Clearly, everyone wants to give their opinion on superhero films these days. After Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, it’s Tom Hanks’ turn to give his opinion on superhero films.
Fed up with superhero movies?
At the moment it is bon ton to bring down the superheroic genre. A sort of general fed up is beginning to take shape. Audiences and artists alike seem to have had enough of superhero films. But is this really the case? Some films of the genre like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Marvels or Joker: Folie à deux were indeed box office failures. But there are still significant counter-examples. Deadpool & Wolverine was a huge success with more of 1.3 billion dollars of box office revenue. It is also the R-rated movie which brought in the most money in the history of cinema. Likewise, Venom : The Last Dance made a rather convincing start with more than $316 million of recipes.
Despite everything, artists are beginning to express their weariness with the genre. Martin Scorsese et Francis Ford Coppola have already had fun criticizing superhero films and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It is now the turn of the immense Tom Hanks to give his opinion.
Tom Hanks against superhero films?
Tom Hanks is back in theaters this week on the occasion of Here – The Most Beautiful Years of Our Lives, the new film of Robert Zemeckis. In full promotion of the feature film, Tom Hanks weighs in on the state of the superhero genre in the film industry. He gave his opinion on the question on the podcast microphone Happy Sad Confused. An intervention in which he reveals having never met Kevin Feige or James Gunn to talk about a possible induction into the MCU or the DCU. Anyway, he finds that the era of superheroes is over.
Remember in the 1970s and 1980s they tried to make a TV version of Captain America and Spider Man? There was also Adam West’s Batman. The technology didn’t exist to make it look like what we saw in the comics back then. But now it’s possible. We can do anything. Christopher Reeve’s Superman was the first to come close due to the advanced technology at the time that allowed the wires that held him aloft to be removed. We all believed a man could fly when we saw him. It was quite extraordinary.
But if Tom Hanks liked old superhero movieshe finds that the genre is currently running out of steam, especially narratively:
The film industry tells itself every time that if it works, it will work again. But the public is always one step ahead of the industry. Viewers see something too familiar and think, “I’ve seen that before.” Doing amazing things is no longer enough. It’s about knowing what story you want to tell. What is the point of all these stories? People want to be talked to about themselves too. It feels like we’ve reached the end of something and we’re exploring new territory on this every year.
So perhaps this is why we have never seen and will probably never see Tom Hanks in a superhero film. Too bad, because that would have added a new string to his bow…
