Literary Criticism and the Super Hero Movie
By
Arcanaville,
Posted on: 2012-07-05 17:48 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
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No one tell J_B about that first point.
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Originally Posted by Zombie Man
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/mo...l?pagewanted=1
1. Fandom is mainstream, so, stop playing the outsider card, fans. 2. Comic book movies have been co-opted by the media industrial complex, but some good stuff still gets through. 3. Comic world stories are still too outdated in its mores: Boys creating for boys. |
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The picture they used for the article is my biggest gripe about comic book movies. Let them wear their damn masks. All of Raimi's Spider-Man movies pulled that garbage, and even Iron Man does it (although at least the way they did it for him makes sense and isn't just convenient battle damage). Also, killing off every. Single. Villain. The biggest way The Dark Knight would have been ruined for me is if it had echoed the 1989 movie and Joker had fallen to his death (but not before Batman's cowl conveniently fell off revealing his identity to the Joker, who clearly cannot be allowed to survive with this knowledge).
I read this article earlier today and thought most of it was meandering criticism applied to stories that don't really need that degree of analysis (I'm sorry Avengers wasn't deep enough for you, buddy boy, maybe an in-depth documentary about gender relations in Afghanistan would be more to your liking). Although I do agree with point 2 that the movies have become WAY too commercialized with corporate tie-ins, but that's how you get money to make things these days I guess. Welcome to American culture, ain't it grand?
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4. Irony continues to be an art practiced by the people who least understand it:|
Originally Posted by Zombie Man
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/mo...l?pagewanted=1
1. Fandom is mainstream, so, stop playing the outsider card, fans. 2. Comic book movies have been co-opted by the media industrial complex, but some good stuff still gets through. 3. Comic world stories are still too outdated in its mores: Boys creating for boys. |
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| But the kind of condescending dismissal practiced by Wilson and the cultural panic expressed by Wertham exist nowadays almost entirely as straw men. |
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It's kind of funny how they're saying comics won out over the cultural elite and are no longer "on the edge." They're pretty much co-opting that for themselves: "we're smug an priggish about the genre, but we're the ones being sidelined now." They didn't come out and say that first part, but it's just dripping in the article (and A.O. Scott's review of Avenger's, which was basically an article about how he didn't care for superhero movies) before they get into that over the top last line of the article. If the article didn't have that smug, arrogant tone all over it, its criticisms would be much more strong.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
4. Irony continues to be an art practiced by the people who least understand it:
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I do agree in part that there are some gender and racial issues with comic books and their movies, but their comments on those ignore what most movies have done recently (and I'm assuming comics, I don't read enough to know much beyond the using of Samuel L. Jackson for Nick Fury in comics as well). While most of the heroes are white and male, the better comic book movies out there make the most of their female characters and making them more than someone to save. Besides Nick Fury, Heimdall in Thor hardly had to be a black man, Hogun was more Asian than eastern European, etc.
Their pooh-poohing of Scarlett Johanssen in The Avengers is a good case in point. Yes, she's going to be good looking and have that going for her, but they miss how the movie focuses on her ability to outwit her opponents and how she's able to take on Hawkeye, a similarly "powered" male. They're pretty much victims of the same male pandering that the Russian general early in Avengers exemplified: she's just a pretty face.
In short, the genre has room to grow, but it has grown more than they're willing to acknowledge.
Random tangent, they seemed slightly annoyed that comics movies were trying to be serious at one point, then were bored with Avengers, which seemed to balance lighthearted and serious effectively. I'm not sure they know what they want or what they're critiquing.
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Super heroes are modern myths. To say that something crafted a mere 60 years ago or less is outdated in its mores when Aesop, Beowulf, the Bible, Shakespeare and other 'timeless' stories deal with the same themes and tropes is idiotic.|
Originally Posted by Zombie Man
3. Comic world stories are still too outdated in its mores: Boys creating for boys.
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The only thing I can say to those so called "professional critics" is this: "Read some Joseph Campbell, you pretentious *********".
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That article seemed to me to blither on at great lengths without actually saying much.
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Much like most conversations of Liberal Arts majors ... or Baristas (same thing really).
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Originally Posted by Tenzhi
That article seemed to me to blither on at great lengths without actually saying much.
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The better stories are timeless. And often many of the better comic book stories are tapping into those Campbellian parameters to be timeless. But there certainly things about comics that are more outdated or reflected the culture they were in to a negative extent. |
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
Super heroes are modern myths. To say that something crafted a mere 60 years ago or less is outdated in its mores when Aesop, Beowulf, the Bible, Shakespeare and other 'timeless' stories deal with the same themes and tropes is idiotic.
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But yes, they seem more keen on shooting down what comics/comic movies can (and can't) do. Good example of that was mentioning X-Men First Class and not tangling with the Civil Rights movement at that time. I haven't seen the movie, but I can only imagine doing the origin story plus building up to Cuban blockade and then adding in Civil Rights references (beyond normal mutant stuff) would have hopelessly cluttered the movie and made it stagnant. These two would have probably (rightly) complained that it was trying to do too much.
Like I said, these two don't seem to know what they want or what they are critiquing. It's a terrible article from that and a writing standpoint.
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Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Much like most conversations of Liberal Arts majors ... or Baristas (same thing really).
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But really... writing clearly is something that any writer should be able to do, particularly for a prestigious newspaper like The New York times. A.O. Scott did sidetrack his review of Avengers to go off on comic book movies, though, so I guess it's par for the course with him.
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So....some one(s) had to do a narrative on superhero movies since 2000. So I guess superhero movies before then don't count? I was always of the belief that most movies (counting documentaries when I say most) are made for the audience to escape reality for a couple of hours... Not once have I watched a fictional movie and for some reason believed that it actually happened in the land of the real. There will ALWAYS be those that feel that the movie did not stay true to the roots of the subject matter and point out every single flaw in the friggin thing. As I said above I watch movies to escape reality for a couple of hours. Lord knows my life is not all that exciting and perhaps quite a bit too mundane. At any rate, this piece by the NY Times is a couple of peoples opinions and should be treated as such.
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It actually does something much more insidious. It disguises harsh criticism in pretend back and forth discussion.|
Originally Posted by Tenzhi
That article seemed to me to blither on at great lengths without actually saying much.
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Comic book movies suck. Just kidding. No I'm not. Really, I am. But they do.
Contrary to Scott's assertion, I have no need to feel perpetually beleaguered and disenfranchised. But I do feel compelled to point out phoney intellectualism, even when it doesn't rise to the level of competency necessary to beleaguer.
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You mean like Alanis Morissette writing a song about being ironic, but never using an example of irony?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
4. Irony continues to be an art practiced by the people who least understand it:
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@Rylas
Kill 'em all. Let XP sort 'em out.
I love Manola Dhargis, she's been by far my favorite movie critic since her days at the LA Weekly and the only serious threat to someday unseat Pauline Kael at the top of my all-time list.
Still, I expect I'll like Avengers just fine.
Wheadon makes good nerd-porn.
/edit
also, Scott and Dhargis are both film, not literary, critics.
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Honestly, they kind of don't. 70s/80s Superman/Batman were done well and consequently did well at the box office, but without exaggeration they're the most iconic superheroes in the history of comic books, and at the time it would have been hard to make a movie about them that people didn't want to see. And superhero/comic book movies have evolved quite a bit since then, and most of that is due to the successes of 1998's Blade, 2000's X-Men, and 2002's Spider-Man. Those three movies really changed the game as much as Superman (1978) and Batman (1989) did.
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Originally Posted by Sevenpenny
So....some one(s) had to do a narrative on superhero movies since 2000. So I guess superhero movies before then don't count?
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"You don't lose levels. You don't have equipment to wear out, repair, or lose, or that anyone can steal from you. About the only thing lighter than debt they could do is have an NPC walk by, point and laugh before you can go to the hospital or base." -Memphis_Bill
We will honor the past, and fight to the last, it will be a good way to die...
Quote:
More directly, it was really easy to make a superhero movie not about them that people didn't want to see.
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Originally Posted by DarkGob
Honestly, they kind of don't. 70s/80s Superman/Batman were done well and consequently did well at the box office, but without exaggeration they're the most iconic superheroes in the history of comic books, and at the time it would have been hard to make a movie about them that people didn't want to see.
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That isn't something specific to Super Heroes though. It is really easy to make bad movies.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
More directly, it was really easy to make a superhero movie not about them that people didn't want to see.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpIYz8tfGjY|
Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Much like most conversations of Liberal Arts majors ... or Baristas (same thing really).
|
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/mo...l?pagewanted=1
1. Fandom is mainstream, so, stop playing the outsider card, fans.
2. Comic book movies have been co-opted by the media industrial complex, but some good stuff still gets through.
3. Comic world stories are still too outdated in its mores: Boys creating for boys.
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