Is anyone else tired of superhero flicks?

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RathDarkblade

Moderator
City Watch
Mar 24, 2015
19,448
3,400
49
Melbourne, Victoria
#1
Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and more recently (as recently as 2008) the Marvel ones - Iron Man (starting in 2008), Incredible Hulk (also 2008), Thor (2011), Captain Bleedin' America. Enough, please. I'm so tired of it all. It'd be good if someone made a parody of them for a change.

Which brings me on to my real question: wouldn't it be great if someone made a Thor movie that shows Thor and Odin and all the rest as the original Norse myths show them? =D For instance, the story of Thor losing his hammer to Thrym the Frost Giant because the gods refused to let Thrym marry Freyja ... so Loki disguises Thor as Freyja (and himself as Thor's "handmaiden"), and Thor 'marries' Thrym to get his hammer back. :mrgreen: It's one of the most famous Norse myths.

Or an unnamed giant who, in the guise of a mortal, promises to build Asgard an impregnable wall in one winter, and if he does, the gods have to let him marry Freyja (why is Freyja's consent never mentioned?) and let him have the sun and moon as a dowry. (What a fair price - but stupid Odin agrees). :p The gods laugh at him, but with the help of his magical horse (what?), he nearly gets the job done, and with 3 days in winter to go, he only has to finish the gate. The gods panic, and Odin actually orders Loki (Loki again!!!) to stop the building of the wall. So Loki transforms himself into a lovely mare (again, WHAT!??) and impregnates the giant's horse (WHAT!) so the horse can't help the giant. :mrgreen: The giant explodes in a fit of rage, and Thor smashes the giant with his hammer. But afterwards Odin feels guilty for breaking his promise, and this is the start of the downward spiral that leads to Ragnarok.

Or when Thor stops for the night at a giant's house and dares anyone to beat him at a game of strength, and an old woman steps forward to dare him to wrestle her, and Thor laughs - an old woman can't beat me! - but she does, and he is humiliated ... and the giant reveals that the old woman is actually Elli, the Personification of Old Age, and nobody can beat old age.

But my favourite has to be when a giant (why is it always giants??) dares the gods to make him laugh, and nobody can do it, until Loki volunteers, and he ties his own beard (or in more vulgar and apocryphal readings, his testicles (WHAT! :eek: ) to a goat (again, WHAT???)) and has a tug of war with it, and the giant laughs, and Loki saves the day. :mrgreen:

I think someone must have been doing magic mushrooms when they wrote these stories. =D But they sound great. I wish someone would come along and film them. Except the last one. 'Cos that'd be ... well ... even weirder than the others!

What do you think, hmm? ;)
 
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Tonyblack

Super Moderator
City Watch
Jul 25, 2008
31,236
3,650
Cardiff, Wales
#2
I've got to say that I generally love Super Hero films. Some are great and others are dreadful. The recent Thunderbolts film and Fantastic Four are very enjoyable. However I'm not a huge far of the DC Universe.

This will probably pass eventually. In the past we've had films such as Jason and the Argonauts, Beowulf, 300 and other classical myths (sorry, I know a bunch of these but my mind has gone blank).
 
#3
I'm all in on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Superhero comics passed me by as a kid (except The Phantom, if that counts, but I never read much), so by the time I was an adult the comics I ended up reading weren't of that ilk, they were more of the Sandman/Fables/Saga style (plus spinoffs from TV shows I liked).

But I have quite enjoyed almost everything Marvel has released since Iron Man in 2008, and even some of the earlier Marvel property films (X-Men series, Spider-Man various reboots etc) were decent enough. Even some of the DC films and tv shows have been entertaining. Sure, there's bad stuff in amongst all the good, but I consider myself an MCU fan, and try to watch everything canon and even some things that technically aren't (like Agents of SHIELD).

Despite all of that, I still have not read many Marvel superhero comics. There's just far too much of it, dating back decades, that I doubt I could ever really reconcile it with what the MCU has done, and also I know that a lot of it (especially in the early days) is not great quality from a modern-day perspective.

So I don't yet have superhero movie fatigue, but I can certainly understand people who do. Marvel did make some mistakes post Avengers: Endgame where they did some wonderful shows on Disney+ (WandaVision, Falcon & Winter Soldier, Hawkeye, Ms Marvel etc) but then later had the movies rely on knowing what had happened in the shows --- this likely put off people who weren't the "I watch *EVERYTHING*" type so had a much narrower appeal to general audiences. Fine for people like me, but not for those who just want a standalone story that might exist in a bigger universe.

I think recently they've been trying to go back to that idea - so that you can watch one movie or tv show in isolation and you don't really need to know about EVERYTHING else to enjoy it, but if you do then there's some background bits and pieces that flesh out the world even more.

It's hard to judge the new DCU (James Gunn's one) because there's really only been 1 movie in it so far (Superman) and a few unrelated TV shows (Creature Commandos - which is animated, and Peacemaker Season 2). But I'm willing to give it a go.
 
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Likes: Tonyblack

Quatermass

Sergeant-at-Arms
Dec 7, 2010
8,145
2,950
#4
I have to say I'm ambivalent about superhero or comic book films. I love a lot of them, true, but I think of late, there's a supersaturation of them over the last decade or two, especially once Hollywood learned how to make them without screwing the pooch (more or less: there's still plenty of howlers, of course). I haven't watched an MCU film in the cinema since...I suspect maybe Thor: Ragnarok? It also got pretty annoying when so much stuff got put into TV shows that, even before Disney Plus swallowed them up, I was unlikely to watch.

I gave up on the latest DC stuff after the Dark Knight Trilogy, at least in the cinemas. Oh, I did watch Birds of Prey (which was, bluntly, underwhelming) and The Suicide Squad (the one that was actually enjoyable), but that was pretty much it. I did watch the Harley Quinn cartoon series, and I have been pecking away at the 90s Batman cartoon, as well as straight-to-DVD movies like the adaptations of Batman: Hush and Batman: The Long Halloween. Oh, and the new animated Watchmen.

That being said, for various reasons, I haven't read or watched much in the way of comic books, from the West, or at least of superheroes.

Ironically, I do also like some of the comic book video games, or at least some. Deadpool, the Batman: Arkham games (though I think Batman's character was railroaded way too much into dark and edgy territory in Arkham Knight, possibly due to Paul Dini not writing the story for that game) and the recent Spider-Man games.

BTW, Molokov, even with the backlog of comics storylines, there's quite a few comic limited series, often collected in graphic novels, that are worth reading and don't need to know every detail of the prior storylines. Iron Man: Extremis is a good example from Marvel, while the Batman stories Year One, The Long Halloween, and Hush are good DC examples.

In addition, I think Penguin, of all publishers, has recently started publishing compilations of the older comics of various Marvel series.

Oh, and before I finish, there's also a number of DC comics that continue the various adaptations they've had. For example, I've read a couple of graphic novels in a series called Batman '89, which is a new continuity based on the two Batman films directed by Tim Burton, but ignoring Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. The first one has Billy Dee Williams' take on Harvey Dent from the first film become Two-Face, as well as the introduction of Robin and Barbara Gordon. The second volume pretty much crams in the kitchen sink, but mostly focuses on Scarecrow and Harley Quinn. And to add more to it, it's also written by Sam Hamm, the screenwriter who brought Batman to the screens in 1989.
 

RathDarkblade

Moderator
City Watch
Mar 24, 2015
19,448
3,400
49
Melbourne, Victoria
#5
...(except The Phantom, if that counts, but I never read much)
So, no love for The Shadow? ;)

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"
"THE SHADOW KNOWS!"
<cue dramatic chords and eerie, maniacal laughter>

I tried to get into MCU, or Marvel, or the others etc. -- but there's just so ... damn ... much.

Marvel ... later had the movies rely on knowing what had happened in the shows --- this likely put off people who weren't the "I watch *EVERYTHING*" type so had a much narrower appeal to general audiences. Fine for people like me, but not for those who just want a standalone story that might exist in a bigger universe.
Fair enough. I'm exactly the latter type -- I don't mind the occasional superhero movie, but I don't watch every single one that comes out. So when I do watch one, it's confusing and turns me off.

But to be honest, I think the people who make them take "their" creation way too seriously, and it'd be great to see something just done for fun, like a cross-dressing Thor marrying an oblivious giant, or Loki wrestling a goat with his beard. ;) What do you think?
 
#6
So, no love for The Shadow? ;)

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"
"THE SHADOW KNOWS!"
<cue dramatic chords and eerie, maniacal laughter>
I didn't think The Shadow was a comic book? Wasn't it a radio series? To be honest, I don't think I ever heard of it until they did that movie in the 90s, and I'm pretty sure I never saw that movie until years after it came out...
 

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