I read a pretty interesting article today on comicbookresources.com which you can read HERE. It was on a topic I’ve been considering for the last few weeks as the world (that’s probably overstated – my world is better) is ramping up for the release of Iron Man 3 next Friday. It’s followed by Man of Steel in June and The Wolverine in July and then there will be a hiatus in superhero fun (if you don’t count things like The Lone Ranger in the mix) until November’s Thor: The Dark World. Superhero movies have become a tradition it seems. And a fairly recent one at that.
Superman The Movie didn’t set of a superhero movie craze in the 1970s. Sequels were made, sure. Supergirl was a poorly conceived and received spin-off. Even Batman and the craziness surrounding it in the late 1980s weren’t enough to spark a sustained slate of superhero films.
The came Marvel’s Blade. Then the X-Men. Then Iron Man and Marvel’s plan (which was filled in a bit retroactively, but that’s okay) to build a cinematic shared universe. Then came the expectation of a superhero movie or two or three each year.
I am okay with that expectation.
However, what I might have wanted or expected to see from superhero films ten years ago has changed.
Ten years ago, I was looking for a pretty slavish devotion to, if not a paint-by-number, point-for-point, the mythos of some of my favorite characters. I was looking for the writers, designers and directors of these films to do everything “right.” How they give me the Batcave or the Baxter Building or Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters? How would the costumes look? Who would play the characters?
I wanted the movies to not only look like the comics I loved, I wanted them to be the comics I loved.
1989’s Batman is an example of a skilled director doing his damnedest to slavishly adapt. Outside the backstory-shattering revisioning of the Joker having been responsible for the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne (And how many of the millions of movie goers who plunked down their $4.00 [that’s a little high, the average price was $3.97] knew that it was Joe Chill not Jack Napier who killed the Waynes in the comics? A pretty small percentage, I would guess.) the film was very much like the Batman comics.
And, in terms of making much sense, not very good. Oh, it looks cool and Michael Keaton nails it (Nicholson’s Joker was always a little too over the top for me, but that’s another function of the slavish adaptation) but, in terms of story, it just falls flat.
Why do producers make big summer movies? To make money. It’s not to make art. If superhero movies only cater to comic book readers, they’ll fail. There’s barely enough money among comic book readers to keep the comic book industry alive.
Comic books movies are like Shakespeare’s plays. Yes, really. They are.
Are they as good as Shakespeare’s plays in terms of literary merit? Of course not (though I would personally stack Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns up against Coriolanus anytime). Can they – should they – be as malleable? As adaptable? Should they be altered to the tastes of a mass audience?
I saw Natalie Wood as Juliet in West Side Story. It was still Romeo and Juliet. I saw Val Kilmer as Hamlet in Boulder about 20 years ago. The setting was Latin America. It was still Hamlet. So was The Lion King, for that matter.
It doesn’t matter, then, that Hugh Jackman is 6 feet tall and Wolverine is supposed to be 5′ 5″ or that Superman will be missing his red trunks or that Tony Stark, by now, should have a raging problem with alcohol. Slavish devotions would lead Christian Bale running around with a 10-year-old kid in a red and green and yellow costume facing Heath Ledger’s Joker or Tom Hardy’s Bane. I think we can all agree that the Robin John Blake solution in The Dark Knight Rises was far more elegant.
No, I say Shakespeare it up. Change the settings, the costumes, the sex of the characters. Play to the mass audience. Make the stories work.
Make fun movies. Make people want to plunk down their $12.00. If they are good, make more.
Comic books – superheroes – they’re American myth. I want to see the mythology continue.
And There Came a Day... 