Seven Directors and Super Hero Influence

Originally I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with this post. I thought about looking at the directors of super-hero movies, and then only discussing their other work. Then I thought as a way of keeping my head wrapped around so much data to limit it to directors who only directed multiple movies in the same franchise.

Doing that was kinda cool, guys, as that list has plenty to work with, with both super-hero genre and regular films. It started with one guy in 1978, and his influence is still being teased out in different directions.

The super-hero genre seems today to have taken the place of yesterday's western, or WWII movie; they are America's most popular form of mass entertainment: it has easy to recognize and clearly defined roles of good and evil; it has spectacle; and in the end, good triumphs and reassures the audience.

There is justice and fairness in the world.

So, back to 1978, and Richard Donner's release of Superman changed the way America looked at super-hero films. His serious look at the genre--what a world with bumbling Clark Kent could look like, how the suave Superman would fool people into not recognizing Kent, how a large city might react to a flying man in a cape. The camp has been removed, that silly, pun-filled Bat-tastic world from the '60s television show of Batman has been wiped clean. Could the movie work?

It did. Box office receipts say as much, anyway. Another thing Richard Donner did was to film the first two movies together. Now I know that Superman II was hijacked by the studio, and it was only recently that there was a release of "Richard Donner's Superman II", the cut I guess he wanted to make, but at least there was a continuity of tone between the two films.

I love Richard Pryor, but that's all I can say about the third and fourth films in the series.

The influence of Richard Donner on the Superman movies alone is seen with Superman Returns, the most recent Superman movie, which uses the same John Williams score and contorts itself to be mostly a sequel to Superman II (right?).

The next super hero film franchise that executed the material well enough to be called a success would be Tim Burton's Batman.

Dan, you should remember this, but we were at the Cabin when mom and dad went to go see Batman at the theater without us, just to make sure it wasn't going to be too intense for us. Summer of '89. Is that right, dad?

In any case, the realism that Donner brought was splashed in black paint and darkened up darker than even Christopher Nolan can handle. Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton turned in performances where at least they'd bought into the characters and story, and the franchise was set.

Batman Returns was an event as well. Batman eventually went into some strange territory, and came back, and we'll take a look later.

As the super-hero genre was trying to recover (Thanks Joel), 2000 saw Bryan Singer's "X-Men". Joel Schumacher's expanding the dark realism that Tim Burton materialized into shiny gadgetry for his two Batman movies seemed like a dangerous meld between realism and camp. In any case, the colorful world of his Batman films at least hearken back to Donner, so the influence chain wasn't broken.

Bryan Singer added onto that world successfully.

Here, an America with rhetoric on both sides about civil rights and mutants is Singer's realistic look at how the country would react to randomly powered individuals. The film did well because it was well made and it had that deeper tone that Marvel comics always had and DC didn't--substance of story.

This movie and the next, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002), both show the inherent differences between the Big Pictures in Marvel and DC. I was always a DC guy, oddly enough considering my affinity for story and literature...

Superman: alien comes to Earth, somehow finds earthlings not-contemptible assholes, decides to protect them. Batman: parents gunned down, becomes ninja and fights crime in costume. What are those super hero stories about? Mostly fighting crime, right?

The X-Men has always been about prejudice and segregation, about being an outsider, a weirdo, somebody who just doesn't fit in, alienation. Spider-Man was about the day-to-day struggle, getting bills paid, trying to get the girl, trying to keep a job while also trying to save lives wearing a costume.

And what a costume, right? Spider-Man's costume may be the greatest costume in comics. And seeing him fly through the air on webbing, like Tarzan in the urban jungle, is so much fun that we don't care that there is realistically only ten square blocks he could ever really get around like that in all of New York City. He's just another alienated dork who gets powers and decides to do well with them.

For me X-Men and X-Men 2 did what the Schumacher Batmen tried: made technology a semless part of their world, and the Raimi Spidermen brought the color and life to a small story, and edged on the side of camp, while playing it straight.

Christopher Nolan never sniffed camp, let alone edging near it. Batman Begins, from 2005, was a reboot of the Batman franchise that, as far as Bat-fans were concerned, absolutely needed it. Here, the realism is in every aspect of the trilogy, even within the existential framework of "is the existence of the Batman a good thing" argument. An argument, by the way, that is a one of the Nolan trilogy's thematic pillars.

What Bryan Singer brought to his two X-men movies, Jon Favreau brought to the 2008 Iron Man movie and it's sequels.

X3 didn't really have it together, and Spider-Man 3 was widely rejected (although I'd like to see it), but Favreau brought audiences some excitement and humor, and something genuinely fun to watch. It was a return to colorful and shiny realism.

Donner, Burton, Singer, Raimi, Nolan, and Favreau.

I think between those six guys we can find six awesome non-super hero movies. Maybe even with this guy, but you never know:

This is just a wasted post, isn't it? I didn't even do anything here...