Abstract
After almost 20 years of a succesful run of superhero films it seems that we are now entering into the fully-developed format of this kind of cinema. Through films like “Avengers: Infinity War”, “Logan” or “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse” the general audience all over the world is becoming familiar with strictly comics-based forms and ideas like retcon, crossover or the multiverse paradigm (that serves as a model for ‘infinite’ superhero narratives and limitless iterations of characters). Despite the fact that popular cinema had already introduced some of these elements before – like the crossover aesthetic in Universal Studios’ horrors from the 1930s and 1940s – modern superhero cinematic universes can be seen as much more demanding productions for the viewers in terms of following strongly comic books-based modes of the ‘multiverse-centric’ perception. As a result we can right now observe an emerging process of turning even the non-superheroic popular cinematic features into very ‘comic booky’ narrative patterns. In this article I’m interested in analyzing the most recent cases of superhero cinema by looking at some specific titles as a way of introducing the narrative systems and tools from superhero comics into cinema.
Highlights
Since 2017 the newly established cinematic meta-genre known as a comic book film – which is synonymous with a superhero movie with its dominant super-human characters – seems to gain more and more recognition as a profitable and respectable line of modern cinema
After the financial and critical success of recent superhero films that endure the idea of a narrative multiverse it would be reasonable to assume that in the following years the quantum narrative will become more prominent within the area of comic book cinema
By doing so all the negative voices about the ”Avengers effect” commonly circle around its negative impact on spectators and their lack of ability to appreciate any non-superhero related content which leads to some bizarre conclusions about ‘fanboy-ization’ of film literacy and criticism
Summary
Since 2017 the newly established cinematic meta-genre known as a comic book film – which is synonymous with a superhero movie with its dominant super-human characters – seems to gain more and more recognition as a profitable and respectable line of modern cinema. It is interesting that amongst the general contempt for superheroes-led ‘lazy blockbusters’ Buckmaster feels the need to underline the element of a limited ‘narrative efficiency’ as the main guilt of Endgame (the most elaborate narrative case of a modern comic book film) It is nothing new, to find a criticism of superhero stories as never-truly-ended plots that constantly recycle the same characters, twists and narrative patterns to serve the most predictable (and safe) form of entertainment. Some of the researchers are trying to find a way to put superhero films into the audiovisual patterns of storytelling, suggesting that this area of cinema can be regarded as ‘motion comics’ Such is the case of Maya Philips’s article ”The Narrative Experiment That Is the Marvel Cinematic Universe” that stands in contrast to Buckmaster’s critical view and tries to appreciate the new narrative formula of Marvel Studios’ productions by comparing them to the formula of a soap opera: ”Unlike most novels and films, soaps are all middle, he [Rick Altman – T.Ż.] writes. The balance between cataclysm and continuity has led superhero comics again and again toward the development of narrative tropes of revision, opening their narrative worlds up to maximal contingency” (Backman, 2014, p. 203)
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