Too much is too much, even with superhero movies

Mar 6, 2015 14:41 GMT  ·  By

Let’s start this on a very positive note: I love movies and I am not a snob where they’re concerned. No matter the genre, the budget or the cast, or any other technical aspect you might label a cinematographic production by, if it’s good, I will see it. And I will enjoy it accordingly.

Superhero movies are a personal favorite, regardless if they’re Marvel-made, or dark, serious and somehow neglectful of the mythology / source material, from Warner Bros. All are good popcorn entertainment, but some actually stand on their own feet as decent films.

These are the kind of movies that not only entertain you with mindless action scenes and explosions (like Michael Bay does as a rule) but also make you happy you just viewed a production that comes halfway between an action film and a more “serious” one.

This is the reason why so many established actors are jumping on the superhero bandwagon; the other one is money. There is a lot of that involved in this new Hollywood bubble, and for the time being, profits are so impressive that not one studio wants to be left out.

I don’t think this will last for much longer.

Too much is too much

Starting with 2015 through to 2020, studios will put out over 20 superhero movies in total. I am excited for some of them, particularly the current big franchises from Marvel and Warners, but there are also those I can’t be moved to feel anything about right now, like the standalone Aquaman, the Marvel Spider-Man (which is not the same as Sony’s Amazing Spider-Man or the previous Spider-Man from Sam Raimi), Shazam, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, etc.

Just listing these names, though they’re not half of what we have coming our way, I wonder: how does one keep up?

The idea from all studios is to create superhero universes rivaling Marvel’s Avengers, where one character could easily move from one film to another and interact with the characters in it, and people wouldn’t need any explaining why that happened.

Again, how does one keep up? This makes sense on paper, but if you think that all the studios, not just one or two, are asking the same of us viewers, you realize keeping up would imply more homework than we ever had to do in college for class exams.

To me, as a fan of superhero movies, with only basic knowledge of the comic books they’re based on, this seems like too much: when Marvel did it, it was ok. It was still tolerable when Warners moved to get a piece of the pie, but recent announcements, with superhero movies-packed schedules, make it seem like the situation will soon become too taxing on the wider audience.

Loyal fans can only do so much in terms of ticket sales.

The stakes keep getting higher

There’s another aspect that will make the superhero bubble burst, other than the sheer number of planned releases: the need for each movie to take the stakes even higher than the previous one.

Yesterday, Marvel released the third trailer for “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” which will drop in theaters this May (see video below).

It’s just as awesome as you’d expect, with plenty of tense moments and explosive action scenes, a dash of romance and seemingly solid acting from all members of the cast, some humor and scenes teasing even more surprises to be revealed in the full film.

However, once the excitement wears off, you start to think about the levels of destruction you just witnessed on your computer screen. Just like it happened with Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel,” which must’ve killed thousands in the final confrontation between Superman and General Zod, this new “Avengers” installment will also bring about destruction of the kind you would not have imagined before.

With each new installment in a franchise or a new release from a rival studio, the stakes get higher and higher, and frankly, at the rate things are going right now, I don’t think Marvel or any other studio will have anything left to blow up by late 2016. When that happens, there will be nothing left to save and nothing left to keep us viewers in our seats in the theater.

Everything has a beginning and an end, and just like other trends in movies (vampires, end-of-days or post-apocalyptic films, biblical epics), this bubble will burst too. My impression is that it will happen before all the major studios get to bank on it, and some time before 2020.

When it happens, it will be glorious and costly for the studios, so let’s just sit back and enjoy the ride while it’s still good.   

Truer words have never been spoken
Truer words have never been spoken

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The superhero movie frenzy can't last for much longer
Truer words have never been spoken
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