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What's Next For Superhero Movies?
New submitter Faizdog writes "The Atlantic has a very interesting article on what's next for superhero movies after The Dark Knight Rises leaves theaters. DC in particular doesn't seem to have a good pipeline of readily available heroes to create movies around. The article discusses the challenges surrounding the upcoming Man of Steel movie, as well as how the circumstances around the successful Spiderman reboot may not necessarily translate to a Batman reboot. The author also mentions the necessity and viability of the comic book print medium continuing on in light of the film successes, especially in terms of revenue (the Avengers movie alone made more profit for Marvel than all comic book sales for the last two years). The article concludes with an interesting suggestion that television may be the ideal medium for comic book adaptations, as it may permit a richer and more complex story telling experience than a two-hour movie."
or has that been done before?
I think Drew Carey would be excellent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Cinematic_Universe
And I'm not even a comic fan. Who was this article written for?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Interesting that the article suggests movies possibly superseding the original comics, but doesn't even mention TV series based around these characters, despite the popular and critical success of many such series. Batman: The Animated Series almost single-handedly pulled animation out of its 1980s kiddie ghetto.
And I don't mean stop making movies, I mean they should turn to their dirtier and darker titles like Preacher, Fables or Scalped. I guess those center around a more anti-hero or "regular" hero but if done right they could be a great movie franchise. Personally I'm sick of superhero movies and though they have been lucrative I hope that we get a little break here before it gets ridiculously diluted. In the movie industry too much of a good thing can go bad real fast.
My work here is dung.
Pixar's The Incredibles was everything I could have possibly wanted from a super hero movie. How about a sequel to that?
Wasn't Leonardo Dicaprio spear heading production of a live action Akira?
That would be so cool if it was made the right way.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Young Justice and The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes have both been excellent examples of comics on television and show how you can have longer-running plot arcs without the difficulty of extending series past 3 movies. You can also have the comic book trope of a villain being beaten and coming back next season that you never get a chance to do with movies.
Disney's already working on the John Carter sequel - CowboyNeal of Uranus
The next new thing I think is going to be MMO inspired movies. Blizzard, for example, is in a great position with World of Warcraft, they have tons of content already written, and I'm sure fans would pay gobs of cash to see an epic character's take on a world they already know, and with appropriate special effects and drama only approximated by the capabilities of the game. The difference between that and a comic book movie, where the source material has also been previously written in a world people are already familiar with, is minimal. They just might be video game movies that don't immediately suck, so long as they stay reasonably true to the source material, which is why many comic book movies do well. They differ just enough to allow the production crew to imprint their take on it, and they're familiar enough to ring home with audiences.
If you think it's ridiculous, consider going back in time and telling yourself 20 years ago that the movies would be absolutely dominated by remakes and reboots and comic book movies, and imagine your double's response.
More Twoson than Cupertino
There are enough toon heroines to choose from.
Modesty Blaise, for example. Or Betty Boop. Or Powerpuff girls.
But I'd rather want an antihero movie.
With Cheech & Chong going animated, how about turning it around and make Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers with fleshies?
It is about damn time we had the Tick on the big screen. and they can still get the actor that did an amazing job with it.
We want the Tick!
SPOOOOOOOOOOOOON!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Wasn't he already in a Spider-Man movie? *ducks*
Neil Gaiman talked about it at one of his readings.
Hollywood so far as not been able to wrap its head around the concept of a single character who delivers good dreams AND nightmares.
So the scripts he sees keep having a "bad" Sandman character in addition to Morpheus. The "bad" Sandman only delivers nightmares.
Fuck Hollywood is stupid.
The next step is robots, then zombies, then vampires and we're back to superheroes again.
Can they stop re-making movies already. Everything in theaters this year other than two or three movies are all remakes. Why not take some other short story and mold it into the next Bladerunner or something?!?!
I'm in favor of the idea of an ongoing TV series. Heavy super-powers may drain budgets, but I think something like Batman could be done in a way that would make an excellent TV series, especially if it could get a budget approaching what Game of Thrones has. Ultimately, these characters and storylines were developed for an episodic medium, and I think you could get even better results putting them into another episodic medium rather than making a couple of big movies.
Of course, budget is only have the problem. You also need talented writers who can deal with the cultural relevance of some of these characters. I think getting good writers might be the most difficult part. I would be fine with some more high-quality animated work if they could get good writers.
Well, "comic books" have come a long way, and in cases like the original Dark Knight, it's termed more of a graphic novel.
Quite frankly, if Hollywood had a better story telling experience, they wouldn't be turning to heavily to these sources.
Some of these have story lines that go back decades, and which cover a lot more interesting things than what most screen writers seem to be able to do on their own.
Let's face it, starting with the first X-Men movie, these have been making huge amounts of money for the studios.
I would agree that a TV adaptation isn't as likely to garner the audience it would need. But to say that the original comics don't have rich and complex story telling is a little unfair.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The problem with making comic book stories on television is that you don't have the budget. Special effects cost money, and any truly 'super' hero is going to need special effects to wow the audience.
Without the multi-million dollar budget you get in movies, there are few superhero stories you can make well. Maybe something with minor SFX like Arrow (the Green Arrow TV show coming out in the fall), but nothing with real powers and real sensawunder. At best you'll just make lame soap operas like Smallville that occasionally hint at super powers being used in the background.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
I have this vague distant memory of when comics were celebrated for bursting with imagination and exploring all sorts of important social issues (racism, sexism, various other isms). With complex twisting plots
While movies, by their nature, can't get that intricate, studios seem to think that people want nothing more than brainless Bay-esque explosion festivals. Then once in a while they accidentally spit out something like Avengers (Can't comment on batman since I haven't seen it yet) where they have something resembling a plot and depth of characters. Yet can't bring themselves to accept that people are tired of the same old Hollywood cliches and want something genuinely new and interesting. Something that tugs on your emotions and somehow pulls you in so deeply that you actually care about the characters as if they were actual living beings.
Here's a hint hollywood... I saw Avengers SOLELY because it was written and directed by Joss Whedon. It is the first movie I have seen in theatre in years, and it's the first movie I have EVER seen where I can honestly say that I would happily fork over money to watch it in theatre again. Why? Because despite Avengers being another comic regurgitation, he still managed to do the above.
Can we have that back again? Please?
I think they really missed a chance to turn Smallville TV show into a movie enterprise. They had most of the characters assembled, and could have done a proto justice league type movie.......
I'm not really expecting the Superman movie coming out to do anything. In fact, it could be a huge flop......and I don't see anyone doing a Justice League movie anytime soon either. You really need to do like what they did BEFORE the Avengers. You need to have a movie or two to give the origins of some of the main characters. So, say a superman movie......a flash movie......a green arrow movie.......
Or just spin off Smallville's version of them and put them on the big screen.....it's not like the cast of that show is really doing a lot right now.......
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
>> what's next for superhero movies?
Reboot the same lame Batman/Superman/Spiderman/Xmen/Hulk/whatever story again, this time after only two years, not five, and this time, it will be "darker than last time."
Why not? People seem to fall for this every time.
the original comics - the successful ones - have a rich history behind them, and in many cases the nature of what they convey happens to translate well into a good action film, aided already as they are by a visual medium.
with such a rich history behind the development of the stories and the characters, it is incredibly hard for any film to screw that up: they would actually need to make quite an effort to destroy the film, by cutting out too much, deviating from the original too much, or trying to introduce their own "creative" storyline elements that are out of tune with the characters.
no - the problem that the original article is referring to is, i believe, this: that it took a *hell of a long time* for the comic books to come up with the successful and compelling material that was portrayed in them, and thus it was a relatively easy (if somewhat expensive) task to convert that material into a film. for that success to be *repeated* it would therefore make sense for the comic books to continue further story development, which may take at least one maybe two decades to complete... but film enthusiasts don't want to wait that long. herein lies the dilemma...
If there was ever an example of how racially tonedeaf Hollywood can be it's American Akira.
I guess someone wants us to forget Indiana Jones 4.
Is Hollyweird out of old movies t hey can rehash and turn a profit on?
Will they have to get their creative juices flowing even though that's been long gone in the past two decades?
Don't temp them to mine the 1960s and 1970s TV shows for more "inspiration".
The Super Hero genre has got very, very old for me. I'm not interested in seeing any more, reboot or otherwise. I once spent about half my disposable (after rent, food, and expenses) income on movies, but find Hollywoods desire to hedge on known quantities (sequels, copy-what's-popular, rehash/remake) is killing the creative content. Scads of great books would make for some awesome movies, I certainly have at least one in mind, but Hollywood is practically run by bean-counters and Wall Street now.
It takes someone with finances or clout (like Spielberg) to do something they want to (and alas, Spielberg's War of the Worlds fell far short of what it could have been) so I don't hold out much hope. Now if I want to see a good flick I spend more of my movie & popcorn money on indie and foreign cinema, some people are still creating and I should reward them with my dollar votes rather than the garbage recyclers Hollywood have become.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
He had a script and a star (Cobie Smulders) and tried to get a WW film made.
WB wouldn't greenlight his project so Joss went and made $1.5B for Marvel and Disney.
I wonder what kind of career wreckage the WB people ran into for that decision.
XKCD the movie. You know you want it.
Remind me not to see a movie at your house...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
as much as I would like to see how they would cast Death, I think I am okay with no Sandman movie. I think it would just be awful.
The dark, edgy reboot as Gilligan and the Skipper land on the "Lost" island. A threeeee hour tour. A threee hour tour.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Super Hero TV shows already suffer from power creep and "drama".
Either the bad guys get more powerful and the Hero's must as well to the point of absurdity;or they mix in a buncha teenage drama BS.
So far, all the superhero movies have been start-from-scratch, where the movie has to intoduce the hero, tell the origin story, set up a Big Bad to get the hero moving along the path to heroics, etc.
So each superhero movie has been more or less the same as all the rest - change the character, nudge the origin, different baddie - but overall, same formula.
But actual comic books don't do this (very often). When you buy a comic, you already know the hero's backstory - what you are getting is a story featuring that hero.
I postulate that with the superhero movies doing so well - and with so many characters having been introduced to the non-comic-reading public, that it will become possible to do stand-alone movies featuring known characters.
So you could do, for example, Arkham Aslyum (per the graphic novel) where the opening scene is Batman showing up at the front gate and meeting Gordon to be briefed on what is going on inside and why Batman is needed there - without having to show Batty's parents getting murdered, the discovery of the Batcave, the origin of the Batmobile etc etc.
You might have to do a couple of establishment scenes to show how this Batman differs from whatever movie came out last, but that's trivial compared to a full reboot.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Was it?
I always understood it to be just another of those teenage angsty drama shows, but with Superman. Along the same lines as Dawson's Creek, Felicity, Roswell; shit I'd catch five minutes of before the real show I wanted to see came on.
I want an Atom movie. And Flash.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
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I would love to see TV properly exploited as a medium to explore superheroes, other comic book lore, and similar storytelling. Unfortunately, with the exception of Heroes and Buffy, the TV networks have largely been unwilling to put the money and risk into giving any comic book styled work the necessary support.
Good, long term plot based writing only appeals to the networks when they have a LOT of extra capital to throw around with development. One only needs to look to Joss Whedon's other works such as Dollhouse and Firefly to see plot lines and characters bearing strong parallels to the comic book format to see what I am talking about.
The networks are pretty much a lost cause at this point. It seems TNT, USA, Showtime, and HBO are the only ones willing to incubate a variety of shows in which plot arcs matter as much as the stand alone episode. NBC gets the closest to an honorable mention since they were willing to back Heroes and The West Wing years ago (different genre, but Sorkin's storytelling is very similar to comics / graphic novels in every TV show he touches).
Even SyFy (what a terrible restyling) is dropping it's cache of long development series, Eureka and Warehouse 13 in favor of yet more illiterate programming.
No Ordinary Family That one had real promise, but it never really got going. Shows like Grimm and Once Upon a Time are showing a willingness to drop a few extra bucks on special effects in TV Dramas again, maybe we can start to see something other than Reality TV and Cop Dramas again in the next few years. Don't get me wrong, I like Cop Dramas, but like Superhero Movies they're getting a tad overdone.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
The Real Housewives of Gotham City - The Penguins wife is real twat. The Wonder Twins - The Joe Paterno and Jerry Sandusky story. Spiderman 2012 - The life and struggles of Peter Parker trying to find a job in a downward U.S. economy still living at home with his aunt. Teen Mom - We follow Sabrina the Teenage Witch as she deals with her teen pregnancy.
Starring Kim Kardashian.
Not even IMAX can support that arse on screen.
I'd definitely get in line for a "Girl Genius" movie.
Bleach also falls into the forever scaling power level trap. With characters needing to get more power/better swords to fight the more powerfull enemy. But this should not be an issue for first movie. First movie is just 6th sense + swords + teanager angst.