Superheroes come of age

With 'Batman Begins' and 'Superman Returns', Chris Tilly believes the superhero flick has finally grown up.

Jul 18 2006

The superhero movie has finally come of age. With last summer's 'Batman Begins' and last week's 'Superman Returns', comic book movies have finally shaken off the shackles of adolescence and entered the adult world with mature movies of passion, power and substance.

Of course there will always be a place for the 'Flash Gordon', 'Fantastic Four', 'Blade' and 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' of this world, but in the last year Christopher Nolan and Bryan Singer have taken the genre to the next level.

Singer started down the path with the first two 'X-Men' movies, big budget blockbusters that featured thoughtful, thought-provoking (if somewhat simplistic) subtexts about tolerance, acceptance and understanding.

But with 'Superman Returns' he's truly nailed it – a superhero flick that would work perfectly well without the superhero element. A touching, old-fashioned love story that just happens to revolve around the most powerful man on earth.

Same goes for Nolan's 'Batman Begins', a thrilling superhero epic that was full of action and spectacle, yet at its heart was a psychological drama about a deeply troubled young man coming to terms with the loss of his parents.

Marrying the wide-eyed innocence of comic book youth with more grown-up themes is no easy task however. Alex Proyas and Ang Lee both tried and failed with 'The Crow' and 'Hulk' respectively, and their po-faced entries into the genre managed only cult success.

And while 'Sin City' looked great, it engaged neither the mind nor the heart and failed to inspire that child-like sense of wonder and joy that the greatest superhero efforts achieve.

But Nolan and Singer (and to some extent Sam Raimi with his 'Spider-Man' flicks) have managed to take stories that were originally aimed at children and given them truly universal appeal.

In striking the perfect balance between comic book simplicity and silver screen substance, they've changed the genre forever, and with sequels planned to both films, from here on in it seems that the sky's the limit for the superhero flick!

• 
•