Superhero film
Superhero films typically contain genre elements of action, adventure, fantasy, or science fiction, and often address themes of power, justice, morality, and immortality.In the following decades, the decline of Saturday matinee showings of serials, along with turmoil in the comic book industry, slowed superhero motion picture production except for Superman and the Mole Men (1951), starring George Reeves, and Batman (1966), a big-screen extension of the Batman television series starring Adam West.[16] This rise in popularity of television superheroes in Japan led to the Kamen Rider and Super Sentai franchises by manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori in 1971 and 1975, respectively.[26] While commercially successful, Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin (1997) was critically panned for its campiness[27] and deviation from the darker style of the series' first two films directed by Tim Burton.A few months later, The Dark Knight was released to widespread critical acclaim and became the first superhero movie to make over $1 billion at the worldwide box office.[46] On March 9, 2015, publishing house Valiant Comics made a nine-figure deal with Chinese company DMG Entertainment to produce their series of superhero movies set in their cinematic universe.Due to this dominance, Warner Bros. attempted its own endeavor to have a shared universe media franchise, the DCEU, with Justice League, though this was a critical and financial disappointment.[citation needed] The antihero film Venom, based on the comic book character, was released in October 2018 to poor reviews but box-office success.[64] Later in April, the DCEU's Shazam!, featuring the lead character who was previously known as Captain Marvel, had decent box office success for its relatively low budget,[65] which has been seen as further evidence of the revitalization of the Warner Bros. media franchise.That same month, Avengers: Endgame ended the Infinity Saga to widespread acclaim, broke numerous box office records, and became the fastest film to exceed $1 billion worldwide, doing so in just five days.[citation needed] By contrast, the X-Men film Dark Phoenix performed poorly critically and financially upon release in June.[69] The second and third films in the series, Sri Asih and Patriot Taruna: Virgo and the Sparklings, were announced for a 2020 release but were pushed back to 2021 as production was significantly delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.The poor performance was attributed to the disruption of cinema during the COVID-19 pandemic (particularly the Delta variant) and confusion from the general audience on whether the film was a sequel, reboot, or remake.[72][73] Meanwhile, Marvel's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings broke Labor Day records,[74] while similar successes were seen in the Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU) film Venom: Let There Be Carnage.It was a critical and commercial hit, with particular praise for the film being a grounded detective story,[84]' due to Matt Reeves' direction and Robert Pattinson's performance as the titular hero.[87] Variety reported that whilst the initial opening was hopeful for Morbius, "the character is not nearly as recognizable to general audiences as Spider-Man, Batman or Venom, nor is the film clearly connected to a larger story like Eternals or Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings."[88] Scott Mendelson further stated that Sony seemed to rely on the film's connection to the Spider-Man universe, the success of Venom and a misguided assumption that audiences were interested in villain movies.Joker: Folie a Deux was followed by Sony Spider-Man Universe films Venom: The Last Dance in November 2024, and Kraven the Hunter in December 2024.[105] In 1968, VIP my Brother Superman was released, directed by Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto; it parodied the superhero genre[106] and was a financial success.[107] In 2004, Pixar released The Incredibles, about a retired superhero couple and their children, which did extremely well both critically and financially and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.[citation needed] In 2018, three theatrical animated superhero films were released to critical and commercial success: Pixar's Incredibles 2, Warner Bros.' Teen Titans Go!In a 2019 interview with Empire magazine, American filmmaker Martin Scorsese commented, "The closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks.[110] He later added that he was worried about studios' dependence on the format because in "many places around this country and the world, franchise films are now your primary choice if you want to see something on the big screen.I know that if I were younger, if I'd come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself," he wrote, adding, "but I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies — of what they were and what they could be — that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri."[115] Some media commentators have attributed the increasingly popular superhero franchises in the new millennium to the social and political climate in Western society since the September 11 attacks,[116] although others have argued advances in special effects technology have played a more significant role.Namely, the editorial realities of comic book publishing, which can have series running for decades, encouraged writers to resort to a variety of story situations so diverse, from the fantastic to the relatively realistic, for so long and so often that it has become an expected element of the genre to have such adaptability.Writer Alan Moore, a veteran of the comics industry known for his work on Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman: The Killing Joke, and From Hell, has expressed criticism of modern superhero movies in general, which he once called a "blight" to cinema and "also to culture to a degree.""[121][122]In a September 2023 interview with The Telegraph, Moore reiterated this view, saying that what had appealed to him most about output from comics publishers was "no more," saying, "Now they're called 'graphic novels', which sounds sophisticated, and you can charge a lot more for them.During that same interview, journalist Jake Kerridge asked Moore if it was true that he divided the money he had received from onscreen adaptations of his work among the writers and other staff persons of those productions.[124][125][126] According to box office income figures from The Numbers, as of December 2024, the ten highest-grossing superhero films are: The Marvel Cinematic Universe has earned over $31.1 billion.
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