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The Comic Book is Back?
Fads are really a bitch. Hollywood loves to glom onto them and pass them off as art, or at the very least quality entertainment. They’re a different animal from a genre; while a genre adheres to certain rules and can live, die, and live again (the musical is a great example of this; it died with The Sound of Music and brought to possible resurrection by Moulin Rouge). They begin with a set of rules to be bent and twisted to the director’s ideas. The fad, though, is a passing phase. It’s something that comes and goes about as quickly as a boy band (of course, by now you should all know what a “fad” is and that they are the very definition of such), and it’s rarely a high-water mark in innovative technique. The 1950’s and 60’s brought us the novel approach of taking whatever musical group was big with teens and give them a movie. The scripts were shoddy to say the least, and the end result wasn’t very good. A good actor can theoretically transcend bad material, a musician isn’t often a good actor…does anyone remember the movie with Chubby Checker? Does anyone really think Elvis Presley was a good actor? Occasionally there were breakthroughs, I won’t deny that. Frank Sinatra proved capable with films like The Manchurian Candidate, and documentaries such as A Hard Day’s Night (Richard Lester) and Don’t Look Back (D.A Pennebaker) proved either great entertainment in the former’s case or incredible instances of cinema verité in the latter. In the end though, this fad died out…only to be resurrected briefly by such smash flops as Spiceworld, Glitter, and Crossroads. Thankfully this seems to have died as quickly as it reared its ugly head as each one of these movies failed miserably. But the here’s the lesson: the common bond with all these movies? They all sucked.
In fact, most movies to be churned out as a result of the latest fad do suck. It’s becoming more and more common in the last decade as movies target market alters. For 80 years films were an adult entertainment. Take a look at the roster of Best Picture winners, and you’ll see every winner has been a film created for adult consumption. Suddenly the last ten years have created a radical shift, and now teens comprise more than half of the annual movie-going public. As a result, movies targeted to teens are not only made by the barrel-full, but they will win Best Picture. Shakespeare in Love, Titanic, Gladiator; all movies essentially made to appeal to teenage girls and boys. That’s where the fad comes back into play. There’s no denying that occasionally something pops up that is quality entertainment or great art within the constraints of a fad, and that’s what we’re here to look at today. The latest fad to be churned out by Hollywood is The Comic Book Movie.
Of course, comics got their start by mimicking movies. Film noir and science fiction were big contributors the popularization of comic books (or ‘graphic novels’, as those who live in basements and abhor light prefer to call them). As a result, for the last 10+ years comic books are returning the favor. It can probably be best pegged at 1989 with the release of Batman. Although Superman had enjoyed some success before, there wasn’t much interest in giving your average comic strip its own 2-hour running time. Then there it was, a moody and brutal movie based on what’s considered to be a child’s toy. Since then, things have largely gone downhill. Alex Proyas drew a stroke of genius with The Crow and Dark City, primarily (it would seem) by drawing more on existential and film-noirs as inspiration. Sadly, other than that it hasn’t been working out well. At their best comic book movies are fun. The recent Blade II worked in the hands of a competent director, and was just a hell of a lot of fun to see on screen. These recent successes prompted Hollywood studios to buy up any comic book related property they could find, and now suddenly we have Daredevil, The Hulk, Hellboy, Xmen 2 all coming to us in the next two years. And let’s not forget Spider-man…that one’s currently enjoying its time in the sun now, with a sequel already in production for next year.
ALREADY in production. A sequel. Has been since before the preview of the first one last May. The first one…they didn’t even know if it would hit or miss, and they’ve been banking on a sequel to the point that they had pre-production up and running in April. Doesn’t it seem a little odd that they can be so clairvoyant as to know we’re going to eat it up before we’ve even smelled it?
It doesn’t, actually. They’re running on an old principle of re-hashing the same thing over and over until it doesn’t make money, and then change tactics. That’s how the 1960’s suddenly hit a Renaissance of film-making. The Sound of Music cost so much to make they realized they’d have to go with something with less production cost. Hence all the film-school kids suddenly brought to Hollywood. We’re seeing it all happen again now. Special effects are to the point where the pages of a comic strip can be seen on a screen, and suddenly Spider-man can swing through New York. A movie is made because we eat it up, and that’s what’s happening here. Churn the movie out, and make sure it’s less than two hours so matinees can be 3 or more, and they’ll rake in our money. Is it really so necessary that our collective brow be anointed with lowest-common-denominator entertainment?
Soon they’re going to cost more. It’s going to take more than $80 million to make Spider-Man soar, and then they’ll quit. THAT’S a fad. And whether the movie is good or not doesn’t matter so much. I have no doubts that I enjoy the Spider-Man movie. I enjoyed Blade II as well. The problem is the devoid sense of originality being displayed here.
And who knows? Maybe they’ll start scouring film schools and theatre troupes to pick up fresh talent. The kind that don’t ask for much money. The kind that have a lot of good ideas for movies that don’t cost much to make.
Then it’ll all start over again.