9/11, Film, and Bad Film Criticism: Part II

For those of you who have not had a chance to read part I, please do read it here and also to read the Vice piece that is the subject of this discussion, the link is here as well.

Welcome to part II. To sum up, the previous discussion focused on the faulty premise of Bastanmehr cultural criticism of the effect 9/11 has on film and Hollywood. But for part II, we will dive into a different section of his thinking and expand it. One particular point that Bastanmehr makes in his argument is in regards to superheroes and their role in audience/Hollywood’s relationship. As he says:

Yet it was superhero movies that would come to define the decade that followed, thanks to a renewed interest in a world delineated into heroes and villains. 2002's Spider-Man captured New York City’s charged, post-attack energy best.

This is faulty in a couple of ways, but most of all, because production on Spider-Man would have begun prior to 9/11, so it’s popularity would have been reactionary and accidental instead of intentional, which is counter to the larger argument that Bastanmehr tries to make in his commentary. But it does provoke an worthwhile project: what exactly has been the impact of superhero movies in the last two decades?

Let’s take a look: firstly, we will look at the box office returns as a measurement of their success, as this is a metric that indicates the audience engagement with the genre and also points at the elusive quality that Bastanmehr believes exists in a post-9/11 landscape: audience engagement with superhero movies because of a desire for narratives with clear lines between hero and villain.

Looking at box office domestic returns of the top 15 for the years 2003 to 2014: a total of 26 films finished in the top 15 in their respective year, which makes the percentage of films that are superhero based roughly 14 percent. Outside of those 14 percent, audiences voted with their feet and dollars for other fare that was not superhero related. The 26 superhero films to finish:

2003: X-Men 2 and the widely disliked Hulk starring Eric Bana

2004: Spider-Man 2 and The Incredibles

2005: Fantastic Four and Batman Begins

2006: X-Men 3 and Superman Returns

2007: Spider-Man 3

2008: The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and Hancock

2009: X-Men Origins

2010: Iron Man 2

2011: Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger

2012: Avengers, Dark Knight Rises, and The Amazing Spider-Man

2013: Man of Steel and Thor: The Dark World

2014: Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Big Hero 6, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and X-Men: Days of Future Past

What does this list tell us? First, we could say that the list tells us that most American audience appetites can usually handle roughly two superhero movies a year as a group. But if we take a historical perspective on this list: Batman and Superman movies have been regular mainstays of the Hollywood slate, with Batman Begins and Superman Returns attempts to reboot the series for a new audience with the former a success and the latter a failure to be forgotten by the later Man of Steel. The X-Men films on this list were also the result of the success of the first film, a pre-9/11 project released the year prior to the attacks. The audience was built in for that property prior to the attacks. When Bastanmehr makes the claim that superhero movies would come to define the decade, a more appropriate claim might have been to say that Marvel films would come to define the decade.

In the last two decades, the rise of Marvel films and then Marvel Studios would be a bigger story, but if we look at the list above, we could argue that the claims regarding the superhero as the defining genre of the decade could rather be Marvel finding success with the rest of Hollywood trying to follow suit. One of the early successes for Marvel as a film-making source material was the Wesley Snipes Blade films beginning with Blade (1998). The film was shot on a budget of 40 million and had a worldwide box office gross of 130 million, which would make it a success, but domestically it pulled 70 million which was good for 29th that year. While Blade was a success, it was one done through licensing, which meant that Marvel had to share profits on the film with movie studios that made the film.

This method worked successfully, which is evident with both the Spiderman films and the X-Men franchise (the original X-Men budget was 75 million and made 296 million of which 157 million was domestic sales — good for 8th that year). But, take a step back and what we see are two things: old standbys and well known source material. The old standbys were Batman and Superman, being rebooted and enjoying moderate to good success while the Spider-Man and X-Men films were based on source material well known outside of the strictly fanatical comic book community. While Blade was a box office success, it wasn’t one where executives sit up in their chairs and say, “more comic books”. But then something happened. No, it wasn’t September 11th, which is something you might be thinking. It was more like a bank robbery.

It takes months, if not years for a movie to incubate from idea to finished product. In that process, hundreds of people can be involved and it can be subject to many different deaths. But, the best way to ensure that a film gets through, is to copy the success of others. We were robbed by a man with a smile and green hair. In 2005, Christopher Nolan, which at the time had only two major directing credits to his name (Insomnia with Al Pacino and Memento with Guy Pierce) was given the helm of rebooting the Batman franchise. What came of it was Batman Begins. A commercial success with a budget of 150 million and box office sales of 374 million (205 million domestic), it made enough to return the budget and make a profit. On Rotten tomatoes, the critics were mixed, with top critics scored at 63 percent approval and all critics at 85 percent. But among viewers, though only a million users, it received a 94 percent approval rating. This would be enough to generate a sequel, if not because the Batman franchise can always generate a sequel if it performs average.

The real heist happened three years later. With the release of The Dark Knight in 2008, the idea that comic book superheroes could print money for studios became a prevailing notion. But first, the numbers: on a budget of 185 million dollars, the film grossed over 1 billion dollars worldwide. The thought that a single movie could generate a single billion dollars worldwide (and obviously I am speaking of non-inflation adjusted numbers because there are better performing movies respective to their times) made executives take a closer look. Of the total gross for the film, half of it or more precisely 533 million, was domestic. Additionally, the year also provided another example of the superhero as a money generator; that superhero being Iron Man.

Iron Man’s appeal might have been his newness, or it might have been because war fatigue made a film metaphorically about the military-industrial complex a point of interest, or it could have been the smug and smarmy playboy adventures of Tony Stark brought to life through the brilliant acting of Robert Downey Jr, but for any of the reasons listed above, the film was a success. The budget for the film was 140 million and grossed 585 million, of which 318 was domestic. Taking the top two spots for the overall box office grosses that year were two superheroes: Batman and an inventor in a metal suit. While Batman’s immense success could have easily been written off as the success of a well know source material combined with a quality director and script among other film qualities coming together into one happy confluence of greatness, the success of Iron Man, who was a lesser known character from the Marvel universe in contrast to the X-Men or Spider-Man, brought about a new question: maybe comic book superheroes do work as a source material.

I think this would be self-evident to most people, but for an industry that is consistently looking for material that has an engaging story, developed characters, and can be represented visually for the process of transforming source material into a film, comic books would seem to make the perfect wellspring to draw from. But, as we saw, audiences didn’t seem too interested in viewing more that two superhero films a year, with most being the greater known names. The better answer is that, make a good movie, and audiences come to watch it. Going back to Rotten Tomatoes, let’s look at the scores given. For The Dark Knight, all critics and top critics were scored at 94 and 92 percent while users scored the film an average of 91 percent. Besides financial success, the film also was widely loved by critics and users alike. Iron Man, meanwhile, had a 94 and 90 split for all critics and top critics, with a user score of 91 percent. So, combine two films that generate over 1.5 billion dollars in one year, and garner critical success along with high audience engagement, and with an already built in history of moderate to excellent success with Spider-Man, X-Men, and Superman, and you have the recipe for two outcomes: 1) an idea is born: “we’ve just been doing these films wrong and need to try again” or 2) The Birdcage.

What to say about superheroes? Bastanmehr’s point is that superheroes would become the defining genre of the decade post-9/11, but as we saw, it really is rather the rise of Marvel Studios and there ability to generate quality films that are critically endorsed and audience loved. A better question might be, is it not rather that instead of 9/11 catalyzing the invigoration of superheroes but rather an industry built on storytelling as a business model finding a treasure trove of unused stories? As we looked, audience tastes didn’t seem to spark on superhero movies but for more than two a year until the success of 2008 that has now become the year of superheroes with 2014 possessing 6 of the top 15 spots in box office domestic grosses.

Possibly Bastanmehr meant to argue rather that the genre’s ascent is because Hollywood studios began investing more heavily post-9/11 in the hopes of finding money-making success using stories with clear heroes and villains. He could easily point to failures like Daredevil in 2003, or the trifecta of Hellboy, Catwoman, and The Punisher in 2004 as evidence of Hollywood’s attempts to push superheroes for a post-9/11 audience, but he doesn’t make an argument by pointing to specific films as evidence of the larger trend, so I’ll only hint at it here.

— P.S. Moonshy

• Precognition of Part III: Visual Aesthetics and Inferences of Meaning