It occurred to me recently that 2018 is, in a way, the culmination of 4 decades worth of ups and downs regarding comic books at the movies, with every ten years bringing about some new, dynamic shift. What do I mean? I will explain!
Movies based on comic books are a huge deal right now, and don’t look to be letting up anytime soon.
Every year seems jam packed with more and more superheroes from the Big Two, with so many supermovies that people are complaining about fatigue. Fatigue! People are actually getting tired of seeing superheroes on the big screen. You know you’ve reached cultural saturation when the fatigue complaints start settling in.
But it wasn’t always this way. At one point, superheroes were not treated with quite the amount of respect. But things permanently shifted 40 years ago.
1978
In much the same way every superhero on the printed page owes a debt to Superman, the same can be said for their big screen brethren. Comic book heroes could be cartoon stars, or they could be television stars, or they could appear in serials or on the radio, but a big budget movie seemed out of the question. But 1978’s Superman altered the landscape forever. A big-budget extravaganza, featuring an award winning cast with suitably iconic music, Superman treated the subject matter with a deft reverence that had never been seen before.
While the film has its flaws—a land-crazy Luthor that didn’t quite evoke the mad super-scientist of the comics of the time—there’s no doubting that a virtual unknown actor named Christopher Reeve embodied the titular character with a strength and gravitas that demanded respect. If Superman had been a lesser movie in lesser hands, one wonders what the landscape would look like now.
Unfortunately, the highs of Superman would prove unsustainable. While Superman II managed to, in many ways, improve on the first movie, subsequent chapters would do their most to erase the goodwill built up by those first tow movies. With 1987’s Superman IV, the series was quietly put to death.
Marvel’s big screen gambit did not prove quite so successful. While there had been many unremarkable stabs at Marvel movies—Captain America and Dr. Strange both received movies that were…not good—A large amount of money was dumped into 1986’s Howard the Duck. With the full “force” of Lucasfilm behind it, I guess somebody figured it was a sure thing. But Howard the Duck was as big a failure as can be imagined. It would take a long time for Marvel to recover.
1988
With Marvel’s stab at big-budget cinema destroyed, and DC’s franchise driven into the dirt, 1988 was a very important palette-cleanser year. DC retreated into its shell to regroup and re-prioritize. Marvel went back to the one arena where it had enjoyed a measure of success: the small screen. 1988’s The Incredible Hulk Returns television movie garnered a ton of buzz, drawing nostalgic interest from those who had enjoyed the adventures of Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. Further building on the buzz, the movie promised to feature the debut of the God of Thunder himself, Thor.
However, it was a weird, disappointing Thor in name only, and despite proving enough of a success for two more Hulk movies to be green-lit (no pun intended, I swear!) All the Hulk movie did was prove that something needed to change. And change it did, as the very next year, 1989, brought Tim Burton’s Batman, which exploded with the same force and fury that Superman’s solo movie had the previous decade.
Marvel seemed incapable of capitalizing on the success of their rivals though, releasing movies like Dolph Lundgren’s Punisher and Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four direct-to-video. It seems the stink of Howard the Duck still hadn’t been washed off of Marvel’s cinematic fingers.
As the 90s wore on, the batman franchise followed a similar pattern set up by the Superman movies, culminating with the worst movie of the franchise in 1997. Batman and Robin, like Superman IV a decade earlier, signaled the deathknell for that particular continuity, and DC’s moviemaking esteem in the process. Steel, with Shaquille O’Neal, probably didn’t help.
But Marvel was still in the background, ready to take a chance.
1998
It was unexpected. It wasn’t a big name. It wasn’t a popular character. It wasn’t a major movie event. But it made all the difference. Blade arrived.
Blade, a movie about a half-vampire who murdered vampires with slick moves, a slick car and Kris Kristofferson, was the first movie Marvel had ever made that didn’t have to be watched through a fog of “so bad it’s good.” It was genuinely good. Utterly stylish and stylized, oozing cool charisma for days, Blade was a movie with an attitude, featuring that all-too-important ingredient of marrying the perfect actor to the perfect role. Wesley Snipes looked to be having the time of his life in the role, and the audience responded.
Blade showed the world that marvel could actually make a good movie if they tried. Soon, franchises built around X-men and Spider-Man both added to that success, and Marvel was now a potent force. DC, regrouping after the disaster that was Batman and Robin, refused to remain beaten, and in 2006 returned to the Batman well once more, presenting a more realistic take on the Caped Crusader with Batman Begins.
As the pattern seems to prove, Marvel found itself in trouble once again. With the third movie in Blade, Spider-man and X-men all proving to be very low points in their respective franchises, and the mixed-reviews of Ang Lee’s version of the Incredible Hulk, they needed something in the win column. DC was grabbing all the attention with their brand new Batman franchise, and was building buzz around the imminent appearance of the Joker.
2008
Everything changed in 2008. Everything.
DC scored one of its most well-received movies ever with The Dark Knight, featuring a scene-stealing and award-winning performance by Heath Ledger as a radically different take on a big screen Joker. Ledger’s performance as the Joker makes everything else about Nolan’s Batman movies pale in comparison and, to be frank, makes Batman himself seem dull. The movie itself is essentially set-pieces built around that performance. Critics shat themselves over the movie.
So what did Marvel, who was still licking wounds from failed third efforts, do?
They started what has become known as the MCU.
Marvel built on previous successes by creating a singular continuity with an overarching storyline. It was all in the same world. 2008’s Iron Man pushed a rock down a hill, and it has been rolling nonstop for the past decade. While there have been other Spider-man movies, other X-men movies, And the Fantastic Four has done its best, the MCU has become the 4000 pound gorilla, such that DC, whose Batman trilogy finished up in 2012, followed suit by beginning their own cohesive universe with 2013’s Man of Steel.
Iron Man shifted the landscape of superhero cinema—maybe permanently.
2018
2018 is the culmination of that effort began in 2008. Starting off with Black Panther, itself an anomaly with a primarily black cast that went on to make a couple Wakandajillion dollars, the MCU then dovetailed into Avengers: Infinity War. Every movie, every character, every decade-long plot, came to a head, with a gigantic cast from a diverse mixture of movies all coming together in an unprecedented event.
DC, with Aquaman and Shazam upcoming, seems to be regrouping in an effort to find what works for them after some iffy decision-making.
1978. 1988. 1998. 2008. 2018. Important milestones that have, in one way or the other, informed the decade that follows. I wonder what 2018 will lead to. Have we gone as big as we possible can, and will this mean a stripping back to basics, or will we push even further? Maybe in 2028 we’ll be watching the Avengers and Justice League teaming up to fight Thanos and Darkseid.
Who knows?