I think that the current numbers of comic book movies are unsustainable, below I give 4 reasons why I think the comic book movie will run out of steam sooner than we may think.
1, Movie tastes are cyclical, Star wars spawned lesser clones, launched cinematic star trek and influenced other franchises such as James Bond. The era of Star Wars spilled into TV with shows like Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica. Before Star Wars there was a time when there were hundreds of westerns released year on year. Film noir, war movies all have held centre stage, and subsequently passed on. Film, like anything, is subject to zeitgeist, in this instance a cultural response to 9/11 in which a civilian population devastated by an attack embrace the idea that one person could make a difference. The comic book movie feeds that ideal, and the comic films themselves embraced this, the Dark Knight trilogy is almost exclusively about Batman vs terrorists, fanatical foreigners who judge Gotham’s way of life and seek to punish its citizens (sound familiar?). Meanwhile Superman’s first act in Superman Returns is to save a stricken plane falling from the sky, it is not analogy, its explicit reference. Zeitgeist, or more crudely fashion has one constant, that it changes.
2, The economic case: The Comic book movie is becoming increasingly common, Marvel release 2 movies a year, Fox are releasing at least one Fantastic Four or X Men film a year and Sony is looking at releasing a Spiderman franchise film a year. DC/WB are releasing their own movies at a slower rate but if predictions are correct then we can expect at least an annual instalment of Batman, Superman, Wonder woman, Flash or Green Lantern or any team ups therein. 2016 could easily see the following line up; X Men Apocalypse, Fantastic 4, Thor 3, Captain America 3, Venom, AMSM 3, Batman vs Superman
On TV we will have Arrow season 4 and Flash season 2, Gotham series 2, Agents of Shield, Peggy Carter Director of Shield, Daredevil, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones TV series.
This is without considering the likelihood of other comic related films like the Chronicle sequel, Dredd, Spawn, The Incredibles, Hellboy, Constantine etc. That is a lot of comic related product, on average every month you will be able to buy or watch a new CBM and watch 3 new episodes of CBTV.
The conclusion is simply that it is unsustainable for 6 or more comic films to be released in a year without harming each other’s box office and/or dvd sales. Simple economic rules are that price and in most cases demand go up in relation to a product’s scarcity, 6 or more major movies and up to 175 TV episodes starts to make the product disposable, and what happens when an Avengers movie makes less than 1 billion? It is deemed a failure, the studio gets nervous and decisions are made. Again there is precedent for this, After the launch of Star Trek The Next Generation we had 7 seasons of TNG, 7 seasons of DS9, 7 seasons of Voyager and 4 seasons of Enterprise, a whopping 800 episodes of Star Trek! The 20 year old fanbase had been established on 69. The end result of this deluge? Increasingly poor box office for the TNG films, and dwindling ratings for the TV show leading to its cancellation and after years in the wilderness two reboot films that have brought nothing original to the table and divided fans and critics alike, failed to ignite merchandising despite significantly bigger budgets than previous instalments. If Agents of Shield, Peggy Carter, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Gotham City PD, Arrow and Flash all run for 7 seasons, joining the ten seasons of Smallville we’ll have 1700 hours of modern comic book TV, double that of Star Trek at its point of market saturation. Its also worth pointing out at this juncture that this calculation does not include the very good comic book Animations in production as well.
Add to that the inevitable rising expense of actors, Hugh Jackman has played Wolverine a whopping 7 times in 5 x men films and two solo spin offs. He owns the role, in the public mind he simply is Wolverine. What will it cost to put Wolverine in X Men Apocalypse? What will the box office effect be if Jackman is recast or Wolverine is missing? Robert Downey Junior has played Tony Stark 5 times with a contract for a 6th and 7th appearance. Is a fourth Iron man film (but 8th appearance of the character) without Downey Jr such a box office draw? Would a recast Iron man command a lower budget, what happens when one of these risks doesn’t pay off, or when a star simply demands too much? Lucasfilm had plans to re release all 6 star wars films in 3d, the interest in The Phantom Menace derailed these plans. This demonstrates that there is precedent for amajor studio to change or withdraw from its product if the numbers stop adding up. I suggest that the saturation of the market, freely available TV versions of similar stories and increasing costs vs a reduction in garuanteed box office return will, at some point, make the kinds of numbers of comic book movies we see in production economically unviable.
3, The case of quality. The quality of comic book movies is not the highest standard, even hard core comic fans cant agree if the Avengers was delightful or dross, for the general audience a film like Avengers may answer a hidden craving to see multiple heroes on screen at the same time, but when that becomes Avengers 3, justice league 2 will there be an appetite for more of the same? Look at Iron man as an example, the first one was a real feel good ride with great production design, iron man 2 was, to most, a big disappointment and part 3 divided its audience. Imagine a recast Tony Stark in Iron man 6 with a hokey explanation giving us the ‘real’ Mandarin because a new creative team don’t agree with Shane Black’s vision. I suggest that it can’t win, its either too complicated too swallow, or its more of the same, or it bares no relation to its original instalments… leading to yet more division, negative reviews etc. Despite a long history in comics just how many more of Iron Man’s villains can be used, how many are interesting? How many different ways can he defeat them? Despite being a reasonable film the Amazing Spiderman suffered the criticism that it simply regurgitated what had gone before. Again Hobson’s choice for the studio/Webb, either pick up where Raimi left off and be forced to deal with a Spiderman with a steady girlfriend, dead rogues gallery, public acceptance and no arch nemesis, or reboot the franchise and be accused of repetition? The X-men franchise is suffering from the early loss of pivotal characters like Cyclops and Jean Grey, it may be that DOFP is partly an effort to resurrect these characters into the franchise. The Dark Knight Trilogy with its universal high regard and first billion dollar comic book movie take, still had a quality problem… it was divorced, or at least separated on bad terms, from the source material! We have a Batman who deals with terrorist threats and spends 2 out of 3 films trying to give up the cowl so he can have a girlfriend! And whilst the interpretation of the Joker gives us a redefined vision of the character that has translated back into the comics, for that single success (and a reasonable job of two face) we also have Ras al Ghul, Catwoman, Robin and Bane who are equally bastardized versions that don’t satisfy or translate anywhere near as well. They feel like embarrassed token gestures made to service Bat fans who hadn’t realised they turned up to see 24 but with a guy dressed as a Bat instead of Jack Baur. The Dark Knight Trilogy is a story about terrorism and national security with few or none of the crime fighting elements you expect from the character Batman, one wonders why he even turned up at the bank robbery at the start of Dark Knight, perhaps he was outside using the cash point and just popped in to see what the fuss was about?
So, amidst two-film-a-year shared universes the franchises risk repetition, alienating the fans or confusing the general audience. At some point this will translate as reduced ticket sales. There will be a time when simply seeing a curiosity like a live action Thor movie isn’t enough. That’s is if that threshold wasn’t already reached with the blink and you’ll miss it villainy in Thor 2 that interrupted the dicjotemy of an excellent character study of Loki and a series of lamentable trousers down comedy sketches. Helmsworth’s other film of 2013? The excellent Rush. I know which of those two I am buying on Blu Ray. How many times can the Hulk flee the military? How many times can a rival business man try to usurp Stark using his technology against him? How many times can Batman save the city from an unrealistic doomsday device? 2 hour movies do not have the time and/or budget to retell some of comics finest hours, and studio fears prevent the riskier or more personal stories being translated to the screen, e.g. Death in the Family or Demon in a Bottle. At the other end of the scale the big stories like the Death and Return of Superman or The Age of Apocalypse were told over something like 30-50 comics featuring numerous characters, will the movie version of Age of Apocalypse be a 6 film extravaganza with the same depth as the comics, or will it, like Robin Blake or the Trevor Slattery Mandarin turn out to be a pale and largely unsatisfying imitation? What happens when the films stop meeting even the most basic expectations of the audience? Even Superman’s bold 2013 reinvention, with an all star cast and predictable apocalyptic anti terror overtones drew the criticism that it wasn’t enough like the 1979 take on the character. Itself an unsatisfying vision in which Lex Luthor is little more than a used car salesman and Superman’s powers include the most implausible and ill thought demonstration of time travel ever conceived on film, and that includes hot tub time machine. If the quality, or perceived quality falls, then so does the genre.
4, The case of Fandom. I have a fondness for Spiderman, Superman and Batman, I like some X books and my comic collection is wide and varied. I never really considered Marvel and DC to be at war with each other, and still don’t. Moreover however they present as rivals I think their mutual success is essential, feeding a symbiotic relationship between the big two. For example Marvel Now! is a riff on the new 52, itself an expansion of the successful All Star… series, which was of course inspired by the Ultimate universe. Avengers taking a billion dollars can only have acted as a defibrillator on the development issues surrounding the Justice League movie, not utterly defeated it as is suggested in some reader responses to other articles. The worst thing that could happen to the DCCU would be the failure of the MCU. However with so much product on the shelves (see argument 2) fandom is dividing itself, people define themselves as Nolanites or Marvelites in much the same way as fans of Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal hate and vilify each other. And whilst many football rivalries are based on religious division or geography, there is no such cultural imperative for CBM fan division. 20 years ago I would have assumed liking Superman was a good predictor that you would probably like Spiderman and the Hulk, the same assumption now, it seems, would be lunacy. And this rivalry, perceived or real {since most Man of Steel detractors certainly seem to have seen the movie} is generating hatred. This ill feeling is expressed as bad press, hostile fan reactions, twitter threats and anti ‘this film’ or ‘that actor’ facebook pages and twitter trends. At some point this will begin to have a real impact on the genre, film boycotts, pickets, what happens to the public perception of the CBM following the first suicide brought about by an online row about Superman’s costume or the Human Torch’s “racially inappropriate” casting? Maybe that is an exaggeration but whatever the crunch point is, at some point it will happen, and it will change the game. And in turn it will affect box office (see argument 2)
The good news is that between the plans already in place, current CBM popularity and ever cheaper CGI there are probably a few years left of this current fashion. The coming of Star Wars may well lead to resuscitation of the space action adventure genre and one Star Wars film a year will by definition feel more special than the 6th or 7th CBM. Like comics themselves it may be that future CBMs become less obsessed with continuity and shared universe and that a Ben Affleck version of Killing Joke in 2017 may be followed in 2018 with a version of The Dark Knight Returns starring Clint Eastwood. We may see Disney and/or Pixar producing lower cost Marvel CGI movies where, free of contracts and licensing issues, and aging actors, every Marvel Character can star in the Infinity Gauntlet or the Secret Wars. This would give fans the comic faithful intimate or blockbuster stories they are looking to see realised on the big screen, The DC Batman Animated Series was superb, as are the continued DC animations. These approaches would give the studios and creative talent the freedom to chop and change without upsetting the needs of a cultivated shared universe. The current trend of quickly produced generic CBMs may be heading to an inevitable decline, but fortunately the aftermath may be significantly more satisfying.