamed titles is going to be this. Thanos looms large and is the obvious connector. (Unless they spin Ultron into space and adapt the comics Annihilation: Conquest storyline to be the bridge.) What I am interested in is once they use Thanos as the Big Bad, what happens next? (If my vote counts, I vote “no” to Civil War. Please.)
Regardless, the Marvel universe of films and shows keeps plugging along and I am excited about both the television shows and the upcoming movies, which kick back up again next May with Avengers: Age of Ultron, to be followed by the Ant-Man movie, which should be interesting given all the issues surrounding the directorial situation as it moves rapidly into production.
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