With comic book movies nowadays based on some heroes having different opinions on how to tackle their superheroing duties (Batman VS Superman and Captain America Civil War) and comic book movies based on the villians rather than the heroes (Suicide Squad), you have to wonder, why are comic book movies like this?
We live in a world now where live action comic book stories can tackle racial happenings such as police brutality towards black people (Luke Cage) or a comic book movie where our favourite heroes fight over whether they should be accountable for collateral damage when saving civilians (Captain America Civil War), but why?
The answer is simple, ever since Blade and X-Men, comic book movies per year have increased rapidly and as a result we have approximately six comic book movies coming to us in 2017 with still many more to follow. Comic book movies make 100’s of millions so each company wants that sort of money but in order to stick out to the general public, you’ve got to bring something new to the table.
X-Men Apocalypse that came out in May of 2016 was one of the lowest grossing FOX/Marvel movies of all time, however, Deadpool, a R-Rated Comic Book Movie is the most profitable FOX/Marvel movie, but why is this? Deadpool brought us a unique story with a type of character that we have never seen before done in the comic book movie genre, mainstream audiences were treated to a character unlike your friendly neighbourhood, Spider-Man and your favourite Caped Crusader, Batman. Mainstream audiences love the comic book genre but they don’t want to see the same old stuff thrown at them, it’s not just a problem in comic book films but in film media as a whole.
X-Men Apocalypse, following the triumphant hero-vs-hero political stand-off was a plain old boring “bad guy comes to destroy shit, heroes must team up and stop them” that may have worked in 2012 but now we have over 50 comic book movies, we’ve seen this type of story from the X-Men films before when they used to be the ones developing the comic book genre. Fan reactions from X-Men Apocalypse clearly show that the norm isn’t good enough for us anymore when we’ve seen superhero movies develop into political thrillers (Captain America The Winter Solider) and psychological thrillers (The Dark Knight). With Logan coming along promising a ‘The Last of Us’-esque unique storyline to the comic book movie genre, we can only hope the main X-Men films return to how First Class was where it is set around a historic event and deals with it in the movie.
Overall when a lot of the mainstream audience have superhero fatigue, filmmakers always have to make something unique to the genre which stands out and becomes a painkiller for superhero fatigue.
Why have CBMs Became More Unique Over The Years?
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