DVDizzy Forum

Considering that most likely none at Marvel will read this post, or actually act on the suggestion, you could probably call it wishful thinking more than a suggestion, but never mind.

Because other studios had the movie rights to some of the biggest Marvel titles, like Fantastic Four, X-Men, Hulk and Spider-Man, Disney had to use some lesser known characters. Iron Man may not have been as huge, but he was still familiar for everybody who have grown up reading comics, buying toys or watching cartoons.
But Guardians of the Galaxy was probably unfamiliar with most of the audience that doesn't read the comic, which is probably the majority of them. And if they have never heard about the team or the characters before, they could just as well have been an original creation of Marvel's cinematic universe, instead of a comic adapted for the big screen.

So why not try that approach for once? If practically none of the paying audience have heard about many of the characters, and they are still a great success, why not a movie about new Marvel characters never seen in a comic book before? That would give the scriptwriters free hands to do whatever they like. Their background story could easily be tied in with some already existing titles.

It has been done at least once before. In the cartoon show Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends they introduced Firestar, which did not exist in the comics at that point (and Dazzler was meant to be a character in a movie).

This is actually similar to what Netflix is doing with some of their comic acquisitions and I can see happening in the future. Creating characters and comics simultaneously with a film. I don’t think it’s a bad approach. The only thing is that with these established comics, the world building is already done. The rules are in place. So it takes less time to develop and it’s easier to understand for creators and thus translates easier for audiences. They can mine the entire run of a character instead of one singular arc that’s been strictly created for this one movie. Either way, I’d love to see some original work start to be produced.

Mining the Marvel universe for inspiration is hard to resist, but sometimes the characters are so different from their origin that they might as well could have been original creations.
One approach could be to use something established as a starting ground, and add new original layers from there, which is what Netflix is doing from the sound of it.

Or even better, using characters, new or not, to create new mythologies in the Marvel universe.

Live action movies and the old comics have always felt so different from one another, at least for me, that we are talking about two different experiences.