''The Upsurge of Superhero Genre''

Presently the most popular movies in the Hollywood industry are without a doubt the superhero movies. This achievement is not something that happened overnight, but it follows back to decades of a huge list of the superhero movies. In 1930s comics came as a vital source of entertainment targetin
g the children with a variety of superhero comics and the abundance of different stories and timelines that they followed. Marvel and DC both started in 1930s and both had their own characters followed by their origins and timelines and how different characters were linked to others which we now experience in the Marvel and DC cinematic universe. As said before comics focused primarily on the children with silly costumes and the pageantry etc. and no adult considered these comics as a serious thing from which they could get joy. As the comic books rose to popularity, soon they were adapted into movies under the banner of two distinct production houses the Marvel and DC.

The first big budget movie that was made in 1980s introduced the Superman as a DC superhero played by Christopher Reeves and the production was done by DC and warner brothers. The film grabbed the attention of many people but still they didn’t get what they expected. People were more driven towards a cinematic experience with good special effects and a strong sense of action sequences. The follow up superman movies just started getting worse in terms of quality and storytelling to an extent that DC had to terminate the superman franchise for that time. Precedented by a failed superman franchise DC was not willing to give up and made efforts to revive the superhero cinema with their second-best known character ‘The Batman’. The first two movies in the late 80s of the batman franchise did comparatively well but yet again movies that followed like ‘’Batman and Robin’’ and ‘’Batman Forever’’ were a box office failure. Mixed reaction of audience and failure of superhero movies especially the Batman franchise almost marked the death of this genre in the 90s and because of a non-serious input by the audience not much efforts were being made to bring an advancement and improvements to this genre movies.

Marvel had also been producing movies of its popular characters which again were not able to set a standard for this genre like the devastating Captain America movie in the 90s. The movie was so bad in terms of quality and experience that you couldn’t have asked for any worse and this project of marvel could be considered as part of their ultimate fails. Subsequently, in early 2000s attempts were made again to revive superhero cinema by Marvel when they introduced their X-Men universe by releasing some outclass movies such as X-Men, X2 and X-Men the Last Stand. Spiderman movies starring Tobey Maguire were also among the famous movies of early 2000s. From both an audience and critiques perspective these movies were looked upon as a fun to look at, action set pieces and special effects etc. During the Oscars season superhero movies could only mark their presence in the visual and special effects category and not in any other major category. On the parallel, DC also took a strong initiative and revived its character of Batman that went dead in its previous franchise. But this time around DC trusted the works of Christopher Nolan and placed the character of Batman in his hands. Nolan putting his directorial skills to its fullest potential took this genre to another level by releasing The Batman Begins starring Christian Bale as batman which was the foundation of the unforgettable batman trilogy. Then followed by The Dark Knight the intense and striking performance by Heath Ledger as Joker had entirely changed the concept of superhero genre and transformed it into a more meaningful dramatic thrillers with which people could relate to. The final installment in the trilogy was The Dark knight Rises starring Tom Hardy as Bane and the movie with its strong content and storyline represented a superhero movie in a manner that people now looked it differently not as something that is just fun to look at but a serious and respectable creative art piece. In the dark knight movie, it was not about the costumes or the visual effects, yet they were there and were presented really well but on the contrary some scenes were so intense that they pushed audience emotionally and made them think about the concepts of evil and good that were discussed wonderfully.

Following an up shift trend in the popularity of superhero movies in the 2000s Marvel studios was tempted to introduce its extended universe which proved to be very successful as they humanized larger than life characters which we know as Thor, Hulk, Iron-Man, Captain America etc. with whom people could relate to. This universe marked the highly grossing Infinity Saga of Marvel a series of films that related with each other’s timeline and brought the best marvel superheroes together as Avengers. DC also introduced its extended universe by releasing movies like Wonder woman, Man of steel, Batman vs Superman and Justice league. However, the DC universe movies were not that successful and had mixed reviews in comparison to Marvels and why is that opens another debate which we would not get into here. It would be biased not to mention about another Marvel movie Logan which was again a lot more than just a superhero movie starring theatrical actors Hugh Jack man and Patrick Stuart in which you observe acting at a higher standard. They showed their tremendous acting skills and presented the concept of tragedy and loss in a tremendous manner.

As a result, facing many ups and downs throughout the decades superhero movies have now become very stable and mark a significant place in the Hollywood industry. These movies are now more than just a silly visual effects movie and more of a serious creative piece of work with strong content and high cinematic standards that is respected by a broader audience including adults.

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