Imagine further that each of these famous western heroes is an exclusive copyrighted property that can ONLY be handled by a single, licensed parent studio - that only Fox could have created Wyatt Earp films in the same way that only Warner Brothers can make Batman films. Already you’d eliminate the vast majority of great westerns ever made - but you’d still have a handful. Imagine what the history of the western might have been if the studios only produced films about those few western icons that everyone was already familiar with - Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, Billy The Kid, Wild Bill Hickok, Black Bart, and The Wild Bunch. This distinction may not seem all that important at first, but it’s enormous in its implications for a variety of reasons we’ll get to. It was the form that held a special resonance with audiences, more than any particular person that populated it. Western fans went to see westerns, regardless of their degree of familiarity with the individual characters in any given film. The western was a different circumstance. The public might give a chance to a lesser known property from a brand they trust,like Marvel or D.C., but that’s about as far as it goes. What interests audiences are the individual heroes they know and love. Random guy in a cape just isn't as exciting as Batman (for reasons we'll get to later). What you don’t see much of are studios (or screenwriters) rushing to create their own superheroes - perhaps because there isn’t anything particularly resonant about the genre in and of itself. Even franchise flops are a safe bet to be profitable for this reason - and in the event that a film does flop, a studio only has to listen to fans and promise to better meet their expectations in the next reboot. The whole reason these properties are so attractive to Hollywood is that they have an established audience that will - come hell or highwater - line up on opening weekend to see whatever movie follows the exploits of their favorite heroes. The first, and potentially most fatal, hurdle the genre faces is that no one really goes to see * a superhero film* as much as they go to see Batman, Spiderman, X-Men, Iron Man, Superman, and Avengers films. Reason #1: Superhero films are brand-oriented rather than form-oriented That isn't to say that there can't be a handful of serious, and potentially even great, superhero films produced - only that there are significant reasons (having nothing to do with the genre's age and experience) that will most likely keep it from developing into a wellspring of creativity, inspiration, and just plain good art to rival the western in it's glory days. In this respect, I think superhero films face a great number of limitations that the western didn't. The number of times something is made is much less important than how it is made, and what inherent values the object being made has. I can understand what he's saying, but I'm not sure more films will yield the result he expects. The Atlantic's Tim Wainwright responds that what we need are more superhero films, not fewer. Matt Zoller Seitz offers an excellent critique of the 'sameness' of superhero films. While it's hard to not see some superficial similarities between the two genres (they're both largely action oriented, both involve elements of myth and morality play, and both began as adolescent entertainment), I think it's clear that the western genre was (and is) varied and adaptable in a way that superhero films haven't been. It has become a truism among the faithful that comic book films will become the next great chapter in American genre art, if only we have a little patience. Many of the critics offer some variation of the old 'The superhero genre is like the western, it'll eventually get good if you get it time!' argument.Ĭomparing Superhero films to Westerns has become a cliché, a bit of received wisdom that has thus far been passed without much skepticism or examination. I particularly recommend reading Glenn Kenny and Richard Brody's responses - they represent very different types of reactions to the question 'Are there too many superhero movies?' (both of which are reactions I sympathize with). The reaction to The Amazing Spiderman 2 has started an intense critical dialogue about superhero films, first in this Criticwire survey.
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