No, Superhero Movies are NOT Like Westerns

No god damn it, superhero movies are not like Westerns, and we're gonna talk about why.

Music Featured:

Love Him by Loyalty Freak Music
Setup with an E by Small Colin
Both Flanks by Small Colin
Facing It by Komiku
Carnival by Smallertide
Sednoseteres by Hinterheim
End of the Trip by Komiku
The Zone by Komiku

Works Cited:

More Eyebrow Cinema:

[blupunk]

It's interesting to run across this at the end of 2023 when it seems like the superhero movie has run aground. The Aquaman sequel was the big last hope in a year where exactly one live-action film in the genre was considered financially successful (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3), and it is simply not performing up to expectations. Of course, The Flash was a disaster estimated to have lost its studio over $200 million for a variety of reasons, but even the third Ant-Man movie, which right now is number 10 at the global box office for the year, is estimated to have lost more than $125 million for Marvel Studios. Yes, there was another hit Spider-Man animated film, but the second Shazam movie and Blue Beetle earned less than the latest Evil Dead and Exorcist movies. The Marvels was hard-pressed to out-perform the Paw Patrol movie. Sure, top ten of the box office is still dominated by big-budget branded IP (with the sole exception of Oppenheimer at #3), but there does seem to have been some shake-up as far as what has and hasn't proven profitable.

[JonConstruct]

The part about brands being the main box office draw as opposed to genre or stars seems like fertile ground for an essay. The boom of reboots, remakes, and sequels have made stars of people but very rarely does that success translate outside the brand. RDJ could make Doolittle a hit. Chadwick Boseman was the face of a billion-dollar movie but 21 Bridges flopped. ScarJo couldn't get Rough Night over the hump. The only success I can think of is Chris Evans and Daniel Craig teaming up for Knives Out. Even Will Smith, the titan of the 2000s, is relegated as a leg for Suicide Squad and the Aladdin remake to stand on. This is a huge shift is how the film industry worked and how filmgoers related to movies. People went from debating the best Bruce Willis or John Wayne movie to debated the best Marvel or Fast and the Furious movie. Idk maybe that's something.

[camillagilmore]

I think Multiverse of Madness was a really good example of the brand problem you were talking about. You'd get a really interesting, strange, imaginative scene and feel like "this is a Sam Rami film" and then the next scene would be so flat and formulaic and youd be like "oh yes, and now we are in a marvel film again".

[WraxTV]

That story of Cleopatra being the highest grossing yet still failing reminds me A LOT of the gaming industry, especially since the PS360. Heard tons of stories of games selling ludicrous numbers yet still considered failures.

[Longlius]

Even as someone who likes schlocky genre fiction films, the dominance of Disney has been worrying for quite some time.

[Dock]

It's so irritating that I have to criticize superhero movies. Some of them are among my favorite films. I never heard of westerns stopping Hitchcock from getting movies released in theaters.

[Pssybart]

If you look at the Wikipedia list of highest grossing movies of the 70's, the top 3 are Star Wars, Superman and Jaws. Sure, those are the same kinds of movies that dominate the market today. But back then they were isolated examples of genre blockbusters, and they're the exact movies film historians point at to show what killed New Hollywood in the first place.

If you look at all the other highest grossing movies further down the list you'll get The Godfather, Grease, Animal House, Rocky, The Exorcist, Apocalypse Now, Alien, The Sting... And you know what movie made it to the top 10? Kramer vs. Kramer, a drama about a single father who fights for the custody of his kid. Yeah, that pretty much shows how different the 70's was from now. It was a short period in which filmmakers were allowed to experiment with a great variety of genres and with original screenplays. And as great as Star Wars, superman and Jaws are, they unfortunately revealed to studio's that certain formulas and intellectual properties can almost guarantee box office return.

[jcmurie]

I think A24 might be one of the most important studios today. I'm not a die hard fan but I am interested in almost everything they put out. What I think is important, is that they are popularizing original indie films and I think studios will eventually recognize that people want original stories in addition to their blockbusters

[OldWitchDoctor]

I think the real issue is that studios have gotten bigger, I mean, look at Disney, they practically own most entertainment, and it's not like they will put out something that will compete with their own stuff. And honestly if we saw a shift to another popular genre, I'm honestly not sure that the same two or three companies still wouldn't conquer that genre too.

[pbh]

Always thought zombie films especially the walking dead are more like western. In a way they are all about trying to be moral and the battle for civilization where all of society is on the fringe

[moonlight]

I think the shift to action/effects heavy blockbusters represents a change in people's general theater-going motivations. Not to add to the "controversy" but Scorsese was kind of right when he called those movies "theme-park rides", in the sense that the visual spectacle is the main (or a least a large part of) the draw. If you're going to actually *go* to a cinema, pay for each ticket, probably popcorn/other snacks as well, they have to offer an experience that you couldn't just get at home. Dramas, comedy, romance, etc play just as well on a TV screen as a theater screen.

[filmfanaticryan]

Hear me out:
Superhero movies (and television shows) are more comparable to Japan's boom of "Tokusatsu" (special effects driven) projects from the 50's well into the late 70's (and somewhat still today). And I'm not talking about actual thematic similarities. It is almost always based in an economic perspective for profitable means (selling toys comes to mind).
I've always likened Westerns to Samurai films as they are so reflective of each other; grounded in the framework of a country's history and especially mythos. I think most people generalize their Superhero = Western argument based purely around genre filmmaking and don't care to elaborate.
I agree with a lot of the ground covered in the essay. The box office analysis is exact. I just think it's worth a look into the history of Tokusatsu projects in Japan. While not anywhere near as prolific as Disney has been, Toho dominates a lot of the Japanese movie markets.

[They_are_Arthur]

Ironically enough, I feel like the cultural shift between Westerns and high action (Superhero) movies was met in 1977 with Star Wars. Star Wars was kind of like a western in space, but it also had spectacular special effects (and was later used for a lot of marketing). The original Star Wars trilogy is almost entirely responsible for big franchise blockbuster films with high octane action, and Star Wars slowly shifted from being seen as a legitimate piece of art crafted by filmmakers and turned into a brand instead. Granted though I really love Star Wars but it speaks to how infectious brand loyalty can dominate Hollywood (and in the worst possible scenario, bringing that brand to Dinsey's blackhole).

[niktri]

On the bright side of things, as homogenized as mainstream cinema seems to be, the complete opposite happens over on streaming platforms, Netflix especially. Though the quality is often debatable, I think it's really telling that the top five shows currently are Squid Game, Bridgerton, Money Heist, Stranger Things and the Witcher, shows that belong to entirely different genres and have almost nothing to do with each other stylistically or thematically. Even more impressive is the fact that Squid Game and Money Heist aren't even made in the US, and yet they managed to reach such a wide audience, signifying that, while Disney might have a stranglehold over current cinema, the same can't be said of Netflix, where it seems like almost any creator with any budget is given at the very least a fair chance. Not only that, but they're much more open to different ideas, which creates other problems such as overreliance on fast and cheap content, but can also lead to out-of-the-box masterpieces like Bojack Horseman and Arcane

[jmn]

This is a really, really interesting essay, and I hope more people see it. The "superheroes are like any other genre" argument has never made much sense to me, but as an amateur in the cinephile space (took some classes, never studied *that* deeply) I've often had a hard time enunciating what doesn't work about that take. This really seems to nail it.
For me, what's really stood out in modern times is the death of the "middle class" of movies. We still get some quasi-indie content that studios are ok distributing given how cheaply they can be made, we get the gigantic blockbusters, but the days of mid-budget comedies, family films, dramas, etc. making an impact on the popular imagination seems buried. Maybe this is due to theater tickets becoming increasingly expensive and people only wanting to spend their cinema dollars on films that "need big screen presentation", but it's not as if people didn't have cable and TVs to watch back in the 80s and 90s, too.
The other part is the really creepy aspect of "branding" that you discuss. It's crazy to think, but a film like the original Star Wars, or something like Back to the Future likely would have no prayer of being made today: high concept escapist fare that isn't based on a pre-existing IP, and in many cases is an original creation for the silver screen. Naturally, Disney and Universal are happy to leverage those brands in today's toy and nostalgia markets, but they'd never greenlight them in today's film market.
Where this really goes off the rails is when we then have, for lack of a better term, "stans" for billion dollar corporations. It kind of pains me to see people who in many walks of their life would condemn such concentration and monopolization going on in an industry shouting down wider criticism of trends like, for example, Disney's gradual takeover of the box office via studio acquisitions. One is welcome to enjoy a MCU movie, for example, while hopefully still acknowledging the potentially dark road this is leading us down.

[four-en-tee]

"There are some consistent points. Jessie James is always an outlaw. Billy the kid is always defined by his youth."

The Man With No Name is always played by Clint Eastwood.

[leonarddillon]

If anything, the only other genre that's similar to Westerns are Samurai films from Japan. Countles scholars have analyzed the comparisons and how both genres took too many inspirations from each other as contemporaries that it's only cultural, asthetics, and location that's the only difference. Western film director's have given gifts to Akira Kurosawa for taking his storytelling style and many Samurai films unapologetically take the "Lone Stranger" trope facing the adversity of evil people taking control of lawless lands. Superheroes films are only being compared to Westerns based on the plethora of films chasing a trend in modern day as opposed to old-fashioned cinema years. My feelings of the superhero genre being compared to Westerns is definitely mutual in this video.

[sildaz]

Good analysis. While we can't predict how this will effect the future of cinema, monopolies and the cultural dominance of one type of film are never a good thing

[enigmaodell]

What’s weird is that superhero comics can be pretty different. A noir mystery, psychological thriller, over the top brawl, speculative fiction, or buddy comedy.

[mafeuk]

Comic book movies are here to stay, I just hope they move on from superheroes to focus on different stuff like horror. Like what happened on the 1970s when comics started focusing more on horror and the supernatural.