Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Superhero movies are ruining modern film

Modern cinema is flooded with release after release of superhero movies, almost every month we have a new movie featuring a one dimensional hero who obviously will prevail in the end. The highest grossing movie of the year thus far has been Captain America 3, with Deadpool in second place. People come out in packs to waste their money watching superhero films, which I feel are the ultimate modern day cash grab. These are movies not meant to be quality cinematic pieces, these are meant simply to make as much money as possible. These movies wouldn't even be so bad if they weren't so goddamn predictable, we all know the hero will win in the end, its not like Captain America is going to get shot in the head in some twist ending, we all know he will ride off into the sunset victorious yet again. One of the biggest things I love in cinema are the dark twists, the unhappy endings. Scarface would not have been as good if he got away, one of my favorites The Departed would not have been the same if not for the last 10 minutes when main characters were getting their heads blown off left and right. The movie studios know people are going to waste their money watching these superhero films, so they pump millions and millions of dollars into making them, which results in huge production budgets just to watch something as pointless as Captain America having more buildings to destroy for the sake of the battle looking bigger. Between the dedicated fan boys who start to rave about the next film off of a 10 second clip they waited until the credits ended to see, and children who drag their parents to see these films with them, they have a pretty dedicated fan base. I just feel as if cinema is meant to do more than this. The ultimate end of anything is making money, that I wont argue, but I feel as if with superhero movies they have discovered a cash cow that can be continuously milked, with sequel after prequel after spin-off after a shit ton of merchandise and so on and so forth. Cinema is being shamelessly milked for all its worth.

I believe cinema to be an art form, it is more than just watching Spider-Man shoot thugs with webs for the 3rd time (they are actually rebooting Spider-Man for a 3rd series). In fact, these days I prefer television shows to cinema, as the long term format of the medium allows for greater character development, exploration, and emotional investment. It's much more upsetting when a character you knew for 3 seasons meets his gritty end as opposed to someone you've been watching for 70 minutes. Completely unrelated, I saw an article recently where people were outraged over an X-Men poster featuring Mystique being choked by the main villain in the film. They were outraged because they said this poster promotes violence against women. As if some idiot is going to see the advertisement and go home and choke his wife as a result of this poster. The poster is showing two of the main characters fighting, its what happens in these types of movies. I am not saying violence towards women is acceptable in any form at all, all I think is that these people were trying to make a shit storm out of nothing. Maybe for the next film they can just have them menacingly stare each other down or some shit like that, I don't know.

And by the way, I saw Captain America 3 and it was just a bunch of superheros punching the shit out of each other on screen for 2 and a half hours. But it's the highest grossing film of the year and you can bet your ass next summer there will be a new one.

3 comments:

  1. I completely agree that cinema is an art form and it's currently being exploited. Very sad! With Finding Dory opening at record sales...I can only imagine how many anthropomorphic fish we'll be seeing in the coming years!

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  2. The reason that superhero films are doing so well is because of the fans that have grown up reading the comic books and are finally seeing there heroes on the big screen.

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  3. The reason that superhero films are doing so well is because of the fans that have grown up reading the comic books and are finally seeing there heroes on the big screen.

    ReplyDelete