No More Heroes Already
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of superheros, and comic books. Also, love going to movies. But I’ve come to a conclusion, one that might seem incredulous or shocking on the surface: Hollywood needs to stop making superhero movies.
(Scapulaman, possibly the next big superhero film?)
Maybe not entirely, but 94% of the projects in development should just be scrapped. No Avengers, No Iron Man 3, No Thor, No Spider-Man 4. No prequels, no origin stories, nothing. We’ll let the 3rd Dark Knight movie go ahead, but after that, let’s ban them from Hollywood for another 5 years or so.
And here’s why: I’m getting sick of them. There’s too god-damned many of them. It’s like an ice cream sandwich. If you haven’t had one in forever, they taste awesome. You can’t believe you went that long without one. But if you then go on an almost exclusive diet of ice cream sandwiches, you can’t stand the f*cking sight of them.
The first stage of the superhero movie film is the rumors. The studio says they have a director on board to make Scapulaman in to a film. The internet lights up with every fanboy douchebag offering up their pearls of wisdom as to whom should play Scapulaman, which, while they all think they’re Einstein, usually comes down to “Nathan Fillion or Ryan Reynolds”. I have nothing against either of them, but they’d be the first to tell you they’re not the answer to all the questions Hollywood has to ask. The actual casting is released, and fanboys once again rail to the heavens about how terrible it is, or alternately, hold a Hawaiian-themed jizzfest about how Fillion was born to play Scapulaman.
Then we get those same fanboys proffering plot ideas, based on their favorite (usually the worst possible) story arcs from the past. If the film in question is Batman, it’s non-stop “Harley Quinn!!!!”, if Spider-Man, some paste eater will insist that “Maximum Carnage” is the only possible story (cuz Venom wasn’t bad enough!) They continue to whip themselves into a frenzy, such that when the actual story is decided on, they’ve already decided it was a bad choice.
The press starts covering the opening of the film, and we get either shitty, error-filled articles about Scapulaman, or lengthy interviews with the terrible actress they’ve chosen to play the “love interest” (kept to 3 scenes maximum). All of which leaves the public with a skewed idea of what Scapulaman is all about.
The film opens, and the fanboys go insane, because they “got the character all wrong”, or they “changed the storyline”, or “that ISN’T scapulaman”. And usually, it’s true, because the actual story wouldn’t have appealed to every possible movie goer, so they whipped it in to a smooth pablum. Now the general public is all “meh”, because the story is very lame. The fanboys are furious because the movie isn’t what they wanted. (or alternately, none of the above happens, the story stays true to the book, and no one but the fanboys see it: Case in point, apart from the changed ending (which was still faithful to the spirit of the story), The Watchmen.)
At the end of the day, very few superhero movies are handled well, fewer still actually jump off the screen. I’m tired of the crappy ones, and most of the proposed upcoming films just look f*cking terrible. Who asked for an Ant Man movie? Who? Anybody? No, no one did. Do you know why? Because Ant Man sucks, and the fans barely tolerate him in the comics. But some asshole movie producer, whose only credit is that he worked in the mail room, then blew his boss for 2 years, has decided that the intellectual property “has legs”.
Enough. Make movies about other stuff for a while, so that we can enjoy our ice cream sandwiches again.
