Allergy season means I get (more) easily distracted, so I find myself perusing Cracked.com a lot more lately. I kind of hate Cracked, but sometimes it gives me something interesting to complain about, so what can you do? Anyway, amid all the same-y lists like “8 Stupid Things The Man Has Tricked You Sheeple Into Believing” and “6 Incredible Facts You Already Read on Wikipedia,” I came across “5 Reasons Superhero Movies Are a Bubble That Will Soon Burst.”
The whole thing is painfully tl;dr, but the gist of it is comparing the evolution of the superhero genre to the rise and fall of New Hollywood. Essentially: Hollywood takes a chance on a new idea, the new idea is an unexpected success, Hollywood tries to make the new idea into something easily repeatable and consistently profitable, until they ruin it. It took 13 years for New Hollywood to get from Bonnie and Clyde to Heaven’s Gate, and it’s been 13 years since the first X-Men movie, ergo Guardians of the Galaxy is going to suck.
There’s a lot of problems with this reasoning, so let’s start with the big one: the guy who wrote the article has no idea what qualifies as a “superhero movie.” In tracking the development of his putative bubble, the writer refers to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings series, the JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot and the forthcoming Disney version of the Star Wars franchise. Now, the reasoning here is to compare the film geek directors from New Hollywood with the SF/F dork directors who actually like the source material they’re adapting today. And I suppose there’s a point there–Hollywood listening to the Joss Whedons of the world is sort of a new thing, and perhaps it will fizzle out as the Cracked article suggests. But that issue is separate from the fortunes of superhero movies, the topic identified in the article’s title.
It’s also telling that the piece defines the superhero genre as launching in 2000, because X-Men was he first attempt at a superhero film since Batman & Robin apparently smote the earth with a terrible curse or something. Look, I hate Batman & Robin as much as anybody, but that only “killed” superhero movies about three years before X-Men “saved” it, so let’s not pretend that was some interminable drought for the genre. To be honest, the superhero genre has been chugging along as far back as the 1978’s Superman–the only major change that X-Men represents is that Marvel finally got in the game with its A-material. Take Marvel off the table and the volume of superhero movies for the last thirteen years doesn’t look substantially different from the 1990s.
So let’s rephrase the question to the one the article only pretends to address: Is the Marvel superhero movie bubble about to burst? I don’t see why. Cracked seems to think the current run of “for nerds by nerds” movies will give way to safer, blander blockbusters. But even if you accept this as inevitable (or think its already happened), said blockbusters would still be superhero movies. The next Star Wars isn’t going to be as groundbreaking or beloved as the first one, but Star Wars movies are still a thing which is still happening–you may think the newer ones suck more, but you can’t argue that they’re going away.
I suppose the implied question is more like “Will Marvel movies continue to be consistently good?” But that’s a fallacy anyway since there have been quite a few shitty Marvel movies already, and that didn’t stop Avengers from clicking. People act like one Marvel movie can only succeed if Marvel as a whole remains bulletproof. But that aura of invincibility depends on you only counting their tentpole franchises (X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Avengers that aren’t Iron Man), and even that subset had a stinker or two. Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t have to be a home run because the people who gave us Elektra and Ghost Rider weren’t exactly batting a thousand to begin with.
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Thanks for the rebuttal of that article, I also was shaking my head in disbelief at the assumptions and leaps of shaky logic.
While I think that Guardians of the Galaxy is actually a good sell ( if they do characters like Groot and Rocket Racoon in a good way and not as mere comic relief ), I have my doubts that there is any shape or form in which they can sell Ant-Man to the public.
Besides, Blade came out a year before X-Men and started the whole “Let’s start really trying with these” movement. Blade’s success motivated them to go for it with X-Men.
Guardians of the Galaxy is James Gunn (whose last superhero movie is going to be one of my favorite super hero movies of all time.) doing what is essentially Firefly 2 with a ‘holy shit Thanos is going to wreck earth if we don’t stop him guyz!’ teaser for Avengers 2.
That it might flop with a mainstream audience, I can see that. but he’s been on a roll making things I adore these past couple years, I pretty sure that i’ll love it at least.
Actually, superhero movies can easily be dated back to the days of serial pictures of the 1930s and 1940s, which had both Superman and Batman, but also Captain America, Captain Marvel, and Dick Tracy (not a superhero, but definitely a comic book movie). And although your millage may vary, Batman ’66 was released in movie theaters.
Blade is not a superhero movie, it’s a more masculine version of Buffy.
I’d have an easier time accepting Punisher as a superhero movie. At least Frank wears a big damn logo on his chest.
~40% of all Cracked articles are attempts to spin up the comments section.
And Ghost Rider still got a sequel.
Buffy is pretty much a superhero story anyway.
Punisher is more of a revenge flick.
Oh, yeah, Blade’s just a buff guy with superpowers who puts on a costume and runs around punching monsters. How silly of me to think he was a superhero.
Superhero movies survived Fantastic Four, Elektra, Superman Returns, X3: The Last Stand, Spider-Man 3, and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Those movies were all within 2 years of each other (2005-2007), were critical flops or under-performed despite their characters. By the logic of the article, we never should have gotten Iron Man and The Dark Knight.
I think a “superhero” needs to have a clearly defined second identity (not necessarily secret) and a recognizable costume that goes with it. Tony Stark puts on the armour and becomes Iron Man. Bruce Wayne puts on the costume and becomes Batman, etc.
Blade only has one outfit that he wears all the time and has no other identity; therefore, not a superhero. Maybe.
What about The Thing? I mean, his real name is Ben Grimm and all, but it’s not like he can stop being The Thing whenever he wants to. Functionally speaking, he only has one identity.
Yeah that definition excludes the entire f4
Taking Cracked articles seriously is its own punishment.
I miss PWOT.
/googles “New Hollywood”
Oh. Baby Boomer Hollywood.
Ant Man wil bomb, but Wright makes films so good it doesn’t matter.
Incidentally, I had a hell of a fun time watching Iron Man 3, and the post-credits scene was one of the more enjoyable ones of the Avengers movies.
I don’t think Ant-Man will bomb. I think they’ll spend less money on Ant-Man, market it appropriately as an action comedy, and it will do proportionately less but still healthy business.
And the two Ghost Rider films are great, the second moreso.
Salmo’s got it. “Blade” made US$70 at the box office and about double that in DVD sales. It was Marvel’s first big movie success.
But Blade was an unknown character, African American, part of a franchise that diminished over time and wasn’t helped by Wesley Snipes’ later behaviour. A lot of fans prefer to think of “X-Men” or “Spider-Man” as the start of ‘modern’ superhero films because those are the marquee names, whereas Blade isn’t.
But they’re overlooking how important that film is to the start of Marvel’s movie ambitions. If “Blade” had flopped, there’s no good reason that “X-Men” or “Spider-Man” would have left development hell, or be given budgets of US$75m.
And as for the ‘separate identities’ thing, “Iron Man” effectively (and sensibly) scotched that at the end of the first film. The world knows that Tony Stark is Iron Man.
Maybe a better rule would be that if you can say “x IS y”, where x =/= y, they are a superhero.
Tony Stark IS Iron Man = superhero
Blade IS Blade = not superhero
Reed Richards IS Mr. Fantastic = superhero
Ben Grimm IS The Thing = superhero
John Constantine IS John Constantine = not superhero
The main problem with the Cracked article is that it was terribly myopic, and overlooked a somewhat consistent cycle of movie trends.
What prevailed before “New Hollywood”? Blustery war movies and 70mm epics.
Before that? Film noir and tightly-plotted character pieces? And before that? World War Two.
The author of the Cracked article has a hidden presupposition which is: “Great art comes from taking risks and making mistakes.”
It’s a common view, often fostered in academic circles (or pretentious circles hoping to be academic) as one of many ways to somehow trivialise an artist’s accomplishments as accidents.
There may be a bubble, but it’s not because ‘artists can only create if they risk and struggle’.
It’s nonsense. Pixar, Clint Eastwood, and the Coen Brothers disprove that every year. All great artists. All producing consistently excellent work. None of them are worried about their next paycheck and produce at ‘clockwork’.
…Clint Eastwood??
Other than his one man (well one man and a chair) stage show*, Eastwood is considered one of our greatest artistic directors.
*and really, that just shows why comedians and musicians test out/workshop new material at late night venues before their big shows.
Oh, no arguing that he’s done great work, it’s more the “every year” part. I mean, Trouble With the Curve and all.
Eh, Cracked is able to give me unique info now and then, so I can’t complain about a flop article once in a while. At least it doesn’t mire in relentless hypernostalgia like some of the more low brow “List” sites out there.
Eric Brooks IS Blade = superhero
Exactly so, Adam. His mama didn’t name him Blade – Well, she didn’t name him anything. But you get the point.
These comments caused me to look up Hellboy’s demon name.
Donald Blake IS Thor (in the comics, sort of) = superhero
Thor IS Thor (in the movies) = not superhero?
Well that’s part of what’s cool about Thor, is that he’s a Norse god who hangs out with superheroes.
“The author of the Cracked article has a hidden presupposition which is: “Great art comes from taking risks and making mistakes.”
It’s a common view, often fostered in academic circles (or pretentious circles hoping to be academic) as one of many ways to somehow trivialise an artist’s accomplishments as accidents.”
And the award for ‘No Understanding of the Creative Process Whatsover’ goes to…Bass Wikil!
No, Bass, to think that great artists are great because great work just springs out of their heads fully formed is what trivializes great artists’ accomplishments. You also used some terrible examples.
The Coens are some of the riskiest filmmakers out there, never playing it safe and always trying to avoid repeating themselves. They also struggled mightily in their early years, having difficulty finding funding (or box office success) for almost every film they made before ‘Fargo.’ If the Coens played it safe, they’d be making the tenth reiteration of ‘The Big Lebowski’ by now.
Clint Eastwood spent years apprenticing under experienced directors like Don Siegal, as well as most of the 70s and 80s directing unremarkable action programmers like ‘The Gauntlet’ and ‘Firefox’…and nevermind those Orangutan movies. Even after he hit his stride (and won critical respect) with ‘Unforgiven’, he had his fair share of critical and commercial failures. He’s in his mature, can-seemingly-do-little-wrong period now, but it took him about fifty years to get there.
And Pixar? The company that John Lasseter came to after he was fired from Disney? The company Steve Jobs bought after he’d been ousted from Apple and was heading a soon-to-collapse company called NeXT? Pixar, the company that George Lucas sold to Jobs because he thought it was basically a money pit? Pixar, the company that is very open about spending literally years in the development of each script, trying dozens of different approaches, employing armies of writers, sometimes throwing out years of work because the stories didn’t click? Pixar is great because they ARE willing to make mistakes, lots of them. They make great movies because they’re willing (and able) to take the time to go down every wrong alley until they get a story that works. After that, they make the movie, but not before.
I’m sorry Bass, but you don’t understand how these things actually work for most creators, and it sounds like you fall into one of two types of people/fan: 1. The fan who wants to believe that the artists they admire are basically inhuman, infallible gods or 2. The person who aspires to be a brilliant creator themselves, and wants to hold to the fantasy that it will happen because they’re brilliant, instantly, and without struggle, risk, mistakes or pain. For your sake, I hope you fall into the first category, because you’re in for a world of disappointment if you’re in the second.
Uh, the article is just saying that people will get tired of the Superhero movie fad, and it will happen before Hollywood is aware of it. And he bases his ideas on past fads.
Yes, he also says that superhero movies paved the way for a lot of other fantasy movies headed by geeks who love the material. And that this happened before in the previous fad he mentioned.
There really are more good superhero movies out than there were in recent history. And that’s not going to stay the same, because people are going to get bored unless they innovate–aka take risks, which past history has shown most won’t do.