DC and especially Marvel have been active with their blockbuster movies in the recent years. And is no wonder, when you look at the gross income of most of them. For example the recent Marvel movie ”Avengers: Infinity War” has made a profit of over a billion dollars in a faster pace than any other movie.
The saying ”hit the iron when it’s hot”, is very accurate with the superhero movies. Even the older movies like ”Electra” or casting Ben Affleck as Batman haven’t made a noticeable dent on the movie buzz, but does that mean that Wonder Woman, Hulk, etc. movies are here for a short time – as a phase, as something the audience will grow bored of?
There will be a time that every type of movie genre goes through its highs and lows, but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be around anymore. After the big animation hits like ”Toy Story” and ”The Ice Age”, there is still plenty of animation movies being made now and will be in the future too. With animation and superhero movies technology used was and is very high, and the usage of cutting edge technologies correlate strongly to the interest of the movie – studios are spending a lot of money in those movies. Therefore they expect big profits.
Not so long ago Peter Jackson\’s “Lord of The Rings” epic trilogy was all the rage, but now it is the superhero movies. There have been different sound systems THX, Dolby Atmos, etc. and 3D/2D showings of the same movies, another tendency that we see lately. Some theaters even offer more expensive tickets for sessions with speakers in the ceiling, to provide a more realistic experience.
With home cinema growing alongside streaming services like Netflix there is a definite interest in the technologies used to film, distribute and show the movies. With superhero movies there has been a great combination of good story (with a following of its own) and technology that is up to date (also bringing in curious crowds) – not to mention that the darker perspective on the familiar storyline and heroes/villains seen in the screen give a lot of momentum for superhero movies to be hits.
But are superhero movies “just” a subcategory of action/thrillers? There are all the elements of that, but the popularity of the DC/Marvel movies has been so great that the movies can be categorized as superhero movies and not as action movies. One can definitely keep the category as hierarchical, but it should be remembered that animation movies are not called family-action-thrillers-movies, there is a whole separate category of animation movies.
This article gives point on how movies can hit a sweet spot where things are made with cutting edge technologies and from a different angle than they have been done before, making the movies grow up to become a whole new movie category. Given that the Marvel cinematic universe completes ten years this year, looks like there’s still a lot stories to be told in the future. In contrast the next big movie wave could very well be a comeback of classic rom coms.
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