After watching Iron Man 2 with Tanja and the Nerd Herd, I was watching the Totally Rad Show review of it at the gym. It got me thinking about films and origin stories, specifically when it comes to superheroes and comic book films.
Now, I've heard from people that the second film can be more difficult than the first, due to the terrors of sequelitis, the law of diminishing returns, and viewer fatigue. Other comments have said that sequel films are easier due to the fact that you don't need to spend half the film introducing everyone, but can get right down to telling the story you want.
Where it gets interesting with Superhero stories is simple: everyone knows the end of the origin story. We know Peter Parker will become Spider-Man. We know Bruce Wayne will be Batman. We know Wolverine may take off in a snit, but he'll always come back and be part of the X-Men. Everyone knows this plucky kid/cavaleir inventor/troubled man will become the superhero. If nothing else, we know it because it was on the poster for the film that we walked by to get into the theatre. So how do you build tension?
Well, in the case of the better superhero stories/films, you make the origin not about the destination, but about the journey. This can be difficult, and may require fleshing out due to the fact that most comic book origins are a single issue. That's 16-25 pages, with ads, to go from soup to nuts, introduction to actualisation. In the 40s, 50s, and 60s, it was not hard. Hey look! That's your hero. We know because he's on the cover. He got his powers from a lightning strike and now he can run fast, calls himself The Flash, and fights crime. Boom. Done. That took about two pages. That, however, makes for a terrible film. So the better ones (which is how I started this paragraph) take their time and use the origin to establish character.
Batman? Show the parents' death. Show the training. Show how determined and dangerous he becomes. Spider-man? Show the getting of the powers. Show the fun side. Show it turning dark and the acceptance of responsibility. Iron Man? Show him cavalier. Show his interest turn from the frivolous to the immediate (ie survival). Show him using his genius outside the box and that with constraints comes true discovery (In a CAVE! With a BOX OF SCRAPS!).
This is why, when Marvel asked Brian Michael Bendis to create a new variant of Spider-Man (Ultimate Spider-Man) with no continuity to the 40+ years of history, he took a bold step and instead of telling the origin in the first issue, he used the entire first story arc. All 6 issues of it. And it was heralded as a masterpiece of storytelling. By the end of it, we don't just know Spider-man. We know Peter Parker, the kid who, just maybe, has it in him to be a hero.
I have no idea where I was going with this, but I find all of this fascinating. I love the wayposts of the Hero's Journey. I love looking at stories, be they film, book, comic or TV show slightly off to the side so you can see the strings. It the same reason I love magic. You can watch it and love the spectacle, and you can also appreciate the technique. Plus, once in a while, a magician will do something where you have NO idea how he did it. And that's real magic.
3 comments:
Then you get the heroes for whom an origin story isn't needed. The character is mysterious and that's part of the fun. The '90's were littered with such characters, and then when other creators got hold of them, they got back stories that just made them goofy. Take Wolverine for example: I could have lived my whole life without knowing his name is 'James'.
Or Cable, where they debuted him and then shoehorned in that he was Cyclops' son Nathan, but now a cyborg old guy with guns he shouldn't be able to hold who is always roaring at things.
And "James" is better than "mutated/evolved-by-High-Evolutionary-actual-wolverine" which was what he was originally meant to be.
I agree with the principle that withholding information can be a good thing, especially when the creative minds who could develop the canon aren't actually that great.
If they kept their mental traps shut, we'd have to use ours to fill in gaps, which can make for cooler entertainment. Then again, I think what I've just said was basically what you both have just said, but with more words, possibly proving my point. Uh...
*drools*
Anyway. I'm personally interested in things I don't entirely understand. If people tell me too much about it, it sometimes kills the fantasy/mystery, probably because it becomes obvious that it's just some dude's clumsy fabrication - where it wasn't before all was revealed.
There can be rare occasions where the entire world/person/gopher-hole is stripped back and shown to the audience in immense detail, while still keeping it alluring, but that takes a special type of mind.
Hey, look. I did the same thing. More words, same subject.
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