Game of Thrones creator George RR Martin has spoken out against the trend for comic-book movie villains to boast similar powers to the superheroes who are trying to take them down.
Writing on his blog, the self-confessed “very old Marvel fanboy” had plenty of praise for the Disney-owned studio’s latest film, Ant-Man, but less for its main antagonist, Yellowjacket. Played by House of Cards’ Corey Stoll in Peyton Reed’s controversial movie, the villain boasts similar powers to Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man, having stolen the technology necessary to create it from the tiny superhero’s mentor, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas).
Martin appeared to conflate Marvel studios’ own films with the Spider-Man movies made by rival studio Sony, which licenses the wall-crawling Marvel Comics superhero on the big screen. But his polemic was clear enough.
“I am tired of this Marvel movie trope where the bad guy has the same powers as the hero,” said Martin. “The Hulk fought the Abomination, who is just a bad Hulk. Spider-Man fights Venom, who is just a bad Spider-Man. Iron Man fights Ironmonger, a bad Iron Man. Yawn. I want more films where the hero and the villain have wildly different powers. That makes the action much more interesting.”
Martin nevertheless described Ant-Man as one of the best films based on a Marvel Comics character he had seen, second only to Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 from 2004. Given the latter movie was a Sony production, Ant-Man represents the fantasy writer’s favourite Marvel Studios instalment.
The Game of Thrones creator’s position on the film stands in contrast to that of many critics, particularly those in the UK, who have generally rated Ant-Man as a middling Marvel effort. The film currently boasts an 80% “fresh” rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, but it has dipped a little below expectations at the box office following much-publicised controversies surrounding the replacement of original director Edgar Wright with Reed and numerous script rewrites.
Martin described the film as maintaining a “proper balance of story, character, humour, and action,” in contrast to recent Marvel efforts, which he said had strayed too far towards “smashing and bashing and stuff blowing up”. He also revealed his favourite Marvel character was Doctor Strange, and said, in response to reader’s comments, that he would love to have been given the chance to write the forthcoming film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, but feared he did not have the time.
