But I thought it was actually a very good idea for a discussion, so...yeah, I'm doing it now!
So, for those of you who have somehow missed this trend, let's give a quick recap of when superhero films started to be a big thing. Superhero films have actually been around since the comic industry has been around, technically, as some of the first superhero films were film serials (basically, short TV programmes). One of the first, Mandrake the Magician, actually came out in 1939, but Batman, Captain America and Superman had their own serials made in 1943, 1944 and 1948, respectively. However, as Sunday serials went into decline on TV and the comic books industry having to respond to accusations of their graphic crime and horror stories encouraging juvenile delinquency (during which prosecutors entered evidence involving a cover having a decapitated head that was claimed to have been published, but, in truth, had actually been edited already to remove some of the elements that had been shown on the version in the court), the idea of comic book films became less popular, with only Adventures of Superman (a TV show that had episodes compiled together for theatrical release) and Batman (which was basically like the first three Pokémon films in that it was basically a feature length episode of the show, with a larger budget to match) making any major impact. There was a Japanese superhero film in 1966 called Ogon Bat based on the 1930s superhero of the same name, but there wasn't really any major superhero stuff of note between 1952 and 1978.
What changed that? Superman.
Well, technically, it was Star Wars that encouraged the return of superhero films, as it was the surge of interest coming from that which encouraged studios to take a chance on superhero films again. However, Superman was the first really high profile superhero movie (despite having gone into production prior to the release of Star Wars: in fact, the film started being filmed about two months before Star Wars came out, only taking so long to be released because it was being filmed alongside Superman II, with the latter only being put on hold when it was about 75% of the way through filming) and certainly laid down the groundwork for what we would recognize as a superhero film today: taking itself as seriously as it could while still recognizing that it's not based on reality and can, as such, bend the rules a bit on what is realistic for the sake of telling an enjoyable story. While one could argue that superhero films have moved beyond what Superman did nowadays, it certainly was the superhero film that proved that superheroes could be big screen stars and later encouraged films to be made like Flash Gordon, Robocop, Swamp Thing, Conan the Barbarian and Supergirl throughout the 80s and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Phantom, Steel, Batman & Robin and Tank Girl throughout the 90s.
While most would point towards Batman & Robin (released in 1997) as the film which originally killed off the superhero genre, the honest truth is that the market was being over-saturated by superhero films and the failure of Batman & Robin happened to be the point when the general public finally had enough of them. That said, it wasn't the end of superhero films at all: in 1997 and 1998, two films were released based on comics by Marvel which would go on to spawn franchises, Men in Black (yep, that's really based on a comic!) and Blade, to say nothing of some lesser known superhero films like Steel, Spawn and Mystery Men (the first two from 1997, the last from 1999). That said, it can certainly be said that Batman & Robin highlighted many of the big problems that had started to form around superhero films at the time: they had become overly camp and impossible to be taken seriously, relying on effects to cover up the quality of the writing of the movies, which had gone NOTICEABLY downhill since the time of Superman.
However, there were really two films that brought the superhero film back to life (if you consider it to have died in the first place): X-Men (from 2000) and Spider-Man (from 2002), although you could argue that M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable (from 2000) also had a hand in reviving the superhero movie and certainly could be regarded as the precursor to the trend started by Batman Begins in some regards (although, if you want to be completely accurate, the first superhero film which deserves the honor of being the first dark, gritty and violent superhero film is actually 1994's The Crow). Probably predictably, the successes of these two (or three, if you're counting Unbreakable as a superhero film) films caused a new boom of superhero films, some of which were good (Hellboy springs to mind) and some of which...weren't (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Catwoman spring to mind). It wasn't really a revival of superhero films per se, but superhero films certainly weren't impossible to track down between the release of X-Men and The Dark Knight (indeed, I remember seeing the first Fantastic Four film in cinemas, which was WAY before I started to be really interested in comic book stuff!).
However, it was probably in 2008 that superhero films had their first major surprise for people in a LONG time (even considering Nolan's Batman films proving that superhero films could be dark and gritty and still be fantastic films which didn't require you to know anything about comics to enjoy them!), for it was in 2008 that Marvel started what would become the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the release of Iron Man. This might not sound like a big deal now, but remember, in 2008, the idea of a shared universe for superhero movies was something that NOBODY had tried before: superheroes were assumed to live in their own planes of existence separate from each other in their own movies and the idea of them teaming up together for films was something reserved only for fanfic writers. Nobody had thought of getting Spider-Man to team up with the Fantastic Four or the X-Men in a film together simply because nobody had any idea whether it would work or not (although, in fairness, there was also the logistics behind it all which meant it was unlikely to happen anyway: different companies own different rights to different Marvel properties, which made making them team up difficult at best and outright impossible at worst, and DC had basically only had success with Superman and Batman up until then, both at different enough times to make getting them to team up a very dumb idea). After the success of Iron Man...well, most of you reading this probably know what happened next. We had The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America in the lead up to 2012's Marvel's The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble if you live in the UK and Ireland) as phase 1 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers: Age of Ultron making up phase 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (with Ant-Man in July being the film closing off phase 2).
Now, some of you will have noticed the strong emphasis on Marvel's successes and will be thinking "Wait, what about DC?"
Well...there have been three failed attempts to create a DC Cinematic Universe, the first of which, surprisingly, dates back to 1998 (so yeah, DC technically were the first company trying to make a shared cinematic universe!). In the 90s, a plan was made to bring Superman back to the big screen in a film called Superman Lives and, as part of it, Michael Keaton was going to be brought in as Batman so that an attempt at starting up a shared cinematic universe could be made. The film spent a LONG time going back on forth on stuff before finally being cancelled, which is probably for the better, in all honesty: the plot for it, from what I've seen of it, looks like the film would have been even worse than Batman & Robin!
Also, Nicholas Cage was cast as Superman in this film and Will Smith was approached to be Superman when he dropped out. Let that sentence speak for itself...
Anyway, in the early 2000s, the idea continued on, with J. J. Abrams being hired to write a screenplay for a film named Batman vs. Superman. This film was later cancelled in order for Warner Bros. to focus on doing individual Superman and Batman films, which was definitely the right decision if you think about it, but, having glanced through the plot summery for this film, I have to say that I'm actually disappointed that this film wasn't made, because the plot is actually pretty interesting and makes their return, despite a long period of time when both weren't on the big screen, actually make some degree of sense.
Also, funny side note: one of the people who was approached to be Superman for this film? Christian Bale. Yep: Christian Bale could have been Superman as well as Batman (as he was being considered for the lead role of an adaption of Batman: Year One at the time as well)!
It would take until 2011 for the next attempt to make a shared cinematic universe to happen, and it started in the place that most wouldn't have expected it to, for it wasn't a Batman film or a Superman film that was going to be the starting point of a DC Cinematic Universe, but it was going to be through the success of Green Lantern that the next film, The Flash, would start off a shared cinematic universe. The failure of Green Lantern ended that plan very quickly, but, speaking as someone who found the film decent (not great, but not awful!), I have to say that it actually would have made some sense for Green Lantern to have started off the DC Cinematic Universe had it been successful. While the scale of the film arguably would have made later films feel less grand by comparison, the arrival of Parallax could have been used to explain why many human characters got superpowers, as they could have been involved in trying to create methods on Earth to counter a later attack by beings like Parallax, and would have explained the arrival of alien heroes like Superman and Martian Manhunter to Earth, as they could have come to Earth intending to help protect it from Parallax's attack only to arrive after the conflict had ended. There was potentially a very good idea there that, unfortunately, was never to become reality.
The current attempt at creating a DC Cinematic Universe was through 2013's Man of Steel, which is currently still going ahead. Now, I've still not watched Man of Steel, so I can't comment on the quality of it, but what I've seen of the upcoming plans for the DC Cinematic Universe indicates that DC is making a mad rush to ensure that it can catch up with Marvel, as it's making the next film be a crossover with Superman and Batman (who isn't the same Batman from Nolan's Batman films) and will feature Wonder Woman, Cyborg and Aquaman in the film, none of whom have had any live action appearances in films before now. I will be polite enough to reserve judgement for now, but I'll be honest, I don't see this attempt to start off a DC Cinematic Universe resulting in anything except for a bunch of films ranging from decent to awful in quality, because I can't imagine this having had any major thought behind it beyond "Marvel have their own cinematic universe? Let's make our own cinematic universe!"
Think all of THAT is confusing to keep track of? Well, you've got even more to keep track of, because I've still got the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Spider-Man franchises (it's technically defunct now, but I've got to talk about it to help give context on it all) to talk about and I've not even mentioned the Valiant Cinematic Universe which got announced a few months back, let alone started to talk about other superhero films from other companies and completely original superheroes who never started from comic books...
OK, I think I've actually rambled enough! You may start to notice why I asked that question in the title now: are we now having too many superhero films coming out? Is history doomed to repeat itself and are superhero films going to die off due to overexposure?
Well, it's really tough to say. On the one hand, superhero films never really died in the first place. Sure, Batman & Robin caused such a backlash against superhero films that it took a bit for superhero films to really make a proper comeback, but, considering Men in Black and Blade were technically superhero films, it wouldn't be right to say that superhero films were dead after the release of Batman & Robin. That said, the fact of the matter is that there are A LOT of superhero films coming up in 2016 (2015 is actually pretty quiet: the only two films coming up at the minute that are going to be of much notice to most people are Ant-Man and the Fantastic Four reboot!). At the time of writing, here are the confirmed films from all of the franchises I've mentioned thus far for 2016:
- Deadpool (February 2016)
- Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (March 2016)
- America: Civil War (May 2016)
- X-Men: Apocalypse (May 2016)
- Suicide Squad (August 2016)
- Gambit (October 2016)
- The Sinister Six (November 2016)
- Doctor Strange (November 2016)
Oh yeah, and, if you're think it's going to be better in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, then here's the confirmed films for those years as well:
2017
- Untitled Wolverine film (March 2017)
- Guardians of the Galaxy (May 2017)
- Untitled Spider-Man film (June 2017)
- Wonder Woman (June 2017)
- Fantastic Four sequel (June 2017)
- Thor: Ragnarok (November 2017)
- Justice League Part One (November 2017)
- X-Force (no confirmed date, but likely late 2017)
- Female-led Spider-Man spin-off film (no confirmed date, but likely 2017)
- Venom Carnage (no confirmed date, but likely 2017)
2018
- The Flash (March 2018)
- Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (May 2018)
- Black Panther (July 2018)
- Aquaman (July 2018)
- Captain Marvel (November 2018)
2019
- Shazam (April 2019)
- Avengers: Infinity War Part 2 (May 2019)
- Justice League Part Two (June 2019)
- Inhumans (July 2019)
- Cyborg (April 2020)
- Green Lantern (June 2020)
That sound was your wallet screaming in terror.
The big question that I've not answered, however, lies in the title of this article: do we have too many superhero films now?
As odd as this might sound in light of the last bits of information I've provided, I don't think we do. Sure, we have A LOT of superhero films scheduled to come out and the list is still going to get longer, but, on the other hand, there are a lot of comic book properties out there and, if all of them were to be made for the big screen, it would take many decades, if not centuries, to cover all of them. I'm not even talking of obscure titles here or characters most people don't want to remember, like the New Guardians, Black Cat or the Fixer: we've got comic book characters like Supergirl, the Teen Titans, Nightwing and Martian Manhunter which haven't been given a look into yet, comic book characters like Daredevil, Elektra and Ghost Rider who are in need of a more faithful take on their source material on the big screen, characters like Hellboy and Blade who have been off of the big screen for long enough that a new take on them might be appreciated and characters like Spawn and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen who...well, just need a film made about them that isn't as awful as their last outings were!
What IS indisputable, though, is that there's far too many of these films coming out over a small period of time and that, with so many of them either being sequels or have interconnected continuities with each other, it isn't entirely unreasonable to say that it's difficult for people new to everything to have to catch up with everything (I got introduced to the Marvel films before Avengers Assemble came out and even I'll admit that I found watching five films in a short period of time a bit daunting, so I can understand how apprehensive some people would be about watching eleven films in a small period of time, especially if you want to watch them all before seeing Ant-Man!) and people who aren't interested in superhero films will have a very valid reason for going "God, is that ANOTHER fucking superhero movie?" when the influx in them ramps up from next year. The over-saturation is a very valid concern, for it looks suspiciously similar to what happened between the late 70s and the late 90s in terms of what happened with the quantity of superhero films coming out (if anything, I'd argue it's worse now!) and, while there is a far greater appreciation for quality than there was back in that period of time, over-saturation of a quality product is still over-saturation, at the end of the day.
That all said, however, I do not think that the general public has completely tired of superhero films just yet and part of me is glad of that fact. It isn't exactly "cool" to be a geek these days (I think most people would still look at trading card games, role play games or tabletop wargames as being territory only for weird losers with no lives of their own...), but now, people are starting to get why geeks like the stuff they do thanks to stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy, The Dark Knight Rises, Big Hero 6, The LEGO Movie, Wreck-It Ralph and The Big Bang Theory being popular and involving stuff that is usually labelled as geeky and, as a result, there's more appreciation for just why these hobbies are so interesting. In a strange way, I almost feel proud to be a geek now, not because I'm now having the last laugh on those who looked down upon me for my hobbies in school, but because it's encouraging to see people finally starting to realise that all of the stories passed down about gamers, comic book fans, otaku and the like being strange people who are best avoided are just that: stories.
...Well, OK, maybe The Big Bang Theory isn't helping as much as it should do on that front, but points for effort, I guess, as it does encourage viewers to look up the stuff being talked about whenever they don't get the references and does show that geeks come in more shades than most works usually show!
I think, at the end of the day, the abundance of superhero movies is a valid concern to those not in the know about comic books, as there's only so many times you can see what looks like a person in a silly costume before it gets tiring to keep seeing it again and again, but, for comic book fans, this turn in the market is a nice change that they will continue to enjoy while it lasts. Do I expect the rivalry between the fans of all of the movie universes to ever die off? Not in the slightest: Marvel and DC, for instance, run on very different plans (even down to the receptions of their heroes by civilians in their respective universes) and those appeal to people for very different reasons. But those reasons don't stop the fact that, at the end of the day, the important thing isn't the rivalries, but it's the films that get made and the quality of them.
Whether DC understands that or not is up for debate, but that isn't important: so long as the films are enjoyable, I have no major issues with superhero films being popular! My wallet might disagree with me on that one, though...
The big question that I've not answered, however, lies in the title of this article: do we have too many superhero films now?
As odd as this might sound in light of the last bits of information I've provided, I don't think we do. Sure, we have A LOT of superhero films scheduled to come out and the list is still going to get longer, but, on the other hand, there are a lot of comic book properties out there and, if all of them were to be made for the big screen, it would take many decades, if not centuries, to cover all of them. I'm not even talking of obscure titles here or characters most people don't want to remember, like the New Guardians, Black Cat or the Fixer: we've got comic book characters like Supergirl, the Teen Titans, Nightwing and Martian Manhunter which haven't been given a look into yet, comic book characters like Daredevil, Elektra and Ghost Rider who are in need of a more faithful take on their source material on the big screen, characters like Hellboy and Blade who have been off of the big screen for long enough that a new take on them might be appreciated and characters like Spawn and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen who...well, just need a film made about them that isn't as awful as their last outings were!
What IS indisputable, though, is that there's far too many of these films coming out over a small period of time and that, with so many of them either being sequels or have interconnected continuities with each other, it isn't entirely unreasonable to say that it's difficult for people new to everything to have to catch up with everything (I got introduced to the Marvel films before Avengers Assemble came out and even I'll admit that I found watching five films in a short period of time a bit daunting, so I can understand how apprehensive some people would be about watching eleven films in a small period of time, especially if you want to watch them all before seeing Ant-Man!) and people who aren't interested in superhero films will have a very valid reason for going "God, is that ANOTHER fucking superhero movie?" when the influx in them ramps up from next year. The over-saturation is a very valid concern, for it looks suspiciously similar to what happened between the late 70s and the late 90s in terms of what happened with the quantity of superhero films coming out (if anything, I'd argue it's worse now!) and, while there is a far greater appreciation for quality than there was back in that period of time, over-saturation of a quality product is still over-saturation, at the end of the day.
That all said, however, I do not think that the general public has completely tired of superhero films just yet and part of me is glad of that fact. It isn't exactly "cool" to be a geek these days (I think most people would still look at trading card games, role play games or tabletop wargames as being territory only for weird losers with no lives of their own...), but now, people are starting to get why geeks like the stuff they do thanks to stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy, The Dark Knight Rises, Big Hero 6, The LEGO Movie, Wreck-It Ralph and The Big Bang Theory being popular and involving stuff that is usually labelled as geeky and, as a result, there's more appreciation for just why these hobbies are so interesting. In a strange way, I almost feel proud to be a geek now, not because I'm now having the last laugh on those who looked down upon me for my hobbies in school, but because it's encouraging to see people finally starting to realise that all of the stories passed down about gamers, comic book fans, otaku and the like being strange people who are best avoided are just that: stories.
...Well, OK, maybe The Big Bang Theory isn't helping as much as it should do on that front, but points for effort, I guess, as it does encourage viewers to look up the stuff being talked about whenever they don't get the references and does show that geeks come in more shades than most works usually show!
I think, at the end of the day, the abundance of superhero movies is a valid concern to those not in the know about comic books, as there's only so many times you can see what looks like a person in a silly costume before it gets tiring to keep seeing it again and again, but, for comic book fans, this turn in the market is a nice change that they will continue to enjoy while it lasts. Do I expect the rivalry between the fans of all of the movie universes to ever die off? Not in the slightest: Marvel and DC, for instance, run on very different plans (even down to the receptions of their heroes by civilians in their respective universes) and those appeal to people for very different reasons. But those reasons don't stop the fact that, at the end of the day, the important thing isn't the rivalries, but it's the films that get made and the quality of them.
Whether DC understands that or not is up for debate, but that isn't important: so long as the films are enjoyable, I have no major issues with superhero films being popular! My wallet might disagree with me on that one, though...
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