I may be wrong, but I don’t think he’s a (professional) critic. Some of his books have been adapted into movies.
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You’re right. Apparently he’s just another rudderless militarist. Why exactly would he write this horseshit oped, backing it up with pretensions of knowledge and authority, if he didn’t think himself a critic? As a profession it’s obvious it’s beneath him, therefore it’s easy! He at least gets the attitude.
As with every other master of torture and war hagiography, the pit is too deep for him to talk his way out of it.
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Are you as enthusiastic about superhero movies based on original stories, characters, and “mythologies?”
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What, you mean like Hancock? Or how about The Incredibles?
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Not going to ask about why I liked something in particular? Or are we chasing this other guy’s crap around?
I’m not sure what this means.
Superhero movies are generally pulled from either specific comic book lines (Marvel & DC Universes) or start from comic book tropes (The Incredibles). Even outliers like Dark City and The Matrix have comics behind them somewhere.
Also not sure why mythologies earns quotes. Read up on Stan Lee, Neil Gaiman, and many, many others – they all know their ancient mythology, urban mythology, and folklore upside down and backwards. And they use it.
So do the artists. There’s a Gaiman with something written in the Elder Futhark on a stone in one panel (it just says something boring like “Fuck you, nerd” on it). Little Easter eggs of mythology references show up all the time, in the books and on screen.
Not to mention, for all the pixels spilled about audience expectations and the credit teaser scenes, those are comic book conventions transformed for movies. So there are other meta-conventions happening all the time.
I can never find the damn thing, but I remember Tom Hiddleston wrote an essay which argued superhero comics are a new take on ancient Greek plays. The action, the conflicts, and even the humour all map very well onto those works.
That the author of the article, someone who claims to be more literary than thou, fails to pick up on that is telling to me.
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Hancock was eh.
The incredibles was brilliant.
Haven’t seen more than a few MCU films
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The Incredibles is an unlicensed Fantastic Four movie 
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The Avengers. Loki mind-controls Barton and Selvig? Okay, who cares? They’re bit-characters from Thor. Loki kills Phil Coulson?! Okay, now that’s personal, for the Avengers themselves as well as for the audience.
Guardians of the Galaxy. The back-to-back-to-back moments of Groot’s sacrifice, Peter finally reaching out and taking his mother’s hand, the claiming of the GotG name, and the reveal of the origin of the name “Star Lord” just emotionally destroyed me. It’s one of the reasons why GotG2 was such a let-down.
Going back a bit, the climax of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man 2. Peter has given up the title of Spider-Man, because it’s brought him nothing but pain and trouble. His powers desert him, because he doesn’t want them anymore. As the film goes on, he tries to reclaim the power, but still doesn’t want the responsibility that comes with them… and then responsibility comes and sucker punches him, and he realizes once again the consequences for standing back and doing nothing.
The Incredibles. How can you not feel some tiny part of Bob Parr’s pain when he thinks the plane has been shot down with all souls aboard lost?
Those are the first few that immediately come to mind, but I could probably make the case for about a half-dozen more.
Admittedly, a lot of superhero films are just popcorn flicks, especially most of the MCU films that aren’t origin stories. But reducing them all to just spectacle is seriously underselling the standouts among them. It’s saying “90% of superhero movies are crap” and therefore they’re all worthless, without keeping in mind the general rule that 90% of what is in pretty much every genre of creative work is crap.
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Exactly. Not to mention, with a few exceptions, the very popular stuff rarely gets the blessing of these kinds of critics. Last Year at Marienbad wasn’t exactly a blockbuster.
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Arrival.
The thing that gets me about comic book hero movies is that there are so many of them, and, to movie mogul eyes, are exactly the same thing as sf movies. But they’re not, and as a fan of the latter and not the former, the situation annoys me.
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Damn good film.
Oh yeah,
Amy Adams : man of steel
Jeremy Renner : avengers
Forest Whitaker : black panther
must keep this pot stirring
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I thank my library for letting me see them for free (well my I guess I pay for it via my property tax) when they come out on DVD. They have all been pretty well done if not something I would have plopped out $13+ for the big screen each release.
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Library access is the best. Besides what you mentioned, they also tend to have those films which were not well distributed, and so were easy to miss when they were (kinda sorta) in theatres.
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My library stocks British mysteries and educational films. They sell off a lot of the popular stuff that gets donated. Marvel cinematic universe is not a priority for them.
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Well that sucks. Seriously. They are definitely worth rental price then.
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Okay, I’m just going to give a run-down of the pale-ass white guys of the MCU main cast (who are about the only ones I feel comfortable criticizing).
- Tony Stark is a genius in his field and thinks that being that smart in one specific field means that everyone should defer to him in everything.
- Bruce Banner reverts to mindless violence whenever he gets too angry, and then blames the resulting devastation on everything other than his inability to keep his own behaviour in check when emotionally excited.
- Thor Odinson has one gift: the ability to beat the shit out of anyone and anything he comes across. Having that hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
- Steve Rogers is the epitome of American exceptionalism. The world’s problems are his to solve, and, because he’s convinced of his own righteousness, he won’t let anyone — friend, foe, or neutral party — stand in the way of holding what he sees as the moral high ground.
- Peter Quill acts hedonistically, caring for little beyond his own pleasure, until the consequences of those actions come back and get rubbed in his face.
- Scott Lang is the stereotypical little guy going up against people, companies, and systems that are much bigger than him, and, because he’s always the underdog, believes that justifies his use of illegal or immoral tactics towards his ends.
- Steven Strange defines himself by what he can accomplish by the work of his hands; he throws what could have been a distinguished career as a medical researcher away trying to get his hands fixed because anything less than complete control of the outcome is abhorrent to him.
- Peter Parker has the typical teenage certainty of his own invulnerability.
Those all seem like fairly standard “human appetites, weaknesses and strengths.”
On the contrary, most of the Marvel villains, especially, are just the main characters with one difference that amounts to a sin.
- Stane - Greedier Tony Stark
- Vanko - Vengeful Tony Stark
- Schmidt - Egomaniacal Steve Rogers
- Winter Soldier - Brainwashed Steve Rogers
- Pierce - Unrestrained Nick Fury
- Ultron - Eugenicist Tony Stark
- Cross - Hank Pym with an inferiority complex
- Kaecilius - Steven Strange who hasn’t read to the end of the book to find the warnings
- Ego - Sociopathic Peter Quill
- Toomes - Poor Tony Stark with a family and employees to feed
- Hela - Bloodthirstier Thor
- N’Jadaka - Imperialist T’Challa
I seriously can’t see how he missed that – a lot of the complaints I’ve heard about the MCU are that, more often than not, the characters are fighting evil versions of themselves.
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I think that’s fair but it’s also a pretty inevitable consequence of having protagonists with god-like powers in the first place. The whole point is that they’re unstoppable, which means that your average rent-a-thug is never going to stand a chance.
Pretty much the only way to create drama with an essentially immortal central protagonist is to have them fight some version of themselves.
The standard model seems to be that the antagonist has to be a mirror version of the protagonist but with one aspect of their personality dialled up to 11, which initially makes them more powerful than the hero.
The hero learns from the initial defeat, realises that the personality aspect is actually a weakness, not a strength, and uses this knowledge to both defeat the antagonist and grow into a more well-rounded (read: less two-dimensional) character.
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“We are a lot alike you and I…”
- every comicbook villian ever
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Those are always the more boring superhero stories, though.
Superman’s iconic nemesis isn’t Zod or Bizarro, it’s Lex Luthor.
Batman’s nemesis isn’t anyone who will out-fight or out-plan him, it’s the Joker, who will act unpredictably.
Spider-Man and Venom fights are boring; he’s better when he fights Vulture or a Goblin.
The villain almost universally acknowledged to be the best for the first two phases of the MCU? Loki, whose defining trait is that he’s nothing like Thor (beyond a mutual desire for parental affection).
Etc., etc…
There are three ways to threaten an invincible superhero:
- Manufacture a weakness (Superman vs. Kryptonite).
- Put them up against someone even stronger (Hulk vs. Abomination)
- Threaten something they care about in a way that their power set is useless to stop
The problem with option 3 is that it isn’t very cinematic, so they usually go with options #1 or #2 - find a counter to their powers, or put them up against their mirror.
But, again, #3 is almost always the best option. Look again at the end of Thor. Loki didn’t lose when Thor defeated him in combat, or when he broke the Bifrost. He lost when Odin showed up and said the two heartbreaking words: “No, Loki.” That single moment of paternal disapproval is what finally broke him. It’s a character-driven moment, and that’s almost always going to be stronger than the use of some McGuffin or a battle where the villain has the hero on the ropes until the hero discovers a new depth of strength and beats the villain into submission.
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