 |
Look at the colors in this poster for
Thor Ragnarok. How can you not
be excited to see this? |
Nothing quite sets me off like the phrase “Super Hero
Fatigue.” It’s a passive-aggressive way for movie reviewers and online content
providers to turn their nose up at a genre that they either don’t like, don’t
get, or some combination of the two. I’m not unsympathetic; we’ve all gotten
fed up with a trend or a fad before the media, or your little sister, or the
world was ready to let go of it, and we’ve all suffered through “the Spring
Break song” of the year or the Twilight Saga or whatever it was with a mixture
of benign hate and stoic indifference. I get it.
But if you don’t stop talking about super hero
fatigue, I’m going to sock your nose.
When you talk about “super hero fatigue”
you may mean that you’re bored with the movies, but what I hear when you say
that is, “I want these movies to go away.” Well, I don’t. If you don’t like
them—if they aren’t for you—that’s fine, whatever, go peddle your ducks
elsewhere. But to my mind, they’ve only really been good for, what, 9 years,
now? Not even a full decade? Why do you hate fun? Who hurt you? And why would
you waste good ink complaining about it when there’s hundreds of other movies,
obscure and neglected, that you can champion as only a hipster can?
Now that you know what this blog post is going to be
about, feel free to chalk it up as one of those “Old Man Yells at Cloud” posts.
Or just skip right down to the end and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking
about. You will be wrong, of course, and do you know why?
I did the math. I’ve got the numbers. I have data, you
smug bastards. So let me explain to you folks—many of whom are under the age of
35—why you need to stop kvetching
about the Super Hero Movie Genre and let us Generation X folks have our moment.
My
Thesis
The
modern comic book movie didn’t officially begin until the year 1999 with the
premiere of The Matrix. While it was not connected to a comic series or based on
established characters, the visual effects in the film handily duplicated the
fast-action and ballet-like fighting that was a staple of comic books. The “Bullet
Time” effects in particular showcased key scenes before, during and after their
execution, mimicking a “panel” in a comic.
Note:
I did not include Blade (1998) in this calculation because, while Blade’s comic
book origins are well-established, he is a vampire who hunts vampires. His
speed and strength did not need any further explanation. The movie going
audience understood that from the get-go and so no additional story was needed
to justify his “super powers.” Nevertheless, Blade does count as a comic book
movie, as we’ll later see.
Special
effects, and in particular computer-generated effects, have been a staple of
the movie industry since Jurassic Park in 1993. However, it took nearly a
decade to create computer-generated imagery that was able to meet the rigorous
demands of a super hero film. Even movies that were deemed mediocre as films
boasted incredible special effects and images that were simply not possible
prior to the 21st century.
Of
course, that didn’t keep Hollywood from trying. The 20th century has
some of the best-and worst-super hero movies and television shows to ever
exist. And I should know. I watched all of it. Yeah, that’s right, all of it.
Look, I was an early and avid fan of super heroes. I was reading comics at the
age of 5. Collecting them by age 8. And—here’s the kicker—I was born in 1969,
which puts me at ground zero for everything that was to come along and, little
by little, improve with each try. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that if you
were born anytime after 1960, then you probably feel as I do, if you’re as big
a fan of comics and super heroes as me. If you were born in the seventies, you’re
probably on board with me. But if you were born in the mid to late 1980s...you
may just be the person I’m talking to when I say, “shut up your flapping food
hole” about Super Hero fatigue.
I Made a Chart
You
can download a PDF of my full chart here. It took me a while to put together, since this is not my strong suit. But I
wanted to back up my feelings, my impressions, and my memories with some actual
hard data points. So there it is, in its full glory, if you’re so inclined. Also, I graded every single super hero movie and project from A to F. That's what we're all going to fight about. I just know it. So go ahead and download it now and look it over and get ready to tell me why I'm the biggest idiot the world has ever produced because I didn't like your favorite movie from 1997. For
the rest of you, I’m going to skip ahead and talk briefly about what I
uncovered.
Most
of you know that modern super heroes debuted in 1938 with the first appearance
of Superman in Action Comics. Batman
followed in 1939, and Captain America and Wonder Woman came after that in 1940.
Most of you know about the Golden Age of Super Hero Comics, and you may even
know about the Silver Age and the creation of Marvel Comics in 1961 with The
Fantastic Four, followed quickly by The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man.
Marvel
and DC continue to rule the roost when it comes to super heroes and their
related properties. There have been (and continue to be) other publishers of comics,
but it’s hard to topple characters who’ve been around for 60, 70, and 80 or
more years. One thing I found interesting was that the 1940s and the 1960s,
both times of great interest in comic book super heroes, each had their own
attempts to capitalize on that success in movies or TV.
The 1940s were the era of the serials, or
“Cliffhangers,” wherein a story was broken up into weekly chapters, each
running around 15 minutes, and exhibited as part of a larger Saturday matinee
program. These serials were sometimes re-edited into feature length films. The
special effects for these cliffhangers was shoestring, at best, but the stunt
work and action were often top-notch.
The 1950s gave rise to atomic age science fiction, and
also opened up circuit distribution for independent film companies and
“packagers.” Thus, quality varied widely, with some of the movies skirting the
edge of outright exploitation.
Television was a fixture in the 1960s, and when Marvel
came along, it saw an opportunity not on the silver screen but on the little screen.
As early as 1966, a number of animated properties were developed—aimed at kids,
of course—featuring the Marvel super heroes. The 1960s also continued the
Science Fiction trend, but new fears were creeping into the zeitgeist. Planet of the Apes is the standout from
this decade. Also, the studio system was breaking down.
The 1970s were essentially the end of the 1960s. Some
speculative films were out, but there were more Godzilla movies than super hero
fare on the big screen. It wasn’t until Star
Wars changed the game in terms of what could be done onscreen that things
started to change—but not until the 1980s. However, Marvel—perhaps emboldened
by its success with animated properties, made the bewildering decision to take
some of its beloved characters and turn them into lackluster live-action
properties. Only Superman in 1978could
save us from such mediocrity, and set the bar so high that it became the
standard for decades on How to Make a Super Hero Movie.
1980s were a heyday for fantasy films, embracing the
new technologies created by ILM such as blue screen technology and optical compositing
as soon as it was invented. Most of the time, the technology was badly applied,
or worse, applied quite well to bolster terrible films. Marvel never really got
its legs under it, doubling down on projects like Incredible Hulk TV movies and
trying to launch David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury. DC didn’t do much better, with
the Superman films rapidly declining in quality, each one dumber than the last.
Again, a last minute save by Tim Burton invigorated Batman for a new generation.
 |
Never forget. This is why we fight. |
The 1990s tried their hardest to deliver, but the
technology was just out of reach of the subject matter. To make matters worse,
decades of bad super heroes, campy super heroes, and corny super heroes had
muddied the waters. The nadir of this era was the much maligned and rightly so Batman and Robin, an intentional salute and celebration of the 1966 Batman TV show that everyone tried so hard to overcome. That the show has found a new audience now is not the point; there are finally enough interpretations of Batman in the zeitgeist that a super silly Batman isn't the only thing drawing water, nor is it the only view of super heroes out there. Back when it was the only note anyone could blow on a horn, it was tiresome in the extreme. The independent comics produced a few exceptions, such as The Mask, which made the rubbery computer animation work for it,
and The Rocketeer, which matched nice
special effects with a sincere attempt at getting the character right, made the
failures around it that much worse. Only the quantum leap forward with CGI at
the end of the decade made what came next possible.
The
2000s can inarguably be considered the new Golden Age of comic book movies, now
that technology finally caught up to the rigorous demands of the stories being
told. However, the old modes of storytelling and the insistence on telling the
same kind of super hero story—now a mash-up of the Superman (1978) and Batman
(1989) plot would continue to plague many of the projects for most of the
decade. When Iron Man started the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008, it put
into place one of the most ambitious world-building and franchise building
exercises ever attempted on such a large scale, and it paid off handsomely.
2010
to 2017 is not a complete decade, but I would go so far as to argue that today’s
comic book movies and television shows have supplanted the comic book
themselves in terms of the place they occupy in popular culture—as a mirror of
the times, and also as a reaction to current events. This is especially true in
the politically-charged decade of the 2010s. The success of the Marvel
Cinematic Universe only highlights the ongoing struggles of Warner Brothers to
get its proprietary DC Universe characters on the big screen.
My Methodology
First,
I counted only the Marvel, DC, and Independent movies and TV shows that were
based on actual comics. There were a couple of exceptions, as you’ll see if you
look at the PDF above. Mostly for multi-media properties such as The Green
Hornet, The Lone Ranger, and The Phantom. It was only a few extra numbers, as
you’ll see. I also only counted TV shows once, even if they were on for
multiple seasons.
I
left off animation because it would have ballooned the super hero list. Also,
because 95% of the animation was aimed at children. There’s a separate metric
for that, in that all of that kiddie fare drove the discourse down and made
super heroes infantile and their fans man-children for much of the 20th
century. But that’s not what I was looking at. For what it’s worth, I did
choose to count the live-action Saturday Morning Shows like Shazam! and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. I’m nothing if not capricious.
Then I went back and counted all of the movies and TV, aimed at American
audiences, that were super heroes who were not actually comic book based. This
is where stuff like The Greatest American Hero (1981-83) got counted.
M.A.N.T.I.S. (1995). Heroes (2006-2010). Hancock (2008). You get the idea. For
what it’s worth, I did choose to count the live-action Saturday Morning Shows like
Shazam! and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.
In
order to give these numbers some meaning, I used the combined Fantasy and
Science Fiction genres to help “classify” them, since they have, up until very
recently, been considered part of that genre (well, sometimes they get placed
in action/adventure, but I maintain that the special effects needed to get
super heroes to work on film is equal to an F/SF film, so this was a more
accurate grouping). I looked at the
number of “real” or Top Shelf (Marvel, DC, etc) movies and TV shows by decade,
and compared them to the number of Non-Marvel, DC, etc. movies and also F/SF
movies by decade to generate a percentage within that larger group. Here are
the results of that.
Super
Hero Movie Stats
YEARS
By
Decade
|
Marvel, DC &
Indy films
|
Other “Super
Hero” films
|
Other F/SF films
|
% BY
DECADE
|
1940s
|
|
|
|
|
|
14
|
1
|
37
|
36%
|
1950s
|
|
|
|
|
|
6
|
2
|
164
|
4%
|
1960s
|
|
|
|
|
|
3
|
1
|
115
|
2.5%
|
1970s
|
|
|
|
|
|
7
|
5
|
123
|
5%
|
1980s
|
|
|
|
|
|
11
|
7
|
196
|
5%
|
1990s
|
|
|
|
|
|
24
|
16
|
194
|
11%
|
2000s
|
|
|
|
|
|
33
|
5
|
190
|
17%
|
2010s
|
|
|
|
|
|
48*
|
4*
|
159*
|
29%*
|
* an ongoing statistic. Tallies are not final.
Interpreting
the Data
I
deliberately pushed “Other Super Hero” films into a separate category because,
almost without fail, they only added to the signal to noise ratio in getting
good and true representations of these characters onscreen. In retrospect, I
should have included another column for animated series, as it’s very important
from the 1960s on, as keeping the characters (albeit simplified) in the public
eye. But what I’m driving at here is this: Condorman
did nothing to sell the public on the idea that super heroes were anything
other than kiddy fare, played for laughs. And that was released by Walt Disney.
Captain Nice, another live-action Saturday morning Yuk-fest, was even more stupid.
This all relates back to the Batman TV series, of course. It was played for
laughs and it was so incredibly successful, so fast, that they couldn’t
monetize it fast enough. It was a legitimate pop culture phenomenon. And
because it was so successful, that’s the well Hollywood went back to for a full
decade when Super Heroes came up. That’s why Doc Savage looked the way it did.
That’s
not to say that the major comic book companies didn’t shoot themselves in the
foot, either. For decades prior to the premiere of X-Men in 2000, Marvel comics fans groaned every time a new TV series
or movie was announced, because they just Couldn’t Get It Right. Ever. In some
cases, it was like they weren’t even trying. The Incredible Hulk was popular, for what it was, but it really
bore no resemblance to the comics. There were no super villains, nothing to really
set The Hulk in the Marvel Universe. Ferrigno in green body paint was expensive
enough. And he stormed through Styrofoam walls, broke balsa wood tables, and
even pushed cars around with his Hulk-like strength, but it was a far, far cry
from “Hulk Smash.” Later, in the 1980s, they revived the Hulk for TV movies
co-starring Thor and Daredevil, and they were the sorriest, most inane versions
of the characters I’ve ever seen—and I’ve seen them all, even the pirated
unreleased TV pilots and movies that have been shelved over the years because they
sucked so bad.
And
What about DC? They were defined by the success of Superman (1978) and Batman (1989), this is true, but no one
ever brings up Swamp Thing (1981). Or
Legends of the Superheroes (1979). Wonder
Woman was initially as great as something with a nineteen-dollar special
effects budget could be, but as quick as they could, they brought her into the
modern era, where everyone wore pantsuits, and all of the aliens were from a
future or a planet that used crystals and a lot of lycra. No, there’s enough
blame to go around. By now, the Batman TV show was in syndication, and it was a
daily dose of super heroes, and we all watched it, because we had no other
options, but we all wondered why Adam West and Burt Ward were nothing—at all—like
the Batman and Robin in the comics.
At first glance, it sure does seem like the number of
super hero projects has increased. I think it’s interesting to note that in
terms of percentages, 2010 and 1940 are the closest in comparative sizes, and I
think this is due to a similar rise in interest. Comics are no longer hermetic
and inaccessible. Super heroes are everywhere, and they function, more or less,
like how they work in the comics. This is a huge leap forward, and one that may
contribute to the decline (and maybe even the death) of American super hero
comics as the characters move into this new storytelling medium en masse.
These
are good numbers to look at, but there’s one more number, very important, that
I want to talk about. Here’s where we venture, and quite correctly, into “You
Young Kids” territory. I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves, for now.
Number
of Top-Tier Super Hero movies prior to 2000: 65
Number
of SF and “other” super hero movies combined, prior to 2000: 861
Percentage
of Top Tier Super hero films prior to 2000:
7.5%
Number
of Top-Tier Super Hero movies after 2000: 81
Number
of SF and “other” super hero movies combined, after 2000: 358
Percentage
of Top Tier Super hero films after 2000:
23%
So,
what we have here is not only the establishment of super hero movies as a
genre, but also a clear line in the sand for people born from 1960 to 1985 and
people born after 1985. It has a lot to do with when you started consuming
super heroes. If you were born after a certain age, you just aren’t in a
position to understand why it’s important to Generation X that we now have cool
movies that don’t insult anyone’s intelligence and that millions of people are
interested in and oh yeah, also star Captain Freaking America. You don’t understand, and I don’t know
that you’ll ever have the empathy to do so.
A
Tale of Two Marks
To
prove my point, I’m going to create two identical Marks. Mark from Earth-1 and
Mark from Earth-2. For clarity’s sake, I will eschew with the standard time
deviation that is problematic with the multiverse and make Earth-1 Mark older
than Earth-2 Mark. I know that there’s a small percentage of DC comics fans who’s
heads just exploded, but I don’t care. This isn’t for them.
Mark
from Earth-1 was born in 1969. He was born at a time when there wasn’t Cable TV,
and there wasn’t VHS recorders (and certainly not any DVD players). Mark really
likes super heroes, and thankfully, there’s plenty of them around. He just has
to ride his bike all over to the four or five convenience stores, drug stores,
and super markets that each have a limited selection of Marvel and DC comics.
Earth-1 Mark has to smile politely when his grandparents bring him a handful of
“funny books” to read; stacks of Archie and Ritchie Rich that do nothing to
satisfy his itch to leap tall buildings in a single bound and save the world
from the mad menace of The Joker.
Earth-1
Mark is eight years old when Star Wars premieres in 1977. Up until that time,
he’s been watching cartoons (of course) and Wonder Woman on television. He’s
also been watching Shazam! every Saturday morning. Most of the time, their
super heroics are about this same; I can’t count the number of car bumpers they
both lifted up to prevent criminals from just driving away from them.
But
all is not gloom and doom for Earth-1 Mark. Even though he doesn’t have the
streaming Internet, or even cable, he has regular TV and radio. On the AM
stations, at night, he can listen to old time radio programs like The Shadow. He’s
got Power Records, actual comics with actors speaking the lines. Those are
pretty cool, and do not shy away from the subject matter. And on TV, he’s privy
to just about every super hero program from 1940 to 1968. Shows like Batman ran in the afternoons, after school.
He watches all of it, including the Saturday morning cartoons like Batman and
The Super Friends, and Space Ghost. Even after Star Wars debuts, it take years
between projects. There is no Internet to instantly spread the latest rumors
and gossip; just controlled press releases that state Superman II is now
filming and will be premiere in 1980. Three years away.
 |
You were supposed to protect us from this, Stan! We
trusted you! How could you let this happen? Do you
have any idea how much shit we took for liking this stuff? |
In
the meantime, Earth-1 Mark can tide himself over with The Incredible Hulk, on TV,
and watch Bill Bixby turn into Lou Ferrigno twice each episode. He can watch
Spider-Man, on TV, climb up walls and shoot nylon cord out of a webshooter the
size of a disco ball and watch it magically curl around a bad guy to tie him up.
He can watch Captain America, on TV, drive a motorcycle while wearing a giant
blue helmet and throw a clear plastic shield around like a Frisbee. He can watch Ed McMahon yuk it up with
third-rate comedians in ill-fitting super hero Spandex, on TV. And he can
deftly avoid the bigger kids in school who love to make fun of him because
comics are stupid and for babies and nothing in the larger media is proving the
bullies wrong at this point.
Earth-2
Mark? He was born in 1985. He also loves comics. His mom takes him to the comic
book shop every week to buy his latest books. He still has to avoid the other
kids who might make fun of him, but there are other people his age who also go
to the comic book store, and they band together, like Sand People, to hide
their true numbers.
Earth-2
Mark is 6 years old when Jurassic Park comes out. It’s the first time he’s been
thrilled and terrified at a movie, because the dinosaurs looked so very real!
Later, in his early twenties, he’ll decry the animation as clumsy and stupid,
but for now, he’s duly impressed. Mostly, though, he’s into Batman: The Animated Series and the
X-Men cartoons.
Earth-2
Mark’s dad took him to see Batman Forever
but he didn’t remember it, so he rented the VHS tape and rewatched it at his
home. All of his super hero movies are on video tape, and he can watch them whenever
he wants to, now. But the movie he really remembers seeing in the theater was Batman & Robin, and it blew his
young mind (he watched it years later, as an adult, and was bummed to find out
that it didn’t hold up, not in the least). He also saw Spawn that same year by sneaking into the theater, and it was super
cool, because he got Spawn #1 and it’s
now worth $20 and it’s only going to go up after the movie comes out, right?
When the first X-Men movie drops in 2000, Earth-2 Mark is in line. And he comes
out of it energized. Finally! He thinks. We’ve been waiting for, like, ten
years for this. It was stupid of them to wait so long. They could have and
should have done this years ago. In fact, they should have done X-Men
instead of Blade. Now, if only they’d
put Colossus in the next X-Men movie...
Now
it’s 2017. Earth-2 Mark is 29 years old. He’s been to college. He’s gotten a
degree in general studies. He now works for an online content provider, and he
writes pithy and succinct think-pieces about popular culture. But he’s bored,
now, because they still aren’t making the movies he wants them to make, and he’s
so fed up with all of these super hero movies, because, come on, this is so
1997, people, amiright? I mean, it was fun when I was younger, but after watching
12 Years a Slave, he simply cannot go
back to movies that don’t elucidate or instruct in some meaningful way.
When
Captain America (Finally) Throws His Mighty Shield
Okay,
that’s enough of that. My point, in case you missed it, was this: for my
generation, super heroes on film and TV were rare, hard to access, and nearly
always not worth the terrible effort it took to find it in the first place. For
so long, the special effects necessary to sell these stories was sorely
lacking. When the special effects got better, efforts to translate the material
suffered because of the prevailing attitude that comics were either A. Stupid;
B. Infantile; or C. Both. The only thing people could do was to try and
duplicate the success of the Batman TV show, with terrible results every time.
I
really cannot stress to you just how bad all of it was. And I’m not saying, “compared
to now,” either. I mean, bad back then. Case in point: Captain America.
I
love Captain America. He’s one of my all-time favorite super heroes. Cool
character, cool costume, cool powers, cool friends, cool everything. I was a
seventies kid, and the bicentennial was huge. I had a copy of Captain America’s
Bicentennial battles. I had the Captain America and the Falcon Power Records
Book and Record set. I had the Captain America pocket books full-color reprint.
Cap was my guy.
So
when I found out there was a clilffhanger serial, featuring Captain America,
and made during the 1940s, when it was cool to punch Nazis, I spent years
tracking it down...and when I found it...ooh boy. It’s not good. Dick Purcell?
Really? It’s just not. Cliffhangers are kind of cheesy and bad, but this poor
sap in the cap suit didn’t even have a shield! I mean, Come On. How hard is
that? There's nothing in the serial that is unique to Captain America. He could have been called "Bund-Puncher McGurk" and it would have made zero difference to the plot or the story.
Thankfully,
in the 1970s, there were these old limited animation shows (and I do mean
limited) featuring the Marvel Super Heroes. One of which was Captain America,
which came with a nifty theme song that I know you’ve heard people sing before.
These cartoons were done in the mid-sixties, at a New York studio, with crude
animation and clumsy voice acting, but the art for the cartoons was taken
directly from the comics themselves. They look almost exactly like the Motion
Comics of today.
 |
This was not cool. Not even during the heyday of
Evel Knievel Fever. It sucked and we all knew it. |
In
the late 1970s, these two Captain America TV movies were shown, starring Reb
Brown (don’t ask me) and featuring a Captain America who drove a motorcycle
with a giant clear plastic shield that snapped onto the front of the bike like
a windscreen. To promote cycle safety, Cap also had a giant blue motorcycle
helmet with white wings painted on the side. Not even Christopher Lee as the
bad guy makes these things worth watching. They are wrist-slitting awful.
By
then, Stan was in Los Angeles, ostensibly heading up Marvel Entertainment,
making movie and TV deals for all of us True Believers and telling us about it
in his monthly column in the comics. That lasted until the early 1990s, but by
then, we had the direct market and some comic book magazines that kept us
up-to-date on the latest gossip—like the brand-new Captain America movie coming
out!
Featuring
an Italian Red Skull, a rubber suit that looked okay, until Cap turned his head
and the molded rubber ears that were part of the mask he wore flattened against
his head and looked ridiculous. This Cap is untrained, and flown into battle
with one mission, holding a solid shield (thank you!), and he promptly gets
kidnapped by the Italian Red Skull and strapped to a rocket that drops him into
the Arctic Sea and freezes him. He’s thawed out in the modern world, only to
find the Italian Red Skull is still alive, and they have one more fight and Cap
wins.
Did
I mention to you that this movie wasn’t originally released in America? It was
so bad, it ended up going straight to video—right about the same time that
Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four movie was being shelved for sucking so bad.
So,
there’s Captain America’s media history. One of the easiest (you’d think)
characters to pull off: no flight, no crazy powers like eye beams or weather
control. Just running, jumping, punching, and throwing a shield—stuff that
special effects could have and should have been able to pull off since the
early 1980s.
That’s
why Captain America: The First Avenger
(2011) is such a big deal. Not only did they get all of the little stuff right—the
running, the jumping, the punching, and the shield—they spent a shit-ton of
money making Steve Rogers look like a 98 pound weakling for the first third of
the movie. When Cap throws his shield and it ricochets off of two bad guys and
knocks them out, it looks exactly like how he does it in the comics. Chris
Evans plays him like a conflicted Boy Scout, which is Cap all over from the
1960s to the 2010s. And the Red Skull was German, and a Nazi. Don’t ask me why
it took so long. But understand this: I never thought they’d do it. After
seeing them trying, and failing, so often, from the age of 7 to me in my early
40s, I just didn’t think they’d ever do it right. Not until Iron Man in 2008. Until then, I had zero
hope.
By
then, it was clear that the Geeks had Inherited the Earth. And apparently, what
we want is good comic book movies and TV shows. Is that so wrong? We’d been
denied them, all while the rest of you got romantic comedies, westerns,
gangster movies, war movies, and love stories. And we had to take what we could
get, because no one took comics seriously for decades. But there came a point
when comics weren’t stigmatized. It started in the mid-to-late 1980s with the
publication of a number of comics and graphic novels aimed at adults rather
than kids. Somewhere in the mid-to-late 1990s, comics stopped being popular
culture’s whipping boy. By then, it was okay to like comics, and the movies
that came out, while of widely varied quality, at least looked and behaved like
comic book super heroes. It wasn’t until members of Generation X started making
these movies that they underwent a tonal change.
Post
2000 super hero movies are still a mixed bag, right up until 2008, when Marvel
dropped Iron Man on an unsuspecting world. The birth of the Marvel Cinematic
Universe was one of the most ambitious experiments of all time; make six super
hero movies just so you can make a seventh one. Planning that far ahead was
backwards thinking to the rest of Hollywood, but it worked like a charm. And judging
from the box office numbers, it continues to work.
Most
of us old-timers chuckle at how the fortunes have reversed. There was a time
that we preferred the DC movies and hated everything Marvel threw at us. Those
days, thankfully, are long gone. But it’s worth noting that our interest hasn’t
waned, just because we’re older. There’s still a lot to answer for. Decades of mistreatment,
in fact. Even if we scrape off the first seven years of the 21st
century (throwing out Spider-Man and X-Men along with Elektra and Catwoman)...even
if we just start keeping score in 2008, that’s just ten years of jaw-dropping
sights and sounds, stuff we never thought we’d ever see—such as an actual
Captain America movie that wasn’t completely stupid—ten years, compared to,
what? Thirty to forty years of insulting our intelligence, denigrating
something we love almost unconditionally, mishandling the characters and
concepts that have sustained generations of fans, beloved characters that are larger
than life and mean something personal and sacred to so many folks...four
decades of Hollywood screwing it up and making it worse.
This
is our time. We earned these movies, with our money, with our loyalty, with our
hearts. We kept these flames alive, and we kept the comic book industry afloat,
and we championed these things to our friends, our family, our boyfriends and
girlfriends—to anyone who would listen. It cost us social currency, relationships,
arguments and fights—scars we carry to this day in one way or another. This is
our hard-earned and just reward, in this new Era of Geek Culture.
They
may not all be good, and some of them aren’t. But this is a relative and highly
subjective criteria we’re talking about, here. Take the worst Marvel Cinematic
Universe movie you can think of—whichever the worst one in your mind is. Now,
go compare that to anything that came out in the 1970s and 1980s. Go on, do it.
I’ll wait. Pick the worst DC movie of the last ten years and go compare that to
anything in the 1990s. See if it suddenly, magically, doesn’t start to look
amazing and wonderful, by comparison.
See,
it’s all relative. And it should be. We’re talking about a sub-genre of fantasy
and science fiction movies, here. As popular now as the spy genre was in the
1960s or the western was in the 1940s and 1950s. It will very likely slow down
on its own, due to economic pressures and interests, since Hollywood has a
time-honored tradition of self-sabotage and over-saturation. But for right now,
Super Heroes are only about one fifth of the overall number of fantasy and science
fiction movies being released in the last ten years.
So,
how about you let us have this moment and stop trying to take it away?