It's superhero season
The Oscars are upon us. While it’s fun to tip one’s hat — even vicariously — to the best films of the past year, I’ve got my sights set on a different type of movie, one that has pure entertainment and not necessarily art as its main goal: the superhero flick.
It was hardly a surprise that my eyes nearly sprung out of their sockets, cartoon-style, upon seeing the recently-released trailer for X-Men: First Class. I’ve been a fan of the series since Bryan Singer’s X-Men made a mint more than a decade ago, with the exception of 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which leaked online to disastrous results. Set in the 1960s and directed by Matthew Vaughn, this spin-off features some of my favorite actors: from James McAvoy (Professor X) and Michael Fassbender (Magneto) to Nicholas Hoult (Beast) and Rose Byrne (Moira MacTaggert). June 2011 can’t come soon enough.
To a lesser extent, I’m also hyped about DC Comics’ Green Lantern and Marvel’s Captain America. I try to keep my expectations in check as productions like these can sometimes be too big for their own good. (Some fine examples to justify my caution: Daredevil, Catwoman, Elektra, and those dreadful Fantastic Four movies, the ones starring Jessica Alba.)
Douchey: Chris Evans, here as Captain America, has been working on his unlikeable actor persona for 10 years now. Remember Not Another Teen Movie? More than that, however, I have issues with the names headlining these live-action adaptations: Ryan Reynolds and Chris Evans are too cheesy for words. Though we’re totally talking mainstream movies here — they don’t get more people-pleasing than this – I still want to see actors with some indie left in them. There’s an ongoing debate now on whether Firefly’s Nathan Fillion would’ve made a better Green Lantern than his Two Guys and a Girl ex-co-star Reynolds. (Fillion was earlier named as the voice of the space cop in the forthcoming animated feature Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, which probably caused the nerdery.) Underdogs seem to have more geek cred, and geek cred is the fuel on which this genre runs.
Producers are all too aware of this, I believe. How else can you explain the seemingly irrational move to reboot the Superman franchise? (See, even the word reboot is computer-related and therefore geeky.) Brandon Routh was already eerily perfect as the new Christopher Reeve. Warner Brothers executives have acknowledged this, saying, “He’s got an amazing quality. He doesn’t look too much like Reeve and Routh, but he’s big and strong and he has a very modern feel to him.” (So is it all about that then? A “modern feel”?) Incidentally, the British-born Tudors star auditioned for the lead role in 2006’s Superman Returns. He will finally be the caped crusader in 2012’s Superman: Man of Steel, proving that good things do come to those who wait.
School ties: In 1963, Charles Xavier starts up an academy, and later a team, for humans with superhuman abilities. Showing in June, X-Men: First Class stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, Nicholas Hoult and Lucas Till. On the other hand, it’s different for Spider-Man. Although Tobey Maguire will always be this generation’s Peter Parker, I agree that he is simply too old to play a high school student convincingly. The choice of current Internet It boy Andrew Garfield to don the famous red and blue tights was a stroke of genius, a business move that is guaranteed to bring the vehicle from the ’00s straight into the ’10s. The Amazing Spider-Man is likewise set for a 2012 release.
Superhero capers continue to be popular because they tend to summon a part of one’s childhood. For some strange yet welcome reason, I instantly jog to the past whenever I watch these movies. I did go through a phase of superhero play — I recall asking my parents for a Spider-Man web-slinging-type toy when I was 5, and a Captain America shield shortly after that — as well as a series of Batman and Superman duds for birthdays and Halloween. (Somehow those characters weren’t as douchey as today’s Tony Stark.) I even collected comics in 5th grade, listening to my peers as they discussed the artistry of DC and Marvel titles and dispensed connoiseur-like advice on comics-based games for my Sega Game Gear.
Caught in the web: Andrew Garfield was among the list of final contenders for the Spider-Man role along with Jamie Bell, Anton Yelchin, Aaron Johnson and Logan Lerman. I didn’t go as far as dressing up in costume to watch a superhero movie — I didn’t want to get beaten up after all — but I understand those who do. After all, my cape is still there. You just can’t see it.
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