The State of the Superhero, 2019

Spoilers for "Endgame" ahead.

Oh boy, what a year. Disney and Marvel are on top of the world, with the record breaking "Avengers: Endgame," and billion dollar earners "Captain Marvel" and "Spider-man: Far From Home." I liked "Endgame" because it delivered a lot of payoff, but the other two were on the weaker side. The MCU definitely reached a climactic moment in 2019, because of the momentum of all of these films in one continuous storyline. Next year, however, with "Black Widow" and "Eternals," we're bound to see an ebb in Marvel's fortunes as far as the box office is concerned. However, there's every reason to hope that the films will be good. Both will be directed by women and star women, a nice break from form.

Disney also acquired Fox and their slate, absorbing the critical and commercial failure of last summer's "Dark Phoenix," and punting "New Mutants" to next spring. Frankly, the acquisition looks worse the longer I think about it. If Disney had "X-men" from the start, the movies would have been more consistent, but they also would have been duller and blander. We never would have had "Logan" or the "Deadpool" movies. There's no way that "Legion" would have made it past a first season. I think about the "Iron Man" sequel we could have had, addressing Tony Stark's battles with alcohol, and I'm still a little pissed off. "New Mutants" is being retooled to be a standalone film, and I'm looking forward to it as a quasi-horror film with a lot of young actors I like. Everything else that Fox had in development, including "X-Force," "Gambit," and even "Deadpool 3," are in limbo.

So right now Warners and Sony are the best hope for more interesting superhero film content. Warners has already delivered with "Joker," possibly the most unlikely Oscar hopeful of the past several years. While technically a comic book feature, this is really a throwback to '80s Scorsese pictures, and directed by Todd Philips of all people. It's a great example of someone taking a big chance with a well known property. I also wish that "Shazam!" had done better. It had its problems, but it was nice seeing a superhero film aimed squarely at kids, and I like the characters that it set up. I'm also looking forward to Cathy Yan's "Birds of Prey," which is a female ensemble piece. It may be a mess, but it'll be a novel kind of mess. I expect that "Wonder Woman 1984" will be the film to beat next year at the box office, banking heavily on more nostalgia. Further out, "The Batman" with Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson, and the "Suicide Squad" reboot with James Gunn are all in various stages of coming together.

Sony's superhero films next year are "Morbius" and "Venom 2," neither of which I have much interest in. However, the studio also deserves many kudos for throwing the biggest wrench into Disney and Marvel's plans by not backing down in the custody battle over Spider-man. Frankly, I would have been perfectly happy to see Spidey leave the MCU. Holland has proven he's popular enough that he'll be able to carry future films just fine by himself. Sony has had its ups and downs with the character, but "Into the Spider-verse" showed that they're willing to take risks that Marvel isn't in a position to. The superhero film I'm looking forward to the most right now is the proposed Spider-Gwen spinoff, possibly featuring more Spider heroines.

Alas, the smaller superhero films like "Brightburn" and the "Hellboy" reboot all crashed and burned. These were reportedly pretty awful films anyway, so it's no great loss. If you count "Glass" as a superhero film, it was a win for M. Night Shyamalan, but audience reactions were unenthusiastic to say the least. Next year, there are a couple of smaller superhero projects that might make some waves. The most prominent one is "Bloodshot," technically a Columbia/Sony production, about a nanotech-enhanced hero played by Vin Diesel. That one's currently set for February.

Television and streaming, of course, are offering even more superhero content, but that's a post for another day.

---