The Decade of the Superhero Film

Each decade has a certain type of film that it’s remembered for. The eighties had family films like Back to the Future, Ghostbusters and the last two Star Wars films. The nineties had action films like Con Air, The Rock and Goldeneye mixed with Disney classics The Lion King and Toy Story. For the noughties it can only be superhero films.

Bryan Singer kicked the decade off with X-Men (***), a solid if not spectacular blockbuster which he would follow-up with a vastly improved classic of a sequel in 2003 (*****). The crime against humanity that is Brett Ratner took control of the third and well, the soon-to-be-typed score will say it all (*).

Superman returned in Superman Returns (**) with Singer again at the helm. It wasn’t the commercial or critical hit Warner Bros was looking for so a reboot of the franchise has been talked about ever since and will eventually hit our screens with Christopher Nolan taking up the role of advisor to whoever eventually directs.

Nolan provided one of the two biggest superhero franchises of the noughties. Batman Begins (****) was a successful reboot and a great superhero film despite feeling a little clichéd upon repeat viewings. Like Singer he followed it up with a far superior sequel in The Dark Knight (*****) which is undoubtedly the biggest summer blockbuster of the whole decade raking in over $1 billion. It was a comic book film for the masses, helped no-end by the Oscar-winning performance from the late Heath Ledger. The Joker of that film will sit alongside Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader and Biff as one of the greatest film villains.

The other major franchise was Sam Raimi’s Spiderman films. The first (***) was everything it needed to be, helped no end by a great Willem Dafoe performance as Spidey’s nemesis Green Goblin. A performance that even managed to override the awful Goblin costume made for the film. The sequel, once again, was an amazing improvement (****) and was aided by another fantastic villain, this time Doctor Octopus as played by Alfred Molina. However the third was a cluster-fuck (*) and it was a great example of why studios should fund and not run their films. They wanted Venom, Raimi did not. The result was awful.

Towards the end of decade Marvel decided to take matters into their own hands and their film studio gave us its first offering. The Robert Downey Jr Show (feat. Ironman) (****) was a great comeback for the charming actor who every geek has a crush on and a great film to boot, doing very well in the summer of 2008 and resulting in a sequel earlier this year (***).

Of course I can’t mention superhero comics without looking at their alter-ego, graphic novels. Zack Snyder is the guy to look at first. His first was the highly-stylised 300 (**) and enjoyable action film with more homoerotic undertones than Top Gun. He followed that up by making the film adaptation of what many agree is the greatest graphic novel of all time.

Alan Moore’s Watchmen is a classic, a classic that I hold in very high esteem and read every year. For that very reason I haven’t seen the film though I understand that it’s an adaptation that’s almost too faithful despite the altered climax. Unfortunately for Snyder he was only ever in a lose-lose situation with that film, due to the nature of the geeks whose favourite comic he’d decided to adapt.

There have been plenty more I’ve missed and there will be plenty more to come. Marvel are kings of the comic book films right now after two successful Ironman flicks but other studios are fighting back. Christopher Nolan will bring us the third Batman flick very soon as well as working on the already-mentioned Superman reboot. Elsewhere Columbia Pictures are working on their Spiderman reboot while DC begins work on Green Lantern which gives us the tantalising prospect of Martin Campbell directing the always-awesome Ryan Reynolds.

The Avengers Assemble - The cast and director at Comic Con

At Comic Con this week they showed off Thor and Captain America for the first time as well as bringing together the cast and director of their superhero ensemble behemoth, The Avengers. It’s what geek dreams are made of. Robert Downey Jr and Samuel L Jackson will lead the charge, with Chris Evans’ Captain America, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Jeremy Renner (of Hurt Locker fame’s) Hawkeye, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow and Mark Ruffalo taking over from Edward Norton as The Hulk. All of them under the watchful eye of geek-favourite, director Joss Whedon.

Eventually every super hero will have had his day at least, maybe twice. At this stage reboots will become increasingly popular but that, despite what I said in my post about sequels, may not be a bad thing. The difference between rebooting films like Karate Kid or Nightmare on Elm Street and this is the wealth of possibilities each superhero has. There are so many characters, so many stories to take inspiration from that reboots might well be a good thing for these types of films. But as always, time will tell.

And here is the unplanned part 2 of my article!