Why Superhero Movies Aren't So Super

Here's a movie joke: "Have you seen the superhero movie this summer?"

*cue hysterical laughter*

Here's a list of some of the superhero movies we've had come out between 2010 and now (June 2013): 

Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, The Amazing Spiderman, Thor, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Jonah Hex, Captain America, X-Men First Class, The Green Lantern, The Green Hornet, The Dark Knight Rises, Man of Steel SOMEONE GET ME A GLASS OF WATER, STAT.

There is an industry-wide problem with tentpole movies (aka hugely expensive movies that are expected to bring in the big ticket dollars). It's tied into the way that movies are shopped and funded. Especially in a bad economy, it's real tempting for The Powers That Be to only fund movies that come pre-equipped with platforms. The industry has had a boom of success with previous superhero movies, so that's what studios jump toward. After all, why would you fund a total unknown over a comic book adaptation with a built-in audience?

The problem with superhero movies in particular is twofold: First, superhero movies, for a variety of reasons, tend toward very similar themes and conflicts. Second, when you have investors that are already only willing to fund these tentpole projects, that means that they are by default unwilling to allow a lot of creative changes.

Why are all superhero movies similar? Do they have to be? Well, yes, to a degree. All movies that center around a certain device (for instance, Boy and His X movies) are going to necessarily be similar because they are appealing for the same reasons and explore the same issues. At their hearts, are ET and  Free Willy all that different? Both are movies about a young boy's friendship with a non-human, and how he grows as a person as a result of the relationship. That's it.

At their base level, superhero movies are about what happens when you take an ordinary human and give them extraordinary powers. It's a dramatization of being given responsibility in real life. To a certain extent, it's essentially wish fulfillment - we all want to believe that when the chips are down and the weight of the world is on our shoulders, we'll pull through.

Giving a person superpowers might sound like it opens up a ton of possibilities, but in terms of storytelling, it's actually incredibly restrictive. In order to have the audience sympathize with your character, they must use their powers to fight the good fight. Otherwise, they're killing people by default.

So now your superhero is a crime-fighter. But regular crime isn't a problem for your superhero, due to their powers. That means that at all times there must be a greater threat at work, some more-powerful power coming after them.

This means that every superhero story is a man v. man story, in terms of Ze Big Plots. There is often a secondary theme, but these are almost uniformly either Don't Let Uncle Ben Die (aka no, you cannot stop being a superhero, get your shizz together), or Sorry the City is Busy Washing Its Hair (aka, everybody hates and fears the supehero for his differences and ability to crush them with his thumb).

And that's another thing - I do mean that these stories are man versus man. All superhero movies are remakes of comic books that date back to somewhere between the 1940s and the 1970s. Minorities of any kind were not well represented in those time periods, and by "minority" I don't mean "literally smaller percentages of the population", I mean "anyone except white straight men". Sometimes we shoehorn a woman or a black guy into the remakes, but only one at a time, let's not get crazy here. 

Hope Black Widow is enjoying the back of
the box! And The Avengers is the best of
the entire superhero genre in terms of
inclusivity.

Does this mean that superhero movies are bad by default? No, of course not, and we've had some worthy offerings from the genre. But it does mean that superhero movies are a bad choice to have dominating the film industry. They're exclusive and restrictive to storytelling and creativity.

Next time, we talk about the business side of superheroes, and where this trend is leading...

Why Selling Fanfiction is Weird Science

Putting aside moral and ethical quandaries, today I want to talk a little about the business aspect of pulled-to-publish, or P2P, fanfiction. All of what I'm saying here applies to self-publishing as well as trade publishing, but I'm going to talk about it in terms of trade publishing for ease of reference.

When publishers buy fanfiction and repackage it for the mainstream market, they're making two big assumptions:

1. This book has an appeal beyond its initial fanbase. 

2. This book's popularity in fandom says something about its potential popularity on the mainstream market.

And I’m not entirely sure those are good assumptions to make.

There is a very definite possibility that E.L. James was another Octomom; that she got big on notoriety rather than any real interest in her content. She wrote a story about something relatively taboo, and the way in which it was published was also (or at least it used to be) taboo. BDSM and intellectual property theft - turns out that the two of those things churn up enough interest to make you a bestseller.

This was the first time something this raunchy went mainstream. It got a lot of attention and started a movement. There's no doubt that E.L. kicked erotica into high gear and that a lot of other people have been successful in that field since. But I notice that all of the breakout successes since have been original fiction.

I think the forbidden unknown was the draw of E.L.'s work and the reason it succeeded. I do NOT think it succeeded because it was formerly a successful fanfic, and here's why: Fanfiction has already had an audience. Therefore, many of your potential fans have already read the story, and the rest of your potential fans know that they can find it online for free.

What you're doing when you re-publish a successful piece of fanfiction is putting it on the market and assuming that the same things that made it appeal to a fanbase will make it appeal to everybody. But fans of whatever it may be are a self-selecting group, and doesn't it seem likely that a lot of them will have already read the story?

Additionally, fanfiction and original fiction are not the same thing. Fanfiction relies on at least a passing knowledge of characters, themes, and setting. Fanfiction also tends to be written in a serial style with an emphasis on spending more time with your favorite characters v. tight plotting and action. It makes sense that different forms of storytelling would have different focuses, but one of these things is not like the other and there's no reason to assume this style will sell well on the mass market. (And no, Fifty Shades does not count as a reason - it is one example. That makes it an anomaly, not the norm.)

But wait! Authors say their P2P stories are reworked and edited so that they barely resemble their original forms. Okay, fine. I wonder how far you can take these stories from their original form without losing the very things that made them popular, but even if this is so...

What about legality?

Thus far, publishers have been acting under the "it's better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission" principle. That's fine right up until it isn't. Stephenie Meyer may not be interested in suing anyone, but E.L. James herself has demanded fanfiction of her work be taken down, and many well-known authors like Anne McCaffrey have long stated that they don't allow fanfiction of their works in any form. Eventually, somebody is going to balk.

The courts may decide that P2P fanfiction is in fact legal. But publishers don't know that. They're walking on thin ice.

What it comes down to is just because something's salable doesn't make it legal, and just because something's legal doesn't make it salable. Either or both of these things may be true about pulled-to-publish fanfiction. But neither are proven. I don't think this is a good move by publishers, and I wonder what this says about their attitude toward the industry.