I saw Iron Man 3 last week, and just like you've heard, it's great. The action scenes are amazing, Robert Downey Jr. plays Tony Stark with his trademark snark, and there are even a few surprises that make this film worth your while. Yet at about the halfway point in the film, I had a somewhat surprising and discouraging revelation: I'm over this. I'm over the super hero film. A few days after seeing Iron Man 3, I was thinking about just how many super hero movies have come out in the last 10 years. With the help of a few friends, we named thirty movies, just off the top of our heads. Previous to 2002, the super hero genre pretty much looked like this: the Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve, some Batman movies ranging from decent to awful, Blade, and one X-Men movie. That was it. Each of these enjoyed some success, until one film changed all that: Spider-Man. It made an absolute boatload of money, lured casual fans to reading comic books, and the race to pump out as many super hero films as possible was on.
After Spider-Man in 2002, there have been at least 35 identifiable super hero films released, which doesn't even include movies like Underdog or The Incredibles, which are not based off of a comic book. Pre-2002, as far as I can tell, there were less than 15. Spider-Man was such a crowd pleasing blockbuster, that Marvel, DC Comics, and others realized that with advances in special effects, these characters stories could be faithfully portrayed on film. And even more than that, for whatever reason, America was ready to eat up these movies like they never had before. Spider-Man is not a very good film, but it did a great job capturing what is interesting about super heroes. Peter Parker is just an ordinary kid that becomes super human, and seeing the potential of his powers that now could be faithfully rendered through modern effects was pretty astounding the first time seeing it. I remember seeing Spider-Man in theaters and thinking, "I've never seen anything like this." Watch it again today and you will see how badly it has aged (and yes, that IS early 2000's one hit wonder Macy Gray making a cameo), especially considering all the others like it that came out later. But Spider-Man was the tipping point, the film that proved to the studios that the genre had serious box office potential. And as with any craze, there comes a point of saturation, where no matter how great the next iteration is, it gets old. I have reached that point with the super hero movie.
Save for the recent Batman movies (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises), almost every single super hero movie avoids risks like the plague. Almost all have a single-minded villain, incredible special effects, a love interest, and the origin of the hero is explored (obviously omitted in sequels, but not reboots, as The Amazing Spider-Man proved). Some are different than others; 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man was largely a romantic comedy, and X-Men: First Class is a period film set in the 1960's. But on the whole, the producers stick to this mold. And why not? Most of them end up being good, and more importantly for movie studios, make giant amounts of money at the box office. Iron Man was probably a cut above, and The Avengers was too, but other than that they're all about the same. Pretty good. And until last week, I was content to pay 9$ and lap all of them up. Yet as with anything, formulas and conventions become stale. These things can't go on forever. Even if Robert Downey Jr. were willing, I can't fathom that the Iron Man franchise would go on to 7 or 8 installments. It's inevitable that a fad will decline and fade away. As far as my interest goes, I'm over the super hero fad; we will have to wait and see as to when everyone else agrees.
I make an exception for the Christopher Nolan helmed Batman trilogy because of how different they truly are. These films play out more like intriguing crime dramas that happen to have a super hero in them. Almost all of the others are totally dependent upon the super hero itself. I realize this is a difficult "what if", but if the movies were not about Batman, and just about a detective who fights crime or something, they wouldn't lose any of their punch. When The Dark Knight premiered in 2008, many were comparing it to Michael Mann's Heat, widely considered to be a modern crime drama classic. In fact, it's these Batman films that are the only super hero movies to ever be compared to any other movie besides another super hero film. I've gushed over these films before, and I think that most would agree they stand out. They have subtext, layered villains, and emotional stakes that no other super hero film even comes close to equaling.
Another possible explanation for my revelation was the existence of The Avengers. I surely didn't think about this when it came out, but The Avengers might have ruined every other super hero movie that comes after it, especially ones in the Marvel universe. Marvel has done a careful job of making sure that the audience understands that all of these movie super heroes exist in the same universe; while Tony Stark is throwing parties in California, at the same time Thor is somewhere up in the heavens ruling the galaxy or something. Spider-Man and X-Men don't explicitly portray that they exist alongside the other heroes, but it's not a stretch to think that they do. So in The Avengers, when the most powerful super-humans in the universe, along their puny human friends Black Widow and Hawkeye, team up to fight alien beings, it seems kind of silly to think that there would ever be any danger again. If earth is in trouble, just call The Avengers. Case closed, right? Iron Man 3 makes a half-hearted attempt to explain why The Avengers don't team up again (that their problems with the bad guy are specifically American and that it should be kept "in house"), but I wasn't really buying that. The Avengers blew it out so big that a single super hero story seems tame; that is, ones that stick to the formula. And as good as Iron Man 3 is, it most certainly sticks to the formula.
Further watering down the super hero films impact is how desensitized American movie goers are becoming towards spectacle (or maybe it's just me when looking at box office receipts). In the days of Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Terminator 2, and the like, there were only a few movies that had truly great special effects. Innovators like George Lucas and James Cameron were able to harness technology in new ways to make movies seem much more real on the big screen. These movies were so spectacular because you might get one like that per summer. Great special effects were not near as common as they are today. Now, just about every single movie that is released has spectacular special effects. Movies with a halfway decent budget have grandiose set pieces and gigantic battle effects sequences that are as eye popping as the next. Iron Man 3 certainly has its fair share of great battle sequences, but after seeing so many over the past 10 years, I didn't seem to care. There can still be movies that make strides in special effects in a time where CGI is so prevalent. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King set the new standard for battle sequences with it's sheer scope, something that hasn't really been equaled. Despite its pedestrian and semi-offensive story, Avatar was a magnificent achievement in 3-D film making and special effects. The Matrix, released the same year as the incredibly effects laden Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, was able to create new concepts and ideas in the world of effects, and has been ripped off ever since. The point behind these examples is that special effects can still have that "wow" factor, it's just rare. The standard "really good" effects and action sequences that are in all of these super hero films are starting to tire.
In 2013, there will still be another Thor, a new X-Men story, and a reboot of the reboot of Superman. 2014 will bring a sequel to the Spider-Man reboot, another Captain America, and yet another X-Men movie. Clearly the studios are not ready to stop giving us healthy doses of the super hero. And if Iron Man 3's box office returns are any indication, movie goers will gladly indulge. As for me, I've hit my saturation point. Not one of those I listed excites me. I'll probably end up seeing them at some point, but with the expectation of seeing the same ol' mindless and entertaining movies once again. Maybe I'm being too harsh on a genre that is mostly fun escapism. But at some point, I will choose to go elsewhere for my escape. And I think that America will too. It just isn't today.
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