Discussion Forums > The Lounge
Everyone loves it, but you absolutely hate it...
Nikkoru:
--- Quote from: Ixarku on February 13, 2013, 10:56:58 AM ---The majority of my friends are avid fans of the superhero genre, although I don't think any of them still buy comic books. With the exception of the recent Thor and The Avengers movies, which were actually entertaining, I'm pretty much over the entire superhero thing. If I never see another Spiderman, Batman, or Superman movie, I won't shed a tear. I look at this stuff these days and it just seems to me that the major characters and the tropes have been largely played out. There's no mystery, no tension, really nothing to grab my interest anymore. Hollywood tends to paint superheroes with broad brush strokes, and I feel like, for the most part, I've seen the same picture over and over. And as Nikkoru mentioned in another thread, the storylines in print have gotten so lengthy and convoluted, there's even less incentive to try to pick up an existing title unless you find the right point to start.
I guess I would say that I hate the genre, but it certainly bores me.
--- End quote ---
I wouldn't mind so much, but people are still harping on characters who've been around and recycling plots for nearly a century. The best comics are series like Watchmen, Sandman, or Walking dead -- certainly because of the writing, but that sort of story-telling is only possible when there's an ending. The characters can die, the world can blow up, things have meaning because they're going to have a conclusion.
If you look at how insanely inflated Superman has become (I read a list of his abilities earlier today) you get an impression of a hot mess which has been festering over decades. That's because no one lets anything die here, not when it's profitable or nostalgic. Rich story-telling is replaced by needless complexity and melodrama, giving the image of things happening while everything remains in a perpetual stasis.
It makes me feel such fondness for manga and manwha. While repetitive in certain tropes, are not without innovation -- not everything is shonen battle manga -- and they're certainly able to end (although one can debate the timing of such an ending).
occasional:
--- Quote from: Ixarku on February 13, 2013, 11:37:46 PM ---
--- Quote from: FlyinPenguin on February 13, 2013, 10:55:25 PM ---^^^
Agreed. I don't hate the genre but I find super hero stuff to be very boring. I didn't even like Iron Man despite Robert Downey Jr.'s excellent performance. Damn, that guy is a good actor.
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Yeah, he pretty much owns the Iron Man role now, almost as much as Ian Mckellan owns Gandalf. That said, Iron Man 2 sucked horribly.
--- End quote ---
Iron Man 2 rocked simply because of the AC/DC soundtrack.
Ixarku:
--- Quote from: Nikkoru on February 14, 2013, 06:19:46 AM ---I wouldn't mind so much, but people are still harping on characters who've been around and recycling plots for nearly a century. The best comics are series like Watchmen, Sandman, or Walking dead -- certainly because of the writing, but that sort of story-telling is only possible when there's an ending. The characters can die, the world can blow up, things have meaning because they're going to have a conclusion.
If you look at how insanely inflated Superman has become (I was read a list of his abilities earlier today) you get an impression of a hot mess which has been festering over decades. That's because no one lets anything die here, not when it's profitable or nostalgic. Rich story-telling is replaced by needless complexity and melodrama, giving the image of things happening while everything remains in a perpetual stasis.
It makes me feel such fondness for manga and manwha. While repetitive in certain tropes, are not without innovation -- not everything is shonen battle manga -- and they're certainly able to end (although one can debate the timing of such an ending).
--- End quote ---
"Perpetual stasis" is a good way to put it. I first became aware of comics as serious media in the mid-90s, before the big crash that nearly killed the industry, and certain titles & characters were new then (Image had just launched, for instance) or were at the height of their popularity. And it was pretty exciting for a while, until I started to realize the endless recycling of characters and stories. DC and Marvel had figured out one of the keys to success was to write a monthly series for a while, and when interest waned, they would end the series and shelf it for a while. And eventually, months or years later, they'd relaunch the series, possibly with new artists & writers, and with a new look, new stories, new direction, to shake things up a bit. It was a pretty smart move, kept interest going, and gave artists & writers some new opportunities. Some of the relaunched series were even pretty good (series 3 of The Spectre was one of my favorites).
The problem, of course, is that you can only do so much with an overexposed, iconic character before it falls into melodrama and ridiculous gimmicks. Many popular characters grow to the point where the public owns them more than the writers, so nobody's ever going to permanently change the nature of Batman, Spiderman, Superman, etc. Some of the Golden Age / Silver Age stuff with Superman, for example, is absolutely hysterical, it's so ridiculous.
As far as Hollywood movies go -- well, find a winning formula to make money, and Hollywood will beat it into the ground six ways to Sunday. Watchmen, some of the X-Men, some of the Spiderman, Iron Man 1, The Avengers, Thor, etc all made for entertaining movies, but personally I've grown weary of the formula. I feel like I've seen everything interesting that I'm going to see in the genre -- I feel the same way about werewolves and vampires, too.
--- Quote from: occasional on February 14, 2013, 09:41:03 AM ---Iron Man 2 rocked simply because of the AC/DC soundtrack.
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Don't make me smack you. ;)
Nikkoru:
I loath all these remakes, reboots, adaptations of adaptations of adaptations -- Hollywood has decided, quite reasonably, that we have the attention span of hamsters on meth.
As such, a title we recognize -- that can break through the white noise of our civilization -- has become necessary to convert into film. The superhero movies aren't some expression of nerd dominance or wide-scale acceptance of those fantasies ascribed to the socially graceless -- in the same way any anime conversion into Western theatres (and I don't doubt that it will) isn't going to be about openly accepting the people who use this site. It's all name recognition, anything remotely known which hasn't been utterly saturated already is going to be absorbed into it. The Superheroes and fairy tales are the current trend, the fairy tales being especially sought for their public domain cheapness.
I can honestly say I like some of them, but as an industry I don't really want to have my hobbies embraced by the popular culture. I'd rather see all original screen plays than an adaptation of anything again and again.
SirSkyRider:
Carnival. I loathe it from the bottom of my heart.
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