10 Ways To Fix The Biggest Superhero Movie Problems

8. Forced Genre Destruction

jonah hex The great irony to comic book movies is the phrase €˜conventional wisdom€™ because it would suggest actual wisdom. However, it has become apparent that when the meeting for making these films start, logic and common sense are immediately shown the door. Comic books are a relatively young form of literature, which means that it often borrows heavily from pre-established genres using comics as a visual medium. The fact that the term comic book is synonymous with super hero is a misnomer in and of itself as one is a medium and the other is a subject, and are mutually exclusive (required reading: Soon I Will Be Invincible, an original novel about super heroes and villains). Filmmakers should know better than to assume that a movie based on a comic should be treated as €˜comic booky€™ when it clearly isn€™t. Jonah Hex is one hell of a comic book, and character. There are people who wouldn€™t read a comic book if it meant bringing about world peace, but would devour Jonah Hex. Even his appearance in the Batman Animated Series allowed the animators to play it straight and make a 30 minute western that couldn€™t be denied. When I heard that Hex was going to be a movie I was interested, when I heard that Josh Brolin was starring as Hex I had to change my shorts. I couldn€™t believe how lucky I was to be alive when this movie was on its way, and then I saw the first trailer which featured a horse mounted with twin Gatling guns that actually fired. The comic book movie stigma had struck again, the imbecilic desire to make a story that is marginally a straight western into some sort of western themed fantasy because it€™s a comic book. Road to Perdition was a comic book too, but you didn€™t see Tom Hanks suddenly whip out a space gun at the 40 minute mark. Filmmakers should consider the idea that comic books can be anything, it is a vehicle for telling a story and not a style of storytelling specifically. There was a time when comic books were plentiful and super hero comics weren€™t. I really want to see the mediums mixed while paying attention to the tenants of the genre. How come The Punisher can€™t be a straight vigilante story like Death Wish? Can we see Superman kicking alien ass Independence Day style? There are so many ways to utilize stories that were born in comics without treating them in such harsh fashion.
 
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Dante R Maddox got started in writing about pop culture in 2007. He developed his conversational style majoring in English and minoring in speech communication, his desire to write as if he were speaking to the reader face to face was the bane of many professors. An odd blend of geek cred and regular fella chic', you're just as likely to end up talking about baseball or politics as you are about comic books and movies (just don't mention Tucker Carlson, you are addressing the man who will go to jail for assault in the future after all). He wrote a book called The Lineage of Durge that's available on Amazon for a small amount of money, he's writing a second while acting as Editor-in-Stuff over at Saga Online Press, there is a graphic novel expansion of his book series also in the works as well as continued development of his cheesecannon, one day Canada...one day (Seriously, a piece of ham, you slice it up and now it's bacon?!?!? I say thee nay!!!)