Meet the 'Guardians of the Galaxy'

I said it in the last edition of my newsletter and alluded to it in a recent tweet, but I’ll say it again here: I’m not at all excited for Marvel’s upcoming movie. Iron Man 3, The Avengers, and even Thor: The Dark World — although to a lesser degree there — all spent way too much time and energy in pursuit of humor. In some cases, it paid off: the scene where Hulk tossed Loki around before calling him a “puny god” was great, and Loki’s scene where he impersonated a number of other Marvel characters with Thor in their latest film was delightful. By and large though, that humor has no place in action movies. Marvel ought to pick one or the other and stop aiming for both genres, because they invariably meet both criteria poorly. Better to focus on a single goal than spread themselves too thin. There’s a particularly worthwhile analogy to writing here, but I will leave it to you, the reader, to make.