SUPERMAN AIN'T SAVIN' SHIT!
I remember how excited I got when I went to the cinema to
watch Batman Returns. I was finally old enough to see Batman on the big screen.
I didn’t know who Tim Burton was at the time; I was just excited to see
Beetlejuice dressed up as my favourite superhero. This excitement for comic
book movies has died a slow death for me over the past few years. Sure, I
rushed to book tickets when the Nolan Batman movies were released. Sure, I
stared with childlike wonderment at the screen when I saw a teenage boy
discover he had the powers of a spider. I watched the Iron Man trailer more
times than I can count but now, after a plethora of caped heroes with perfect
jawlines and spandex clad abs, I am bored. I find myself watching the films
just to see what happens next in what can only be described as a soap opera
with a billion dollar production company behind it. I’m not particularly
excited, just curious…and I find out every day that I am not alone in my
thinking.
The market is saturated. Fatigue has set in. There are too
many of these films, just like there were too many horror movies in the 80’s,
too many teen flicks in the 90’s and too many dance movies in the 2000’s. Those
genres eventually got to a point where the production companies realised that
the time had come to move on and a lot of those films went down as cult
classics…no matter how terrible some of them were. I fear that the Marvel and
DC money-printing machines have no idea that the end is in sight and will
continue on this route until they have destroyed the memory of all the
superheroes I love so dearly. Eventually, it will all become one huge joke and
(hopefully not) the actual medium these comic books were intended for, will die
out with the last die-hard fans who still stand in line at the comic book store
for the latest graphic novel. The art is gone and all that remains is a price
tag attached to a marketing tool to sell more merchandise.
Remakes, reboots, comic book adaptations with sequel after
sequel after sequel. Where are the writers? Where is the art of storytelling
that I am obsessed with? Where has the creativity gone? Give us a Pulp Fiction.
Give us a Forrest Gump. Give us a Back To The Future. Give us a Donnie Darko.
Fuck, at this point I long for a Police Academy. I don’t want remakes or copies
of those films, I just want the type of creativity that went into creating
those stories that made me memorise every line and quote them with excitement.
Hopefully, we will get to a point where only one or two big
blockbuster superhero films are released a year and the rest of Hollywood’s
time and money will go into developing original ideas that finally give us
value for the time and money we spend on supporting them.
That is all.
Ramz
