"A damaged man-child with pre-sexual romantic attachments and fantasies of secret lineages and untapped greatness, whose destructive arc is far closer to what perpetual adolescence really looks like" - the Joker, Donald Trump.
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Ross, if you want to do cerebral stuff for entertainment, you can always stay home and watch Friends reruns.
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The first superhero movie of this most recent iteration was 1982’s “First Blood.” In it, John Rambo used his combat powers to deal with a corrupt, dictatorial sheriff. It is significant because it shifted the narrative actor from the squad to the superhero. The squad, best exemplified by the movie, “Guadalcanal Diary,” was us. It signified our ability to take difficult, collective action to make things better. William Bendix was just a regular guy from Brooklyn. Part of the squad, he just wanted to get home and drive his cab but, goddamnit, there was a stinkin’ war on. He and the squad signified how all of us can have agency if we work together.
John Rambo, in contrast, does our fighting for us. He relieves us of the necessity of getting off the couch. He gave us permission to slap a “Support the Troops” ribbon on a Ford Explorer, instead of enlisting in the fight. John Rambo is a loser. It’s Taxi Potts and the rest of us that win wars.
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It’s just a movie!
Marvel comics has taken the P.T Barnum ethos to the world. There is nothing serious in it. Its a circus nothing more. Not having seen Joker but being an admirer of much of Scorsese's work from what I've read its out of the "its a cold world out there without enough love to go around" school. Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ" called into question Jesus's manhood. All these admiring women and Jesus a silly fool has a dream he has a concubine and becomes a father. Then suddenly the movie has Jesus on the cross.
Ross, what does this have to do with the Catholic church?
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It's just commerce. As one who comes from an era when you really were a marginalized geek if you were a sci fi fan, it is hilarious that the current fandom still thinks of themselves as outsiders when they have so obviously won the mainstream. Oh, and Adam West will always be Batman. We were in on the joke, old Chum.
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Art is, and has always been, in the eye of the beholder. For me, those who consider Jackson Pollack paintings to be art are suckers, but I get why they might enjoy looking at it, and may even find meaning in it that eludes me. I'm sure that they consider me to be a Philistine. So it is with superhero movies.
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An excellent column! Usually can barely get through Douthat’s op-eds, but this is right on
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Nice job not talking about the impeachment inquiry, Ross.
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Make no mistake, most superhero movies are absolute drivel unworthy of their lavish production budgets and talent. That being said, Joker was something else entirely—an unflinching look at what it means to have a mental illness and a groundbreaking reimagination of “antihero” as “hero.” It was remarkable and touched me in a way no comic book flick ever has.
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Put down your phone. Take a break and watch “Wild Strawberries”, “Le Grande Illusion”, or “Vertigo.” You’ll feel like an adult world of cinema still exists, and the purpose of cinema was to preserve the art anyway.
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This idea that Hollywood has EVER seriously nurtured quality in movies is a ridiculous hypothesis. In the 40s Hollywood churned our horrifically insipid musicals on a far larger scale than Marvel and Disney are today. It’s a business that has a hit formula on its hands. What else do you expect a business to do? Exactly what it has always done.
I will give you that your grievances about us nerds still feeling disposed despite having power now is eerily relevant — to the current state of Republicanism. Sadly you seem too focused on criticizing Hollywood for doing what it has done for the past century to see the irony.
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Superhero movies are just like music videos a waste of attention.
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Super hero movies are entertainment. Period. Why are we discussing this?
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Consider one other entertainment medium: professional wrestling. Enough said?
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Kubrick is dead! Long live Stanley Kubrick!!
And sadly Scorsese, FFC and others are in their twilight.
Finally someone is pointing out the horrid state of movie making.
Do we seriously need another suboptimal Star Wars vehicle? More Batman?
(BTW, the last really interesting, terrifying and thought provoking film by G. Lucas was THX 1138. (1970) Check it out kids!
The advent of CGI hasn't helped either. Has anyone seen the trailer piece for the new Midway film? I use the term film ironically here. It looks like an animated feature with faces of famous actors added on.
If you like trite plots and characterization and self flattery right out of central casting, at least you should be wowed by live action cinematography and sweep as was delivered by the 1970's epic of the same name.
These new efforts also show a lack of imagination. Hollywood is bankrupt of any original ideas whatsoever it seems.
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Thank you for providing a crystal nucleus for my unease with the superhero cinema to form into more understandable language. The undeniable commercial success of this form has all but supplanted any films I might watch. If Joker can serve as a poison pill and sour enough viewers to the disenpowerment if superhero worship I will owe a huge debt to Mr Phillips.
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Ross, you're onto something when you defend Joker. What 'Joker' does is detach its hero from the very genre in which he was culturally born (i.e., inside our literary imagination), and turn him into a 3-dimensional character, a common man with mental issues that an uncaring society doesn't care about. In that way, Scorsese tears a real story out of a hyperbolic comic book.
However, the business of 'genre' as a whole is much more complicated than it can seem, and it's best to avoid it here. Scorsese is attacking the lowbrow & commercial comic-book genre. But there are films that _reference_ comic-book genre without belonging right inside it. The original Batman did that, and that would not be what Scorsese is attacking.
It's complicated. Genre difference can deal in clashes of presentational mode (e.g., a novel versus a comic book) but also, more basically, in settings and atmosphere. The "western" as a genre is only different from It Happened One Day in its historicity, stock characters and narrative conventions.
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Joker breaks rules of cinema. Here we have a character that starts off as sympathetic. A troubled, neurotic sad sack who is bullied.
Instead of rising up and getting just desserts, or revenge, he becomes (in the ordinary scheme of things) hugely unsympathetic by taking actions that are not commensurate, or designed to remedy, his plight. He lashes out at innocents.
While I love dark stories and anti-heroes, this development lost me, at least on an artistic level.
On "what is the meaning of this movie" level, given the movie's commercial success, I think it reflects the "tear it down" attitude of so many people - the attitude that brought us Trump.
How many times have we heard that Trump is just a vehicle for bashing the "establishment?" Likewise, the Joker character does not seek to right any particular wrong, or even bring clarity to a complicated dilemma. Joker just conveys the idea that it's ok to destroy stuff.
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Isn't the dominance of the superhero genre just the free market at work?
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Another off day for Ross. Sigh.
Sentence fragments and bombast in the same column (Really... "sequelae"? Do you want us to roll our eyes at that obscurantism or applaud you?).
It's a movie that tries to work with a character that has persistently reworked, and it may be a complex rendering by the actor, using material that does not have enough psychological depth.
But where do we go for psychological depth in film...with your approval and the approval of the cultural canonizers?
Genre films will always have their naysayers, but it does not mean that they are, in toto, all bad.
Also, your reading of comics makes wonder how many you've popped one open. Even some superhero genre works have sophistication and depth. Much like the way that many works of our esteemed classical tradition have sophistication and depth, while others are facile and probably outputs created as part of the cultural juggernauts of their own era (as much as such was possible in a pre-capitalist era).
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Movies have always depended on trash; if it was all good for you, you'd be bored to death in the dark. From Citizen Kane, with its middle-brow human development cliches, to the obvious wish-fulfillment offered to frustrated low-income fantasists by the Marvel movies, in a neo-liberal age where imagination is tainted everywhere by the market, and other movies.
And, quite unlike the "films" he made in the 70s and 80s, Scorsese's own pictures lament today the loss of a world familiar to him from the fantasies of his own movies, and no more more real, for most people, than the Marvel universe: so he shows us with dismay middle-aged schlubs who pay to hear Jordan Belfort tell them how to get rich with the right attitude or herds of vacationers taking over the casinos, with slot machine tokens and belly rolls. Gone went the Church, real crime replaced by Power Point presentations and experience anyone can buy, cheap.
Anyway, formal rigor has never worked all that well in this movies. Want art? Then find a non-commercial source of funding. Or fugetaboutit and read books instead. They still make those.
In ancient times, stories and plays were often populated with miracle-working gods and monsters. Thousands of years before Shakespeare introduced us to characters like Falstaff and Hamlet, adults and children alike paid attention to heroic archetypes like Hercules and Achilles.
I don’t know when such themes came to be seen as exclusively juvenile, but to the extent that modern literature is devoid of miracles and heroic archetypes, superhero movies have rushed in to fill the vacuum—to satisfy a hunger for visions of a spectacular world whose most powerful people also have the best intentions. Why should such longing be confined to kids?
If Douthat wants to say that this ancient hunger represents arrested development, he can do so, but not expertly. He should leave such diagnoses to psychiatrists.
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@Jim Grossmann
In a world where no outrage matters for long and no one seems capable of making a profound and positive change to the world, it's no surprise that people flock to movies where well-intentioned heroes have the power to make a difference.
Yes, it's escapism. As Jim Grossman points out, people dealing with harshness of the real world have turned to fantasies about miracle workers for thousands of years. The people making those myths weren't children -- and certainly weren't infants.
The fact Russ Douhat calls the impulse to watch such films infantile says more about him than it says about the audience. He has to reduce millions of people to infants in order to feel superior.
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Despite their huge ticket sales, superhero movies are not “the industry.” To say so is an ignorant dismissal of the terrific animated films that pull big numbers and range of adult dramas that remain both relevant and, in many cases, significant enough at the box office.
Still, it feels like there has been a dumbing down of what a trip to the multiplex will get us. Others here have correctly pointed out the great home tv options available. In the end, viewers cast their votes for what they really want whether by ticket buy or channel changer. What we get will only be as good as what we ask for.
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Of course Scorsese is right. Superhero movies use the medium of film to entertain, but they are not cinema. Comic books use the medium of print and pictures to tell a story, but they are not literature nor fine art. What’s the big deal. Different strokes for different folks.
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These movies remind me of my granny's soap operas. They carry a similar level of literary under-development, pandering unmercifully to the audience. How can an intelligent person view these films as anything but"case study's?"
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Let's distinguish a few things:
Comic books are stories published on a regular schedule, typically monthly.
Graphic novels is the catch all for any other material published with panel art that is on a non-repeating schedule.
Superheroes are not a part of either of those definations. Acting like all comic books are about superheroes erases decades of indie writers who are absolutely writing on par with current NYT bestsellers; honestly at the top echolan, there's absolutely more weird experimenting coming from the graphic novel writers then novelists.
There might be Superhero saturation, but movies haven't even scratched the surface of the weird and wonderful world of graphic novels.
But more than that, it's kinda an odd conceit to me that so many critics call the stories childish -- and ya ok theres something to the distinction that kids are way weirder and the right word is adolescent -- but they deal with pretty heavy issues.
The movies aren't always true to the comic book source in terms of just how weighty the issues the heroes deal with are. The current X-Men team is building a nation from scratch, and grappling with what laws and punishment looks like.
The mainline Batman comic killed alfred, had robin as a hostage to Bane, and forced Bruce into a direct confronting with an alternate universe version of his father. The ongoing DC year of the Villian event saw heroes legitimately switch sides. It asked ever main character if they had a price.
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I used to sort cinema into three categories:
Flicks - The 5th Element
Movies - Saving Private Ryan
Films - The Thin Red Line
Then, with the arrival of Transformers and similar fair, I had to add “Spectacles” as a fourth category. And not in a complimentary way.
I understand Ross’s frustration with the Marvel-verse. I took my kids to see most of them and had erroneously thought the second Infinity War movie meant that we were done. But we aren’t - even if I am.
I think one of the other posters hit the nail on the head, commenting on the quality of television that is now available. It’s difficult to compete and Hollywood has fallen back on familiarity and spectacle. Part of the issue may also be that the really creative minds in writing and producing are being pulled to Netflix, Amazon etc. because they are competing by taking risks and being creative, rather than retrenching and regurgitating.
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I watched the over-hyped Batman with Christian Bale and was mildly entertained but mostly bored.
I watched one of the recent Spiderman movies and was thoroughly bored.
I watched one of the Ironman movies and was really irritated.
It seems they are not for me but I am happy for those who find joy in them. I just hope that Hollywood would produce other entertaining movies as well for folks like me.
I can’t remember anything that happened in any of these movies- they just sort of move past me all blurry and cgi’d.
I cannot tell what is happening and don’t care.
Sometimes I remember a costume or clever line reading- and the Hemsworth type men are nice to look at but really, why?
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I agree, while I love comics, a lot of the stories being told with these characters on film aren’t that great (see Captain America’s story in end game which basically ignored all of his character development in the rest of the series). I wish that the whoever brothers who did endgame would just leave it alone and let better directors and writers at the stories.
As a professional screenwriter who has sold a dozen scripts to the studios and have had four movies made, I can certainly attest to the fact that Comic Book movies are the coin of the realm.
Scorsese, Tarantino, Spielberg, Fincher and a few others can make "real" movies, but almost no one else can. Serious character studies and sophisticated themes have migrated to TV and streaming and 90% of American movies are little more than impressive technical achievements in service of stories that are meant for teenage boys of all ages. Sigh!
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In my opinion, people seriously underestimate comic book movies. Sure, they tend to have a lot of fights and explosions, but many of them pose very interesting and relevant philosophical questions.
Take CA - Civil War. The central conflict is caused by the fact that Iron Man wants superheroes to be accountable to some form of oversight, whereas Captain America believes his actions should be guided only by his own judgement, not that of a government. At its heart, this is an issue that has driven US history since the War of Independence. Neither of them is right or wrong, both are 'good' characters trying to do the right thing, and they have to make the very difficult decision whether they should be true to their friends or their moral convictions first.
Similarly, Batman v Superman questions whether a man who kills criminals is more human than an all-powerful being who shows mercy. Wonderwoman contains debates on the morality of interventionism and the fundamental nature of human beings. Age of Ultron pits freedom against security.
That doesn't mean that those issues are always resolved well, or that the films are all equally good, but many of them leave you with big questions to consider.
The entire genre rather reminds me of Shakespeare's plays. You get fighting and easy humor to make it entertaining, but the themes driving the plot are often much more complex and interesting than they appear at first. And I think that's one of the reasons why they're so successful.
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Let us also remember that we are living in an age of extremely high-quality television. In fact, I would say that the best television series I have watched in this era (such as HBO’s The Wire and Band of Brothers) easily outdoes the best movies of the last 20 years.
Long-form television can take its time with character development and create a much broader world than a 2-hour movie. It is simply a better format for quality storytelling. Indeed I have heard the format compared more to a novel than to a movie. Unsurprisingly, many quality storytellers have gravitated towards longform TV (writers, directors, etc.).
When people have such an abundance of moving-image entertainment options at home – including stuff of the highest quality – what is going to get them to go out and go to the theater? Spectacle. While the big screens at home are great, there is still something larger than life about seeing things play out in the theater. But this tends to hold true moreso for films where the visual appeal is a fundamental part of a movie’s attraction (such as in a typical Marvel film) as opposed to something where the dramatic interplay or the story itself is more dominant in the film’s appeal.
Don’t think of a separation between movies & television. Instead, think of “moving image” entertainment. In those terms, “movies” are just as good now as they have ever been, and often better. They are just offered at home, in the form of a long-form series as opposed to in the theater.
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I guess I'm too cynical for my own good. I see the Marvel universe (etc) as a plug -in universe. The days of Harry Potter and the concomitant mega-salary that Daniel Radcliffe (et al) commanded are gone. Now - much like reality TV - actors are plugged in to a story-verse. Fans attach to the character, not the working actor, director, writer, editor or even producer. So actors/directors etc today cannot command the 'take-a-hike' money that Radcliffe et al made. To say nothing of JK Rowling.
It could be argued that Potter is what caused the producers in Hollywood to stop creating franchises. They don't want to share any amount of money with anyone anymore. Hitchcock sorta said something similar, about how actors are superfluous to his movies. Female actors have long bemoaned the fact their roles have been relegated to being 'the girl' in a film instead of a character with a name. Screen writers are being shut out of proceeds from their work. (see Disney)
Follow the money. The money is staying in the studio's pockets. No trickle down to the working actor, writer, director. The fact they (and we) *think* they are well paid shows how much koolaid is being drunk.
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Genres are in and of themselves neutral in terms of aesthetic quality. It's my contention that great work can be produced in any genre. Thrillers, science fiction films, and gangster films were once looked down upon by the intelligentsia until Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Coppola (and Scorsese) produced masterpieces in each of those genres. The superhero genre in film may not have yet have produced its VERTIGO, 2001, GODFATHER films or GOODFELLAS, but the notion that the genre is intrinsically incapable of producing films of this caliber is absurd.
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@Art Turner So far, I don't see any Kubricks or Hitchcocks in the genre, just a lot of CGI trying sadly to cover for less creativity, less talent and less investment from the top down.
Movies, which may or may not be the same as cinema or films, like most creative expression, which may or may not be art, serve to entertain and illuminate. Both aspects are worthwhile, and some people's taste runs more to one or the other. Nothing wrong with that. My taste in movies tends towards those that are entertaining. For illumination, I usually prefer to read a book. Not a comic book. I find the comic movie franchises boring; repetitive, predictable, filled with lousy acting and scripts and dependent on overblown special effects. But, "Hollywood" is a business and businesses make money by providing products that people want. Nothing wrong with that. In the old days, before television, movie studios churned out many more movies each year than they do now, and while some are classics most were ordinary and forgettable. The same is true now. Some people think seriously about movies. I rarely go to a movie theater. I will not be seeing the current version of the Joker.
Human beings have always been drawn to stories of human-like individuals who are far more powerful than we real humans actually are. The Greek myths and all of the other mythologies of the cultures around the world, with their very human-like deities interacting with each other and with us seem very similar to what goes on in superhero stories, which now have an 80-year run in the American imagination since one must go back to the comic books to understand the superhero phenomenon.
I don’t think it would take much imagination to incorporate the following of Jesus and God into this human behavior. We are talking about stories of super-powerful entities who are very involved with the events of earth and regularly engage with “regular” humans. The comic books long had a significant following. It simply took movie-making technology to be able to represent them in an appealing way for these stories to make their way to the big screens and then dominate there.
Rather than complain about superhero dominance on the big screen, critics may develop a better understanding of humanity if they try to explore why we are – and have always been – drawn to stories of the superpowerful interacting both with each other and with us unpowered mortals.
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Everyone is coming up with all sorts of complex reasons for the popularity and dominance of comic book genre movies...maybe because they are like heroin for the visual cortex, so fast, so extreme, no thought required. Most importantly, like heroin, they have worldwide, cross-cultural appeal. Just think of the billions to be made around the world. The American audience is a tiny drop in the bucket. Producers only put in some of our favorite actors because it will draw people who would not normally watch a comic book movie.
So the ultimate reason for the dominance of the genre: Money
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I rather agree with Mr. Scorcese. Granted I minored in film. Not that I haven't loved some of these films. Black Panther really blew me away but I found both Infinity Wars films to be rather "meh". The Joker, I haven't seen yet so I don't have an opinion but the character has twice been a vehicle of acting greatness. There's something very archetypal about Joker.
As a former worker in the industry, I appreciate all the mouths these films are feeding. I've often wished to be a 25 year old makeup artist again.
I'm actually more interested in why the super-powered character is on the rise. These characters come to the fore during extraordinary times when we face existential threats. WWII and The Cold War years were very good to superheroes. Is it any wonder in the face of the greatest existential threat humankind has faced that having some special ability that could save our species saturates our storytelling? I don't find this surprising at all.
Comic books aren't literature but can be great fun. Super-hero movies aren't cinema but can be entertaining and give one an hour and forty-five minutes in which one is not worrying about climate change and the world's political climate. People are stressed. It's okay to like these films.
I do find the gratuitous addition of "powers" to tell stories that need telling without magical thinking to be lazy writing. A steady diet erodes critical thinking skills. After all, the super-power we need most of all right now is good science.
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In the real world, diversity is the rule. Everyone likes something different. Nobody likes everything. Things exist because enough people like those things. These movies are stories. Tell a long story and people will find what they want in them, identify with things that are relevant in their lives.
Conservatives, like Ross, seem to think that people are monolithic, that one explanation, or in Ross' case, an overthought explanation, can explain whatever they are getting at.
For me, no. I like Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. For most people, these movies are just more entertaining, and for their own reasons.
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Joker is a complex movie.. the director presents the audience with a variety of complicated topics in our current consumption based society. the slow deterioration of arthur; who's "feeling much better" after losing the ability to receive his medications and his personal worth increasing after declaring that "I didn't think i mattered, but I DO!" after his initial act of violence resonates, are presented in a very impressive, thought provoking way. it's completely the opposite of the super-hero movement show.
it's excellent....
Ross, it's pretty simple. Most people have always gone to the movies for one reason: To be entertained. They still do. That's why superhero movies make so much money.
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I haven't seen the movie yet, and I don't often agree with Douthat, but this excellent essay for me confirms the existence of a troubling phenomenon I've noticed: the arrested development that seems to pervade our culture, evidenced years ago in sit coms like Friends and Seinfeld (or perhaps earlier) through the embrace of Halloween as an adult celebration to the popularity of theme parks for those who don't even have children. This is not to say I don't appreciate comedy which necessarily must occasionally delve into the silly, Belushi's Killer Bee, a case in point. But it seems to be going too far.
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It’s amusing that Ross Douthat, like David Brooks and Bret Stephens, is now suddenly opining on subjects other than politics. These guys who have done nothing but lecture us about conservatism for decades are desperately seeking other topics, now that American conservatism has been wholly consumed by the sinking ship of disastrous Trumpism.
Meanwhile, this particular topic is overwrought. Martin Scorsese has a right to his perspective and movie plot, just as we all have the right to be interested or not. This whole concern about superhero movies is a typical generation gap, in which older people fret because they don’t understand the younger generation’s culture and complain that the youngsters are missing out on the “real” quality art of decades past.
Including television, where the bulk of creativity now resides, there has never been a more golden age of choice with respect to quality storytelling and sheer variety expressed through film and video. We should revel in that rather than wring our hands.
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I,d like to see movies made from comics like Zap Comics. Or Stan Mack’s real life Funnies. Now those would make for some interesting film content....
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I think this whole obsession with superheroes began with that Jesus story. It's just like the infantile superhero movies today. Yikes! There's a problem. Bam! Here's a miracle to get the hero out of the jam. And talk about origin stories, it's rewrite after rewrite.
Or maybe I missed the point. Maybe in criticizing an entire sub-genre of cinema, you thought you were being smart.
Forget the movies; America itself has been a comic-book society for some years, it seems to me.
One of the symptoms of old-school comics (somewhat less so today) was a simplistic presentation of reality as us vs. them, good guys and bad guys, black and white — Manicheanism, in garish color on poorly pressed pulp.
But it's now been decades since American politicians, pundits and military leaders began referring to "bad guys" when describing an enemy on the battlefield, criminals, terrorists, and so on. George W. Bush epitomized the juvenile worldview with his squint-eyed, "You're with us or against us" formulation.
This, of course, is now reflected in the social-media-distorted "conversation" among Americans with opposing beliefs. No longer are those with whom one disagrees seen as persuadable or misguided; they are seen as enemies, irredeemable, objects of pure hatred.
Memo: The world is not black and white. It's painted in shades of gray. Pretending otherwise leads to tragedy and idiocy.
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I love the smell of vulture capitalism in the morning.
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A lot of various points here:
I have an extremely brilliant friend who tests people’s taste by asking this question: “which do you think is a better movie, Mary Poppins ( the original, of course) or Raging Bull?” If they answer Bull, he writes them off. I’ve never seen Bull, but would like to- it has a great performance and a great director.
The thing is, most movies are economically forced to be “family” movies today, meaning ok for ages 5-18. The same is true for Broadway: even the powerful and nuanced production of To Kill a Mockingbird now in its second smash year, is important for children to see.
The popularity of the super hero genre is probably wrapped up with our sense of powerlessness. As human beings we have very little power of any real kind. We can make children, but only if we can find a willing partner; and we can kill, but usually only with the help of some form of weapon. All other powers we have are really nothing, because their effects are all doomed to impermanence.
Super heroes have, in addition to their special powers, the greatest power of all, immortality. Peter Parker and Clark Kent are the same age now as they were decades ago. They’ll be that age a thousand years from now.
So super heroes compensate us for our fears. They became popular in World War Two, came of age during Vietnam, (thousands of Americans killed) and bloomed like toxic algae after 9/11. They are drugs for a frightening world.
I took a dip into Ross Douthat's links, read the linked essays and comments. One idea, new to me at least, struck me.
We know that "geek culture" is fond of viewing itself in terms of a high-school allegory, like so:
The "geeks" have long been oppressed by the "jocks" of culture: small-minded, sadistic, muscle-bound authoritarians with unearned self-confidence and entitlement.
The geeks treasure their derided art forms, especially comic books and genre fiction, as a refuge from getting pantsed in the hallways and mocked for their pimples and horn-rimmed glasses.
Now the geeks have their revenge and their blockbusters.
Except auteurs, high-artistes, and "snobs" like Scorsese who criticize this development and speak up for art are not jocks. They see themselves as protecting something fading and frail. They were also there in high school, with their Rimbaud and their Plath, their Kandinsky and Debussy.
No, the "jocks" in the present scenario are the grown-up moguls and billionaires making vast sums off of Spiderman et al. The geeks, whose fantasies always favored muscle-bound, violent avengers, have teamed up with the jocks of capitalist culture.
And the sensitive souls who would rather read Emily Dickinson than watch people getting righteously punched in the face had better just shut up, or they will face the murderous wrath of the jock-geek coalition.
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Effective stories are powerful because they connect with people. So why are superhero stories so popular? Why is the idea of having a super power so appealing? And why the excess violence?
Look at our world today and how we deal with it. One practically need super powers to be a good parent and provider, while somehow managing a firehose of information and stimulation. The lines between good and bad are chronically blurred. Where do we turn?
One smart superhero movie that addresses our super culture in a profound way is an animation: The Incredibles, which at its heart is a family drama cloaked in a satire of superhero action. Brilliant!
My complaint with superhero movies is on a completely different level and not nearly so esoteric or philosophical. I don't see these movies, especially in a theater, because they are simply too loud. The sound effects and the music are overpowering. It's like visiting my grandpa and dealing with the TV blaring in the background the whole time. I can hear the TV from outside, as I approach the house. And, I can hear the movies blasting clear out in the lobby of the theater. I have to prepare myself for the onslaught of noise before I enter. What is happening? Has the whole population gone deaf?
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Poet Diane Wakoski once wrote "Leaning to live with what you're born with is the making of a life". All of the mindless superhero films strip away the forming of character that makes life and people interesting. Our struggles negotiating our strengths and weaknesses is what makes us who we are.
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Isn’t it great that in this great big world there’s room for all types of movies to be made and I kind of think that today’s super hero movies are like Westerns made in the 40’s all fake
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The literary critic Leslie Fiedler famously noted that American literature itself, going back to classics like Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick, is a tradition based in the stubborn refusal to “grow up.” It is adolescent to its core. Whether this is a good or bad thing, or whether it’s more complicated than that is to be debated but the overall adolescent tenor of the canon is not. In this aspect, the Marvel and DC universes are not something new, but the continuation of a tradition. And whether he wants to admit it or not, Scorsese’s gangsters have something fundamental in common with comic superheroes and villains: none of them want to grow up.
1
If Scorsese had been around during the cowboy movie era of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, he might've said these weren't really cinema, either. But "Stagecoach," like "Joker," may have been an exception to that rule even in that period.
Westerns also evolved and became more cinematic by any measure with films such as "The Searchers" and "Winchester 73." That said, and given the current grab for global audiences that now drives the movie industry, I doubt very much that superhero movies will, for the most part, be anything other than what they now are. In other words, if "Joker" is indeed cinema by something like a Scorsese-style estimation, it's likely to remain a lonely exception.
Advanced technology has not been good for cinema. It has produced movies that rely less on the ability of screen writers to write interesting dialogue and less on the ability of actors to make that dialogue come alive. Today’s movies just go from one fantastical explosion to another. One only has to watch the evolution of the James Bond series to see this. Back in the day, there was more actual dialogue fleshing out plot and character. As technology progressed over the years, Bond spoke less but did more unbelievable feats. Is it any wonder Daniel Craig is bored with the role? He had less dialogue and screen time in his last film than in the first Bond film he made. Scorsese is correct. These superhero movies aren’t films. They’re spectacles. A good rule of thumb - the more explosions, the more juvenile.
It all started with the success of Star Wars. I remember seeing it and thinking, “this is comic book, for kids, not adults”.
Hollywood followed the money, and it’s been 10-year-old level ever since. America culture has been so dumbed down that adults now love movies on this level. They don’t have to think.
2
Give me a break, they're just movies. Every generation has its favorite genres. Ross the scold seems to stretch a bit to predict world doom with this one. I guess the Great Depression lasted so long because Busby Berkeley was yucking it up in light hearted musicals rather then focusing on the hungry and homeless.
1
I am in my late 30s, and the last movie I saw in a theatre was when I was dating my husband, 13 years ago. Everything today is just ... too much. Too loud, too fast, too high concept, too shallow.
You see the same thing in written fiction. I have found myself no longer buying much recently published fiction for the same reasons I don't go to movies anymore. Books today are short, fast, with clipped yet mannered language, and with an empty, silly high concept. If there is a romance, it has to be unconventional or gender bending. Characters and plots are often cyphers for an agenda, combed through by sensitivity readers, rather than actually relatable as the stories of familiar fallen, imperfect, complex, and yes, the sometimes stereotypical human beings we really are. Shallow cynicism, as opposed to the rich contrast of hope and elegy in the classics, rules. POVs are stuck in a dull limited 3rd.
I've been reading through classics, or even just books that were published a few decades ago. I have no fear of genre, but I want real stories, real people, a morally complex rather than activist perspective, rich, descriptive writing that takes its time, a narrator.
Right now I am reading Lonesome Dove. Wow, how FRESH it is. Can you imagine anyone publishing an 800 page novel with a sympathetic view of cowboys, in omniscient POV, that takes a page to describe sunrises over the desert, in today's "market"?
I can't.
And publishers wonder why fiction is struggling.
4
Scorsese is right. Superhero movies are not real cinema. They are entertainment rather than art. Americans like to be entertained rather than moved or disturbed in ways that would make them rethink cherished ideals and assumptions.Superhero themes encourage the fantasy life of Americanist ideology that focuses on simplistic individualist tales of good guys and bad guys, and prevents people from facing up to the disturbing realities of social life in which they participate in a state of total denial. There are no "good guys and bad guys." There are actors, stakes, and interests in an interacting network of structures of power. Locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. No good guy, or gal, is coming to save you, or us. This preference for entertainment and the focus on the individual and magical thinking goes to the heart of our broader social and political problems as a nation.
1
I'd be on Scorsee's side except that I don't find his films that different than superhero movies. They are depressingly the same and folks are trapped in the same cycles.
The same darkness for darkness sake. I don't find them deep or complex at all. They are their own genre.
3
Many directors were like Bryan Singer, and moved from doing an offbeat award winning movie like "The Usual Suspects" to blockbuster comic book movies like the X Men. Many talented actors have also cashed in by playing large and small parts in those movies, it's not just directors.
However, despite himself, Douthat hit the nail on the head. The X Men are all mutants, all unique, all not fitting in by conventional society, and all needing to hide their real identity. This resonates with young people all over.
Even the prototypical comic book hero, Superman, had a secret identity, mild mannered reporter Clark Kent. Even as a child I wondered why he bothered with that, why wasn't he Superman all day, doing good 24/7 instead of posing as something else. Again, the answer is psychological, so people can say I'm really a lot more powerful than what people see.
Back in the 60s, Marvel came up with a new twist, all of their superheroes were neurotic and basically unhappy and much more human than the bland Superheroes from DC.
I do love Scorcese. Maybe we should ask him why he makes gang movies over and over again, and why even his upcoming movie is going to recycle the same actors and the same themes.
People can like what they like. Other than the Christian Bale Batman movies, i've been quite disappointed when I see a comic book movie, but I'm a sucker and go to the latest that gets a ton of hype.
33
@Jerry S Superheroes often have commonplace lives not just "so people can say I'm really a lot more powerful than what people see," but also because of the preternatural power of the 'embedded' meme -- the undercover role, blending in -- which permits the super hero to truly understand with compassion that is lived what it is like to be everyman or woman. A superhero without a nine to five, or 'day job,' is not a hero most of us could relate to.
6
I hang out online with a fairly diverse group of basically middle class, mostly educated adults in their 40s-60s, from diverse parts of the English-speaking world, who for some inexplicable reason just love superhero movies. So I share Ross's urge to theorize about the degraded mental state of those around us, but for the life of me I have never encountered anything like "a fan base that imagines itself eccentric and disrespected and oppressed." Where did that come from? Are they "eccentric"? Well, some of them, there's no argument. They don't have to imagine it. But, otherwise, contrary to what Ross notes, they strike me as rather confident and brazen about their superhero love and superhero lore. It's all a bit much, but they go on and on quite merrily. Of course, that might just be because I bite my tongue. Perhaps Ross typically finds the same kind of fans feeling "disrespected and oppressed" because he doesn't.
14
@RRI
That's where Ross gives it all away....with the 'disrespected and oppressed' thing.
Like you, I don't watch much of the genre, but when I do the limited plot lines always seem to be heavily focused on social-justice-good-triumphs-over-evil stuff--you know, the sort of thing liberals might enjoy. Given that Ross routinely (and erroneously) asserts that all liberals are feeling oppressed and disrespected, not to mention grievance-laden, it's not a giant leap for him to paint all people who watch super hero movies with that brush.
That's all I can come up with--that the one-dimensional moral certainties presented in these big screen comic book offerings probably have a liberal bent, and so the people who enjoy them are, let's see---rebels, outsiders, weirdos, freaks, and those who feel eccentric and disrespected and oppressed.
Just another creative way to sneer at liberals brought to you by Ross Douthat.
12
@CF I also understand that there's a fair amount of revenge in many of these themes. And even though the characters can have degrees of nuance, there is little subtlety regarding who is evil and who is good. So the genre would seem to appeal to those who engage in "black and white" thinking and relish revenge. Dunno. Maybe that's part of it too...
2
@RRI When I read that line my assumption was that he was referring to the Comic-Con culture, in which people gather together dressed as comic book or sci-fi movie characters. I don't know that there's any particular left or right political undertone to this culture, but there is certainly a strong assertion of eccentricity that seems increasingly out of touch as their entertainment subculture has taken over the movie business.
The photograph depicted taken in California for the "Joker" poster is brilliant, somewhat reminiscent of a contemporary triste Magritte.
When the movie critics came in with Scorsese's new release earlier this month, the 'joke' was that none of us was planning to see the above.
And then a friend surprised me. Known for her exquisite grace and compassion, she wrote that a viewing of 'Judy' was poignant and moving, enhanced by the courage it must have taken for the leading actress to catch the spirit of Garland in a fine rendition of a much-loved star.
Her message was followed by a slight note of reticence when expressing her wish to see 'The Joker', and she leaned on her admiration for Joaquin Phoenix in this version of Batman revisiting New York in the 70s. We were young then in Gotham with an edge, in time to spread our wings and never to leave again.
Over the years she has traveled on humanitarian mission to Afghanistan and The South Sudan, in war-torn countries; a devout believer in God, she remains the most spiritual of friends.
She might understand what Ross Douthat has to say, while I keep checking who's that knocking at my door.
17
@Miss Ley
Magritte. Absolute perfection.
Cheers.
6
Well said. The variety of Superhero movie we are plagued with can't actually address adult themes (or human themes), and they have long since stopped being any fun. They do not reflect the world, and the brand of fantasy they offer is typically a kind of steroidal rage fantasy. Clearly I'm not the audience for these things, and I don't particularly want to ruin anyone else's pleasure, but they are, as Douthat points out, the entirety of the film industry. They are less movies than corollaries to all other mega late-capitalist juggernauts, like amazon, apple, facebook, and etc. They have assumed control.
45
Next time somebody tries to tell me that elitism is a trait of the political left, I'll show them this column. It appears that both right and left are equally capable of being intensely bothered simply by people enjoying themselves.
"Joker" features a scene where a room of wealthy elites are all crammed into a room watching Charlie Chaplin's classic "Modern Times," a slapstick movie with a populist message. Isn't it funny how tastes change by virtue of time?
I think the movie is smarter than many of us are giving it credit for being. But even if it wasn't, why should that be the end of the world? Simpler entertainment has it's right to exist too. "The Three Stooges" should never be compared to "The Twilight Zone."
33
@Roman Doyle There are other kinds of movies that are entertaining. The problem is, we can't find them anymore. We're not "elitists." We just don't like comic book movies and heroes.
5
I still feel ticked off by the way "Boardwalk Empire" turned into a gangster theme park with comic book villains. Scorsese has some nerve to talk about theme parks, when so much of his work takes place in Gangsterland, on the same old rides every time.
And now let's look at a real comic book movie. "Black Panther" has the thrills of a theme park ride. But at its heart, it's a movie about the costs of isolationism as a response to colonization. Wakanda has avoided the fate of the rest of Africa, but at what cost to Africa and to African-Americans?
I don't see Scorsese reaching that deep when he takes us on another trip to Gangsterland.
30
@Patricia I too was taken in by the ride that is Black Panther, but I missed the subtext, thanks for sharing. Also, I think Scorsese has bigger fish to fry, selling his own stories.
4
@Patricia
Scorsese grew up in Little Italy in New York at a time when the histories that he works with were either very much alive or at least echoing in the streets of tenement apartments and storefronts. Another block away was the infamous Bowery.
I lived in the same city block as his, in the late 70s, well after he had left. Back then, much of Little Italy was a beaten down place, struggling, and where the young people had left. There were vacant lots on Mott and Prince that collected the spill over of Bowery denizens who lit bonfires in metal drums to keep warm. Dapper Dan, John Gotti, had a social club there, and gang world had a presence, including a late night hit job on the street. The strength of the Italian American neighborhood culture was still pervasive and fairly insular to intruders, full of character, religion, tradition, rich history. I loved the neighborhood and its people, and anything I learn about it always fascinates me.
I think Scorsese has a right to subject matter which is authentic to a culture he grew up in, and one he has studied, and we're lucky that he's documented it.
75
@Patricia If you think Scorsese's movies are about Gangsterland, I would respectfully submit that you know little about Scorsese. The fact that his gangster films have had the most durable resonance in American culture does not mean he only makes gangster movies. Far from it.
And no, Scorsese has not made a film like Black Panther. I imagine it would be disingenuous for him to tackle the subject of colonization or see it through the prism of the people oppressed by such. An artist knows the themes which he or she is most apt to examine.
I would say with a strong sense of certainty, however, that none of the Marvel films even come close to the emotional complexity and depth of a Scorsese film. Like, not even a little bit. I don't say this as someone who hates Marvel movies; I've watched and enjoyed my fair share, but I know what they are. The Marvel machine simply would not allow such a film. Marvel movies - including Black Panther - share the same story beats and the same aesthetics, and only operate within a certain set of parameters - can't get too deep or experimental, because you've got a multibillion dollar empire to feed. It's product. Exceptionally well-made product, but product nonetheless.
36
In actuality, some of those westerns of the Ford-Wayne heyday (and most especially the Ford-Wayne-Stewart-Fonda ones in and of themselves) were a good deal more interesting. more sophisticated and more personal than anything to come out of the Marvel canon thusfar. Or the DC canon, excluding the Philip Nolan Batman trilogy. Mr. Scorsese can certainly vouch for this- as can Francis Coppola and virtually every other American filmmaker who has an even superficial understanding of what good narrative cinema is all about. "Joker," on the other hand, is little more than a fan-boy's idea of the profound and the profane. It's well-acted, well-shot and well-designed (which admittedly gives it a leg up on Todd Phillips' previous movies), but its ideas are strictly second-hand and, even on the level of outré shock and violence, it can't a hold a candle to a film I'd endured just hours earlier, Fatih Akin's "The Golden Glove." In movies, as with everything else, people are free to like what they like, but it seems to me that those who are talking up "Joker" as though it were the greatest thing since, um, "Game of Thrones" will soon be staring at "Riddler: the Untold Story" and thinking they've hit the artistic mother lode.
46
@stu freeman I think that Joker has finally given a voice to the popular mood of rejection of the established order that brought us Trump on the one hand and Bernie Sanders on the other. It may not be at all subtle but it is the only movie I can think of that dared to approach this topic at all.
3
@stu freeman Your mention of the Riddler amused me because the Joker films at least have the advantage of a character with something to work with. I was wondering which one from the old stable might also have some legs and came up with Riddler, if you really, really wanted to (which I don't). Seems we may agree on that.
@stu freeman Joker is really a mediocre film largely celebrated by so called incels....which is the latest euphemism for right wing white guys filled with resentment and prone to violence. Douthat would like to impart this notion with faux ‘depth’.
3
The big problem with superhero comic books and now the vast influence of comic books on film making, superhero films?
It all comes down to a particular and profound weakness of American life: An unwillingness to have a profound psychological understanding of humans, to profoundly reflect on how this or that person will behave in this or that situation, how a person will develop over time with this or that character deficiency or this or that talent, or how a person will be transformed by this or that augmentation of personal power.
For all individuality, freedom in America and the concept of say having a career, we box people into very superficial descriptions, expect artists, scientists, business people, politicians to follow as predictable a trajectory as possible, and therefore when we imagine people out of the ordinary, say a great mathematician or a psychopath or a superhero or a great artist, we just smash together this quality or personal characteristic or ability with that and the whole hangs together in so implausible a manner we can be forgiven for asking if anyone really believes it.
I don't think America really wants profound psychology, science period really examining thoroughly the human and truly imagining human possibility; evidence of dislike of literature not to mention groupthink (we much prefer to think of evolving, growing institutions say, and not individuals) has left us with little but an incoherent grasp of individual development in all fields.
47
@Daniel12
As a person who has traveled extensively in over 30 countries, I can assure you that the shallowness you decry is an aspect of humanity, not just those dreaded, knuckle dragging Americans.
5
It’s possible to take individual films on their own merit. Robert Downey Jr is magnetic and funny in the Iron Man films. I like those. I walked out on Wonder Woman. I didn’t like that one at all. I could watch Casablanca a hundred times. I never understood why Citizen Kane was supposed to be so great. I love the Thin Man movies. Whiplash knocked me out. And so on.
I think many critics are a little too friendly to superhero movies (and animated movies IMO).
Movies like "Black Panther" are universally praised. They are amusing but there's not much to talk about when you get home except special effects. "Panther" gets extra credit from critics because everyone is dark skinned and you get an extra vote for that from the critics. "Parasite" gives you a lot to discuss. Superheroes do not.
1
Interspersed with this article with its negative comments on the DIsney empire are ads for Micky and Minnie mouse costumes. I suppose because I am female I get the Minnie version straight from the Disney brand.
I don't know whether to laugh (yes, I did) or be a little afraid.
1
Swilliams - That’s interesting (and funny). The ads I got were for BNSF Railways. I assume it’s because someone knows I watch the PBS Newshour, which they support.
Ross senses a disturbance in the force, which is as much you could rightly expect from an avowed consumer, be it pap culture or apple pie.
2
The interesting thing is how the Joker has become a star independent of Batman. That can't be good.
2
"Joker" is merely a Batman movie, but without Batman. Oh, yeah, we've been down this road before. It was called "Catwoman," and not even Halle Berry could save that train-wreck of a movie.
I collected comics as a young boy, and they sparked my imagination and inspired my love of reading. After a while (when the darn things started to cost too much), I moved on to other reading material--science fiction, then mainstream fiction, biography, etc.
I've seen all the Marvel movies, and enjoyed them for what they were--a trip down memory lane. I admit I got a kick out of seeing my childhood heroes brought to cinematic life. If Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola want to complain that such movies are not "cinema," my reaction is...whatever.
If Mr. Douthat wants to grumble about Marvel movies in the pages of The New York Times, I would suggest that he is using a battle-ship to swat a fly. Marvel movies are a pop-culture phenomenon that is here today, gone tomorrow. Ten years from now, no one but hard-core comic book fans will remember them.
Personally, I think making a "Joker" origin story is pointless. Half the fun of the character was his LACK of a back-story. He wasn't really human, but in fact the living embodiment of chaotic evil. Batman's REFUSAL to kill the Joker is what makes Batman a true hero. When both the good guys and the bad guys have super-powers, how do you distinguish between them? Simple. The good guys work in the service of LIFE--all life.
I think Letterman nailed it some time ago when he said that all Hollywood movies these days seem to have been made for an audience of stoned 14-year-olds.
6
I find most Scorcese films uninteresting. They depict and are geared to less than 40% of our population, Caucasian heterosexual males and he pounds the same nails over and over. Women, blacks, latinos and gays barely exist in his films.
I know he's capable of making a great film because he made one, although many decades ago. It was called "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore". If only he had made several more of this and several less "Goodfellas" and its clones cinema would be richer.
As for Marvel, it's adolescent which has become tiresome and repetitive in "franchise after franchise", just using that corporate term tells us everything about it not being good cinema. The best cinema is found internationally and at NYC theaters like IFC, Film Forum and Angelika which play lower budget films about people that open up both my heart and mind and feed my soul.
Ross, I am infernally grateful to you for calling attention to the Marvel Empire. I might have nodded right through it all.
3
As Trump and the GOP destroy our republic and the US Constitution, (the US Constitution Trump just called "Phony"), all Conservative pundits for the Times write only about a supposed failure of the liberal order, while making sure not to even mention Trump or the GOP.
In addition, your tortured analysis has been done already.
Back in 2016, Annika Hagley wrote in the Guardian about how the Superhero Regime was directly tied to the "rise of Donald Trump" with movies fomenting a "national culture" celebrating a simplistic "brutal" idea of "justice."
In 2017 Bill Maher made the "arrested development" argument about superhero movies.
A host of critics examined all arguments in just one Times piece: "'Avengers: Endgame' Has Taken Over the World. Let’s Talk About Fan Service and Marvel’s Legacy. With “Endgame” hijacking the box office — and the cultural conversation — five writers assembled to discuss these superhero-saturated times we live in."
A.O. Scott stated: "The ethic and the aesthetic is fundamentally authoritarian. There's an interesting historical correlation in the rise of these movies —which are within their worlds fundamentally uninterested in anything democratic, that promote a super-elite Ayn Randian idea of what authority and heroism looks like —and the rise in the real world of anti-democratic authoritarian politics."
As it's been done Ross, how about writing about something that truly matters now?
Start with how Trump and your GOP are destroying America.
2
One can't help but notice the resemblance between art and life. With the full title of the movie being "Joker: Put on a Happy Face," doesn't this seem at least to be a cinematic embodiment of Trump? Tortured, nihilistic, and destructive, despite the "greatness" of branding his name around the world, if Trump is indeed a form of Joker, truly the joke's on us.
1
I think this article is spot-on. Superhero movies have really overwhelmed the slate of new movies being released. Also, and I think somewhat insidiously, the sheer number of them have caused film critics to lower their standards, in an effort to find something positive to say amid the flood of dreck. I suppose that's a natural reaction to being forced to review more and more of these movies, but after having been taken in by more than one such glowing review, I've learned to avoid nearly all of them.
1
I got sick of obsessive comics culture about 15 years ago, when the genre became something I couldn't simply enjoy anymore because of the bizarre intensity of the fan "community." Every discussion turned into an argument; expressing an opinion often resulted in getting shouted at and my intelligence insulted. (Don't even get me started on the resurgence of misogyny.) It was like trying communicate with a bunch of Ignatius J. Reillys, all convinced of their superior knowledge and insight but at the same time unable to hold down a job for more than three months.
Note to comics store owners: Snotty comments by clerks about customer purchases are not a good business model and leads to people leaving their potential purchase on the counter and walking out the door. At least did in my case.
I have no interest in seeing "Joker." Judging from the ear-shattering previews I've endured, the movie appears to place a murderous psychopath on a pedestal. I'm currently having to live in a country where an obviously mentally disturbed criminal is in the White House; that's enough for me.
By the way, Ross: According to Wikipedia, you're turning 40 soon, so it might be best to dispense with the snotty commentary about "ageing" people; you're not young anymore, either, and Martin Scorsese does more in a day than you will in a life time. Welcome to life.
What Disney is doing by locking away such classics from theatrical re-release is behind despicable. They are a monopoly that should be broken up.
Two comments:
1. Have you read the "Watchman" graphic novel, seen the film or are watching the series? This critique of the graphic novels dates from 1987.
2. Does it not seem to you that the current occupant of the White House in some ways styles himself as a superhero with his claims of having "super" negotiating skills and his acting with invulnerability?
One theme in superhero films is that a superhero may in fact be a supervillian.
1
Superman No.1, Spiderman No. 1, Batman No.1 were kind of fun spoofs of comic book culture. I deplore what has happened since those went out of circulation. The talents of these actors are indeed being wasted -- and they know it themselves. I can't believe a great actor like Robert Downey Jr. allowed himself to be exploited as Iron Man, not just once (which might have been forgivable given the paycheck) but numerous times. Disgusting!
1
Ross Douthat is a conservative embarrassed by Trump so he turns to movie criticism. This move should be called a "Brooks" after David Brooks who invented the art of ignoring politics once conservatives actually come to power and the failings of the ideology are exposed.
6
"Joker" is no superhero. He is an implacably evil person whose evil is not the responsibility of his upbringing or society but rather of his own willingness to permit the demons within himself dominate his actions.
The message is don't blame others when you let the evil within yourself take control. It is you who are to blame. In our day and age that's a subversive idea.
New York Times readers interested in this topic should take a look at the work of the writer Abigail Nussbaum, who knows the genre world inside out and is one of its smartest critics. Here she is on Captain America: Civil War: "the minute you start taking superheroes seriously, and debating the rights and wrongs of them, only one conclusion is possible: that superheroes are a really bad idea, and that any fictional world that houses more than a handful of them will inevitably devolve into a horrifying dystopia in which the rule of law and the authority of democratic government are meaningless. In the end, and despite the wide gulf of quality between them, Civil War ends up telling the same story as Batman v Superman: a tragedy about people who don't know any way to address their problems except through violence.": https://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2016/05/captain-america-civil-war.html
1
I’ll give it my best shot, and see if this slides thru. Ross, you’re missing a great opportunity here. Write a “ Graphic Novel “ aka Comic book. All about your Life, views and recommendations.
Title : “ Scoldman “. I’d buy it, priceless entertainment.
3
Isn’t this a bit much inference about comic characters? And we liberals get accused of taking things too seriously...
3
So many "anti-hollywood" Christians end up writing long screeds about just that...Hollywood. They meander and review movies and wonder of their effect upon humanity. Sometimes deciding for that humanity that they are blind to what they are seeing.
But humanity also loves movies like Dumb & Dumber.
I say there is nothing to figure out or understand about that fact. It is what it is, sometimes people just enjoy going to the movies, and it is not always a cultural moment for them......and that's really ok, that it says, means and effects nothing.
First, realize that comic book movies are made for a worldwide audience and are made for the many people who don't speak English. They are unable to explore nuance or character and rely on special effects to sustain and interest.
Movies, particularly comic book movies, paved the way for Trump and our current crop of authoritarian leaders all over the world.
"Genre" movies rely on a hero, or set of heroes, with extraordinary (super) powers to come and save the masses.
These heroes often have deep seated problems, (drinking, whoring, quests for revenge) as we cheer them on against the "other".
They leave audiences wishing for a hero of their own with special powers who will come and vanquish the "other".
Could this deep psychological yearning, nourished and fertilized by a constant string of super heroes, have any connection to Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Netanyahu and our current crop of Authoritarians?
Do cigarettes cause cancer?
1
Joker in this film is not THE Joker from Batman. Hence the name of the film is just Joker. He’s too old, and devoid of any evil genius and in fact is both mentally ill and physically weak. His identity is also known and he is in a mental institution already by the end of the film. [notwithstanding his fantasies of escape].
I have been struck by an underlying theme in the majority of movies these days. That of corruption within institutions such that they no longer can be trusted. The police force, the CIA, the military, Churches, union bosses, the corporation, the bank, etc. Not sure which is chicken or the egg. Yet that message has permeated/emerged from the culture on the left and the right. No one is safe, and no one can be trusted...except the individual superhero. Institutions are under attack across the globe by populist and progressives. Art imitates life? Life imitates art?
29
@HPower Except that the superheroes generally can't be trusted either. If you watch superhero movies thinking that the protagonists are intended to be always correct, you will think that you are watching a one-dimensional story espousing questionable morality. If you recognize that the characters are intended to be flawed--and many of them are clearly so intended--then the stories acquire a bit of depth.
We talk about comic book villains, but the thing about many of the best actual comic book villains is that they're not entirely wrong. Some of the most effective plots require the protagonists to come to terms with the ways in which the comic book villain is right and the protagonists are wrong.
2
@HPower It goes way back. Robert Redford made a 1975 movie, "Three Days of the Condor" , about a CIA agent who had to hide from the agency because he did not know whom to trust.
1
When I was a kid growing up in the 1950s I hated school with a passion, but learned to read one summer by looking at Classic Comic books at 12 cents each. I could buy 2 of them with my allowance.
I liked the Classic Comic books because they told stories from the past and I found the past to be more interesting than the present. Stories about super heros did not interest me because none of it was credible and I could in no way identifiy with guys who had super powers when I was only 7 years old and completely powerless. To me there wasn't much of a story for a guy who had super powers taking on ordinary stupid criminals. In such a contest I could only identify with the underdogs, but they were never very attractive characters either.
I find it disturbing that super heroes have taken over the movies, where there is so much potential to tell good stories about ordinary people overcoming the challenges of life. But even historical movies are a disappointment today.
The last movie I went to was "Lincoln" and this was also a disappointment to me, because he was also portrayed as some kind of super hero rather than an ordinary human being trying to deal with a difficult challenge....making mistakes and learning from his mistakes....but the deified Lincoln lives on.
In ancient Rome the purpose of the Colosseum was to take people's minds off of politics so they could be more easily manipulated. Movies, sports, and soap operas all perform the same function today.
27
@Robert Scull Classic Comics were a godsend for kids who had to turn in a book report.
2
@Robert Scull Robert, I am so grateful to you for mentioning your experience growing up. At the same time, I was a little girl/then teen growing up in West Virginia with scant access to anything “cultured” except our little incipient library (which Lady Bird Johnson turned into a real library). I got Classic Comics at the grocery store and devoured them. That led to my reading every actual classic book I could get my hands on, which all led to my going to college and professional school and being “an intellectual” in my adult life. I just can’t thank Classic Comics enough and thank you for mentioning them!!!
9
@Robert Scull
Today adults and even teenagers don't need comic books in which the exploits of super heroes are extolled. Pick up the NY Times, WaPo or any tabloid like the NY Post and read about the adventures of a real Super Hero (or Super Villain) Donald Trump who resides in a nouveau Gotham, abb. DC. while his aging sidekick, Rudy Giuliani, whose abode is in the echt Gotham is sent around the evil world trying to drain a global swamp. The cast of characters is large (too many to be named here), the plot twists and turns daily, and expert explication is provided almost daily by Mr. Douthat and his colleagues. Given the nature of the continuously unfolding plot, my guess is we'll have to wait a while for the comic book or the movie.
5
Believe this NYC set ~ April-May , 1986 .
Boy, you’re workin’ hard to pretend that you and only you are moral.
Normally, I feel that the Times’ columnists are way over my head in terms of professional accomplishments.
With you I do not. I file it under, “Cripes, I could be a better president than trump, and this is incredibly not good.”
A superhero movie is to film what American cheese on white bread is to lunch. Bland and flavorless and really, really popular. Ross Douthat should consider the sandwich only reflects its maker's limitation.
1
If you told anyone 25 years ago that two and a half decades into the future Donald Trump would be president, and comic book superheroes would be the overwhelmingly dominant force in films, and indeed culture, they'd never believe you. They'd never believe things could possibly get so stupid.
And yet here we are.
1
Our Prez is like a wannabe super hero. This morning he’s going to proclaim to the world how he’s made us safe from ISIS because our commandos “got” the Evil one, Bakr.
Whoohoo! Bragging rights provided by Assad and Putin for having provided them with the keys to the Middle East kingdom last week and it only cost a few thousand Kurdish lives. Some comic strip hero Trump is. Thinks he’s made us safe from ISIS because they got the ISIS terrorist chief. Not.
1
These are awful movies. But with their idiotic story lines and constant barrage of bright lights, loud sounds, and carnival-like characters with super powers, it's easy to see why they're so appealing to those "suffering" from ADHD or who go into panic mode when they enter an area with no cellphone reception.
When it becomes impossible to defend anybody in his party, Mr. Douthat decides to become a movie critic.
1
Neither Tarzan nor Superman nor George Washington nor Thomas Jefferson nor Woodrow Wilson nor John Wayne nor Elvis Presley nor Ronald Reagan nor Donald Trump nor Tony Stark have or will ever be heroes to me.
Give me Pope, King Phillip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Crazy Horse, Black Hawk, Quanah Parker, Mangas Coloradas, Jack and Joseph.
Give me Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois.
Give me John Brown, William L. Garrison, Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, James Reeb, Viola Liuzzo, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman
1
Mr. Douthat, when you use words like "simulacrum" and "inceldom" in an opinion piece it signals me that your goal is not to inform or engage with the reader, but to impress the reader. That approach to communicating with readers is very William Buckley Jr. — most likely a big hero of yours.
Btw when I looked up "incledom" in Merriam-Webster I was advised — the word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. I am sure if this gets posted I will be pummeled by the intelligentsia.
2
It was a classic salesman's trick to get theaters all upset about ''The Joker's'' effect on viewers even the reaction to the movie itself has been a snore.
But selling is what makes capitalism work, so they say.
Will theaters hire discreet wake-up staff to visit emptying spaces to make sure all the old guys know the film is over?
Oh Puleeze. People go see the entertainment they enjoy. Only cultural snobs criticize that. These are fairy tales and they no more threaten serious story telling than MacDonalds threatens fine dining establishments. This column is vacuous.
I'm not sure why you need to put it into such a sussinct category.
I think that this film, "Joker" lays out the life a socially crippled invilid that never found a way to overcome his difficulties. He found the ultimate way out, which was to just start killing people, that if you could do that, just start killing people your life would be grande.
That's my take on the movie. I'ts a wonderful investigation of characther that nobody wants to contemplate.
And if it's offensive, good. It offended the right people.
Bravo!
Absolutely essential reading. But re-read Nietzsche's essay, "The Case of Wagner," and you'll find-- perhaps to your horror-- that Germany in the 19th century was in the same place we are today. Nietzsche viewed the arrival of the Wagner's version of Marvell entertainment as an omen presaging the entry of a "Golden Age of War." The mass demand to be wowed spoke to Nietzsche of overwhelming decay and cultural exhaustion. Human character had become a pose, favoring "expressivity at all costs." Then, they were shield-carrying Siegfrieds. Today, the malls beget imbecile incels cultivating tattoos, victimhood, and rage. In the Times last year, David Brooks test drove one of his humanistic essays down this road, testing the contrast of two narrative modes, parables and myths, teasing out connections to character. Douthat catches our toxic romanticism more incisively. We no longer fancy ourselves un-recognized Clark Kents: today we are a nation of Travis Bickels. Conrad's Marlow today might be finding stepping off a riverboat in Laughlin Nevada, sidling up to a card table only to be dealt a hand full of jokers. But to paraphrase Peter Schjeldahl in a New Yorker piece about Jeff Koons: wanting a genre to better represent our times is futile. We're locked in the funhouse. How do we get out of this chromium and pink colored escape room? If superhero movies have anything to tell us, we're going to have to go through one helluva ride before we figure it out.
1
I read Mr. Douthat to improve my understanding of Catholic Conservatives and right wingers. I also read him to stretch my understanding because he is difficult to follow and understand. I read the comments to help me understand. Today I did not understand either the columnist or the comments.
I am however really excited to find out that another version of Dune is on the way.
25
@Rich Pein
Your impression of Douthat is accurate. His writing is unnecessarily abstruse and lacks clarity.
Douthat mistakes convolution for sophistication.
4
A couple months ago Mr. Douthat wrote a column in which he claimed that the death of Toni Morrison marked the end of literature. I remarked at that time about the truly remarkable novels that had come out this year. Now we are told that cinema has become the Marvel franchise. I watch many films each year and I never watch any superhero films. If Mr. Douthat doesn't want to spend the time to find good novels such as Margaret Atwood's "The Testaments" , or watch excellent films such as "Transit" or listen to first rate popular music such as Wilco's "Ode To Joy' that is his prerogative but he shouldnt be in the business of telling people that there is nothing out there to look for and thereby giving them an excuse for settling for superhero sequels or just re watching films they loved when they were 19.
2
Mr, douthat: I have missed your brilliance until now. In the future, I will pause and include your editorials in my list of favorites. I wish this piece was broadly reviewed by millions and could lead to a gentle awakening from our long adolescent slumber. Thank you and well done.
3
Not sure why Ross thought the superhero movie industry is worthy of a column when America and our world are confronted with real life threats demanding thoughtful attention and, hopefully, a helpful perspective.
"Joker" is much more a psychological introspective study than a superhero movie. Unlike superheroes who have powers which real people don't, the Joker is relevant to our world. It shows us, without the need for special effects, how damaged family members, relationships and society contribute to the creation of a villain. Need I point out that in today's America, a Joker sits in the White House?
9
I really really enjoy the Marvel Universe.
I am a successful professional in my 50s. I don't think of myself as an outsider, rebel, or freak. I am baffled by Douthat's characterization of Marvel and DC Comic's fans.
The real world can be so grim, especially of late. I go to movies not to wallow in painful introspection, but to escape, to disengage my brain and enjoy 2 hours of goodly humor or splendid action with good triumphing above powerful evil foes (in the case of Deadpool, both)
I find Douthat's need to create a controversy from Superhero movies baffling. Is there not sufficient real-life issues to wring one's hands over?
1
The movie studios, like all other for-profit businesses, are putting out the products they feel will make them the best return on their investment (pronounced: giving the people what they want).
They are no more interested in the public good than are Exxon, Microsoft, JP Morgan, etc.
If demand died down, the movies would change.
4
I happen to enjoy genre. Genre establishes conventions and expectations which film makers are free to conform, distort, reappropriate, or disappoint at their leisure. You have boundaries within which to operate. Boundaries which once understood are fun to manipulate and destroy. Not every film needs to be high literature. Consider genre a cinematic novel. Somewhat formulaic but fun all the same.
Consider the original "Star Wars." The film is ostensibly science fiction. However, cinematically, you're actually dealing with a western-samurai mashup. You'll find more in common with the "Seven Samurai" or the "Magnificent Seven" than Douglas Trumbull's "Silent Running." However, Lucas did steal Trumbull's film technique for the opening shot and all other Star Destroyer sequences. He also stole the droids.
Genre is not the problem with the comic-verse though. The problem is franchise film never ends. That's the intention. Like a comic book, the series is designed to just keep going and going and going off into a galaxy far, far away. That's not how stories are supposed to operate. Not in a literary sense and certainly not in a cinematic one. If you can't tell your story in the amount of time a person is willing to sit in a chair, you've failed as a filmmaker.
True cinema is efficiency in story telling. Bringing forth a complex story with complex characters in an extremely limited amount of time. Doing it visually and doing it well is extremely hard.
1
In exploring the superhero cultural phenomenon, Mr. Douthat fails to mention the streaming series "The Boys" which offers a an often unsettling but very satisfying counternarrative. Yes, it's an Amazon (failing Washington Post) offering. But still.
"And it has habituated adult audiences to stories that belong...to the state of arrested development in which far more of Western culture than just Hollywood is trapped."
Can attest to this. Among my younger friends, I've often felt the positive evaluation of these films seems more like submission than delight. In part, I think there is simply no point of comparison: they've never seen a film or read a novel that awoke that sense of wonder, of sublimity and delight that art is capable of.
2
Superhero movies are fun. "Threads," staring Daniel Day Lewis, is not fun. It's ponderous. We can live in a world where both kinds of movies exist. I'm sorry that the great unwashed masses don't appreciate art. It must be their fault. If only they were more appreciative of genius! It must be frustrating.
2
@Odin: I find superhero movies totally boring, and loved "Phantom Threads". To each his own. Movies have as many "purposes" as critics and fans, but the bottom line is a truly bad film won't last long.
2
You know why I go to the movies? To be entertained. Big-budget sci-fi/superhero/space-opera movies are perfectly calibrated to entertain. Even mainstream bio-pics / legal thrillers / etc are calibrated to entertain above all.
Art films and think pieces and "real cinema" aren't nearly as entertaining. If I want to be culturally enriched and intellectually challenged, I can read a book or find a museum. I am not dragging myself to a movie theater and shelling out $30 for the privilege.
Judge me all you want, but disengaging my brain and having fun is all I want out of a trip to the movie theater.
6
I saw the Avenger movies. I enjoyed them. They were part of a social occasion with a relative. However, I don't think they were much more than a couple of hours of entertainment. They are not a path to enlightenment as some seem to think.
1
My beef with superhero movies is that they are so unimaginative. If a character make himself invisible, fly away or see through walls when trapped, where's the challenge? For example, in Hitchcock's movie "North by Northwest" Cary Grant's character is chased through a hotel by assassins. He goes into an auditorium where an auction is taking place and makes a fool of himself purposely so the auctioneer will summon security. Then Grant is led out, right past the bad guys, with a police escort. A lesser director would have had Grant happen upon a door (conveniently unlocked) hidden behind a curtain for an escape. Superhero movies use the hidden door metaphor; better movies solve the problems believably.
5
I haven't seen it, but sure want to now now because I consider Scorsese one of the most brilliant and creative movie makers of all time. If he's taking down an over-exposed genre, so much that Ross felt impelled to write about it, I suspect it's a doozy.
Don't the topics and success of a movie depend on audience taste, desire, and word of mouth, critics or no critics? I don't think you can stop a good or even great film from gaining wide viewership, any more than the Hollywood machine can be stopped from cranking out superhero moneymakers.
But for me, the bottom line for is mission. Didn't film start as entertainment, more than intellectual challenge or political statement ? If so, in this era especially, who doesn't want escape the ugliness of today's coarsened political culture, in search of simplicity, and the triumph of good over evil?
2
In the fifties and sixties many movies,Twelve Angry Men, Judgement at Nurenberg, the Oxbow Incident and many others had important social issues and helped educate people. This was important especially for young people. Now most movies are terrible and simply escapist entertainment.
TV crime shows foster the view that we live in dangerous places and must rely upon the police. Crime statistics are the opposite.
4
When, in their writers group the Inklings, C.S. Lewis asked “what class of men would be opposed to escapism?”, J.R.R Tolkien answered “Jailers”.
I was prepared to hate the first of Marvel’s superhero movies “Iron Man”: and it made me believe this fantastic character and his world. It was a carnival ride, with a decent moral message.
These movies are escapist entertainment: their world saving plots reflect the anxiety of an imperiled world.
I get that auteurs like Scorsese feel that these well oiled entertainment machines are a threat.
1
When the world was simple, escapism needed to be complex. When the world is complex, escapism needs to be simple. Commercial media in its moment provides what its creators think the world wants.
3
Movies have always been about mythology. They tell lies in order to expose a deeper truth. At their best, superhero flicks can accomplish the same.
5
If Ross set out to interpret this film and reaction to it in order to read in those something significant about our larger culture and collective life, there's a problem. He's taking a fairly old-school tack, here, regardless what one thinks of his argument, as if movies and film were still anywhere near as culturally predominant and, hence, telling as they once were. The video game industry dwarfs film and music combined. If one wants to interpret something that's more likely significant and telling, start again and start there. I assure you, it is every bit as frightening.
3
@RRI well, fair dos, he is old school tacky after all
As an artist & fan of cultural criticism I found this essay hit a sweet spot. I guiltily enjoy the blockbuster action movies but it does seem like eating sugary treats that inject a vaporous high. Great dialogue writing and acting can, at least for a moment, pull a cartoon character into a hint of transcendence. But it seems the clock strikes 12 almost immediately and the cartoon reasserts itself, the transcendence gone.
3
I'm a Joaquin Phoenix fan and reflexively go to all his movies. I thought the movie was stand alone, no need to have any knowledge of the Batman thing, to understand the movie. And just watching thin-as-a-rail Joaquin dancing on those steps was worth the price of admission. His clown routines were a close second.
If the labyrinth carved in today's article was made into a movie, Joaquin would do it justice in the role of whatever.
5
Mr Douthat seems to over-think a lot of stuff. These are works of fiction meant to entertain in order to make money. Superhero ones are good guys and bad guys doing imaginative stuff, mostly CG, to make money. Entertainment becomes popular for all kinds of people. And just because it is popular with one group does not mean it has meaning for others.
Why isn't Mr. Douthat writing about the awesomeness and moral superiority of Conservatives, or how Trickle Down will bring Utopia, or how Scandinavian governments will collapse under the weight of their budget surpluses any more?
15
Not since laissez-faire idiot right-wingers crashed the world economy in 2006-2007, perhaps. But of this we may be sure: the same types are as always waxing indignant that white women are not laying down on the job enough to produce sufficient white kids, and bloviating about how them immygrants cause all the crime these days.
Since Douthat’s vexed about comics, perhaps he might consider selling his much-thumbed copy of Gilder’s “Sexual Suicide #1.” You know...the one with the female Thor.
@L osservatore People would have to be nuts to move from Sweden to the US in the current climate. And given where global population is headed to plateau, why would you think more reproduction is a good thing? Better to import.
1
@L osservatore
Since your comment is at odds with everything I've read about Scandinavia, especially Sweden, would you share where you got your information?
3
"The superhero regime has wasted far too much talent on stories that are fundamentally unworthy of the actors and directors making them." The stories of comics from the late '50s (when I was reading them) were as pulpy as pulp fiction could get. As Truffaut once said, good movies come about when the director adapts a mediocre book -- and isn't afraid to make changes to improve it.
2
@John Chatterton These are stories from comics of the 70s, 80s, and even 90s. The Infinity Gauntlet/War/Crusade came out when I was an undergrad.
Most Americans under the age of 40.....which I have discussed movies with.....have little or no knowledge of the best films of Kubrick, Herzog, Scorsese, Coppola, Malick, Hitchcock, etc.
Is it possible that serious cinema could soon become as irrelevant to most Americans as serious theater and serious novels are now?
I'm beginning to think so.....sadly.
Or am I missing something here?
48
@Kenneth Johnson "Serious cinema" will always be discovered by those who wish to find it. I'm 18 and I have seen movies by every director you have mentioned. That being said, it doesn't keep me up and night knowing that not everybody shares my taste. Some people don't look for complexity in film, and that doesn't bother me. As long as people are capable of critical thinking, I don't care if they wish to apply it to film or not. They have a right to enjoy cinema they way they wish.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic either, it's easier now that it ever has been before for someone to create a movie on their own. Thoughtful film makers are finding their own ways to fund their work, produce content, and air it for the viewers. The next Scorsese may very well be tinkering around on YouTube right now or scrapping together a short film for a local film festival.
29
@Roman Doyle Well I certainly hope your optimism is justified. And it may well be. The work of those directors, and many more, are available and yes, they probably are inspiring budding film makers right now.
Or not. The concept that we are seeing an opening up of possibilities for creative work in cinema or music may turn out to be an illusion. Will the work of new, thoughtful film makers be able to find an audience?
In any event, kudos to you.
1
@Kenneth Johnson
One can say the same for music. Young people are not familiar with classical jazz, never mind Mozart. Everyone likes something different.
2
“The superhero regime has wasted far too much talent on stories that are fundamentally unworthy of the actors and directors making them. It has empowered and interacted with corporate consolidation...And it has habituated adult audiences to stories that belong...
to the state of arrested development in which far more of Western culture than just Hollywood is trapped.”
Excellently put.
1
Since when is a budget of $55 million a 'relatively low budget'? Even in the film world that's a fully funded studio picture.
Attempting to cast this as some sorted of outsider film is simply disingenuous.
2
@Steve Obviously he knows that Scorsese is not an "outsider". What got my attention is the lack of special effects. I am completely uninterested in movies that depend on special effects. Been there, seen that.
I respect Scorsese as a filmmaker. I couldn't care less about his opinion of superhero movies, many of which I enjoy. He is entirely entitled to his view, of course, and to expressing it; I'm just saying his view doesn't matter to me. There needs to be room in the world for many varieties of entertainment and art. Critical views are, of course, always necessary but they are still just one position among many.
17
Totally on point and a source of frustration for many people. As one of millions of CableTV subscribers with a package that includes access to “free on demand” movies, the accessible archive consists of superhero franchise works and their endless zombie meaningless sequels. It’s all so unwatchable and a reason to downgrade the subscription. The meaning of enchantment can’t be found here- plots lack a moral to the story.
According to the MPA, admissions per capita was $1.42B in 2009 vs. $1.30B in 2018. International revenue has been growing, though.
Harlan Ellison once called "Star Trek" a cop show. In my view, the superhero movie is just that, CSI -super prig, puffed up with self righteousness and spandex. Glorified westerns for nerds. Live action, CGI-fueled us-vs-them has always lacked the artistry of the comic book. The distance created by the hand-drawn image is often more powerful in conveying emotion and and narrative arc.
6
Certainly the money to be made in global markets is one driver, so is the risk that accompanies deviating from the tried and true, but how about big screen TVs in the home? Especially if accompanied by a decent speaker system.
How many people are staying home for the "serious" movies with adult themes and venture to the theater only for the "water cooler" special effects blockbusters.
14
Though I don't share his conservatism, Douthat has nailed the problem with motion-picture content here, and in his typically fine writing. Form and substance. Amen. The grit-and-glitter mash-up of "Joker" does indeed show something distinctly actor-driven, location-rich, and character-foreword, in a genre favoring frenetic, airborne action, wan fantasy, and CGI. "Joker" was also far cheaper than most action-fantasy blockbusters, but no less grandiose; a lesson to the studios. However, apart from the reference to "the age of genre" - when did that start, Mr. Douthat? - the thing I don't buy is that "Joker" ISN'T a sham of quasi-subversiveness, dressed-down in the guise of '70s cinema (a rich period of independent filmmaking and broadened subject matter in the mainstream). Despite appearances, and despite Phoenix's grand performance, the picture is not a truly alternative or original product. It doesn't critique, comment on, undermine, or alleviate the problem of contemporary film - it merely complicates it stylistically. "Joker" is a juggernaut, and it belongs to the juggernaut.
1
Are the Mission Impossible movies with the irrepressible Tom Cruise any better than the superhero movies? They are exceptionally lively, full of action and some plot, yet what are Ethan Hunt and his team other than effectively superheroes, saving the day yet again against what should be impossible odds?
Is that perpetual adolescence, too?
23
@Boomer
Yes
5
I go almost exclusively to Superhuman movies. That is where the real Narrative creativity is happening, unfortunately. Once in a while it is also a good movie. A couple of the Tarzan flicks were also pretty good movies, a couple of the Western movies, ditto. I am using something approximating standards here, not "I liked them/I didn't like them " Silliness. History is what keeps happening, and the Arts matter.
1
The early-adolescent approach of the comic book superheroes to a complicated world appears to reflect the devolution of our political atmosphere. Why bother with complicated reality when the imagined "good" vs. the evil "other" suffices for a worldview.
This was the rallying cry of Trump from the beginning (birther anyone?) and it is not going to change until he and his minions are replaced by adults.
8
@RobL
I'm not sure many of the "adults" with a viable chance of replacing Trump are much better in this regard.
2
@RobL
Great point, Rob - also these adolescent themes are easily exportable, thus paving the way for huge box-office tallies.
Can't help but notice a deep irony in this comment.
1
I was never a fan of "Batman", I am not going to see "Joker", and Martin Scorcese is to me not more than a name in the world of cinema. But, to the essence of Mr. Douthat's title, peoples' fear of helplessness and desire of salvation always produce superheroes to be worshiped. An emotional drive similar to worshiping God, gods, or Supreme Being.
10
I will not go to see the movie either, especially after reading Douthat’s column and went quickly through what readers were saying of it. My impression is that this new movie is on a line of anti-heroes’ underworld to explore viewers’ psychological mines, regarded as treasure lands for the never-ending growth of the movie industry.
How inappropriate for me if I mention Birdman and Black Swan here? Either negative or positive, I guess. I think I’ve been traumatized by those two movies. I’ll skip any other which would open up my psychological injuries, therefore.
More inappropriate if I mention here Old Orchard Beach, that is the end of land? Its fun park used to be no-Scorsese. Quebec shifted down there every summer. I went down to Manhattan by the bus from Chinatown (Boston) to Chinatown several times in the past for a day trip. That’s true, New York City has a psych-aura of peculiar and particular kind. I also met many jokers there.
@Tuvw Xyz
The uplift you feel coming out of one of these movies is as transient as the one you'd get coming out of a church. As I flip through the channels, I see dozens of stations devoted to 24/7 preaching of the gospel. Yes, I know there's money in it, but nobody's forcing people to watch. They watch because their faith needs to be constantly refreshed against the indignities of everyday life and the feelings of powerlessness they engender. Want fewer superhero movies? Give people more authority over their lives and less anxiety.
1
Some superhero movies are great movies, not just when compared within the genre but when compared with the full spectrum of movies. Example - "The Dark Knight" - a film by a director at the top of his craft (Christopher Nolan) and acted by two actors at the top of their respective games - Christian Bale and Heath Ledger.
7
Here's the thing, I can't help but think that Scorsese, master that he is, has his own agenda: a new movie. Having said that, I have sympathy for his point of view, but I think it's misplaced.
Let's imagine, as Marvel and Disney toy with their spoils after conquering cinema, does everyone then decide, ok, only superhero movies matter? I doubt it, at this point Joker isn't the exception that proves the rule, it is the rule itself.
We can go down the road Mr Douthat implies that Hollywood creates an unreal image of America, or notice that Hollywood has one core principle, and it ain't about art, it's about money. And in that, it reflects American corporate culture perfectly, in fact it is to corporate/crony capitalism to a tee. Principles are nice, unless they get in the way, Republicans take note, but principles don't put bread on the table, and they certainly don't elect Supreme Court judges.
9
Maybe this is just a matter of Ross and many other critics concentrating on the blockbuster superhero movies, and not on some of the other works in the genre--including some on the small screen (such as "Legion"), or even some of the animated ones (such as "Under the Red Hood").
It'll be interesting to see how HBO's new adaptation of "Watchmen" plays out.
4
You get a feeling for the "machine" if you watch ABC, which is now owned by Disney. Their morning shows, and news both local and national, always manage to cover some story centering on the latest Disney film, and Jimmy Kimmel at night seems to have his entire guess list hand picked by Disney, even devoting a whole week's worth of shows to promoting a film. I enjoy Kimmel, but I'm surprised he can live with himself being such a stooge.
55
@stan continople: Excellent point. You get this even on "The View" whose cast members are given free reign to lambast everyone except the powers-that-be at Disney.
23
@stan continople
I've read he receives $15,000,000 per year for that little schitck. For that money, most folks will do some stooging.
5
The huge budgets terrify the production companies who then neuter the screenwriters. Gaping plot holes which could be solved with a few lines of mumbo-jumbo dialog are ignored. Standard plot devices need to be shoehorned in - the end of the world is here but we're dealing with family issues. After the enormous digital rendering expense there is no money in the budget for ideas. When superhero movies stick to being comic books it can be a fun ride. When the expensive stars get too many minutes for empty drama between the set pieces one wonders why we're dealing with top shelf acting school and not the disaster at hand. "Science fiction" is two words, it doesn't cost money to tell the writing department "make it interesting". But we can't risk 100 million so shoehorn in a family drama.
One hopes ideas will become an angle in the biggest budget productions. And the writers will dispense with cut-and-paste family drama subplots.
2
@Jason Goodrow You're right but it shouldn't cost 100 million to make movies that don't involve chases, explosions, big battle scenes and CGI. Unfortunately, film studio execs can't stomach the idea of making a small fortune when they can have a giant one.
1
At their finest (“Iron Man”, “Thor:Ragnarak”), the Marvel movies resemble the movies of Howard Hawks. By that I mean that they display wit, wholly unique characters and narrative drive—qualities that many more lauded films (“the English Patient”) simply lack. On close watching, one realizes with deepening joy that “Avengers:Endgame” really has, as one of its antecedents, “Only Angels Have Wings”.
3
@Michael Judge I'd need Superman's x-ray vision to see any sort of connection (whether thematic or qualitative) between those last two movies.
3
I agree.
The comic book Marvel heroes are indeed symbols of early adolescent "incel" mentality, predominantly male. These guys live in their parents' basement and can't get a girlfriend because they only text to their friends, and are impotent in a social setting.
The better films were about the crises of LATE adolescence, and the greatest was James Dean. So hungry and so lean.
9