Proof that 2016 Was the Best Year Ever for Movies

A little while back, I ran across some click bait claiming 1999 was the last great year of movies. The author compared such medium-expanding greats as Fight Club, American Beauty, Magnolia and Being John Malkovich with the sorry profusion of superhero films today. I was surprised a whole genre could be so slighted, and then when the first photos of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman appeared, I realized something must be said, preferably with some hyperbole:

We live in the Silver Age of Hollywood.

In 1989, I was all about Tim Burton’s Batman. Before it came out, I caught teasers on a little black-and-white television with rabbit-ear antennae. I had the movie comic. My dad, who knew Purple Rain was among my earliest music purchases, bought me the soundtrack by Prince on cassette. My friends and I all agreed that Kim Basinger, who played reporter Vicki Vale, was “hot.”

Batman was a big deal. Until then, superhero movies had been a lot like Shakespeare in the park: men in colorful tights, stilted dialogue, occasional fighting. Batman and Batman Returns changed all that by turning the tights into armor and shrouding everything in a lot of shadow. Suddenly, actors--and big names like Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer--could look like the larger-than-life figures from the pages of comic books, and the movies could be cool.

New-style fan trailer for Batman:

 

After that, the Batman films trundled on, but superhero films on the whole languished until X-Men in 2000. Perfect casting, emotional subplots, and more stylish costumes set a new standard that director Sam Raimi quickly met with Spider-Man in 2002. Big budgets, new technology, and artistic vision were making the bizarre and tacky worlds of comic books--and fantasy (The Lord of the Rings) and science fiction (The Matrix)--possible for the silver screen in ways that weren’t cringe-inducing. Thus, 1999 wasn’t Hollywood’s last good year, it was the beginning of a better Hollywood.

Now we have the glory that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and more. The Avengers in particular showed that Hollywood can pull off a superhero ensemble wearing costumes that resemble the traditional ones, make it appeal to a broad audience, and rake in a fortune at the box office. It’s the apotheosis of Stan Lee! Someone go commission a painting!

As a lifetime reader of comic books, this is a dream come true.

Cynics might insist that for all their success, for all their dazzle, superhero movies are still fluff, but don’t buy it. That’s only on the surface. Underneath, there are powerful, universal themes of justice, responsibility, morality and identity. Along the lines of that last is the nature of masks: what they hide, what they reveal, how they represent the different sides of a single personality, how they spice things up. A lot of that can be found in the iconic scene in Spider-Man when Spidey kisses Mary Jane in the rain.

I don’t expect many people to agree, but I’ve long felt genre flicks and comic books are where the true edge is in art today. Literary fiction and whatever’s winning Academy Awards are largely playing it safe, no matter how serious their stated subject matter. Comic books, by hiding what they’re really about under easily dismissible manifest content, can be much more effective, moving and subversive.

Director Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy (previous post) is a great example of how superhero films can be arty and deep, and with Man of Steel (previous post) director Zack Snyder finally delivered a Superman with dramatic potential. Henry Cavill, one of the highlights of The Tudors, plays a Kent/Kal-El who is pretty, sympathetic, gritty and not a putz, so I’m glad he will be reprising his role in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Which brings me back to Wonder Woman, whose Amazonian costume revealed recently recalls some of my favorite designs from the comics:

 

If you had told me in 1989 that in 2016 I would be able to see a movie called Batman v Superman and it would also feature Wonder Woman, I would have started paying a lot more attention in Science so I could make a Hot Tub Time Machine. The uses are obvious: quality time with Kim Basinger and traveling to 2016 to see The Bat, Supes and Princess Diana tear it up on the big screen.

And that’s why 2016 will be the best year in movies that ever was. Superhero movies aren’t what’s wrong with Hollywood today, they’re why Hollywood is bigger and better today and looks only to improve for a while to come.