A number of years ago, I concluded that the superhero appeal came from the same place that made mythology so enduring. Replace the word "Superhero" with "demigod" and you've got Hercules. A little later, I discovered that Joseph Campbell said the appeal of Star Wars was because it tells a story we never ever get tired of - the hero's quest. King Arthur is a variation on that same thing.
Something may ultimately kill the profitability of DC, Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney itself, but these fantastic stories of epic characters on heroic quests will most likely never die. They might just move out of the movie realm and into VR once the bugs are worked out.
Another fun fact: the reason the ship captain is dressed like Indiana Jones is because Brooks promised Lucas he wouldn't take the piss out of Han Solo …
It isn't Netflix, but you could argue Amazon has take two shots of this kind with "The Expanse" (which was Netflix) and more importantly "The Boys".
"The Expanse" can be viewed as yet another in the long line of sci-fi franchises, but it's contrast to Disney Star Wars and more recent Star Trek (another franchise that needs to be retired, and I say that as someone who wore a Captain Kirk uniform shirt to school at least once a week in the mid-70s) is very much the everyman who you come to admire.
"The Boys", though, turning supers into yet another corporate manipulation, could put a knife through the genre. The wide variety of people I've seen embracing the latest season, many of them openly sick of Marvel at this point, indicate it might be the first shot of what you're describing.
Did you watch, or read "The Expanse" ? While it was a bit different than the books, it is nowhere near the repetitive crap from Marvel & DC. You doe a great disservice to "The Expanse" by lumping it in with Star Wars & Marvel.
I tried so hard to watch the Expanse but couldn't progress beyond about 5 episodes. I expect humans to at least speak like humans. When the torturous main protagonist said gruffly "I'm just trying to do right by my people" - I was finally out of there. I'm not interested in characters that just talk at each other in cliches.
Good Star Trek will never stop being relevant (TOS, TNG, DS9) until society evolves past a state of limitless greed at the expense limited resources and desperate ppl.
I mean there are ppl who got into Trek bc of the politics surrounding the Sanders campaign. The human condition is way too relatable to the point of being smothering.
Also don’t compare Trek to freaking Star Wars. The latter is an awful dystopian society. The Jedi suck at being Jedi by being co-opted by a government controlled by commercial interests.
I'm 55 and grew up in a Star Trek household. My father went to high school with William Shatner and my mother with Christopher Plummer. I sat next to Gene Roddenberry at a convention once. I have been watching Star Trek series in chronological order while using my rowing machine, a habit I started just before the pandemic; I am now about to finish Voyager, around 665 episodes down and well over 4 million metres rowed. It's been great... in more ways than one!
Because I've been watching it this way, I have eschewed the newer series (plural) until now. I have not seen anything created after 2000 yet, and only saw my first episode of Picard last month while staying with a friend who had to see the series finale. My wife likes Star Trek too, so I decided to watch Picard with her together, thinking I would just watch it again when my rowing catches up to it several months from now.
But now I say: "Not likely." While I strongly appreciate the excellent production quality and graphics, as well as the many shout-outs to historic Trek characters and story lines, the trashy vulgar language has made it unpalatable. We will finish it out just to say we did it, but we are so disgusted by the gutter language that I know I will not be able to see it again. I'm gritting my teeth even by watching it now and there is no way I would let my children view it.
Relying on vulgarity and sex (including innuendo and even actual nudity) is—to me—a cheap workaround. It takes skill to write with excellence. Any teenager can drop F words and get a laugh from his pals. And, related to this, as a leader in my corporation, if anyone in our teams talked like that, it is unlikely their tenure with our company would be a long one.
[Just my opinion. I realize there are people who think that swearing is a non-issue, and/or that 'it reflects real life'.]
Agreed, but in this context it is shows like Picard that are relevant.
I mean, I own Mallory, have read it, and still do. I'm a huge King Arthur geek. That doesn't mean new Arthurian has 1% of the impact Mallory did when published or will over time for that matter.
I remember thinking 'what will it take to kill the HAIR BANDS?' I would say the (slightly misnamed) 'Hair Metal' genre ruled the rock world from around the first Van Halen album in 1978 until Extreme's 'Pornografitti' in 1991, which is a pretty great run. One would think that the appearance of the archetypal mockumentary 'This Is Spinal Tap' in 1984 (filmed during the creation of Van Halen's biggest album '1984') would have been the beginning of the end, but the genre continued to pick up steam, showing no signs of slowing down even as the '90s dawned. I was personally flabbergasted by this as a college-aged music fan who couldn't wait for that era to meet its Waterloo. I knew Guns 'n' Roses wasn't going to be it, despite all the hype--they had less reverb on the drums and a refreshing old-school swagger, but also a lot more Hair Band in their soul than anyone cared to admit, then or now.
We all know what happened. Every aspect of Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' including the whole aesthetic of the song's video, was an announcement that the time of the dinosaurs was over and the Asteroid was here, in the form of a bedraggled-looking young man in a thrift store sweater with a then-unfashionable '60s Fender Mustang. Within a few months, all the Seattle bands were being aggressively signed and promoted, and it became illegal to play virtuosic weedly-deedly guitar solos while a spandex-clad singer pranced around in makeup and Aqua Net. Grunge wasn't just a musical style. It was, even more than punk before it, a nuclear bomb.
As Mr. Gioia states, sometimes the world is just waiting for something more interesting and complex to latch onto, whether it's Cobain or Cervantes. I don't know about the end of Star Wars and Marvel, but when it comes to music I feel we're overdue for an extinction-level event.
Darth Vader already won the Nobel Peace Prize. It was in 1973 and he was then operating under the pseudonym Henry Kissinger.
Ridicule doesn’t always kill off tired stories. Westerns survived Blazing Saddles. Airplane! didn’t kill off the pathetic Airport series of disaster movies. Hollywood still makes sci-fi thrillers despite Spaceballs. And against my best hopes Heavy Metal wasn’t euthanized by This is Spinal Tap.
Wouldn’t it be safer — and more accurate — to say the public gets bored of everything eventually and moves on to some new new? Someday even the Big Mac with fries will drop off the McDonalds menu.
This dovetails in a complex way with your previous entries about the current lack of a recognizable counter culture. Don Quixote was counter culture par excellence, until it was all the rage.
An interesting post. I would make a couple of qualifying points. First, hero narratives obviously serve a psychological need, and its not just the psychology of the individual but that of the larger society. "Star Wars" appeared after a decade or two of anti-heroes dominating the screen. Westerns and war movies, for instance, had soured on traditional heroics at a time when the American public's faith in public and private institutions was flagging. The idea of taking cheesy Flash Gordon stories and turning them into operatic tales of heroes and villains clearly filled a need.
Second, Cervantes lived in a very different world from the one that had produced the Arthurian legends. The social, political, and economic realities of Europe were transformed during the 13th through 16th centuries. Much as I would like to believe otherwise, I don't think any parallel transformation will arrive anytime soon.
Your point about the anti-heroes of the late 60s and the 70s is well made. The psychological need of the culture for the kind of hero that resonates with the times is not going away. When Roy Rogers is no longer the ideal, first comes Shane, and then comes the Man with No Name. But there's always a Luke Skywalker waiting to catch the imagination, and the circle will continue.
Don’t know of you’re familiar with Jane the Virgin, but it’s the Don Quixote of telenovelas (Latin American soap operas), so over the top and ridiculous it kills the genre while creating a new fun type of comedy. Also reminds me of Alan Moore’s Watchmen which totally challenged the super hero concept as dangerous vigilantes with god complexes.
"Before the superheroes disappear, they first get turned into a joke. As far as I can reckon, they’re almost at that point already."
I think it's safe to say we've been at that point for a while now. That said, the audience is partially to blame as well [for stale storylines/characters/franchises, etc lingering on into zombie status].
This is already happening...and Disney is the one doing it. Just watch the Lego shorts and movies featuring Star Wars & Marvel characters. Much of this content falls into the parody category and some is quite funny.
Another great read from The Honest Broker this rainy Thursday spring morning in Adelaide. Perfect with a cup of fine brewed coffee in my mug. Thanks Ted.
Indeed!! Just watched EtEwAAO last night and was blown away. It is the Ackerman’s Function for self-referential stories. (AF is the simplest recursive function which cannot be expressed in any non-recursive form). The SFX were used brilliantly and the black hole bagel would have had Hawking down in the floor laughing. That is Oscar bait if there ever was any.
I don't care about oscars or other industry self congratulatory rubbish, but I do care about films like Everything Everywhere. I hope that many others such as I who have little interest in 'super' heroes see the film. A hoot and a wonder.
An amusing and persuasive parallel between the dominance of romances (not just Arthurian ones; see Amadis of Gaul, Don Quixote's favorite book) and the dominance of contemporary movie franchises. I draw a different conclusion than you do, however. The lesson of Don Quixote is not to abandon dominant, money-making narratives. It's to make as much money from them as you can while you still can. To make hay while the sun shines because night is sure to follow.
Fascinating. I wonder -- was Beowulf the equivalent for Norse heroic literature? i.e. making fun of the tragic fall of heroic prowess into crass commercialism (Beowulf goes from naked, Grendl-bashing badass to old, armored dude trying to steal dragon gold for dwarves).
But does parody always means death of a genre? If so, then horror should have begun its death with the Scary Movie franchise (perhaps it too is also dead, or at least is dying, though I'm not learned enough in this genre to comment further).
This has as much to do with humor as a weapon of mass-culture destruction (or reformation). I wonder, then, what Dr. Demento and Weird Al were trying to mock/destroy...
Westerns were dying by the late 1960s. By the time Blazing Saddles came out, they were already an artifact of the past. If you do the arithmetic, if you actually remembered the open western frontier of the 1880s, you had to be close to 100 then. It's similar for World War II movies. In the 1980s, there were so many WW2 based movies and television series that Spy Magazine joked about The Hitler Channel, all Hitler, all the time. There are only a handful of WW2 veterans around today. The superheroes were products of the 1960s and 1970s, so they were "lived" by baby boomers who are getting into their 60s and 70s now. Despite what it must feel like to younger generations, they aren't going to live forever.
There will still be westerns and World War II movie, at least now and then, and some classic stories from those genre's heyday will appear again and again in different forms. Their cultural relevance and popularity will depend on the needs and tastes of the times.
P.S. Consider that all those 15th century Arthurian Tales were published while the stories of the last great era of knights and kings in direct combat were from the 14th century, not all that far in the past.
You know, I've heard it claimed, in a similar way, that Blazing Saddles killed westerns. And maybe it did, in some sense.
And yet, some of the best westerns ever made were made after Blazing Saddles. I'm thinking of Silverado, 3:10 to Yuma, and Unforgiven. Granted, they all deviated from formula in some important ways, but nobody would decline to call them westerns.
I'm a big fan of the MCU. I am unapologetic, but tolerant of those who aren't. What I am less tolerant of is an attitude of "this is beneath us".
No. No it isn't. Humans have loved this kind of story since the days of Gilgamesh. The Greek heroes are in this. The Norse tales of gods and heroes. King Arthur. Frankly, Shakespeare delved into this kind of thing. Think The Tempest, or heck, Macbeth, with its witches and ghosts.
Yes, any specific collection, such as Star Wars or the MCU or even Middle Earth is tied to the culture it sprang from in some important ways, and will lose its punch when the culture shifts. We don't watch all those Tarzan movies I used to watch as a kid any more. And for good reason.
So any particular form of the heroic story is going to age out eventually. But the heroic story itself will never age out, because its about us.
A number of years ago, I concluded that the superhero appeal came from the same place that made mythology so enduring. Replace the word "Superhero" with "demigod" and you've got Hercules. A little later, I discovered that Joseph Campbell said the appeal of Star Wars was because it tells a story we never ever get tired of - the hero's quest. King Arthur is a variation on that same thing.
Something may ultimately kill the profitability of DC, Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney itself, but these fantastic stories of epic characters on heroic quests will most likely never die. They might just move out of the movie realm and into VR once the bugs are worked out.
Time for Spaceballs 2?
I heard it's going to be "Spaceballs 3, the Search for Spaceballs 2".
Merchandising!
Apparently, Lucas has never forgiven Mel Brooks for that crack.
Even Coolio came around to Amish Paradise
Well boo-freakin’-hoo!
Not many people can put “Was insulted by a Mel Brooks gag in his parody of my magnum opus!” on their tombstone!
That puts him right up there with Mary Shelly!
Another fun fact: the reason the ship captain is dressed like Indiana Jones is because Brooks promised Lucas he wouldn't take the piss out of Han Solo …
Barfy! 👍🏼👍🏼
It isn't Netflix, but you could argue Amazon has take two shots of this kind with "The Expanse" (which was Netflix) and more importantly "The Boys".
"The Expanse" can be viewed as yet another in the long line of sci-fi franchises, but it's contrast to Disney Star Wars and more recent Star Trek (another franchise that needs to be retired, and I say that as someone who wore a Captain Kirk uniform shirt to school at least once a week in the mid-70s) is very much the everyman who you come to admire.
"The Boys", though, turning supers into yet another corporate manipulation, could put a knife through the genre. The wide variety of people I've seen embracing the latest season, many of them openly sick of Marvel at this point, indicate it might be the first shot of what you're describing.
The Expanse even has their Rocinante.
But the key to Don Quixote’s uniqueness was not simply the story but also a narrative style that radically changed (and defined) the novel as a genre.
Did you watch, or read "The Expanse" ? While it was a bit different than the books, it is nowhere near the repetitive crap from Marvel & DC. You doe a great disservice to "The Expanse" by lumping it in with Star Wars & Marvel.
I tried so hard to watch the Expanse but couldn't progress beyond about 5 episodes. I expect humans to at least speak like humans. When the torturous main protagonist said gruffly "I'm just trying to do right by my people" - I was finally out of there. I'm not interested in characters that just talk at each other in cliches.
You’ve got me reminiscing. Anyone who wore a Captain Kirk uniform shirt to school during the 70’s already qualifies as a hero in his own right.
Good Star Trek will never stop being relevant (TOS, TNG, DS9) until society evolves past a state of limitless greed at the expense limited resources and desperate ppl.
I mean there are ppl who got into Trek bc of the politics surrounding the Sanders campaign. The human condition is way too relatable to the point of being smothering.
Also don’t compare Trek to freaking Star Wars. The latter is an awful dystopian society. The Jedi suck at being Jedi by being co-opted by a government controlled by commercial interests.
I'm 55 and grew up in a Star Trek household. My father went to high school with William Shatner and my mother with Christopher Plummer. I sat next to Gene Roddenberry at a convention once. I have been watching Star Trek series in chronological order while using my rowing machine, a habit I started just before the pandemic; I am now about to finish Voyager, around 665 episodes down and well over 4 million metres rowed. It's been great... in more ways than one!
Because I've been watching it this way, I have eschewed the newer series (plural) until now. I have not seen anything created after 2000 yet, and only saw my first episode of Picard last month while staying with a friend who had to see the series finale. My wife likes Star Trek too, so I decided to watch Picard with her together, thinking I would just watch it again when my rowing catches up to it several months from now.
But now I say: "Not likely." While I strongly appreciate the excellent production quality and graphics, as well as the many shout-outs to historic Trek characters and story lines, the trashy vulgar language has made it unpalatable. We will finish it out just to say we did it, but we are so disgusted by the gutter language that I know I will not be able to see it again. I'm gritting my teeth even by watching it now and there is no way I would let my children view it.
Relying on vulgarity and sex (including innuendo and even actual nudity) is—to me—a cheap workaround. It takes skill to write with excellence. Any teenager can drop F words and get a laugh from his pals. And, related to this, as a leader in my corporation, if anyone in our teams talked like that, it is unlikely their tenure with our company would be a long one.
[Just my opinion. I realize there are people who think that swearing is a non-issue, and/or that 'it reflects real life'.]
Agreed, but in this context it is shows like Picard that are relevant.
I mean, I own Mallory, have read it, and still do. I'm a huge King Arthur geek. That doesn't mean new Arthurian has 1% of the impact Mallory did when published or will over time for that matter.
I remember thinking 'what will it take to kill the HAIR BANDS?' I would say the (slightly misnamed) 'Hair Metal' genre ruled the rock world from around the first Van Halen album in 1978 until Extreme's 'Pornografitti' in 1991, which is a pretty great run. One would think that the appearance of the archetypal mockumentary 'This Is Spinal Tap' in 1984 (filmed during the creation of Van Halen's biggest album '1984') would have been the beginning of the end, but the genre continued to pick up steam, showing no signs of slowing down even as the '90s dawned. I was personally flabbergasted by this as a college-aged music fan who couldn't wait for that era to meet its Waterloo. I knew Guns 'n' Roses wasn't going to be it, despite all the hype--they had less reverb on the drums and a refreshing old-school swagger, but also a lot more Hair Band in their soul than anyone cared to admit, then or now.
We all know what happened. Every aspect of Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' including the whole aesthetic of the song's video, was an announcement that the time of the dinosaurs was over and the Asteroid was here, in the form of a bedraggled-looking young man in a thrift store sweater with a then-unfashionable '60s Fender Mustang. Within a few months, all the Seattle bands were being aggressively signed and promoted, and it became illegal to play virtuosic weedly-deedly guitar solos while a spandex-clad singer pranced around in makeup and Aqua Net. Grunge wasn't just a musical style. It was, even more than punk before it, a nuclear bomb.
As Mr. Gioia states, sometimes the world is just waiting for something more interesting and complex to latch onto, whether it's Cobain or Cervantes. I don't know about the end of Star Wars and Marvel, but when it comes to music I feel we're overdue for an extinction-level event.
Darth Vader already won the Nobel Peace Prize. It was in 1973 and he was then operating under the pseudonym Henry Kissinger.
Ridicule doesn’t always kill off tired stories. Westerns survived Blazing Saddles. Airplane! didn’t kill off the pathetic Airport series of disaster movies. Hollywood still makes sci-fi thrillers despite Spaceballs. And against my best hopes Heavy Metal wasn’t euthanized by This is Spinal Tap.
Wouldn’t it be safer — and more accurate — to say the public gets bored of everything eventually and moves on to some new new? Someday even the Big Mac with fries will drop off the McDonalds menu.
Yes, this is more likely, i.e. parody doesn't kill, it just signals the beginnings of a change of public taste.
This dovetails in a complex way with your previous entries about the current lack of a recognizable counter culture. Don Quixote was counter culture par excellence, until it was all the rage.
An interesting post. I would make a couple of qualifying points. First, hero narratives obviously serve a psychological need, and its not just the psychology of the individual but that of the larger society. "Star Wars" appeared after a decade or two of anti-heroes dominating the screen. Westerns and war movies, for instance, had soured on traditional heroics at a time when the American public's faith in public and private institutions was flagging. The idea of taking cheesy Flash Gordon stories and turning them into operatic tales of heroes and villains clearly filled a need.
Second, Cervantes lived in a very different world from the one that had produced the Arthurian legends. The social, political, and economic realities of Europe were transformed during the 13th through 16th centuries. Much as I would like to believe otherwise, I don't think any parallel transformation will arrive anytime soon.
Your point about the anti-heroes of the late 60s and the 70s is well made. The psychological need of the culture for the kind of hero that resonates with the times is not going away. When Roy Rogers is no longer the ideal, first comes Shane, and then comes the Man with No Name. But there's always a Luke Skywalker waiting to catch the imagination, and the circle will continue.
Don’t know of you’re familiar with Jane the Virgin, but it’s the Don Quixote of telenovelas (Latin American soap operas), so over the top and ridiculous it kills the genre while creating a new fun type of comedy. Also reminds me of Alan Moore’s Watchmen which totally challenged the super hero concept as dangerous vigilantes with god complexes.
"Before the superheroes disappear, they first get turned into a joke. As far as I can reckon, they’re almost at that point already."
I think it's safe to say we've been at that point for a while now. That said, the audience is partially to blame as well [for stale storylines/characters/franchises, etc lingering on into zombie status].
This is already happening...and Disney is the one doing it. Just watch the Lego shorts and movies featuring Star Wars & Marvel characters. Much of this content falls into the parody category and some is quite funny.
0the audience is completely to blame; they buy the tickets. No ticket sales, no superheroes.
Another great read from The Honest Broker this rainy Thursday spring morning in Adelaide. Perfect with a cup of fine brewed coffee in my mug. Thanks Ted.
Do you know the trumpeter, Freddy Payne?
Everything Everywhere All At Once has already written the Don Quixote you’re talking about.
Indeed!! Just watched EtEwAAO last night and was blown away. It is the Ackerman’s Function for self-referential stories. (AF is the simplest recursive function which cannot be expressed in any non-recursive form). The SFX were used brilliantly and the black hole bagel would have had Hawking down in the floor laughing. That is Oscar bait if there ever was any.
I don't care about oscars or other industry self congratulatory rubbish, but I do care about films like Everything Everywhere. I hope that many others such as I who have little interest in 'super' heroes see the film. A hoot and a wonder.
An amusing and persuasive parallel between the dominance of romances (not just Arthurian ones; see Amadis of Gaul, Don Quixote's favorite book) and the dominance of contemporary movie franchises. I draw a different conclusion than you do, however. The lesson of Don Quixote is not to abandon dominant, money-making narratives. It's to make as much money from them as you can while you still can. To make hay while the sun shines because night is sure to follow.
Fascinating. I wonder -- was Beowulf the equivalent for Norse heroic literature? i.e. making fun of the tragic fall of heroic prowess into crass commercialism (Beowulf goes from naked, Grendl-bashing badass to old, armored dude trying to steal dragon gold for dwarves).
But does parody always means death of a genre? If so, then horror should have begun its death with the Scary Movie franchise (perhaps it too is also dead, or at least is dying, though I'm not learned enough in this genre to comment further).
This has as much to do with humor as a weapon of mass-culture destruction (or reformation). I wonder, then, what Dr. Demento and Weird Al were trying to mock/destroy...
Interesting theory on Beowulf. I'm not sure he was the equivalent as both parts of his tale fit well with the sagas in general.
As for Weird Al and Dr. Demento maybe they were after bands whose name began with "The".
Interesting- it seems like the same thing played out with westerns and Blazing Saddles.
Westerns were dying by the late 1960s. By the time Blazing Saddles came out, they were already an artifact of the past. If you do the arithmetic, if you actually remembered the open western frontier of the 1880s, you had to be close to 100 then. It's similar for World War II movies. In the 1980s, there were so many WW2 based movies and television series that Spy Magazine joked about The Hitler Channel, all Hitler, all the time. There are only a handful of WW2 veterans around today. The superheroes were products of the 1960s and 1970s, so they were "lived" by baby boomers who are getting into their 60s and 70s now. Despite what it must feel like to younger generations, they aren't going to live forever.
There will still be westerns and World War II movie, at least now and then, and some classic stories from those genre's heyday will appear again and again in different forms. Their cultural relevance and popularity will depend on the needs and tastes of the times.
P.S. Consider that all those 15th century Arthurian Tales were published while the stories of the last great era of knights and kings in direct combat were from the 14th century, not all that far in the past.
You know, I've heard it claimed, in a similar way, that Blazing Saddles killed westerns. And maybe it did, in some sense.
And yet, some of the best westerns ever made were made after Blazing Saddles. I'm thinking of Silverado, 3:10 to Yuma, and Unforgiven. Granted, they all deviated from formula in some important ways, but nobody would decline to call them westerns.
I'm a big fan of the MCU. I am unapologetic, but tolerant of those who aren't. What I am less tolerant of is an attitude of "this is beneath us".
No. No it isn't. Humans have loved this kind of story since the days of Gilgamesh. The Greek heroes are in this. The Norse tales of gods and heroes. King Arthur. Frankly, Shakespeare delved into this kind of thing. Think The Tempest, or heck, Macbeth, with its witches and ghosts.
Yes, any specific collection, such as Star Wars or the MCU or even Middle Earth is tied to the culture it sprang from in some important ways, and will lose its punch when the culture shifts. We don't watch all those Tarzan movies I used to watch as a kid any more. And for good reason.
So any particular form of the heroic story is going to age out eventually. But the heroic story itself will never age out, because its about us.
Would the Guardians of the Galaxy movies count as the sort of Quixote-type move "against" the Marvel/superhero industrial complex?