There are only a few naysayers, and most either confused or cautiously speculative, but I honestly don’t think many things on the fandom end will be affected; there will just be more money in different people’s pockets. What’s really going to change with this acquisition? Disney is notorious for aggressive merchandising and pushing their licensed characters, but will a flood of new action figures and new Marvel-themed rides at Disneyland really affect Marvel’s artistic integrity or quality of work? As long as Disney keeps its hand out of what the folks at Marvel actually do, then I don’t see a problem. People were upset when Disney bought out Pixar too, but Pixar has, for the most part, retained its autonomy and continues to produce outstanding films. So why shouldn’t I expect Marvel to continue making comics like it always has?

Some people are concerned with the long list of Marvel properties being developed as films at the moment, but it isn’t like Disney is forcibly severing Marvel’s existing contracts with the dozens of studios already involved. If Marvel’s success in movies is part of why it was attractive to Disney, then shouldn’t Disney just let them continue doing their thing? Others are concerned that Disney might take away from the maturity and violence of certain Marvel titles, but if Disney was also attracted to Marvel’s popularity with boys and men of a wide demographic, why would they tamper with that by numbing anything down? Of course, logic hasn’t stopped companies from shooting themselves in the foot before, but Disney should know that they can’t afford to make too many mistakes here.

I guess I might be more concerned if I actually read more Marvel titles, but my Western comic consumption is pretty limited as is, and even then, it’s mostly DC for Batman. Still, I see this mostly as just another acquisition that will be accepted soon enough, just like Disney and Pixar and when Adobe bought Macromedia.

As for Kingdom Hearts, I don’t really think that Spider-Man will be making his debut there any time soon, but Square-Enix is just as notorious for exploiting its properties as Disney, so who would really be surprised? Sora, Spidey, and Mickey VS Xemnas, the Lizard, and Sephiroth, why the hell not?? At this point, Kingdom Hearts is every bit as much of a cash cow as Final Fantasy, so I’m not too invested in the franchise keeping any kind of integrity anymore. It’s too late for that already, so whatever! Bring it. …I’ll still buy it. Integration might be a little awkward considering most Marvel characters reside in the “real world,” but hey, it would be kind of awesome if Sora and his buddies could visit Manhattan and do the tourist thing. Sora in Times Square! Sora in Central Park! Sora at the Statue of Liberty! Sora riding in a taxi! I mean, they’ve already visited Port Royal and that was a real place too.

Just think, you could have Wolverine as a summon and he’d slash through Heartless for you… Okay, so I can’t actually picture Logan taking orders from Sora at all, but heeey. Maybe if Sora buys him a cigar and a beer.

And yet, if SDCC is any indication, comic movies are going to be going strong for at least the rest of the decade. We’ve got the Wolverine movie coming up, and what, I think DC’s going to do a Justice League movie? Not to mention the Watchman hubbub that’s been up since the trailer debuted in theatres with The Dark Knight. You know what I’d really love to see though? I wanna see Marvel to a Civil War movie. That would be so many kinds of epic. Despite the fact that we’ve seen so many superhero movies already, there are still endless possibilities because the DC and Marvelverses alone span hundreds of titles. With Hellboy and Hellboy II, it’s clear that more independent companies also want in on the potential cash cow too, not to mention that manga-oriented companies like TOKYOPOP and Viz are also very interested. We’ve got enough material here to go on forever!

I don’t doubt that the fanboys and girls will be endlessly willing to keep going to see these films in theatres. I don’t doubt that midnight releases will continue to feature long lines full of cosplay and excited debate. Batman is more than seventy years old; we still love him. But the hardcore fans only make up a fraction of the audience, and I wonder how much tolerance the general public has for superhero genre, especially considering most still don’t consider it a very “serious” kind of movie. How seriously can you take a guy dressed up like a bat? Fighting a clown? Kids stuff, right?

We of the fandom understand that Batman has perfectly legitimate, intelligent and relevant themes hidden beneath the mask, smoke, and mirrors, but from experience, I know that most people don’t care to look for those things and just go for the action-packed fighting or whathaveyou. It’s a cheap thrill, and cheap thrills get boring after a while. Is “educating” the general public about the more serious themes of comic books an achievable task? Would they really care to learn when they can easily get their fix of “seriousness” from what they already deem to be serious movies? Would having them understand the underlying themes of movies really even help slow or stop their gradual progression to boredom? I’d like to think so.

The Times article I mentioned earlier claims that most superhero movies follow the same sort of storyline. Hero meets villain. Hero confronts villain. Hero defeats villain. For the most part, I suppose this is true — Superman defeats Lex Luthor (kind of), the X-Men defeat Phoenix (kind of), Spider-Man defeats Venom (kind of?) — but the beauty of any genre is its ability to break free from the conventions that define it. The Dark Knight is actually a great example of that, or really, any Batman storyline involving the Joker. Does he ever really win? Is chaos something you can really defeat? What would defeating the Joker actually mean? Full of deep questions, see?

Personally, I don’t think the comic book movies are going to stop any time soon, though they may start to diversify and stray away more from the straight-up superhero path. Sin City and 300 are also great examples of this (okay, well, 300 is debatable, but it’s still pretty different). Eventually, the general public may come to realize that comics don’t just mean kid’s stuff. In the meantime, they’ll probably keep watching anyway. We seem to be good at hyping things up, after all. :P Franchises do best in trilogies, so I hope they’ll lay off of Spidey a while longer. I wouldn’t mind if they took a bit longer with the X-Men followups either. But Iron Man 2? Hell yeah! More Batman! Yes, please! More Superman? Sure! Bring it. We’ll watch ‘um. And we’ll smash a few more box office records while we’re at it.