When do you think superhero films will die?

More seriously, though, I do think it might be peaking. Not because people aren't going to keep being really interested, but because they're particularly invested in these characters and they're obviously going to have to go through a lot of narrative upheaval soon, and it's going to be tough for as many people to buy right back in to a new phase/team, even with a lot of holdovers.

The other thing that works for superheroes stories is streaming sites, where they can be presented in different ways in terms of story or approach. For example: Legion was a bit unconventional in subject matter and its presentation and it got an audience. In fact unconventional plots or treatment will be key now. We saw that in Spiderverse movie, as well.

There are more avenues for superhero stories to branch out in. So, they won't simply rely on the box office.

Actually, I do not regard characters like Thor, Hellboy and the ones in Guardians of the Galaxy as "superheroes", they are more like "general" fantasy characters: They feel more like the Orcs in Warcraft rather than like "Batman".

To me Marvel Cinematic Universe's movies feel more like fantasy movies, they have a similar taste to the modern crop of immersive open world action-adventure videogames. They are not "superhero" movies like Superman, Spider Man and Batman movies were but something else. I guess that Captain Marvel feels more like a traditional superhero.

I guess that Avenger's Endgame will see the peak popularity of this specific comic book movie genre, it might gross like 2.5 billion and will never be equalled by a superhero movie again. From this point on it will decline and other blockbuster genres will rise (kinda like the rise and fall of Western, Pirate movies or Star Wars space opera stuff).

I know a lot of people say the general public didn't know the characters before the movies, but it's really not true. The general public didn't know the storylines from the comics. Characters like Spidey, Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man and even the X-Men (to a lesser degree) have been in cartoons and video games, toys and on clothes for some time.

Whether you were impressed with the Reeve Superman films probably depends on when you saw them. As a kid watching the first two in the late 70s and early 80s, I was impressed. On one hand, it doesn't seem fair to compare their special effects to those of today's films. On the other hand, I remember thinking while watching "Justice League," that I often didn't believe the characters were actually where they were. The backgrounds seemed fake. Perhaps I wouldn't have thought that as a kid, though. Any opinions on that?

It is time to die, it will die

Honestly, I think it's the perfect formula. I don't think they'll ever die. It's kinda like asking, "when will the action genre die?"

I personally knew the stories of X-Men, Batman, Superman, Hulk, and Spider Man's stories before the movies came out from watching the cartoons.

I heard about characters like Flash, Aquaman, Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor but to me, they were very underground and felt to me more like characters you were supposed to mock. Kinda like Space Ghost and Aqua Teen Hunger Force type of characters. While I had never heard of Captain Marvel, Antman, Wasp, Guardian of the Galaxy before the movies came out.

The Marvel movies have established the tradition of making huge blockbusters out of relatively mocked or unknown characters. Aquaman's hit movie now is the same for DC. I think that is a nice development since it shows people are being able to take seriously something that previously they were unable to emphasize with and so had to mock.

Man, listening to people discuss superhero movies who never read comic books is like listening to people discuss religious movies who never read the Bible (or Torah, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, etc.)

Addendum: this is by no means a put down - it's just a different perspective from hearing discussions among those who are familiar with the "original" source material in its original form.

If it takes that kind of reasoning then OK, no problem. I'm sure people will. Or, maybe a few dr's or lawyers or penny stocks (lol) financed the more enjoyable film experience. That more enjoyable experience being escape and transcendence rather than being clubbed over the head with transparent manipulation. I guess I have more respect for the sneakier hustle than I do the obvious one.

I've been thinking lately that the collapse of cinema as we know it will go hand in hand with the collapse of the Superhero movie. What I mean is where are those big box office returns gonna come from, kids movies only? Nolan/Cameron films?

We already are seeing and will continue to see the merging of cinema/TV/streaming to a point where we will get new releases direct to our homes.

We are also at the point of seeing too many reboots/regurgitation of already told stories with far too little time in between, even mildly successful franchises like Fantastic 4 have a failed reboot, the excellent X-Men movies have even come full circle back to basically a remake of Last Stand. Several Spiderman's in 12 years? Batman about to follow suit.

The major stress test will be what happens post Avengers Endgame.

Or maybe dummies will keep paying $$$ for this ****.

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You got my ear, I'd like to hear your perspective as a comic book guy on the current crop of superhero films. BTW are we calling any movie based on comic book characters superhero films? I'm not, I don't consider V for Vendatta to be anywhere near the same league as Wonder Woman or the current crop of superhero films.

I repped you, but I have no idea what you just said but it sounded good

Agreed...and I'll add: Netflix will be a huge player in new releases in the coming years. Especially when Disney launches it's own streaming service and a huge number of titles under Disney's control are pulled from Netflix.

Sadly, I'm not all that familiar with the more recent films - I only got up to "Civil War" in the Avengers franchise - I realize it was part of the Captain America series, but it was an Avengers movie. (I'd really like to see them all someday.)

A lot of comic-based movies are not superhero films (such as Road to Perdition).

Then there's superhero films vs the relatively newer superhero team movies (which require some very different dynamics).

So, when you don't consider "V" in the same league as Wonder Woman, are you saying V was that much better or that much worse?

I always wonder what viewers of Watchmen (another story written by Alan Moore - author of "V") was like as a cinematic experience for those who had no knowledge of the comics? The comic itself was an insider's nod to comic fans as the characters were all thinly veiled copies of characters from a company called Charlton that had been acquired by DC and turned into a story overlaid with political / social commentary in a reality like ours but where masked mystery men & superheroes were real. And then the movie, except for a couple major changes, ran like a frame by frame copy of the comic - which in and of itself was written and drawn more like a movie storyboard than the typical comic. I knew all this going in, so I find the concept intriguing what someone thought of the movie who'd never seen the comic. Did it come off as unique, an extrapolation of what most people thought comics were like, or just as something bizarre?

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V was much, much better. We've talked about that movie before. I thought it was ground breaking in it's treatment of the subject matter, and it's beautifully written syntax and it's deeply felt study of humanistic responses to conditioning.

I kinda liked Wonder Woman except for the superhero fighting scenes (go figure), which is why I earlier compared Super Hero films to first person video games. Oh, I really liked Road to Perdition too.

Usually, people use the words "comic book movie" and "based on a graphic novel" to distinguish between superhero movies and movies that are adapted from "graphic novels". V is a movie based on a graphic novel while Amazing Spider Man is a "comic book movie".

There are, actually, many more movies based on non-superhero comics than movies based on superhero comics if you take into account all the Asian movies based on manga like Oldboy. In fact, there are even more live action movies based on manga than anime movies: Japan makes like 200 movies adapted from manga per year.

I watched the movie and read the comic years later. I noticed how faithful the movie was to the comic. Overall, Watchmen, the movie, is still is my favorite superhero movie and Watchmen, the comic, is my favorite English language-original graphic novels. I thought Watchmen, the movie, was very powerful and I even (heretically) think that some of the changes they made from the comic actually improved it over the comic.

My favorite comic book movies in the broad sense are, of course, Miyazaki's movies that were adapted from graphic novels (Nausicaa and Porco Rosso).

Whew! For a minute there I thought you might be saying that V didn't compare to Wonder Woman! I know V doesn't get a lot of love on this board, but I thought it was a great movie - I'm probably due to read the comic again as I only read it once back in college in the 80's (and don't think I appreciated it as much as I might now).

Yes - so many of the superhero movies just look like video games in the action scenes and fairly undecipherable ones at that - WW was a good example of that (along with the clips I've seen from Justice League and several others).

I'd agree - especially about the conclusion of Watchmen.
I'm usually a stickler for sticking to the source material, but having Dr. Manhattan be the "false flag" just made so much sense in the movie (as opposed to the alien octopus) it makes me wonder why Moore didn't think of it for the series. I usually don't like when creators try to tie so much of a story back into itself (like having every villain be tied into a hero's origin), but in this case it worked better with the story and had a lot more irony than Ozymandias' "alien" conspiracy from the comics.

(Still wonder about why they changed Rorschach's killing of the child-killer - except maybe because in the comics, his act of justice was very similar to a scene in the original Mad Max movie?)

I didn't mind the changes in V because it seemed the film makers wanted to make it an allegory for a post 9/11 world - so I felt those changes worked for that purpose (much like the update to Iron Man's origin - making his kidnappers middle eastern terrorists of the 21st century as opposed to the Viet Cong of the 60's). Still, V probably could have worked just as well if it stuck to the source material - it just would have been a different type of allegory.

This does clearly feel different to the likes of Superman, Batman and Spiderman in the past were the popularity of the films seemed tied more into the existing popularity of the characters. If anything these days I would say that such characters seem to have a more limited appeal by themselves as DC have had several disappointing films at the box office featuring big names.

Again it does feel to me that the appeal of Marvel(and more recently DC) is more creating a certain fantasy world and linking it into rising star actors. I mean I'm far from an expert on Marvel Comics but my impression is that a lot of these characters are not wholey "off the page" but rather have a strong mix of the actors persona. I don't think Marvel could just recast Ironman and expect to have anything like the same appeal as Downey Jnr playing the character.

It seems to me that really there are two ways we could see the end of the "Marvel era", either we see the decline of that specific franchise in favour of another or we see the decline of franchise film making generally. Not sure the latter is going to happen anytime soon and the former there doesn't seem like an obvious candidate, Starwars had the potential but I think they've managed to rather poison the well there annoying large sections of the fanbase.

I read this about 3 or 4 times and



I was saying the popcorn movies always pay for the cheese and wine movies. Yet it seems popcorn movies get shht on by the cheese and wine crowd, even though the popcorn movie is what keeps the cheese and wine lights on.