Despite being the third live-action adaptation in a decade, Spider-man Homecoming has managed to garner overwhelming favor with critics and audiences, particularly for its fresh, subversive nature. We’re fifteen movies in and the Marvel hit-making behemoth has effectively supplanted Pixar as the studio that just can’t make an out and out dud. But what’s really impressive is how Marvel is able to achieve this.
The nature of Homecoming’s very existence should inherently frustrate any chance at making the kind of breath-of-fresh-air delight that the MCU has become iconic for, saying nothing of the fact that we officially entered an age where a “Superhero” film, in one form or another, can be found in the sludge of every weekend release. For one of these Superhero flicks to feel at all “fresh” should be viewed as a minor triumph, a minor triumph that speaks to the evolution of the genre as a whole.
Superhero movies make money, almost inexorably, partially because of that “I recognize that thing!” fan-service, but also for a more substantial and less cited reason: these kinds of films, formerly thought of as inconsequential, brain numbing toy commercials by the bulk of the industry, are being made by talented people that share a certain enthusiasm for the source material. Films like Guardians of The Galaxy and Wonder Woman earn enough goodwill for the genre so that films like Suicide Squad can make a killing at the box office. Superhero fatigue is a thing, albeit a hyperbolized thing, but even now filmmakers have begun to take preemptive steps toward preserving the medium for decades to come.
Let’s look at the standouts, films that transcended mere popcorn pastime into either cultural phenomenon or overwhelming critical recognition. Films like Logan, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Dark Knight, and near as I can tell Spider-Man Homecoming. It has less to do with what these movies have in common and more to do with what they don’t. Each example is a decided assimilation of other genre films. The creative team behind each dissected what the characters and their world mean, then defined them in cinematic terms.
Wolverine is a character that has been granted many years to evolve in the comics into the folk hero he is today, but how does one summate that in film terms to those unaware in a less the two-hour running time? Simple: you frame the narrative as a western, a genre wherein a protagonist that comes into the story informed by horrors and adventures that are hinted at it, but never seen by the audience. Wolverine in the context of gritty post apocalyptic Americana worked far and away better than the attempts to bolster him as the traditional “Action-hero movie man.” He’s a hero that has a code, but is ultimately vulgar and self-serving. Sound familiar? No, I’m not talking about Superman, but any number of characters made famous by stars like Clint Eastwood or John Wayne.
The same logic can be applied to Guardians of the Galaxy, the Dark Knight and Homecoming. Guardians of the Galaxy takes more cues from films like Indiana Jones and Star Wars than from traditional Superhero films. It’s a space opera that has the markers of the comic book movie genre but I’d say tentatively so at most. Similarly, The Dark Knight is a crime suspense drama at its heart, which so happens to feature Batman as the stand-in for “unhinged, loose cannon” detective. Spider-Man Homecoming took what made Amazing Fantasy #15 so singular and repurposed that essence in the form of a high school coming-of-age comedy.
Genre-crossing is an inspired approach that more and more of these kinds of properties are taking. Just this week, Ryan Coogler said that he aims to frame his upcoming Black Panther film as the beginning of a series that feels like a cross between James Bond and The Godfather in tone and scope.
When everything’s said and done, the conservation of the Superhero genre on film relies on the constant reaffirmation of what makes these characters so relatable. Right now, the landscape is doing so by melding them with the genres that speak to their corresponding tones. Soon, comic book movies won’t be the limited genre it is today – there will be fantasy films and noir thrillers that just so happen to star Brother Voodoo or Batman. That isn’t to say there isn’t a place for more traditional approaches, like was the case in Patty Jenkin’s Wonder Woman, it's just the future of the medium is expanding in order to sustain itself for many more years to come.
