There have been superhero movies, tv shows and comic books for years and years. But it seems like now it has become very profitable, at least for some of them.
Granted there are the batman series as well that go back, the 80s superman movies, etc. But I remember watching a movie about captain america when I was younger and it was campy. I know there have already been movies about the incredible hulk, fantastic 4, iron man, etc before the current incarnation as well as endless TV shows.
Did anyone figure out why they’ve become so profitable this decade? Is it because the audience is made up of people in their 30s and 40s who read these comics as kids?
I think you can give a lot of credit to CGI, which has presumably cut down on the cost of special effects while also making the result look more realistic.
Better writing, casting, marketing. Effects are better and cheaper. And there’s better penetration into the international market, so the investment is less risky. Plus maybe a little bit of technology in general being more popular, and multiculturalism.
Also, they entered into the MCU with a plan to make a pile of movies, and signed actors to multiple-movie contracts, so all the parts of the organization had a vested interest in making sure everything worked, from the writing to the casting, directing, special effects, continuity… That’s also why the LOTR movies worked out so well. They were really one, big, 12-hour movie. The Avengers saga is like one big 24-hour movie.
One thing that’s new is the idea of an interconnected cinematic universe. None of the individual franchises within the Marvel universe has had any more movies that other superhero series: There have been three Thor movies, three Iron Man movies, three Captain America movies, and four Avengers movies… but then again, there were also four Batman movies back in the 90s, and four Superman movies back in the 80s. But even though Batman and Superman are both DC, the Batman and Superman movies didn’t connect to each other at all (at most, I think there was a passing reference to “Metropolis” in one of the Batman movies). The Marvel movies, on the other hand, have been full of cameos (or larger parts) by the characters from other franchises, and even more offhand references to the other events of the cinematic universe.
Way out of my depth here, but is it partly because they invested in A-list actors? ISTR a review about one of the Iron Man movies (I think) remarking that this is a great time for superhero fans who appreciate good acting. Having excellent actors like Robert Downey Jr. in the movies probably helps broaden the appeal from “superhero fans” to “movie fans”.
This is what I was going to say. The stories and characters have been there for decades. Hollywood just had to wait until special effects advanced to the point where they can put realistic looking super-hero action on screen.
I don’t think it’s CGI, or connected universe, or A-list actors, only because that’s all true of other “universes” that aren’t doing nearly as well as the MCU. The most obvious example is the DC universe, but there’s also the Dark Universe. That was planned to have all of those things but the entire universe died in childbirth when the first installment (Tom Cruise’s The Mummy) tanked.
I think it’s all about writing and direction. The MCU movies have good scripts and good directors, and when it comes right down to it, I think those are the two most important ingredients for making successful movies.
EDIT: I could also be convinced that the success of the MCU could be fully credited to the vision of Kevin Feige.
…Favreau had to actually fightwith the producers to bring Robert Downey Jr on board. Downey was a risky investment at the time even though he had largely cleaned up his act.
I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that the creative people behind the scenes **love **comic books and love making comic book movies. Kevin Feige loves the playground he gets to play in. He’s bringing in directors and actors and writers that “don’t hate” the characters and the universe that they are writing about. And since the exit of “Ike” Perlmutterthe creative people behind the scenes have been given a much freer hand to be able to bring about their own cinematic vision.
And with Ike gone, Feige has really expanded the vision of who these movies could appeal too. Captain Marvel and Black Panther showed his bosses that you could make movies with women and black protagonists that would make not just reasonable amounts of money, but big-huges truckloads of cash. We’ve got Shang-Chi, Black Widow and the Eternals coming up, Natalie Portman’s Mighty Thor, we’ve got two female directors in the next slate (compared to zero right up until Captain Marvel), they are making movies that appeal to lots-and-lots of people.
They are telling stories that people want to see, featuring people that look and act like us, being made by creative people who are excited to make them. Who knew that would be a recipe for success?
I give Feige a lot of credit. But he’s not solely responsible for the current super-hero genre. He didn’t make Spider-Man or X-Men or Batman Begins or Kick-Ass or Deadpool or Hellboy.
I think a great super-hero movie needs some credible super-hero action scenes. And up until recently, that wasn’t possible. People making a super-hero movie had to work around it.
Now it’s possible to make good super-hero action scenes and that makes it possible for people like Feige to make great super-hero movies.
Even people like Zack Snyder who can’t make great super-hero movies are now making good super-hero action scenes.
Ground them in reality enough so that the characters and situations can be taken seriously by audiences. If you treat a comic book movie as just something out of the funny papers then you lose credibility and audiences lose faith.
Well, Hellboy (the Ron Perlman one) flopped, and google serves up countless think-pieces about why Kick-ass and Scott Pilgrim both failed. (You didn’t mention Scott Pilgrim, but Kick-ass and its failure to perform is forever linked with Scott Pilgrim.)
Just listing off a handful of superhero movies isn’t really compelling anyway, as the same argument could be made decades ago pointing to Christopher Reeves’ Superman and Michael Keaton’s Batman.
It’s pretty clear that while we’ve had big budget superhero movies with A-list actors for decades, the MCU has put pretty much all other superhero franchises to shame. Kevin Feige has absolutely created something special, something that has no prior analogue in the history of superhero movies.
I believe there’s at least an element of generational change as well. For many years comic books were seen as a childish interest, and the powers that be treated movies based on the characters as kids movies. As people who’d grown up with them, and still read them, came into positions of influence, they could get these movies made, knowing there was a bigger audience than just kids out there for them.
While the MCU has ramped things up massively, you have to remember the first X-Men movie was released back in 2000 (feel old yet?) and the first Tobey Maguire Spider-Man in 2002. Both were Blockbusters. Spider Man in particular raked in $800M. That’s 6 years before Iron Man hit the screens.
It has little to do with the quality of the movies themselves (not that they aren’t good) and mostly to do with the cost of movie tickets. Given the price, people want to see something on the screen that loses something if seen at home. And that means spectacle. Superhero movies, as currently confirmed, give them plenty of big screen action, enough so that audiences will pay to see them in theaters.
As a side effect, action scenes don’t need translation, so they do well in non-English-speaking countries.
There are things that you Just Can’t Show Batman and Superman doing. Warner Brothers can’t show their beloved icons behaving badly. Iron Man, being a little farther below the public’s radar, can snort coke off a hooker’s ass and it only reinforces what makes him appealing. The only Marvel character as iconic as the DC big three is Captain America, and I don’t think his movies do quite as well at the box office as Thor and Iron Man’s.
) and the first Tobey Maguire Spider-Man in 2002. Both were Blockbusters. Spider Man in particular raked in $800M. That’s 6 years before Iron Man hit the screens.