Explaining the Emergence of Superheroes in the 21 st Century

Journal of Student Research

A wide variety of studies has identified a significant correlation between the income of a film and its genre. Unveiling that with newer genres and new audiences, certain movies experience more success than others. Here the researcher institutes a content analysis in which 12 live-action ‘superhero’ films are viewed and evaluated based on a sophisticated code. The films are viewed multiple times and other ‘outside’ codes are also recorded by the researcher. The research results in a found correlation between economic success and the superhero genre is identified along with a greater understanding of the impact that the films have on audiences. Not only is the impact revealed, but also some methods are evaluated along with their effectiveness on the amount of income generated.

People in ancient Greece and Rome created their own heroes as leaders and believed in them. These stories passed on by word of mouth, and thanks to Iliad and Odessa by Homer, they were then written down. Even planets and star clusters are named after the gods of Rome, and even words we use regularly, such as “echo,” “erotic,” “chaos”, and “volcano” originate from Greek myths. Mythology is an abstract power that ties people and cultures. Our understanding of 'hero' also comes from Greeks and Romes. As a result of globalization, the world gets more complex and stories change form and content to keep up with their complexity. Today’s brilliant concept is to replace those myths and call them “super heroes”. These heroes first appeared in comic strips by Marvel Comics and then they were presented as films. Thus, super heroes became worldwide known.The aim of this study is to find out common points of worldwide famous super heroes and their roots in ancients myths. The Avengers film series of Marvel Comics is to be analyzed via content analysis method. There are two ways of applying myths to cinema. First method is to make a film out of a myth directly and the second method is to incorporate ancient myths in contemporary films. Since The Avengers film series uses both of these methods, it seems to be able to represent the myths very strongly. To strengthen the evaluations, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor film series are also analyzed as these characters are part of The Avengers. At first, mythology and its relation with popular culture is mentioned and secondly The Avengers film series is examined in a detailed way

2013

Ever since the first appearances of Superman and Batman in comic books of the late 1930s, superheroes have been a staple of the popular culture landscape. Though initially created for younger audiences, superhero characters have evolved over the years, becoming complex figures that appeal to more sophisticated readers. In Enter the Superheroes: American Values, Culture, and the Canon of Superhero Literature, Alex S. Romagnoli and Gian S. Pagnucci argue that superheroes merit serious study, both within the academy and beyond. Structured around key themes within superhero literature, the book delves into the features that make superhero stories a unique genre. The book also draws upon examples in comics and other diverse media to illustrate the socio-historical importance of superheroes, from the interplay of fans and creators to unique narrative elements that are brought to their richest fulfillment within the world of superheroes. Additionally, the authors provide a list of notewort...

Death in Classic and Contemporary Film, 2013

2018

Science Fiction Film and Television

The recent glut of superhero blockbusters and indie films in Hollywood highlights the persistent influence of high modernism/mass culture distinctions on how we talk about culture, a conversation that too often takes the form of ethical oppositions. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s indie portrait of the artist as a superhero, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), prompts a rethinking of such entrenched binaries in film criticism as a symptom of Hollywood in economic and aesthetic crisis after 2008. Using Birdman to diagnose this situation, the article explores the utopian prospects available in the web streaming medium in general and the superhero subgenre of sf in particular. The article argues that Netflix’s Marvel series – Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage – reinvent the superhero genre (at the levels of aesthetics, ideology, politics and production), and urge us collectively to imagine and enact new utopian world-building projects. These series, moreover, are redefining not just the superhero genre, but how we understand the artwork itself in the contemporary moment.

2004

Today superheroes have a huge success in movies and television series, but originally the superhero genre is born on the pages of comics. What are the comic’s characteristics that helped the superhero genre to obtain so much success? How are these characteristics linked to the aspects that define this genre? How a different approach to the artistic potentialities of comics can change the perception we have of superhero, villains and antihero? These are the questions I will try to answer with this work. I analyse different comic media’s aspects like the colour, the symbolism, the “gutter” (the space between the panels) and the time of comic and graphic novels. I will refer to Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, Reading comics by Wolk Douglas and to Umberto Eco’s essay The Myth of Superman. I argue that comics and graphic novels have spurred the success of the superhero not only for economic reasons but mostly because of their peculiar characteristics. I show how a different use of the potential offered by this medium modifies the characters themselves, sometimes breaking down the barriers that divide hero, villain and antihero.