A couple of days ago I noted I’d probably pass on Captain America: Civil War during its theatrical run (not that the few bucks I would have contributed to its box office haul would be missed!).

While the reviews for this film, as opposed to Batman v. Superman, have been very good and the movie currently rests at an impressive 90% positive among critics and a near equal 92% positive among audiences, from reading the reviews I’ve found myself feeling less and less enthused about seeing the movie.

I noted some of the critiques against the film here, but should note one in particular which bugs me quite a bit: These movies are becoming part of a progressively longer chain of movies and there is no end in sight.

When the first Iron Man film appeared you had that clever “after the credits” bit which offered a fascinating, tantalizing glimpse into what future Marvel films could bring.  Over time these Marvel films have become, IMHO of course, more a “chapter” in some larger story which, frankly, doesn’t seem all that coherent in the larger sense or has any particular goal/end in mind.

While we’ve been teased the idea of Thanos being a “big bad” in the upcoming Avengers films for a while now, it too feels like just another part of a continuing story and when its done, there will be something to come after it.

Now, those who have read my current Corrosive Knights series may point their fingers at me and say: “Aren’t you essentially doing the same?”  I am, after all, writing a multi-part series and some of the novels, in particular the first three, do not appear to interconnect at all.

Thing is, by the fourth and especially fifth books they do interconnect.  Every one of them.  And by the end of the series, which will come very soon, you’ll see that the entirety of this project amounted to one very large, elaborate story.

As far as the Marvel films are concerned, other than hints of characters to come, I don’t feel many of them interconnected to form a larger story.  Note that I say “many” not “all” in that previous sentence.

And it becomes even more bothersome to have the current film, Captain America: Civil War just come out and the wheels are already in motion to hype the next film…

The Avengers Have Already Started Hyping the Crap Out of Infinity War

Now, lest you think I’m critiquing Marvel and conveniently ignoring the DC films, take heart, I’m not.

Batman v. Superman seems to be trying for the same “larger picture” story and dropped quite a number of hints regarding the two-part Justice League film(s) which follow.  The largest hint, of course, is that Darkseid will be the films’ big bad.  DC at this point only has one film as their “universe” and therefore at least as of this moment haven’t built up the same “to be continued” sense Marvel has done.

Another, larger aspect of this which bugs is the fact that Captain America: Civil War appeared to be a very close variation on the same themes of Batman v. Superman.  Many critics and fans have noted this and were not bothered in the least with the similarities.  They focus on CA and note it is a better film than BvS and I won’t argue their opinion.

What I will argue, however, is that however “bad” you may feel Batman v. Superman was, and there are plenty of people out there who did feel that way, me not included, it bothers me that with the advent of the launch of the DC “universe” films we’re already starting to find such similarities in plot between them and those coming from Marvel.

Granted the comic book version of Civil War came out before BvS started filming, but BvS was filmed -though not ready to be released, obviously- nearly a year before CA started filming.  The makers of CA noted the BvS story “inspired” them to go in other directions with their CA movie.  The other direction wound up being a thematically similar one to BvS.

And like it or not, we’re about to get more direct comparisons between these film universes. The Justice League films, a two parter whose first half will be released next year, will apparently deal with our heroes fighting Darkseid.  The image below is of Darkseid, created by comic book legend (and the man who co-created most of Marvel’s characters currently gracing the screen) Jack Kirby.

And this is Thanos, the big bad villain already shown in Guardians of the Galaxy and talked about in various Marvel films.  This will be the scheduled villain presented in the (also!) two part Avengers films, the first of which is scheduled to be released in two years:

Look familiar?  Thanos was created by comic book writer/artist Jim Starlin.  This is Mr. Starlin’s account of how the character came to be:

Kirby had done the New Gods, which I thought was terrific. He was over at DC at the time. I came up with some things that were inspired by that. You’d think that Thanos was inspired by Darkseid, but that was not the case when I showed up. In my first Thanos drawings, if he looked like anybody, it was Metron. I had all these different gods and things I wanted to do, which became Thanos and the Titans. Roy took one look at the guy in the Metron-like chair and said: “Beef him up! If you’re going to steal one of the New Gods, at least rip off Darkseid, the really good one!”

For the record, this is Metron as drawn by its creator, Jack Kirby:

I like comic book movies.  I really enjoyed Captain America: Winter Soldier because it tried -and in my mind succeeded- in doing something different with the concept of superheroes.  But one of the reasons I find it hard to get myself to the cinema to see Civil War is because somewhere deep down inside -and among other things- it bothers me to see a film come out so closely after Batman v. Superman that appears to essentially take the same concept as its own.

Again, this isn’t the only reason my desire to see the film has diminished, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t one of the more prominent ones.  The fact that the next few years will give us two movies each featuring the Justice League vs. Darkseid and the Avengers vs. Thanos also bugs me.

Its like instead of the studios trying to come up with their own unique spin on the superhero movie they’re instead competing to make the better version of the same superhero film.

Very, very weird.