Why Hollywood Found it Impossible to Make a Decent Superhero Movie

On the commentary track to the DVD "Drunken Master" with Jackie Chan martial arts movie expert Ric Meyers explained how he went from being a comic book journalist to writing exclusively about Kung Fu movies. According to Meyers he had been in a discussion with some friends about how Hollywood was not capable of making a decent superhero movie when they mentioned that the Hong Kong cinema was getting it right. To prove their point they took Meyers to a theater in Chinatown where an undubbed subtitled print of "Drunken Master" was playing along with a second martial arts movie. For some strange reason Meyers had never seen one of these movies before even though a few years earlier Kung Fu mania had swept America sending hundreds of dubbed Chinese and Japanese martial arts movies into theaters alongside the disaster, blaxploitation and other B movies popular in the early 70's. ( To be fair, television had yet to dare to broadcast any dubbed foreign martial arts film and was even reluctant to air the tamer American chop socky movies like "Billy Jack" in prime time. ) Probably even stranger was the discussion of how Hollywood was treating the superhero genre in 1979 when the only one in theaters at the time was "Superman", an decent depiction of the comic and a great movie. The era of truly awful superhero movies would not really begin until the release of "Superman III" in 1983. To that date Hollywood had only made three superhero feature films, "Superman" in 1978, "Batman" released in 1966 which was a continuation of the then popular campy television series with Adam West, and another Superman movie "Superman and the Mole Men" in 1951 which also served as the pilot for the George Reeves Superman series. Most of Meyers complaints would have been about superheroes depicted on television series.

Hollywood first noticed the superheroes in the 1940, very soon after the first official super hero comics were released. However, they only saw them as subjects for Saturday afternoon serials, those mini movies shown in chapters and marketed to young kids along with Hopalong Cassidy and Bugs Bunny. Very little money was ever spent on the serials and the superheroes used, such as Captain America and Batman, rarely displayed any powers other than the ability to fist fight. The real money was being spent on sci-fi serials such as Buck Rogers and Flash Gorden. In the 1950's "Superman and the Mole Men" was shot specifically so that the producer would have a budget for his planned syndicated television series. The movie made enough money at the box office to pay for the production of the first few episodes of the syndicated series "The Adventures of Superman" while sponsors paid for the rest of the show's production. Shot on the same low budget at the movie serials had, Superman went around fighting gangsters instead of the giant robots and mad scientists he fought in comic books and the popular Max Fleischer animated cartoon series. "The Adventures of Superman" remained on and of in production throughout the 50's until it's star George Reeves committed suicide in 1959.

In the 1960's producer William Dozier was interested in reviving the Superman series with a new actor, but then found out the producer of "The Adventures of Superman" was still holding on to the television rights to Superman with his own plans to some day revive the series. Dozier changed plans to produce a series based on "The Green Hornet" radio show but once again the rights to that hero was being held up. His third choice was Batman. Columbia Pictures had formerly owned the film and television rights to that character but after making two movie serials had allowed them to lapse. Realizing that the good Batman stories in the comic books and the best villains were far too dark for television broadcast Dozier realized the only way he would be allowed to put them on network television would be if he camped the series up. Showing the series as cartooney as possible allowed him to get away with occasionally killing off characters as well as the weekly attempt on Batman and Robin's lives. The campiness was what made the series popular and soon became it's formula. The formula spread to other network shows such as "Lost in Space" and soon most network action series were campy. Ironically when Dozier had obtained the rights to "The Green Hornet" a year later he decided the show would not have any camp whatsoever. Despite having Bruce Lee cast as the Green Hornet's sidekick Kato the series failed to which network executives assumed that Dozier's refusal to make "The Green Hornet" campy like Batman had doomed the series.

Superheroes made the return to prime time television in the 1970's with the series "Wonder Woman" with buxom actress Linda Carter*. While clearly the show's producer was influenced by the campiness of the previous "Batman" series it was mostly 70's television cheesiness that effected the series. Once again it was the budget that dictated how faithful the series was to the comic book and which powers Wonder Woman displayed. Other superheroes were looked at for possible use on live television shows. Captain Marvel was next in the live action Saturday morning series "Shazam!"* Produced by Filmation it suffered from a brand new budget cut. This was the elimination of characters from the comic book, specifically the wizard Shazam that the series was named after. In the comic book Shazam was the one who gave Billy Baston his powers telling Billy that if he wanted to turn into Captain Marvel all he need do is yell out his name Shazam! While Shazam dies shortly after this his ghost appears to Billy throughout the comic book series as a ghost. In the series instead of talking to the ghost of Shazam Billy talks to the animated ghosts of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury. The reason for this? Filmation would have to pay DC for every character they used from the comic book. They already had to pay separately for both Billy Baston and Captain Marvel and did not feel like paying for any other characters. Since DC did not own the rights to the other ghosts Filmation could use them for free. Filmation was also reluctant to pay for the rights of any of Captain Marvel's regular villains.

This also played into other superhero series. Producers for "The Incredible Hulk" only paid for the Hulk character. Instead of paying for his alter ego Bruce Banner producers called him David Bruce Banner thus saving them money. The budget also meant a different origin. There was no way producers could afford the special effects of a nuclear weapon going off and dousing Banner with gamma rays. Instead Banner deliberately gives himself gamma rays as part of an experiment. The budget also meant they could not afford to give the Hulk the same powers as in the comic book. This meant no power of flight, no causing earthquakes by stamping on the ground and no lifting up tanks and hurling them. The decision not to have the hulk talk as in the comic book was also dictated by the budget. Had Lou Ferrigno been given lines then union rules dictated that he would have been paid a lot more. Basically he was being paid as a stunt man and not as the star of the show. Even the grunts and screams the Hulk made were dubbed in by Ted Cassidy ( better known as Lurch from the Addams Family ) to prevent any claim that the hulks grunts counted as lines. Other Marvel superheroes at the time to be given television shows were drastically altered for budgetary reasons, usually eliminating characters and alter egos and more often then not doing away with powers that would be too costly to film. Costumes were also altered to be made out of fabrics that were cheaper to maintain. Even when a series came close, such as with "Spider-man", the special effects used for the series were so cheap they made the character look ridiculous.

*While Captain Marvel's series predated Wonder Woman's series by a year, the initial pre series television pilot for Wonder Woman with Cathy Lee Crosby predated Captain Marvel by a few months. Captain Marvel was often paired with a character created by Filmation called Isis for the "Shazam!/Isis Hour".

"Superman" was the first superhero movie released to American theaters in over a decade, the first not to be an extended episode of a television series, and the first with a decent budget. It was in response to the success of "Star Wars" that Warner Brothers agreed to beef up the budget. The original script was campy but inevitably producers decided to tone the camp down. A decision was made to keep a strong tongue and cheek comedy element, and the script called for Lex Luthor to be saddled with two incompetent assistants played by Ned Beatty and Valerie Perrine. This was not unusual for the time as other action movies such as the Star Wars and James Bond series also relied heavily on comedy. The Superman movie series remained faithful to the comic book retaining most of it's supporting characters, powers, and settings. There was not much there to complain about with exception to the comedy which picked up by the third movie where producers cast Richard Pryor as a prominent character. "Superman III" had other problems including cast members unwilling to return for any new sequels and a smaller budget that left the movie looking half finished.

In 1986 Marvel Comics saw their first Superhero movie released with "Howard the Duck". A combination of poor production decisions such as the duck costume and the decision for a deliberately campy script contributed to a bad movie which in turn began a long string of failures for Marvel. The company had been in court for the past six years fighting over the rights to Howard with it's creator Steve Gerber, and now owning the character had hoped the movie would make him popular. The failure of the movie pretty much destroyed the character and it would be another decade before Howard appeared in another book. Marvel insisted from that point on that they wanted the ability to decline to release any movies with their characters, this as insurance against any other motion picture company ruining a character with a bad movie. Three years after "Howard the Duck" came "The Punisher" which Marvel also pulled from distribution, followed by "Captain America". Perhaps it was no coincidence that these movies turned out so bad as they were produced by small independent studios who were better known for direct to video B movies. Roger Corman made a film version of "The Fantastic Four" which Marvel also shelved. According to Stan Lee the production company Constantin Films was going to lose the film rights to Fantastic Four unless they began production of a movie by 1992. The movie Constantine intended to make needed a $40 million budget which they did not have, so for legal purposes they asked Roger Corman to produce a cheap $2 million Fantastic Four movie. The plan worked and Constantine retained the rights to the Fantastic Four for another decade, long enough to finally begin production on a proper movie.

While Marvel had farmed out the rights to their heroes to low budget studios that ended up producing garbage, DC Comics was owned by Warner Brothers and therefore gave that studio first crack. In 1989 they released "Batman" which was produced and directed by Tim Burton. The years prior had seen the Batman character go through many changes, from the original dark version Bob Kane created to the kid friendly Comic Book Authority approved Batman of the 50's, to Batman's brief campy period in response to the success of the 1960's television series, to it's return to the comics dark roots in the 70's, to finally the character's even darker image after the release of the graphic novel "The Dark Knight" in the 80's. Warner Brothers could not make up it's mind what version of Batman they wanted and just prior to hiring Burton were considering bringing back Adam West. Tim Burton's darker version of Batman won out, but not for long. Despite two successful Batman movies under Burton's direction executives at Warner Brothers could not help but think that a campier version of Batman would have been more successful. Eventually Burton was forced out of the series and Joel Schumacher was brought in specifically because he understood that from now on the executives would have creative control. The executive controlled campy Batman resulted in one of the worst motion pictures ever made "Batman and Robin". The series quickly went on an extended hiatus.

The end of the 90's saw the first successful release of a Marvel movie, "Blade", another unsuccessful adaption of a DC superhero through Warner Brothers, "Steel". Warner Brothers continued to insist on being the studio that released movies of DC characters, but after the critical failure of "Batman and Robin" and box office failure of "Steel" decided that they would have to rethink all their comic book movies. This virtually cleared the field for Marvel characters and a sudden string of successful movies, "X-Men", "Blade II" and "Spider-Man". "Daredevil" opened to mixed reviews as did the second X-Men movie. Then finally Marvel stumbled with "Hulk" which was given to Ang Lee who directed a movie critics mostly liked, but alienated the movie's core audience with too much talk and not enough action. And then came the second Punisher movie which got mostly bad reviews. For the next few years there were plenty of superhero movies that ranged from fun to awful. One standout movie was "Batman Begins", Director Christopher Nolan's solution to the Batman franchise. His solution was simple, reboot the series. Pretend the other movies did not exist. Start the franchise over. The idea of rebooting a franchise was picked up by Marvel who decided it was time to take control of their movies. The result was ""The Incredible Hulk" which ignored the Hulk movie released a couple of years earlier. Marvel also too control of "Iron Man" and announced that they would retain creative control of all their other characters from that point on. Comic book fans took this news with mixed results as at the time they were not happy with the editorial decisions back at Marvel. Warner Brothers attempted to revive the Superman series with a partial reboot called "Superman Returns", a movie that ignored all but the first two Superman movies in Warner Brother's franchise.

With such great movies as "Iron Man" and "The Dark Knight" being released it would seem like Hollywood studios finally got how to make a proper superhero movie, and yet at the same time they still release movies of lower quality like "Punisher: War Zone". Mistakes are still made. So why did it take so long for Hollywood to begin to get it right? Well, first of all there are a few things to consider. For one Hollywood movies rarely stay faithful to their source material. Remember "The Wizard of Oz"? Nothing like the book. This all has to do with a clash of story structures. Hollywood loves to follow formulas. It makes them feel safe to copy a formula that works two thirds of the time rather than risk everything by copying the comic book verbatim. There is also the budget to consider. Budgets dictate what ends up on the script and the quality of the final product. Characters and action sequences are left out whenever producers can only raise a small budget. Special effects not done properly can make any superhero movie look stupid even if it did have a good script. A bigger problem seems to be the Tim Burton effect. While allowing a talented director to have full creative control over a project seemed to be the right thing for Burton's first two Batman movies as well as the Christopher Nolan reboot, it could also alienate long time readers of the book. A good director with creative control will usually decide to make major changes to a comic book hero because he felt he had a better story to tell. But one must also understand that movie studios are businesses. They are run by executives who want to see their product make the maximum amount of money. If they think that turning a superhero movie into a comedy will bring in a bigger audience then they will do it. If they think adding new characters will allow them to merchandise an exclusive line of toys hen those characters will be created. If they think miscasting a superhero with a well known actor will bring in bigger box office even if the end result is a weaker movie then they will still miscast that part. They are there to make money and only agreed to a superhero movie because the character is currently popular. If they thing screwing things up will make them money then they will. When Ric Meyers gushed at how the typical Hong Kong martial arts movie was handling it's heroes with the kind of respect that Hollywood was not doing with superheroes the genre was only three feature films old. Martial arts movies had been around for a long time by then and were released in the hundreds, enough time for the Chinese to get their formulas right. He should have also mentioned that the Jackie Chan movie he was gushing over was so successful back in China that it opened up an age where martial arts movies were turned into campy comedies.