How Many Superheroes Does It Take to Tire a Genre?

The New York Times

July 24, 2008

By A. O. SCOTT

“Batman has no limits,” says Bruce Wayne to his manservant, Alfred, early in “The Dark Knight,” and the accountants at Warner Brothers, which released the movie, are likely to agree. I’m not so sure.

“The Dark Knight,” praised by critics for its somber themes and grand ambitions, has proven to be a mighty box office force in a summer already dominated by superheroes of various kinds. But any comic book fan knows that a hero at the height of his powers is a few panels removed from mortal danger, and that hubris has a way of summoning new enemies out of the shadows. Are the Caped Crusader and his colleagues basking in an endless summer of triumph, or is the sun already starting to set?

The season began with “Iron Man” back in May, which anticipated “The Dark Knight” in striking many reviewers as a pleasant surprise and hordes of moviegoers as a must-see. The July Fourth weekend belonged to “Hancock,” which played with the superhero archetype by making him a grouchy, slovenly drunk rather than a brilliant scientist, a dashing billionaire or some combination of the two. In that case, the reviews were mixed, but the money flowed in anyway. Even the lackluster “Incredible Hulk,” back in June, managed a reasonably robust opening, as did “Hellboy II,” a somewhat more esoteric comic-book movie.

The commercial strength of the superhero genre is hardly news of course. Ever since Tobey Maguire was bitten by a spider back in 2002, this decade has been something of a golden age for large-scale action movies featuring guys in high-tech bodysuits battling garishly costumed, ruthless criminal masterminds. Some of them — the “Fantastic Four” pictures, most notably — are content to be entertaining pop-culture throwaways. But most aspire to be something more, to be taken as seriously as their heroes and villains take themselves.

These movies wear their allegorical hearts on their cartoon sleeves, dressing up their stories with intimations of topicality overt, like the Afghan kidnappers in “Iron Man,” and indirect, like the ruminations on due process and torture in “The Dark Knight.” They are also stuffed with first-rate actors who, rather than slumming for a paycheck as Marlon Brando did in 1978 in “Superman,” at least attempt real, fleshed-out performances.

Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart do some of their best work in “The Dark Knight,” as does Robert Downey Jr. in “Iron Man.” Well-regarded directors like Sam Raimi and Bryan Singer have burnished their reputations with the “Spider-Man” and “X-Men” franchises, as has Christopher Nolan, director of “The Dark Knight” and its predecessor, “Batman Begins.” These filmmakers have become bankable auteurs in the Hollywood economy, affixing their artistic signatures to projects that come with budgets in excess of $100 million dollar, built-in mass appeal and an ever-growing measure of cultural prestige.

There have been missteps and disappointments — Ang Lee’s 2003 “Hulk”; Mr. Singer’s “Superman Returns”; the third installment of the “X-Men” series, directed by Brett Ratner — but these have hardly dented the power of the genre. And its hold over the attention of studio executives and audiences is unlikely to end anytime soon. Already the studios are locking in release dates for the next rounds. Mark your calendars: The first X-Men spinoff, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” will come along next May, and “Iron Man 2” is scheduled to hit the local multiplex on April 30, 2010, two months ahead of “The Green Hornet,” with Seth Rogen stepping into the Van Williams role from the television series.

Still, I have a hunch, and perhaps a hope, that “Iron Man,” “Hancock” and “Dark Knight” together represent a peak, by which I mean not only a previously unattained level of quality and interest, but also the beginning of a decline. In their very different ways, these films discover the limits built into the superhero genre as it currently exists.

I don’t want to start any fights with devout fans or besotted critics. I’m willing to grant that “The Dark Knight” is as good as a movie of its kind can be. But that may be damning with faint praise. There is no doubt that Batman, a staple of American popular culture for nearly 70 years, provided Mr. Nolan (and his brother and screenwriting partner Jonathan), with a platform for his artistic ambitions. You can’t set out to make a psychological thriller, or even an urban crime melodrama, and expect to command anything like the $185 million budget Mr. Nolan had at his disposal in “The Dark Knight.” And that money, in addition to paying for some dazzling set pieces and action sequences, allowed Mr. Nolan and his team to create a seamless and evocative visual atmosphere, a Gotham nightscape often experienced from the air.

But to paraphrase something the Joker says to Batman, “The Dark Knight” has rules, and they are the conventions that no movie of this kind can escape. The climax must be a fight with the villain, during which the symbiosis of good guy and bad guy, implicit throughout, must be articulated. The end must point forward to a sequel, and an aura of moral consequence must be sustained even as the killings, explosions and chases multiply. The allegorical stakes in a superhero are raised — it’s not just good guys fighting bad guys, but Righteousness against Evil, Order against Chaos — precisely to authorize a more intense level of violence. Of course every movie genre is governed by conventions, and every decent genre movie explores the zones of freedom within those iron parameters. Thus “Iron Man” loosens the reins of its plot to give Mr. Downey room to explore the kinks and idiosyncrasies of Tony Stark, the playboy billionaire engineering genius who finally grows up and builds himself a metal suit. And “Hancock” takes the conceit of a dissipated, semi-competent hero — more menace than protector — and turns it into the occasion for some sharp satirical riffing on race, celebrity and the supposedly universal likability of its star, Will Smith.

But in both cases, as soon as the main character is suited up and ready to do battle, the originality drains out of the picture, and the commercial imperatives — the big fight, the overscaled action extravaganza — take over. “The Dark Knight” has some advantages from being the second movie in a series, with less need for exposition and basic character development, and its final act is less of a letdown.

Instead the disappointment comes from the way the picture spells out lofty, serious themes and then ... spells them out again. What kind of hero do we need? Where is the line between justice and vengeance? How much autonomy should we sacrifice in the name of security? Is the taking of innocent life ever justified? These are all fascinating, even urgent questions, but stating them, as nearly every character in “The Dark Knight” does, sooner of later, is not the same as exploring them.

And yet stating such themes is as far as the current wave of superhero movies seems able or willing to go. The westerns of the 1940s and ’50s, obsessed with similar themes, were somehow able, at their best, as in John Ford’s “Searchers” and Howard Hawks’s “Rio Bravo,” to find ambiguities and tensions buried in their own rigid paradigms.

But the cowboys of old did not labor under the same burdens as their masked and caped descendants. Those poor, misunderstood crusaders must turn big profits on a global scale and satisfy an audience hungry for the thrill of novelty and the comforts of the familiar. Is it just me, or is the strain starting to show?