Marvel and DC both have rosters of heroes (and heroines) numbering in the hundreds, if not thousands. With the success of Iron Man and Batman, and with all the movies on deck from both companies, including the Flash, Green Lantern, and virtually all of the Avengers, you might wonder why more characters haven’t been given their own chance to shine on the big screen. Certainly, the hard realities of filmmaking must intrude at some point; just look how long long it took to make Superman Returns. There’s another factor to consider, though: the mistrust Hollywood has for the superhero genre.
It’s easy to understand why movie studios would be wary. Of the dozens of superhero movies that have been released in the last few decades, only a handful have proven successful to any degree. On the other hand, only a handful of the main characters portrayed in those films could be considered true superheroes. It takes more than a costume, superpowers, and an easily identified nemesis to fix your character into the genre. Many of the most well-known heroes from both Marvel and DC don’t even fit those few criteria. That hasn’t stopped Hollywood from trying to cram every comic book character they are handed into that mold. Even when they have a genuine superhero, there’s no guarantee they’ll know what to do with him; or her; or them.
The best example, perhaps, is the Incredible Hulk. Played for years on television by Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno as the dual sides of one of Marvel’s most tragic figures, the character of the Hulk was rarely portrayed as a “superhero”. The villains of the show were usually generic lowlifes and thugs, with nothing that could be said to classify them as “supervillains”. The long story arc of the series, culminating in the TV-movie special “The Death of the Incredible Hulk” was one of an accidental crusader at best, an itinerant do-gooder who couldn’t settle anywhere. Steering clear of all the conventions of the genre helped create a much more sympathetic character, in both the vagabond doctor and the vicious monster. Audiences grew to love both sides of the tragic hero, and they didn’t need a showdown with the Abomination for that to happen. Despite the lack of (almost) anything resembling the comics in the highly popular TV series, both recent Hulk movies have attempted to fit him back into the superhero mold, giving him showdowns with supervillains and even the U.S. Army. We can only guess, at this point, how his character will fare in next year’s Avengers movie.
Another example of a superhero that isn’t is Batman, the Caped Crusader. It’s not the lack of superpowers that bars him from qualifying, but rather the nature of his work. He’s a detective who uses forensics and deduction to capture criminals (albeit strangely-costumed ones). In Batman, the first Michael Keaton movie, he spent as much time investigating and unraveling the Joker’s schemes as he did directly confronting him; the same was true in The Dark Knight, and in the 1960′s TV series with Adam West. The franchise has only floundered when it has moved away from this dynamic, that of balancing crime-solving with crime-fighting. Despite all the gadgets, themed villains, and fight scenes, Batman is best-loved not when he’s “dark and gritty”, but when he’s filling the role of “the world’s greatest detective”.
There are plenty of other examples of when movies have handled comic book characters well, and when they’ve handled them poorly. Looking at it through the lens of placing characters in the correct genres helps identify most of the real problems with those movies. Jonah Hex, as we’ve discussed before, would have been much better if it had been treated as a straightforward Western movie. A lot of the disappointment with 2009′s Watchmen movie is that audiences came expecting a superhero movie but got something else (which is how the series was always intended). Looking ahead to this summer, it looks as though the new Captain America movie is shaping into quite the period war movie, and that can only help. Comics were never meant to present us with only one type of hero; there have been detective stories, romances, adventures, comedies, and war stories in the pages of Marvel, DC, and many other comics. There’s no reason to think they can’t be treated as such on the screen as well as on the page.
Here is a list of some “superheroes” from both Marvel and DC that shouldn’t be treated as such when and if they receive their own movies. Some of these, we will write about in greater lengths in the months ahead:
WONDER WOMAN - No one doubts that the Amazon Princess fits the definition of superhero(ine), but that doesn’t mean her movie should be written as one. Like Batman and the Incredible Hulk, she had her own TV series, and in it she proved that she could fight for truth, justice, and everything else in a more “standard” way. A Wonder Woman movie should include a mix of war, espionage, and diplomacy, presenting challenges to Princess Diana in each of her roles as a warrior and ambassador for her people to the outside world. The themes of war and diplomacy are certainly topical ones in any age and should be handled carefully; even when something isn’t intended as a metaphor for real life events (and people), that won’t necessarily stop a large number of people from believing that it is. No one wants an icon like Wonder Woman reduced to “taking sides” in a global conflict; but she can still be an icon, an ideal for our time.
AQUAMAN – Many have said that Aquaman, despite being one of the oldest and most easily recognized of the DC heroes, is not a top-tier hero, or even a second-tier hero. When it comes to fighting villains on land, they are correct. However, Aquaman isn’t meant to be a land-based hero, but a sea-based one; and in a world that is seventy-percent ocean, his power is greater, relatively speaking, than most land-based heroes. Aquaman’s “origin story” isn’t that of a typical superhero. His quest isn’t to fight injustice or protect the helpless (though he may do those things anyway); it’s to return to his home in Atlantis, from which he was exiled and of which he is the rightful heir. We’ve seen and heard this story told since before the days of King Arthur, and it’s one that other superhero movies are already utilizing (see Thor). To set such a story undersea could be quite the new angle.
POWER PACK - Not every movie needs to be for adults. Children watch movies, too, and the Children/YA Fantasy Adventure genre is certainly growing. First published back in the mid 80s and retaining a cult following to this day, Marvel’s Power Pack told the story of the Power children, the pre-teen offspring of a scientist couple who saved the universe from reptilian aliens, gaining amazing powers in the process. Despite the cutesy-sounding premise, the series took itself quite seriously, with the Power kids more often than not having adventures that would have tested the best and brightest of Marvel’s adult heroes. Obviously, Pixar would be the prime choice to bring this film off, but a live action version could work as well as long as Disney treats the characters with respect.
THE GREAT LAKES AVENGERS – Marvel Studios has been foreshadowing an Avengers film since the first Iron Man movie came out a few years back. But there’s been several teams to bear that moniker over the years, including the hard-luck heroes of America’s mid-west. Mister Immortal (his power: He can die! But, he’ll eventually come back), Flatman (powers: He’s flat! And yes, he’s often confused with Reed Richard), Big Bertha (she’s a super-model who can become super-strong when she overeats; no, really), Doorman (he can create portals in things; he’s just not very good at it), and the sublime Squirrel Girl (has the powers of a squirrel, and an uncanny rapport with all squirrels) have been trying to save the world for years. And sometimes, just sometimes … they manage to pull it off. Everyone loves the underdog hero; that’s why Spider-Man is so popular. And the GLA manage to make Spidey look blessed by angels. This wouldn’t be an underdog superhero movie so much as it would be a tragic comedy (tragicomedy?).
DAMAGE CONTROL - Ever wonder how one week, a giant robot can rampage through New York City, the Lava Men can break through the turf of Central Park, and the Dread Dormammu can rain hellfire and demons from the skies above onto Times Square … but by the next week, everything’s back to normal? Well, Marvel Earth has a little company called Damage Control. They clean up after every hero and villain slugfest, every alien invasion, every time a giant mutation from the ocean’s deep comes to the surface and wrecks havoc “just to feel something”. While chronically over-worked, they’re also one of the most lucrative businesses in the world. Done right, this could be the next Ghostbusters. One of the things that’s made the Marvel movies so popular is their willingness to hang lamp-shades and indulge in self aware humor. We’re betting an entire film of such material just might be a hit in the comedy genre.
AGENTS OF ATLAS – Before the Avengers, there were the Avengers (no, we don’t mean John Steed and Emma Peel). Back in the 1950s, Marvel was mostly a monster comic company. And it wasn’t even called Marvel, it was called Atlas. They did have a few oddball characters who might vaguely be considered heroic. There was Marvel Boy, the super-hero from Uranus. There was Venus, the goddess of love. There was Jimmy Woo, secret agent (a very rare case where an Asian American was shown as heroic). During the 1970s, someone wrote a story where these and other 1950s-era Marvel characters formed a mighty team of Avengers, some years before the actual Avengers were around. But the story ended with the heroes being forced to disband, the claim being put forth that the world was not yet ready for such a combination.
While only a one-shot, the idea refused to ever really die. A few years ago, writer Jeff Parker brought the team back in the critically acclaimed Agents of Atlas graphic novel, in which a rejuvenated, amnesiac Jimmy Woo must reunite with his band of long-forgotten heroes to save the world from a mysterious organization so vast, so powerful that only the name of the god who supports the World on his shoulders seems a suitable moniker: The Atlas Foundation. And each member of the team conforms to one of the great pulp adventurer archetypes: a Secret Agent; a Spaceman; a Mermaid; a Robot; a Goddess; and an Immortal Talking Gorilla. Together, the Agents can and do go off on bizarre adventures into realms of weirdness that few Marvel heroes can equal. Give it to a visionary director, who can combine weird science whimsy and gut-wrenching peril with genuine emotional involvement. So, really, we want to give this to Spielberg as he was thirty years ago, but I’m sure a suitable substitution can be found.
As you can see, there are many different paths Marvel and DC could take and have taken with their characters. We don’t need every comic book character who makes it to the big screen to save the day; sometimes, it’s enough that they make us laugh, or even cry. We don’t need a showdown between Wolverine and Sabretooth to make us cheer; those fights help, but they’re not what make the movies great. Fiction can entertain and enlighten us in so many ways, and getting caught up in the questions like “who’s the archnemesis” or “what kind of powers does everyone have” keeps us from seeing the types of movies we could. Comics have such a rich and diverse array of genres, and, if anything, that is what should make it onto the big screen.
- Stephen Monteith and John Ellis contributed to this article
