7 Predictions for the Future of the Comic Book Movie

3. Darker?

We all wondered if Nolan was going to kill Batman and previews of Iron Man 3 show his house being blown up. Superheroes aren't just for kids any more, they used to be but then the kids grew up and so the demand for deeper, grittier writing increased. It would make sense that movies follow the trend and we've already seen this to some extent.

The Dark Knight franchise was always going to be dark visually but Nolan veered away from Burton's gothic darkness and headed towards psychological darkness (terrorism, revolution, corporate greed) and it was incredibly effective. The newest Batman franchise was also the first of the new generation of superhero movies to deal with the problems of how to keep a character interesting, how to match the hype of a previous successful movie and how to finish a story arc. The answer to the first two questions was to put the main character at risk and make the audience wonder what's going to happen. This may not work for every character but there's been rumours of Iron Man's demise which probably won't happen but generate hype for the movie all the same and keeps an element of risk active in the mind of the audience. If the Extremis arc is used then we're probably going to see Tony Stark get the crap badley beaten out of him at least.

There's huge potential for darkness or at least psychological depth in Iron Man (think 'Demon in a bottle' arc) Captain America (already pretty angsty), Thor (new movie is actually called 'the dark world', duh!) and Spider-man (a venom reboot? or more parent angst? or maybe just general teenage angst?) and many of the fans' favourite arcs from the comics are the dark, twisting ones. What remains to be seen is how the audience take to that darkness. Will it alienate more casual viewers and over-complicate our favourite characters or will it add depth and keep things interesting?