Animated super hero shows/films are a very lucrative market for comic book companies. Not only do they cost less to make, but they’re much easier to get out and they’re somewhat always in demand. Fanboys love the animated movies because they keep closer to canon and don’t suffer from Hollywood syndromme, and kids new to the stories are there to fill all remaining gaps because all kids like cartoons. Essentially – this is a goldmine.
But what’s another goldmine as far as cartoons of the moment go? Anime.
Let’s face it: Japanimation is a hot market. The kids love it because Japanese animation is the most frequent type of existing cartoon, older kids love it because the stories are ridiculous (and sometimes awesome), and adults love it because they grew up with it. Everywhere you turn, you will see some kind of Japanese Animated whosawhatsit. It could be as annoying as Bakugan or as popular as Dragonball Z – I don’t care. It’s there. And Marvel wants a piece of the pie too. Marvel made a deal with Madhouse, the company that previously produced Hulk Vs. for them, to make two animated feature films on the two most popular characters in the film Marvel world: Wolverine and Iron Man. They brought in Warren Ellis and said, “Hey. Write us two cool films.” And he did. And now, we have trailers. BEHOLD:
Wolverine
After I watched this, all I could say was, “Hahahaha, really?” This looks to be the most ridiculous thing ever. Ok, so Wolverine is in Japan. Makes sense. But since when was Wolverine some guy with long flowing hair and no side burns? Heck, it almost looks like he has un-curled Jewish side burns with that hair! It’s positively ridiculous. It’s also positively AWESOME. There comes a point when things just pass the border of seemingly idiotic to amusingly badass, and I feel like this movie will do just that. I can’t imagine it really having any kind of real plot, but what it will have is the most ridiculous looking Wolverine in the world finding giant samurai. I don’t think I could ever take this seriously but I would most definitely watch it.
Iron Man
This looks to be a lot more serious. Did anyone ever see the two Karas movies? No? Ok, well this is what I thought of after watching this trailer. Karas played out more like a Japanime Green Lantern, but I think the same basic concept lies within. We have no idea if this is going to be an origin story (probably not) or just Iron Man being bad ass, but I get a better sense that this movie will be the more legitimate one. While the Wolverine movie features mondo hair Logan versus giant samurai, this looks to be a film about man in machine versus man in machine, and that’s a pretty core Iron Man idea when you get down to the nuts and bolts. This trailer definitely intrigues me more.
