Are 'Superhero' and Comic Adaptions stifling Hollywoods....

[peter]

Creativity?

Am I the only one that is getting a little tired with remake after remake, adaption after adaption, amalgum after amalgum, all centered on the Marvel, D-C Comic world superhero stories? I mean surely it must be the case that Hollywood has a finite budget for the making of summer blockbusters - and the money spent on all these one-genre films means a dearth of money spent turning stand alone and novel new ideas into films for the family during the summer [or at any other time for that matter]. Frankly I'm bored with the genre and it doesn't really matter to me what permutation of what story with what charachters they perform. I want to see something new hitting the screens. Am I so really alone?



[Thought so.]

[Cagliostro]

No, I see it, and as long as the comic book movies keep bringing in the big numbers, we are going to keep see them being made. And as there needs to be another Avengers movie made, the other facets of them will need to crank out in the meantime.
I suspect soon we will all start getting sick of Star Wars. That deluge hasn't started yet though, so it will be fun when it starts up, particularly with episode 7. But they are talking about doing the same as the Avengers - character focused movies with beloved characters. Something tells me the first several will be interesting, but then when we start moving into one of the little-known characters from the cantina scene, we'll all be sick of it.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Superhero movies are only now hitting their stride, being elevated from mere "summer blockbuster" status to movies with engaging characters and plots with more depth than *sock* *biff* *pow* *zzoosh*. Go watch the Thor movies again yet focus only on Loki and his relationships with his adoptive parents--there are some complicated dynamics going on there. Consider again what we saw in Winter Soldier--in essence Cap's own government rejects him and starts hunting him as if he were the criminal, creating a very political statement. The latest installment, DoFP, is so much better than any X-Men movie which came before it that it is fitting that the series now has a fresh start.

Just like when Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, House of the Flying Daggers, and Hero were more "art" than "martial art", superhero movies are becoming less about blockbuster blitz and more about being artistic movies which happen to feature superhuman characters. Eventually, probably less than 10 years from now, a superhero movie will win a major Academy Award (the major categories being "best movie", "best director", "best screenplay", "best actor", "best actress", and "best supporting actor").

Have you watched Arrow on CW? I started to watch one or two episodes just for kicks once but was surprised at how well-made the TV show was. It is, at this point, the superhero TV show against which any other superhero TV show must be judged for quality. This fall it also has a spin-off: Flash. Both shows have the same creative team so that one should be pretty good, as well.

[sgt.null]

Agreed Hashi, if they are done well keep them coming.

DC needs to make better movies.

And 3d-Man needs a film.

Cags - the only two Star Wars books I have ever read were Tales ofthe Bounty Hunters and Tales of the Cantina.

Loved that Lucas allowed the secondary characters to be used and fleshed out. I would watch any movie based on those two collections.

[peter]

Hollywood is notorious for it's 'ruts', but this one has been going on a long time. And in fairness I fully get the need to 'follow the money' when the budget/returns of single films alone can be enough to make and break studios. Also - ok, if the genre is going to 'grow up' then perhaps their is a chance that viewers like me [who were superhero film lovers for a looong time before exhaustion set in] can be brought back into the fold.

But remember 'Jurrasic Park', remember 'Independance Day', Remember 'Jaws', remember 'Braveheart'. There is a price to pay for this endless cycle of intertwined comic-book adaptions.

[I'm Murrin]

Hollywood's been doing lots of remakes and adaptations since at least the 1930s, that ain't gonna change. They're a safe bet for making back your money.

[peter]

I wonder if films [of this type] can really stand up alongside the interactive expreience of gaming these days; sure, the deeper, more reflective films will always have a place - but if it's 'thrills and spills' a person is after then a good game on a good consul takes some beating. Given that the gaming experience is improving in leaps and bounds, and new technologies in the pipeline look like taking the experience to new levels altogether, it's hard to see that 'sitting back and enjoying the ride' will actually be enough in days shortly to come.

[Zarathustra]

I'm not a comic book reader, and I don't get too excited about the next superhero adaptation, but I do like the trend of telling very large stories via several different interrelated movies. While it may be viewed as a "safe bet" to do sequels, and we've been doing that for a long time, I think what we're seeing is still in many senses new. It's quite ambitious, even if also "safe."

Part of the safety of that bet is that the hero's journey is one of those basic myths that keep getting reinterpretted (a theme also central to fantasy), to which humans have responded with wonder/respect/awe throughout history. Even if it takes me months or years to get around seeing the movies, I usually enjoy them on this basis alone, as a fan of fantasy and all epic, mythic fiction.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

I'm not a comic book reader, and I don't get too excited about the next superhero adaptation, but I do like the trend of telling very large stories via several different interrelated movies. While it may be viewed as a "safe bet" to do sequels, and we've been doing that for a long time, I think what we're seeing is still in many senses new. It's quite ambitious, even if also "safe."

Part of the safety of that bet is that the hero's journey is one of those basic myths that keep getting reinterpretted (a theme also central to fantasy), to which humans have responded with wonder/respect/awe throughout history. Even if it takes me months or years to get around seeing the movies, I usually enjoy them on this basis alone, as a fan of fantasy and all epic, mythic fiction.

What's the point of posting anything if Z. says everything you were going to say only better? I agree strongly that what is occurring with the superhero genre in the movies is in some sense novel. I'm curious what the limits are, but for now I'm fully bought into the three main sagas currently in development. The Avengers saga is a cut above rest right now, though Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy is still the standard in the genre.

[Cail]

I'm not a comic book reader, and I don't get too excited about the next superhero adaptation, but I do like the trend of telling very large stories via several different interrelated movies. While it may be viewed as a "safe bet" to do sequels, and we've been doing that for a long time, I think what we're seeing is still in many senses new. It's quite ambitious, even if also "safe."

Part of the safety of that bet is that the hero's journey is one of those basic myths that keep getting reinterpretted (a theme also central to fantasy), to which humans have responded with wonder/respect/awe throughout history. Even if it takes me months or years to get around seeing the movies, I usually enjoy them on this basis alone, as a fan of fantasy and all epic, mythic fiction.

What's the point of posting anything if Z. says everything you were going to say only better? I agree strongly that what is occurring with the superhero genre in the movies is in some sense novel. I'm curious what the limits are, but for now I'm fully bought into the three main sagas currently in development. The Avengers saga is a cut above rest right now, though Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy is still the standard in the genre.

He's a bastard like that.

I haven't read a comic book since middle school, and I don't intend to start again, even though they're "graphic novels" now. That said, with very few exceptions I've enjoyed the hell out every superhero movie I've seen.

[Vraith]

I think an argument could be made, and a damn strong one, that for a few years now...and likely for several more to come...some of the best story-telling available is going on in these series.
Of course, the genre will age and become unfashionable and predictable...but then revive again.
I think the only real, and possibly fatal...though more likely to just shift them to a niche market...challenge is when they face full-on, full-immersion, full-interaction virtual worlds competition.

Of course, all bets are off across all sorts of human realms/interactions, not just Superhero, or even just film, when that happens.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy is still the standard in the genre.

Not for long. By this time next year it won't be the standard against which other superhero movies are measured. Of course, I disagree with that sentiment already but it isn't worth debating the issue.

[Cail]

Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy is still the standard in the genre.

Not for long. By this time next year it won't be the standard against which other superhero movies are measured. Of course, I disagree with that sentiment already but it isn't worth debating the issue.

I'm with you Hashi. Nolan made two decent Batman films and one silly one. None of his films - and I include Inception and Memento - stand up to repeated viewings.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

If we always agreed about everything it wouldn't be very interesting. Strange as it may sound, I think Nolan's films require the suspension of pessimism or cynicism to be morally effective, as they are usually founded on optimism about humanity even if it is well disguised. In a way you have to want to believe in the story he's telling, to buy in emotionally to the characters and consider their ethical dlemmas and struggles to be important in themselves for the narrative to work. And somehow I feel I've just equated his moral aesthetic to Donaldson's.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

It is difficult for me to suspend my cynicism when The Dark Knight Rises is such a weak film on so many levels. The main character has, himself, given up, abandoning his own crusade for 8 years as of the film's opening. The plot by which Bane seeks to destroy Bruce Wayne's wealth is too absurd to be believed even for a movie--guys break in to the trading floor with a laptop and force the transactions? Those transactions would be immediately suspect and retroactively cancelled both in the "real" world and in any realistic movie world, especially when done at gunpoint by people who are clearly not Bruce Wayne. TDK was a much better film, leading me to suspect that TDKR was a film Nolan did just to satisfy contractual obligations and that Bane was not the villain he wanted to use but had to because it is what the studio and the fans wanted.

GotG is going to raise the bar because it will take characters with which average audiences are not familiar and it will make them *like* those characters. AoU is going to raise the bar because by then audiences are really going to want to see what happens next with the Avengers, as well as this plot going on in the background with those Stones/Gems as well as why--how--Hydra got its hands on Loki's scepter. In fact, most of the Marvel movies are going to do this--whet the audience's appetite and make them *want* to go back to the next movie just to see what happens.

If the screenplay and the acting also improve then the audience gets to enjoy that, as well. Eventually, as noted, a superhero movie will win a major award. We have come a long way since Daredevil and Elektra (and I actually liked Daredevil; Elektra was just an attempt to capitalize on Ms. Garner and suffered from a very weak plot).

Thomas Jane and his friend Ron Perlman want to make another Punisher movie. Can we get a studio to green-light this, please?

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

I agree with you to an extent about TDKR, I had the sense that Nolan's reach exceeded his grasp there, much in the same way that i sometimes feel myself nearing the summit of some elemental insight into creation or human nature, only to be rebuffed by some unforseen avalanche of doubt. I think some of the themes he was exploring there were relevant to or times but they never quite plumbed the same trenchant depths as TDK. It is hard for me to find much fault in the attempt. I agree that the Marvel universe is a quite promising theater at present, with the latest Captain America being comparable at least to TDK in terms of its gravitas if not quite at the same level. Ik forward quite keenly to the development of that saga.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Agreed--TKDR could have been much better given the Bane-related themes of terrorism and economic disparity (the 99% have nots versus the 1% haves).

The reason Winter Soldier is a much better film than TDKR is because the director wanted to make an old-school political thriller centered around the modern themes of government surveillance and preemptive war dovetailed with someone remembering why he is doing what he is doing. The director succeeded.

Strangely, the theme "a hero remembering why he is doing what he is doing" is present in TDKR, as well. Why had Wayne abandoned his nightly career? He had built a system based on a lie. After fixing his back he remembered why he had chosen his path....only that character ultimately walked away whereas Cap does not.

Consider one of the other big franchises right now: Twentieth Century Fox's X-Men. In a bold move, they retconned their own previous movies out of existence but they didn't do it stupidly; on the contrary, the plot was engaging and believable--we even got a surprising and unforeseen happy ending. Now they proceed making quality movies with plots that are deeper and more complex than "hey--let's tell Wolverine's past and throw a whole bunch a characters in it we think the fans will like". "oh, and we'll make him and Sabretooth brothers! cool!".

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I was wrong about one thing. GotG didn't make the audience like the characters--it made the audience love the characters.

Incidentally....2017 is shaping up to be the Year of the Super-Heroine. Sony has purchased the film rights and has hired one of the writers on Burn Notice (a decent TV show I haven't watched in years) to script a movie which people suspect will be Black Cat and DC has announced a solo Wonder Woman film to be released that year (no other news about it right now but they'll probably stick with Ms. Gadot). Feige over at Marvel is a little behind the times--there are vague promises of a female lead superhero but nothing on the published list for Phase 3 at this time.

[I'm Murrin]

Wait wait wait. Wonder Woman movie? Did I miss something?

[Hashi Lebwohl]

For now, it is only an announcement but it does already have an IMDB entry.

What the hell is wrong with Hollywood, anyway, that Elektra is the only superheroine movie which has been released to date?