Top 5 Favorite Vincent Price Movies

Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (1911-1993) was an American actor who made over a hundred feature films in a variety of genres, including historical drama, mystery, film noir, and even comedy, but he is best known for his roles in horror films. A graduate of Yale with a degree in art history, he later studied abroad in London, where he kindled his love of theater and later performed onstage opposed Helen Hayes in Victoria Regina. This led to a five-play contract with Orson Welles Mercury Theatre. Eventually he was put on contract at Universal as a character actor, playing romantic leads and scoundrels in equal measure. But he never abandoned the stage, returning to it every chance he got.

In fact, it was during his performance in the 1941 play Angel Street (the American version of Gaslight) playing the cruel Jack Manningham, pushing his wife Helen into madness, that he found his true calling playing villains. Speaking about that role, Price told one interviewer “…I came out for my curtain call and the audience just hissed. I knew I'd found my niche.” He secured a few more villain roles and turns in minor horror movies. Later, in the early 1950s, Price would become wildly successful in the genre, leading to some of his most memorable roles and performances for the next twenty-odd years.

The Children of Generation X, Part 1: The Marvel Cinematic Universe Ten Years Later

I think one of the worst aspects of our New Digital Lives is that the Internet tends to speed up and also shorten lengths of time between Intellectual Property discussions. You don’t have the luxury of processing and mentally digesting genre film and TV anymore; the same day that a movie debuts, there’s a dozen articles on the Easter Eggs you missed. No need to see the movie a second time, or really even pay that close attention in the first place. Stupid Internet.

The thing is, I need time to think about this stuff. Always have. I get some brilliant insights, usually during the first viewing, but I need to let them percolate and cook for a while. Sometimes, I figure out that my insights aren’t that insightful. Other times, I have a working theory that takes years to develop.

Case in point: Iron Man, when it first debuted, ten years ago, was just another super hero movie, in a fairly unbroken stream of Marvel Comics movies that ranged from Soup to Nuts. For every X-Men, there was an X-Men: The Last Stand. For Every Spider-Man, there was a Spider-Man 3. For every Daredevil, there was an Elektra. They weren’t all great, but they were nowhere near the awfulness of the failed Marvel TV and movie efforts that came before them.

But Iron Man had this different vibe for me. It just felt different, never mind the assurances from the studio that it was going to be “unlike anything that’s come before.” Yeah, right, pull the other one, Charlie. This ain’t my first rodeo. But it really was true in the case of Iron Man.

That super cool landing became Iron Man's signature move. 

There was an internal metric that made the world seem not closed off, as opposed to the X-Men universe, which made it clear that there wasn’t anything else in the world except mutants, so please don’t ask. Granted, some of this seeming spaciousness was implied. The mention of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the appearance of Nick Fury at the end (looking exactly like the Nick Fury from Marvel’s Ultimates comic, no less) were the only hints at what was to come; namely, Rhodes glancing at the armor and muttering, “Next time.” Okay, we get it. You want to do more movies.

It wasn’t until The Incredible Hulk came out the same year that we saw, imbedded in the movie, more clues in the form of Easter eggs. The very idea that the Hulk was a failed experiment to re-create the Super Soldier serum that made Captain America was, well, the first real clue that we were going to get a Captain America movie set in World War II. No way of knowing if it would be any good, really...except for that one scene with a pre-Abomination Emil Blonsky running in to engage the Hulk. Watch it again, if you don’t remember, and see if his moves don’t look exactly like the moves Cap used in comics all the time. I remember watching that scene and saying to myself, “We’re going to get Cap! And this is what he’s going to look like in action!”

I remember back in the late 1980s and early- to mid-1990s when I was working in comic shops, and as was frequently the case, a crowd would gather and let me hold court about comics, movies, and what-not. We came to the mutual conclusion back then that a JLA movie could never work, because it took them two whole hours to make us care about Batman, and there was no way you could introduce the concept of Flash, Hawkman, and Green Lantern into a normal-length film and expect it to not be weird and rushed and ultimately, very cheesy. We saw the Cheese-Creep happen at the end of Superman 2, and then it blossomed like a flower in Superman 3 and Superman 4. We were surprised by it in Batman Returns (remember the penguins with rocket launchers?) and it only got worse as the 90s progressed.

No, we reasoned, the only way to do it right would be to make a separate movie for each character and then you could make a Justice League movie and clean up because all of the fans would come together no matter which character they liked, see? It was genius...but it would never work, because what movie studio wants to make five movies, just so they could make a sixth one?

Fast forward to the 21^st century. Super Hero movies are now not only probable, and even possible, but a going concern. Special effects were finally able to duplicate (with an army of programmers and months of time) on the screen what Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko could do with a pencil and ink on Bristol board in a single afternoon. We’ve seen Spider-Man. We’ve seen Wolverine. We got Nightcrawler, and Colossus, and even Daredevil.  It wasn’t a far stretch to get Iron Man, or a better Hulk (don’t get me started on Ang Lee’s movie. It’s terrible. And I love the Hulk, a whole lot). And even Thor and Captain America were great—really satisfying to watch in their own way. Each one getting it more right than wrong. Highlighting the strengths of each character and story.

They were wise to put this shot in the trailer. It's still cool.

But when I saw The Avengers for the first time, it cut deeply into my chewy geeky center. That movie, probably more than any of the other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies to date (as they were now called), actually felt like a Marvel comic book. Everything from the snappy banter to the heroes’ first meeting where they end up fighting each other until they realize they are after the same thing, from the quiet, interpersonal moments, to the sweep of the epic scale battle...this was what comics looked like in my head; George Perez Avengers comics, written by Roger Stern.

During the epic final battle, there’s a scene wherein Cap vaults into a bank where the Chitauri had a gaggle of civilians held hostage, and he does his shield-slinging thing, of course, and gets the people out of harm’s way. But the bad guys throw a grenade down, and Cap sees it and in a split-second, he leaps into mid-air, tucking and crouching behind his shield (which absorbs kinetic energy, remember), protecting himself from the blast, which knocks him backward out the window. I turned to my wife and said, “That was a Jack Kirby move, right there.”

That was the real start of it, looking back. That’s when we got Thanos for the first time. All of the building blocks were there. It was clear that Marvel (and soon, Disney) were playing a very long game. But the success of even the early movies turned on something else. Something that people have incorrectly mis-attributed to “the same plot, over and over again.” It ends up being the beating heart of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: the family unit.

Everything important in the MCU hinges on family, both nuclear and extended, and the heroes (and villains) relationships with primarily their father and occasionally, their mother. These movies are resonating with members of Generation X because they are in part written by members of Generation X, who grew up reading Bronze Age Marvel and DC comics in the 1970s and well into their teenage years in the 1980s. The latchkey kid generation grew up and these movies are an ongoing conversation with absent and/or inadequate parents.

In Iron Man, Tony Stark is living in his father’s shadow. His substitute father, Obie Stane, ends up betraying him and Iron Man dispatches him handily. In Iron Man 2, Nick Fury steps in as Tony’s substitute father because Tony has no emotional rudder and he actually grounds Tony, confining him to his house (hardly a punishment). Despite a scene where an aged Howard Stark tells Tony how much he loves him, Tony doesn’t seem to quite believe it. Or maybe the barn door has been open for too long. Either way. Tony starts to take a little responsibility for his actions. A bit.

Later, Tony creates Ultron, a child of high intelligence and zero empathy and wisdom. He decides the best way to protect the world is to kill every human. Like his creator, he makes the Vision in his new image of himself, but his “child” is stolen from him and the Avengers give the Vision life, creating an ideal Dad who can actually wield Thor’s hammer. He’s the only other one who can.

All of this guilt drives Tony into a kind of self-therapy. He’s out of control and he knows it. The only way to course correct is to swing his emotional pendulum the other way. This causes problems, of course. He’s not ready for responsibility and those bad choices come back to haunt him in Iron Man 3 and Captain America: Civil War.

The Hulk is the living embodiment of men behaving badly. Driven by his unmanageable anger—a creature of the Id, he is opposed by his girlfriend’s father, who doesn’t like Betty hanging around Bruce Banner. It’s a classic “That Boy is No Good For You” situation, only General "Thunderbolt" Ross is actually spot-on in his assessment. Later, when Mark Rufalo takes the role, Joss Whedon puts these words into his mouth: “That's my secret, Captain: I'm always angry.” The Hulk eventually gives into his anger completely, shutting himself off from the people who care about him, like Natasha Romanov, and running away from his problems. It's unfortunate that Ang Lee's movie really muddied the pond from which the Hulk's current origin is derived--namely, that because he was under the thumb of an abusive parent, his manifestation from the gamma exposure is that of a wounded child, flailing out in anger. We don't see that so much in the MCU, but it doesn't take a giant leap to see the subtext.

Thor and Loki are constantly in competition for their father’s love. Thor is delightfully immature because he wants for nothing, privileged and entitled. Loki has to keep proving his worth, to stunning indifference. Odin favors Thor over Loki and this bit of bad parenting decision sets the whole movie in motion. Loki plays father against son in a perfect imitation of the Shakespearean melodrama that fueled the Thor comics for decades. And that theme runs through all three Thor movies and right into The Avengers, as well.

Captain America has no father. He’s trying to become a man, literally and figuratively. He calls people “son.” He’s a member of The Greatest Generation, something that actor Chris Evans brilliantly alludes to in subsequent portrayals, but never over-plays. Cap becomes the heart of the Avengers, the symbolic patriarch, which cuts right across Iron Man’s bow, since—and this almost comes out in Captain America: Civil War verbatim—“Dad always liked you best!” Cap becomes Iron Man’s target for all of his displacement and unresolved feelings about his father by treating him like the older brother he never had, and moreover, Cap never was.

Cap, on the other hand, has set to rebuilding a semblance of a family for himself. Black Widow, Falcon, and eventually, Bucky, the brother he chose to have, all factor heavily into his personal and professional choices. This includes extending his fatherly protection to Scarlet Witch, who lost her parents and her brother. Black Widow he treats as a sibling. She’s a product of Soviet Spy Programs, and it’s her mother-figure who does the betraying. Father Russia holds no sway for her, since it forced her to become sterile. No wonder she went elsewhere.

War Machine, The Falcon, and Hawkeye are all versions of the career soldier, the person who placed the mission before themselves. Only Hawkeye has the holdout secret family—who he abandons to go save the world—and this weirdly is the most normal familial relationship than anyone else’s on the team; a wife and two kids, with one on the way, in an out of the way farmhouse. He’s gone for weeks at a time, but the family knows he’s being a super hero, so it’s presumably okay. What would be untenable in the real world is a comforting normalcy is the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In Guardians of the Galaxy, the whole movie resonates with conflicts relating to broken homes. Gamora and Nebula, daughters of Thanos rebel after the years of abuse they suffered by his side. Star-Lord has no mother, an absent father, and a terrible step-father who turns him into a criminal. Drax lost his wife and child because of Thanos. Rocket Raccoon has no family, nor, presumably, does Groot. Later, Star-Lord meets his father and realizes he’s a monster, and his step-father, Yondu, tells him he loves him. Gamora and Nebula work through their sibling rivalry. And Star-Lord realizes his created family fills the emotional needs, even as he’s honoring his step-father’s death.

Ant-Man is trying to be a good father to his daughter, and he is hamstrung by the decisions he made in his youth. Hank Pym is trying to protect his daughter from the dangers that using the shrinking tech presents, as he feels responsible for his wife’s death. Hope Van Dyne, meanwhile, is eternally pissed at her father for not letting her spread her wings. And later, about lying to her regarding her mother’s death. Together the three of them team up to stop the adopted son who betrayed the family trust—and he’s also mad at Pym for not sharing his legacy with him.

Doctor Strange would seem to be an exception, but his narcissism and infantile behavior, which seems to echo Tony Stark’s initial character arc to a lesser degree, is more akin to the man-children of Generation X who have grown up but are not completely mature. Strange’s Journey into Mystery (ahem) represents his fledgling attempt at becoming a functional adult with emotional maturity, something he’d previously lacked. Once his hands are mangled, he has no identity, or so he thinks. The Ancient One teaches him that the world does not, in fact, revolve around his hands, and Strange begins to re-engage with the world just in time to save it.

Out of respect for my readers, I’ll not rehash Spider-Man’s origin, nor should I have to point out what the death of Peter Parker’s parents and also his Uncle Ben do to him. “With great power comes great responsibility.” Spider-Man’s story is about learning how to be an adult when you are still just a kid. Classic Generation X. And Peter, looking for a male role-model, finds one (not a good one) in Tony Stark. Meanwhile, the Vulture is looking to provide for his family the best way he knows how. He’s being a good father and husband and also trying to protect his daughter from Peter. Lots of teenage angst, especially since the film intentionally mimics John Hughes movies from the 1980s in structure and content.

Black Panther has stepped into his father’s shoes and onto his throrn after his untimely death. In the most pointed and not-even-allegorical scene, he confronts his father’s living ghost-spirit and tells him his decisions, made twenty years ago, were wrong. Killmonger is created following the death of his father at the hands of Zuri by way of King T’Chakka. Black Panther has to contend with the sins of his father revisited upon him.

Even the TV shows follow this pattern. Iron Fist? Dead parents, abusive and manipulative father figure and ersatz siblings. Daredevil? Living in his father’s shadow. Abusive foster father figure in Stick. Kingpin? Abusive father. He passed his rage onto his son, who is a giant-sized manipulative sociopath. Luke Cage? Has a half-brother he didn’t know about. His half-brother did know all about him, though, and he’s the villain, enraged by what he thinks Luke Cage got that he didn’t; namely, an acknowledged father. Jessica Jones’ parents died, and she grew up with a foster mother who treated her like a second-class citizen and lavished her attention on her foster sister instead.

Not a scrap of Spandex in sight. And we're cool with that.

The Runaways. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Even the God-Awful and not-worth-watching The Inhumans. It’s all there. All over these stories featuring characters trying to get their shit straight, to figure it all out, to be better versions of themselves. I think it’s partially why the women in these movies are more capable and also seem to have more agency and less emotional encumbrance. They simply don’t have the baggage that the men have. Shuri is certainly unaffected by her father’s decisions. Only T’Challa internalizes them in his self-struggle. As angry as Hope Van Dyne is, she’s twice as capable as Scott Lang in or out of the Ant-Man rig. Black Widow establishes her bad-ass-ness in Iron Man 2 and only gets better through her five subsequent movie appearances. She’s now one of the strongest characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in terms of utility and agency. Scarlet Witch comes of age at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Gamora has assumed the matriarchal role for the team in Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2, which only highlights Star-Lord’s arrested development. When Hela (now Thor’s sister in the MCU) shows back up in Thor: Raganrok, she takes over the family business by blowing up the household. Firstborn and daddy’s favorite, until she outstripped him, she’s as angry as Loki is, but for different reasons. And she wins the movie and sends Thor packing.

Jessica Jones is a work in progress, even if her decisions for dealing with her issues aren’t particularly healthy. Apart from the explosive anger, she doesn’t read as masculine at all. Her agency comes from her surviving the abuse at the hands of the Purple Man. Contrast this with any of the male heroes in The Defenders, whose personal damage informs all of their choices.

This notion of surviving broken families is the engine that has driven the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first three phases. These 19 (and counting) movies have become their own genre, pushing away from the more generic “super hero” movie formula that DC and Warner Brothers is still struggling to update some thirty years after they created it. By keeping the characters more or less intact and recognizable in terms of personality and presence, the filmmakers have latitude with costume and appearance, something that didn’t used to be the case. All that remains is plot and story, and in the case of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, these “heroes with problems” look a lot like our own problems. Thus, they are relatable and more easily personally identifiable to a mainstream audience. Only in the final acts of their movies do their true comic book origins come to the fore, where they can blast, swing, fly, and punch their way free of the conflict. 

But it’s always a temporary fix, because violence never really solves the problem. Howard Stark still never hugged Tony. Star-Lord’s dad is still a colossal asshole. T’Challa will always be compared to his father. These things can’t be punched away. And that leads the characters to those quiet moments, the conversations and introspective sharing that shows us that these heroes have feet of clay. They are as flawed as the rest of us. We couldn’t do any better in the armor, or with that shield. And that is as much of a comfort, knowing we’re doing the best that we can, as it is knowing that the Avengers are always going to protect us from the bad guys.

Part 2 coming tomorrow. 

I Come to Bury Blade Runner 2049, Not Praise It

Nice poster. 

This entire article is a spoiler. You have been warned.

I’ve got real problems with Blade Runner 2049, but they are not the problems you think. Specifically, I have a real urge to throw this movie and everyone associated with it under the bus. But I’m going to untangle my ire and see if I can’t get to the heart of what’s bothering me. There’s a series of errors occurring in meat-space that have all conspired to create a false narrative around this film.

Fans got it wrong. They didn’t want this. They never did. Even if they say they did, they didn’t really. And right now, fandom is shearing off into two camps, as per usual; folks who are tearing the movie to pieces because it doesn’t look like what’s in their head, and folks who are blindly adoring of the movie because it’s “transcendent” and “evocative” and they dare not dislike it for fear of being accused of “not getting it.”

Critics got it wrong, for the most part. They were the ones granted early access to the film and they didn’t talk about what’s really wrong with the movie. They used words like “transcendent” and “evocative” to cover up the fact that they had no idea what they just watched and didn’t want to seem as if they didn’t “get it.”

Dennis Villeneuve and his whole team got it very wrong. Blade Runner 2049 is a Jurassic Park T-Rex: its makers were so pre-occupied about whether or not they could make it, that they didn’t bother to ask themselves whether or not they should make it.

This is a thing that should not be.

I think the thing that bothers me most is the reaction I’ve seen from some people akin to profound relief and satisfaction, as if they’ve been waiting patiently for three decades for them to “finally get it right.” Let me re-iterate: No one asked for this. The reason why it has slowly morphed into a beloved classic of the science fiction film genre is because there was only one of them, and it more or less worked right the first time. It didn’t need a second chapter, and it damn sure didn’t need to be re-kickstarted into a “franchise.” This whole project is a disservice to everyone. And it was doomed from the get-go.

Not my favorite Harrison Ford movie.

But let’s back this up 35 years, first. The problem begins in 1982 when Blade Runner first appeared. Ridley Scott was (comparatively) at the beginning of his career. Blade Runner was his third movie, after The Duellists, which was seen by maybe seventeen people, and Alien, which was seen by all of North America. He’d done some TV and music video work prior to that, but Blade Runner was clearly his most ambitious movie to date.

It was based on “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” by Phillip K. Dick, and it was the first of many Dick-inspired films appear, with widely varied results. To wit, there’s not much of the story in the movie, but then again, it was 1982, and we weren’t really expecting there to be. Also, Blade Runner ends up asking questions that are similar to the kinds of questions Dick wrote about, so this movie gets a pass from most die-hard SF readers and fans.

The movie starred Harrison Ford, fresh from Raiders of the Lost Ark, at the apex of his "Young Bogart" phase. Sean Young co-starred, doing her best Veronica Lake impression, and then there’s Rutger Hauer, an actor who was literally cast in everything he’s been in since based entirely on the strength of his performance as Roy Batty; i.e. "Hey, is that Rutger Hauer? Boy, did he get fat!" "Yeah, but he was the shit in Blade Runner, wasn't he?" The film is front loaded with great co-stars and character actors, each one bringing something different to the mix. Darryl Hannah plays a killer sexbot. M. Emmet Walsh is Deckard’s old boss. Edward James Olmos plays a skeevy cop named Gaff. Brion James, William Sanderson, James Hong, Joanna Cassidy...it’s smorgasbord of talent, okay?

Noir-style lighting, expertly applied, with no guessing as to where the light was coming from.

The film came out during this great period in early 80s cinema; ILM was an established entity by this time, and could turn in some impressive special effects, but it wasn’t so easy to do that you could sacrifice story or plot to make your spectacle. You still had to make an actual movie. And while Blade Runner spends a lot of time swinging wide over chilling hellscapes of over-developed cities in a flying car, there’s not too much else going on to distract you from the main story.  Also, there were a lot of downbeat endings, sort of a holdover from the 1970's flirtation with "realism" in cinema. It was okay, for example, to have a "happy for now" ending. Lots of movies from the early to mid-80's had that feel to it. It's like films were deconstructing themselves, even as people like Lucas and Spielberg were trying to stitch them back together again. But I digress.

Ford plays Deckard, a former cop known as a Blade Runner (why? Sounds cool, I guess) that hunts down and “retires” rogue Replicants—artificial workers who sometimes get wise that they are being used for slave labor and decide to rebel, run, or cause trouble. Pretty cynical. Deckard is done with that business, but apparently, he gets called back by his old boss for “one last job.” While he’s on the job, he meets Rachel (Young), and as soon as he does, he’s doomed. We find out pretty quickly that she’s a Replicant, like the ones he’s hunting. Deckard gets leads, drinks a lot, and runs the Replicants down, one by one, all while dealing with Rachel who keeps insisting she’s a real person. She’s got memories, photographs, see? She can’t be artificial.

 

One of the most used and most dramatic stills from the film. 

We find out that the Replicants who are rebelling want more life—they were only supposed to be active for five years. Eventually the head of the Tyrell Corporation, the maker of all the Replicants, has to tell that to Roy Batty, the leader of the gang of miscreant Replicants. “The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. And you have burned so very brightly, Roy.” Weirdly, that does not satisfy Roy, who was looking for more than platitudes. But by now, Deckard has caught up to him and they fight, and Deckard is clearly outmatched. But Batty recites some amazing dialogue and dies right in front of an immobilized Deckard. The movie ends with Deckard grabbing Rachel and heading for the country. She may have a limited lifespan, like Batty. Maybe not. But Deckard decides it’s worth it, because they love each other.

Neat movie. Really makes you think in places.

Only, that’s not the end of it. Ridley Scott decided several years later that he didn’t like the movie. There’s voice-over narration in the film, see, and it was added under protest because the studio couldn’t figure out what was going on in the movie. The V.O. really heightened the “film noir” aspects of the movie. Also, the ending was tacked on, see? Another studio addition. So, Scott released a Director’s Cut, with more scenes of the flying car zooming over horrifying cityscapes, more Vangelis music, no narration, and an ending that was abrupt and jarring. Case closed, right?

No. It turns out that Scott really didn’t approve the director’s cut, and now there is a third version out there, a workprint that was screened once, and THAT is the closest to his vision. Oh, but there’s also a UK Director’s Cut that’s slightly different...sigh. By the time the dust had settled, there were a total of five different prints of Blade Runner, including the Ultimate Final cut that Scott DID approve of, complete with computer re-coloring because we can do that now.

But central to most of these do-overs was a scene where Deckard falls asleep and dreams of a unicorn. Based on that, for literally twenty years now, there’s been a friendly debate about whether or not Deckard was a Replicant himself.  Watching the movie that way completely changes the film. Especially since—and this is very important to note—there is literally zero indicator of this throughout the film.

 

There is more expression in this still than in the whole of Blade Runner 2049.

And don’t start on me with that “But Mark, the clues are there if you’re paying attention...”

First off, Chuckles, I’m not Sherlock Holmes. I’m not even John Watson. I’m a guy watching a movie. I don’t want subtle clues. I want scenes with plot, story, and dialogue in them. Heck, you can even throw in sub-text, if you like. I’ll sit there all day and discuss what it means with you. But at some point, you need to cue your audience in to what you want them to know in some way.

“See how much damage he takes? That’s a clue, man!”

Well, yes, but all of the signifiers in this movie are telling me it’s also a film noir homage, and one of the classic tropes there is the Herculean amount of concussive force the detective hero soaks up on his skull without permanent brain injury. So, if you signal to me this is a film noir, and then you have Deckard getting continually beat to shit, I’m not going think, “Hmmm, he must be a secret robot!” I’m going to think, “Oh, they’re doing the old Sam Spade schtick.” The only way it works is if in act three you let it slip that he’s a secret robot. If you keep it a secret, then you either didn’t think this through or you just didn’t want anyone to know in the first place.

This is one of the major problems with directors going back after twenty-five years and monkeying around with their movies. They aren’t the same people, anymore. They are bringing a completely different brain to the process. Early work is early work. If you want to revisit it, the best thing you can do is identify the themes you want to expound upon and put them into a new project.

 

Another great example of how to light an actor so that you can see
the performance. Something to think about for next time.

But as muddy as the waters were around Blade Runner, this was a friendly argument to make. After all, there were people who liked the voice-over (myself included) in that it helped build and explain the world in which this dystopian society operated in. Just like film noir voice-over should. This is doubly useful because of all the extra time director Ridley Scott spent filming vistas of blasted hellscapes and flying cars and having people sigh and drink and not say anything. And I never warmed to the Director’s Cuts, any of them, because I kept hearing the V.O. in my head during the scenes when it was supposed to be there and wasn’t.

But it was our movie, and we loved it. It was science fiction at a time when there was a limited amount of it to consume and the quality varied widely. Over the years, it became a right of passage for other SF fans. “You haven’t seen Blade Runner? Oh, you gotta! We’re watching it this weekend.” And it’s a movie that gradually became more popular, and more respected, despite the director’s best efforts to confuse everyone, but it was always firmly in the SF genre. It didn’t break out, never really crossed over. Jocks don’t watch Blade Runner. It’s not that kind of movie, and never was. Even in the new Age of the Geek, it’s a deep cut. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I never ever, not once, thought to myself, “I wonder what happens next?”

 

In the original movie, buildings were billboards.
So, like, we're two years ahead of the curve on this one.

Now we get to Blade Runner 2049.

In the “Even a Blind Squirrel Occasionally Finds a Nut” Category, we find this short feature by Looper on Why Blade Runner 2049 Really Failed at the Box Office. I offer it here with no commentary, because I largely agree with it, and also, what I really want to do is pile on here, because I watched this movie twice and I have to tell you, I don’t know what you all were watching, but I don’t think the Emperor is wearing new clothes, here.

 

This orange color palate is supposed to mean something,
but I have no idea what. Ford is blue in the poster. 

Dennis Villeneuve made a splash with Arrival, a science fiction film, adapted from a real science fiction story, and it was well-received all around. He apparently pulled a lot of his visual style from watching early Ridley Scott movies. I wonder which ones?

It’s too bad he never figured out that Scott’s “style” is another way of saying “storytelling,” because this film substitutes mood for murk, doesn’t know when to start telling the story it’s trying to tell, doesn’t know how to signal anything to an audience, visually meanders for two hours and forty three minutes. That’s if you don’t count the three short films Villeneuve commissioned to explain key events leading up to Blade Runner 2049. Those run an additional twenty-seven minutes. That’s three hours and ten minutes’ worth of “What the hell am I watching?”

A great many of the shots in this movie are set up along the same angles and planes as many shots in the original film. Noticeably so. This wouldn’t be so bad in and of itself, but when Villeneuve isn’t swiping visual cues from the original movie, he’s bathing the background in heavy fog or smoke or “atmosphere” so that it’s really difficult to see what’s going on. In a 3D movie, darkened by technology to begin with, this renders big chunks of the movie oily and muddy by degrees.

When there is a light source, it’s in motion, creating a strange distraction. It’s the future. Why are light bulbs still swinging? Is conduit that scarce? Many of the scenes are inadequately lit—and we know this because when other scenes start, they are expertly lit, or over-lit. In a movie with three generations of hunky actors in it, you’d think you would want to shine a light on those darling faces so the audience could see them. There’s a scene with Ford and Leto where the moving light is so distracting, I was trying to figure it out instead of listening to the dialogue.

Oh, and that’s the thing: you have to concentrate on this movie, and instantly judge what you’re listening to so you can decide if this is plot, big secret reveal, or simply chit-chat before something else happens. For a movie that both slavishly values its silence, and yet also wrote in a literal Girl-Friday-in-the-Machine for Gosling to interact with so that we aren’t watching a silent picture for three hours, there are still scenes that Go Nowhere and Do Nothing. Gosling and Dave Bautista, easily the best actor in the movie, have several minutes of empty-calorie banter before Bautista is retired. The only purpose it serves is to introduce the idea that Gosling’s character is a Replicant, and in case you forget it, there’s a scene where he’s walking down a hallway shortly after that someone—human, I guess, barks at him as he’s walking by, “Lousy Skin-Job,” and Gosling’s character flinches and pulls away. See? Replicants are still a problem, here, too. But, why? I’ll get into the story, later.

And the soundtrack? It’s industrial noise. Say what you want about Vangelis, and I would not presume to debate you, but the soundtrack in this overblown set of vacation slides is giant, strident Harrumphing noises and sub-woofer honks. I shit you not. They are loud, too, instigating almost a jump-scare, because, see, for the past thirty minutes you’ve been leaning forward in your chair, trying to hear something, anything resembling meaningful dialogue. Next thing you know, Gosling is back in the car, flying over L.A. and the movie is braying at you like the genetically-recreated dinosaur that it is.

 

This is the most exiting moment in the film.
A real edge-of-your-seat nail biter, this one is.

It’s a technical mess. Villeneuve inexplicably found a sans serif font that is very thin and hard to read, underlit the text, and then slapped it up the upper and lower corners of the frame. It almost works when the screen is black, but those cards that are ideally used to tell you where you in the new scene (Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc.) are get lost in the corners of the frame with no weight or light on them. Oh, and they are sporadically used, as well. Some places never get a card. Good luck figuring out the place with the context of Gosling frog-walking through a scene with no expression on his face! I’d call it a rookie mistake but I don’t think it is. I think it was just a bad choice.

The lighting is bad, the sound is bad (actors are either quietly talking, or the soundtrack is blasting sub-woofer honks at you), the pacing is bad, and it’s an editorial mess. So much dead space that is given to showing more vistas of blasted hellscapes. No sense of place, no sense of time. I honestly don’t know what Villeneuve was thinking.

Let’s talk about the actors for just a second. I love Harrison Ford. I grew up with him. Spiritually, he’s wish-fulfillment figure to me—a psychic Cool Uncle I wish I had. Raiders of the Lost Ark is my personal Rosetta Stone. And so I say this with zero irony and full sincerity: Please sit down. I am really afraid he’s going to break a hip or something. And for God’s sake, quit dressing up in your old roles. The only reboot you need to be in right now is the Grumpy Old Men revival. Of course, there’s a practical reason why Ford is in the movie, and I’ll hit that later. I guess if you’re casting a movie about life-like robots, the wooden Ryan Gosling is probably a great call.

I think Ryan Gosling is one of the blandest, most colorless, gotta-face-made-for-punching actors in Hollywood right now. I’m glad Ford really hit him. I don’t get how two lazy eyes and a half smirk equals sex appeal in the 21^st century, I really don’t. And don't say "abs." There's better abs on better actors. This triangle-headed incubus is what's wrong with the country today.

And then we come to Jared Leto. Yeah, I’m just going to leave that right there. This kid, boy, I tell you what...

But the worst thing about this movie is that it hinges on making a decision about the first Blade Runner movie. Its premise is based entirely on the idea that Deckard is a Replicant. Oh, yeah, sorry. Spoilers.

This premise has to be bought if you are going to buy the premise for the new movie. And if you are like me, and think the “Deckard is a Replicant” idea is bullshit, well, guess what? This movie is a fight from start to finish.

It’s a fight because the whole “secret plot” hinges on finding the baby—the all Replicant child of Deckard and Rachel. The baby that shouldn’t have happened. Because they are, you know, not real. Gosling’s character has to track this kid down before he “upsets the balance of the world.” I guess if the Replicants can Self-Replicate, then they are people and therefore not to be used as slave labor for...doing what, exactly? The off-world colonies are thriving, we are told. They aren’t terra-forming. Or are they? It’s a bunch of hand-waving, and God Help You if you didn’t watch the 27 minutes of bonus footage that came out ahead of time.

 

Lots of great visuals in this movie. When you can see them.
But not enough to move the story forward. 

Three vignettes. The first one was Dave Bautista, dated one year before the movie starts. It connects directly into the start of the movie. So directly, in fact, that it should have been the start of the movie.

The second vignette, starring Jared Leto doing the worst “William Shatner does Stevie Wonder” impression I’ve ever heard in my life, dated twelve years before the movie starts. We learned that the Tyrell Corporation was bought up by another mega-corp, run by Leto, who is genius enough to make Replicants who are totally safe, this time, because see, he orders his man to kill himself and he does it. Genius! Based on the movie that just came out, it’s safe to assume the ban on making Replicants has lifted.

The last one, an anime, is the longest, but it’s also got the most useful information in it. It happens three years AFTER the first movie. All of the Nexus 6 Replicants (Roy Batty’s batch) have expired because of their 5 year life span. Except presumably, apparently, (and now according to Villeneuve definitely) Rachel, who Tyrell said was special, and if you think that way, then presumably, apparently, (and now according to Villeneuve definitely) Deckard, as well. So, the new Replicants are Nexus 8’s, and they have all of the advantages of Nexus 6 Replicants, but they have a normal life span.

When a pack of former Replicant Soldiers find out that they are fighting a war against other Replicants (“toy soldiers in a sandbox,”) they decide to free the enslaved Replicants. Oh, yeah, and there’s an uprising. Replicants are being lynched. So, get the metaphor? Okay, just checking. Deep waters, here. A small team of infiltrators manage to blow up a satellite uplink and an installation that contains all of the Replicant records. It’s called The Blackout. It means, obliquely, that the Replicants were free to go into hiding to escape persecution. Which, apparently, they did.

 

This fight? In the Vegas Lounge? It's technical chaos.

Glossing right over the idea that, in fact, Blade Runner 2022 makes for a much better, more compelling, and more interesting story than the one we got, these nuggets of info are crucial to understanding the 2 hour and 43 minute movie you’re watching—because, apparently, they couldn’t figure out a way to shoehorn that information in—in 2 hours and 43 minutes.

But instead of putting useful information into the movie, we get told things and then are given all of this empty space to try and make sense of it. And, when Harrison Ford shows up at the end of Act 2, and you realize that all of the assumptions you had about the first movie were, according to this movie, wrong, well, that’s on you to wrestle with. We’re not going to fill anything in for you.

So, Deckard is, apparently, a magical Replicant, not a Nexus 6, but “special,” like Rachel. A prototype Nexus 8, maybe? Two of them? And why would NO ONE in the first movie say anything to anyone about this? Why would Tyrell create two prototype Self-Replicating Replicants, which is basically just cloning at that point, and not tell anyone about it?

When Gosling’s character (K, or Joe, or, you know what? Who cares!?) starts pulling at this glued-over Gordian Knot of a plot, it has to compete with other lapses in logic. RepliGos has to be regularly re-calibrated to “baseline,” which is, I guess, the tweak Jared Leto did that keeps the Replicants from freaking out. Except that everyone still hates and distrusts them. Except for the ones who don’t. Whatever. When he starts looking into this mystery of the magical RepliKid, he has another Replicant bird-dogging his every move. She’s loyal to Leto, who needs the kid for...what? The secret of Replicant Life? Leto apparently can’t make more Replicants and thinks a self-Replicating Replicant, or just a clone, is the key to making more Replicants. His Replicant helps RepliGos from a distance, at one point even taking out a group of people attacking him with missiles. But she doesn’t try to attack RepliGos until he finally goes rogue. And even then, his human handler gives him 48 hours to “get right,” but it’s clear she’s just letting him go. Now the Replicant Hunter has become the Replicant Hunted. And he’s being tracked by a tiny bug a prostitute slips into his coat. Jeez, Louise, what a god-awful mess.

This film takes a very long time to tell a very basic, hackneyed, clichéd story that ultimately goes nowhere and does nothing. It’s got no heart, no balls, and no guts. It’s fitting, I suppose, that everyone in the movie is so wooden as to appear to be puppets. The Biblical allegory is ham-fisted, and the elaborate machinations necessary to get Deckard into the movie, and have him figure into the Messiah plot, and spend so much time on these earnest discussions that solve no problems and raise no stakes. This movie flies in the face of everything that made the original Blade Runner great. It was a simple story, made complicated by the questions it asked. It did not ask a bunch of pedantic questions and then try to build a story out of them.

I watched this movie twice, trying to reconcile what I was seeing with all of the questions that came up. Having Deckard end up a Replicant in the movie knocked me out of the film completely, and took some time to get back in. By then, I was pissed. This is a premise that shouldn’t have been utilized for a platform.

I don’t doubt that Villeneuve is a huge Blade Runner fan. I think this movie attests that he was unable to separate himself from the material and as a result, he made bad creative choices. No one else could separate their fan-ness enough to help him, apparently. I wish like hell that Ford was able to continue his personal quest to kill all of his beloved characters before he dies. Deckard should have eaten a bullet in the third act. Instead, he gets the last shot in the movie. Phillip K. Dick is spinning in his grave.

Oh, and the cinematographer? Roger Deakins? I agree, he deserves an Academy Award. Just not for this. But this will be the movie he wins it for. And that just sucks.

You may well think I’m wrong. That’s fine. Feel free to try and convince me otherwise.

What We Mean When We Say “Super Hero Fatigue”

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 21^st century.

Of course, that didn’t keep Hollywood from trying. The 20^th 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 Donner's Superman (starring Christopher Reeve) in 1978 could 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 20^th 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. 

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 the appallingly campy Legends of the Superheroes (1979) TV special, hosted by Ed McMahon. Lynda Carter’s 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 the 1970s, the ’66 Batman TV show was in syndication, and it was a daily dose of high camp caped crusader tomfoolery, and we all watched it, because we had no other options, but we also all wondered why Adam West and Burt Ward were nothing—at all—like the Batman and Robin in the comics. 1970’s Denny O’Neill/Neal Adams Batman was solving murders. Adam West was doing the Batusi in the What a Way to Go-Go. Talk about a disconnect.

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%

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 this stuff?

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.

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 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 21^st 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?