Steven Spielberg set off a firestorm of controversy recently over comments he made about the future of superhero films. Spielberg said that superhero movies would die out just as westerns had before. People were quick to jump down his throat regarding his thoughts. Fans cried foul and blogs labelled him as elitist, out of touch and an old man. Since the rise in popularity of the comic book superhero in the world of films, the pro and anti-comic book people have been gearing for war, each as dogmatic in their beliefs and vision of cinema as the other. Now, with the news that a superhero film won't be the highest grossing summer film for the first time in four years, a grenade has been thrown into the melee. Is Steven Spielberg right? Will superhero films go the way of the western as a genre?
From Zap2It.com, "We were around when the Western died and there will be a time when the superhero movie goes the way of the Western. It doesn't mean there won't be another occasion where the Western comes back and the superhero movie someday returns. Of course, right now the superhero movie is alive and thriving. I'm only saying that these cycles have a finite time in popular culture. There will come a day when the mythological stories are supplanted by some other genre that possibly some young filmmaker is just thinking about discovering for all of us."
The thing we must first differentiate is that Spielberg is talking about superhero films not comic books themselves. These exist in two very different spheres, in spite of their shared topics. Like novels before them, it could be said that the greatest felony ever committed against the written word is when it is decided that it must come to life. Quite often, and the annals of time are littered with examples, the adaptation is where the project becomes ultimately doomed, or sometimes saved. While novels face their own set of conventions, film has far more constraints on it, most notably being time. Films can deal with great periods of time in a story but not as easily or fluidly as they do in novels. Mass appeal will play into the adaptation as well. One only need look no further than the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey for that. To quote the New York Times online, "The sex in Fifty Shades is nowhere near as abundant or explicit as it is in the book." Movies will rarely present a faithful adaptation of the original source material.
Fact is that film genres do come and go. While many naysayers will and are rubbishing Spielberg's assertion that the superhero movies will go the way the western, it is not a criticism of the genre, merely an observation based on the facts as history has told us. Like the musical and the western, the superhero genre is a sub-genre born out of the two foundations of storytelling, comedy and drama. Another style will come up is what Spielberg is suggesting that will replace the superhero one in popularity. That isn't a damnation, more a reality of popular culture cycles.
The Fiscal Times sports an interesting and quite truthfully accurate assessment of the counter argument, "First is the slate of films and television shows announced by Disney as it continues its fascinating effort at building out the Marvel universe, for better or worse, over the next few years. Remember that Disney paid $4 billion to buy Marvel in 2009, and it's going to keep looking for ways to maximize the return on that investment, including a new partnership with Sony to bring Spiderman into the fold. Cleverly, Marvel has also developed its properties for television, with Marvel's Agents of Shield and the quartet of Netflix shows that have begun rolling out, starting with the excellent Marvel's Daredevil. By having these shows exist in the same universe as, and be affected by the events of the larger movies, they function as a kind of commercial. To keep up, you need to watch them all."
However, based on numbers for this year, audiences are starting to become weary of studios regurgitating the same plot, very loosely hung together by a happenstance of events. Continue throwing out weakly plotted movies and audiences will become bored with them and look for a new sub-genre with which to latch onto. It doesn't matter how grand your scheme is. As one friend pointed out to me, "The western isn't dead. Look at what Quentin Tarantino is doing."
Maybe, that's what Spielberg's biggest gripe against superhero movies is, the lack of a fresh approach.
