The Death of Zeitgeist and the Reflective Superheroes of the Mid-2000s

[Charles EP M.]

Discuss this article by @Thande here!

 

[Alex Richards]

It's interesting that I think there is a recognition of 'some other genre could be revived' but it's been paired by the execs with the 'but only if it's tied to some existing franchise' issues.

'Big Budget space operas could come back, as long as it's Star Wars'
'We can revive the Sword and Sandal genre so long as it's a sequel to Gladiator'
'We can have a big budget fantasy film as long as it's Tolkien'

And so on.

But yeah I can absolutely see where there's some obvious gaps in the market.

At some point, somebody will do a relatively low-budget but well written animated film featuring a generically heroic protagonist, maybe with a couple of mild character flaw they can grow out of, facing off against a big campy melodramatic villain who's motivation is 'basically just pure evil'. They will have a low-key love interest. It will be a musical. It will be massively derivative of classic Disney and all the old tropes that are supposedly played out. It will be a massive success.

 

[Thande]

I wrote this one a while back and didn't recognise the title at first!

Alex raises a good point about recognisable franchise obsession. In some ways the Marvel films are a counter to that - while they're all 'Marvel' branded, they've also shown that obscure and little-recognised superheroes (including, er, Iron Man and Captain America, at least in the UK) can become successful. And some of the recent stuff shows that just slapping Marvel on it doesn't automatically equal success, either, so it's not just a case of serving up anything attached to a franchise.

 

[Gryphon]

I remember 2008 being widely regarded as perhaps the beginning of a new era in that respect, popular attitudes towards superhero media- that we'd gotten quite possibly the two best superhero movies ever within months of each other in TDK and Iron Man- and realizing somewhere in my gut that the nerd side won the culture war, a realization that has only grown more powerful since (a topic which could on its own become a whole series of intersecting Thandean culture articles).

(Tangential to one of the article-ending asides, I think at least once a week about the apocalyptic covid alternate history potential avoided by Endgame coming out in spring 2019 instead of spring 2020)

 

[RyanF]

A few thoughts on this article:

In the 1950s the popularity of superheroes declined in favour of other genres – which represents another example of a flaw in the natural historiographic assumption that superheroes have always been ubiquitous. But the superhero genre came back into popularity in the early 1960s, a period now known as the Silver Age (with the 1930s and 40s as the Golden Age).

Would have liked mention of which genre in particular dethroned superhero comics until they were outlawed. Think it actually helps point out the flaws in the superhero ubiquity assumption because most people wouldn't guess that horror could dispalce it briefly. It's like if a portmanteau horror film outgrossed an A-tier MCU film in the next couple of years.

The 1970s also saw the release of the Christopher Reeve Superman film in 1978, one of the first archetypal blockbusters along with “Jaws” and “Star Wars”. The film’s tagline, ‘You’ll Believe a Man Can Fly!’ summed up its broader impact. For the first time in a while, people were actually taking superheroes seriously rather than as an inherently campy and self-parodying genre.

Every time I see that film I am in awe of how much of it is just pure cinema. It's a throwback to cinema of the 30s-50s as much as it is to superhero comics. Think you've pointed out in an earlier article that until this film Clark Kent was usually portrayed as a television newsman rather than a reporter during the 1970s.

The second really big and influential superhero film was Tim Burton’s “Batman” in 1989. Despite being a smash hit, one that married a neo-noir interpretation of the setting of the original 1930s Gotham with the modern dark and gritty interpretation of the Batman setting, it seemed strangely unable to dent the public’s firm conviction that Batman was always Adam West-style shenanigans. (Of course, the mixed messages sent out by there being kids’ toys based on a film involving torture, poison gas and a crazed psychopath did not help). Despite its success and having sequels, this didn’t seem to open the floodgates for many more superhero adaptations – barring a questionable DC adaptation of the obscure “Steel” in 1997.

I've a theory on this that I plan to commit to an article at some point in the future. Batman (1989) did open the floodgates, but for pulp hero adaptations rather than , with the likes of Dick Tracy (1990), The Phantom (1996), The Rocketeer (1991), and, coming full circle, The Shadow (1994). My notion is that the powers that be, who greenlit the films, were old enough that they connected Batman with the pulp heroes you mention preceding and inspiring him. If not the prose or comics then perhaps the cliffhanger serials you also mention.

In 1998 the second Marvel film adaptation came out, adapting the vampire hunter “Blade”. The film was successful in its own right but was not tied to any comic property that would be recognisable to the average viewer, so it’s questionable whether it really counts. 2000 saw the release of “X-Men”, an unambiguous success of a comic adaptation to film.

Blade really deserves more credit/blame for proving that you could still do a sucessful comic book adaptation. Remember that it's only one year removed from Batman & Robin (1997), and to your earlier point of neither Donner's Superman nor Burton's Batman ushering in a wave of copycat superhero adaptations, that they took off in the years immediately following Schumacher's much-maligned second Batman film makes practically no sense without Blade coming along so quickly.

One film missing from the article that I think feeds into your overall theory is Mystery Men (1999), which in some ways prefigures what would come later with Heroes or Hancock. I only saw it myself earlier this year (thoughts here) and one thing that really jumped out at me was how it felt not only like a film that came too early (a partly-subversive parody of superhero fiction and films) but also one that came along too late, having a look seemingly inspired by the most successful superhero series at the time, the 1990s Batman films.

 

[Charles EP M.]

I've a theory on this that I plan to commit to an article at some point in the future. Batman (1989) did open the floodgates, but for pulp hero adaptations rather than , with the likes of Dick Tracy (1990), The Phantom (1996), The Rocketeer (1991), and, coming full circle, The Shadow (1994). My notion is that the powers that be, who greenlit the films, were old enough that they connected Batman with the pulp heroes you mention preceding and inspiring him. If not the prose or comics then perhaps the cliffhanger serials you also mention.

Possibly a large part of this is Burton's gothic-camp-noir style for the film? It doesn't look like what Hollywood thought superheroes look like but does look like pulp fodder.

 

[RyanF]

Possibly a large part of this is Burton's gothic-camp-noir style for the film? It doesn't look like what Hollywood thought superheroes look like but does look like pulp fodder.

Great point, it's possible then that a different director grounding the film into a style more typical of the late 80s *shudders*, assuming it can still achieve the same success, would make something like Spider-Man an easier pitch in the early 90s than Dick Tracy. Though from an AH perspective I do wonder what the impact might have been of a half-decent Captain America film in the early 90s, it feels like it could have bridged the gap between pulp hero films and more superhero adaptations during the 1990s.