In an audiovisual universe saturated by superhero films, Tom Hanks has expressed a certain weariness with this type of production.
Tom Hanks is currently on a promotional tour for the film Here – The best years of our livesfor which he reunited with director Robert Zemeckis and actress Robin Wright, thus reconstituting the triumvirate of Forrest Gump.
Adapted from the graphic novel Here by Richard McGuire, the film traces the life of a family over several decades (and History in general) while maintaining the same unity of location: the living room of an American house. The proposal, however, did not appeal to the press or the American public. Robert Zemeckis' film received catastrophic reviews across the Atlantic (it was not shown to the French press), and for its arrival in theaters, Here got off to a disastrous start at the box office.
At the podcast microphone Happy Sad ConfusedTom Hanks returned to his experience with Robert Zemeckis, then the conversation turned to the topic of contemporary superhero films. If the actor has no particular grievance against this cinematic genre, he still points to a certain lack of steam.
Tom Hanks tired of Marvel/DC films
Tom Hanks began by clarifying that he had never met with Kevin Feige or James Gunn to discuss potential participation in the MCU or DCU. If the actor does not criticize the cinematographic policies of these two teams, according to him, after twenty years of great spectacle built with the trowel of special effects, spectators now aspire to deeper stories, more connected to the human experience .
Recalling the attempts to adapt Captain America or Spider-Man of the 1970s and 1980s, the actor stressed that the technologies at the time did not allow him to recreate the atmosphere of the comics. Then came the Superman with Christopher Reeve, first to create this “magic” as Tom Hanks defines it. Today, thanks to advances in special effects, studios can make any crazy thing come true.
« You can do anything. We can probably say that Christopher Reeve's Superman was the first to get close to it thanks to the advanced technology that allowed the removal of wires. We all believed [qu’un homme pouvait voler] when we saw him. It was quite extraordinary.«
Man of Style
However, by focusing on technical prowess, superhero films have forgotten the essential: telling a story. For Hanks, a film must have meaning, a statement about the human condition, beyond simple visual spectacle.
“Since it's possible to achieve anything on screen, we came to the idea of 'OK, that's true, but where's the story?' » You can dream of Lake Michigan and fill it with cuckoo clocks that form a three-headed dragon that breathes fire and destroys Chicago. It's possible. But for what purpose? What is the story and what will it say about us?«
The actor continued his argument by explaining that superhero cinema used to be less insane. It highlights the fact that there was indeed a moment when the values and moods of superheroes necessarily spoke to the public.
“There was a time, and I felt this way too, where we would go to DC and MCU movies to see these better versions of ourselves. God, I feel like an X-Men every now and then. I'm as confused as Spider-Man. I'm as angry as Batman. I love my country as much as Captain America.
We have come this far. We've had 20 years to explore this stuff, and now we're in an evolution and a place where we're asking: And what is the story? What is the theme? What is the goal of this film? »
Complete saturation?
Tom Hanks also suggests that the industry is wrong to believe that the money mill that is the superhero cinema genre can continue to run at full speed indefinitely :
“The industry often says if it works, it will work again, but the public is way ahead. Viewers see something too familiar and think, “I’ve seen that before, so what?”« Doing incredible things is not enough, you also have to know what story you want to tell. What is the point of all these stories? People want to be talked to about themselves also. We feel like we've reached the end of something and every year we explore new horizons on this subject. »
And the figures seem to prove him right: the latest productions from the DC or Marvel universe, such as Shazam : Fury of the Gods, The Flash, Madame Web or Ant-Man and the Wasp : Quantumaniahave had a string of failures at the box office. 2023 and 2024 seem to mark a turning point for the genre, where even a title like Joker: Folie à Deux completely fails in terms of theater attendance.
If exceptions remain, such as Deadpool 3 and its $1.3 billion in revenue, the overall trend seems to illustrate a decline in public interest. According to Hanks, spectators, accustomed to superhero stories, would now be looking for novelty, and stories with real dramatic scopecapable of provoking empathy from spectators and moving them.
What Tom Hanks describes is undoubtedly symptomatic of an industry which, by recycling formulas that are too well-established, causes saturation among the public. ” That [le public] wait, it’s new, it’s history”he concluded. May it be heard so that we can discover, likee Here by Robert Zemeckis, in theaters since November 6more unique proposals of their kind.
