ESL WORKSHEET - The Media and Movies

LESSON PLAN FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS

MARVEL POWERS

LinguaHouse
Feb. 2, 2023

Level: Upper-Intermediate (B2-C1)
Type of English: English For Teenagers
Tags: The Media; American Culture; Describing Films/Movies; Negotiating; Paraphrasing and Explaining; Reported Speech; 16-18 Years Old; Vocabulary and Grammar; Video Talk
Publication date: 02/02/2023

The topic of this lesson is Marvel and the Fantastic Four. Students will watch a short promotional video and then will discuss superheroes and superpowers. There is a listening on Marvel licensing deals and the Fantastic Four reboot. The language point focuses on reported speech. Students will survey each other on the movies they’ve seen and then report them. Finally, there is a roleplay where students will cast the Fantastic Four movie. There is an optional homework task to write a review of a Marvel movie or trailer (by J. S. Fox).

• CLICK HERE to download the student’s worksheet in American English.
• CLICK HERE to download the teacher’s lesson plan in American English.
• CLICK HERE to download/listen to the audio in American English.
• CLICK HERE to download the student’s worksheet in British English.
• CLICK HERE to download the teacher’s lesson plan in British English.
• CLICK HERE to download/listen to the audio in British English.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Fantastic Kit
Woah.
Flame On Matches. Do not strike indoors.
Slinky Plus Hand.
What is this?
How does this work?
Glue Plus Rocks.
Woah! This is awesome!
Oh yeah!

AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

The complex web of Marvel
Speaker: Marvel was a comic book publisher which started in 1939. In 1961 it launched its Marvel era when the company released The Fantastic Four. But by the time the 1990s rolled around Marvel was in financial trouble.
In a bid to bail itself out of financial strife, Marvel did a number of licensing deals throughout the 80s and 90s. For example, Marvel sold the film rights to X-Men and Fantastic Four to 20th Century Fox. It sold The Incredible Hulk to Universal Pictures and Spiderman to Sony.
The licenses typically gave the rights to the film studios to use the characters and in return, Marvel would receive a fee or royalties – without having the produce the movies themselves.
But, despite these efforts, by 1996, Marvel was ultimately forced to declare bankruptcy.

Out of the ashes
The company struggled on until 1998 when it was able to emerge from bankruptcy under the control of toy-industry billionaire Isaac Perlmutter.
It then decided to start making its own movies. The company had seen that movies with their characters were popular, such as Blade in 1998, X-Men in 2000 and Spiderman in 2002. But Marvel didn’t actually make that much money from them. Blade, for instance, made $70 million at the box office, but Marvel only got a return of $25,000.

The Marvel Movie era
Marvel realized the real money would only come if it started a new venture to make its own movies. But to do it they needed to take an enormous risk. To finance the new venture, Marvel took on a $525 million loan. As collateral, the company put up rights to 10 of the biggest characters, including Ant-Man, Black Panther, and the Avengers. If Marvel’s movie were bombed, some of its most valuable properties would be forfeited. It was a huge gamble, which fortunately for them, paid off.
The first movie they chose to make was Iron Man. It was chosen after focus groups revealed it was the character most likely to sell toys. The film was a huge hit when it came out in 2008 and ultimately grossed more than $585 million.
The year after its release, Disney bought Marvel for $4 billion dollars. It was a wise investment as Iron Man became the first movie of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). And the MCU would go on to become the highest-grossing movie franchise in history.

The MCU
The MCU is a single shared universe where all of the characters can cross over. So far there have been four phases within it. Iron Man was the first movie in Phase 1, which concluded with The Avengers, a film which alone grossed more than $1.5 billion worldwide. By 2020 more than 20 MCU films had been released, and the franchise’s cumulative global box office receipts had topped $22 billion.
Marvel also wanted its other characters back. After a court battle in 2015, they reached an agreement with Sony to share Spiderman allowing both studios to use the character.

Fantastic Four reboot
The next on deck was Fantastic Four. Marvel managed to gain the rights back after Disney acquired the rights holder of 20th Century Fox in 2019. A Fantastic Four reboot is now in the works.
Currently pegged for release in February 2025, the movie will be part of Phase 6 which will also include Deadpool 3, and two Avengers sequels. While a director and writers have been attached no actors have been cast yet. But fan-casting has begun in earnest. As for the plot, the only thing that has been announced is that it won’t be an origin story.
Will the world domination of the MCU continue? Only time will tell.

Adapted from: https://www.linguahouse.com/esl-lesson-plans/english-for-teenagers/marvel-powers. Accessed on March 15, 2023. © 2008–2023 LinguaHouse.com. All rights reserved.