Mari Ness - The "Strain" of Superhero flicks

New York Times decides that "strain" is starting to show in superhero flicks.

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From a purely financial point of view, this is a strange argument to make at the moment, coming right after record breaking box office receipts for The Dark Knight and Iron Man. But, to restate the obvious: this summer has featured a lot of superhero flicks, leading some people to greet the arrival of Hancock and Batman with an agonized auugh! can't Hollywood do anything other than superhero flicks?????? (Of course, this led to one of you then deciding to skip Batman thanks to superhero overload and see Mamma Mia instead, only to be apparently overloaded and sickened from Pierce Brosnan singing overload,* meaning that pain comes in all guises). So I think we can agree that five superhero flicks (six if you are including Wanted) might be putting a significant strain on the audience. (And quite possibly lowering the box office receipts for a few films -- movie watchers deciding that they could only handle one or two superhero films at the most per year possibly decided to restrict themselves to just Iron Man and The Dark Knight, a speculation based solely on box office receipts.)

But that audience strain doesn't necessarily translate to film strain, which is where I think A.O. Scott, who I usually like, goes off the mark here, in a couple of different ways. For one, he's picked a bad comparison: the Western genre. I keep hearing, over and over and over again of the "death" of the Western, only to see yet another Western (last year's 3:10 to Yuma) pop up again and again and again, and although the most recent batch of Westerns focus on "thoughtful" (read, let's chat about the meaning of violence, kids!) reinterpretations of that genre, that's hardly a new approach to Westerns -- think, for instance, of High Noon. (On a mild note, A.O. Scott's protestation that superhero flicks are under unusual financial pressure is also wrong -- Hollywood was just as interested in making money in the 1950s, and those Westerns were expected to bring in heavy profits.) Two, as A.O. Scott admits, all Hollywood flicks are governed by conventions: if you are complaining that superhero films must have a climatic fight between villain and superhero, you have to complain that romantic comedies must have a misunderstanding between hero and heroine. It's not the conventions, it's what a film does with them. Three, true, Hollywood, in general, is not known for the creativity -- or indeed, particularly interested in the creativity -- the goal is money. (Which, according to BoxOfficeMojo, all of the superhero flicks, except Hellboy II (so far) amply provided.) Hollywood rehashes old ideas, flicks, and TV shows (hello to the non-superhero flicks Sex and the City, Get Smart and the upcoming X-Files), but in some ways, superhero flicks -- especially those like Hancock and Hellboy II not as tied to audience preconceptions of the character -- can actually revel in more creativity than some other films. After all, the praise for The Dark Knight isn't because it's the all time ultimate portrayal of Batman, but because the film had something to say about law, terror and morality, combined with a pretty damn good car chase.

In other words, instead of discovering the limits of the superhero genre, as A.O. Scott suggests, I think that these particular films have shown just how much these limits can be stretched -- suggesting that quite possibly, the genre doesn't have limitations at all. I may, of course, be reacting from a long term fondness for comic books and superheroes, or I may be reacting the same way I react to any statement that any genre or art form has died. (Outside of, say, sillouettes, which probably won't be making a major popular comeback any time soon.) Because that suggests that as artists, we are restricted by the pathways carved by previous artists -- rather than finding hints of what we can do next, of how we can stretch those conventions a little bit more, and maybe, along the way, produce something original -- or if not wholly original, at least a dazzling new take on the old. Kinda the way Shakespeare did.)

Or maybe I'm just being optimistic, and from here on out, every superhero movie will be utter crap.

* I haven't seen Mamma Mia, but I have been assured by its viewers that Meryl Streep should sing, and Pierce Brosnan should not.