Ace of Spades sounds like he’s being drawn against his will into the Marvel Phase 2 project. He pokes fun at the new Thor: Into Darkness trailer and makes a crack about the villains being Dark Elves. Here, I’ll let him do the funny in his own words:

So here’s Thor 2, in which Thor teams up with Loki to stop… I don’t know, they’re called Dark Elves or something. I notice they don’t say “Dark Elves” in the trailer. Prudent of them. We have to preserve some sense of dignity. Going to a movie where we’re told right up front is about Dark Elves would deny us that figleaf of dignity.

This brings up a really interesting question: In a contest between WoW nerds and comic book nerds, who’s the winner (loser?) dignity wise? Having been on both sides of this contest at various points in my life, it seems like a pretty close call.

Ace then closes out with this great little hand-grenade:

Exit question: Aren’t these movies the Star Wars of the twenty-aughts and twenty-teens? It’s a fictional universe in which Guardians with Special Powers maintain Peace and Order in the Galaxy. Isn’t Captain America just a Jedi with a high-tech shield instead of a high-tech sword?

Isn’t Iron Man just Chaotic Good Boba Fett?

Isn’t Jarvis just disembodied C3PO?

And isn’t the Hulk just Gamma-Wookie?

He had me at “Chaotic Good Boba Fett.” Well played.

Meanwhile, Allahpundit is not amused.

Truth be told, I’m basically ready to buy in to Marvel Phase 2. Looking back on Phase 1, it’s interesting how uneven the Marvel films were in quality. I think we could classify Iron Man and Avengers as top-shelf productions–well-crafted with a real sense of what they were doing. And quite winning. Captain America was the next tier down–a great first and second act, and loads of promise, diminished only by the paint-by-numbers third act. Thor was a little less impressive still. And Iron Man 2 is a complete disaster.

As far as batting averages go, that’s certainly respectable, but it’s not like Marvel is working on a Pixar-like streak of quality.

This means that (1) We’re likely to get some more crap in Phase 2–and if Guardians of the Galaxy is anything better than Green Lantern with plushies, I’ll be surprised; and (2) It’s not like Phase 2 is trying to live up to some unattainable ideal from Phase 1. There’s room–lots of it–for improvement.

What’s interesting to me is that Marvel doesn’t seem to have a systematic approach to assembling their film projects. There doesn’t seem to be a “Marvel Method” for the film universe. Look at the directors they’ve chosen: Whedon, Branagh, Johnston, Favreau. You can try to find some common theme with them, but it’s pretty hard. Now look at the Phase 2 directors: James Gunn.  Alan Taylor. The Russo Bros. You might remember them from such classics as You, Me, & Dupree and Super. And lots (and lots) of TV work. The only stud in the bunch is Shane Black–who is awesome. But again, it’s interesting to think about the kind of managerial process which hands pieces of big, expensive, interrelated movies to Kenneth Branagh, Alan Taylor, and Shane Black. Maybe there’s a coherent worldview to that, but I can’t intuit it.

In fact, looking at the writing-directing teams from Phase 1 and now from Phase 2, I only see two likely conclusions. Either (1) Marvel has decided that it doesn’t care about a writer-director’s pedigree, they’re just hiring talent that has figured out a great way to tell their particular story. Or (2) Marvel has decided that writing-directing talent is secondary to the power of the characters and pre-existing story pieces which they’ve already generated through the comics. Why else move down from (mostly) proven feature-film directors to marginal film and TV directors for Phase 2?

Two other notes: First, Marvel now has their hands on Daredevil, which is great. There’s at least one awesome Daredevil movie to be made, and I nominate Joe Quesada’s Daredevil: Father arc which very artfully tells the Daredevil origin story (which any rebooted DD will have to do) but does it in an extended series of flashbacks while DD is solving a crime–and it does so in a way that makes the origin the payoff. It’s great and honestly it would be a little crazy not to start DD this way and then bring in the Kingpin or Bullseye or Elektra or some other classic Daredevil foe in the sequel. Not that I’ve thought about this or anything.

Second, I wonder if Marvel is ever going to give one of their house comics writers a shot at writing one of the movies. Though I suppose you could count Whedon in this, since he only wrote the best X-Men run in the history of the book.