Superhero movies part of a trend we might need saving from
 No comments posted.
By MELISSA OLSON
Monday, May 21, 2007 10:36 AM CDT
Special to the Herald
For a long time now, movies have operated in trends.
If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that film topics are kind of like deer along the side of the road. Once one of them steps in front of you, there’s bound to be more back there.
At one point, the trend was disaster movies: “Armageddon,” “Deep Impact,” “Dante’s Peak” and “Volcano.” Then there were a few years of teen comedies, what I like to call Freddie Prinze Junior’s Golden Age. And there were a couple of years after “Jurassic Park” when animals-gone-wild movies were all the rage — remember “Congo”? No?
Trends are nothing new in Hollywood — they go back as far as movies do. And we’re in a couple of different trends right now. I’ve already mentioned the man-boy comedies, and the new, “more-guts-more-glory” breed of slasher horror.
But the biggest trend, the one we’ve been in for so long now that it’s easy to forget it entirely, is the comic book hero.
Comic book adaptations have also been around for ages, and they’ve been trendy before. But in 1997, “Batman and Robin” joyously drove the last nail in the coffin of what was already a dying genre of movies. Comic book movies had been waning for awhile, but when Arnold “Mr. Freeze” Schwarzenegger started spitting out lines like “You’re not sending ME to the COOLER,” we were ready to swear off costumed heroes forever.
But things change. And sadly, something really big changed in 2001. After September 11th, America was upset and uncertain. As it turned out, there was something to be afraid of, something that really did hate everything about us and our way of life. And suddenly, we kind of needed a hero again.
And “Spiderman” stepped up — or swung up, however you want to look at that. In 2002, the first “Spiderman” movie broke every box office opening-weekend record we’d ever had. And I hate to say it, but it wasn’t because it was all that great of a movie.
The first “Spiderman” film is uneven and tacky — just look at the Green Goblin’s plastic costume, or the gagging cheesiness of Kirsten Dunst’s damsel-in-distress performance. There are some gaps in logic, and also some holes in the plot.
It didn’t really matter, though, did it? Peter Parker, the young, lost boy who finds himself consumed by incredible gifts, gave us a hero again. And suddenly, hero movies started to pour out of Hollywood.
They were mostly origin stories, mostly about the making of a hero, even an established hero like Batman, and that means something. I think that through our movies, we were maybe trying to find our way back to what it means to be heroic. In the last few years, “Batman,” “Superman,” and lesser-known denizens like “Hellboy” and “The Punisher,” all stepped up to defend us. And it was good.
And so was “Spiderman II.” While the first Spidey movie made us remember superheroes again, the second made us believe in them. The second film is about Spiderman wrestling with his responsibilities to himself and to the world that needs him.
And it’s also about him taking responsibility for his own actions, and the harm they’ve caused others. It’s a serious, poignant movie that just happens to also be incredibly cool and breathlessly entertaining.
Which is why, for me, the third Spiderman movie was such a disappointment. I began this column by talking about a trend, and so I am. When they first started being mass-produced, superhero movies were a reaction, a way of bringing back feelings that we almost lost after September 11th.
Then they became about the art form — using an incredible story to tell a really personal tale (“Spiderman II” and “X2” being the best examples). And then very slowly, like so many things in Hollywood, they became about spectacle.
“Spiderman III” is all about more. More villains, more fights, more angsty love triangles, more power. It’s Hollywood flexing its big, impressive technology muscle, and in that respect it’s a tremendous success. But in their rush to add more, the creators of “Spiderman III” seem to have forgotten all about the why.
No, instead, “Spiderman III” has something to do with Peter Parker being taken over by an alien or meteorite or something, that spouts out this vicious black goo that makes you evil. (It also, apparently, makes you use your Spider senses to do really cheap bluesy jazz dances to make your ex-girlfriend that you mistreated really jealous. Or something.)
And there’s a lot more than that in the overstuffed, bloated plot, a mixture of actual Spiderman lore and cheap soap opera tricks designed to distract the viewer from what’s actually a pretty hollow film.
It might not have been so upsetting if “Spiderman II” wasn’t so good, or if the world didn’t still need their superheroes. But we do — just look at television, where one of the most successful new shows of the year was actually called “Heroes.”
We still want someone to look out for us, and we don’t want him doing it all covered in evil black goo.
It’s early in the summer, and there are more superhero movies on the horizon: a “Fantastic Four” sequel this summer, and upcoming entries in the “Batman” and “Superman” franchises, just to name a few. And thanks to the enormous box office haul of “Spiderman III,” there will probably even be additional Spidey sequels down the road, with or without the current cast and director.
But if “Spiderman III” is any indication, we may be on the cusp of a pretty dreadful downhill scope. Maybe these movies aren’t important to us anymore. Maybe they’re just… empty. And if that’s true, maybe it’s time to think about getting another trend.
Melissa Olson was born and raised in Chippewa Falls. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in film and television, and works for a television production company in Madison. E-mail comments and questions to Melissa at mfo.usc@gmail.com.
|
Archives