If you’ve been paying attention to cinema at all in the past
decade, you have witnessed the rise of superhero movies into the mainstream
consciousness. Sure, there were
superhero movies prior to the past decade.
There were even many popular superhero movies before then. But the past decade has brought us the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well as the
Dark Knight trilogy, and a slew of
movies about average people going all vigilante because they just want to try
it out. It has been a great decade that
saw X-Men flourish, Spider-Man reboot twice, and Superman return in a movie that wasn’t Superman Returns. So, basically, superheroes have become major
blockbuster contenders.
But, as with any kind of movie, there are some good, some
bad, and a lot of in between. No genre,
subgenre, or sub-subgenre is ever going to be consistently good. As much as superhero movies have become one
of the staples of summer movie fun, there are many superhero movies that flop,
or go under the radar so much to not be known.
It is the way of movies.
This post is going to involve me looking at the different
types of superhero movies, while using an example of a good version of the type
and a bad version of the type. Why am I
doing this? It’s not a lack of ideas,
but rather a way to show that everything can be done well or poorly. Quality is not a definite thing. There will never be a case where everything
is bad or everything is good. There will
always be a mixture. Things will vary in
quality, as superhero movies do. Let’s
take that look at superhero movies that I promised.
Super-Powered Beings
This category is one that I really do need to define. By super-powered beings, I mean single people
with super powers that use them to fight crime or stop bad guys (since superhero
movies have mostly moved away from the crime aspect). People like Superman or Spider-Man
count.
There are a bunch of good movies that have come out of the
super-powered beings section of superheroes.
Aside from the Superman and Spider-Man movies, we’ve got Captain America. Specifically, Captain America: Winter Soldier is one of the better superhero
movies out there. It builds the
character up to new heights by giving him a fish out of water, fish out of time
story. Putting a man from the 40s into
the present day helped to give an interesting fold to a modern spy action
thriller that shifted to a high gear and never let up. The action was great, the acting was great,
the character work was great, and the music was great. All around, the movie was one of the most
enjoyable experiences in the theater in 2014.
That’s not to say that all super-powered being movies work
as well as those ones. There was a Captain America movie in the early 90s
that was not nearly as good. The first
issue is that the effects to make superpowers believable just weren’t there at
the time. Also, the character of Captain America wasn’t as inherently
good as the one that would come with the Marvel
Cinematic Universe. Instead of being
an all-American good guy, this Captain
America stole cars by faking sick and luring the drivers away from their
cars. There was also a weird nuclear
missile aimed at the White House thing that is just plain ridiculous. Two sides of Captain America, and the 90s one is the lesser of the two.
Suit-Enabled Heroes
Here come your Batman
and Iron Man movies. These are the heroes who don’t have any
special powers on their own, but instead have suits that help them stop the bad
guys. Whether the suits are mechanical
or come with a bunch of gadgets, they are integral to the success of the
superhero. Without the suit, they would
be nothing.
Of course, on the good side, you a bunch of Batman movies. You have your Batman, Batman Returns,
and your Dark Knight trilogy. Hell, I’ll even toss in Batman Forever because it’s not that bad. The character has been successful in three
forms so far from the Adam West incarnation to the Tim Burton started franchise
and then with the Dark Knight
trilogy. People like these movies
because of the acting of the people playing Batman (Keaton, Bale), the villains
(Nicholson, Pfeiffer, Ledger), or the brooding nature of the movies. They have tended to be the darker alternative
to the lighter Superman or Marvel movies. People eat them up.
But, you get some bad movies out of this too. Metal
Man is one that I covered before.
This week’s movie, Steel, is
another. Most of the bad comes from the
costume design and the acting in this one.
Shaquille O’Neil is not someone who should be leading movies. His character ends up using military grade
weapons for his suit to stop a guy who is trying to market military grade
weapons. The thing that I find really
weird about Steel, even though I like
the movie, is that it is based on a character from the Superman comics, it alludes to Superman,
but the movie is completely disconnected from Superman. It’s a mess
partially because of this, and partially the acting throughout. Either way, it’s a mess.
Vigilantes
These are the people who are much like the suit-aided
heroes. They wanted to stop bad people
but didn’t have the superpowers to do so.
However, these ones also don’t have the suits to help them. They’re just going out there to fight all by
themselves. They want to put an end to
the bad. This section of superhero
movies has seen a rise in the past decade.
The first one that comes to mind, and one of my favourites,
is Kick-Ass. It’s a movie about a teenager who reads comic
books and decides that he wants to be a superhero. Though the action is heightened in the movie,
I appreciate the realism in him not doing so well when he begins his superhero
journey. The fact that he is not a good
superhero only makes the vigilantism more entertaining to watch. The same can be said for movies like Super and Defendor, though to a different degree.
To look at vigilantes in the form of a bad movie, we have The Spirit, helmed by Frank Miller. Done in the visual style of Sin City with a really campy tone, the
movie did nothing but grate on viewers.
There was a good cast in there, but it wasn’t enough to save the
ridiculously bad movie from being good.
If I could remember more about the movie outside of it being bad, I
would write more about it. But I can’t
remember because I watched it once, disliked it, and never watched it
again. From what I can tell, most people
were the same.
Superhero Teams
This one is fairly straight forward. Instead of having a superhero, you get a
whole team working together to stop the villain. In some cases, that’s just the nature of
these heroes. They tend to work as a
team. In other cases, it is a
combination of heroes who usually work by themselves. Most of the teams are fairly well known. X-Men,
Fantastic Four, Justice League, The
Incredibles, Big Hero Six… It’s
not hard to tell what the teams are.
The most notable team as of yet is The Avengers. In one of the
most ambitious movie projects yet, the Marvel
Cinematic Universe brought together heroes who had their own franchises in
order to make an ultimate movie team. Thor, Iron Man, Captain America,
The Incredible Hulk, as well as a few
others teamed up to stop Loki from attacking Earth in the first Avengers movie, and to stop Ultron in
the sequel. It is a big task to bring
all of these heroes together and one that seems to have worked well for the studio. Fans eat it up and the movies are not
disastrous in any way whatsoever.
Then you’ve got Zoom. This movie was similar to X-Men in that it had a bunch of mutant
teens and children teaming up with a couple of adult instructors to fight a
villain. Like many of the mid 2000s Tim
Allen movies (specifically The Shaggy Dog
and The Santa Clause 3), the movie
didn’t fare too well. It was a little to
hammy in the family geared aspects, turning off the families it was trying to
attract. I remember thinking it was
alright when I saw it, but it was nothing more than alright. I think a rewatch is in order.
Spoof/Parody/Satire
Yes, there are a few movies that fall into this
category. In a way, Kick-Ass fits in here. It
takes a look at superheroes and how they go above and beyond what a normal
person would be able to do. Yet there
are other movies that do it better and other movies that do it a whole hell of
a lot worse.
Mystery Men is one
of the most notable of all superhero movies that have been made. It takes the concept of the team movie and
turns it into a superhero satire before superhero movies were the big thing
that they are today. The comedy works,
the cast fills their roles well, and the movie is entertaining. That’s all that you could ask from a movie of
this kind.
As for the negative side, if you go to the modern era of
parody, you get Superhero Movie. Sure, it’s not nearly as bad as Date Movie, Epic Movie, or Disaster Movie,
but it still does bad all by itself. Superhero Movie works in much the same
way as the other movies of its kind, making references rather than jokes within
the genre. Though I think it’s better
than many because it isn’t only referential jokes, it is still a tired idea
that could have been done much better.
The acting is bad, the jokes fall flat, and it is just plain annoying to
watch.
Superhero movies come in all shapes and sizes, much like the
superheroes in the movies. They could be
great additions to cinema, or dark marks on someone’s career. It all depends on the movie and how well the
filmmakers manage to work within the movie type. I’ve seen many great superhero movies that I
had a great time watching. I’ve also
seen a few clunkers that weren’t so good.
They all have their reasons for existing though. The 90s Captain
America had some decent action in it, and showed Marvel what not to do when
they rebooted the character for the new millennium. Steel
had an early appearance by John Hawkes, an actor who has more recently gained
the respect of audiences through movies like Winter’s Bone and Martha
Marcy May Marlene. The Spirit helped to show that the
specific visual style of that and Sin
City couldn’t work for everything. Zoom introduced audiences to Kate
Mara. And Superhero Movie was a slight step up from other Movie movies that came out around the
same time. Each of the bad movies have
some sort of positive to them.
There are many more superhero movies that will be released
over the next five years, and even more than that when you figure in the
knockoffs that will undoubtedly be released by studios like The Asylum. It is a kind of movie that isn’t going to
disappear any time soon. There will be
great ones that come out in the future and terrible ones. The terrible ones might even get featured in
the Sunday “Bad” Movies. I would like
that. Not the terrible movies, but to
feature some of the movies. I like
sharing bad movies and my thoughts about them with you guys.
I also have some notes to share with all of you before this
post ends:
- Steel was suggested by @ER_NotR, who previously suggested Birdemic.
- Shaquille O’Neal was the star of Steel. He was already in a Sunday “Bad” Movie called Jack and Jill.
- Another actor in Steel, Gary Graham, has been featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies before. He was in Robot Jox.
- You may have recognized Judd Nelson in Steel. He was in Santa, Jr., a movie I watched during Christmas season 2014 for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
- Have you seen Steel? Did you like it? What are your thoughts on different types of superhero movies? Do you agree with anything I said? Am I an idiot? Tell me all of this stuff and more in the comments.
- If you would like to see me watch a movie for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can suggest the movie to me in the comments, on Twitter, or through my email: sundaybadmovies@gmail.com
- Next week’s movie is going to be Ice Pirates. I have no idea what it is, but the title sounds fun enough. I’ll see you next week.
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