Superheroes are everywhere. We have always had comics, cartoons and the sporadic movie or TV show, but we are experiencing a huge boom lately. Batman led the way back in 1989 and we’ve seen franchises for Spider-Man and X-Men with varying degrees of success. There were some other movies that were either loved or hated like Daredevil, Fantastic Four and the Hulk. However, it wasn’t until Batman Begins and Iron Man that the new age of Superhero movies started again.
Marvel has led the way with this new wave and have laid the groundwork that all of us fans have been waiting for: movies that bring comics to life with characters that look and act like they should. No drastic changes and a universe that is connected. DC is still struggling to figure this out, but will take a giant leap in that direction with the Superman/Batman movie.
Soon, Marvel will be taking that formula to TV with a new Netflix deal that will bring us TV shows based on their heroes, with the highest profile being Daredevil. DC has had success with TV with Smallville and Arrow, but those have not been faithful adaptions to the comics. With Marvel, you feel like events that happen in one show will be reflected on the other. Even with S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC they are attempting to bridge their universe a little between big and small screens.
With all these recent successes, one has to wonder when the crash will come. You cannot walk into a movie theater, turn on the TV, go the store, eat some cereal or get fast food without seeing an image of the Superhero of the moment. As of this writing, Thor’s latest movie is in theaters, the Man of Steel just came out on Blu-ray and announcements of upcoming projects are being talked about daily. Eventually this bubble has to burst, right?
Perhaps, but I think the backlash will take a while. There are some comic fans that might start to rebel, probably because they don’t like it when things they like become mainstream, but the general public doesn’t care about comics. To them, what they see on screen is the gospel truth and comic continuity doesn’t matter at all. For example, my wife has probably never read a comic book in her life. She enjoys watching Superhero movies with me and probably liked Smallville more than I did. One thing that she does often is ask me if that is how something happened in the comics. On Smallville, the answer was almost always “no”, but with the current crop of movies that line isn’t quite as defined. More times than not, I’m able to say “yes”, or at least “somewhat”.
That is why I, again, like what Marvel is doing. They do change things, but it is obvious that they are farming their comics for ideas so us comic fans can get really excited to see those stories on the big screen. In the comics we’ve had Doc Ock as Spider-Man for a year now, do you think that will ever make it to the movies? No way. On the flip side, The Dark Knight Rises had Bruce Wayne walk away from being Batman. That’s where it was left and to many moviegoers, Bruce Wayne is no longer Batman. Each of those examples just serves to show that these two mediums can complement each other, but also live independant of each other. To me, that makes them fresh and interesting. I don’t see myself growing tired of them anytime soon.
Next year already looks like another great year for movies and 2015 is going to be the year of Superheroes on the small screen. Is that too much? Just enough? Don’t care and just enjoying the ride?
