The scaffolding for this piece is going to be very post-post-modern. To an almost nauseating degree, but stay with me. I’ll be using two episodes of the podcast Plain English with Derek Thompson as a jumping-off point. One from this week called, How Hollywood’s Hit Formula Flopped — And What Could Come Next. And another from two years ago called, Why Does it Seem Like Everybody Hates Everything?
In the more recent episode, Derek interviews Lucas Shaw, and after talking at length about the last 20 years of movies, and the franchisification therein, Shaw asks Thompson if he has, “a theory for why superhero movies were so popular in the first place?”
Thompson’s response is thoughtful, and essentially boils down to these movies being a surprising version of an “already popular mythology.” But I don’t think that’s quite right. It’s part of the business success of these franchises without a doubt. But it’s not why they became so popular in the first place
This brings me to the podcast episode from two years ago. It was released in late August of that year, and the guest was Chuck Klosterman.During the episode they brush up against a wide range of topics related to the episode’s title; from the demise of the monoculture to the approval ratings of US Presidents. But, they also stumble upon what I believe to be the answer to Shaw’s question. Thompson begins the interview by discussing a theory Klosterman posited in a separate interview, (I told you, nearly nauseating), about the way we viewed celebrities from the middle of the 20th century until the early part of the 21st century. The theory is that, for a long time, celebrities were pretty much beloved. And that somewhere along the way that began to shift.
Klosterman notes 2003 as the end of that era by referencing the TV show, Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica. 2003 is also the year Lord of the Rings: Return of the King came out, and was right during the middle of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
What happens to movies over the next 20 years can be seen as an explosion of superhero movies, and sequels, and franchises. What really happened is we traded in movie stars for superheroes.
Let’s break down the concept of celebrities/movie stars being these infallible public figures for most of the middle part of the 20th century. There are obviously exceptions, but there is a reason there are so many Westerns starring John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. Or why the 80s and 90s were dominated by films starring the two Toms, Will Smith, and Julia Roberts (to name a few). We loved stars.
And these are movies that aren’t based on previously existing intellectual property. (At least not in the way we think of this now — there were a LOT of John Grisham adaptations.) There are also not a ton of high-concept movies in the lot either. “Tom Cruise is a lawyer,” was really all you needed to get people in the theater.
But at a certain point this changes. As Thompson and Klosterman discuss, the rise of visibility and communication via social media plays a large role in the disintegration of celebrity infallibility. There were tabloids and paparazzi before this, but to truly engage in that discourse you’d have to turn on TMZ or buy US Weekly.
Now it’s hard not to know that Tom Cruise is a Scientologist or that Will Smith is a little out there. (The slap notwithstanding. Go read about Will Smith and everything surrounding the production of After Earth.) Now our movie stars have baggage that we’re all aware of.
Enter the superhero.
Superheros are almost infallible by definition. And I’m not talking about physically — I’m talking about culturally. There isn’t going to be a Reddit thread from someone who valeted Captain America’s F-150 one time detailing how Cap is an asshole who also had a Confederate Flag decal on his gearshift.
And this worked for everybody. Studios loved the vanilla morality of these mythical figures, and the vast majority of the public who go to see movies as an escape from reality loved it too.
And looking at The Avengers, the defining franchise of the last two decades, it’s no mistake that other than Academy Award Winner Robert Downey Jr., most of our heroes are played by actors who were, at the time, not as well known. If you happened to see Tom Cruise on the street in the 90s you wouldn’t say to your friend, “Oh my God, look it’s Jerry Maguire!” You would say, “Holy shit, is that Tom Cruise?” But if that same scenario played out in 2017 with Chris Evans, I have to imagine the line would be some version of, “Oh my God, look it’s Captain America!”
This is why superhero movies became so popular in the first place. They replaced movie stars in popular culture. But if that’s the case, why are we getting tired of them? And more importantly: what is the next totem of infallibility we want to see projected on the silver screen?
I’m not sure I can answer that question. But if we just wanted to poke around at a possible answer, let’s start by taking a look at last year’s box office. The top 3 movies are:
- Barbie
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie
- Oppenheimer
Number 4 on the list is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, but of the top 10 box office movies only that and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse are superhero movies.
Let’s look at other cultural hits from the past few years. There is the number 2 movie on last year’s box office, The Super Mario Bros. Movie based on a video game from the 80s. We have Top Gun: Maverick, which is technically a continuation but is (basically) a remake of the original movie released in 1986. The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was a surprise hit from last year. And, oh yeah, one of the most popular pieces of media from 2020 was a documentary about Michael Jordan and the 1990s Chicago Bulls.
It should come as no surprise that the most culturally significant superhero franchise of the moment is a Spider-Man cartoon.
Are we trading our superheroes for nostalgia?
These types of analyses are never perfect, of course. Oppenheimer was one of the two most culturally significant movies of the last year (along with Barbie). But I don’t think that had anything to do with nostalgia. Could you squint and say that being a part of a monocultural event made the act of seeing Oppenheimer an act driven in part by nostalgia? Maybe?
Generally speaking, the “vibes” haven’t been great post-pandemic. We refer to pre-2020 as, “the before times.” We are no longer comforted by superheroes in the same way. What we’re yearning for now is the nostalgia of our youth. At least that is what it feels like. I recently purchased Pokemon Emerald from a secondhand videogame store. Of all the infinite ways I can choose to entertain myself, I went out of my way to play a game that came out when I was thirteen. It was awesome. Slaking is loafing around.
I’m watching The Masters right now, and they keep playing this Wright Thompson voiceover (poem?), titled: Ever the Same. The gist is that things are always changing, but we try desperately to grasp onto those things that seemingly stay the same. Childhood memories tend to stay the same, or at least we want them to. We want everything to be The Masters, or Pokemon Emerald, or Barbie, even though deep down we know it can’t.
We always want to watch the same thing.
Lemmen's Nursery 