When do you think the superhero flick fad is going to die?

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When this generation grows up.... So never. Actually, it'll probably be when the next generation grow up and 'don't want to watch that crap our parents watch.'
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It'll certainly be when they're no longer worth the risk, that's for sure, though that's not the same as when they start to lose money. Of course, if the nature of the business changes and they go back to being happy with making tens of millions, rather than hundreds of millions, then it could continue for a while after that.



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When this generation grows up.... So never. Actually, it'll probably be when the next generation grow up and 'don't want to watch that crap our parents watch.'
Hey just wanting your opinion on something - what do you think made the Superhero film trend so popular in the first place?

Because while Superman, Batman, Spiderman, X-Men etc are still pretty popular (ex. a lot of 90s kids grew up with their animated shows on TV) - a lot of the others are not extremely popular outside of the hardcore comic book fandom. And I didn't think comic book fandom was mainstream enough today to justify the success of films like Iron Man and Thor alone.



I think it's more than mainstream enough. Maybe not the fandom per se, but it's filtered through to other areas and the internet has spread it so widely and made it so easily accessible. People play games with characters they didn't know existed in comicbooks. This then opens up the property. Same with tv programmes. There are people watching Gotham, for example, who won't have ever read a Batman comic in their lives. I know there are because I know one. No reason to think she's the only one or even one of few. Comicbooks, fanfic, anime, manga, etc there's so much crossover that to be into one of them will often offer the opportunity to enter into another. All this gets filtered by the mainstream and made into TV and film.

The big marquee properties (Batman, Superman, X-Men etc) but also the smaller stuff. Kick-Ass, Ghost World, Sin City, 300, 30 Days Of Night, The Walking Dead, Barb Wire and many, many more. It may be having its time now, but if you go back to the 90's you'll see quite a few one off films which were comicbooks. They've been trying for a long time. I think it all goes back to Spielberg and Lucas. That's where Hollywood started towards what we now see as the norm, An infantisation of adults, as I see/call it. They're not to blame, they were just the ones which happened upon it first. Of course, had Star Wars, Indy or ET all performed like Howard The Duck (which was a comic book) then it might not've happened the way it did.

Another thing is that it's just what's served up now. If you want to see an action film, but not a comicbook film, your choice is a lot more limited. Were it not for the recent neo-grindhouse and 80's action revival, it'd seem almost non-existent.

The non domestic (N.American) market is so much more important now, too, so you're looking at films which require as little dialogue as possible, so action works well. Same reason horror and slapstick/gross out films play well, too. Though they don't usually make the money of the big summer films, so they're not usually released at that time.

Action films also give you spectacle, which is the be all and end all of the summer market and the summer market is where Hollywood concentrates it's big money releases.

The more it makes the more there is and most people don't care about or view films even like I do, let alone in the way some of you do. They don't care who the director is or what he or she has made before. They like actors. Who's in it and what's it about? Those are usually not only the first two questions I hear, but the only two. After that most know whether it sounds like something they'd like to see or not.



Well they're better than a lot of Marvel films which came before it - IMO the Dark Knight Saga is the one superhero film series which stood out the most- and that one was a planned trilogy.

When they turn it into a 'machine' which cranks out a new movie or 2 every year, there's only so much time it has before it 'jumps the shark'.

I disagree. There's quite a few older Marvel titles that are quite good and the Marvel universe has literally thousands upon thousands of altering storylines. They could quite literally make these things until they stop making movies altogether. You may say they jumped the shark, but really they're just most likely different people making the flicks that may not make a version to your liking. Cool thing is nowadays is they seem to get these stories right more often than they get them wrong. Oh yeah, and Howard the Duck was effing dope.
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Oh yeah, and Howard the Duck was effing dope.
That one had a lot of adult humor in it, I think that's why it failed.

Too raunchy for kids; but too cartoony for adults - it didn't have a target audience. (Though you could say the same thing about TV shows like Family Guy and South Park, and yet they're massively successful - go figure).



I don't think it can be discounted just how many huge names in the industry get involved in these flicks too. As long as all this great talent keeps making really solid superhero flicks there's no reason for them to stop. Not only do all these serious "actors" get to have all kinds of fun but they do get to dramatically act a fair bit in these movies today as well. I think a lot of the guys and gals grew up reading these things just like we did and can't wait to get their own shot the material.



Never. Superheroes are modern mythological figures. The main characters of the Illiad were in a sense superheroes too, for example.

Though if you mean the North American superhero concept of men with superhuman abilities wearing colorful costumes to fight crime/evil, well that's a more specific thing.

Maybe this genre will lose popularity but will never completely die (and I hope it will because I dislike movies with masked characters wearing ludicrous costumes, Guardians of the Galaxy was better though but that wasn't a superhero film but an adventure sci-fi film), I prefer the more conventional type of hero like the guys in Seven Samurai and in Star Wars. Those had more style.



There are people watching Gotham, for example, who won't have ever read a Batman comic in their lives. I know there are because I know one.
I never read an American superhero comic. I read a lot of North American comics but never a superhero themed one.

No reason to think she's the only one or even one of few. Comicbooks, fanfic, anime, manga, etc there's so much crossover that to be into one of them will often offer the opportunity to enter into another. All this gets filtered by the mainstream and made into TV and film.
Manga is very different in that respect because it's a much more diversified medium than North American comics. There are substantial amounts of it inside the superhero genre broadly conceived (I guess Akira is one), but most of it mirrors literature in general, covering all genres and demographics (for instance, manga sales in terms of adult/juvenile manga are proportional to sales of novels, classified as adult or juvenile).

The big marquee properties (Batman, Superman, X-Men etc) but also the smaller stuff. Kick-Ass, Ghost World, Sin City, 300, 30 Days Of Night, The Walking Dead, Barb Wire and many, many more. It may be having its time now, but if you go back to the 90's you'll see quite a few one off films which were comicbooks. They've been trying for a long time. I think it all goes back to Spielberg and Lucas. That's where Hollywood started towards what we now see as the norm, An infantisation of adults, as I see/call it. They're not to blame, they were just the ones which happened upon it first. Of course, had Star Wars, Indy or ET all performed like Howard The Duck (which was a comic book) then it might not've happened the way it did.
It's called entertainment. Before Lucas and Spielberg there were the historical epics (Ben Hur) and the westerns. And movies like Seven Samurai from 1954 are extremely similar to a movie like The Avengers, besides the special effects and supernatural elements. Blockbuster films always exist as long as there is a large market for movies.

You call that "Infanti(li?)sation of adults", well then adults are being infantilized since the Illiad, i.e. since fiction and fantasy exist. Just because a movie is accessible for children does not mean it isn't supposed to be enjoyed by an adult.

The more it makes the more there is and most people don't care about or view films even like I do, let alone in the way some of you do. They don't care who the director is or what he or she has made before. They like actors. Who's in it and what's it about? Those are usually not only the first two questions I hear, but the only two. After that most know whether it sounds like something they'd like to see or not.
Seeking films by director instead of actor is the way of the film buff. The way of the casual film watcher is to seek movies by the actor or theme or franchise. This applies to all eras and countries, not just the present.



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Never. Superheroes are modern mythological figures. The main characters of the Illiad were in a sense superheroes too, for example.

Though if you mean the North American superhero concept of men with superhuman abilities wearing colorful costumes to fight crime/evil, well that's a more specific thing.

Maybe this genre will lose popularity but will never completely die (and I hope it will because I dislike movies with masked characters wearing ludicrous costumes, Guardians of the Galaxy was better though but that wasn't a superhero film but an adventure sci-fi film), I prefer the more conventional type of hero like the guys in Seven Samurai and in Star Wars. Those had more style.
I wasn't suggesting that it'd die out completely - I was talking about the recent trend of cranking out 2-3 films per year or more, and rebooting every popular franchise under the sun.

I think eventually it's going to become old hat, and we might see something closer to 1 or 2 films every couple years - hopefully which will be more memorable.



That one had a lot of adult humor in it, I think that's why it failed.

Too raunchy for kids; but too cartoony for adults - it didn't have a target audience. (Though you could say the same thing about TV shows like Family Guy and South Park, and yet they're massively successful - go figure).
Now they're successful. Would they have been so back then? I don't know. I don't know how widely seen they'd have been back then, as I doubt they'd have been on network tv in the States. Things have their time. Do it before and it doesn't work, do it after and it looks dated. Unless you wait long enough for it to look fresh again or have a new twist on it, then it's back to whether it's the right time for it.

Would your parents have sat and watched a cartoon on tv in the 80's without using the kids as an excuse? Because that's the first hurdle to overcome and, if they don't think they can get people to do that, then the quality is immaterial as they simply wouldn't bother making it.



I never read an American superhero comic. I read a lot of North American comics but never a superhero themed one.
Do you watch Gotham? If so, there's another one. Though, what I really meant to put across was that there will be people watching Gotham who've never read a comic and wouldn't think of doing so who will be watching. That's how mainstream it is now, which was my point.

Manga is very different in that respect because it's a much more diversified medium than North American comics. There are substantial amounts of it inside the superhero genre broadly conceived (I guess Akira is one), but most of it mirrors literature in general, covering all genres and demographics (for instance, manga sales in terms of adult/juvenile manga are proportional to sales of novels, classified as adult or juvenile).
Yes manga is different, but from a mainstream pov, it's all the same area. I could've included Cosplay, RPG's (both computer and board) or even Japanese culture itself. My point wasn't to compare those things, but to say that they're all easily accessible and widely available now thanks to the internet and that an interest in one can easily lead to the acknowledgement of another. So, for example, you might only be interested in anime. But then you're talking to someone on a website about a film and they mention a convention they're going to. Something you didn't know existed. It sounds like something you'd enjoy, so you go to a convention and discover cosplay. Previously these sorts of things were outside the mainstream and tucked away. There were fan clubs or fanzines, small local groups, but they were few and fair between and they were often the sort of thing which you stopped when you became an adult/grew up and had responsibilities. Now it's so easy and quick to find like-minded individuals and interact with them and, thanks to people sharing digitally, it can happen so much quicker and if it's not free, then it's usually cheap, which makes it easier to spread because there's little/no risk. All of this increases the pace at which these things happen.

When I first got into foreign cinema there weren't any films like that shown anywhere near me and any films you could find to buy would usually be very expensive. Plus, they'd be blind buys and often I might not even know the title. Those from the generation before me wouldn't have even had that option.

There still aren't any non-mainstream cinemas near me, but that doesn't matter because it's all out there at my fingertips. If I know about it I can find it and if I don't know of it then there's so many places/opportunities to find out about it. Before there were the people you knew, tv and radio and the library. And the library didn't rent films out when I started in foreign cinema, so it wouldn't have mattered even if I'd borrowed every book on cinema they had so I could research what I might like. With the exception of Sight & Sound (which back then wasn't sold in any shop I'd ever been in outside London) I don't think there was a mainstream/populist film magazine in the UK until the early 90's, though I'm sure you could get the US version of Premire or something like that in London in some places. But, again, you had to know it existed.

It's called entertainment. Before Lucas and Spielberg there were the historical epics (Ben Hur) and the westerns. And movies like Seven Samurai from 1954 are extremely similar to a movie like The Avengers, besides the special effects and supernatural elements. Blockbuster films always exist as long as there is a large market for movies.
So, as I said, they're currently what are being used for action films. Thanks, I've already said all that.

You call that "Infanti(li?)sation of adults", well then adults are being infantilized since the Illiad, i.e. since fiction and fantasy exist. Just because a movie is accessible for children does not mean it isn't supposed to be enjoyed by an adult.
No, I didn't say that sci-fi and/or fantasy are for children. Neither did I say adults shouldn't/can't enjoy children's entertainment. This is only one element of what I think of as the infantilisation of adults, but in this instance what I mean is that this is sold to adults as if it's for them. Whereas before it was/would've been seen as a kids film.

I remember seeing The Care Bears Movie in 1986 and my abiding memory from that experience (other than the gift pack we were each given. That was the first time I'd been to the cinema and been given anything) was that I was the odd one out. Everyone else in the queue (and you all queued up outside the doors back then. No foyer or games area to be in) was either a small child or the accompanying adult(s). I was 13 years old and I seemed to be at least half the age of the adults or about twice the age of the kids.

I don't know this, but if the same thing played out now, my guess is that the 13 year old HK wouldn't be the odd one out. It might still be mainly kids and parents for a Care Bears film, but I still don't think I'd be the only 'other'. Personally, I can think of two women off the top of my head who may well be in that line and, were it My Little Pony, I'm sure it'd be a hell of a lot more.

I have an hypothesis that my generation looked at our parents and their refrain of "Hope I die before I get old" and realised that that was all well and good but a) You didn't want to die and, b) If you didn't, then you got old. I feel we got around this by just not growing up. We'll get old, but we won't grow up and if we don't grow up then we get to avoid what our parents wanted to avoid by dying, which is being a grown up and having responsibilities.

Seeking films by director instead of actor is the way of the film buff. The way of the casual film watcher is to seek movies by the actor or theme or franchise. This applies to all eras and countries, not just the present.
Again, this is what I said/meant. We may care/think about directors/producers/writers/etc, but the vast majority of the cinema going public want to know who's in it and what's it about.

That was so much longer than I was expecting. Sorry about that.



I don't know this, but if the same thing played out now, my guess is that the 13 year old HK wouldn't be the odd one out. It might still be mainly kids and parents for a Care Bears film, but I still don't think I'd be the only 'other'. Personally, I can think of two women off the top of my head who may well be in that line and, were it My Little Pony, I'm sure it'd be a hell of a lot more.
Well, when I went to watch How to Train Your Dragon 2 I saw mostly 7 year old kids and their parents. Me and my sister were perhaps the only ones in their 20's there (without a kid). Though that was in Brazil, in the US I think the general public is more "open minded' for animation (non-foreign).

I have an hypothesis that my generation looked at our parents and their refrain of "Hope I die before I get old" and realised that that was all well and good but a) You didn't want to die and, b) If you didn't, then you got old. I feel we got around this by just not growing up. We'll get old, but we won't grow up and if we don't grow up then we get to avoid what our parents wanted to avoid by dying, which is being a grown up and having responsibilities.
It's true that people today become mature adults at slower rate, that many 20 year old persons are just big kids. I notice that this is more characteristic of the US than in Brazil, though 20 year old people from the Brazilian upper classes tend to be less mature than 20 year olds from the lower classes.

My grandfather started to work when he was 13 and was supporting his family at that point, while he said he worked 16 hours a day when he was a teenager. While I became financially independent from my parents after finishing college, at the age of 22. And I was comparatively mature for my age compared to most Brazilians from the upper classes.

Again, this is what I said/meant. We may care/think about directors/producers/writers/etc, but the vast majority of the cinema going public want to know who's in it and what's it about/
Indeed.

That was so much longer than I was expecting. Sorry about that.
I like reading.



Yes manga is different, but from a mainstream pov, it's all the same area. I could've included Cosplay, RPG's (both computer and board) or even Japanese culture itself. My point wasn't to compare those things, but to say that they're all easily accessible and widely available now thanks to the internet and that an interest in one can easily lead to the acknowledgement of another. So, for example, you might only be interested in anime. But then you're talking to someone on a website about a film and they mention a convention they're going to. Something you didn't know existed. It sounds like something you'd enjoy, so you go to a convention and discover cosplay. Previously these sorts of things were outside the mainstream and tucked away. There were fan clubs or fanzines, small local groups, but they were few and fair between and they were often the sort of thing which you stopped when you became an adult/grew up and had responsibilities. Now it's so easy and quick to find like-minded individuals and interact with them and, thanks to people sharing digitally, it can happen so much quicker and if it's not free, then it's usually cheap, which makes it easier to spread because there's little/no risk. All of this increases the pace at which these things happen.
True. When I was a kid I read magazines of the Brazilian anime fandom (who were mostly ranting that local TV stations don't air it), but it was thanks to the internet, most specifically the IMDB top 250 list, that I discovered Miyazaki. It was thanks to recommendations and comments in anime forums that I watched PMMM and it was thanks to film critics blogs that I watched a huge amount of European film.

Without access to the internet I believe I would never be an animation and manga fan or even know much about films beyond Brazilian and American ones. Or about science fiction literature, or about metal bands beyond the mainstream ones. The internet is the greatest invention of the last 60 years or so.



When they stop making money, which they won't, especially with online fan forums. The outpouring of support for so many of these "secondary" comics (Guardians Of the Galaxy, Deadpool, Antman, etc.) is generating enough of a buzz to make the studios money hand over fist.

Here's a review/drinking game for Guardians Of The Galaxy, courtesy of Reel Wasted:

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The time frames we are talking about you should be more concerned about the death of movies as a relevant artform. The last movie to play in the last cinema will probably be a superhero flick. Maybe not a DC or Marvel comics film, but a superhero film of some description. It is an amazing genre that combines our love of exceptional people and unworldly visuals, can be endlessly combined with other genres for freshness, and has decades worth of proven stories to mine.

Doomsayers and haters claim viewers will get sick of seeing the same thing. Though I recognise the overused tropes I don't see much at Fox or Marvel to imply stagnancy. I see mixing of genres, creative directors, exploration of new characters etc. They don't just stick with what works and mine it dry (except Hugh Jackman, Spiderman, and third-act destruction coming from the sky). How much similarity is there between GotG, DoFP and The Winter Soldier for people to get sick of?

This is because Superhero films have huge momentum now and we can see no signs of even the beginnings of their decline. Age of Ultron will probably be one of the top three grossing movies of all time. Is that evidence of a "bubble burst"? They have a vast future ahead of them. Marvel has barely stopped relying on their most popular characters. No one has even yet created an original superhero concept for film. The exploration of mixing genres with superheroes has only just started. We have only recently developed the special effects that do superheros justice, and they are always getting better. If you don't like superheroes, best get over it, because it's only just begun.

People will stop watching superhero movies because they are too busy playing videogames, not because they're watching other movies.