Why are Superheroes so Dominant in today's Movies and Modern Media in General?

 

Why are Superheroes so Dominant in today's Movies and Modern Media in General?

Before I continue writing this, I recommend a video by Exalted Speed that helped me inspire the creation of this blog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAe1k04g-w&t=2s

Superheroes have been everywhere in modern media especially in movies and live action TV shows, in fact, they appear in almost anything of the live action variety nowadays. So much so that the term "capeshit" has been invented and there's a huge hype backlash going against them on the internet as of late. Here, I am going to examine why this is the case and the reason why they are so dominant in recent years.

As much as it pains me to admit it, when MCU fans use genre labels to try to distinguish the movies, they kind of have a point. The big reason as to why superheroes have yet to die out is because really, you can put these characters in almost any kind of genre and story and it's almost always a guarantee sell. You can make a superhero story about almost anything really. The first Iron Man was a military movie with Iron Man, Captain America the Winter Soldier is an espionage story with Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy is a sci fi epic, Spider-Man Homecoming is a teenage comedy drama, the Daredevil Netflix show is a courtroom drama, the recent Shang Chi is a martial arts movie with a superhero skin. This can apply to non MCU examples too, Logan is basically a western, Punisher Warzone can be viewed as the traditional action movies that superhero movies have mostly killed off, Man of Steel can be viewed as a coming of age Alien Invasion Story, both Justice Leagues are Seven Samurai with Superheroes. It's endless really, this is the reason why superheroes have lasted so long in Western Comics too. Why go out of your way to make a new original property which won't sell nearly as well, when you can make a Romantic Comedy out of Spider-Man and it will sell like crazy?

This now transitions me to my next point, before, Hollywood would rely on the power of the movie stars to sell their movies. In the 80s it was Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeanne Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren(who starred in a Punisher movie), to name a few. Then in the 90s, it was Keanu Reeves, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Steve Buscemi and others. And the original Superman movie needed star power in order to sell people that it was a genuinely serious take on the idea of the superhero, the advantage of the movie star is that since they are people rather than characters, depending on how attached certain people were to them, you could watch them in almost anything. Many people watched the Matrix for Keanu Reeves, many watched Men in Black for Will Smith, many people watched the first Mission Impossible for Tom Cruise. It gave the chance for a movie with less than "marketable" premise to make money because if you could land on one these big stars in your movie, it *could* sell well. Mad Max probably wouldn't have been as big if it weren't for Mel Gibson, same can be said of Lethal Weapon and Braveheart too. Sixth Sense probably wouldn't be as big of a hit if it didn't have Bruce Willis. There's many examples. Now, with the reliance on characters over actors is that the thing is, characters don't have to rely on making sure they remain acceptable in the public eye and add social media where it's harder to get away with making mistakes in public. That and the movies require so much money to make that they need to sell overseas, and a character with an "iconic" look will generally be enough to sell people of cultural and national boundaries more than a face of an actor and their acting nuances. That and when you add movie reviews and the internet into the mix where people will watch a movie based on if they do well with critics rather than a movie because an actor they like is starring in it and you can see why the movie star died out

Anthony Mackie makes a great point in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj8JK6c5x3M

On a side note I am surprised they let him say the stuff he did in that video.

In conclusion, I think these are the reasons why Superheroes have stayed for so long, it's because of how marketable they are and easy it is to shove them in any kind of story.