“The superhero movie is dead.” “Actually, cinema is dead! (And superhero flops are to blame).” “Can Deadpool save Marvel?” “Can James Gunn save DC?” “Can anyone save us from our own conjecture?!” Those are just some of the increasingly, hyperventilatingly high-stakes headlines that have accompanied each dud superhero release of the last few years (and there have been plenty).
No need to panic, though – these films are unlikely to ever go away. But they do need to go somewhere. And Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine, out now and predicted to have the biggest opening weekend in history for an R-rated movie, has left me wondering where.
It’s the first outing for Ryan Reynolds’ wisecracking mercenary since Disney (who own Marvel) bought 20th Century Fox and their characters, including the X-Men, hence this new iteration of Wolverine (pictured top). And there’s been much talk about how the lewd, gleefully violent Deadpool, who regularly breaks the fourth wall to send up superheroes, will join the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), which takes itself pretty seriously. Would the film be watered-down post-watershed, or a colossal, meta piss-take?
Well, it’s the latter. The cameos are plentiful, as are the jokes at Marvel’s expense (Deadpool tells Wolverine he’s joining the MCU “at a bit of a low point”). There’s preposterous timeline-jumping, and takedowns of Marvel’s post-Endgame multiverse-set films (“it’s just been miss after miss after miss”). The whole thing is both a parody and a shining example of everything Marvel has become; a sorry/not sorry for flops like The Marvels, and for the slew of interconnected, subpar Disney+ series that have created endless extra homework for viewers.
But it also feels like an ending of sorts. There are only so many characters you can stuff into a movie, only so many versions you can revisit or reboot, and only so many times you can wink at the camera about it all. So really: where to now?
DC Studios are laying out their own path, which involves having their cake and eating it, too. They’ve developed stripped-back, standalone films that exist in their own worlds, like Joker and The Batman. Both were successful (Joker was the first R-rated film to gross more than $1bn) and both are getting sequels. But under the guidance of newish studio CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran, they’re also rebooting the DC Extended Universe, with new versions of characters (including Batman and Joker) played by (mostly) new actors. Things kick off in cinemas with next year’s Superman, but it remains to be seen whether all the cake-eating will pay off commercially or stylistically.
For Marvel, a drop-off in interest was inevitable after the Avengers films Infinity War and Endgame, cinematic events that marked the climax of years of world-building, and the only superhero films to gross more than $2bn each worldwide. If you’re not going to top that, why try? Why not think small? Marvel might never again trap their characters in their own worlds like DC, but they could still emulate some of the magic of Joker and The Batman by focusing on character. After all, that very approach propelled them off the starting blocks in 2008.
Iron Man, the pick for their first feature, was largely unknown outside the comic book world, but man was he great to watch: a loose-cannon Batman with charisma. Plus, he had human depths to mine – his relationship with his late father, his moral consternation at inheriting a weapons manufacturer, the ego that blurts out his secret identity to a packed press conference. We got to know and love him, and the same approach with films such as Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America meant that by the time Endgame rolled around, we cared about (almost) the whole gang.
Marvel’s next film, Captain America: Brave New World, looks as if it might explore the struggles of Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson (the new Captain America) as he tries to fill Steve Rogers’ big red boots. But that’s followed up with Thunderbolts, a team-up of antiheroes from various Marvel releases you may not have bothered to watch.
Maybe genre experimentation is the way forward. DC’s Joker: Folie à Deux (above), released this October, looks to be a dystopian jukebox musical. Marvel has dipped into space opera, heist and romcom among others, their president Kevin Feige constantly denying that “superhero [is] a genre in and of itself”. Meanwhile, Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, in 2018, gave us a head-spinning kaleidoscope of clashing animation styles, and is still the top-rated superhero movie on Rotten Tomatoes. Could Fantastic Four, which Feige has said will be a 1960s period piece and is out next July, continue to beat a path out of the superhero genre towards more uniquely stylised films?
Of course, the best direction for superhero movies would probably be to stop making them for a while and let a craving for them naturally return. Obviously, that’s not happening; there are five out next year (so far). And from the looks of things, the powers that be will continue to experiment with the genre, taking it any which way they like.
Perhaps they might hit upon something brilliant. And eventually, new generations will arrive with fresh zeal for what has come to bore us. Until then, the question isn’t so much where superhero films go from here, but whether anyone will care enough to go there with them.
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