Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Reboots...the black holes from which creativity may never escape...

They are making another Superman movie. Let me get my excited pants on. Spidey too? Well, there is certainly some room for improvement on the last franchise. Fantastic Four? Seriously? Sigh...

I am a fan of comic books, and by extension of comic book movies. The first comic books I remember reading were some Batman mags (Detective Comics, I think) and a random issue of the Avengers (it may have been the only actual Avengers title I ever owned). I got them as a get-well-soon present while I was in the hospital with a badly broken arm in fourth grade. Probably I had a few comics before that, but these stuck in my memory. The simple stories, the artwork, and the black and white division between the good guys and the bad were very appealing. I got hooked on Spider-man, X-Men, Batman, and a smattering of others. As with many of my peers, my affection for reading comic books eventually developed into an obsession for collecting them that was directly at odds with appreciating the stories and characters. This collection mentality was exactly what the industry was trying to encourage in the nineties - what with all the die-cut, hologram covered, foil wrapped, No. 1 issues that were coming out, what were kids supposed to think except that every single issue of every single comic book was one day going to be worth as much as Amazing Fantasy No. 15 (first appearance of Spidey) or Action Comics No. 1 (Superman’s premiere). So instead of actually reading comic books, we brought them home from the store and put them straight into a mylar bag, supported by specially made, acid-free cardboard backings, and placed them in corrugated boxes designed to fit them precisely and keep them in “mint” condition.

I don’t know why the term “mint” is applied to comic books and baseball cards. They are not coins, and are not minted, nor does any flavor beginning with spear- or pepper- have anything to do with them. But I digress...

Fifteen years later I’ve got three huge boxes of comic books, only about half of which I have any recollection of actually reading. I could easily pare the collection down to a handful I would actually like to hang on to, but short of just throwing the rest out there’s nothing I can do with them. No one buys nineties era comic books (or baseball cards, for that matter). No one. They were overproduced, and comic book stores all over have more than they need. So, I’m stuck with my bloated collection instead of a distilled handful of issues with actual worth.

This is kind of how I have felt about comic book movies over the last several years. We have a bloated collection of movies, spinoffs, sequels, and reboots that has a net effect of dragging down the value of the entire genre. Any given movie may be excellent or total crap, but even the good ones tend to get undervalued over time as we see more and more crap that is simply derivative of what’s already been done.

Comic book movies have a hit-or-miss history in Hollywood. Batman is pretty much always box office gold, even if one or two of the big-screen turns of the caped crusader have been less than well-received by fans. (Nipples on the Bat-suit, Mr. Schumacher? For shame.) Anything featuring The Punisher might as well be released straight to DVD, John Travolta’s appearance in the film not withstanding. But the real variable in comic book movies isn’t the value at the box office (though that does vary widely) but the quality of the underlying film. Crappy films happen - I get it. It pains me when a character I grew up with is given a spotty treatment by Hollywood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, anyone?), but c’est la vie. What drives me nuts is the current environment of constant, never-ending reboots. The attitude seems to be: It made money the first time, so lets do it again with a new cast and a slightly new direction in two years. Hooray! Unfortunately, from a financial perspective, this strategy seems to work, so we’re not likely to see a change anytime soon.

The big heroes probably need a reboot every fifteen years or so. “Need” may be too strong, but it can at least be forgiven and enjoyed if done well. But let’s look at a few of the recent insta-reboots.

Hulk (2003) and The Incredible Hulk (2008): Yes, the Eric Bana version was simply awful. There was nothing remotely redeeming about that film. Anyone who cared a lick about the character of the Hulk had to have been miserable in the wake of this travesty. But did that mean we needed another one five years later? And was Edward Norton’s version such an improvement that the reboot was justified?

I know - this reboot had nothing to do with redeeming a piece of crap movie and everything to do with fitting the Hulk into Marvel Studio’s long-term goal of an Avenger’s movie. The idiotic limitless size of the 2003 Hulk would not have meshed well with the other... more realistic?... heroes that will be featured in that film due out next year.

X-Men (2000) and X-Men: First Class (2011): The spread is wider here, but only if you look from the beginning of one franchise to the beginning of another. The first franchise last put out a movie in 2006 (X-Men 3: The Last Stand), unless you count the festering pile of poo that was the Wolverine movie in 2009. But this reboot is perplexing to me. The earlier franchise did at least a passable job with the X-Men story and characters. And lets be honest - who else could have played the adult Charles Xavier than Patrick Stewart? Wizard magazine called that one years before the script was written. I understand the reboot actually made a good flick (haven't seen it yet, myself), which is gratifying, but the movie wasn’t promoted very well and didn’t have the star power to draw the huge crowds that usually justify comic book movies. So if it wasn’t to replace a crappy franchise, and it wasn’t to make a cash grab, what was it?

Spider-Man (2002) and Ultimate Spider-Man (2011): Again, shorter spread than these two start dates indicate - Spider-Man 3 was a 2007 release. I can sort of get the theory behind this reboot. Based on the trailers, the new Spidey flick looks much darker and grittier than the Sam Raimi franchise which, by its end, was beginning to suffer from some of the same goofiness that defined Joel Shumacher’s much lamented Batman & Robin (aka, the Batman with nipples). To the extent that they are going a darker direction, Ultimate Spider-Man may be Marvel’s attempt to do a Batman Begins for one of their most endearing characters. The only problem with that is that Spider-Man is not, and never was, as dark, brooding, angsty, or angry as Batman at his most light-hearted. They are vastly different characters, despite the similarities in their backstories. I’ll probably drop ten bucks to see the new Spidey, but I’m not sure what to expect.


Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four (2013): A good friend of mine has said repeatedly that the best thing the Fantastic Four had going for it was Jessica Alba, and they made her invisible. I really didn’t hate the 2005 version, but I didn’t love it either. This is somewhat appropriate, in that I had a lot of ambivalence toward the comics on which the movie was based. My feelings on the FF - books and movies - can pretty much be summed up with “meh.” Yet, I didn't care a lick for Iron Man comic books as a kid, and I have thoroughly enjoyed Robert Downey, Jr.'s turn as Tony Stark, typecasting be damned. Thus, I don't think my lack of strong feeling about the FF has impacted my opinion about the movies.

Certainly there is some room for improvement over the first two movies with a reboot, but I’m not sure how this quick reboot helps Marvel. My best guess is the studio needs a filler project for the year following the Avengers big release while they go to pre-production on their next big buildup for...whatever comes after the Avengers. Probably more sequels.


Superman (1978), Superman Returns (2006), Man of Steel (2013): Okay, so the Brandon Routh reboot in 2006 was warranted if only by the passage of time. Nearly 20 years had passed since Christopher Reeves wore the blue and red pajamas, and movie-making had come a long way. A lot of people wanted to see what could be done with the Man of Steel on screen in the modern era.

But it was terrible. It seems there are a lot of filmmakers who subscribe to the George Lucas school of thought that if you throw enough money at the special effects budget, you can skimp on script-writing and direction. In fact, in a recent conversation with a friend about movies in general, Superman Returns was one of the films we determined demonstrate that Kevin Spacey is maybe the most directable actor in Hollywood, in that his performance quality is almost totally dependent on the skill of his director (contrast American Beauty and K-Pax if you need a “for instance”). This means that in his turn as Lex Luthor, he couldn’t convincingly villain his way out of a wet paper sack.

Of the big name comic book heroes, I feel like Superman is the riskiest to portray on film, financially and otherwise. Superman’s almost infinite power and unwavering morality make him inaccessible. It’s difficult to get modern audiences to relate to him without fundamentally changing the character. He was never my favorite hero as a kid - I didn’t hate him, but I never saw the drama in fighting crime when you were bulletproof. I don’t know that I’m the best person to determine how this next movie version of him is likely to go. Only time will tell I suppose.

Although not an insta-reboot in the same vein as many of these others, I would be somewhat remiss to not talk about Batman (1989) and Batman Begins (2005). These two franchises are probably spaced about right, and ignoring the Joel Schumacher efforts, both franchises have made for quality entertainment. I look forward to the Dark Knight Rises next year, and while part of me is disappointed that the current cycle of Batman movies will end at three, the entire point of this posting is that the law of diminishing returns calls for a lesser number of higher quality movies rather than squeezing a franchise as fast and hard as possible for a bunch of predictable, plodding storylines.

Still, I'm more likely to buy a ticket to each new reboot than I am to stay home in protest. Despite my well-reasoned frustration and desire for greater quality entertainment, I suspect Hollywood knows exactly what it's doing. After all, there aren't many big studios failing financially at the moment. What do you think about the constant rebooting of our childhood heroes?