State of the Superhero Displacement

“Hi, thanks for waiting.” This is what Monica says the first time we meet her in “Mystery Men” (1999). She has no last name, just Monica, easily affixed to a nametag, like a server at a greasy spoon, which is where Monica works, and is why you might not think anything is out of place if you just saw her. But, of course, you don’t just see her; you see the people on whom she’s waiting. They are all dressed in absurd costumes and call themselves nutso things like The Blue Raja and The Shoveler and Mr. Furious. This is because it’s Champion City and Champion City is home to all manner of superheroes, like if Metropolis was the Olympic Village rather than a bustling New York-ish city. In that way, Monica is the one who stands out; Monica is the one who doesn’t seem to be in the right place; Monica is the anomaly.

When I was first introduced to the superhero movie way back when with “Superman: The Movie”, there was really only one superhero, the Man of Steel himself, Kal-El. He had the stage all to himself. When I became re-familiarized with the superhero movie in 1989 with Tim Burton’s “Batman” there was still only one superhero and one super villain, no one else. I could really get a handle on those dudes. It was with “Batman Forever”, which I loathed, that I noticed the soundstages were getting a little more crowded; someone could have been sacrificed to give that much more face time to the main dude, and Chase Meridian too (biased). But that was nothing compared to now.

Superhero movies are fastly and furiously becoming victims of overcrowding. In my review of “The Avengers” (2012) I noted the gang’s resembling a rock group. And not a power trio, mind you, but a sprawling multi-part ensemble like The E Street Band. But that, as A.O. Scott notes in his review for the new “Captain America” movie, was nothing. He writes that the whole affair is “like the last number at a big benefit concert, when a mob of pop stars squeezes onto the stage to sing ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ or whatever. Some performers sing a whole verse. Others shake maracas for the cause and stare off into the middle distance.” All that’s left is a Cecil B. DeMille-ish superhero movie with a cast of a thousand superheroes, all jockeying for close-ups in a five hour box office bonanza.

There are so many superheroes these days overrunning so many different movies, often with parallel movie universes, and sometimes not, that the state of superhero cinema is beginning to resemble Champion City, where there are so many costumed crusaders and heavies running to and fro that when you actually see a regular person, it’s shocking. I always wondered what brought Monica to Champion City. How did that work? How an ordinary josephine becomes drawn to a place where everyone is fronting so superhero hard? I thought that perhaps she moved there with dreams of becoming a superhero, only to have those dreams go bust, or that maybe she moved there with a boyfriend to support his superhero dreams only for the relationship to fall apart. But I’m not sure that’s right anymore.

I think maybe she’s been there all her life. I think maybe Champion City wasn’t Champion City. I think maybe it was Rockville or Rosedale or Rutland before it was overrun by superheroes, and the villains that followed. I think it’s an exemplar of the destinies of Gotham City and Metropolis, and every other movie city too, places where everyone will become a Monica, off to the side, paying fealty to their superhero overlords.

Christopher Nolan's Latest Big Announcement

You would have thought, naive reader, that superhero movie news could not have got any more bloated than the recent announcement of roughly 330,000 new superhero movies to be released over the course of the next 75 years with some planned filmmakers for some planned installments not having been born yet though, rest assured, the studios in question already have contingency plans in place because contingency plans in case of hypothetical directors for theoretical superhero movies failing to be born always takes precedence over, say, originality but I think I've become carried away in one of my patented run-on sentences and, speaking of which, I'm 34% convinced I saw Amy Adams on the the train yesterday morning because "Batman vs. Superman" is being filmed in Chicago right now because they never stop filming superhero movies and even though it might have just been a case of Superhero Movie Overload Hallucinations, oh my God, how desperately I wanted to go up to that probably-not-Amy-Adams-woman and say "Excuse me, but aren't you the Picasso of passive-agressive karate?"

What was my point? Oh. Right. Just when you didn't think superhero movie news could get any more bloated a report by Latino Movie Review emerged that Sony is considering a "Spiderman" spin-off that would not actually include Spidey himself and focus instead on Peter Parker's dear Aunt May.

Naturally this made Christopher Nolan, the King of superhero movie bloat, jealous and he immediately announced plans for a "Batman" spinoff that will not actually include Batman himself and instead focus on Bruce Wayne's momentary squeeze, Natascha, the prima Russian ballerina. Reports indicate the film will focus on her attempts to create the first ballet company on the moon after dancing is outlawed by the Republican controlled Senate. This, of course, likely means that Hans Zimmer will be tasked to re-imagine Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker" which should make it a must-see for purists. It will probably also star Michael Caine.

Christopher Nolan's new muse?

Superhero Movie Update

With “The Amazing Spider Man” series, not to be confused with the “Spider Man” series, set to conclude with “The Amazing Spider Man 3” in 2016, Columbia and Marvel chose to get a jump on the Spiderman Reboot to the Reboot by announcing pre-production plans for a new trilogy called “Spidey.” Director, Writer and Actors have yet to be named but the release date of Memorial Day 2018 has been locked in as a means to box out “Mission: Impossible 6”, the already-announced follow-up to “Mission: Impossible 5” which will not be released until 2015. “Mission: Impossible 6” is tentatively scheduled to be directed by Derek Cianfrance who announced these plans after previously announcing his decision to drop out of directing “Peter Parker”, a “Spider Man” prequel also set to be released by Columbia and Marvel, with a release date of May 2019. Cianfrance had hoped to lure Ryan Gosling for the part of Peter Parker but Gosling has instead announced intentions to star in “The Green Lantern”, set for a July 2017 release, the reboot to the 2011 “Green Lantern” which starred Ryan Reynolds who will star as “Hawkeye”, an entirely separate entity from Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye of the forthcoming “The Avengers 2: Age of Ultron”, which will be released in the spring of 2016.

Meanwhile, James Cameron announced his intention to film a Justice League Trilogy – post Zack Snyder-Justice League Trilogy – but with a twist. It will be a Justice League meets Avengers Trilogy as both bodies of crime fighters team up to eradicate evil. In order to properly sculpt his desired Justice League meets Avengers universe, Cameron simultaneously announced his intention to write and direct his own “Batman”, “Superman”, “Wonder Woman”, “Green Lantern”, “Aquaman”, “Iron Man”, “Captain America”, “Incredible Hulk”, “Thor”, and “Black Widow” movies prior to filming his Justice League Trilogy. Therefore the tentative release date of his first Justice League meets The Avengers installment has been tentatively set as 2035, pushed back from 2034 to avoid a conflicting release date with the “Black Canary” (tentatively scheduled to star Lily Mo Sheen in the title role).