Why does Hollywood turn superheroes into celebrities?

[VikingKing]

There have been some really good superhero movies over the last ten years. Plus some really bad ones. The bad ones have a fairly common issue running through them. As you'll probably guess from the title, it's my belief that it stems from attempts to translate comic book characters into an archetype which Hollywood has proven far more comfortable in handling. The Celebrity.

Which results in The Amazing Spiderman. To quote Honest Trailers, "Peter Parker was just an attractive, intelligent, likable, athletic, well-dressed, teenage loser.", and it's hard to argue with that.

Relative success of the movie doesn't matter. It's when a character has few passive flaws but lots of active mistakes that my eyebrow shoots up in disbelief, making you wonder *how* they keep screwing up. Or, for that matter, how do they succeed at the monstrously difficult task for the finale when anything smaller just rolls over them like the boulder from Indiana Jones?

Anyhow, my take is that superheroes are too good, and Hollywood's answer is to make them constantly fail to reinforce an audience's suspension of disbelief.

Or, to put it another way, give us the Spiderman movie John Jonah Jameson would fund in a heartbeat if you told the Webslinger spends the majority of his time being a twat and getting chased off by generic thugs.

 

[Ubiquitous Duck]

Is your issue specifically with the Spiderman reboot?

I accept that their depiction of Spiderman just didn't make sense. I mentioned this even in another post today, that Andrew Garfield just doesn't fit the role of Peter Parker, I don't blame him, it's the casting and scripting that I didn't get.

But other than this, what are you annoyed by?

Superheroes like Captain America and Superman are obvious spectacles that would be idealised in the public eye and upheld to extreme celebrity status, so I have no issues with these. Whereas films like Batman manage to create a more confusing public image than just pure good, as it should.

So I'm not sure who else you are seeing fault with.

But I definitely agree they messed up on the Peter Parker depiction.

 

[VikingKing]

So I'm not sure who else you are seeing fault with.

Man of Steel has Superman making a number of bad choices. Ramming logs into the truck of some guy who pissed him off, going onto Zod's ship without even trying to fight back, talking to a priest instead of his supercomputer father about the looming threat of Kryptonian invasion, constantly keeping the fights inside the city for maximum potential causalities, deciding to snap Zod's neck when he barely seemed able to hold him in place.

...realizing this was a poor choice of title for my point.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Your meant to love superheroes and see them as celebrities, they are larger than life. But i also hate that they say the character is a looser nerd and he blatantly isn't.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I don't mind Andrew Garfield at all. As Peter Parker he's poorly written, but as Spider-Man he looks and acts great. I think he has the precise height and slim frame for the suit, and carries the role perfectly. I found the new Spider-Man closer to my idea of the superhero (based on the old animated series and some PS1 games I played a while back), more comical and aware in his behavior.

 

[dyre]

Heh, calling that archetype "the celebrity" is pretty misleading because people will think that you mean the media attention aspect of being a celebrity (like in Ironman). Actually, I'm not sure why you call it "celebrity" at all...celebrities have plenty of character flaws.

In terms of making supposedly perfect heroes make tons of stupid mistakes, I guess it's supposed to make them relatable. You know, "he's just like me, except when crisis strikes" rather than an unrelatable hero who is always perfect all the time. Part of it is also probably because mediocre writers don't realize their characters are acting in a stupid way.

 

[SilverStuddedSquirre]

I don't mind Andrew Garfield at all. As Peter Parker he's poorly written, but as Spider-Man he looks and acts great. I think he has the precise height and slim frame for the suit, and carries the role perfectly. I found the new Spider-Man closer to my idea of the superhero (based on the old animated series and some PS1 games I played a while back), more comical and aware in his behavior.

I really must agree with you. Garfield as Spidey was actually pretty good. "Oh no! My one weakness, small knives!" Pure Spidey Gold - and I personally think that movie was shit. Which once again is a shame, because people CLEARLY see that Spider-Man is a great hero. He's tons of fun, and his powers are sweet, but not no so good as to render him boring. *cough*Superman*Cough*Wolverine

Another post mentioned Spider man TAS from the 1990's. This show was absolutely awesome because it understood that Peter Parker in High School is a total wet napkin, and nobody gives a rat's ass. Peter Parker about age 20 -22 is where the fun is at.

((Yes I know you mentioned that Pete is out of High School in the 2nd Raimi Film, and that it doesn't do much. You are correct about that. The REASON it doesn't do much however, is that the writers continued to write him AS THOUGH he were in High School. I'm looking at that godawful Song and Dance from 3))

 

[Queen Michael]

First of all, it'd be great if you'd spell it "Spider-Man." Secondly, you've got a pretty good point. But my problem with Tobey McGuire was that he was too nerdy. Yeah, I know that's what Peter Parker was like in the old Ditko comics, but I needed wise-cracking!

 

[Someone Depressing]

In times of economic depression, Superman sells more; people need a father figure, or a god figure, and that's exactl how Superman was written; a Mary Sue God-type who is uncannily non-human. But if you're scraping lint off of walls and boiling it for dinner, do you really care? You just want someone portrayed as humble, but amazing.

In times of economic elation, Batman sells more, because he's got lots of money, the sleek, art deco art styles consistently found through the series, ect.

Really, because they just fit into the molds that many of our real celebrities fit into.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I don't mind Andrew Garfield at all. As Peter Parker he's poorly written, but as Spider-Man he looks and acts great. I think he has the precise height and slim frame for the suit, and carries the role perfectly. I found the new Spider-Man closer to my idea of the superhero (based on the old animated series and some PS1 games I played a while back), more comical and aware in his behavior.

I really must agree with you. Garfield as Spidey was actually pretty good. "Oh no! My one weakness, small knives!" Pure Spidey Gold - and I personally think that movie was shit. Which once again is a shame, because people CLEARLY see that Spider-Man is a great hero. He's tons of fun, and his powers are sweet, but not no so good as to render him boring. *cough*Superman*Cough*Wolverine

Another post mentioned Spider man TAS from the 1990's. This show was absolutely awesome because it understood that Peter Parker in High School is a total wet napkin, and nobody gives a rat's ass. Peter Parker about age 20 -22 is where the fun is at.

((Yes I know you mentioned that Pete is out of High School in the 2nd Raimi Film, and that it doesn't do much. You are correct about that. The REASON it doesn't do much however, is that the writers continued to write him AS THOUGH he were in High School. I'm looking at that godawful Song and Dance from 3))

No, I meant the The Amazing Spider-Man 2, not the second Raimi movie. He graduates at the very beginning but doesn't make much of a difference for him. College is never brought up and there is only a single mention of him freelancing in photography for the Bugle. It makes it look like he doesn't really do much of anything other than fight crime.

 

[VikingKing]

After discovering a certain TV Tropes article, and not getting sucked away by it's many tantalizing links, it struck me that I was indeed wrong to use Celebrity as what Hollywood does to my favorite heroes.

They've been using the Cool Loser trope. Quite a lot. Unrealistic dislike of an individual by the majority of folks for no discernible reason, often in defiance of their noteworthy qualities. It happens in Fantastic Four, The Anazing Spider-man, Man of Steel, most of the X-Men...well, actually, just all of X-Men. Everything involving X-Men tends to be either Cool Loser or Bullying the Dragon.

About the only time it makes sense is with Batman, as he deliberately and intentionally tries to be terrifying, and his methods are pretty extreme when it comes to law enforcement. Plus the public persona of Bruce Wayne is intentionally egotistical.

I know this thread's died down and I apologize for bringing it back up once more, but felt the need to put this up for my own sake, if nobody else.