Heck, he’s DOCTOR STRANGE, which sounds like a superhero alias – except, well, his name is Stephen Strange, and he, uh, has a doctorate; you’ve got President Obama, you’ve got Rabbi Cohen; you’ve got Doctor Strange; it’s a little less “Batman” and a lot more “Commissioner Gordon”, is my point; He’s Here, He’s Strange, Get Used To It.
For me, the origin story is often the most interesting part of the movie: watching how the character deals with new-found powers can involve human reactions and emotions. The later part of the movie is usually just fighting the super-villains, yeah, neat special effects but emotionally boring.
I can certainly understand that some characters don’t need an origin story, it’s possible to just start the action. Dr Strange is a powerful sourcerer, OK, that’s good enough. Batman is a crime-fighting detective and we don’t need to know his origin. But to just start out with someone who can shrink to the size of an atomic globule, well, that takes some explanation to me.
Gee, they should have made an origin story for him, then… oh, wait…
I’m reading this as, “we’re not going to burn $100 million on an origin story… unless the character is HUGELY popular, in which case we’ll ‘reconsider’ it.” Which is to say, ‘green-light that sucker.’
Well, that’s how he got his powers, yes. But what made him a hero was the whole “he could’ve stopped the thief that later killed his uncle, and didn’t.” That’s what keeps him going when he could just leave, like in Spider-Man 2, when he could’ve just jumped off the runaway train.
Think what Batman would be like if Bruce could’ve stopped the guy who shot his parents before that crime, and didn’t. :eek:
BTW, also in Spider-Man 2, Jameson and a subordinate are trying to think of a supervillain name for Otto Octavius. Before settling on Dr. Octopus, the subordinate suggests Dr. Strange. Jameson says, “That’s good, but it’s taken.”
The thing is, comic books LOVE origin stories. They keep getting re-told, asnd elaborated on, ad changed. When I was a kid in the 1960s, they spent several issues re-telling Superman’s origin, with various changes and new things that happened in btween his leaving Krypton and getting to Earth. Marvel did the same thing with its heroes.
This has carried through to the movies – the two Spidermnan origins depicted in the twom series are very different, with the second tying into the plotline about Peter Parker’s parents being government agents (something that wasn’t even hinted at in the comics until Spiderman Annual #6 (I think), that had Parker discovering odd stuff about his parents that made him no longer the “typical nerdy teen” that her started out as. Retcon\ is a wonderful thing.)
No more origin stories? I doubt it. The origin stories are the interesting part, where you see the life-chaging things and the moral choices that are the meat of drama. And they’re not “all the same” at all. Heck – look at Superman, Batman, Iron Man, Thor, and Spiderman./ Their origins are all completely different. Heck, look at Watchmen – the series is a set of origin stories. If they had all been the same, it would’ve been a repetitive twelve issues.
The tough part is writing the month to month regular isues. You can’t just have super-powered Good Guys and Bad Guys simply hitting each other. I think that’s why they keep going back to the Origin issues, to get the human drama back in there. And so we get the endlessly elaborated origins of villains as well as heros, and Sandman and Professor Zoom ewnd up mwith incredibly complicated life stories, and multiple name changes.
Origins are one possible source of human drama, but ensembles are another one, and I think superior. How a person deals with themself is not as interesting to me as how different people deal with each other. Look at the Avengers, for instance: Who would have guessed, going in, that Stark would have a genuine respect and admiration, not just for Banner’s mind, but for his physical power? And yet, it works. Or Thor coming to the realization that Rogers is a leader worth following, or Romanov’s entanglement of mutual-debts-that-she-refuses-to-call-love with Barton. There’s a lot of room for development there, and always will be, no matter how many movies they make, because every time you introduce even a single new character, they have interactions not just with each of the existing characters, but with all of the existing relationships. The potential story space grows exponentially.
This gets at the heart of it, I think. Despite the short-term financial success of the Michael Bays of the world, what really makes a movie resonate with audiences in the long term is if it can achieve two goals:
(1) Get the audience to empathize with and/or care about the lead character.
(2) Create a conflict that the lead character, in turns, cares deeply about, thus bringing the audience along for the ride.
This is a lot harder than it sounds, but one of the easier ways to achieve it is with, yep, an origin story.
With respect to goal (1), origin stories often start with the superhero in question as a “normal,” and always, at the very least, provide the hero’s backstory and motivation. As such, there’s an easy “in” for both the writer and the audience, as we’re being introduced to the character for the first time as he or she is simultaneously discovering his or her own powers. That empathy comes built into the story mechanics, because we see Steve Rogers as a scrawny weakling getting the crap beaten out of him before we see him turn into Adonis. We see Tony Stark being forced to face the consequences of his blithe weapons dealing for the first time in his life. We see Bruce Wayne’s parents gunned down. And so we understand where these guys are coming from.
(As a side note, this is also one of the few situations where the blockbuster movie production industry is actually incentivized to spend some effort working out the mechanics of the story, as the quickest way to sink a new franchise is to fail at goal (1) in the very first film. So they’re willing to spend much more time making sure the character beats work than they often do in sequels.)
Once we’ve accomplished goal (1), we need a central conflict to build the film’s story around. And ideally, it’s a conflict that the main hero has a very personal investment in. Again, origin stories make this much easier to write, as you can often build the villain’s backstory into the hero’s own. War Machine is Stark’s mentor. Loki is Thor’s jealous brother. Etc.
But even if you don’t, it’s actually still really easy to do this in the context of an origin story. Because origin stories, pretty much by definition, are the first time a given superhero even has the opportunity to care about a Big Bad Problem, much less have the physical capacity to do something about it. So you can have Peter Quill decide to take out Ronan the Accuser, even though he’s never even met the guy, because for the first time in his life, he “gives a shit.” It’s personal to *him *even if it isn’t strictly personal for the villain, because he’s never had reason for something like this to be personal before. So achieving goal (2) is also easier in an origin story.
That doesn’t mean, however, that origin stories are necessarily the only interesting ones out there. “The Dark Knight” is brilliant, among other reasons, because it achieves both goals without needing the crutch of an origin story. Bruce Wayne is already Batman, and he’s already saved Gotham. But the film still takes some effort to emphasize that he’s viewed as a vigilante, and his activities are actively reflected with those of the “White Knight” represented by Harvey Dent. Meanwhile, the Joker of “The Dark Knight” has no particular personal beef with Wayne (a lesser film would have turned the Joker into the guy who murdered Wayne’s parents or something), but he represents the philosophical opposite of Batman, and in that way, makes the conflict personal. Batman is anarchism in the pursuit of justice, and the Joker is anarchism in the pursuit of nihilism.
Every single interaction between the two characters in the film reinforces this contrast. Which is why, even though the special effects are great and the actors are great and everything looks great, what really resonates is the deep personal interest both characters clearly have in the battle between them. Even though neither of them really knows each other or has any external reason to hate each other! It’s theme become character, and though that, becoming story. And that’s why “The Dark Knight” will be remembered for decades to come, while an equally visually stunning but narratively bereft film, like DC’s own “Man of Steel,” is already being forgotten.
First, “origin stories” in comics books can be one or two panels, with a little monolog box of verbal explanations. And comics are always getting new readers (or so they hope), so the occasional reminder of origin was reasonable.
Tanbarkie, that’s an interesting analysis. Note that the Joker from DARK KNIGHT has no origin story (he verbalizes some nonsense that’s inconsistent.) In comparison, Jack Nicholson’s Joker from BATMAN has a lengthy origin story that tied to Batman’s origin story. Both Jokers are interesting, although very different (and the Nicholson Joker’s evil plot is pretty stupid, but that was then, this is now.)
Slight Hijack:
It was more of a reboot that a sequel. The origin shown in The Incredible Hulk during the opening credits completely discounts the the origin story shown in The Hulk. They purposly recast all of the parts in order to break from the story told in The Hulk and the Hulk’s powers manifest differently. For exanple in the Ang Lee film the more damage they try to do to the Hulk, the bigger the Hulk gets. At one point he looks like he’s at least 20ft tall.
Back to the point, even thought The Incredible Hulk was a reboot (much like The Amazing Spider-Man would be later) the film makers recognized that we didn’t need another feature length origin story. The origin can be handled during the opening credits or salient flashbacks, especially for characters where the origin is fairly familiar or relatively uncomplicated. Sometimes it can be more or less ignored.
A good example of all three techniques can be seen in The Watchmen. You get a good team origin story during the credits supplemented with some flashbacks later when we need more information; a fairly detailed flashback sequence on the origin of Dr. Manhattan; and for some characters you just get “I decided to become a costumed hero”.
I agree with asterion that it’d depend on the character. But I’d still like to see an origin movie for Dr. Strange.
For one thing, his story is delightfully over-the-top (so much so that it might be jarring to just sort of drop us into the middle of it). For another, it makes for an interesting character arc…an arrogant man humbled and forced to find a new way of life.
The only drawback is that it’s a little close to Tony Stark’s origin story…a self-centered man shaken up by a blow to his mortality and abilities and learning to see beyond himself.
Oh, I agree. Some could be done well and some might even need one. Heck, I never had much interested in Marvel beyond Spider-Man and the X-Men. I’ve also never been a comic book reader, so most of knowledge and interest comes from early 1990s animation. But look at what Marvel did. First, they had effectively a bunch of origin stories–Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America. Then they had a big ensemble movie where they dropped in a couple other characters that may have been mentioned in previous films. In the meantime, they’ve made sequels for everyone but the Hulk. And now, their latest big movie is Guardians of the Galaxy with effectively no origin for any of the characters other than maybe five minutes of actual film and a whole lot of dialogue as they interact. If this was the Avengers we would have seen a Star Lord movie, a Gamora movie, a Drax movie, and a Rocket/Groot movie before we got Guardians. Instead, we get dropped into the middle of everything and it’s fun. I didn’t know squat about the property until I saw the movie and at no point was I sitting there thinking “Boy, I wish I had sat through four two hour movies about the origins of these characters first.”
I would like it if DC and Marvel could only have one origin story per character. But this thing of rebooting the story every third movie gets really tiresome. I think they formed the habit of doing this when the comic rebooted every time they got a new artist.
But for heaven’s sake, pick a story and stick with it, and then develop the different aspects of the character based on that story. It’s annoying to say “OK now we will start over and make him a much darker character” or "this time his father figure was involved in some criminal conspiracy"or “now he was trained by a secret cult of ninja assassins”. Because it is not the same character.
I keep falling for it, though, so they will keep doing it.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s a very good reason why Spider-Man needs to go back to Marvel Studios. Sure, there are plenty of characters in his own world, but who wouldn’t want to see Spidey interact with Cap, Hulk, and Iron Man in the Marvel cinematic universe?
Sony.
Basically, all you’re saying is that no one at the comic book companies has ever bothered to come up with stories worth telling, for any of their superheroes.
I’d be perfectly happy to force them to move past that.
Me. Spider-Man is one of the Marvel characters I can’t stand. I don’t want him mucking up my Avengers movies. Buy I clearly am in the minority on this.
I’ve been saying this for years now. The origins of Superman and Batman are part of cultural DNA at this point. Everyone just KNOWS them now. Spiderman and the Hulk are close to that territory.
They’re not the interesting part, they’re the easy part. The hard part is writing stories that include life-changing events and moral choices, while not changing the character so fundamentally that you lose the hook that made him interesting in the first place. That’s tough to do with an established, on-going franchise character, which is why comics and comic book movie keep going back to the origin story. It’s the easiest way to tell a story about one of these characters that features major character growth, without breaking the character.
It’s worth noting, I think, that when you ask someone what their favorite Superman story was, almost no one says, “Action Comics #1.”
I read this and thought "Yeah, I can’t remember the last time I saw a Dracula origin story… and then I realized I don’t know the Dracula origin story. Don’t get me wrong, I think we’ve about covered our bases on the heroes you mention… but I’d kinda like to find out how Dracula became a vampire.
Oh, wait… isn’t that how we got the Star Wars prequels? :dubious:
It had one. It just wasn’t interesting, extensive, or well executed.
Also, the black hole that is Penelope Ann Miller’s acting sucked most of the joy out of a movie with an otherwise surprisingly talented cast (Alec Baldwin, Tim Curry, John Lone, Ian McKellen).
Origin stories are a staple because they provide almost a paint by numbers for easy character development. as mentioned above.