…I said at one point that I couldn’t think of ANY superhero team movie that hadn’t gone down the chute. Obviously I whiffed on X-Men and its sequels. The first two were pretty good, especially in making the whole thing accessible to non-comic folks, but the 3rd was just egregious. Bryan Singer left to do Superman, leaving X-Men for Brett Ratner, which killed both franchises dead.
I guess what I was thinking was that there’s never been a film that combined a bunch of established characters – thinking of something like Justice League of America, which would have Superman AND Wonder Woman AND Batman, all characters that would carry their own movie normally. The lineup for Avengers seems a little more daunting since everyone will have had at least one movie of their own – and Robert Downey Jr. has almost pulled Iron Man to the level of a Spiderman or Hulk, where the character is at least beyond the “huh?” level with normal civilian non-genre types.
Looking back, if you consider Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk in 2008 to be the start of the unified Marvel film universe, it’s remarkable that they did two Fantastic Four, three Spiderman, a Daredevil and (by some count) four X-Men without ever doing any sort of overlap between them. Of course, factor in two Iron Man and (sigh) two Hulk, and since 2000, we’ve had fourteen Marvel pictures, damn near two a year most years. DC’s had two Batman (which reinvigorated the franchise) and one Superman (which damn near killed it, if it wasn’t only the best known of all superheroes) and I suppose broadly speaking you can count Watchmen, although I suspect everyone involved is running like hell from that one. And V for Vendetta, while I liked it, isn’t any part of the normal DC universe.
I guess the point is, don’t look for a film adaptation of Challenge of the Superfriends anytime soon.