Will the Superhero Fad Ever End?
Growing up, my dad was a huge comic book collector. He loved them and literally had cases full of old comic books. Ironically, I always hated them. Literally all of my youth when I'd go visit him he'd try to give me a comic book to read and I never finished one. I hated the whole picture book storytelling thing. I hated the action blurbs and "blams" and "pows" and all that stuff. And I absolutely hated the fact that they weren't real and didn't relate to real life. I always preferred real life stories that I could relate to and learn from.
But then, there was Batman in 1989, starring Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger. That movie changed it all for me and for once, superheroes were cool. Perhaps it was the fact that Batman had no super powers, he was just a bad ass with really cool gadgets. He needed nothing, he didn't even need to be Batman he just did it for the hell of it. Some might argue the early Superman movies starring Christopher Reed started the superhero movie trend, but I think Batman started putting these films in the realm of blockbusters.
Although I still hate comic books with a passion, the wave of superhero movies over the years have grown on me. I think the main reason I can't stand comic books is because when I open a comic book, they're painting the picture for me and the graphics have always been too limited. When I read a regular book, I have complete control over the images in my head, which I prefer. Nowadays, the graphics have gotten so awesome in the movies they've created from comic books, one can't help but to love watching the films. But I must ask when, if ever, will this superhero fad end? Or can I even call it a fad at this point? Perhaps it's just a way of life, or perhaps they should qualify as their own separate genre.
In either case, the fact is super hero movies are dominating the box office and have been for quite some time. For a detailed summary of the top 100 grossing films go to http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/, you'll find many are superhero films. As I said earlier, these movies have grown on me lately; but I usually gravitate to the ones that I feel have the best and most realistic story. As with all cinema, you need a good story as the vehicle for success and to keep me interested. Some of these superhero movies have good stories with characters we can relate to; but then there are those with very weak story lines, and this is where I think the trend is problematic.
There are two questions here: 1) how good can the graphics be? and 2) how good can the story be? Obviously, graphics have a limitation, stories don't have a ceiling on how good they can be. I'm not going to go down the list, but I'm sure you have your share of superhero movies you like and dislike. And I'd be willing to bet the ones you dislike the most have weak story lines. Reflecting on my childhood and those comic books my dad always tried to sway me to like, the overall story line that I think has always been weak is the "end of the world scenario". This, I believe, is why I hated comic books the most. There were far too many "end of the world scenarios".
This is where we might one day see an "end of the world scenario" for the super hero movie fad. There can only be so many "end of the world scenarios"! And every time, everyone knows the world's not really going to end! This goes for all movies with this type of scenario, not just superhero movies. It takes a lot and has to be darn entertaining to keep an audience's attention throughout this type of scenario. Or it has to be very creative in showing how they save the world in these types of scenarios. All in all, it all comes down to the money. As long as they keep topping the box office with sales, superhero movies will continue to dominate. Then there's Comic Con and all these other Cons, it's basically its own industry now. We'll see where the trend goes, in the meantime, I can only hope for more variety and more compelling story lines in the future.
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