Don't Hang the Cape Just Yet!

The Future of Superhero Cinema and How to Keep It Bright

It’s been almost two weeks since Avengers: Endgame premiered in theaters around the globe, a thrilling and spectacular 3-hour love letter to a decade of superhero cinema. And if you’re looking for a review of Endgame, I’m sorry but that’s all I will say about it. This article isn’t about the latest blockbuster about guys and gals in hyper-technological armor or tight spandex – or any single other blockbuster of the kind. What I want to do here is simply trying to answer a question that many avid fans of the genre are probably asking themselves right now:

What now?

Seriously, if you haven't seen it already, what are you still doing here? Go watch it NOW.

And I’m not simply referring to Marvel’s slate for future movies. If you look at the history of film and television, you can clearly see the rise of certain genres in specific eras – and their subsequent dwindling. Take for example the ‘80s, the decade hailed by film aficionados as the era of science-fiction: The Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner, Terminator, and Back to the Future are just a few of the movies released between 1980 and 1989 that are considered timeless classics in popular culture. And yet, while the genre still survives today, films that directly draw inspiration from them are often met with lukewarm reception (just think about the recent Star Wars sequels and spin-offs).

I think the superhero genre is headed in a very similar trajectory. In the ‘00s there had already been a few isolated… let’s call them “flare-ups”: Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns, before Joel Schumacher ran that franchise to the ground; Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy; and of course, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight saga -- which actually propelled the genre forward a great deal, but ironically also managed to accidentally put its future in jeopardy when Hollywood executives mistakenly came to the conclusion that in order to be successful, superhero movies had to be just as “gritty” – something that I like to call the “Nolan Syndrome”.

I mean, as long as you forget the third chapter of both...

And then the Marvel Cinematic Universe happened, and suddenly, all the big studios were scrambling to put their own costumed vigilante on the big and little screen: comics-inspired releases increased ten-fold, until we had at least five movies a year and dozens of series on major cable networks and streaming services: Gotham, the entirety of the Arrowverse on the CW, Runaways, Cloak and Dagger, the Defenders series on Netflix… the list goes on. And unfortunately, no matter how high the great-to-mediocre ratio is, the truth is that the industry is quickly becoming over-saturated with costumed vigilantes.

Don’t believe me? Raise your hand if someone has ever said to you that “they don’t watch superhero stuff because it’s too much and too hard to keep up with nowadays”. Yeah, exactly.

“But Tom, if the genre is over-saturated, how come most of the latest MCU movies still hit the box office harder than Thanos laying the smackdown on the Avengers in Infinity War?” You cleverly ask. Good question, anonymous reader! So let’s talk about what I think are the three solutions Hollywood can employ to not only keep churning quality superhero content, but also innovate the genre as a whole.

New game: can you name all the characters in this shot? Because I've honestly lost track of who's who here.

SOLUTION #1: MAKE GOOD MOVIES/SERIES THAT JUST SO HAPPEN TO BE SUPERHERO MOVIES/SERIES

Because of the MCU, but generally due to the way their source material works, most superhero-related media are interconnected to each other, either outright (sequels and spin-offs), or through references that hint at their shared universe (MCU, Arrowverse, DCEU). That, in of itself, wouldn’t be a bad thing – if it wasn’t for the fact that sometimes, executives are more interested in expanding (and therefore capitalizing) on existing properties, than in making a good movie. That’s why the DC Extended Universe is in such a bad shape as of now: instead of taking their time building the individual characters before tossing them all together, Warner Bros. raced to match the level of complexity the MCU had achieved in seven years, with catastrophic results. Marvel isn’t guiltless of this either: not all their movies are showstoppers, after all: think Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, or even (unpopular opinion ahead) Ant-Man and the Wasp or Age of Ultron.

The trick is in making a movie or series feel like it could stand alone even if the rest of its shared universe didn’t exist. Daredevil, The Dark Knight, and Logan are three perfect examples of this. None of them exists in a vacuum: one is the part of the TV side of the MCU, one is the second movie in a trilogy, and one is the last chapter in a single-character saga which is itself only a fraction of a much bigger franchise. But even if they weren’t, they’d still work, because they’re more than super-hero movies. Daredevil is ultimately a series about the limits and contradictory nature of the Law and a man torn between a life dedicated to upholding it, and one to break it for the greater good. The Dark Knight embodies the archetypical contradiction of Good vs Evil, in which there can’t be one without the other. And Logan is about a bitter, defeated man finding hope for the future in a new generation.

I mean, could anyone guess this still is from a "superhero movie" without context?

To put this point into perspective, great recent science fiction movies often employ this technique to rethread on classic tropes. Her and Ex-Machina are both movies about artificial intelligence, and both ask the same age-old question: can a machine truly feel emotions like a human being? But they’re also movies about loneliness, betrayal, and the ethics of science. They’re respectively a great rom-com and a great psychological thriller that just so happen to be science fiction movies.

Still with me? Great, let’s move on to solution: #2. I promise it won’t be as nebulous as this one.

SOLUTION #2: KEEP THAT DIVERSITY COMING

The biggest problem with an over-saturated genre is that it often leads to stagnation. If viewers already have a hard time following all the new releases, imagine how they might react when they find out they’re all the same! Sure, the saying goes, “everything’s been done before” – but that’s no excuse. The point is to build upon previous works, to innovate. And what better way to make an old tale fresh, than to change the perspective from which it’s told?

That’s why diversity is important. You might say: “What does it matter if Spider-Man is black? It’s still Spider-Man!” But identity doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Being black, or gay, or a woman, carries with it both a different culture from what you could say is the “mainstream” culture of white, straight and male, and the significant weight of a history of oppression. And you know what makes for great dramatic pieces? The oppressed rising to glory and (personal) power.

"You gotta go, man." The symbolism in this movie is I C O N I C.

Hollywood has recently reached to the same conclusion, as the release of movies such as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Black Panther, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman can attest. Stubborn naysayers call it a sellout attempt to appeal to today’s “PC culture”, and while that might be one of the reasons, the truth is that the superhero genre has been pushing societal norms since its inception. Captain America was born a disabled Irish-American at a time when the Irish were treated as badly as any POC. Spider-Man is a low-income citizen, and a lot of his early comic books dealt with his struggle to balance out his duties as a masked vigilante and his struggle to help his widowed Aunt make ends meet. Wonder Woman was created by notorious 1940s feminist William Moulton Marston (with a lil’ nudge from his wife Elizabeth) to be a power icon for young female readers. The list goes on and on.

And it’s not like minorities and “the progressives” are the only ones enjoying this new wave of diverse media. All the aforementioned movies have been successful both among regular audiences and among critics, from simply selling big at the box office, to winning Academy Awards. Seriously, weeks after Black Panther came out, I still bumped into people – of all ethnicities – yelling “WAKANDA FOREVER!” at each other.

So keep the diversity coming, Hollywood, and you’ll be able to fill your coffers with superhero money for years to come.

The crossover we truly deserve.

SOLUTION #3: STOP RELYING ON THOSE FRANCHISES

If you haven’t figured it out already, confession time: I love superheroes, and I would love to write a superhero movie/show. In fact, my BFA thesis was an original pilot set in a world in which superheroes are hailed as celebrities (you can read it in my portfolio). But when I presented the script to my mentor at NYU, he looked at me dead in the eyes and said: “You know this is never going to be made, right?”

Turns out, selling a superhero script is nigh impossible if it’s an original concept that isn’t based on a franchise. That is because the genre was born from comic book adaptation, and deviating from this tradition is still seen as a rather risky move. After all, why bother with new characters and stories when you can take ones that already have a dedicated fanbase?

And yet, now that we’re approaching over-saturation levels, that doesn’t seem like a smart move anymore – mainly due to the stagnation problem we were talking about before: you can only use a character so many times before people start getting fed up with them. Not only that, but attempts at rebooting classic pop culture icons such as superheroes are often in danger of garnering the disappointment, or even the hatred, of moviegoers. DC and Warner Bros. are the worst offenders in this regard, if audiences’ reception to the DCEU’s broody Superman, mook-killer Batman, and “gangsta” Joker are of any indication. Not to mention their Titans TV show, an abomination for anyone who grew up with the Teen Titans cartoon.

Prediction: if Joaquin Phoenix's Joker is a smash hit, it's going to be precisely because it's so removed from its source material that it might as well be an original movie.

Series based on less-used and less-known characters have had much more success. I’ll never forget ABC’s Agent Carter miniseries, and I’m deeply enjoying Doom Patrol on the DC Universe streaming platform. Meanwhile, for the past 10 years Marvel has been going through their rolodex and introducing as many lesser-known heroes to the general public as possible: Ant-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage… the list goes on. But since these characters are not as popular – they might even be completely unknown to most viewers – the risk factor might be almost as high as just creating new ones from scratch.

Finally, there’s also the fact that new original properties would have a much easier time achieving Solution #1 and #2 than pre-existing ones. As they are unshackled from franchises, they could tell more subversive stories; they could also introduce more diversity without fearing backlash for changing a beloved character’s sexual orientation or race. Think about The Incredibles, an original concept about the importance of family that also happens to focus around superheroes; and its sequel, which deals with more progressive domestic dynamics, with a stay-at-home dad and a badass bread-winning mom. You have a pair of great, diverse movie with powerful messages that perfectly fit the canons of the genre without having to be adapted from any previous source.

Ultimately, whether superhero movies and series will continue to grow and sell post-Endgame remains to be seen. But I think there’s an opportunity here to push the envelope a bit, to go a bit deeper, to experiment and say something more – an opportunity to elevate this great, marvelous genre to new heights. So, as a certain tights-wearing Kryptonian would say: Up, Up, and Away!

Me, whenever a new piece of superhero media comes out.