Superhero Movies - More Diverse Than You Think

At the risk of using a classic snowclone, Superhero (or comic book) movies are the new Westerns. What I mean is that the genre is both popular and diverse enough to be regarded as a venue for working through our collective philosophical and psychological issues.

Other genres (horror, melodrama, comedy) also hold up a mirror to our collective psyches, but not in the way that the Big movies do. The lesser genres show us what we want - morally, aesthetically, emotionally - but only part of what some of us want. The dominant genre of the time, be it Westerns, gangster movies, or superhero flicks, reflects most of what most of us want. I would consider comparing gangster movies and TV shows to Westerns, if you were to say that Westerns were more of a way of defining masculinity. But I think Westerns, in their time, were bigger than gangster films/shows like The Sopranos, Godfather, Goodfellas, and Scarface are today.

No one would doubt that superhero tales are quite popular, more popular in the last 5 years than ever before and more popular than any other type of film with the possible exception of talking-animal-CGI films. If you were keen on making an older comparison, you could liken them to myths or fairy tails, other dominant genres of their times. But what about my claim that the genre is diverse?

Enter The Dark Knight, in some sense a synthesis of the superhero movie and the gangster flick. And yes, I know Batman isn't technically a superhero because he doesn't have superpowers. But genres and classification aren't defined that way. They're defined by the language we use to refer to the texts, by marketers, vendors, critics, and fans. And I'm willing to assume that most of them would classify this as a superhero blockbuster film. While watching it, I couldn't help but compare it to another superhero blockbuster - Iron Man. These films came out in the same year, they're of the same genre, I'm willing to wager they make roughly the same money (they're as popular as one another), and, significantly, they have almost the same amount of critical acclaim (79 for Iron Man on metacritic, to Dark Knight's 82).

If we were going to plop down $15 to see the Dark Knight on the Imax, maybe we'd like to have a good idea of what we're in for. Ads are of no service here, as they remain startlingly homogeneous. They have to. Ads have to appeal to the largest group possible, even if they have to misrepresent their product, which they frequently do. Ads for Iron Man, Hancock, and Dark Knight look pretty similar to one another - lots of action, some ironic wit, good-looking wounded-yet-rough men, sexy women. To take Dark Knight as an example, its interesting to note that almost all of the clips in the many previews come from the first 2/3 of the movie (which, in my opinion, are the least interesting part of the movie, certainly not as morally complex as the last third). So ads are not a good indicator of content.

What about critics? Shouldn't critics be the corrective to misleading advertising? Well, it depends on how much you bother to read. If you're just looking for general thumbs-up-thumbs-down assessment, as most people are, then the critics are of no use. Yes, all of the critics like both movies, but I have a tough time believing that the public will like both movies equally. One is pretty frothy and fun, the other is pitch black and quite complex. If you dig a little deeper and read the reviews, you can see that most critics recognize these differences. Its important to say that I do not think critics should've praised Iron Man, damned Dark Knight, or vice-versa. But to fail to acknowledge the stark differences between these movies, as thumbs-up-thumbs-down reviewing does, seems to indicate that there's something wrong with that kind of popular film criticism.

Let's go over some of the differences:

Humor: the humor in Iron Man relies primarily on understatement - the hero reacts to a huge explosion with raised eyebrows. There are plenty of catchphrases and instances of Tony Stark reacting in more laid-back fashion than the situation dictates. In the Dark Knight, the humor is more dry and British, quicker and, depending on your taste for these things, either clever or too clever. There's more gallows humor as one would expect with the Joker (here's hoping that Heath Ledger's death doesn't totally overwhelm critical appraisal of this film).

Romance subplot: While both protagonists are playboys, Tony Stark gets the girl in the end while Bruce Wayne is left to brood over a dead lover. Not exactly a minor difference in terms of tone.

Morality: Iron Man dabbles with moral complexity, casting a reformed arms dealer as hero (who ultimately ends up using weapons he designed to kill bad guys, much like the military does). The Dark Knight, on the other hand, had scene after scene in which characters were made to ask themselves (and the audience) tough moral questions: is it ever moral to kill large numbers of people? Is it okay to lie to the public in order to maintain order? Is it okay to survey the public without their knowing? Does using force against the enemy breed more insidious, amoral enemies? Can we delegate the killing that our situation demands to superheroes (read: soldiers) because we can't do what needs to be done? The film was practically an ethics class.

There's one scene that really brings home the dissimilarity. At the end of Iron Man, Tony Stark holds a press conference and announces that he is Iron Man. The scene is subversive, in that it goes against what we know about superheroes: they like to keep their true identity a secret. In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent calls a press conference and announces that he is Batman (when we know that he's not). Iron Man is content with a few double crosses here and there but doesn't want to confuse the audience with too many. The Dark Knight assumes the audience can maintain an understanding of character motivation even when there are many, many more double crosses.

If there's anything to learn from this, it is that looking at who wrote and directed the movie might be a better indicator than any as to what the film will be like, lending credence to the beleaguered auteur theory. I think that auteur theory is imperfect in that it fails to recognize the fact that creators could create something especially similar to other creators' works and dissimilar to their own previous work. This happens plenty, and the good critic can recognize it.

So, what are the recurring authorial themes? Right away, there's identity. In the first two scenes, the Nolans play with our expectations of who's who, just as they did with the twins in The Prestige, the hero/villain of Memento, and superhero-as-symbol-transcending -individual concept in Batman Begins. They take the idea of superhero's symbolic power being more important than their individual identity to a new level by making a mockery of the personal-history-as-destiny concept. The Joker tells a couple of different versions of how he got to be as fucked up as he is, and none of them is the truth. Each version suits his situation. This film deals far more with moral, political, social, and philosophical issues than psychological or personal ones. Another point of difference from some comic book heroes (Hulk) but not terribly different than others (Spiderman).

And for those of you who think web criticism doesn't matter, check out this article from Slate. Be advised that the article never claims that critics cause a movie to be popular. Only that they are able to anticipate the popularity of a movie better than non-experts and better than chance. Surely, some critics exert some effect on the popularity of a movie (probably the ones who have been especially good at predicting how much the public will like it). Anyway, if critics learn to write from the point of view of the experienced expert and not from the point of view of the cultural elitist, then they will be valued widely. As long as they assume that their job is to say what is good and what is bad, what is art and what is trash, instead of being able to distill the differences of films and be able to present those differences in a way that consumers can make decisions based on them, they'll be writing for just another niche.

Are 'No Country for Old Men' and 'There Will Be Blood' good movies?

Right after seeing No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood (both of which I liked, kind of), I got the feeling that critics would love them and the public would wonder what the critics were smoking. The lackadaisical pacing, the meandering plots, the lack of distinct musical cues, emotionally remote protagonists, and the oddball endings all seemed like something that people wouldn't like nearly as much as critics. I was right about the critics, but I'm not so sure about the second part.

One hint that this is the case can be found on metacritic which aggregates critical reception of a film and compares it to the opinions of users. The 18 point difference between critical praise and user praise of Blood and 17 points for No Country are larger than those of any other film out now, maybe bigger than any film on the site ever (need to do more research there). Granted, the sample of users is so small (329 & 401) and is interested enough in critical reaction to come to a site dedicated to aggregating it, and therefore it probably isn't very representative of general public opinion. IMDB users (larger samples at 30,000 and 60,000) rated both films very highly, so highly that they're both in the top 40 films of all time according to users.



For a moment, let's assume that the public didn't (or wouldn't) like either of these films as much as the critics. As I've always been interested in the relationship between critical praise and popular success, having rejected the reductionist platitude that critics like one type of film and the public another, I thought I'd take another look at why the discrepancy might exist.

One explanation would have it that there are certain static characteristics, both thematic and stylistic, that critics are drawn to more than the general public. Grandiose themes like the criticism of American capitalist arrogance, might be a thematic thread that is common to so many critically acclaimed films, while long-duration shots and any of the attributes listed above seem to fare better with critics than audiences.

In some cases, I think critical praise, of a film or the themes and stylistic traits of a film, precede the popular embrace of those things. Does the praise cause the public to like those things; that is, does the public or has the public ever looked to critics to tell them what's good and what isn't? Are the critics merely good at predicting what the public will eventually like? Are they just as likely to guess which movies will be popular if they were to pull a film's name out of a hat (the times they anticipate popularity are roughly equal to the odds that they would do so by chance)?

It would be fascinating to do an analysis of films that were loved by critics and hated by the public. Within that category there would be to sub-categories: the films (or attributes of films) that the public came to love (or at least accept) and films/attributes that the public still dislikes. The former would show us instances critical anticipating of popularity (critics doing their job well) while the other would show us what the critics like that the public will never like (critics acting like cultural elites, trying in vain to force the public to like what they like).

Limited access might skew there numbers. Even if all critically praised films become available to everyone via online or in-person rental, some will be better promoted than others, and so their popularity would reflect their promotion budget more than any intrinsic characteristic of the film. But still, the internet allows people to see some prima facie indication of what films critics liked that the public wouldn't like if they were made to watch the film instead of selecting it b/c they sought it out or b/c it was heavily marketed. Critics are made to watch every film, so for it to be a sensible comparison, the public would have to be made to watch every film too.

Art vs. Commerce, Resolved

While wandering around the Art Institute of Chicago, I started thinking more about the difference between "classic" art that lasts hundreds of years and commercial "art" that is replaceable and disposable, at least in terms of the way it is created, received by the general public, and its role in the economy. Some of the art in that museum had been appreciated by billions of people, and had generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue over the years. What accounted for that? Was it a cadre of critics who deemed the work "classic," or did those critics and curators recognize some intrinsic appeal that is not limited by time or culture?

I'm pretty sure that the determining factor between art and commerce is longevity or lasting value and universality. Longevity and universality can be achieved two ways: remaining in sync with the aesthetic and cultural values of society over time and space OR by using one's station in life to acquire the markers of "classic" status, if not the substance.

The relevation that I had while staring at "The Feast of Herod and the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist" was this: certain kinds of art critics are no different than advertising: they're both using their accrued capital (either social, in the case of critics, or monetary, in the case of ads) to artificially boost the value (the longevity and universality) of a work.

If you'll allow me the opportunity to completely "dork out," I've worked up this chart that better explains what I'm talking about.



I think this might be related to thoughts I've had on the debate over the wisdom of crowds vs. the wisdom of experts. You could replace "experts" with "critics." In order to determine the relative value of crowds vs. critics, we must first determine which critics simply use their station in life to subject the masses to their opinions and which critics predict the popularity of a work over cultures and time. Then, you could compare the thoughts of the predictor critics to those of the masses (i.e. crowds, the public, first weekend box office, democracy). My guess is that they'd fare pretty well, b/c as wise as crowds are, they can't see beyond their own micro-culture and they tend not to base their collective decisions on thorough research of previous successes and failures the way an informed critic could.

Of course, predicting the future success of a work is pretty difficult (though not impossible). As I was driving back from O'Hare today, I heard Marky Mark Wahlberg's "Good Vibrations," which, thanks to Wahlberg's rising status as producer of a successful show and his Oscar nominated turn in The Departed, probably gets more airplay than Brian Wilson's "Good Vibrations." I guess critics can analyze the intrinsic values of some work and say that, "all things being equal," its likely or unlikely to withstand the test of time. But some of those "things" are the careers of the artists and the subsequent assignment of kitsch value. But that's a subject for another blog.