The main reason this news sucks is that it puts the third movie of a planned trilogy into turmoil. We all know it didn't work with X-Men 3. Spider-Man 3 was another bomb despite having the same director involved, and Superman 3 was downright bad.
So...how do we eliminate the Curse of the Third Movie?
Take out the trilogy.
Marvel Studios has made it very clear from very early on that they want their films to be franchises like James Bond...which includes over twenty films by a variety of directors, designers, screenwriters and even actors.
By looking at the Iron Man films as an ongoing franchise, meaning more than three movies total, we can see that RDJ won't be playing the role forever, and Favreau won't be directing them all either, but we will continue to see Iron Man (and Hulk, Cap, Thor, Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D., Black Widow, Black Panther, Blade, etc...) on the screen for the foreseeable future.
Think of the films as issues of an ongoing series. Writers and artists come and go. Some issues are amazing, some suck eggs, but we still read them because the characters are what matter. And hey, we did go to see Edward Norton didn't we?
I think this is Marvel Studios' first real challenge: to convince the movie going public that they are as hooked into these characters (and their planned Marvel Movie Universe) as we are reading about them.
I'm ready. How about you?
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