Amph Superhero Overload?

So you're trying to misrepresent the numbers. Influence how people percieve it.

 

They are the same franchise. There are mini-franchises within the franchise, but the whole point is that they're one big connected story feeding into each other. You've got to watch The Avengers to connect Iron Man 2 to Iron Man 3 and Thor to The Dark World. If you watch just the Iron Man movies and Avengers, you're going to realize you're missing out on understanding exactly what's going on with Thor and Loki and Selvig and everything else. If you haven't seen Captain America, you won't understand what the Tesseract is other than a MacGuffin. And sure, audiences can live that way if they want and get by, but let's not pretend that they don't know that all the characters who show up in The Avengers are all part of a big Avengers franchise, and that they won't have the whole picture if they don't watch all the movies. Let's not pretend that GOTG and Ant-Man won't be marketed as "Part of The Avengers movies! You've got to see this if you love The Avengers!"

I agree that Marvel's efforts to diversify its movies are good, and help give the overall project greater longevity. But nobody's going to look at Captain America movies and say, "Oh, it's another spy movie!" No, it's another comic book superhero movie, with an espionage-thriller slant to its particular bombastic comic book action. Audiences aren't so stupid that they can escape burnout just so long as you give them a movie where Iron Man fights guys who are on fire instead of guys in power armor, or a movie where Thor fights space elves instead of space giants and his space Viking brother. Varying the flavor of superhero movies can prolong the genre's boom, but it can't eliminate the eventual decline.

 

I think another factor in favour of these films is that television is producing a more accessible product where deeper investment in character arcs and plots can be achieved. Since these films are spectacle and bombast, as Havac rightly said, they tend to be perfect for the price and time. Unless TV has a decline these films I don't think are going to slow down, assuming a near constant rate of quality.

 

I remember six years ago when looking at the catalog of films being released, I actually couldn't wait and I was eager to see them all. Six years later i can say I've been burnt out (which is a shame to be honest ), the last comic book film I watched was Dredd (and even though I'm burnt out I bummed we might not see a sequel for it). Honestly the only comic book film I am remotely interested is X-men apocalypse when it comes out, only because the Apocalypse is long overdue. Other than that I'm only looking forward to Star Wars and Expendables 3.

 

2ndQuest, your argument is insane because it's too particular to specific plot details. Yes, you can skip out on Iron Man 2 and still make sense of Avengers. But you've never had to see a single previous Bond film to understand any other given Bond film. So how does this degrade the notion that what we're dealing with is a franchise? Moreover, why do you think people will attach so much significance to whether fights are happening with hand guns, laser rifles, battle axes, or bare fists? Those are really quite superficial alterations.

The fundamentals are these. All of these movies have abnormally long climaxes. They all take the form of battles, and they represent as much as 30-40% of the total screen time. All involve a character with superhuman abilities, with the exception of the one character whose whole trademark is achieving superhuman feats despite technically lacking powers. All tend to have antagonists with whom we spend relatively little screen time with alone, and whose motivations (for either the particular plans shown in the film, their broader ambitions, or both) are pretty poorly sketched. Resolving the plot will require a direct physical confrontation between the hero and antagonist. All will contain comic relief in the form of "normal" people interacting with the superhuman lead.

I could go on. But it is the crushing sameness of these films that make them identifiably a franchise, and which will fatigue people. Dress it up with a different name or a slightly different costume, the effect is still the same. There's only so many times I want to see minor permutations of the exact same story arc. Romeo & Juliet, whether set in its original timeframe, on Mars, in the modern era or in the fantastical kingdom of Atlantis, is still at its base just Romeo & Juliet. At some point I'll say enough. The sort of differences you are discussing never break the mold of this ultra-standardized "superhero movie" that keeps being made ad nauseum. No more.

 

I agree with everything you just wrote, but in particular I shared your confusion about the comparison to the Bond series. Quantum of Solace is the only direct sequel in that franchise's history. Outside of that one film, you literally never need to have seen a previous film to understand the plot of a Bond flick. They're all self-contained standalones.

 

You could easily jump in with any Marvel movie released as of today, without having seen a single one, and be totally fine. They certainly won't tax anyone's mind. If you're done with the movies, you're done with the movies, that's fine.

Oh, as for Bond, there's that one flick where he wants revenge on Blofeld for murdering Mrs. James Bond.

 

Diamonds are Forever.

Also that critique applies to Spiderman 1 and 2.

 

Yes, I know that critique applies to the first two Spiderman films. That's why they are rightly grouped as part of the same trend. They are some of its best representatives, while the Iron Man and Thor series are some of the worst. But they still have to be grouped together.

EDIT: 2ndQuest, this is, once again, insane denialism on your part. Average audiences aren't going to notice? Go back and look at the reviews of Man of Steel. Several of them complained about how insanely loud and long the climax was. Several of them mentioned this as a broader pattern among superhero films. Why? Because it is. They are all the same, and it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. Everyone notices. It's almost impossible to miss. Let's get a grip here.

 

lol, insanely loud and long climax

That's kind of a problem with every blockbuster/would-be blockbuster. It's pervasive in a fair amount of media, it's not unique to superheroes. Ignoring that, though, man, we're getting into some intensely specific and heated debates about narrative structure.

 

No it isn't. This is just laughably wrong. For all your talk about what the "average" person thinks, you keep hand-waving away the actual comparisons to other superhero films, and replacing them with your own theoretical comparisons that could have (but largely dind't) happen. Why? How come you can't account for that fact? This is why I characterize your position as denialism.

On the other hand, let's take one of your comparisons: Star Wars. We spent an intense amount of time with Darth Vader, to the point that several people pretty plausibly argue that he was actually the main character of the story. While ROTJ certainly has a prominently featured physical confrontation, the actual resolution of the film turns on a father choosing to value his relationship with his son. All the tension in the film is centered on whether he can actually do this or not, and the most suspenseful moments are the intercut images of Luke's suffering and his expressionless mask, as he's implied to be weighing the choice before him. The humor does not come from "normal" people interacting with gifted ones, but from all sorts of points in the film. For instance, a robot talking with teddy bears, and someone wryly commenting on their own rescue.

There's not really a lot of match-up here, but all the superhero films map very easily onto what I laid out. What does that tell you?

 

...that Bethany is ... part black?

 

This is like every second year literature course I ever took except about things that are supposed to be fun.

 

Jabba-wocky: Here's the solution in seven words.

The Silver Surfer, directed by Terrence Malick.

 

I'm sure there are lots of professional writers on these boards who could point out in detail that most movies made today adhere to some variation of The Hero's Journey. Not just super-hero films, not just action films, but even comedies and romance movies are being built to hit these specific movie beats. They are following this formula because it works, it has proven popular with audiences, and has made money. When critics complain about super-hero movies having these long, drawn-out set-piece endings, the problem isn't that they're following a formula, it's that the writing and directing have not been artful enough to engage the audience emotionally and disguise the framework.

And for what it's work, Superman Returns didn't have a big punch-up with the villain at the end, and that was one of the most common complaints about the film.

 

Just stop.

 

Aha so the Silver Surfer and Invisible Woman fall in love and go on a mass murdering spree across half the country?

 

2ndQuest, your answers are becoming contradictory. Before, your whole position was that these films couldn't cause viewer fatigue because they were all of wildly different genres. Yet, when presented with all the similarities of these films, you defended it by saying they were common features of all action films. But which is it? Are these all action films? Or are they an "urban war drama," a "sci-fi 9/11 disaster film," a "supernatural horror," a "fantasy epic" and a "modern political thriller" as you originally claimed? Because I would never categorize dramas, horror movies, or thrillers as "action movies." Nor fantasy epics, really. I think the truth, which you even you admit implicitly, is that these movies are all just the same.

But since you've protested the ROTJ is some sort of exception, let's look at ANH instead. The principal villain, Tarkin, is not super-powered. He goes through the entire course of the film (and indeed, his whole life) without knowing that Luke Skywalker exists, let alone having a confrontation with him. Luke never even has a confrontation with Vader--it's teased, but Han interrupts before the two can engage one another. The plot is resolved by destroying a device, not fighting a villain in personal combat. We are extremely aware of his personality and plans. He is trying to foil the Alliance's espionage operation against the Death Star while at the same time attempting to break their operatives to find the Rebel's main base. We know that, for him, this conflict is pretty strictly political, and there's not a deep ideological component, as he is irritated at both Vader and Motti. The humor in the film is not created by interactions with super-powered individuals at all. It is from normal characters interacting with each other about normal things (eg "Get this walking carpet out of my way"). While the climax was a half hour, which was long for its time, that's only 25% of a 2 hour film, which is proportionately shorter than what I was complaining about. Really, the only way in which this fits is that Luke has special abilities.

Or if, you prefer, let's consider another franchise you brought up: Harry Potter. While he has special powers, so does everyone else in the movie. Relative to them, neither he nor the villains have any special abilities. In fact, he knows comparatively less than many other characters. The humor is not based around interactions between special and normal people, because they are all the same. Even with a surprise villain in Prisoner of Azkaban (meaning we don't spend a lot of time with him), we still have a very good idea of what the "fake" villain supposedly wants, and also what the real one actually does once he is revealed. Once again, this summer blockbuster doesn't map well at all onto the schema that all the superhero movies fit.

To drive the point home, explain some things to me. Why did the Lizard's philosophy do a 180 from helping the disabled to social Darwinism in the Spiderman reboot? If Yama****a was going to steal Wolverine's marrow, why didn't he do all at once in the first operation, instead of waking him up, doing the bizarre faked death and chase around Japan, and counting on the off chance he could recapture him? Why didn't Zod just colonize Mars? If Loki wanted to control humanity, why not just use the magical scepter that allowed him to control humans, instead of that byzantine plot with the never-ending supply of video game re-spawning aliens? This isn't just a problem of one franchise or one movie. It's all of them. Because they are all the same. You can like them if you want, but be serious here. These movies are the same.

 

If this wasn't a circular and semantic argument before, it certainly is now.