The story so far...
Last time I talked about the proliferation of Superhero
movies over the last two or three decades, and I suggested that the number of
different versions and the number of different actors playing the heroes (and
villains) had the unintended effect of creating a modern myth. By regularly
re-making the same Superhero films in different styles, and using different
directors and different actors, by willfully ignoring events in previous films, a particular
story or franchise becomes bigger than any one of its constituent parts –
actors, directors or storylines. Batman as we know him isn’t just the latest
version, directed by Christopher Nolan. It’s all of the versions (Tim Burton
and Michael Keaton; Joel Schumacher and Val Kilmer).
Compare this with, for instance, the Mission Impossible franchise.
Rightly or wrongly, this franchise is now wedded to Tom Cruise’s character of
Ethan Hunt, and the limitations that brings.
Last time, I was careful to say that I mean myth in inverted
commas, and today I’ll be exploring the limitations Superhero films have when
compared with other stories, mythic or otherwise.
Same old, same old
In some ways it’s curious that, on the one hand, there are
so many superhero sequels, and on the other hand, relatively few of them are
able to develop and continue the preceding themes and stories. It seems we’d
rather have the same battles played out again and again between Batman and The
Joker, or Superman and Lex Luther rather than have our hero come up against
anyone new.
How to make your own Superhero movie ...
Superhero franchises follow a familiar pattern. The first
movie is all about tracing the origins of the character – what I would call the
‘origin story’. Actually it’s quite difficult to get this one wrong. The director spends half the film explaining
how Batman became Batman, and pits him against a character we would recognise
as his chief nemesis. So,
films like (Tim Burton’s) Batman, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, and Sam
Raimi’s Spiderman 1 all tend to be
strong films (the same applies to non-Superhero 'first' movies like Star Trek and Casino Royale).
The second movie in the franchise is generally a ‘now we’ve
got started’ -type film, and is often (though not always) the strongest movie
of the franchise – films like Batman Returns, The Dark Knight, Spiderman 2 fall
into this category. Why are these stronger? Possibly because the studios often
use the same director again. Consequently, these directors have learnt their
mistakes in the first film, they have another chance to get it right, and have
a clearer idea of where they want to go with the franchise. Also, I’d suggest
that it’s the villains who make the more interesting characters, not the hero.
And we’ve just spent the first film establishing the hero’s origins – so if the
sequel is more about the origins of the villain, it would stand to reason it
would make for a more interesting film.
The third movie in a franchise is often more problematic.
You’ve used up your strongest villain in the first movie (Joker, The Green
Goblin); you’ve then moved on to the other strong villains (Catwoman and
Penguin, Doctor Octopus); you’re now left with the secondary villain characters
for the third film. My own feeling is that film-makers often make up for the
lack of ‘quality’ by having a larger number of these slightly less interesting
villains. So, where The Dark Knight had a single villain in The Joker, The Dark Knight Rises has a plethora of villains.
Going over to the Dark Side
The other interesting feature of the third superhero movie
is there’s often a dark version of the hero.
Think of Superman 3 where Kent fights the ‘bad’ Superman; and also
Spiderman 3 when Spiderman is covered with the black slime that temporarily
turns him into ‘bad’ Spiderman. The slime is transferred to another character,
who in turn becomes a sort of ‘bad’ Spiderman in the character of Venom.
In Batman Returns (admittedly only the second of the Burton
Batman films), there’s one point when Catwoman describes a plan to turn Batman
into what he hates the most – ‘us’ (meaning turn him into a villain). So, after establishing the origins of the
hero, after pitting him against his most evil foe, the next stage in the development
would appear to involve the superhero fighting (or resisting turning into) a
‘bad’ version of himself.
What I’m describing here is, in fact, a fairly limited arc.
A superhero gets created, fights his nemesis, then fights a dark version of
himself. What happens next? Where else is there left to go? Nowhere, perhaps,
except to repeat the whole cycle all over again. It’s the ‘Reboot’ phenomenon
we discussed last time.
I’m not an expert on the original comics and graphic novels,
but I gather that (for example) in the Spiderman comics, Aunt Polly and Mary
Jane have been killed off and resurrected numerous times. You’ll probably
remember in the 1990s when they ‘killed off’ Superman for good, only to
resurrect him once again. So even the comics had to keep generating interest by
killing off and resurrecting the different characters.
Movies versus TV
I’d argue that the limitations of the superhero movie have a
lot to do with the actual movie format.
Something has to happen. There has to be a beginning, a middle and an
end, and audiences have to leave the cinema feeling they’ve got their money’s
worth. You can’t introduce a villain and have him /her survive at the end of
the film. In the comics, you can have The Joker or The Green Goblin defeated
countless numbers of times and re-appear in the next issue. In the film you’d
feel cheated if there wasn’t a final climactic showdown at the end of the film.
Any suggestion that The Joker survived to another day would seem a blatant
gambit by the film-makers to keep their options open for potential sequels.
A big budget movie tends to have a particular structure
where the hero and villain lock horns initially, and then climactically as the
centerpiece of the movie. When you think about it, this is a very restrictive
strait-jacket to fit the characters into. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
(though not a superhero film) can’t introduce Moriarty without killing him off
at the end. Effectively this reduces one of crime fiction’s greatest characters
to two or three set piece scenes.
By contrast, TV excels in continuity. The very fact a story
has to be followed over a number of episodes (often many hours of viewing) to
my mind makes it often a more satisfying experience. Think of series like 24,
The Wire, The Killing, Law and Order, ER. There is massive potential to have
any number of cliff-hangers, red herrings, and climaxes that simply aren’t
possible in the world of the movie. It’s funny that, having started to watch a
series like The Killing, we often end up being more and more gripped and
wanting to know what happens next. Compare this with cinema, where we often
feel less and less motivated the more sequels come out.
And finally....
I think part of the reason we watch superhero movies is
because we enjoy these mythic good versus evil encounters. Why? Because it
makes the world a simpler place. We
know who the good guys are and we know who the bad guys are.
I think superhero films touch on our ideas about good versus
evil ‘archetypes’ in a way that other more ‘realistic’ movies don’t.
But while I love watching popcorn movies as much as the next
person, I invariably leave the cinema feeling slightly cheated, as if the movie
wasn’t quite able to deliver what it promised.
But the reasons for that, and what all of this has to do with myth-making, will have to wait until another day
and another blog.
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