Wither the Superhero Summer Blockbuster?
The Hollywood Reporter is out with an analysis of this summer’s box office, leading with a rather startling statistic: R-rated comedies have grossed more than superhero flicks.
Barely, it should be stated. But when you’re talking over 1.01 billion (with a B) dollars, barely isn’t nothing. The figure is even more compelling for Tinseltown number crunchers when you consider that an R-rated comedy, even one featuring the more expensive stars, costs dramatically less to make than a tent-pole action blockbuster. In other words, R-rated comedies’ box office may only be ever so slightly higher than the spandex-clad movies, but their profitability is higher still.
There have been endless lamentations of the quality of blockbuster superhero flicks, comic book adaptations, and the general suck-itude of what Hollywood has fed us. Last year, Matt Zoller Seitz at Salon.com wrote a mini-thesis on why superhero movies often aren’t very good, and he hadn’t even seen Green Lantern. Of course, his piece was hardly original. A few months later, UnrealityMag.com argued the whole genre had peaked. Between then and now, countless more blog posts, magazine articles, and comments online basically made the same point.
Then, this week, Jacob Silverman wrote a surprisingly solid piece in Tablet magazine on how to save the genre by reconnecting it to the complex tension many early Jewish comic book writers infused in their stories.1
There are some exceptions, of course, but most of the last decade—an era when Hollywood has supposedly rededicated itself to producing quality superhero movies featuring iconic characters—has been a wash.
I’ve read all of these arguments, and I’ve even agreed with them, in overall sentiment if not in every specific complaint. Then, I’ve shrugged and ignored them.
Why? Because it’s a ridiculous argument that has no bearing on whether or not these films will continue to get made, or whether they will continue to suck. Hollywood makes money by making movies. For every Green Lantern or Iron Man 2, there’s The Dark Knight or X2: X-Men United. The good mixes with the bad, and every last one of them, regardless of where they fall on that spectrum, has made money.2
I’m generalizing. Not every film has been a success. There are notable financial flops (see, Superman Returns), but the superhero flick has remained a fairly profitable enterprise on the whole. The merchandising alone is worth the trouble of producing these films.
But show me an article about the flagging fortunes of the genre’s box office relative to some other genre, and then I’ll pay attention. Dollars and cents make the world spin round, so this is something studio execs might pay close attention to. Of course, if anyone sees this and thinks, “Ooh, finally! Hollywood might stop making superhero movies — or make fewer of them — and start pouring its production budgets into some other genre,” that person fundamentally misunderstands the economics of the film industry.
That R-rated comedies made more at the box office one summer than a crop of admittedly middling superhero flicks will not sound the death knell of the over-marketed spandex set. What it does mean is you can expect to see more R-rated comedies coming down the pike, and guess what boys and girls, a larger percentage of them will probably suck. The same Hollywood model that has turned so many superhero flicks into pale imitations of Christopher Nolan will greenlight a bunch of pale imitations of Zach Galifianakis. Yes, there will be some really funny movies in that mix, but more than not will be, at best, eh.
Also, don’t expect R-rated comedies to become the next summer tent-pole. By definition, they can’t be. Merchandising is limited to non-existent on a film like Bridesmaids and you can’t make bank off the kids during their summer vacations with cursing, nudity, and poop jokes.3
So, take a deep breath. Repeat after me. Wither the superhero summer blockbuster? Not on your lightsaber, chuckles.
- I say it is surprising, because Tablet is a Jewish publication, and thus the subhead states, “Hollywood should get back to the source material and make these heroes more Jewish.” I’ve little doubt that was inserted by an editor looking to stoke click-thrus, but that doesn’t make it seem any less ham-handed. The article itself is more nuanced and literate, simply proposing that there was a moral and narrative tension reflected in early Jewish creators’ desire to assimilate despite their fidelity to Jewish identity and traditions. He’s got a point, though I would argue that Hollywood has never shied away from stripping the nuance and storytelling depth out of a genre if it can mass-produce a profit. That so many superheroes were the product of Jewish writers is, at least to some degree, merely coincidental. Besides, most of these characters are the product of a litany of writers, of multiple religious and ethnic backgrounds, contributing to their cannon and identity piecemeal, over time. ↩
- You could, in fact, say this about virtually any genre that Hollywood has cashed in on en masse. Horror films are usually less interesting, often far worse, and ridden into the ground dramatically more often than superhero films. I don’t see people routinely wringing their hands about that, possibly because they don’t have childhood affections for such films like they do for comic book adaptations, possibly because one genre is cheaper on average and less aggressively marketed. Regardless of the reason, it’s not exactly clever to point out Hollywood’s business model can be detrimental to the quality of some films. Not all films, but some. ↩
- Two out of three ain’t bad, but one out of three isn’t enough to get a film financed. Usually, anyways. ↩