The Super Hero Craze, Part I

I see a lot people complaining about all the superhero movies, sequels, and remakes. I understand the griping, I really do.  However, I wouldn’t expect any of these to end anytime soon.

Look, there are some things you need to realize. Once you do, we will all be better off.

Yes, our creative landscape is shifting. Access to new technology and the shitty economy—unless you’re a millionaire, in which case the economy is awesome—has impacted the way we consume. Our buying, viewing, listening, and reading habits are all different now. But that landscape is still overseen by large corporations.

Now, corporations need to grow their profits to survive. That’s how capitalism works. When that growth is threatened—like it has been with our altered spending habits, corporations will do everything they can to maintain the profits they’re used to, with as little effort and risk as possible.

So we get more superhero movies, more sequels, and more remakes because corporations already own most of these properties and each of them offers: broad appeal, additional revenue streams, and annual event potential.

What do those three things mean? Well, they mean money. Plain and simple. Only consideration. Anything else that comes out of it? That's just happenstance.

I mean, take Nolan’s Batman movies. You know why we got Batman Begins? It didn’t have anything to do with “artistic vision” or “protecting the sanctity of the character”—those are artist's words and not readily within the corporate vocabulary. Very, very simply put: Christopher Nolan had already made Warner Brother’s a lot of money when he pitched his take on one of their existing properties that had already made them a lot of money.

So, in the companies eyes, the equation was like this: $$$+$$$=$$$$$$

That’s it.

You know what guaranteed Nolan a sequel? The first movie making a shit-ton of money.

That's it.

The fact that most of us consider the first movie to be good? That's luck. Luck that the stories Nolan wants to tell, the ones we think of as "good", are the ones that make money. As long as his stories make money, then he gets to keep making him.