Do me a favour – March out into your proverbial ideas
paddock and do a quick headcount for me. How many “Cash Cows” do you own? I’ll
bet that those few money makers are adorned in colourful spandex, impractical
capes and voice-impeding masks. Whilst this analogy may inspire you to pursue
your long dormant “Telekinetic Bovine” project, my point is that superhero
movies are here to stay, and box office success is almost an inevitability at
this stage. But whilst the camp, Universe-building Marvel movies and the
sparse, yet “serious” output of DC go toe to toe, maybe it’s about time
something different came along to mix up the formula.
1) Write Characters,
Not Powers
Seems like a no-brainer, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Obviously,
I’m not advocating that we eliminate super powers altogether, but when your
protagonist can stop a meteorite by winking at it, it becomes a little tough
for the audience to relate to their “daddy issues”. We need to start going a
little bit further than single characteristic definition, as just using
“brave”, “headstrong”, “tortured” or “snarky” over and over means we’re
limiting ourselves to watching dull, cookie-cutter men doing dull,
cookie-cutter things (incidentally, I’ve already bagsied Cookie Cutter Man for a five film deal, starting Summer 2017).
Of course, many of the heroes we see on the big screen these
days have endured decades of back catalogue in the comic book realm, but the
hardcore fans mostly want the pure,
original, untainted versions in their debut movies. This should be seen as an
opportunity to add complexity and context-specific traits to the characters,
rather than attempt all-pleasing broad strokes. This is why you, Mr / Mrs / Miss
/ Dr Writer, have the advantage of working from the ground up. Your superhero
movie can be about a sociopathic, narcissistic pacifist, suffering from
survivor’s guilt, but with a deep affinity for animal preservation and healthy
eating, on account of their strict vegan upbringing, who just so happens to
have the ability to control anything that is magenta in colour. And don’t get
me started on having a female lead...
2) Destroy Stuff,
Like For Real. Not Just Buildings.
Beware Spoilers for:
The Dark Knight, Avengers: Assemble, Iron Man 3, Thor 2: The Dark World, Amazing
Spiderman 2, Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy.
Most films basically.
The truth is audiences are pretty sadistic. When we see
characters kicking ass and beating the system, we are, subconsciously, eagerly
anticipating that hero getting knocked down a few pegs. It endears us to them,
particularly when they finally succeed in the end, or even later in the
franchise. However, if these “Earth-shattering” blows merely amount to the hero
finding a new sense of motivation or purpose, what was lost starts to feel a
little... cheap. I mentioned in a
previous post that female characters close to the protagonist are often killed off
for this reason (e.g. Rachel Dawes,
Frigga, Gwen Stacey, etc.), but wouldn’t it have been more interesting to
see the heroes fail in the end because of
their grief?
Consider on the flip-side how many fake-out deaths Marvel
have hit us with over the last few films – Agent
Coulson, Pepper Potts, Loki and Nick Fury, with Bucky Barnes, Zola and Groot to
a lesser extent. It makes financial sense to keep these characters around,
if only to kill one of them in Avengers
2: Age of Ultron and give a “dark middle chapter” vibe, but COME ON! Kill
someone important already and make it stick! At least Cap 2 gave us a kind of death in terms of “nothing will be the same
after this point” (yeah, I’m talking
about that organisation), but overall, there’s a lack of courage. When you
come to write your movie, kill and destroy almost everything your hero cares
about, for real. But make it fun too. That shouldn’t be too hard for you.
3) Mess With Your
Audience
We’re all pretty savvy with the formula by now, at least with
origin stories. Superhero sequels afford the producers a little more creative
licence to experiment (e.g. the Iron Man
3 twist, Batman’s nipples in Batman
Forever, etc.), but first instalments follow a pretty specific pattern
(even Batman Begins when told
linearly). That’s where you come in. Maybe
you create a film where we don’t even
know who the hero is until the film’s final moments, or maybe your hero and
villain are the same person, or maybe
the love interest betrays the hero and is
having a gross affair with the elderly mentor figure, meaning our hero must
convince their teacher that they are “just after their money and that all
powerful amulet”, or something.
Maybe those maybes were bad examples, but maybe they weren’t.
Where is it written that superhero movies have to appeal to the masses? Let’s
get Nicholas Winding Refn to direct an introspective, visually bizarre acid
trip about a hero who can’t speak, or he’ll explode. And forget all the 12A /
PG13 stuff, because this revolutionary script demands a narrower, more mature
audience. Marvel have already said they’re shying away from making their
upcoming Deadpool movie R-Rated, so
the burden falls upon us to realise the potential of that missed opportunity –
maybe not with that particular titular anti-hero, but another obscure character
from the furthest reaches of Marvel’s hive-mind subconscious.
4) No Action
Picture, if you will, your favourite superhero movie of the
last two decades. Now decide what your favourite moment from that film was –
chances are it was either 1) a comedic moment, 2) a badass line of dialogue or
moment, 3) a moment of pure tension, 4) a sad moment or 5) Stan Lee’s
inevitable cameo. If you fail to conform to these arbitrary parameters and it
was actually a moment of action, like a fist fight or a shootout or a random
mook getting owned, then you may be surprised to hear that you are in the
minority (according to my trusted source, Facts And Legal Statistics Ensemble).
Action, in its rawest sense, whilst visually awesome, is a delaying strategy. We
love it for entertainment, but think of the amount of time it takes up...
Take The Dark Knight
– often lauded as one of the best superhero movies of all time. Why? Because
there is, surprisingly, very little conventional action. The Joker isn’t a
physical antagonist – he plays everything on a far more cerebral level. Other
than shooting that RPG at that armoured truck that one time, he barely gets his
hands dirty. This means that Batman himself gets into arguably the least “fights”
of any Batman movie (“SHASPLAT!”), approaching each scenario more like a bomb
defusal. The final film, as a result, plays out more like a thriller, equating
to the most stressful plate spinning contest that Batman has ever entered. So,
if you want your superhero movie to be amazing, put your hero into situations
more demanding than just outnumbering them with henchman, like needle threading
or headphone untangling.
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