The ‘Infinity Gauntlet’ movie is where all these Marvel films are coming together

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With Comic Con coming to an end today, there’s a lot of buzz about Marvel movies, especially the hype was focused on the next Avengers movie: Age of Ultron. 

San Diego Comic Con has gotten so HUGE and a part of pop culture over the last several years, now you have the entire Avengers cast making appearances and movie studios using the event to announce and tease their projects.

It’s crazy (and awesome) how comic conventions went from straight up just being for 100% comic, sci-fi geeks, nerds, and enthusiasts to this mainstream.

Anywaaaaaaays…. since we’re on the topic of the Avengers, and with the release of the Guardians of the Galaxy on Friday, I got to thinking again about where all these Marvel movies are heading and how it leads into my favorite comic limited series of all time — Infinity Gauntlet.

What is the Infinity Gauntlet?

The Infinity Gauntlet is a gold glove designed to hold the six infinity gems, the wielder of the gauntlet with all six gems would be given the powers of a god; the ability to control time, matter, and space. Basically, omnipotence.

This item is the centerpiece of a popular crossover series that brought together a powerful group of Marvel superheros to take on Thanos. Thanos, already an already formidable opponent, now has the Infinity Gauntlet in his possession. In one of his first moves, Thanos wipes out half of the universe with a snap of a finger to impress Mistress Death.

Obviously, erasing half the universe didn’t go unnoticed by Earth’s superheros. Lead by Adam Warlock, Mr. Fantastic and Doctor Strange, the three idenitfy and round up some of the most powerful remaining heros and formed a strategy of attack to steal away the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos.

I won’t give everything away, but what sets out in the six issues is an epic battle that not only includes Earth’s superheros, but characters from other galaxies and powerful cosmic beings, coming together to take down Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet.

Planting Seeds (Gems) For Infinity Gauntlet Movie

Anyone familiar with the Infinity Gauntlet knows that this is, without a doubt, where all these Marvel movies are headed. Not just the post-credit teaser of Thanos after the first Avengers movie, but the team at Marvel has been setting up the Infinity Gauntlet in every Avengers-related film since 2012.

The most obvious seeds of the Infinity Gauntlet have been the infinity gems. In the comic books the 6 gems are referred simply as space, mind, reality, soul, power, and time. In the movies, the “soul gems” (as they’re also known) are given cooler labels.

So far three gems have appeared on screen – specifically the Tesseract (Soul) has shown up in Thor, Captain America, and Avengers. The Aether (Time) made it’s first appearance in Thor 2.

A third gem (Mind) was in Avengers 2 embedded Loki’s Chitauri Scepter, you know the one that was able to alter the minds of some of the Avengers?

(For a much more detailed infinity gems speculation, read this awesome research from Kennedy Kruger at Moviepilot)

Without a doubt, another gem will make its debut in the Guardians of the Galaxy. It has to, as GotG introduces some key players in the Infinity Gauntlet timeline: Gamora, Nebula, and Drax the Destroyer. Another main player, the Collector, will also get more screen time. These are the players we know are in the movie, so I’m sure we’ll see some of our other cosmic friends (Starfox, Adam Warlock, Death, Firelord) that were in the comic and will also appear in Avengers 3.

Here’s the Bummer….

Excited?  Me too, but here’s some bad news.

In the comics, the Avengers, Spiderman, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Guardians of the Galaxy, Daredevil, Namor, and Doctor Strange all exist in the same universe. They often appear in one another’s storylines, are friends and enemies, and come together for crossovers. In real life (the court system), that’s not the case. The rights to Marvel characters are spread across five movie studios.

Unfortunately, this mean that because the Infinity Gauntlet movie will be an Avengers storyline, we very likely won’t be seeing Wolverine, Spiderman, the Silver Surfer, Namor, Dr. Doom, or Cyclops in Avengers 3.

Marvel Studios is in this mess because in the same decade that the Infinity Gauntlet was published, Marvel as a company was struggling. In a move to inject money into their primary business, Marvel sold off the movie rights to some its characters (as well as their related characters and villains), but not to just one studio: Spider-Man went to Sony Motion Pictures, the X-Men and Fantastic Four were sold to 20th Century Fox, and Namor to Universal. The Avengers and every other Marvel character remained with Marvel Studios (phew!). 

marvel character movie rights

It sucks, but really, the rate that Marvel Studios is introducing new characters into their universe, some of the players in the comic book are expendable for the film. It’ll be interesting to see how a storyline shifts without Dr. Doom and Silver Surfer – both of these characters played primary roles in the comic book. All the other characters can be replaced, as they were more or less just part of the 21-deep posse.

Yes, from both a personality and we’re-going-to-fight-a-God perspective, I would much rather have Spiderman over Black Widow, Wolverine than Hawkeye, and Namor over Falcon, but this is when fanboy fantasy meets the hard realities of capitalism.

I wonder what Captain America would think of all this?

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