Anghus Houvouras on the elevated structure of superhero films…
We’re in a golden age of comic book adaptations. A time where every major comic book icon is getting the cinematic treatment. As these film types become more commonplace in our culture, patterns begin to emerge. I talked before about my distaste of the super hero origin story, a movie type that has become ridiculously redundant. Origin stories are shackles that must be endured every 10 years or so because studios worry that people have forgotten that Uncle Ben was killed because Peter Parker refused to act. Or that Batman’s parents were murdered in front of him changing him irreparably and launching his crusade on crime.
In the past it was the origin story that we had to deal with. The creative hurdle that had to be jumped. Once we got past the basic storytelling structure, filmmakers could then move on to more interesting and epic stories. Now we’re starting to see the potential problem for that scenario.
Comic book movie sequels usually work on a double down principle. The sequel has to double the amount of visceral thrills of the first. The third film doubles down again. The stakes keep getting raised until the series is exhausted and has nowhere left to go. I’ll give you an example.
The first X-Men film was a solid movie that featured a relatively sublime conflict between Professor X and Magneto. The movie was heavy on establishing characters and the final battle was a small conflict at the Statue of Liberty. The big finish is basically Wolverine and Magneto toe to toe pushing back and forth trying to destroy the mutant creating machine threatening the leaders of the free world.
The second X-Men film doubled down on the big set pieces. You had the excellent opening sequence with Nightcrawler. A military raid of the X-Mansion. An aerial conflict with the military involving tornadoes, missiles, and a mid air rescue. And that’s before we get to the Alkali Flats and have a breaking dam, a Weapon X throw down, and Jean Gray’s sacrifice holding back a river to save her fellow X-Men.
X-Men: The Last Stand doubled down so hard, the entire movie feels like one long garish spectacle. The ridiculous Danger Room sequence. The ridiculous scenes with Angel. The ridiculous confrontation between the Brotherhood and the X-Men at Jean Grey’s house. And that insane Golden Gate bridge/siege bit that through everything and the kitchen sink on screen.
To coin a famous Superhero catchphrase, the first three X-Men movies went Up, Up, and Away. After Last Stand there was nowhere left for them to go, so the studio went back in time with a hybrid prequel/reboot X-Men: First Class which stayed relatively small and character based until their kitchen sink based Cuban Missile Crisis finale.
X-Men: Days of Future Past looks to follow the double down trend. As does The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and it’s massively expanding roster of villains. As does Captain America: The Winter Soldier with giant flaming helicarriers spiraling to the ground. For some reason, studios believe that volume and spectacle is what sells these movies. There’s the rare exception like The Wolverine that manages to take a nice step back and pare down the obscene amount of third act kitchen sink shenanigans. Iron Man 3 felt like a nice change of pace until they blew up Tony’s mansion in epic fashion before launching into an incomprehensible third act shipping dock battle featuring fifty different suits of armor and an army of Extremis soldiers.
My point is, why is ‘up’ the only direction for these films?
Man of Steel is an interesting example of this theory in action. A lot of people wondered why Batman was introduced into the sequel after only one movie. But what choice did they have?
Where do you go from Man of Steel? A galaxy spanning story with exploding planets, cities being leveled, giant battle scenes of super powered warriors shooting lasers from eyes, throwing each other into space, fighting giant mechanized world engines. Man of Steel took the concept of ‘Up, Up, and Away’ to crazy new heights.
A great possible option for Batman vs. Superman would have been to take things down a notch. Slow it down. Introduce us to Clark Kent, reporter at the Daily Planet. Bring Lex Luthor into the mix. Show us the aftermath of the big, city destroying battle and people’s apprehension about Superman. The problem is, studios don’t seem to know how to notch things down. They only know how to ratchet everything up. Hence, we get Batman thrown into the mix in order to further elevate the already ludicrous stakes.
It’s a shame that the genre hasn’t found a way to tell more textured, subtle superhero stories. As a medium, comic books have found a way to tell a number of stories both big and small, but for the most part only the big ones are making it to the big screen. Every subsequent release gets bigger. Every Director doubles down on the action and spectacle turning the third act into an all out war. I understand the need to try give people a nice song and dance so they walk out of the theater feeling that the ticket price was justified. What history has shown is that you can only go Up and Up for so long before it just goes away.
I think that’s why Marvel was smart to hold off on the introduction of Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet story line. They realize that there’s only so many places you can go after our heroes face a would be Universe conquering nihilist with the power to bend reality. Superhero stories need to take small steps, or else you end up like Man of Steel which played it’s hand too quickly leaving Warner Bros. with only one option: mashing franchises together.
If you’ve got nowhere to go but ‘up’, you might just see your franchise go ‘away’.
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker. His latest work, the novel My Career Suicide Note, is available from Amazon.