Marvel Studios: Assembling A Universe Review
Is it worth setting the DVR tonight?
It’s a colossal understatement to suggest that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has impacted the landscape of feature films over decades. Beating the odds and making a successful Iron Man movie was one thing, but they had the gall to include a post-credits Easter egg scene that introduced Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), which suggested they had much bigger plans in the works.
Premiering in 2014, the TV special Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe tracks how Marvel Studios did the seemingly impossible. They created a true movie counterpart to the serialized and intertwined stories fans loved from their comics and made huge banks off unsure-thing characters such as Captain America, Thor, and — dared we hope? — the Guardians of the Galaxy.
The Marvel title we were most excited about at the time was the studio’s first foray into full-on space craziness. Thor movies and The Avengers incorporated cosmic settings beyond Earth, but Thor’s Asgard and the invading Chitauri have shown us only small slices of the broader Marvel Universe.
With the exception of its backstory, Guardians isn’t about Earth, and it isn’t set on Earth, so the movie will be a chance to get a look at the galactic community Marvel has been hinting at through the eyes of grounded, comparatively insignificant characters.
Much as he’d try to argue otherwise, Peter “Star-Lord” Quill (Chris Pratt) is no Captain America, and the motley band he unites with are sure as hell no Avengers — even though it falls to them to save the goddamn universe.
With Captain America: The Winter Soldier next up in the barrel for Marvel, Guardians didn’t get much attention in Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe. Almost no attention, it doesn’t slide into the spotlight until the special’s final segment, and it only accounts for around two minutes of the total runtime.
The good news in Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe is some intriguing new footage crammed into those two minutes. We see more of the Guardians group in action, including a few shots not seen in the trailer. Those include Glenn Close’s Nova Prime putting in an appearance (complete with a semi-goofy hairstyle). There’s another good look at Doctor Who’s Karen Gillan as space pirate Nebula. And finally, we get a better look at the film’s main villain, Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace).
While you’ll get your first look at Ronan tomorrow night, we can say that his look is very faithful to the comic book version you can see below, complete with nifty hammer.
Since the Guardians clips in Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe are so brief, there isn’t a whole lot of new information to sift through. Much has been made of how risky making a Guardians of the Galaxy movie is compared to focusing on better-known heroes.
But as Marvel Studios President of Production Kevin Feige points out, there was a time when people thought it was crazy that they were making an Iron Man movie starring Robert Downey Jr. “It does take us back to the same mindset we were in six, seven years ago where we decided, ‘Hey, we want to make a feature out of Iron Man,’” says Fiege.
Director James Gunn also appears in Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe, explaining that one of the things that appealed to him most about Guardians was the chance to create a gritty sci-fi universe that was still very colorful.
That color is apparent in everything we’ve seen so far, and it’s a nice change from the cooler blues/blacks/greys templates you see in a lot of science fiction. Finally, lead actor Chris Pratt explains that the Guardians are all very selfish characters who end up uniting for a cause larger than themselves — very much in keeping with Marvel’s flawed, down-to-earth tradition when it comes to its heroes.
While the Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe doesn’t serve up much on the Guardians front, the even bigger draw will be our first look at the much-anticipated Avengers: Age of Ultron. So far, we’ve seen diddly-bupkis from the Avengers sequel outside of some set pics, so while our screener only had a place-holder where the Avengers 2 footage will go, there’s no doubt every Marvel fan will want to set their DVRs to see what they surprise us with.
Beyond the previews of the upcoming films, Marvel Studios: Assembling a Universe is a pretty straightforward but entertaining retrospective of Marvel’s phoenix-like ascension over the past few years. Individual segments explore the different movies (although Iron Man 2 kind of gets short shrift), the so-called Marvel One-Shots short films, and the troubled and uneven Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series. Frankly, if the show were as good as the segment makes it look, it’d be on much sturdier footing.
