Movies are...of quality?

There has been a lot of discussion in the media about Comic Book movies because there have been so many of them.  There will be five released this year alone.  Next year we will see ten.  The number grows as filmmakers grab up comic book properties of every style and sub-genre.  Who would have thought that there would ever have been a Jonah Hex movie?  Sure, it was terrible and no one was surprised, but the very idea of it existing at all is kind of crazy.  Spider-man was a forgone conclusion as soon as the tangle of legal proceedings er...detangled.  Fantastic Four crops up now and again.  X-men come to visit the big screen almost every year.  But these are properties that we’ve all actually heard of.  We’ve also seen Elektra, Catwoman, Deadpool, Antman, two Kick-asses and two Punishers as well as Ghost Rider and Green Lantern.  Some of those movies even made money...a lot of money...and didn’t suck.  Some of them.

The thrust of discussion has been about Comic Book overload and the cookie-cutter nature of these films.  Fair points worthy of consideration.  I’ll get to those.  But what I wanted to address in this piece is the question of quality.  Something I find sort of amazing is how much better the films are on almost every level than they were just ten years ago and how much better the studios handle the properties than they did ever in the history of ever (for the most part).  A lot of the improvement and care that is taken with these cherished characters and storylines has been hard fought. The studios and filmmakers had to fall on their faces quite a bit before people that really enjoy the properties could get control of them.

A short tangent (Spoiler:it turns out not to be short): In the mid-80’s the cousins who ran Canon Films, Menahem Golan and Yorum Globus, acquired the rights to Spider-man to be made into a major motion picture.  Fresh off the success of several low-budget but highly profitable films starring well known actors like Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone and Charles Bronson the cousins came up with a plan to make a big-budget version of Spider-man to hit the screen sometime before the rights ran out at the end of the decade. They tried to get Toby Hooper to direct.  Why ask the creator of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to direct a kids Comic Book film?  Because they didn’t know who Spider-man was.  They bought the rights to the flagship Marvel Comics property without any idea who Peter Parker was to say nothing of a costumed alter-ego with his own, at the time, nearly 30 year, history of stories and villains.  They thought he was some kind of monster-kid that transmogrified into a giant spider-creature.  The script they commissioned read like a modern telling of Frankenstein with Doc Ock creating the Spider-man out his unwilling lab assistant. It was a horror film that would have worked well had it been made by David Cronenberg.  In a way it was made by David Cronenberg in 1986 as The Fly starring Jeff Goldblum.

The point is the moneymen didn’t have a clue nor did they care about Spider-man.  They knew it could make money so they bought it. Might as well have been a Bentley or shares of Coca-cola.  In any event, they never made the film.  Canon ceased to be, the rights went with one of the cousins to 21st Century Films which also went under and was swallowed up by Carolco.  Then Carolco went out of business and the rights became disputed territory with Columbia (soon to be Sony Pictures), MGM, and several other studios claiming to own Spider-man.  It would be more than ten years before the rights were handed to Sony and we got a film with Peter Parker in the Red and Blues.

This is significant because this was the beginning of what we consider today to be a “golden age” of Comic Book films.  This was the turning point when at least some of the people bringing these characters to the screen actually A) Knew who the character was. and B) Liked the character.  It seems strange that anyone would want to make a movie about a character or from a story they don’t like or understand, but that is exactly what happened before now.  Tim Burton doesn’t like Comic Books and has publicly stated during his short feud with Kevin Smith that he would never read one.  I’m sure Joel Schumacher and Richard Lester feel much the same.

Some background on me as a fan (and I am a huge fan): My first exposure to anything Comic Book was a series of terrible “read along” comics that came with a short record that could be played on one’s home hi-fi system.  My Mom had a very nice stereo with turntable that she retained after my parents divorced.  She doesn’t like music at all, but it weighed upward of two hundred pounds because it was 100 dollars worth of equipment inside a sturdy oak armoire so it stayed in our living room for many years.

It was on this turntable that I listened to the adventures of Captain America as he fought against the dastardly Baron Zemo.  Zemo had a plan to defeat the allies using “Adhesive X” a glue so sticky that nothing could remove it from any surface.  I don’t know how sticky things might have halted the Allied war effort, but that was some really sticky stuff and Cap just had to throw his shield at it.  I don’t remember the story very well, but I do remember thinking the whole thing sounded like it had been recorded on a kazoo.

Later I picked up old issues of Batman and Superman that my brother had around.  There was a ROM: Spaceknight and I had a Spider-man Calendar for the year I was born with full color splash pages for each month.  Oh, and a metal Spider-man garbage can that I still have in my adult bedroom right this minute.  It is a little beat up.

For my birthday one year I got a collection of old Marvel comics in a big yellow omnibus that featured adventures from the 1960s mostly.  The art was crude compared to today’s standards and the stories were extremely simple.  No one but a child could read any of it and get much of a thrill.  I think that’s why the people in charge of film and television when I was growing up had no love for the characters.  They were adults when Spider-man first swung into action and established in the entertainment industry well after the X-men started fighting for mutant rights.  I’m sure they wouldn’t know what to do with a Spawn, of course neither did Todd McFarlane.

If you watch any of the shows featuring superheroes that were made in the 1970s they are all fairly silly.  Only The Incredible Hulk ever takes itself seriously as a show and it stars a body-builder in covered in green paint wearing a fright wig.  Wonder Woman, Spider-man, Shazam and others from that time just show somebody dressed like the hero you love on television and in those days I was ecstatic to see any live-action content at all.

Later still my older cousins showed me Dreadstar and Alien Legion.  I didn’t really understand them, but it opened my eyes to the idea of the Comics being more than just a guy in tights punching a bank robber.  Real, complex stories, grown-up stories, could be told.  Once I read Daredevil during Frank Miller’s run I realised the stories could be complex and there could still be tights and bank robbers too.  In highschool I would discover Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns.  Some years prior to my collecting comics everybody started fighting ninjas, became ninjas or were tangentially associated with ninjas.  Oh, and mutants.  Everybody was a mutant.  In fact, when my friend Derek and I began playing our own open-ended version of the Marvel Role-playing Game all of our characters were ninjas too.  Also, they were all stronger than the Hulk and had razor-sharp claws that came out of their wrists and could shoot energy beams and were millionaires and had hot girlfriends.  We were like 12 or 13 at the time. Also there was a spaceship and one of the heroes owned his own planet the orbited on the opposite side of the sun from the Earth.

All of that is to say that I am a lifelong fan of comics.  I see their shortcomings but I tend to judge any piece based on what it contains and not on what I wish it contained.  It is not always the case, but I tend to.  There’s a reason that the medium tells largely the same stories in various ways over and over.  We see Bruce Wayne’s parents killed from a thousand different perspectives drawn by as many artists.  Peter Parker loses his Uncle Ben.  I’m put in mind of Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly’s All Star Superman.  The opening pages simply read “Doomed Planet. Desperate Scientists. Last Hope. Kindly Couple.” and then the story begins.  When you think about it that opening could apply to a lot of stories.  Not literally.  Not every story has a doomed planet or any scientists, but there are many with a kingdom on the very edge of collapse or an empire crushing its enemies.  How many of our heroes secretly come from greatness.  They’ve been hidden away with the kindly (or not-so-kindly) couple all these years with their very birthright a mystery to them.  The Power of Myth is real, folks.

"Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade like your father did."

“In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.”

“You’re a wizard, Harry.”

I’m not excusing bad storytelling by suggesting that Comic Books can’t rise above the traditions that we embrace.  But it is important to note that these types of stories do come from somewhere very primal, from a place that we all relate to instantly.  Creators can be forgiven for leaning on that goodwill in the beginning.  And we should allow ourselves to enjoy that part of the journey too, even if we’ve been there before with a different guy or gal.  I’m worn down by the origin story myself and I do relish when a new character, in Comic Books or otherwise, just hits the ground running and then circles back later to catch me up on how he or she came to be.  When people ask why they should have to sit through another re-hash of Kal El coming to Earth I say “You shouldn’t.  We know that one already.”  But when Marvel brings Daredevil out of retirement for a new run on Netflix I dig in and watch every second of his becoming because it is just so damned good.  Yes, it is a well-worn path in Comic Book world with a freak accident and inexplicable powers that lead someone to fight crime.  The Flash has the exact same origin story and so do many many others.  But if well told I don’t mind to have it trotted out again.  Bear in mind that I’ve seen every James Bond movie ever made and they are, to date, the exact same film over 20 times.  I know he’s not going to die at the end and I know he’s never really in any peril, but just going along for the ride is fun.  Rollercoasters serve much the same purpose.

Now, to my main point which I had to go back and read to remember what it was.  Quality.  With few exceptions the quality of Comic Book properties produced by Hollywood has been poor.  Even when the financial budget was very high the creative budget was often very low.  

In 1978 we got Richard Donner’s Superman: The Motion Picture which is still one of my favorite movies today.  It has not aged well, but the earnest performance by Christopher Reeve still plays very well and much of the dialog is very quotable.  When my son was quite small I would sometimes say to him while he slept “You will make my strength your own, and see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father, and the father the son.”  Was that creepy?  Maybe.  But it was good enough for Superman’s father so it was good enough for me.

The special effects for the time were groundbreaking and the performances were excellent even when the story goes sideways in the final act.  Luthor’s plan never makes sense and Superman’s efforts to stop him make even less sense.  And if Superman can reverse time, why not just go back to before the Nukes launched in the first place?  Silly but fun.  It is a very genuine film that loves and respects the characters and the audience.  When I watch it I’m transported to the living room of the old house.  I’m sitting on the floor in front of the floor-model Zenith television with wood paneling.  My mother has tuned to ABC so we can watch the Sunday Night Movie.  It is a special extended edition of Superman done only for ABC television.  I have school the next day, but Mom lets me stay up late to watch the whole thing.  You could argue that I only like the movie so much because of that memory.  That could be true, but I think the memory is so precious because the viewing experience was so good.

Several sequels followed but they were never as good as the original and eventually they beat that poor dead horse into a paste.  In 1989 we got Batman.  I have fond memories of that movie as well.  Saw it in the cinema when it came out opening weekend.  Loved it at the time.  It too does not hold up, but I must say that while I am not a Tim Burton fan there is something about the design of that movie that really gets Batman right.  There are all kinds of nits to pick with 1989’s Batman, but overall it looks great and Batman is super cool.  He kills a bunch of people, which will be a repeating theme, but otherwise it is very true to the source material and it does respect the characters enough to tell a good story.  Once again things fall apart at the end.  Mostly it is good stuff for its time.  And once again several sequels followed that were never as good as the original and there was more horse paste.

I won’t go into the many and varied Marvel comics properties that either never saw the big screen or were slated to be release and never were.  They are prime examples of a studio not having any idea what to do with a character and just putting a guy in a costume.  Sometimes they didn’t even do that.  The Punisher never wears his costume in his late 80’s outing.  Captain America went straight to home video in an age when that was almost the same thing as going straight into the garbage.  That guy is wearing a Captain America costume no doubt about it and that’s about it.  There are other factors at play beyond not respecting the material.  The lack of financial savvy at Marvel comics is somewhat breathtaking.  They just assumed that they could license their characters to whomever and that a runaway blockbuster hit would magically appear.  It turns out that just because you are the editor-in-chief of a major Comic Book company doesn’t mean you know how to negotiate a Hollywood deal.  Who knew?

Overall we got either overproduced tripe or criminally underproduced tripe.  One great Superman, one good Batman and whole lot of expensive garbage over the course of about 25 years.  That didn’t begin to change until Marvel accidentally struck paydirt with Blade.  Three films were made starring the titular Vampire-hybrid character, the first two are pretty good with the second film featuring some truly fun action sequences.  The third one was directed by the writer of the first two and featured almost no Blade at all.  Wesley Snipes was feuding with the production company and couldn’t be bothered.  I don’t think it would have made a difference.  But it put Marvel on the map at the cinema.  Later we got X-men from Bryan Singer.  Operating with half the promised budget and headlining a completely unknown Australian actor named, get this, Hugh Jackman X-men made big bank at the box office.  Alliteratively.  The story was not genius but held together and, along with Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen, the whole cast turned in a good performance.  Special effects were mostly special and the audience got to see all their favorites do fun things on the big screen.  Now, there are purists that only wanted to see literal interpretations of their heroes in the movie playing out exact plotlines from the comics, but that would almost certainly have sucked.  Enough of the material was there to clearly be the X-men without choking on decades of criss-crossing stories.

That was the turning point.  At least for Marvel comics the first two decades of the 21st century began an evolution as far as corporate structure and success at translating their characters from pen and ink to flesh and blood.  Spider-man 1,2, and 3 all made massive amounts of money.  This allowed at least one of those films to be very well made.  It’s the second one.  The second one is good.  And emboldened by that success other studios put together major motion pictures featuring whatever they could get Marvel to sell them.  The results look something like this: Universal made Hulk which sucked.  It had some interesting ideas and asked some serious questions about the nature of self, of identity and what makes us who we really are.  But it was also really boring the Hulk didn’t look good most of the time.  At the end he fights a cloud.  20th Century Fox put out two Fantastic Four movies which were both ironically named.  They also put out Daredevil starring Ben Affleck and directed by the man that made Simon Birch.  I’ll let that sink in. After that they made an Elektra movie about the Greek assassin starring Jennifer Garner.  Yeah.  Full disclosure: I owned the Director’s Cut of Daredevil on DVD.  I was just convinced that there was a good version of that movie that had been left on the cutting room floor.  It could be there, man.  And Dad’s gonna be right back from the store with those cigarettes.  Just you wait.  He’s probably just stopped by the store to buy us some ice cream.  He’ll be home any year now.  Fine, you go inside and watch Rockford Files.  I’m sitting right here and he’s gonna see me first and I’ll get to have ice cream with Dad.  What?

The litany of false-starts goes on like this for a while from a whole host of studios and Comic Book publishers.  There are Ninja Turtle movies for a while, there are Punisher movies, John Constantine shows up played by Keanu Reeves in a film that I actually like but must admit bears no resemblance to Hellblazer.  A whole host of films are made and distributed during the last fifteen years or so, but the only two factions that make good money and tell compelling stories are the X-men films from Fox and the Avengers series of films from Marvel Studios/Disney.  So what happened to make those two movie universes so damned popular and good?  In the case of Fox, I think they just had a really good director most of the time who cared about the characters and had a vision for the stories he wanted told.  He was going somewhere with it.  But, when Bryan Singer left to do Superman Returns for another studio things went off the rails.  However, Fox held onto the rights for long enough to sight back in on what made the stories great.  They hired a wonderful new director to right the ship and he did with X-men First Class.  They just had control for so long and it had made them so much money that they didn’t give up on the property.  That is rare in Hollywood.  But once again there was another factor that made the real difference.  In the past the people making the money decisions didn’t care about these stories because they didn’t grow up with them.  Now directors, writers and producers were mostly comic fans.  It is almost impossible that each and every person involved in the production of the modern versions of these films never read a comic or had a favorite hero.  These characters are now so much a part of modern life for children in a way that they were not decades before.

In the case of Marvel Studios they had a show runner.  In television you have a position called “Show Runner”. That’s very likely an informal title.  I really don’t know what each individual is named on each show, but a large show like The Walking Dead or The Newsroom has someone who is the final word on how things get done.  This person keeps everybody on task regarding the overall story that is to be told, the development of the characters and so on.  They just generally make sure the wheels don’t come off.  They don’t write every show or direct the episodes.  The Show Runner makes sure that the writers get to write good television but only within the confines of what the Show Runner wants done.  No story can stray too far and no director can change the tone.  For Marvel the Show Runner is Kevin Feige.  He’s been the producer on almost every Marvel property no matter the studio and he has been THE producer of all of the Marvel Studios films.  Because he has so much control the stories have been able to weave a larger tale connecting disparate characters and storylines.  To be sure there is a big financial advantage to putting all your heroes into films together, but Kevin Feige is one of the main reasons that they all fit together so well.  Now, anybody could be named Show Runner and you would not get the same results.  Kevin Feige loves Marvel comics and their characters and he has made sure that the people involved in all the projects love them too or at least pretend to.  It makes a big difference. Ang Lee loved the Hulk, but he didn’t understand what made the Hulk compelling.  Sam Raimi loves Spider-man, but the studio loved action figures more than storytelling.  The results speak for themselves.  Imagine if Universal or Sony Pictures had relied on someone like Kevin Feige to shepherd their characters to screen.  He was around, but it was only on X-men that anybody realised how much he loved the properties and it was Disney/Marvel that locked him down.  Of course, he didn’t write these films and tv shows, he just hired the people that did.  People like himself.  People that love the stories.  As a result we have seen some very exciting and well made films and some tremendous television.  They aren’t all winners.  But the majority are at worst extremely fun and at best thought-provoking.  Avengers is just popcorn cinema.  Really, really good popcorn cinema.  But Guardians of the Galaxy made me weep in the opening ten minutes.  When Steve Rogers visits the elderly Peggy Carter who is slipping into dementia during Winter Soldier it is just a heartbreaker.  Civil War asks real questions about the nature of justice and who do we trust to keep us safe?  Both sides make excellent points and the question is not answered by the film just as it is never answered in the real world.  Strong storytelling, compelling action and thoughtful dialog are the hallmarks of these films.  There’s humor too and the entire enterprise is ridiculous and yet somehow I just don’t care.  Some films are intended to present you with the stark reality of daily life and those films cut you to the quick and make you question what makes you who you are.  Some films feature cars that turn into robots and then they pee on people while buildings explode in the background.  These films, Comic Book films, are somewhere in the middle.  It is an exceptionally wide spectrum.

I haven’t even touched on the television properties.  Both DC and Marvel have TV Shows in abundance.  

Agents of Shield pretty much sucks.  I don’t know why.  They have the biggest budget, direct backing by Disney which owns ABC and well-known actors in the primary roles.  The show is a trainwreck.  Season one took forever to get going and was largely a let down.  Season two seemed like it was really going to shake things up and then put them all right back where they were before.  Season three has a dead guy as the host for a monster or something and the Inhumans are there but not the ones from the comics that folks might actually like to see.  It hurts us.  We paid for it on Amazon so we could watch the whole season, but I just don’t think I can do it.  I mean, money is money, but the sunk-cost fallacy kicks in after a while and I just don’t know.

Daredevil on netflix is the best thing Marvel has ever done.  End of story.

Jessica Jones...just watch it.  It overstays its welcome by about three episodes, but the story it tells about violation and about choice...damn.  I hope this entire generation of young women gets to watch that story.  It is not about empowerment.  It is about how to deal with loss.  Loss of self.  Loss of control to another.  Loss of worth and how you come back from it.  This is daring television from a company that has entire series of comics about a talking duck from space.

I mentioned The Walking Dead earlier.  This is a wonderful example of gripping stories, relatable characters and just wonderful production values from a Comic Book property.  The Walking Dead was and is a long-running comic from creator Robert Kirkman.  Started in 2003 from Image Comics it is a richly realized post-apocalyptic tale the has been enthralling readers since the beginning.  The AMC television show is in its sixth year and is by far their most watched show.  I personally work with many clean-living, bible-believing, good, Christian people who call in sick when this show drops on Netflix so they can binge the whole season.

DC has Arrow and The Flash.  Supergirl on CBS.  The first season of Arrow is quite good.  Several episode of The Flash were really great.  I haven’t watched Supergirl, but what I have read about it suggests that it too is fun television.  I hear they are doing a Vixen TV show.  It would be the first Comic Book television series featuring an African heroine.  Could be good.

As far as Warner Bros. are concerned they have had some missteps like Green Lantern.  The Dark Knight series from Christopher Nolan was good for two movies and was a big moneymaker for the studio.  The Dark Knight is one of the best Comic Book movies ever done and one of my favorite movies full stop.  The man just cared about the characters and wanted to tell the story well.  The death of a major actor derailed future plans and, I believe, resulted in a final film that was not what anybody wanted.  Man of Steel has its supporters.  It is a visually appealing film with a strong style.  In my opinion it strays from the spirit of the character.  I am very biased because I grew up with Christopher Reeve catching that helicopter.  Also, when he fought Zod and his minions, the Superman I remember stopped the fight rather than put people in harm’s way.  The new Superman personally destroyed buildings full of people and caused the deaths of thousands so that he could continue to punch a guy that he knew for a fact he could not hurt by punching.  There are people who love that movie and I concede that they have every right to think it is great.  It is a very high-quality film from a production standpoint and on that alone I think it helps prove my point about the overall quality of modern Comic Book films and it helps to illustrate that they are not a pre manufactured, vacuum-sealed product.  As far as Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice goes...we will just have to take a breath and address some things.  Okay.  This is not a well made film.  It strays from the core concepts of the characters in a big way, sidelines Wonder Woman except for the final few minutes during which she is easily the coolest thing on screen (as she should be), looks ugly, features sub-par effects for a movie that must have cost more than the GDP of Corto Maltese and just makes no damned sense.  I will happily write a proper screed against this angry, hateful film.  Just not today.  

I wish I had more to say about the current quality of modern Comic Book films with regards to DC/Warner Bros. but there just isn’t much content to work with and what has been produced has not been indicative of the trend.  Surely there will be more and better from DC in the future.  Ben Affleck, who does an admirable job as Bruce Wayne and Batman in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice has been brought in as executive producer on both the Batman solo project and Justice League.  He will write and possibly direct the Batman project.  I reserve judgement on that entire enterprise until the Academy Award winning writer/director has time to make his mark.

They’ve been making Comic Book movies since the 1940’s in some form.  Pretty much all of it was terrible until 1978 and things didn’t really pick up until the late 1990’s.  But I’m confident the evidence is clear that the past decade has served as a sort of crucible for good storytelling when it comes to Comic Book properties.  The audience has responded to a better product and they won’t stand for anything less.  The hardcore fans will always be more forgiving.  I’ve been one of them.  Oh, how I tried to like Hulk!  I argued the merits of the good parts.  I glossed over the bad parts.  In the end there just wasn’t any justifying it.  But we’re beyond that now.  The creators of the content from the editors to the key grips like what they are working on.  The big money people grew up with these stories.  And the audience has finally been shown their heroes and villains in a way that has not been done this well and on this scale.  It can’t last.  Nothing ever does.  But right now I can’t imagine the good stuff being any better.