Breaking Point

I have written before about the influx of superhero movies in the modern age and questioned when we would reach the point of over saturation with the genre, which would be the movie that broke the camels back?

At the time I asked this question we were waiting for the release of Antman which many people believed would be the first superhero movie to under perform, alot of people even going so far as to say that it could be Marvels first flop. Whilst it was not a billion dollar film like their top tier projects it did make over $500 million worldwide and proved to be a success with fans and critics.

So we are back to the question of which film will be the first to not only turn people off but also prove to be the point where we say enough is enough. For me I think I may have now reached that point or at least a watered down version of it.

Superhero movies have been around since the 1920s in one form or another with the first film of this type being The Mark of Zorro but the first superhero movie as we know them today was arguably the 1966 release of Batman which of course was based on the hit tv show. It would be another 12 years before the next marquee release which of course was Richard Donners Superman, a movie which spawned 3 sequels.

There would be several superhero releases over the next 20 years but the genre would get it's next shot in the arm in 1989 with Tim Burtons Batman which again had 3 sequels which like the movies in the Superman franchise would get progressively worse (although I have a secret love for The Quest For Peace).

Marvels first big release would come in 1998 and saw Wesley Snipes (remember him) play vampire slayer Blade and 2 years later they truly launched the modern age of the superhero movie with the Bryan Singer directed X-Men.

Since then of course the genre has exploded, Disney bought Marvel and with their combined weight they have created the Marvel Cinematic Universe which has become a multi billion dollar franchise in its own right bringing us the likes of Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America and Thor, all of which I should point out are movies that I have watched and loved.

So why do I think I may have reached my breaking point with the genre that should continue to appeal to my geek tendencies? And more to the point which movie is it that has finally done me in? The year 2016 has seen the release of the following superhero movies -

Deadpool - Absolute bloody genius

Batman vs Superman - Every bit as dire and dull as I dreaded it would be

Captain America Civil War - Perhaps the greatest MCU movie to date

X-Men Apocalypse - The one I was looking forward to most which sadly left me cold

Suicide Squad - A real mess of a movie that should have worked but just didn't

Dr Strange - Almost $650 million at the box office but I have not been inclined to rush out and see it

There are others such as the Russian movie Guardians, Max Steel and A Flying Jett but for the purposes of this discussion we will focus on the big six above.

Now if you look at the list it would be fair to assume that the two DC offerings are where things have been derailed for me and are the cause of my loss of passion but honestly I don't think they are. No I think my problem lies more with whats to come than with what is now behind us. Take Marvel for example, they have 9 more superhero movies planned for release before the end of 2019 which of course is an average of 3 a year and DC have 7 releases in the next 4 years which brings us to a grand total of 16 movies in 4 years or an average of 4 films a year.

This in turn does not account for any future release by other companies such as Sony or Fox (we know there will be another Wolverine movie next year, a forthcoming Deadpool sequel and at least 1 more X-Men film) all of which adds up to a whole lot of superhero to watch in the near future.

Not that all of the planned movies are putting me off as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 looks like it is going to be great and Logan (aka Wolverine 3) could be one of the films of 2017. I'll even go so far as to say that the MCU mash up which may or may not be called Infinity War could be a spectacle the likes of which we have never seen before, but it was a recent trailer release that left me cold and left me feeling I may have had enough.

The trailer in question was for Spiderman Homecoming which is Marvels first Spiderman movie after they negotiated a deal with Sony who own the movie rights to the character (it's a long story that if you don't know you should really google). Did it look visually great? Yes. Did it tick all of the Spiderman boxes? Yes. Did it neatly intergrate into the rest of the MCU? Yes. And yet for me it just felt like more of the same.

True it will likely stay truer to the character than we've seen before but this will be the sixth Spiderman movie in 15 years going back to the first of Sam Raimi's trilogy which began in 2002. That trilogy ended in 2007 with the frankly awful Spiderman 3 but the franchise was relaunched and rebooted in 2012 with the Amazing Spiderman which itself had a sequel in 2014, a film that bombed critically but still took over $700 million at the global boxoffice.

So we've had the Spiderman story told twice already and now we are preparing to see it once again just 3 years after the last film of the franchise and personally I can't think of any reason why I would want to see this and that was the prevailing emotion I felt when watching the trailer. Now I understand that we all have our own opinions and that there will be millions of people who loved the trailer and are eager to eat up anything that Marvel and DC have to offer them but this post is just my way of expressing myself to you the world wide web.

I guess in retrospect it is a combination of this years disappointments, the overabundance of whats to come and the rehashing once more of what we've seen before that has brought me to this place, I just hope that some of the superhero movies of 2017 reignite my geek desire to consume as much of the genre as humanly possible.