The Quickening: Can superhero films evolve?

Have you seen EndGame?

Me too.

The MCU is probably the biggest cultural event in history since Star Wars (I would say Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, but those are adaptations, we know where they’re going, here we don’t know the following route).

As a film it’s decent, it’s entertaining, but it leaves me asking to myself: Where are superhero films going?

I’m not the first one who comes up with this comparison, but superheroes and western had a lot in common, from its clumsy origins to creating more decent works to becoming a staple of cinema. The obvious thing is to think superheroes will follow the same path, but no.

Superhero films tends to the cinematic universe. If Marvel maintains such a unified aesthetic it’s because they want us to watch its movies not as individual films, but as the next part of the Great Marvel Saga. The hype for Infinity War and EndGame is because all previous movies built the bridge to these ones. Every film is, to an extend and in their own way, a sequel to the previous one and that leads to creative limitations. That’s why Edgar Wright left his director position for Ant-man.

Let’s see it this way. What do Logan, The Dark Knight and Deadpool have in common?

None of these films depend of another to exist. When Tim Burton directed his version of Batman, in the only thing he was thinking was creating his own version of Batman.

A genre needs freedom to evolve, but a cinematic universe needs coherence to progress. That’s why I think superheroes are stuck in a grey area and, as much as Kevin Feige has said that EndGame will change things, how are we sure of that?

I firmly believe Marvel will want to preserve the status quo and we’ll go on repeat for Phase 4 but with different characters because the formula has worked well enough for them. A cinematic universe can’t allow its movies to be so different from each other: you watch one to go to the next to go to the next to go to the next, it’s in its nature.

That’s why that little light of hope I had of watching something new since Logan won’t be fulfilled and the more years go by, that infamous quote from Alejandro González Inárritu is becoming truer. In the end, the superhero movies that will be remember in the future are those which give what they promise with no pretentiousness (Kick-Ass, first Avengers, first Guardians of the Galaxy, Deadpool, Dredd, Into the Spider-verse, Shazam!, Wonder Woman) and those that break the mold or delivered something so different that they don’t really look like superhero films (The Dark Knight, first Iron man, Watchmen, Man of Steel, The Winter Soldier, Days of Future Past, Logan, Joker)

EndGame promises the start of something new, but then we’ll have Spider-man: Far from Home, and after that Shang-Chi, and after that Doctor Strange 2, and after that Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and after that...

With such a planned future, is there room for individual voices?