Quote:
Originally Posted by Aries Walker
I get what you mean, and I have noticed that that's becoming a trend. Until recently, superhero movies were mostly just superhero movies, but now studios are starting to cross them over with other genres. First, I suppose, was Hancock, which had aspects of everything from a crime story to a redemption drama to an alien invasion movie. Within the past year, though, they've also been blended with a psychological thriller (Chronicle), a mob story (The Wolverine), a political thriller (Winter Soldier), and even a Godzilla-style monster movie (Pacific Rim).
We've had superhero romantic comedies and superhero spoofs years ago, but they weren't very good and aren't very remembered. I wonder what they'll cross over with next.
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I think this one was pretty exceptional in that, aside from the Nolan movies and what they tried to do with MoS (which I liked, I own the blu-ray) which were I think exceptions themselves, this one seemed to me more about the plot and characters than about the 'splosions. The action, as much as their was, seemed secondary to the things going on, or even propelled the plot. That's a pretty special thing in an action movie these days. That was actually one of my complaints about Pacific Rim, that there was too much emphasis on "ooh cool, big things beating on each other" and it just wasn't enough to make up for bad writing and, in a few instances, bad acting. I'm hoping the new Godzilla delivers what I was hoping Pacific Rim would be. But a lot of these movies as the (movie) genre has developed have been about being cool. "oh shit" moments sometimes at the expense of substance. And while Winter Soldier is still as cool as anything, I think it has an amazing amount of depth and substance. (The Wolverine may be like this too, I haven't seen it yet, but the main point is that I think The Winter Soldier has risen the bar).
Anyway, comic books, IMO, have always fallen squarely in the SF/F genre, so it's no surprise to me that the movies cover a lot of areas just like the comics themselves did. SF/F has also been that way, can, literally, be anything. I have genre novels on my shelf that range from thick political and social commentaries to something inspired by hollywood westerns (seriously, Red Country by Joe Abercrombie, it's a fantasy western) to romances to military science fiction to space opera (which can have random elements from all over the place) to mysteries to thrillers.
It's while I love genre writing so much. And I've always considered comic books part of the genre.