I was watching a superhero movie the other day, and after witnessing villains destroying
entire cities and heroes saving the world, after all of that spectacle, I sat back and
went “meh I guess that film was alright”.
Now, I am open to superhero films - sure they may not be high brow works of art, and that’s
totally fine - they’re not trying to be.
But when the studios are providing such huge budgets, and making so many of these movies
- I think we’re allowed to have high expectations.
So I started looking back at my favourite and least favourite superhero films to try
and see what separates them.
And let’s just say, it’s been an enlightening experience.
For me, it all comes down to the phrase “let’s raise the stakes” - here’s what I mean:
This is Max and he’s trying to head out the house to meet a friend, but he can’t
find his keys.
Will he find his keys in time, or will he have to cancel his brunch?
Kinda boring right - so let’s raise the stakes:
This is Max and he’s running late for his big job interview, but he can’t find his
keys.
This time the consequences are more severe, so there’s more of a motivation for the
character.
Without there being a lot at stake, it’s hard for the audience to care about what’s
happening - but what if your characters are superheroes?
Saving one person's life would far too easy for the Avengers, they need a much bigger
danger to tackle.
And so by the end of the first Avengers film, there are thousands of giant aliens wreaking
havoc in New York, as well as a nuclear missile that’s heading straight for the city.
Now I reckon there are three problems for the audience when so much is at risk in the
story: Firstly it’s can be very familiar - there
are only so many times we can see a city being smashed up before we start thinking “yeah,
it’s happening again”.
And secondly it’s really anonymous - when we see a building getting smashed up, we should
be shocked, presumably, hundreds of people have just died, but the filmmakers don’t
give us a chance to care - we don’t see anyone inside, and it all happens so quickly.
So there’s a disconnect between what we’re seeing, and how we’re feeling.
But it’s not just superhero movies, most of the blockbusters seem to be competing to
up the ante: Jurassic World has huge crowds in danger,
giant creatures fighting each other and destroying stuff, whereas in the first one basically
ALL of the danger was focused around the few characters that we’d got to know throughout
the film.
And for me, that makes more of an impact.
I think it takes a lot more to get the audience to care about a large faceless group than
individual characters.
And thirdly when the stakes are so high, I reckon it becomes un-relatable.
Like take Pixar - they consistently write stories that are centred around relational,
emotional conflicts - the characters have relatable problems like rejection, defying
against your parents, and saying goodbye.
So how would Pixar handle a superhero film?
Well in The Incredibles, they do give us the big fight scene in the third act, and yeah
some buildings get smashed and lots of people are in danger, but they really don’t dwell
on that.
The big showdown and battle is actually pretty short, and the true climax of the film comes
straight afterwards, when Jack Jack is kidnapped by the villain.
They’ve reduced the number of lives at stake, but it actually feels like a bigger problem,
because it isn’t anonymous anymore, and it’s relatable to every parent and every
child.
That’s they’re big finale, a smaller danger that feels so much bigger.
And this actually reminded me a study where some people were shown statistics about how
many kids grow up in poverty, and others were told instead about one individual child who
was living in poverty.
Then they were all asked if they wanted to make a donation.
The people who had heard the story about the kid donated more than twice as much as the
ones who had heard the statistics.
They even had a third group who had been told about the individual as well as the wider
statistics, and they still donated less.
So forgive me for using statistics to show how no-one really cares about statistics,
but it really does demonstrate the power of empathy.
I think that's where a lot of these superhero films are lacking - they're telling us the
stats of how many lives are at risk, but they’re forgetting to really get closer and give us
the relatable, humanised stories.
And I don't know about you, but those are the stories that I want to hear.