Superhero Movies Lost Their Power | Hacker News Reader

Superhero Movies Lost Their Power

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5 pointsjmsflknr4 comments

IMHO the best ones from DC were the first two Bale Batman movies and the first Cavill Superman movie. The rest had… issues. The problem was trying to pack in too much and making them too complicated. The “everything and the kitchen sink” problem diluted the movies until they became galloping messes. Even the Bale Batman movies should have had two more after the second to raise the stakes with Batman’s physical decline; a multi-year gap with no backstory was too cheap of a shortcut. If anything, two more could have ratcheted up the stakes, with ever more dire circumstances to really highlight Bane’s eventual entrance against Bruce’s desperation.

Marvel got things (mostly) right with their MCU, letting each character have one or more movies that adequately fleshed them out and gave them nuance and complexity with the screen time needed to make the character development “land” well.

One problem is that in each movie they must beat an enemy that is x10 more powerful than in the previous one, and now a guy with a bat costume is fighting interdimensional mega ultra enemies that can destroy the universe.

You're basically describing the structure of the most popular manga and anime genre in the world, and some of the top sellers in that genre have been able to keep the power scaling up for years if not decades. It isn't a problem if you do it right.

Also few superhero movies that I'm aware of actually follow that format. Even the long runners like Superman and Batman tend to only focus on one or a few familiar villains and essentially rehashing their hero's origin story every time, and in the MCU Thanos was always in the background, but the heroes themselves consisted of wizards and demigods. And Hawkeye was also there.

Batman beating Superman in any universe is just stupid, I'll grant you that much. I don't care how much prep time you have, you're not defeating a being that can bench press the moon and slice cities in half with eye lasers like Ramiel in NGE. And you're literally just a rich asshole dressed like a bat.

... but inflation didn't ;)

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