8 Weird Directions The Comic Book Movie Genre Could Take

5. The Age Of The Team-Up and Crossover

This is more-or-less the age we find ourselves at the outset of now: team-ups and crossovers have started in full force, most pertinently with the interconnected strands of the MCU. The phenomenon is also of course apparent in the affiliation between the Flash and Arrow TV shows, the upcoming plans for the Marvel Netflix series to converge in The Defenders, and most obviously in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but there is no reason to think it will stop there. Aside from being a resounding financial and critical success, Joss Whedon's Avengers will no doubt prove to be one of the most significant and influential superhero films ever released. Avengers has managed to remove the shackles from a previously restrictive genre and demonstrated that the public is tired of seeing the same origin stories endlessly reiterated and is ready for the film versions that share the same lack of restraint as their printed page forebears. Now it has been proven that such disparate characters can co-exist in the same stories without cluttering up the screen, we may find ourselves in a situation where (rights permitting) Wolverine and Hulk could share a narrative - or Green Lantern and Green Arrow - using one of the many classic team-up stories that are a staple of comics as the basis.