For all the talk of superhero fatigue and formulaic films — and I don’t necessarily disagree with any of it — superhero movies remain incredibly popular and are still among my favorite films to watch and rewatch. The action! The bombast! The pathetic attempts to turn it into a Serious Genre for Serious Adults instead of acknowledging it’s all kind of silly! Aren’t superhero movies great?!
Or, some of them are. Others…well, they can’t all be Winter Soldier or Lego Batman.
Based on my own experiences and some very passionate feedback from my fellow Book Riot writers, here are the superhero film tropes that we could do without. There will be spoilers, but most of the movies I discuss are several years old at least, so hopefully I’m not ruining anyone’s day.
James Gunn, Kevin Feige — take notes!
Where Did the Women Go?
Superhero movies have undoubtedly gotten better about giving women a role beyond Manipulable Girlfriend, Sexy Villain, and Dead Mommy. Unfortunately, they also cling to the outdated idea that women can best serve the plot by dying so the male hero has something to be angry about. That includes Vanessa Carlysle in Deadpool 2, Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight, and Aunt May in No Way Home. Because if there’s one thing Spider-Man has been missing all these years, it’s a dead parental figure to brood over.
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Even if a film doesn’t literally kill a female character, it may go out of its way to sideline her. Returning to the Dark Knight trilogy, Jim Gordon’s son gets far more attention than his daughter, even though said daughter is mildly famous and slightly important to the Batman franchise. What was her name? Brenda? Barbie? I’m sure I’ll remember eventually. Sooner than Nolan did, anyway.
Bland Romance
So many superhero films (and, just, films) feel the need to shoehorn a heterosexual romance in there somewhere, even if the plot could move along perfectly well (or even better) without it.
Obviously, everyone’s threshold for what constitutes a “pointless” or “badly developed” romance is different, and I suspect mine is lower than most. However, if there’s one romance that fans who are not me think is nonsense, it’s Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter’s in Civil War.
Unlike Steve and Peggy’s relationship in The First Avenger, which was a crux of the film, Steve and Sharon seemed to kiss mostly by virtue of the fact that her great-aunt had previously kissed him, which is not enough to hang a romance on and also kinda weird.
Of course, the real reason this happened is probably because they dated in the comics, which brings me to the final pet peeve…
Who Even Is That Guy?
A superhero movie will never be a one-to-one remake of a comic. It’s just not possible, whether for practical reasons, because something about the comic didn’t age well, because they’re different media, or because the filmmakers have a different vision. There’s nothing inherently wrong with changing the source material, but it has to be done in a way that makes sense and honors the original spirit and intent as much as possible.
For example:
Having a Black man play Perry White in Man of Steel? No problems there. Having “Boy Scout” Superman kill thousands of people? Problems! Big problems!
Making a movie that focuses on the villain instead of the hero? Cool. Jettisoning an established and beloved villain in favor of a heretofore-unheard-of original character? What were you thinking, Catwoman??
Tweaking a character’s design for practical reasons? Fair enough. Giving the audience a giant, boring dust cloud for thirty seconds at the end of a movie that spent the entire runtime promising one of your company’s most notorious and distinct-looking villains? Give us Galactus and his stupid hat, Rise of the Silver Surfer!
And there you have it, the secret formula for how to make a good superhero movie: respect your characters and respect their relationships. Who knew it was so easy?
Got a superhero movie pet peeve of your own? Come vent on BlueSky!