I have been toying with the subject for a while now, it’s a tricky one and I have been struggling with the right way to approach it. Then, while watching No Ordinary Family the answer came to me; You can’t do a realistic take on Superheros, for it to work you have to have a bit of fantasy in the mix.
Take for example, Batman Begins. Even this realistic take on on the story had to have a somewhat fantastical third act to up the danger and give the hero his “save the day” moment. Many people (and champions of the R rated superhero) often say that the third act is a failure on the part of Christopher Nolan. I disagree, I think Nolan realised that ultimately these are fantastic tales and you cannot completely set them in reality. As dark a knight as he created he still exists in a world where one of his villains is the leader of an ancient brotherhood of assassins and the other uses something called a fear-o-sol.
And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this isn’t even the best film incarnation of Batman, that is the 1960’s movie.
As much as we like to pretend otherwise all these heroes were invented to entertain children, in fact they have a lot in common with the fairy tales and fables we read to them. There is always a villain, usually a damsel in distress and the knight in shining armour saves the day. However drawing this parallel is nothing new and I’m not expecting you to think this is my idea. Rather what I want you to do is keep that in mind when you next read a comic book, it’s all about fantasy.
Getting back to No Ordinary Family this is the reason this show works and a show like Heroes ultimately failed. You can throw anything you like into the mix as long as you remember you can’t take it to seriously. Heroes, by the end was throwing about some majorly wacky concepts yet trying to convince us it was a realistic gritty take. No Ordinary Family has similar themes, a shadowy company, a mystery as to where the powers came form etc but it takes itself far less seriously and is all the better for it.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that grim and gritty is not a bad thing but when we are talking about people dressing up in costumes and fighting crime it’s perhaps better not to take the concept to seriously, and there is nothing wrong with accepting that.
4 comments
Oh, it just came to you. Ha ha. This is a good joke you’re playing on Devin Faracci, one of the best-known film writers on the web, and the guy who wrote about this very same thing all the time on this website for over a year before leaving as recently as a few months ago.
As a guy who has never ever given two shits or a fuck about comics, I love the gritty ones. batman, watchmen, stuff like that is my kind of movie. I hated Spiderman, Ironman was all Downey Jr. (take him out and it’s just putrid) and all of the upcoming movies like Captain America and Thor look like similar garbage like those other movies. That’s why I kind of like superhero movies, variety. They don’t have to be gritty and dark or fluffy and light to do well and have fans. Batman works gritty because he’s a dude that has a fuck load of money and the time to train and piss it all away because he’s still fucked up over his parents death. Spiderman can be fun and light because it’s a bout a pussy who gets bit by a spider and can now shoot shit out of his hands and smash people. I don’t even think everyone is for more gritty movies for everyone, the new Spiderman looks to be more emo and serious than the first one and no one wants to see that shit.
Grittiness and ‘the fantasy factor’ are stylistic choices, if you ask me. Doesn’t make or break or superhero film, as long as it’s handled well. Many other (more important) things make a good superhero movie.
Actually I didn’t have Devin in mind at all. This blog has it’s routes in an Essay I wrote years ago about Superheros being modern day fables/fairy tales – hence the focus on that in this blog. I can see where you might think that however because I used Batman Begins as an example but that is only because it’s third act explains perfectly what I was trying to illustrate.
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