It was “good” in the sense that it was on par with any other super hero movie I’ve enjoyed in the past. Great visuals, great fight scenes. I’ve also always favored origin stories. So there’s that.
But I digress… Spoilers ahead…
I found myself getting annoyed. The argumentative banter between the two protagonists, which you know is eventually going to lead to them kissing. The first almost kiss being interrupted by the bad guy. The “surprise” that the mother is still alive. Etc…
I felt like I pretty much knew everything that was going to happen before it happened.
Is it superhero movies specifically, or are you just tired of the entire “hero’s journey” type of story? Because those criticisms don’t really have too much to do with the fact that its about a superhero. Just that it was predictable for you.
Yeah the superhero genre is like any other, some great, some decent, some awful. I enjoyed Aquaman, but there were some pretty silly moments. Worth the experience but not one I think I’ll have to watch again.
No problem. Superheros are out. Do you want to go back to all vampires, or all zombies? It does seem like every few years the various entertainment media get something stuck in their craw and beat it to death. A while back I was looking at some list of “recent release early access” games in Steam, and literally 70% of them were zombie-based.
It doesn’t help that both of the major comic publishers, Marvel and DC, are directly owned by movie studios (Disney and Warner, respectively).
This gives those two studios the film rights* to a range of popular, well-known superheroes, and the fact that, even the poorly-reviewed films that they put out tend to still make a ton of money (and the better films make many tons of money) means that the genre isn’t going to go away any time soon.
Yes, Marvel had signed away rights to a number of their characters / books in the years before they were bought by Disney, but this hasn’t stopped them from making lots of films (and TV series) using the characters still under their control. And, between Disney’s purchase of Fox (bringing the X-Men and Fantastic Four characters back under Disney’s control), and reaching an arrangement with Sony regarding mutual usage of Spider-Man, it’s essentially no longer an issue.
I think of superhero movies today as being like Westerns in theaters and on TV in the 50s/60s. Everywhere then, almost nowhere now. Superhero movies will surely fade away in the same way, it is only a matter of time.
First, Grr! is right that there are a lot of superhero movies. But that’s happened because of positive reinforcement of big dollars, baby! If Iron Man had tanked we wouldn’t have this problem. They’ll keep making them as long as the gravy flows.
But he’s right about superheroes being played. I’ve collected and read comic books since the mid-70s, have original art on my wall and other fun stuff. But the fact is that superheroes are dull on the printed page. What more can they tell us after thousands? Tens of thousands? Millions of pages? They long ago sacrificed quality for quantity and repetition of story. It’s just…dull.
Fortunately, there are tons of independent, non-superhero comics out there exploring the medium and finding new stories to tell. From Scott Pilgrim to bios of Zora Neale Hurston and Frederick Douglass to Hilda there are creators trying to make something new.
Mind you, no studios going to drop $200 million making a big screen adaptation of some indie comic that moved 3000 copies. But a man’s allowed to dream, right?
People trot out the “western” comparison all the time, but I don’t know if it’s really accurate. For one, westerns were so common because they were cheap, superhero movies are anything but.
Will they eventually stop being the most popular movies each year? Yeah, but who knows when that will be. The modern superhero era has been going on for almost 20 years, and it isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.
ETA: And because of that longevity, I wouldn’t call it a fad like zombies or vampires. It’s not a fad anymore than “Scifi” is a fad.
I’m also tired of superhero films; they’re basically the same movie with different actors. And fight scenes are boring even in the best of films.
It’s clear that the best part of any superhero film is what’s happening between the fight scenes. There’s a lot to explore on a personal level (and not the usual origin and daddy issues). The Berlantiverse on TV understands this, keeping the physical confrontations short and the emotional content complex. Movies do it as though it’s a requirement to hit the check boxes.
Superhero is not really a genre anymore, they are just characters now. Winter Soldier was a superhero spy thriller, Ant Man was a superhero heist movie, Thor: Ragnarok was a superhero buddy comedy, Deadpool was an action comedy.
Maybe mermaids could be the new thing. I’ve fairly recently watched twomovies and twoTV series based on them, and while googling for links discovered twomore recent movies that I didn’t know about. (The Shape Of Water could arguably be wedged into the genre, too.)
I don’t think this particular trend right now is limited to ‘SuperHeros’ - right now the trend is “it it was a comic book, lets make a movie/tv series about it”
Preacher
Happy!
DeathClass!
Riverdale
The Walking Dead
Wynonna Earp
Personally, I am looking forward to Star Wars X. The bad guys, whatever they are calling themselves, will have constructed a doomsday weapon out of an entire solar system.
I’m going to point out that if you’re burned out on Superheroes, I’d like to see the good replacement you have in mind. Non-superhero blockbusters have not been doing very qell in the quality department. Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Alita, Jumanji - these are not top-rated movies that the public ignored because they weren’t “Superhero” films. And most did alright financially, but not exceptionally because they were only “decent”.
And finally, Aquaman was an alright movie but it’s one of the least interesting films I’ve ever seen. The plot is incredibly basic and does very little with the concept, although it is clearly competent in all areas. ABout the only thing it has is that the actors are actually prety good and bring a lot of charisma to what would otherwise be extremely uninteresting roles.
