The Big Picture: Done With Dark

[Powerman88]

I see your point Bob, but.... Kick Ass. That is all.

Which wasn't a mature movie.. it just had highly inappropriate (albeit funny) elements, take out the violent gritty and it was a kids movie.

Well it was mature in the sense that it wouldn't be appropriate for children. If it weren't made inappropriate for children it wouldn't have been remarkable. It was awesome because it was violent, over the top, and "mature" camp, yet still in the kids movie trappings. It was that take on cliche that made it the awesome movie that it was.

 

[Gralian]

Firstly i'd just like to say i'm a 20 year old man, so i grew up in the 90s, and i never read a comic in my life. Might have something to do with not living in the US.

Because of that i can't really voice an opinion on "cartoony cheese" over "darkly edgy" aside from taking it all at face value. Personally, i always found the notion of men in spandex beating up bad guys to be really... odd. (COMICS ARE WEEEEEIRD) I never understood the appeal of it. Nor did i get why comic book heroes were so popular when each one only had one or two powers and that's it. Look at the X-Men. Cyclops has his laser thing. Wolverine has his claws and regeneration. That blue chick can change shape. The point is i always saw comic book heroes as nothing more than pokemon for western man-children. Disclaimer: I actually grew up playing pokemon on the Game Boy, so i'm not really one to talk down to man-children. But the point still stands that to an outsider looking externally toward a culture predominated by man-children they're going to think it's weird, stupid and pointless - the one thing my mother always went on about when i was a young kid was how spastic pokemon was / is, for example, and no amount of trying to explain it could change her mind on that, and that's exactly how i feel when it comes to comic books and comic book heroes.

As i'm now a "mature adult" (or so i like to think) i tend to look at things like films for something that will appeal to that more eclectic taste of the gritty and mature themes that we as adults deal with and can now appreciate after having gotten out of childhood and puberty. Political, sexual and sociological themes are suddenly much more relevant to us, so we respond greater to them when it's presented to us in a film and why we identify so strongly with characters we recognise who go through those same struggles.

I've not seen the transformers films or even the X-Men films so i don't know how this merging of the cartoon comic and the gritty serious real world really works, though i have seen Sin City and Watchmen and loved them both. Aren't they examples of the above, of "comics not for kids"? That said, i and most everyone i know loved the Spiderman films, and they definitely had that pre-90's cartoon comic book vibe of a wacky city with a wacky hero and wacky (if emotionally and mentally unstable) villains, though that feeling did ebb away after the first film. Once Spidey has his powers, the tone darkens significantly as we no longer have the whole introduction-of-fantasy element in the way.

 

[norwegian-guy]

Anyone else feel like they were watching an episode of Linkara?

By the way, don't point all your arrows to Todd MacFarlane, okay Bob?
People like Rob Liefeld also had a significant part in the "Dark Age" of Comics.

I think Bob is pointing fingers at McFarlane because his role in defining role in 90s comics. Liefeld is more of a destructive force of pure terrible whose role was to show no class.

Also, yes Linkara did this. And has mentioned it again and again.

 

[GiantRaven]

Disclaimer: I actually grew up playing pokemon on the Game Boy, so i'm not really one to talk down to man-children.

Yet you do it anyway?

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

One thing I do want to know as I'm not a comic buff myself even though I like superhero movies...

Is Spiderman going to be in The Averngers movie? I don't think I've ever seen him on any of the original comic book images of them that Bob has shown but seriously, what is Marvel without Spiderman?

No, spiderman will not be in The Avengers. Spiderman is getting a reboot of his own. Everyone has been recast and it's now going to be more of a teen/highschool driven story. Think Twilight with Spiderman.

Aw crap, seriously? What did they look at the previous movies and say "Wow these were really good, but I think what would be even better is if audiences spent the entire thing watching pre-spidey Pete get the shit kicked out of him while making goo-goo eyes at MJ"?

 

[JMeganSnow]

To me, the very worst part of this whole "dark and gritty" trend is the insultingly imbecilic things the writers consider "grown up". Drugs, sex, and bloody death. Yeah, I TOTALLY identify with this crap. (sarcasm)

I've reached the point where I actually prefer the "family oriented" stuff because it is usually MORE MATURE.

 

[Hoplon]

No shit Bob, no shit. Problem is most of hollywood is too dumb to realise that.

also, I would blame Rob "I can't draw feet" Liefeld before I blame Todd McFarlane.

 

[omegawyrm]

After surveying the mess he have wrought with Watchmen in the 90's, Alan Moore decides he had enough of the GrimDark in comics, and answers back with the more positive Tom Strong, an old-school throwback to the HappyFun superhero stories of yore, only this time with modern twists on that.

Then he made a comic reinterpreting childldren's fairytales as peadophilia, so it's not like he totally rid himself of making grimdark stuff.

But the 90's trends weren't that bad, sure most of it sucked alot but we got Sandman so it wasn't all bad.

Lost Girls was not a grimdark comic. It's about the joy of sexual liberation and freedom, in everything from the art to the symbolism. That is not a grimdark idea.

 

[Gralian]

Disclaimer: I actually grew up playing pokemon on the Game Boy, so i'm not really one to talk down to man-children.

Yet you do it anyway?

I couldn't really think of any other way to put it. If i'm owning up to having done something that is also something man-children do, i'd have thought i'd be ripping on myself just as much or at least creating a level ground with everyone else - clearly not. I wasn't intending to make a derogatory statement, or rather, it wasn't the point of using that phrase. I'm afraid i just can't think of a nicer term for it. But if you can, feel free to suggest one. I just feel the comparison between pokemon and comic book heroes is there, and we all know pokemon are pretty much for man-children (for those who aren't of the younger demographic), and so comic book heroes carry over that same aspect of the comparison in my head, especially when you consider comic book heroes really played on both the imagination of younger audiences, the escapism from mundane school life, and the fact nothing really bad happened to them. There might be a few "ooh, aaah" moments, but at the end of the day you always knew the hero was going to beat the baddies and save the day. Otherwise there'd be no hero and no comic. To me, adults who identify with these comic book heroes are clinging on to old childhood fantasies - hence man-children. But that does not have to be a negative connotation. It's negative because you believe it to be. I know people who are self-proclaimed proud man-children, just like you have those who are proud to be geeks, and dare i say, proud to be gamers. Grown men who play pokemon into their 30s will look you in the eye like a boss while they finish catching a pokemon and say with all seriousness that yes, they do want to catch 'em all and couldn't give a toss what others think about their hobbies or labelling them as man-children.

 

[KirbyKrackle]

No shit Bob, no shit. Problem is most of hollywood is too dumb to realise that.

Well...Audiences get the movies they deserve, sadly. Hollywood is smart enough to realize that the viewers are dumb enough to pay for shallow sex and violence masquerading as "mature themes". Hollywood's also smart enough to capitalize on the conflict between their audiences' fetishizing of their childhood nostalgia and their desire to pretend to be adults that are interested in adult things.

 

[Rad Party God]

Plus while I know you dislike the 90's when you reference tranformer being simple I can't help but think of Beast Wars, which was a tranformer franchise with a good ammout of sophistication and yet was about robot that tranform in animal

I liked Beast Wars and Beast Machines back then and they're mostly everything I know related to Transformers, when I think of Optimus, I still think of a giant gorilla transforming into a bipedal truck.

 

[rnpeek01]

I've made this same rant many a times myself. Although my rants revolve around more how to mature something properly because you can make mature superhero stories and have it be good, here are some guidelines to start out with:
Rule one- Don't throw in drugs, prostitution, or rape just because it controversial.
Rule two- Adding more shadows and making everything black does not make it a mature story.
Rule three- Characters need more then two emotions, just using anger and regret isn't enough.
Rule four- Happiness is allowed and encouraged, I may be an adult but I still read/watch to be entertained, and whiny assholes aren't very entertaining.

I definitely agree. It is possible to be mature without being angry and depressed all the time. I actually find that creating superheros full of angst and sarcasm makes them seem more like whiny teenagers than mature crime fighting adults.

 

[Buckett]

Uh, did Bob just ask me to go back and watch the Transformers movies? Yea, I'll pass thanks.

 

[ICantBelieveItGoesBoom]

I think this change is mainly because kids don't read comics or care about superheroes anymore, so it's understandable that the movies are marketed towards the adults that used to like them instead.

Also, you're complaining that the movies about characters that you know are marketed towards your age group? I don't really see the logic in there.

 

[Speakercone]

(slight diversion)
Perhaps film-makers are trying to (fingerquotes) "find the story behind the spandex" or whatever. To them, Transformers isn't about giant car/robots beating on each other in a spectacle of awesome; it's about the people who are caught in the middle of it all. This is a good idea, but they chose the wrong people.

Here's a transformers movie I'd watch on that basis:
Transformers have chosen Earth as the place of their final battle. Some are friendly and some are not. The story follows a small group of people in London trying desperately to escape the carnage being wreaked by the constant warfare among the machines. These people don't know why these things are destroying their city, they just know that when they fight, people die. suggested lines "what happened to you?" "one of those things crashed into my office building. would have been a good day to be late..." *shows recent wounds".

Yeah, I'd watch that.
(/diversion)

pretty much, I agree with you vis-a-vis the trappings of maturity vs. mature storytelling. Guns, blood, and T&A is precisely not mature, it's juvenile.

 

[RootBrewski]

Thank you Bob for talking about this. I get so sick of the "dark" and "gritty" obsession that seems to have infected everyone I know. It gets annoying when people tell me how much Nolan's Batman is the real thing.

Now I do enjoy reading mature comics, but it doesn't mean I want everyone I read to be filled with a reluctant, rage fueled and revenge driven "hero". I also cant help but feel that the TV show "The Cape" failed because it was about a guy actually acting like a superhero.

Also if anyone wants to see this topic addressed in comic books, not to mention just a good story, check out the Superman story "What's so funny about truth, justice and the american way?"