{"id":169875,"date":"2022-07-07T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.premiumbeat.com\/blog\/?p=169875"},"modified":"2022-07-06T10:19:16","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T15:19:16","slug":"superhero-film-guide-for-superfans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.premiumbeat.com\/blog\/superhero-film-guide-for-superfans\/","title":{"rendered":"The Superhero Film: A Guide for Superfans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From tights and onesies to bikini briefs and masks, superheroes have captured our hearts since they first stepped onto the big screen.<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ah, the superhero film. That blockbuster hallmark that brings fans out of the heat (or the cold) for an oversized bucket of popcorn and a $20 soda. You get origin stories, extraordinary powers, epic battles of good versus evil, briefs, tights, and butt poses. You name it. What’s not to love?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, plenty (superhero films have, quite possibly, the pickiest fans of all cinephilia), but we’ll get to that. We can’t let the haters define the genre after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The superhero comes from a long tradition of larger-than-life heroes, and it achieved its final form during some of the most interesting (and tumultuous) days of the modern era. Even better for we film folk, though, is that the superhero film<\/em> developed more or less right alongside its eponymous namesake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually, we need to trace the roots of our favorite filmic genres through generations of print (or handwritten) and oral tradition before we can really fill out the family tree. Not so much with the superhero film. We went from comics to screen and back (and back, and back, and . . . back) pretty quickly. (We’ll touch on the recursive nature of the genre and its many media later on.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Tight clothes, mean mugs, and often the best effects Hollywood has to offer\u2014the superhero film will throw the kitchen sink at its audiences, and they usually love it. (Image via Disney<\/a>.)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So, grab your leotard and boots, and let’s rewind to the early days of the beloved superhero film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When Tights Became Cool<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Here’s what we know about superhero history . . . <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First off, superheroes have existed for a long<\/em> time\u2014we just didn’t call them superheroes<\/em>. The forbears of the modern superhero include the larger-than-life figures of antiquity. We’re talking David<\/a> (of “and Goliath” fame), Odysseus<\/a>, Gilgamesh<\/a> (from “The Epic of . . . “), and all the Greek demigods\u2014basically anyone who was capable of bigger\/better\/stronger-than-normal feats. The heroes in these stories come mostly from oral tradition and some ancient texts, but this is where we got the idea that these superhumans could walk among us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s not too hard to believe. But when did these heroes start wearing uniforms and branding themselves? We can go as far back as the stories of Robin Hood for a caped hero (13th-14th century), or we can look to France, circa 1909, for the winged adventures of L’Oiselle<\/a>, who relied on her super suit (essentially) for her powers of flight. But, what really drove the idea home in the United States was the tail-end of the era of vigilante justice (see here<\/a> for the Western-Superhero crossover episode).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Errol
Robin Hood, seen here portrayed by Errol Flynn<\/a> in 1938’s <\/em>The Adventures of Robin Hood<\/a>, is an early example of a costumed (uniformed?) hero with something of a branded identity running around and righting wrongs. (Image via Warner Bros.) <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, fascination with the lawless “frontier” of the American West was becoming the stuff of nostalgia, fantasy, and escapism. A lot of this territory had been gobbled up by the expansion of the U.S., most of its native inhabitants had been murdered or forcefully relocated, and there was increasingly less need for fascinating groups like the “Bald Knobbers<\/a>,” (I can’t make this stuff up) a group of vigilante heroes who fought and killed outlaws from roughly 1885-1889. What’s so important about these guys with their goofy crime-fighting name? They did all of this wearing black masks with horns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know . . . costumes<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kirk
Kirk Alyn was the first actor to play Superman in live-action for the 1948 film serial <\/em>Superman<\/a>. Fun fact: we largely have Superman to thank for the superhero’s tights-and-a-cape fit. Creators Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel found inspiration for their hero in the costumes of circus strongmen. (Image via Columbia Pictures<\/a>.)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So while the need for these roving gangs of do-gooders was drawing to a close, the idea behind the hero in the mask, helping folks not on the frontier, but in their very towns and cities, took hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final detail that sealed the deal for the superhero we know and love is probably The Scarlet Pimpernel<\/a><\/em> (and its spinoffs), a 1903 British play that took up the mantle of the masked hero and slapped on the idea of a secret identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presto. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once this cat was out of its proverbial bag, superfans everywhere were suddenly awash in heroes. The Gray Seal<\/a>, Zorro<\/a>, Buck Rogers<\/a>, The Shadow<\/a>, Flash Gordon<\/a>, The Phantom<\/a>\u2014even Popeye<\/a>. These guys all showed up between 1913 and 1936, just in time for the Golden Age of Comic Books<\/a> and, importantly for us, the rise of the superhero film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Superheroes on the Big Screen<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We tend to draw distinctions between televisual<\/em> and cinematic<\/em> when we’re talking about, well, watchable content (let’s not bring the internet into this just yet). But the two media were closer bedfellows back in the day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The superhero “film” (just . . . indulge me the term, all right?) emerged almost immediately following the advent of the superhero comic book. (This is where we’ll get into the reciprocity of superhero media\u2014and how they have created perpetual motion feedback loops when it comes to canonicity.) A lot of this has to do with how studios marketed their early superhero content, especially in the beginning before it was really fit<\/em> for the moniker of “superhero film.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The internet makes all kinds of different claims regarding The First Superhero FilmTM<\/small><\/sup>, so you can kind of grab whichever one suits you best (google Judex<\/a><\/em> to get started). For our criteria, however, everything mostly<\/em> begins with Zorro. Arguably, the first superhero film (as we’re defining it) was The Mark of Zorro<\/a><\/em> (1920), followed by Don Q, Son of Zorro<\/a><\/em> (1925). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These first two films were silent, but in 1936, we got The Bold Caballero<\/a><\/em>\u2014Zorro again, but this time a talking picture, in color<\/em>! (Because it was so expensive, Republic Pictures Corporation would not produce another color film until 1949.) In 1936, we got the film serial<\/em> Flash Gordon<\/a><\/em>\u2014and this is where we need to get a little soft with the edges of our media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Douglas
The Mark of Zorro (1920), starring Douglas Fairbanks<\/a>, is a silent film billed around the internet as follows: “A seemingly idiotic fop is really the courageous vigilante Zorro, who seeks to protect the oppressed.” Be that as it may, this forebear of the superhero film launched Fairbanks’s career, and it would later influence the development of such anti-foppish heroes as Batman. (Image via United Artists.)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The film serial<\/a> was sort of like coming to the theater to watch your favorite television show. It was a progression of short productions, usually episodic, that came out in theaters weekly. Flash Gordon<\/em> here was a bit of an outlier. Typically, these serials were inexpensive, so they lent themselves well to Westerns and superhero stories that appealed to younger viewers already familiar with comic books. Old Flash, however, was a major production of its time, and it elevated the format.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, even though Zorro had been making his mark on the screen for sixteen years by this point, the convergence of affordable cinematic storytelling, with inclinations toward adventure tales and superhero stories, led to the rise of the film serial. Over the next decade or so, fans would see the rise of serials Mandrake the Magician<\/a><\/em> (1939), The Shadow<\/a><\/em> (1940), Adventures of Captain Marvel<\/a><\/em> (1941), Batman<\/a><\/em> (1943), The Phantom<\/a><\/em> (1943), Captain America<\/a><\/em> (1944), and Superman<\/a><\/em> (1948). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Flash Gordon (1936) really changed the film serial game. The next twelve years would see serializations of some of the most famous names in superhero film history. (Image via Universal Pictures<\/a>.)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the late ’50s, the film serial lost popularity, but by then, the superhero genre was raging, especially in comic books. With no shortage of plot lines to film and plenty of eager young fans willing to cough up for tickets, the superhero film pulled on its Big Boy tights and made the transition into feature-length superhero films. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, it didn’t thumb its nose at television either. So, TV shows, movies, books, comics, and (after a while) video games formed a swarming whirlwind of super-content that would give rise to the Knights Canonical, whose mandate from God was to police the fun of superhero audiences everywhere, lest some heresy slip through the cracks and spoil the purity of the storylines. (Truly, few other content families have this multi-modal rule over their fanbases, much to the dismay of stiff-lipped cinephiles in aging theaters.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what happened next? Well, pretty much everything you’ve come to know as a superhero film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How Did We Get Here?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Superhero films, like any other genre films, are the products of what came before them. They’re layered, like strata, with ideas and motifs that proved successful. Not dissimilar to natural selection, the aspects of superhero films that resonate best with audiences survive to show up in other films. Those that don’t are lost to the ages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot happened in the world between, oh, 1930 and . . . now<\/em>. Some world wars, a great depression, the rise of neoliberalism\u2014there’s a dissertation in there about how global politics influenced the rise of the super person, but we shan’t go into that much detail. Instead, let’s briefly tour how the modern superhero film got its wings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Early Years<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Enter the Great Depression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you haven’t already heard the stories of the financial cataclysm that would define the twentieth century, go have a quick read. It changed everything<\/em>, from how we lived to how we earned money to how we farmed. Virtually no one went unaffected by this market apocalypse that simply swallowed everyone’s money with nary a polite belch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, you know, media audiences were in a mood<\/em>, we could say. What did that mean for our burgeoning film genre?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
This photo by the legendary photojournalist Dorothea Lange<\/a> depicts a destitute American family in 1936, living in a shanty. This was a common experience during the Great Depression. (Image via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

These were the early days of the on-screen genre. Depending on how you look at it, filmmakers had been taking steps in this direction for the last couple of decades, and there are some shining moments in cinematic history there that are worth your time. But for the most part, this is where the superhero starts to take a somewhat uniform. . . ah . . . form<\/em>. Morality is clear, conflict is straightforward, and the world has seriously bad taste for inequality (see the Great Depression above).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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