The Superhero Tout

A few decades ago, making a superhero movie would have been considered bad business. Thinking about it, I remember 'Captain America' (1990), 'The Flash' TV series (1990), and even 'Fantastic Four' (1994) was considered a B-Movie that you could only find bootlegs of in comic conventions. No one dared put real energy into the production marketing dollars until 1998....Wesley Snipes, David Goyer and Stephen Norrington gave us the dark vigilante 'Blade'. For the first time a comic book character was placed in a real world setting and taken seriously against the backdrop of film-noir like elements weaved into the fabric of the super-natural elements that make the hero. Since then we have seen X-Men, serious actors like Edward Norton taking on the Incredible Hulk (to be continued by Mark Ruffalo), and Marvel Studios putting hefty work into combining the world of Marvel Cinema into one unique environment. Film Auteur, Darren Aronofsky's name has come up on the set of Hugh Jackman's 'Real Steel' as a candidate for 'Wolverine' helmer; Can you just imagine how great that will be! Now we get to see a re-boot of 'Spiderman' with the same lesson's Marvel has learned from their previous films (Not hamming it up!) - Not to mention Chris Nolan's 'The Dark Knight', Idris Elba as a possible Luke Cage, next summers' 'Thor' and 'Captain America', the excitement is tipping over. We can't wait. With 21st century technology and 'real' screenwriters interested in writing the stories and 'real' filmmakers interested in making them, the comic book genre will hopefully only get better.