Summers of The Superheroes

Summer is a time for beaches, barbecues, and self-consciously hiding your body by avoiding the outside world at all costs. Unless it is to see the summer, blockbuster- a staple of wet, hot American summers. From Jurassic Park to Jaws, summer has become the time where trying to fill the void our television season left us, we fill it with big budget dramatics. However, over the last few years since the new millennium started, those big name summer films are beginning to narrow in genre from just being action or even plain science fiction, to more specifically being superhero films. In fact, the majority of the best known superhero films from the various X-Men titles, to the myriad of DC Universe films, to Spiderman have nearly all been released during summer vacations.

There are a lot of reasons for this which has to deal with the market present. Students are finally set free from late night study sessions, movie theaters are a nice place to cool off, and going off of stereotypical and in no way actual social scientific profiling, your average college student tends to be a white male of the geekier variety. So studios are essentially looking for a way to make money, and so they rely on using superheroes as a way to entertain college kids and just the overall youth of America with movies about awesome people that can kick some serious ass.  Not only the fact that studios are looking for a way to get money by appealing to a demographic that spends half their days bored because without the stress of class and social obligations such as four a.m. games of Super Smash with your roommates, but also because most of the films are part of a contractual franchise.

 Nolan’s Batman trilogy follows a pretty good timeline, where the first was released in 2005, the second in 2008, and finally The Dark Knight Rises in 2012. All being released during the summer, all with about four years in between their release. Most films will follow the same sort of guideline, being released at about the same time as their previous installments. The same can be seen with the Lord of The Rings trilogy, all of them being released in December. There is a certain expectation to have these films at this time of the year, and it would appear more narrowly now that summer is the time for superheroes. And the danger in that is tiring out the genre.

In the past few years there has been a great uprising in the popularity of superhero films with every year since 2000 having multiple films released focusing on different characters and stories. Though not all of the same quality, the past decade has seen more American superhero films, nearly doubling their turnover. For whatever reason the new millennium was the decade for caped crusaders. However the issue with this is superhero films all tend to follow the same format, just with a different execution of the details.

   Nearly all of these films demonstrate a character discovering something they can, in the case of most of the X-Men franchise, it is the basis for nearly three of their movies. And after discovering that these characters are not quite like the average everyday citizens, there is some denial, then acceptance, then a heart wrenching reason that makes them realize they now need to shoulder the responsibility of protecting a city. Nolan used the first installment in his Batman in order to introduce his characters, and nearly all of the other films involving The Avenger’s characters do the same. Except for Hawkeye. It seems not a lot of people care about him.

Superheroes are becoming the new entertainment that America loves, but there is a limited supply of them. Nearly all big name heroes have already been covered, and that is only within a decade worth of work. Really, the only superhero not to have a new movie is Aquaman, because his power tends to be pretty boring. And while writers and directors can keep spitting out new films, it is only going to be a few short years before people are just bored with Robert Downey Jr. portrayal of Tony Stark or Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine (Don’t hate me internet).

Most of these films have been extremely well made, but it is now becoming a question of being too much of a good thing too fast? Studios have spit out film after film with heroes, big bads, and plucky sidekicks. The superhero story is getting a little stale and it is not helping that five more are set to release by the end of 2014. Specifically, a second The Amazing Spiderman, Iron Man 3, The Wolverine, and slightly refreshing Man of Steel.

 Jaws was released in 1975, but America was not treated to another film of the same basics (giant animal attacking everyone, causing havoc, eating people) until 1993 with the release of Jurassic Park. That is nearly twenty years that America was given to relax and then reinstitute their fear of large creatures with pointy, pointy teeth.

Maybe we should take a break for a while- cool the hype. Make superhero films a treat as opposed to the expectation they have become.

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