Comic Book Movies

As all my friends and family know, I'm a huge comic book/super hero fan. I love super heroes. I've been playing City of Heroes for nearly 5 years now (57 months and counting), I read comics, and am passionate about them. I love comic book movies, even the bad ones, because it brings one of my passions to another medium I love-- movies. I have blogged at great length and with great frequency about various aspects of comic books and super heroes.

With those caveats out of the way, I have a startling thing to say: I wish there were fewer comic book movies on the way.

I'll let you catch your breath.

Yes, that's right-- I'd like to see fewer super hero movies on film slates in the coming years. And here's why-- too many properties are either not handled right (i.e., Catwoman, Elektra, first Hulk, etc.), many are produced just to jump on a bandwagon (i.e., Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four, et al), and too few are handled in a serious manner that is both faithful to the source and excitingly new (i.e., current Batman movies, Iron Man, Spider-man 1&2, etc).

At this point, producers and directors have a blueprint for what works and what doesn't. However, you still have crap being made and people going so far from the source material that fans wonder why the filmmakers bothered. Both The Dark Knight and Iron Man show what can happen when you treat the source fairly, have excited people trying to make a good "movie" as opposed to simply a faithful "comic book/super hero movie," and get good talent on both sides of the camera to usher the movie to completion.

Also, the fans primarily want the big, recognizable names up on film. They want to see some of the seminal classics of the genre filmed, or something entirely new. Fans want to see Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash. They don't necessarily want to see Aquaman, Green Arrow (unless it is a film of Longbow Hunter), Red Tornado, or Apache Chief. Fans want to see Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Wolverine, Spider-Man. They don't really want to see the lesser names like Ghost Rider, Daredevil, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, and others.

Fans are finicky, too. Watchmen, for example, I expect to have a lot of wildly excited reviews and a lot of absolutely hate-filled reviews and very little in between. Fans of the source will be disappointed that this part or that part didn't make it into the film, while others will know that you have to cut a lot out and gloss over a lot to make a 12-issue maxi-series fit into a 2 hour film.

You have filmmakers hiring the exact right people to do a film (Joss Whedon doing Wonder Woman, for example) and then absolutely hamstringing what he is allowed to do with the property to the point where he has to leave due to "creative differences." You have film studios saying "The Dark Knight was successful, and it was dark, so all of our upcoming super hero films have to be dark" rather than acknowledging that Batman is a darker property and was done "right," and similarly the other properties should be done "right" -- whatever right is for that property (Superman, hope and light. Captain Marvel, innocence and wonder. Etc.).

Lastly, the proliferation of super hero movies means that the audience gets bored. It's like with the Western; there are only so many tales to tell using that genre, so it has always waxed and waned. It was big in the past, then died away. It came back with a surge in the late 80s and 90s, then died out again. You don't hear about too many westerns on the slate right now. Comic books have ridden high for a while now, and there is going to be a backlash. I'd rather the movie producers realize this, only produce the big ones (and fully commit to them), and put the smaller titles on the back burner for some other time.

I look at the upcoming slate of super hero movies and I, as a fan of this genre and of the source material, am not overly excited about them. I wonder what a non-fan is thinking about having all these films with properties and names they don't even recognize coming out?

Enough is enough. Scale back. Make what you make good, first and foremost, and don't burn out your audience with crap.