Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
Read More.Praise for Star Dragon
"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
Search
Three Crimes of Cliche Modern Superhero Movies Commit
July 9th, 2012
I have enjoyed the last decade of plentiful, quality superhero movies very much, and the few winners from earlier than that. After watching The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man recently, both of which I enjoyed, I was reminded of some things I see too often in such movies that is starting to annoy me whenever I even suspect it’s going to happen. That’s bad, because it throws me out of the movie and is a sign of lack of originality. In fact, we’re talking cliche here, something to be avoided.
Now, there’s a lot of things I could complain about with regard to superhero movies. The laughable science, the ease at which hero and villain find each other when it’s time for a fight, or the how a high school boy can hand sew a costume that would take first place at any Halloween party (a real-life superpower!), for instance. But I want to give those a pass for now and focus on some crimes, if you will, that movies specifically commit that I’ve seen too many times already.
The first crime: ditching the mask early and often.
Superheroes generally guard their identity because anonymity protects them and their loved ones. It’s an extremely rare event for superheroes to remove their masks and flaunt their secret identity, and maybe a movie should represent an especially important and rare set of events in a hero’s life, but come on! Here’s a short list:
Batman — almost every version. Alfred and Robin get to know, but we have Vicki Vale in Tim Burton’s first movie, a climactic cowl removal in the sequel, to Rachel Dawes in Nolan’s version, and a handful of others.
Daredevil — again with the girlfriend, Elektra, but she knew in the comics, so pass there. But the Kingpin at the end, for drama, I assume, and irony needing to be underlined for inattentive viewers.
Spider-man 1 & 2 — every villain knows, and his girlfriend and his best friend who becomes an enemy.
The Amazing Spider-man — again with the girlfriend, her father, and the villain. Really?
The Avengers — Iron-Man is public, but Captain America loses his mask by the end, and Hawkeye never gets one.
The X-Men — they mostly skipped the costumes even. Some X-men usually go masked, some don’t, but let’s just have some cool black leather battle suits and skip the dorky outfits, huh? I liked First Class better in this respect.
I think this comes from the belief that actors need face time to do their jobs well and that general audiences don’t really want to see crazy people in stupid, dorky costumes. This is the same urge that gets the crew in Prometheus, or the Hollywood writer pulling their strings, to remove their helmets.
The Second Crime: Intertwined Hero/Villain Origins.
Whether or not the heroes’ origins are tied into that of their movie foes, or any foes at all, they are often forced into that mold. I’ll just mention a few rather than making a list. In the first Tim Burton Batman movie, the Joker and Batman “make each other.” In the Nolan version, Batman’s origin involves the villain Ra’s al Ghul. Neither were involved in the original Batman origin. Daredevil suddenly gets the Kingpin messing up his childhood. The new Spider-man helps create the Lizard…who was involved in creating Spider-man. Iron Man’s villains have stolen, or believe he stole, the same technology. The Red Skull is the Nazi super soldier to America’s Captain America.
The funny thing is that Lex Luthor, Superman’s nemesis, actually has a vendetta against the hero due to an accident leading to the loss of his hair, arguably caused by Superman. In the movies…no relationship there. Maybe revenge for hair loss is not Hollywood worthy. Okay, it is kind of stupid. Maybe for the next reboot, however, we can shave Fabio for the role and I’d believe the rage.
In any event, yeah, it makes a nice, tight storyline to have intertwined origins but I’ve now seen it a dozen times. I’d like to see the heroes move on with their lives and face some new, unrelated villains. The Joker in The Dark Knight…who knows his real origin or motivations? They probably have nothing to do with Batman, but he’s still a great character in a great story.
The Third Crime: Superpower Training Montages
Movies with these also often have a cliched end scene with the hero, now finished with the main story line, out doing their thing and having a great time. This probably results from, in part, the fact that so many superhero movies insist on being origin stories and the desire to show the audience the powers without belaboring them. Still…I’m pretty sick of it. I usually say to myself, “Okay, self, 45 seconds of training now…and probably one clever bit to smile at in there, too.”
It was pretty bad with the new Spider-Man movie since so much closely paralleled the recent Raimi movies. The only new thing was the shots from Peter’s point of view.
The X-Men, Batman, and the Avengers actually do spend a lot of time training in the comic books. A lot of them just do their thing, or the training is implied. I’m just tired of seeing the same movie solution of the 1980s montage and would like to see some other takes on it than I have been seeing regularly.
What about you? Any pet peeves with the recent superhero movies?
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
The super hero genre is a very tired one. Yes, we get it, he needs to intervene in a crime and can therefore never show up for anything on time. Yes, we get it, his enemies may find out therefore he can’t be with the girl he loves. And then there’s all the fighting. Maybe in the 1930s a person with super strength would be an interesting concept, but in the days of tactical nuclear weapons, not so much.
There is actually a good amount of science fiction about people with special powers, which takes this in much more interesting directions than super hero comics/movies/TV shows. Impact of telepathy on society? Thieves and spies that can do their business without being detected? That is much more interesting.
Of course I don’t like fantasy either, so what do I know.
My primary issue I have with a lot of recent ones is trying to cram far far far too much into them, which also tends to lead into a pretty rushed ending.
Spider man 3 was pretty much that all over. I enjoyed the first two (felt the rushed Green Goblin origin 15 minutes in was offset nicely by the dualistic ‘man in the mirror’ bits personally). Spider man 3 crammed too many villains (depending on if you consider Harry a villain that got short changed a bit), Gwen stacey in (for no apparent reason)and the cheese at the end with the announcer (this could be the end of spider man) and the crowd crying had nowhere near the resonance of 2’s train scene.
Iron Man 2 was better paced but still was similar. The ending was pretty much the result of cramming too much in. Whiplash comes in and its reduced to ‘lets combine our weapons!’.
Just saw The Amazing Spider Man the other day and I’d say that suffers from it as well. But primarily because it essentially repeats an origin story. Am I the only one who felt that the origin story wasn’t needed? I think you could have a series reboot without having to telegraph it so obviously. Fine with the Peter’s parents angle, that would offer a fine way to differntiate it from the previous trilogy. But by trying to have the same-but-different origin it just felt deriviative, unoriginal and trying to do too much with too little.
Nice observations, James. I disliked Curt Conners hearing the Lizard’s voice because it seemed way too much like the Green Goblin’s ‘man in the mirror’ bits. The reboot should can make homages to the first movie, but shouldn’t remind us in distracting ways that suggest a lack of originality.
Yeah, Spider-Man 3, like the last few 1990s Batman movies, and Iron Man 2, tried to cram too much in. Less is more, as they say. Sandman AND Venom AND Harry Osbourne (Green Goblin 2), AND a new rival girlfriend. Poison Ivy AND Bane AND Mr. Freeze AND Batgirl….
I did like that in the new Spider-Man movie, Peter Parker came across like a skinny high school kid. High school science nerd, not quite, but at least like a kid growing up and learning from making mistakes.
I’m not much of a comic book guy myself so I picked up a lot of these things from 90’s era cartoons. On the Lizard does he actually have a full on alternate personality (intelligent as opposed to simply primal) in the comics? Seem to recall something of that kind in the cartoons, just wondering if theres any kind of basis for that in the source material. Did feel kind of shoehorned in there though to justify his kind of lightswitch turn to villain. For the first few seconds didn’t even recognise it as the lizard it was so subtle.
Kind of torn with the new peter parker as represented in the film. I kind of prefer the full on glasses almost proto-typical nerd in the original trilogy. But again thats another thing that it had against it going in (for me I wonder if theres a really significant number of people who for this was their first spiderman film) of comparing it to the original. On the character front having him as the skinny nerd but also a bit of a rebel coming into his own was something that was done well. For all the other faults I definitely think it was an interesting take on the character and done pretty well.
The Lizard is smart in that form, and does indeed have a different personality/perspective from his human form.
I kind of wish he’d been bright green in the movie, with a white lab coat…like my old action figure.