Are Superhero films dying?

[Thomas Shey]

I don't know why you think it's necessary for movie heroes to have overt superpowers.

But in this case, they clearly have the same powersets as Black Widow and Nick Fury.

Who are, you'll note, the least overt superheroes in the movies; Nat is one in the same sense Batman is, and Fury isn't one at all.

The point I'm making is that there's a difference between heroes and superheroes, and trying to ignore that does the latter no good service.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Kang isn't the problem - he's easily as compelling as those guys in the comics.

Which is to say, not very. The problem is, most comics are written quickly, for a young and undiscerning audience. Occasionally, by the law of averages, they hit on a good idea, but those have all been done to death now. My solution is simple: STOP BASING STUFF ON COMICS!

The are a couple of centuries worth of untapped literature available, but even then, it's the same old things over and over, from Pride & Prejudice to Dune. I don't think film makers ever read books, they just look at what has previously been turned into movies.

after GotG managed to "make fetch happen" with a ludicrous set of characters in a silly space adventure

They should have kept the silly space stuff separate from the grounded Earth stuff.

But it's probably inevitable that if you keep pouring silliness into the same old world eventually it will become overloaded and break.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The point I'm making is that there's a difference between heroes and superheroes

Sure. Superheroes are tired, dull, and done-to-death.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The are a couple of centuries worth of untapped literature available, but even then, it's the same old things over and over, from Pride & Prejudice to Dune. I don't think film makers ever read books, they just look at what has previously been turned into movies.

I mean .... given that there was just a giant strike by Writers Guild of America that had a massive impact on media production, I would have thought that the presence of ... you know ... writers in the industry was well-known.

And I have it on good authority (and personal knowledge) that these writers have, in fact, read books.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I mean .... given that there was just a giant strike by Writers Guild of America that had a massive impact on media production, I would have thought that the presence of ... you know ... writers in the industry was well-known.

And I have it on good authority (and personal knowledge) that these writers have, in fact, read books.

The whole strike was about the fact that Hollywood considers writers slightly less important than the catering staff. They write whatever they are told to write by the studio execs - those are the people who never read books.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To make my position very clear, while I don't think there are some cases where "groundedness" can work, too much focus on it is kind of missing the point, and fundamentally trying to minimize what makes superheroes distinct from conventional adventure heroes is fundamentally going in the wrong direction.

I also think it requires a peculiar perspective to consider, say, the comic version of Iron Man being all that popular. That worked in the movies because they made it work, because Marvel had farmed out most of their really popular characters and had to find somebody.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure. Superheroes are tired, dull, and done-to-death.

And I think that's exactly the wrong approach.

Its about like "let's make horror movies less about horror to make them more popular."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And I have it on good authority (and personal knowledge) that these writers have, in fact, read books.

Snarf let's be real there's a very valid question as to whether about 50% of the screenwriters in Hollywood have, in fact, ever either read a book of their own volition (particularly after college), or voluntarily a watched movie made before 1980. The rest have read and seen plenty, for sure.

To make my position very clear, while I don't think there are some cases where "groundedness" can work, too much focus on it is kind of missing the point, and fundamentally trying to minimize what makes superheroes distinct from conventional adventure heroes is fundamentally going in the wrong direction.

Hard disagree that it's "going in the wrong direction". Marvel's problem is that they're in desperate danger of vanishing up their own bum at this point, because they've pushed so hard into the cosmic stuff.

Conventional adventure heroes frankly may well make a comeback precisely because the MCU keeps pushing in what you regard as "the right direction". A lot of the MCU's successs came from it sort of occupying broadly the same territory as conventional action heroes, but offering more apparent excitement.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And I think that's exactly the wrong approach.

Its about like "let's make horror movies less about horror to make them more popular."

Horror movies have changed hugely and repeatedly to stay relevant. Luckily they're cheap to make and so people can experiment easily enough and new subgenres or approaches appear extremely regularly. An awful lot of successful horror movies are, in fact, less about things that were considered to define horror in earlier decades.

That might not be the best example for your point.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Hard disagree that it's "going in the wrong direction".

Noted. But that doesn't change my opinion.