Still, it's hard to argue that today's superhero blockbusters have that much in common with Reeve's Superman (especially Man of Steel, which seems to be about a completely different character to the charmingly heroic seventies depiction). The modern superhero film quickly settled into its own groove when it came to the structure of the narrative, the way the story advanced over the course of sequels, and the very idea of superhero movies as "franchises". That all started properly with Bryan Singer's X-Men in 2000. Sorry, Blade. It was a long and arduous process bringing the merry band of mutants to the silver screen, starting all the way back in 1989 when James Cameron was attached to the project (but, really, what superhero project hasn't he been attached to). Somehow, Fox managed to sift through a decade of casting rumours, script revisions and reams after reams of costume designs to put together a film that is still the template for the modern superhero movie. Sony's Spider-Man took the same sort of time on the origin story, Warner Bros realised they too could hire a serious director like Singer to do a cape movie and took a chance on Christopher Nolan, and Marvel's own cinematic universe certainly wouldn't be as big of a hit if it 1. Didn't have the sort of huge stars that were first tempted over to the superhero genre by X-Men, and 2. Those stars didn't have somewhat more realistic costumes than their comic book inspirations, as X-Men did. What did you expect? Yellow spandex?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
