Have you just about had it with SUPERHERO MOVIES?

Radio_Lady

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Mon Jul-24-06 03:36 PM
Original message

Have you just about had it with SUPERHERO MOVIES?

Edited on Mon Jul-24-06 03:39 PM by Radio_Lady

Now we're awaiting Spiderman 3 -- and after that, a bunch of others.

One blogger makes this point, too -- here's an opinion from The New Yorker in Hollywood.

http://newyorkerinhollywood.blogspot.com/2006/04/more-marvel-more-superheros.html

Friday, April 28, 2006

More Marvel, More Superheros

Today, The Hollywood Reporter posted an article about the huge new slate of superhero films that Marvel Films plans to churn out starting in 2008. This panoply includes, a sequel to the 2003 release of Hulk (which I thought Ang Lee turned into a visual stunner, even though everyone else on the planet seemed to hate it), an Iron Man film to be directed by Jon Favreau, an Ant Man film written by Edgar Wright (writer/director of Shaun of the Dead), and a Captain America film, among others.

I’m all for comic book movies, but I’m curious about how this pack of films will do in the near future. Like anything else in pop culture, superheros have waxed and waned over the decades. In ’78 when the original Superman was released, it was a huge hit, and spawned three sequels, which all declined in quality bit by bit after the first entry. Tim Burton’s Batman in ’89 launched the caped crusader craze which was to last through the 90’s before petering out in ’97 with the infamous Batman Forever. In 2000, the first of the nouveau superhero films hit with Bryan Singer’s X-Men, and since then it seems that a superhero cinema craze has hit like never before. This decade, I think in retrospect, will be known as the decade of the superhero. The past six years have seen three X-Men films, two Spiderman films, a Hulk film, a Punisher film, a Daredevil film, an Elektra film, a Fantastic Four film, and the revitalization of the Batman and Superman franchises. Not to mention the various sequels for these films that are already careening down the pipeline to a theatre near you. Soon to be releases include another Spiderman, another Batman, Wonderwoman, and now, the multi-picture barrage of films from Marvel.

It seems to me like it’s only a matter of time before the public gets burnt out on all this. There will be a superhero backlash as people tire of accidents involving radiation and hi-tech gadgets. Or will they? Are the basic components of the superhero genre so universal –so relatable, that they remain invincible? Even when the comic book/superhero movie market dies down, it only seems to do so for a couple of years before it starts up again. It’s true that people never seem to tire of the summer Hollywood blockbuster formula. But there’s also a certain “special” quality that I think is attached to this genre of films, an originality; dare I say magical at the risk of sounding foolishly sentimental.

More at link, above...