‘Superman’ onwards, the screen has sagged with the torment of superheroes, which is why ‘The Avengers’ is such a relief – if only till the upcoming ‘Batman’ movie.
The big news of last week was The Avengers, which became the first film in Hollywood history to earn over $100 million in its second weekend in the United States. (Most films are lucky if they manage that figure in their opening weekend.) What does this mean, besides the inevitable calculations for a slew of sequels? One, that we are still susceptible to buzz. Two, that no amount of superhero-movie ennui, which we claimed after a stretch when the multiplexes seemed to be playing nothing but superhero movies, will dampen our desire for a really special superhero movie. And three, that we do like superheroes who don’t seem to be ripe candidates for the therapist’s couch. One of the biggest legacies of The Avengers may be the revelation that you don’t have to reinvent superheroes with new-age traumas and yawning reservoirs of unexpressed angst, that they can make jokes and carry on in the manner of clowns in slapstick comedy and be none the less heroic.
The tradition of the tormented superhero, on film, dates back to Richard Donner’s Superman, which was released a year after Star Wars transformed the screen into a wall-to-wall repository of pre-digital-era special effects. In this film, Superman, played by Christopher Reeve with twinkling eyes and a granite jaw, sets right dangling aircraft and prevents California from being nuked into the ocean’s bottom, but his most impressive feat isn’t for public good. He tinkers with the space-time continuum, turning the earth back on its axis to save his sorta-girlfriend from death – and by unleashing his powers for such personal reasons, he laid the groundwork for the superhero who is as much a savior of the world as a prisoner of the self. Of course, this act was presented as a splash of swashbuckling heroism, that he would do anything to save his girl. (The subtext revealed itself only when you really looked at what he did in order to save his girl.)
Superman II, made after the predecessor became a huge worldwide smash, became even more personal. Torn between the planet that gave him his strength and the girl who gave him her heart, Superman gives up his powers and turns human. Looked one way, this is a thrilling romantic gesture, forsaking everything that’s super about him to become a mere man. But taken another way, this is simply the deepening of the schism between public duty and private desire – and that’s what Tim Burton picked up on when he made Batman, a little more than a decade after Superman. (The intervening years yielded nothing special; the subsequent Superman sequels became sillier in tone, and only the most fervent completists remember Supergirl.) The success of Batman turned into a commandment the agony over the split personality merely hinted at in Superman, and the best film in this tradition is undoubtedly M Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, which details the gradual awakening of a man with superpowers.
With The Crow, Blade, Hulk, the X-Men films, Daredevil and Ghost Rider, the screen – Iron Man apart – was darkened by inner demons, and the darkest demon of all was Batman as seen through the eyes of Christopher Nolan, who presented the superhero as the most tortured savior since Christ. And no amount of euphoria over the lightheartedness of The Avengers is likely to dampen the anticipation for The Dark Knight Rises, which will surely be the latest exhibit in the superhero gallery of gloom. More box-office records are likely to be smashed, though the superhero film that I’m more intrigued about this season is The Amazing Spider-Man, directed by Marc Webb, whose only other film (and his first) is (500) Days of Summer, which, in its own way, was about a tortured soul and the attempts to alleviate it. Will this Spider-Man reboot lean towards Avengers-style levity or plunge into Dark Knight levels of nihilistic drama. If I were a betting man with a sense of humour, I’d go with the former, if only because it isn’t often that a story that begins with a spider is spun by a man named Webb.
Lights, Camera, Conversation… is a weekly dose of cud-chewing over what Satyajit Ray called Our Films Their Films. An edited version of this piece can be found here.
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Rajmohan
May 19, 2012
I think The Dark Knight was a superb movie – apart from its memorable dialogues and terrific acting by Heath Ledger, it presented the dark complex world pushed to its edge by a madman. It wasn’t exactly Godfather but I think it reasonably pushed the cinematic edge to regions where summer blockbusters rarely tend to go (I am looking at you, Michael Bay). In the context of superheroes, it’s easier to portray the Batman with his lack of real superpowers, as a tormented soul who even with all his gadgets that money can buy is helpless against an enemy he hardly understands. The Nolan reboot was particularly effective given that he was following the benchmark set by the god awful, Batman and Robin. I like Iron Man too, which has a similar setting – a tycoon fights crime with his gadgets but approaches it from the other direction. Maybe dark brooding superheroes have become the cliche now, but it’s great to know that both Batman and Iron Man are part of this summer season.
KayKay
May 19, 2012
B, let’s not forget THIS film. They’re superheroes too. Every single one of them!
Raj Balakrishnan
May 19, 2012
I second Rajmohan. The Dark Knight was a terrific movie, the greatest super hero movie ever.
brangan
May 20, 2012
KayKay: Yes, let’s not forget this film, at least the first part. (Even if Stallone has begun to look like a botched plastic-surgery case.) That scene with the special guest stars — it was appropriate that it was set in a church, considering the gods who were in the frame
KayKay
May 20, 2012
Yeah, and this time an even older deity is joining the fray.With the inclusion of Chuck Norris, they’ve officially covered the gamut of action heroes of the 70′s, 80′s (Stallone, Schwarzenegger), 90′s (WIllis, Van Damme, Lundgren) and today’s hottest action star (Statham) not to mention and up and coming martial arts whiz (Scott Adkins).
I kinda see a parallel with The Avengers movie and The Expendables 2, in the sense that you could come to it blind and be reasonably entertained by the action, but the experience is sweeter when wrapped in the nostalgia factor bolstered by a childhood spent either devouring Marvel comics (in the case of the former) or watching umpteen bootleg videos of Rambo, Predator, Die Hard, Missing In Action, Bloodsport and Showdown In Little Tokyo (in the case of the latter).
And thanks for the shout out to Donner’s Superman, IMHO the most perfect take on Superman. Ever.
Donner realized Superman needed an epic grandeur coupled with an old fashioned approach to heroism (charm, chivalry, honor), deducing, quite rightly, that all that tortured angst and moody introspection belongs in Gotham, not Metropolis. There’s yet to be a more perfect casting than Christopher Reeve as The Man Of Steel, John Williams’ score I rank as one of his very finest and about the only thing that dates the movie is the rather wonky effects, but it’s still miles ahead of Bryan “overrated” SInger’s turgid take on it 28 years later (Supes as a stalker hovering outside Lois’ apartment as she enjoys domestic bliss with a new partner. Barf!)
MumbaiRamki
May 21, 2012
ada ponga saar .. seriana mokka padam The Avengers … It was The dasavatharam of marvel comics , fitted in the frame of 2012
Sai
May 22, 2012
Mr. Rangan, I’m sure you could write a thesis about how paint dries. The sheer spin of words would keep me reading till the bitter end. Well written !