Families.
Its the weirdest, most boring way to be pretentious in 2020. It’s replaced the music hipster of 10-15 years ago by a mile. There is basically no difference between Black Panther, The Matrix, Mad Max, Die Hard etc in action movie structure. A character having a costume does not radically change the strength of a script. Neo was more of a superhero than most Marvel characters. What matters is the strength of the actual story.
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Quality of super hero movies is defined by the quality of the villain(s). Of course a compelling hero or plot helps, but without a nuanced villain super hero movies are flat.
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I’m over the discussion for the most part but this is so obviously wrong I can’t help but weigh back in.
The difference between superhero movies and Die Hard can easily be summed up with one word. Stakes.
The same word also explains why superhero movies are so utterly boring.
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You think Avengers is doing 350 million opening weekend mostly because a family of 4 bought tickets ~2 weeks in advance and is spending $100 on a night opening weekend?
That’s part of it, but a small piece of the pie compared to a Disney/Pixar film. You see very, very few families opening weekend for any non G film.
This is mostly true. Guardians 1/Iron Man probably the best movies with weak villains. Fury Road the best recent action movie with a weaker villain.
There is basically no discernable difference in stakes between the Die Hard franchise and most superhero stories Clovis. What are you talking about?
Stakes naturally get raised with any franchise. That’s just basic storytelling. Die Hard raised the stakes until he did crazier shit than some superheroes!
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I agree that adults (usually though not exclusively males) with infantile tastes are also a factor.
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Superhero movies are boring but I don’t think “stakes” quite nails it. The problem is that they’re not really action movies, they’re fantasy. If you want to do a basic fantasy story, you do the hero’s journey. You have Luke or Frodo or Neo or whoever and you have them over the course of the movie learn to win against insurmountable odds. You don’t have one side with lasers fighting another side with nuclear sharks or some bullshit. That’s not how action movies or adult fantasies are structured, the only stories that are structured like that are cartoons made for little boys. The reason they have made like 10 million origin stories and counting is that that’s the only way to do a hero’s journey. It sort of worked until endless origin stories got boring.
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Is there anything else super mainstream you’d like to hate in a really dumb, pretentious fashion? Can we have some 2010 era music takes on how Death Grips is better than anything in hip hop or something at least fun?
And yes, Chris nailed it much better that about half of superhero movies are basically just the exact template of Batman Begins. Thats a much better criticism!
Super hero films are mainstream because of the infantile tastes of many of the generation of people brought up on computer games.
Instead of getting abusive you should be asking who the dumb people are, which requires some introspection on your part.
Like I think what Clovis meant by stakes is that the stories now are like “oh noes, will the immortal dude with an all powerful hammer be able to defeat Thanos and his glowing cube of doom” and it’s like, who fucking cares? There are stakes there in theory, but they’re so abstract and impossible to relate to that I just don’t give a shit.
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Exactly.
There are immeasurably higher stakes in the question “will they meet at the train in 6 months” in the Before Series than in the sum total of 200 “will the world end” superhero films.
Can I interest you in a game of Walrus?
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But again, this isn’t anything new, or different from any action movie franchise. Die Hard was no different in stakes, nor was The Matrix or any “good” action movie.
Furiosa dying wouldn’t have made Fury Road any better or worse. I dont think “stakes” or how “relatable” the protagonist is a main driver in the quality of an action movie in most cases.
Dude, you’re calling video games “computer games.” Thats a term no one under 60 would use, while being super condescending about it!
Is that all you have? Ageism? lol
fyi information people first got hooked when they were called “computer games”.
There isn’t great art in Pong. I play maybe one or two games a year, but there is some really compelling stories in video games, right up there with the other visual mediums. That youre so condescending of them as well is just as infantile as the people you are stubbornly attempting to mock.
You might not want to claim ageism after repeatedly using infantile as an insult fwiw.
Mocking videos games seems like a bad angle. I haven’t played video games regularly for 20 years but it seems pretty clear they are the future of narrative story telling.
Saying a group of people have infantile tastes isn’t ageist because it’s an attack on their mentality not their physical age ldo
“The generation of people brought up on computer games” isnt a mentality, its anyone under the age of 50.