The Problem With Superhero Movies

All images from
SuperHeroMovies.net

I've spent a good portion of my evening reading about upcoming superhero movies. As I often do, I sort of got lost in the topic, having no idea how much time I was spending. But through all of that reading, I was also doing a lot of thinking. There are tons of great characters out there (and I'm just talking about the DC and Marvel characters I'm most familiar with). They've had in some cases over seventy years of story ideas. Yet somehow, many characters languish for years in development hell, and others come to the screen as major disappointments.

Part of the problem is that comic book fans are notoriously fickle. You couldn't find a group of people--outside of Star Trek or Star Wars fans--who are harder to please. They don't like the director, they don't like the script, they don't like the actors chosen to play their favorite heroes, villains and the lot. Mostly, they'll complain that the final product is too different--or paradoxically too much like--the source material.

Another part of the problem is that if they're too faithful, they might just look silly. As good as the first two Superman movies were, Christopher Reeve's tights did look goofy. The Spider-Man movies of the last ten years and Superman Returns (highly underrated, in my lonely opinion) proved that they can make a fairly faithful costume that doesn't look ridiculous. And in the upcoming Green Lantern movie--which looks like it could either be great or crappy--they wisely ditched the elbow-length white gloves.

One of the biggest problems with bringing our heroes to the big screen seems to be Hollywood meddling. You would think with so much source material, coming up with a gem would be an easy proposition. But a look at some of the stuff that didn't make it shows that Hollywood doesn't know what it's doing a lot of the time. If you've ever seen pictures of the Tim Burton take on Superman (staring Nicholas Cage as Supes!), you know what I'm talking about.  Even when they get it right, the sequels always spin out of control. 

The original Superman series got progressively more silly, and lower-budget, to the point of embarrassment. The 80s-90s Batman franchise added too many characters, and changed actors too often. X-Men just. . .lost something.  Spider-Man fell to the same "too many characters" trope, and The Punisher could never figure out how to replicate the comic, amongst many other problems.  Only Iron Man and The Fantastic Four seemed to be consistent with tone and style, though I'm again in the minority of opinion on that one, and FF is rumored to be on a reboot schedule as well.

And when they don't fall apart, they reboot. This makes sense, as with Batman Begins, starting up a dormant property in a new era. But only a few years passed between The Hulk and the reboot, The Incredible Hulk. Spider-Man is being rebooted with only a couple of years since the last installment. Superman: Man of Steel is on its way, as a reboot only six years after the last one.

All of this is taking place in a market already saturated with bombastic, CGI-laden "blockbuster" films (now in 3D!). How many times can we watch the "first" installment of a new or rebooted series, with half the picture taken up by an origin story? How many times can an audience be expect to "reboot" their brains to keep a now changed storyline straight? Especially when they're trying to tie the Marvel stories and the DC stories into respective "universes" so that they can make "group" movies like The Avengers and The Justice League of America?

Honestly, as much as I want to see my favorite heroes (Wonder Woman, The Metal Men, Plastic Man, Firestorm, The Flash, Shazam!, JLA, etc.) come to life at the movies, I have a funny feeling that all of this is going to collapse under its own weight. Maybe if Joss Whedon's The Avengers, along with Captain America, Thor and Green Lantern all manage to be both good movies, and successful, that feeling will go away. But given the recent history of failed or stillborn attempts, I don't have a good feeling about the genre in general.

Now, if you are interested in finding a place where all of the future superhero movies can be read about in one place, I've got a link for you. A lot of them are subject to change or cancellation of course, and several of them sound like they can't possibly happen with the given details (could The Flash, JLA and Wonder Woman really all come out on the same day?), and some will make you groan. I mean, they're really going to call a Captain Marvel movie Billy Batson and the Legend of Shazam!? Why not, Shazam! The World's Mightiest Mortal, or With One Magic Word. . .SHAZAM!?  Anyway, the site is called Superhero Movie News. Don't get lost there, like I did.