Why do we go to the movies? What do we want from two hours spent in a room with a screen and a (hopefully) comfortable chair?
The answer is never just one thing, it’s often a series of opposing impulses. We want to root for justice, but we don’t want our morality too simple and watered down. We want action and spectacle, but we also want well-developed characters and interpersonal drama. We want to feel immersed, challenged, to experience some serious, raw, potentially harrowing emotions, but ultimately to walk out of the theater feeling better than when we walked in. It’s hard to meet these criteria, but if a cinematic experience does manage to push all these buttons, you’re probably watching a superhero movie. It’s hard to deny that we’re currently living in a golden age of superhero cinema (even if some might call that a contradiction of terms), mainly due to the unique multiverse which connects the films. This universe has been artfully constructed thanks to a combination of tight writing, careful planning, and insanely huge budgets, with the result that the quantity and the overall quality of hero media is certainly at an all-time high.
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Everything’s Connected
Marvel Studios is not the only group in Hollywood making great superhero movies, but they are making a lot of them, and they’re apparently really freaking good, if box office numbers and critical acclaim are any indication. They have 31 projects in development as of September 2021, two of their films were the highest-grossing of that year, and just one of their films has made $2.8 billion. Clearly, they’re doing something right.
The appeal and success of these movies today is the same as it was for their printed predecessors for a similar reason– interconnection. The ‘Marvel Comics’ era started back in the early 1960s and has been growing ever since. A bunch of episodic stories about brightly dressed do-gooders managed to keep expanding and gaining popularity for decades largely due to fans’ appreciation for the variety and scale of their shared universe, where different characters intermingled in surprising ways. This goes for DC comics too.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
You could be halfway through a Spider-Man comic, when suddenly Thor comes charging in while riding on the Hulk’s shoulders, helping to fight off Doc Ock or whoever else is messing around in New York that week. It was unexpected, and it was awesome. Whenever some obscure hero or villain entered the fray, like Big Bertha (you’re welcome), a little cartoon Stan Lee would pop up and say: “readers will remember Big Bertha from West Coast Avengers, Vol II, Issue #46,” and all was well. That technique is much harder to pull off with high-budget action films; this much is obvious, as it’s extremely difficult to pull off an extended cinematic universe. The films need to be simultaneously stand-alone entries but also hyper-connected. Plot threads need to jump between stories while remaining coherent. Robert Downey Jr. would need to clear his schedule for something like eleven years. It’s hard! But this is how they did it.
Connecting the Dots
During the early 2000s, Marvel was teaming up with all sorts of studios and distribution companies to make stand-alone films based on comic book characters, which went… interestingly. There was no specific locus of creative control. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films were awesome, but then Sony owned the rights to the character, preventing any kind of cross-over success. The X Men films were cool, but Fox owned those guys the same way. Meanwhile, The Fantastic 4 was boring and tonally off, Ben Afflek made a horrible Daredevil, and there were several very questionable Hulks running around. It was a mess. This is when Avi Arad, the head of Marvel’s film division, formed the specialised independent film studio, Marvel Studios. Thus, creative control was acquired.
Creative control was the key to delivering a really successful cinematic universe by ensuring that the same teams of writers, directors, producers, and continuity supervisors (an underappreciated role) had a hand in creating and distributing every film in the MCU. Kevin Feige, Arad’s second in command, pitched the extremely ambitious idea of gradually introducing audiences to the core members of the Avengers, as well as Nick Fury and the looming shadow of S.H.I.E.L.D., and then bringing them all together for the biggest, baddest team-up movie in superhero history. Arad had his doubts. He resigned within a year, and Feige took over as studio head. He immediately hired a dedicated committee of six senior staff who knew Marvel comics inside and out. The committee featured Joe Quesada, Marvel’s chief creative officer, and Alan Fine, the president of Marvel entertainment. This was top tier stuff. Their job was to make sure that the next wave of Marvel films would wonderfully weave together, stay true to the comics, and capture the essence of their most iconic characters.
Over four glorious years, Marvel Studios debuted the punk rock Iron Man, the boy-next-door Captain America, the loveably clueless Thor (outshined by his even more loveable brother, Loki), and The Hulk (don’t worry if he turns into Mark Ruffalo later). The stand-alone origin films were brilliant and unique, yet they carried a sense of tonal and visual cohesion. Ignoring The Hulk, they also all featured Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury as he ran around collecting ‘powerful individuals’ to assemble some kind of Earth defence force. He keeps talking about something called ‘The Avenger initiative.’ Everyone knew what was coming– comic fans informed their non-comic friends, those friends informed everyone else, and all of us were ready for the superhero genre to be blasted wide open, which is exactly what happened.
Boom, There It Is
Boom, indeed. The Avengers was amazing, with so much for hardcore fans to love while also being accessible to new viewers. It was both witty and dramatic, and it re-introduced us to each hero with an extra special new ingredient: chemistry. Bruce Banner finally showed us that other people can rival Tony Stark in intelligence and skill, but Bruce didn’t have the arrogance and narcissism of Stark, forcing Tony to reassess his chronic sass. Steve Rogers was a paragon of justice, deeply committed to one fundamental rule (‘be a good person’), which created some extremely watchable and nuanced friction against the somewhat ambiguous morality of Stark and even S.H.I.E.L.D. More of this cross-overs was all anyone wanted to see, and for good reason. They were familiar and their banter was sitcom-level fun, but they were also stronger as a team than as individuals, which allowed the villains and stakes to get way bigger and way higher.
From that point on, a new precedent was set. The MCU bloomed from this first crossover, and the movies that followed were able to be more varied and stylised without breaking the continuity of their shared universe, both of which is crucial for longevity. The launch of the universe worked, with mainstream audiences accepting even sometimes outlandish premises, and the films met casual viewers halfway by always re-explaining certain key details or re-introducing lesser-known characters. In addition, even more exciting talent was added to Marvel’s behind-the-camera roster, leading to more variety and perspectives. Winter Soldier was heartfelt, complex, and even a bit dark thanks to the Russo brothers. Meanwhile, comedy mavericks like Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish wrote the hilarious Ant Man debut, and Oscar-winning funnyman Taika Waititi brought charm and his own strange wit to Thor: Ragnarok. The MCU had a lot to offer, and if your taste was a tad grittier, DC was in the next theater with a bone-crunching Batman trilogy.
Marvel Studios
The Spice of Life
This sense of interconnectedness is only one of about 80 decent reasons why superhero movies are so popular today, but it’s an absolutely important one. These films are exciting and funny for any audience, but the extended universe adds layers of complexity for those who want it, along with sweet anticipation for those who can’t wait to see who crosses over next. Deep-diving into Marvel’s interrelated web of stories and their many details is one of the most rewarding and satisfying experiences any viewer can have. These days, just over 10 years since that first badass crossover, the richness of references, easter eggs, and background details in any superhero romp is truly delightful for most fans. However, even for the fully uninitiated, the range of stand-alone flicks still hitting theatres is bound to have something for everyone, especially since Marvel is continuing to aim for more cultural representation. They’re using the versatile premise of the ‘superhero movie’ to tell stories which, while grand in scale, also explore and celebrate different cultures and traditions, as well as finding a lot of brilliant people of color to star in and create them.
Perhaps this versatility is the true key to superhero movie success today. However high concept a film is, no matter how far-out a piece of fiction may be, great art reflects us and our reality. Superhero stories are still human at their heart. The epic stakes and fantastical plots give us the spectacle and action, while the people behind the masks are genuine, three-dimensional characters with whom we connect, sympathize, and fall in love. While we’ll never leap from mountains like Black Panther, or bust up alien armies like Captain America, we can identify with T’Challa’s grief for his father and desire to keep his sister close and safe, or relate to Steve Rogers’ feelings of alienation from the unfamiliar, tech-crazy world around him. That’s the beauty to the superhero film– an epic setting, but a grounded story, which should be the mantra of any good superhero movie, Marvel or not.
