Iron Man vs. Zombies

Nothing tweaks my ire more than people who expect The Godfather Part II every time they go to a sequel. And then they come home and write some incredibly snobbish drivel about how they were so disappointed that they, unlike the majority of the rest of America, did not find the movie entertaining.
So today we have this absurd argument from Ross Douthat that all these actors in the 70's were amazing (and never did a bad film), all these directors in the 70's did brilliant work (and never did a bad film), and all these movies in the 70's were epic blockbusters that the world can barely fathom even to this day (and never once was there a bad film)...and current blockbusters don't come up to that par.

Nothing like revisionist history.

What Ross is forgetting, up on his "I demand the greatest show on Earth every time I grace a theater" horse is that the movie industry's entire point is to entertain us while making lots and lots of money. Not to be an artist venue.
If Americans are entertained by two large men in Speedos pounding each other around in a fenced cage, and the UFC makes tons of money because of it...well, I keep waiting for someone who has grown up watching Muhammad Ali make an argument that ultimate fighting is not what boxing was in the 70's, and be damned if it ever will be.
Look, Ross, if you wanted to see amazing directors doing amazing work, go to the Sundance Film Festival. Don't go to a summer blockbuster. The purpose point is different.

Then you get guys like Matt Seitz at Salon arguing that superhero movies suck because they aren't groundbreaking enough.

But wait, Seitz beats me to the punchline:

Critics who don't like a particular superhero film -- any superhero film -- are apt to be simultaneously blasted in online comments threads as aesthetic turistas ill-equipped to judge the work's true depth and snooty killjoys who expect too much and need to lighten the hell up.

Matt, you need to lighten the hell up. Just because you think you can waylay others from countering you just by mentioning what their likely arguments will be does not thereby render those argements invalid!

His basic argument, further on, is that a parallel genre, zombie movies, has so much more depth and so many more really good movies than the superhero genre. Perhaps that is true. But what he leaves out of his discussion of movie quality is how effectively either genre succeeds at its purpose. What is the purpose of a zombie movie? True hardcore aficionados would suggest that zombies are an argument against the nameless hordes of a welfare state, and vampires are an argument against the elites. But in the modern era (and by modern era I mean the era in which 28 Days Later was filmed) the primary purpose of a zombie movie is to scare the hell out of the audience. Or gross them out. Or probably both. Certainly, the zombie genre's purpose is not to make people walk out of the theater and go "that movie really made me rethink some things" or "as Elizabeth Banks was running from those zombies she really put on a great acting performance". In fact, the lack of big actors should tell us something about zombie movies; namely that no one goes into the project expecting an Oscar. And almost every zombie movie ends the same way: open-ended, tragic ending. The all build to the point where you think the infection has been contained...and then either right before the credits or right after, you see a zombie/virus/monster escape containment.

Conversely, the superhero movie tries to excite the audience, and rather than feeding on their childhood fears, instead it attempts to mine every childish fantasy possible. In that way, Iron Man 2 succeeds admirably. What is more fantastic (and entertaining) than being a billionaire genius with a suit that gives you (a normally ordinary little boy) super powers? The only thing better would be if it happened before you had to bother with growing up, right?
When we were kids, we were scared of the dark, of strangers, of the unknown, of lots of things. So during the daytime we pretended to be superheroes. Zombie movies that succeed are ones that find those vague insecurities we still have and exploit them. This entertains us. Superhero movies are no different, except for the imagined scenarios plumbed from the thickness of our brains are much more pleasant.

If you look at superhero movies, and simply say "what was the purpose of this movie?" The answer almost exclusively would be "to entertain me." In this way, superhero movies continue to be wildly successful, and despite Ross' protests, the 70's could never have hosted good superhero movies; there were no good special effects that could sufficiently capture our childhood imaginations on film!

Seitz leaves one thing out, in his quest to prove zombies beat superheroes: for every bad superhero movie there are at least ten bad zombie movies. Compare this list of every superhero movie ever made to this list of every zombie movie ever made. Do we really want to compare these genres?
And how can someone judge the superhero genre without mentioning V for Vendetta, one of the smartest movies made in the last 15 years? And why does Seitz ignore Hellboy, a brilliant, dark movie that pushed for character development over special effects? Why doesn't Seitz mention M. Night Shyamalan's wonderful masterpiece, Unbreakable? And if he loves when movies pay homage to their roots, he certainly should have mentioned Disney's 1991 serial piece The Rocketeer, which featured a deliciously evil Timothy Dalton and a young woman named Jennifer Connelly who gave a performance so hot that some movie theaters actually found burn marks on their screens.
Sure, its easy to go after the larger, more advertised pictures in the superhero genre as campy and formulaic. But just like the zombie genre, the superhero genre has a lot of meat below the surface that deserves its due credit.


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