No Longer "Just" a Comic Book Movie

"What would you prefer, yellow spandex?" This was a line uttered by Cyclops (played by James Marsden), a character in Bryan Singer's 2000 film The X-Men, to his fellow X-Man, Wolverine (played by Hugh Jackman), in reference to the latter's derogatory comment about their black leather costumes. The costumes, however garish-looking, were quite a departure from the colorful and sometime silly-looking spandex costumes the characters sported in the comic books on which the movie and eventual franchise were based. More than that, though, the line was a jab at how silly the thought of a direct, page-to-screen adaptation of Marvel's famous mutant team would have been, and how it was so much better to dress the X-Men like rejects from the 1999 smash-hit The Matrix. There could have been no more damning vote of no confidence in a truly faithful adaptation than a statement such as that. It's funny how, despite the overwhelming success of Richard Donner's Superman back in 1978, featuring a very colorfully-garbed Christopher Reeve, as well as a slew of successful and critically-acclaimed comic-book-based movies spanning the decades that have passed since then, the motion picture derived from a comic book has had a notably difficult time earning the respect in the pop culture landscape that it deserves. While the above-mentioned line of dialogue from X-Men is but one example, there are plenty of others ranging from the quips of studio execs to the fact that a major studio with several Marvel Comics properties in its roster continually treats these gems like second-class citizens. In general, when a comic-book movie has done well or has been received well by critics, for some reason a lot of writers have difficulty saying "it's a great movie" choosing almost invariably to qualify their statements with "it's great...for a comic book movie." There's something hurtful about this, as no one ever hears anyone describing Raiders of the Lost Ark as "great...for a movie derived from the trashy serials of the 30s" or the original Star Wars as "great...for a movie that's set in outer space." There's no qualification, no equivocation. To use a more recent example, The Lord of the Rings films are hailed as great milestones of cinema, not great examples of geek fodder. No one even judges Avatar, with its rather hackneyed plot, as being great for a genre film. These are films judged purely on their merit. Even worse, the handful of comic-book movies that have been described as great, like Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, are described as such "because they don't feel like comic book movies" as if that categorization inherently and necessarily drags the film's quality down a notch or three. Nolan himself, like Singer before him and other makers of comic-book-based films who visibly try to tone-down the four-color sensibility of their works, seems distinctly ashamed of the Batman's comic book roots. Someone commenting on a forum said that it was great because "it was no longer a comic-book film, but a crime drama" which, again, denigrates comic book films as a whole to suggest that the only way this film could be truly great was for it to be something else entirely. It's catchy; I'm ashamed to admit than in praising one comic book movie or another (I think it was the first Iron Man film), I used the phrase "transcends its comic book roots." Looking back that was such a hateful thing for me to say; why should comic book roots be something to transcend? There are many comic books of the latter half of the 20th century, namely the work of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Byrne, and Walt Simonson to name a very, very few, that, in terms of sheer inventiveness and visual verve, still far outstrip anything we see in modern cinema. Like one writer praising Joss Whedon's smash hit film The Avengers pointed out, movies are only just starting to catch up to comic books in terms of being imaginative. Which brings me to the point; I think The Avengers, with its massive, unprecedented popularity, is in a position to do what no other film has been able to do even as far back as the first Superman movie, which is definitively legitimize the comic-book film as an art form. A lot of films have had their shot at this and failed, even though many of them have come tantalizingly close. Unlike any of the Marvel movies, The Avengers is a marriage of four-color heritage with Joss Whedon's trademarked wit and razor-sharp storytelling, and with the very finest technology Hollywood has to offer. It's a heck of a three-way. There's no underlying sense of embarrassment that this movie came from "just" a comic book. The characters don't wear black leather or body armor, there's no attempt to present this film as anything other than what it is, a faithful but wonderfully updated adaptation of Stan Lee's and Jack Kirby's comic book creation. The Avengers could be the film that breaks the glass ceiling for comic-book movies, that shows that they are every bit the legitimate art form that silent movies starring French people are or British war dramas are...just a different kind of art form. It's a movie that's proud of what it is and where it came from, and which has been eagerly embraced by audiences everywhere. Hey, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, I hope you're paying attention. For me, success will come the day comic book films in general, and Marvel Films in particular, have the same cinematic pedigree as, say Pixar movies, which are hardly ever spoken of as "just cartoons." Perhaps it's fitting, therefore, that Marvel has found a home in Disney. Maybe the one sure sign that comic-book-based movies have shattered the glass ceiling is the when truly great comic-book based movies are spoken of by the public and the media alike as great movies, period.