Superhero movie are more popular than ever before, between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Nolans Batman trilogy, what more could we possibly ask for? Well how about finally making a good CBM based around a magic character.
Before going any further, id like to address the people who are going to scream THOR IS A MAGIC CHARACTER! Yes he is, but not so much in the movies. In the movies technology and magic are the same. Where in the comics everything is obviously magic.
The Asgardian architecture and their outfits are all tech based, while weapons like Mjölnir are a combination of the two. Forged in the heart of a dying star explains how the weapon is practically indestructible, but it doesn't explain the security system spell (lets just call it that)or how it can be used to summon lightning, the simple answer is magic.
Probably the best example of this hybrid style of the Thor movies is the Tesseract, Loki used his spear to channel the power of the cube to brainwash people, he then used is as a power source for his device to summon the Chitauri.
Even if this stuff is debated, what cannot be debated is that Thor was just an okay movie. Sure it made me actually believe that this whole Norse mythology can work in the modern world and it did finally make Thor popular to the bigger crowd (along with the JMS Thor run).
But still there was WAY too much Earth, not enough of the nine realms and the incredibly rushed character development and love story all just severely hurt the film for me.
But now that little rant is out of the way, time to move onto the main topic. Why aren't there more magic based superheroes getting movies? And when they do, why do they always suck?
When I think of this im immediately reminded of the Ghost Rider movies. While he isn't a wizard or something. He does deal with demons and hellspawn so that in my book makes him a magic based hero.
While the first movie wasnt The Dark Knight or something, I thought it could setup a sequel that would drastically improve upon the original. Sadly the sequel is an atrocious POS that needs to be buried in a land fill in New Mexico (E.T. game style).
Then you have the John Constantine movie that was a box office success, but it was just meh to me and didn't really leave a lasting impact on CBMs. But is it the movies fault or the comics?
Lets face it, neither of the big two have any super well known magic based super hero, I mean us comic book fans know of these guys. But the general audience will maybe know Doctor Strange or Zatanna, because these two showed up in Spider-Man TAS and Batman/JLU TAS as well as appearing in Smallville in Zatannas case.
The movies that really made me believe that magical creatures like trolls, goblins and dragons could exist in our world are the Harry Potter films. They were fantasy movies that were fantastical just enough for you to be amazed at whats going on, but realistic enough so that you could believe these creatures could exist.
We already know Marvel is gearing up for a Doctor Strange movie, but even this is a long shot, considering that Iron Man, Thor Dark World, Cap Winter Soldier, Ant-Man, GOTG and Avengers 2 have already gotten their set release dates, it seems like were going to have to wait ATLEAST until 2015 before we find out anything more about the Doctor Strange movie.
Also what puzzles me is that movies like this shouldnt be too expensive to produce, it's not like they need to computer generate entire or have loads and loads CGI crap going on like Thors movies do.
But still I think that DC and Marvel need to both work on their magic based heroes, DC is already doing a fine job with Hellblazer still going strong, Justice League Dark, Demon Knights and I,Vampire. While Marvel has almost completely abandoned the likes of Doctor Strange except making him a member of the Defenders.
So what do you guys think? Should Marvel and DC start building up their magical super heroes? Considering their push for giant movie universes, I think we will need a third pillar for them each to balance out the realistic Iron Man with the fantastical Thor by finding a perfect middle ground for the two.
Im still waiting for my Zatanna movie.