Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Problem with Superhero Movies (article)

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-09-2014, 12:21 AM:

Here is a great article from rogerebert.com which really sums up the exact way I've been feeling about all the superhero movies these days. I couldn't figure out why I haven't been able to get pumped up about any of them, and this article nails it...

Things crashing into other things: or, my superhero movie problem

by Matt Zoller Seitz
May 6, 2014

I don't hate superhero movies. Repeat: I do not hate superhero movies. They're another genre in a medium that thrives on genre, one that's as ritualized in its story beats as the western, the romantic comedy or the zombie picture. When competently done, superhero pictures can be fun, or at least intermittently diverting.

The problem with the superhero movie as currently practiced by Disney/Marvel (the interlocking "universe" series) and Sony/Marvel ("The Amazing Spider Man" and "The Amazing Spider-Man 2") and DC (whose recent "Man of Steel" aped that Marvel feeling and is busy building its own version of Marvel's feature film universe) has nothing to do with the genre's component parts, and everything to do with execution.

Specifically, the problem is the visual and rhythmic sameness of the films' execution.

Generous critics and viewers point to fleeting moments of personality, such as the flirtation scenes in the recent "Amazing Spider-Man" movies, and the improv-flavored conversations in the "Iron Man" films, and Joss Whedon's very Whedon-y quips in "The Avengers" ("You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"). But these defenses sound desperate when you look at the films as whole objects.

Despite their fleeting moments of specialness, "The Avengers," the "Iron Man" and "Thor" and "Captain America" films, the new "Spider-Man" series and "Man of Steel" treat viewers not to variations of the same situations (which is fine and dandy; every zombie film has zombies, and ninety percent of all westerns end in gunfights) but to variations of the same situations that feel as though they were designed, choreographed, shot, edited and composited by the same second units and special effects houses, using the same software, under the same conditions. As long as people are talking, there's a chance the movies will be good. When the action starts, the films become less special.

Shots of people fighting inside and atop collapsing and burning structures all feel basically the same, though if you're lucky the filmmakers toss in an emotionally resonant moment, such as the hand-to-hand climax of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." Sometimes the camera shakes a little, sometimes a lot. Giant creatures roar and stomp in more or less the same way, across CGI'd landscapes rendered in more or less the same way, unless the threat is Earth-made, as in the two "Captain America" films, in which case it's helicarriers rather than alien starships that catch fire and crash into buildings.

At some point somebody straps on power armor or climbs inside a robot. Machines bash other machines for a while. The bashing is choreographed and shot and edited pretty much as you expect, with few aesthetic surprises. You hear metal groaning and rubble crashing to earth. Walls crumble, craters open, bridges collapse. Spider-Man skydives into the Manhattan grid, Thor whooshes hither and yon, Iron Man plummets from in the ionosophere and is saved by The Hulk, and somehow none of it has the visceral or dramatic weight that it should.

The smaller an action scene is, the better the chance that it'll be genuinely exciting (the elevator dustup in the new "Captain America" is the best recent example). The bigger the canvas, the more boringly typical the action becomes. Boring action makes hash of any character beats that the filmmakers and actors went to the trouble of setting up.

Even if you generally enjoy these movies, you know you can visit the concession stand during the scenes of heroes being heroic and villains being villainous and not miss anything. If there's burning/exploding/punching/collapsing/roaring/stomping in a scene, you're free to get popcorn or call home.

The good stuff is CGI-lite, or CGI free. Think of Cap just-friends-flirting with Black Widow or visiting a meeting for traumatized veterans in the second "Captain America," or Andrew Garfield, one of the great screen criers, tearing up as Peter Parker contemplates his late parents or remembers a line from his sweetheart's valedictory address or tells his Aunt May "I'm your boy, you're my everything." As a friend observed, the gap in artistic quality between the intimate human interactions and the large-scale action sequences in recent superhero flicks is so immense that they seem to have been made at different studios by different directors obeying different marching orders.

The "ground rules" scene between Peter and Gwen in the new "Spider-Man" feels so sweetly alive — so much like a conversation that actual young lovers might have — that when you get to the end of this overstuffed and overlong blockbuster and have to suffer through yet another tediously unoriginal confrontation between Spidey and two, count 'em two, supervillains, then a climax that extorts cathartic tears instead of earning them, the effect is disorienting in the worst way.

The problem isn't that the movies are product — most movies are product, and always have been — but that they can't be bothered to pretend they're not product. That's the difference between popular art and forgettable mass-produced entertainment: the mass-produced entertainment flaunts its product-ness, then expects us to praise even minor evidence of idiosyncrasy as proof that we are not, in fact, collectively spending billions on product. The marketplace rewards each new superhero movie with a reflexive paroxysm of spending, guaranteeing each $200 million tentpole a boffo US opening that follows a boffo international opening (the new release pattern flips the old one). It's an entertainment factory in which the audience is both consumer and product. Its purpose is not just to please consumers but to condition and create them.

The fat bottom lines guarantee that neither studios nor producers nor writers nor directors will feel much pressure to make superhero films great, as opposed to better than expected. The movies are are "different" from each other in the way that burgers sold by global fast food chains are "different". It's the Big Mac vs. the Whopper vs. the Dave's Hot 'N Juicy from Wendy's. As cold as this strategy is, it works. The audience seems to have no interest in demanding better films, much less excellent ones. It settles for OK and better-than-OK. As long as the films aren't unbearably bad or unnnervingly personal, they're content.

That's great news for the studios and their accounting departments but terrible news for popular art. As long as viewers ask little of superhero films, there's no impetus for studios to encourage an auteurist vision. That's how they like it. Real artistry terrifies them. It's too volatile and uncertain. They'd rather have a mediocre sure thing than encourage filmmakers to try something truly new. Personal expression on this scale is high-stakes gambling with someone else's fortune.

That's why, thirty-six years after "Superman, the Movie," we still haven't seen a range of big budget superhero films as tonally different as post-"Night of the Living Dead" zombie pictures, or Hollywood westerns released after Vietnam, when the genre was allegedly dead. What do George Romero's ghoul films, "Dead/Alive," the "Rec" series, "Shaun of the Dead," "Zombieland" and the "Days" movies have in common besides a basic situation? Almost nothing. What do "Little Big Man," "The Wild Bunch," "Blazing Saddles," "Silverado," "Unforgiven" and "Open Range" have in common besides horses and ten-gallon hats? Almost nothing.

What do modern superhero movies have in common? Entirely too much. Once in a great while you get an outlier like "Hellboy" or "Watchmen" or "Kick-Ass." There's a reason why anybody seeking to counter gripes of superhero film sameness brings up "Hellboy" or "Watchmen" and "Kick-Ass": because most superhero movies are not "Hellboy" or "Watchmen" or "Kick-Ass." They're "Thing Crashing Into Other Thing 3."

Studios don't like personal expression — not on this level. Their goal is to minimize financial risk and avoid a scenario in which viewers buy a ticket for the latest Marvel picture and get something substantially different from what they've been conditioned to expect. The studios don't want another Ang Lee "Hulk" (a Freudian psychodrama with split-screen imagery that was truly strange and special but didn't really work). They want "The Avengers." If that's not possible, they'll settle for "Iron Man 2," a mostly terrible and trashy film that's intermittently funny and asks almost nothing of the viewer and that fits into a much larger puzzle made entirely of square pieces.

Advance excitement for "Guardians of the Galaxy" seems weirdly averse to lessons learned from prior Marvel films. If we've learned anything from giving money to this franchise, it's that we'll love the wiseass banter as long as nobody's running, jumping or punching anything. Once the CGI robots and shootouts and explosions kick in, it's like a set of ankle weights dragging wit to the floor of a murky digital sea. This genre is where imagination goes to drown itself. We forget that. We're supposed to forget that. The forgetting is a part of the experience of going to superhero movies. Ritualized amnesia is Hollywood's best friend.

We forget the good and bad superhero films alike because these days it's all about what's next. Where's the new teaser? Where's the new trailer? Have you seen pictures of Iron Man's new costume? The buzz for the next one begins within days of the latest film's opening. The modern superhero movie leaves impressions as light as footprints in beach sand. Where were we? Who knows? Who cares? The sand's all smooth now. Flat. So we keep walking in the same direction.

Even nearly great superhero movies suffer from the curse of aesthetic same-old same-old. The second "Captain America" is easily the best superhero film produced since Christopher Nolan stopped directing them. It's warmhearted and intelligent, and plugged into a version of political reality—a parable about the United States' recent response to terrorism, with the Battle of New York representing the attacks of 9/11, and S.H.I.E.L.D's terrifying surveill-and-destroy plan standing as this franchise's version of The War on Terror. The moment in which the helicarriers crash into S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters is basically an inverted 9/11, with Cap and his allies becoming homegrown terrorists in order to prevent a corrupt national security state headed by the unwitting ideological descendants of World War II fascists from carrying out millions of extrajudicial assassinations.

But the almost radical nature of this message is obscured (maybe intentionally) by the choppy, whip-pan crazy action sequences, the familiar "Star Wars"-derived cross cutting, and the enervating sight of huge things crashing into other huge things, just as innumerable huge things have crashed into other huge things in three to six superhero films a year over the past decade.

The post-"Iron Man" Marvel films have honed the soft bigotry of low expectations into a science, to the point where every new movie coasts on an initial burst of mild audience surprise ("I saw it this weekend, it's better than I expected!"). I've stopped making fun of the Nolan films' solemn pomposity because the director's deranged passion for each moment makes the whole trilogy feel singularly alive. "Batman Begins," "The Dark Knight" and "The Dark Knight Rises" are honest-to-God auteurist statements in a genre that's increasingly scared of them. It's hard to imagine heroes as perversely scarred as Batman/Bruce Wayne or Selina Kyle or villains as flat-out horrifying as Nolan's Scarecrow, Joker and Bane in the universes of the Sony or Disney Marvel films—or in "Man of Steel." It's equally impossible to imagine a fight scene as old-school as the backbreaking confrontation between Batman and Bane in "TDKR," which plays out in wide shots with few cuts and realistically awkward movements.

In the superhero movie circa 2014, that's radical characterization and radical filmmaking. It goes against the plan. "You know what I've noticed?" the Joker says in "The Dark Knight," "Nobody panics when things go 'according to plan.'" We need more panic. More panic means more art.

LINK

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 05-09-2014, 08:45 AM:

It's not just SuperHero movies. Somewhere in the 1990's, the way many movies tell their story changed. Prior to that, dialog moved the plot forward. After that, action scenes moved the plot forward, with just enough dialog to tie the action scenes together. Of course there are exceptions, but they are exceptions. It's like everyone in Hollywood saw the opening sequence of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and said wow, wouldn't it be great to do entire movie of non-stop action, and they never looked back.

Just look at Die Hard (1988) and compare it to it's recent sequels to see where Hollywood has taken a wrong turn. It's not that some of these non-stop action films are bad films, it that too many films are non-stop action.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 05-09-2014, 09:18 AM:

As I commented on the Ebert site, my first reaction to all of the few superhero movies I've seen is: This could be 45mins shorter by taking out all of the redundant fight scenes and explosions.
I blame it on CGI. They have so much money sunk into their special effects they have to put them all on the screen. It'd become an arms race to see who can get the bigger and louder effects, story be damned.
We need a Dogme 95 manifesto for Superhero movies. [evil]

Posted by Adam Fraser (Member # 1074) on 05-09-2014, 11:24 AM:

I am seeing my customers get very tired of the same rehashed superhero movies over and over again.

We used to get two good weeks and one decent week out of movies like the original Spiderman or X-men. Now we get one very good weekend and everything after that is very slow.

The problem for us is when a major superhero movie opens, there usually is no strong booking alternative as other studios don't want to compete with a $100,000,000 opening weekend.

Audiences are looking for some original, interesting content and many times are leaving disappointed.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 05-09-2014, 03:03 PM:

Buy, you guys have it exactly right, at least to this English major. Nothing really new.

btw: I think i am seeing a cgi repeat fight or two in nearly every film, except from a different abgle.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 05-09-2014, 07:25 PM:

Stories loaded with "eye candy" and a plot a 5yr old can figure out.

Yet, that's who comes to these features: the ones with that simple mentality...and the banks loves the deposits.

Back to the "Supply and Demand Syndrome".

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 05-10-2014, 09:11 AM:

Our local multiplex was having 27 shows a day of Spiderman last week, so it was the top grossing movie in town. But when I broke it down to a per show average, they were grossing about $200 a show. That's about what we do on a mediocre week.
Sounds like the demand is not as high as they think it is.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 05-12-2014, 06:04 PM:

Signs of hope maybe?
http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/film-review-x-men-days-of-future-past-1201177971/

quote:
No skyscrapers blow up, no cities are leveled, and while the White House and a football stadium suffer some serious structural damage, the wholesale destruction of human civilization is kept to a refreshing minimum in “X-Men: Days of Future Past” — just one of several respects in which this strikingly ambitious yet intimately scaled entertainment distinguishes itself from so much of its comicbook-movie kind.

Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 05-12-2014, 07:42 PM:

The fact that Marvel and Disney gave the artistic reigns of their biggest franchise to a cult pop culture figure with but one failed feature directing gig under his belt, and continues to hire television and cult feature directors to make their movies, and continues to get hit film after hit film, proves most of the entire argument in this thread wrong. They are giving their target audience exactly what we want. If you're not a part of this target audience, that's fine. Decry it all you want. Crap all over it. It's cool. Hopefully, Sony takes a look at the relative failure of ASM2, and Warners at Man of Steel, and both finally see there is more to the Marvel movies than just fights and explosions. That although CGI can give a filmmaker free reign to do whatever they want, they don't need to exploit that ability.

The Avengers and Iron Man and Thor and Hulk and Captain America aren't Faulkner nor Hemingway. But they're not meant to be. They are meant to be live-action comic books, and what Marvel has been doing the past seven years has been exactly what they should be.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-12-2014, 07:53 PM:

I would be happy if they would just stick to one story per movie. The way they seem to want to inter-weave various unrelated plots just takes time away from the "main" story and there is no character depth.

The reason "Superman" (the original) was such a good movie is it took time to explore all of its characters and it only had one story. Conversely, while I can tell you I enjoyed "Spider-Man 2" (the previous series, that is) and the first Captain America (I didn't catch the last one) and "The Avengers," I would be hard pressed to tell you any details about them because while they were spectacular to watch, they weren't really memorable in any meaningful way.

The big thing I remember about The Avengers was the very last scene in the restaurant which I though was hilarious. Beyond that....I got bupkis.

I sat through the last Transformers movie twice, figuring there HAD TO be something to it.....and I can't even remember one line of dialogue from that thing. I know part of it took place on the moon, that's about it.

I love a good comic book movie but there aren't that many good comic book movies when they all seem the same. If I see one more lightweight object (be it a person or a thing) "dig up" the pavement after being tossed by another thing, I think I'll throw my large Pepsi at the screen. (Luckily I will be sitting far enough away that it'll never hit.)

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 05-13-2014, 12:12 PM:

quote: Edward Havens
> continues to get hit film after hit film, proves most of the entire argument in this thread wrong.

Yes and no. That fact that these movies continue to make lots of money certainly means they are satisfying a large segment of the public. On the the other hand tastes change, and one day we may wake up to a world where these type of films no longer draw, and the audience for more substantive films has moved on to other types of media for their entertainment. Although a big fan of science fiction / fantasy films, I have grown bored with repetitious comic book movies, and each year more and more of my friends have too.

Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 05-13-2014, 01:10 PM:

I had a pretty decent first weekend with "The Amazing Spiderman II" so I decided to keep it for a second week. But it pretty much petered out during the week. If it doesn't hold up this weekend I'm dumping it. Maybe Oklahomans don't like any action films other than cowboy flicks.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-13-2014, 01:25 PM:

What do you mean you "decided" to keep it a second week? Did they give you a one-week booking on it?

EDIT: Oh wait, after re-reading I figure you must have not opened it till the 9th. As Emily Litella would say, "Never mind."

Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 05-13-2014, 05:15 PM:

I opened it on the break Mike and my wife just reminded me that we are completing our second week. So Friday we will start the third. My booker asked me Monday if I was going to hold on to it. I said yes. I hope that wasn't a mistake.

Posted by Mike Frese (Member # 4361) on 05-16-2014, 08:33 PM:

quote: Robert E. Allen
I opened it on the break Mike and my wife just reminded me that we are completing our second week. So Friday we will start the third. My booker asked me Monday if I was going to hold on to it. I said yes. I hope that wasn't a mistake.

But you are only playing one movie despite having 2 screens. Was there anything else available for you to play? How many weeks has this been only playing one movie? 3 or 4?

Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 05-17-2014, 02:34 PM:

The small auditorium is dark while work is being done to get it ready to show blu-ray classic films Mike. There may be other product for us to play but I chose not to.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 05-17-2014, 05:25 PM:

I don't think there is much of a problem with superhero movies. Amazing Spider-Man 2 has done well worldwide and should finish in the area of $650 million which is pretty darn good. It really is hard to compare the original 2002 movie grosses compared to the current films as those were released with very little "Marvel" competition at the time. Also, Thor and Captain America did much better the second time around because of the Avengers which helped broaden the popularity of the those two franchises.

Expectations of the current Spider-man are way too high, the Spider-Man movies were once a $400 million North American franchise but with all the competition, it just cannot get to those levels, and that is fine it does not have to. Spider-Man also suffers because it is under the SONY umbrella, if it was a Disney film and they packaged Spider-Man in with the rest of the Avengers, then it would do a much higher gross. (Not sure if Spider-Man was ever in the Avengers comics)

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-17-2014, 05:47 PM:

It is actually the author of the article who has a "problem" with the movies. I changed the title slightly for the thread header so people wouldn't think it was "MY" problem with superhero movies.

At the end of the day I personally have no problem with any movies as long as they put butts in the seats. We seemed to have good word-of-mouth on the latest Spider-Man even though the crowds were nothing to shout about.

If the public continues to support these flicks, that doesn't make them good movies. It just guarantees we'll get more of the same until there are a few high-profile flops.

Posted by Mike Frese (Member # 4361) on 05-18-2014, 12:52 PM:

quote: Robert E. Allen
The small auditorium is dark while work is being done to get it ready to show blu-ray classic films Mike. There may be other product for us to play but I chose not to.

What kind of work needs to be done? I have added consumer projectors a few times and never had to close a screen for even one hour. And we were open 7 days a week unlike you who is only open 5 days. Why are you closed Sunday? That is usually the 3rd busiest day of the week.

What is the rationale for closing a screen for 4 weeks when you are desperate for money to switch from film to digital?

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 05-26-2014, 03:09 PM:

Is there really a problem with super-hero movies?

X-Men Days of Future Past grossed close to $300 million worldwide in just three days.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-26-2014, 08:47 PM:

Would somebody please explain to this dork that he (still) is mis-interpreting the whole meaning of the article at the top of this thread? I tried to explain it to him in my last post above, but apparently I used too many big words or something.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 05-26-2014, 09:03 PM:

Deleted.