Kevin Feige Talks Marvel's Past, Present And Thor

Prior to the release of X-Men back in 2000, it’d be fair to say that comic book movies sucked balls big time, that’s not to say that there weren’t one or two gems in the late 80′s/early 90′s, but by far and large the likes of The Phantom, Judge Dredd, The Shadow and (shudder) Batman & Robin were all tacky abominations. Worse than that, any film Marvel had released prior to 2000 ranked among the worst comic book movies ever known to man!

Then came the X-Men, an exciting, intelligence translation of 40 years of comic book history on-screen and everything changed. Throughout the last decade, Marvel ruled the roost when it came to comic-cinematic outings and according to Kevin Feige that’s long going to continue!

In an article featured on Marvel.com, Feige, Marvel Studio’s president touches on that time in the industry and gives us some more info on Kenneth Branagh’s upcoming project, THOR, check out a few excerpts below:

The Marvel Curse
I started at Marvel proper in August 2000; I had been working as an associate producer on “X-Men” in 1998. We worked on that for almost three years. Back in those days there was the “Marvel Curse.” It was the dawn of aintitcoolnews.com and other fan sites saying that our movies were going to suck. We just kind of kept of our head down and made the movie. We focused on the characters and kept it true to the comics.

The X-Men Come to Life
There was a cold night in Toronto, Canada. We were filming a small scene from the movie where the Blackbird lands on Liberty Island. It was the first time all the actors were together in costume, I walked into Bryan’s [Singer, the film's director] trailer and there they were all sort of standing together. It was the X-Men brought to life, it’s a moment that has stayed with me.

With Great Power…
Two weeks into my official employment, I found myself in a room with [director] Sam Raimi going over the script of “Spider-Man.” That was the next step for Marvel. Of course there were concerns with taking on that project. Even when we shot the first promotion photo it looked so good a lot people thought it was CGI! But it wasn’t and that’s where we started to see things go the right way.

Hammer Time
To be honest the thing that I’m most excited about right now though, is the screen test we just finished for “Thor.” We’ve done some costume tests and watching the Asgardians walk onto the sound stage takes me back to that first time I saw the X-Men on the set all together in Toronto. Only it was unlike anything we’ve ever put on film before! It’s great to be starting the next decade in such an exciting way just as we did last decade. We’re really redefining the comic book genre and what a Marvel movie can be. It’s going to be great.

Given the other-worldly overtones of Thor, this will be a true test of Marvel’s metal. It’s one thing to have an audience buy into earth-bound Gamma rays or radioactive spiders, but it’s entirely another to try and wedge an actual God into that universe and make people believe in him.

I have high hopes for Thor, the cast is solid and I believe there to be no-one better than Kenneth Branagh to be taking the reins, if Marvel can pull this off then come 2012, The Avengers will be in the bag! Check out the full interview here.

Tags: kevin feige, marvel, thor