Yes whatever extra money was giving to The Avengers to punch up the film's action finale was obviously well-spent, and I can only wonder what extra action beats or special effects were added after the fact to make sure that the super hero team-up felt like a big f-ing deal. But money does not always help the cause. As some of you may recall, Fox's Daredevil was originally intended to be a $50 million R-rated street-level crime drama. If you've read the source material, that's about right. But the surprise mega-success of Sony's Spider-Man several months prior led Fox to the unfortunate decision to sink another $30 million into the film by way of elaborate special effects in a sad attempt to mimic the high-flying adventure seen in Spider-Man. The final product (a butchered 100-minute PG-13 travesty) was immediately torn to shreds by critics and mostly abandoned by audiences after a fine $40 million Valentine's Day 2003 opening weekend (it barely crossed $100 million in the US, a quick-kill blockbuster in a time when movie-going wasn't as front-loaded). Even if you go back and watch the vastly superior 133-minute director's cut (with an entire second act restored and overtly R-rated violence put back in), the stuff that still sticks out are the fantasy bits, for example the way Matt Murdock seemingly flies through the air as he hunts for criminals. While the restored version of Daredevil remains a rock-solid superhero film, it still has issues, most of which are primarily due to money that was spent purely because it was offered.
It's not just superhero films that have fallen victim to this. It's no secret that I rather adore Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice. It's a light, fun, and exceedingly well-written little fantasy adventure that features wonderful chemistry between Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, and Toby Kebbell. But it is at heart a small film, so the big-scale action sequences and special effects that drove the budget to $150 million feel almost out of place. And it is because of that exorbitant cost that the film's $215 million worldwide gross isn't enough to prevent it from being labeled a flop. The film works because of its knowing sense of humor, clever dialogue, and pitch-perfect delivery. Does anyone think the film would have suffered without a chase scene involving a giant fire-breathing dragon in the first act? Or an extended sequence that openly apes the Fantasia short from which the film takes its title? Not every genre film needs to be the biggest spectacle of all time, something that studios in general have been learning over the last year or so. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island cost just $80 million, making it a smash at $321 million worldwide. Does anyone think that a $150-$200 million version of Journey 2 would have been more popular and/or a better movie? Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is one of the best action films of the last decade, all at a cost of $140 million, or $20 million less than Mission: Impossible 3. If Marvel thought it was able to make a rock-solid character-driven Iron Man 3 for $140 million, throwing $60 million at the film purely for enhanced spectacle will create only that: enhanced spectacle.
With $200 million on the line, Iron Man 3 now *has* to be as successful as Iron Man ($585 million) and Iron Man 2 ($623 million) at the box office. Marvel's decision may in fact work out for the best. We may get our introverted Tony Stark story with a couple extra action set-pieces thrown in for good measure. The film may be as much of a success as the first two films. But Marvel had a chance to show the industry that a superhero sequel could be a low-key, smaller-scale affair and still deliver the entertainment value. But instead they fell into the 'bigger is better' trap. Marvel and/or Disney are throwing $60 million more into a movie that was all set to go at $140 million, a film that would have been a huge hit no matter how relatively low the budget was. They've now created a template where each Marvel film has to be the biggest mega-bucks action spectacular thus-far. It's not a healthy template and it's one that will see costs rise ever higher until they are beyond the realm of plausible profitability. The goal should be to craft the best-written, best-directed, and best-acted movie you can for as cheaply as you can justify. It shouldn't be about burning money onscreen purely to show how much of it you have.
Your turn. Were you excited by the idea of a low-key Iron Man sequel or has the notion of a mega-budget Iron Man 3 only increased your interest?
Scott Mendelson
