Of course it hardly takes a genius to see that 2008 was the breakout year for the genre of superhero/fantasy movies. The genre has been creeping along since 1978 with the first Superman movie, but this year was just a downright explosion of titles. At one point during this last summer, you could see Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hancock, The Dark Knight, and Hellboy II: The Golden Army on the same day. One could even throw Get Smart into the mix as well.
This is not to criticize these movies individually, or the genre as a whole. Each title deserves its own comments, and as in the past, some were superior, while others were poor. But taken as a whole, one can begin to make some conclusions regarding the national psyche, as reflected in the phenomenon of the sudden growth of the genre.
Obviously one of the reasons that superhero movies have proliferated lately is that computer technology and digital film-making techniques have advanced to allow the creation of sufficiently "realistic" special effects. But in my mind, this is not enough for a full explanation of why the genre has exploded so much this year.
My thesis is that superhero movies have become so overwhelmingly popular as a result of the on-going destruction of masculinity within postmodern movies, and the decline of (normal, mortal) male heroes. This has been long in coming, but in the last few years it has reached a cacaphonous crescendo.
Issues regarding male honor and heroism used to be the province of such genres as westerns. But the default mode of postmodern cinema is to regard adult American males as typically egotistical honorless sex-obsessed halfwits, juveniles in adult bodies seeking mostly to get their rocks off and to amass as many adult "toys" as possible. Only exceptional enlightened men are not within this category. The dialect of male heroism that used to be spoken with ease in the classical era is now regarded as an alien tongue in much of contemporary culture.
As a result, I believe, cinema can discuss male heroism only in the context of the supernormal. We thus believe that men can be heroes only when they possess some form of paranormal powers, either magical or ultratechnological, which they have to deal with.
In The Incredible Hulk, for example, Ed Norton's Bruce Banner must constantly restrain himself from using his powers (i.e, from becoming the Hulk), lest the use of his powers damage himself and the ones he loves. This is the essential challenge that defines him. It is very reminiscent of the kind of struggles that classical heroes underwent regarding their "normal" powers, for example Gary Cooper in High Noon.
But such "normal" struggles now seem "unrealistic" to us because we no longer believe that such men exist. Only men with supernormal abilities face these kind of challenges, and thus we must project narrative discussions of them into the realm of fantasy. The strength of Superman as hero used to be that he was a rarified representation of the struggles with masculinity that every adult man supposedly faced (hence the fact that he spent most of his time as Clark Kent). This essential link has been broken. Superheroes are now just, well, super.
That's my view, at least.
One could go a little bit further in the analysis, I believe. At the same time the superhero titles listed above were playing, the multiplexes were also showing non-superhero fantasy titles such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Meet Dave, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Wanted, not to mention the animated releases Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda. At one point this summer, it was nearly impossible to go to the movies without seeing a superhero/fantasy/secretagent title. Before the features, you would have seen trailers for the fall and winter releases of Eagle Eye, Max Payne, The Spirit, and Punisher: War Zone.
Taken as a whole, it's fair to make a guess that future historians will have no trouble seeing where the national mood was this year. To wit: stay as far away from reality as possible. At the end of the criminal warmongering Bush era, after America had been turned into a grotesque fascist parody of its own ideas, when the world was falling apart around us, and we were on the verge of the greatest looting spree in history, and moreover of seriously considering this wretched paragon of superstition and ignorance for national office, as a movie-going nation we turned our attention the fantastic, to the unreal, and to magic. It was both escapism of the highest order, and a vague hope that something out there might be able to save us, to restore some semblance of virtue and justice to the world. But not on the level of normal experience. Not normal, mortal men, who are now, according to common wisdom, universally corrupt.
It was not for nothing that the "hero of the year," the one who would save the nation, was often depicted with imagery such as this.
Nothing like this trend can ever last. For one thing, one can speculate whether the enormous budgets required for these movies will be able to attract sufficient funding in the years ahead, given the evaporation of so much phony wealth from the digital vaults of the criminal pyramid schemes once known as "investment banks." Perhaps the entire future direction of Hollywood is up for grabs.
Did I mention how much I enjoyed Appaloosa? Yes, I did.
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