“Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!” That’s what Jeff Bridges bellows about Robert Downey Jr. in the first Iron Man movie. And, for a while, it was that scrappy, improvisational Stark-like energy that made Marvel Studios special. Across three “phases” of filmmaking, Marvel combined the backbone of good superhero storytelling (likable characters, exciting action, cool special effects, compelling plots, a fun sense of humor) with the true secret sauce of the genre: meaningful storytelling themes.
Lately, however, it’s as if Marvel has forgotten that superhero stories are actually supposed to have ideas. Marvel has moved from the Age Of Heroes to the Age Of Aimless Intersecting Content. That philosophy reaches its nadir in the latest big-screen addition to the MCU, Captain America: Brave New World—a film that continues the “what are we doing here?” trend of recent Marvel projects like Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania and Secret Invasion.
It wasn’t always like this. Marvel once understood what filmmakers like Richard Donner and Sam Raimi long ago proved: More than any other genre, superhero stories are built around archetypal characters engaging in ideological battles meant to reflect something larger about the human condition. That means they need driving central themes to elevate their sometimes-thin individual components into something greater than the sum of their parts.
Please stop, a break, just a little break from the superhero genre, please 🙏
Or, you know, actually stories rather than themes and characters.
All movies have a story. This happens, then that happens, then that happens. That’s a story.
But IMO, what often separates a good story from a dull one are the thematic elements.
The theme is the big narrative idea into which everything else slots. It drives the plot. It defines the character’s motivations and creates stakes. It creates tension and makes character’s actions feel like they have purpose.
We need a great story, but good story comes from solid themes.
Sure mate, I mean Stephen King says this:
. . . starting with the questions and thematic concerns is a recipe for bad fiction. Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme; it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story”
But what does he know?
Fair points. If we are quoting King then he also said in “On Writing” just a paragraph or so after your quote:
“But once your basic story is on paper you need to think about what it means. […] To do less is to rob your work (and eventually your readers) of the vision that makes each tale you write uniquely your own.”
I may not have been right in saying the story /comes/ from the theme, but I very much stand by the notion that solid themes are required, even if the theme does not come first.
King also said:
Not every book has to be loaded with symbolism […] but it seems to me that every book - at least every one worth reading - is about something. Your job during or just after the first draft is to decide what something or somethings yours is about."
As the story is written and progresses, conscious work is needed to refine the theme and draw it out, and good works always are about something that is bigger and richer than the basic story beats.
To the original argument on superhero movies then, the writer’s opinion that we need good themes is still something I very much agree with.
But then, good story and characters are extremely important as the prerequisite, because a strong theme without a strong foundation is nothing.
Which is to say that absolutely, you are right that theme is important because ultimately theme is context.
I do wonder how much of this belongs, not to the creator, but to the viewer/reader.
There’s that great example with Ray Bradbury telling people that Fahrenheit 451 was not about fascism until someone pointed out to him how it absolutely was.
I think the slightly casual, almost throwaway comment that I started this with was more about the fact that, specifically Marvel, films have become all theme and no story.
The standard superhero narrative of “Bad guy gets weapon, or does something bad and Superhero A must stop them” doesn’t sustaing multiple franchises.
Couple that with the classic trauma genesis story which forms the obligatory introduction arc.
Marvel films have become about themes almost entirely to the point where characters and story are interchangable. Take the latest captain America… Almost any other Marvel character could have played the same role in that film… The narrative is so weak that it doesn’t matter. The themes are grand and perhaps even important (a bright red tyrannical monster rampaging in the whitehouse) but the story is what let’s it down.
These stories are weak and we’ve seen them multiple times now. It doesn’t matter how often we change the themes, whether the film is about fascism in America, finding friendship and family, or the perils of unchecked science… These themes ultimately fall flat when the underlying structure, the story, used to convey them is weak.
Sure, all art is usually about something, and those themes can be important, but I stand by what I said… If you want Superhero films to see any good they need to shrug off the notion of being entirely about symbology and theme and maybe have some gripping story.
Sure mate, Stephen King says this:
. . . starting with the questions and thematic concerns is a recipe for bad fiction. Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme; it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story”
But what does he know?
How to write okayish page-turners that are far from the only valid way to approach literature?
Yeah, if we weren’t talking about Marvel films you’d have a point.
Maybe the themes in a Marvel movie will be more universal and rather broadly drawn, but to avoid overstaying their welcome with a rote and repetitive “peril-catharis” cycle, the action needs to be in service to something compelling. Otherwise, it just sort of sputters to the finish line because ultimately we’ve seen the stories before. To the extent he’s not just talking out of his ass, King’s describing a workflow, not a philosophy.
Hang on, are we arguing for the same thing? That story, and more importantly, compelling story, is what is needed?
I was just using king as an example of someone who crafts stories… Whether they are page-turners or not, that compel audiences.
My problem with Marvel films is that they are stale, narratively, and as such the only thing that can fix them is decent writing that isn’t in the service of “franchise”.
I think we definitely want the same thing, at least.
I’m just backing up the (now absent, LOL) person you originally replied to. I think you can – and in Marvel’s case maybe you should, since they are no longer drawing on zeitgeisty, recognizable versions of their comics characters – think about what you want the story to mean at least as early as you do the events that happen in it. King is a talented writer, no two ways about it, but I don’t think you necessarily doom a script to be bad by starting with something like, “I want to tell a story about dealing with the conflict between who we wish we were and what life made us into.”
I reckon that for King, setting events into motion and figuring out the right traits to get characters through them (or to their natural stopping place), or what themes give those particular events meaning, that works for him. If they want to have him write the next Avengers movie, I’d be all for it, LOL. I just don’t think his approach is the only way to go about it.
Marvel is getting a narrative pass from me for a little while as they had to make a massive corse correction after Jonathan Majors, who they were planning on hanging the next 5-7 years of movies on as their big-bad, turned out to be a dude that beats up women. The entire planned arc needed to be bent to accommodate Dr Doom instead, including reshoots on this and the rest of what’s coming out this year.
I think next year’s Marvel movie-products will be the ones that will benefit from not needing after-the-fact fixing.
the Age Of Aimless Intersecting Content
Having films serve the franchise, instead of doing the world-building on the side is definitely the problem. Cap 4 feels incomplete because it is - it’s merely a bridge between one piece of content and the next, which in turn will be a bridge to the next one and on and on. It’s done because it’s easier to do than come up with original ideas, especially when the studio demands a conveyor belt of content.
Beyond anything else, this is also what infected the Star Wars franchise, except there it was even worse because so much of the connective tissue was relegated to novels and comics. At least with Marvel you can keep up just via TV and movies.
Dumped into a new series of films that rehashes the first? Explain it in a bunch of mediocre books! Sequel that thinks that setup was boring (and tbf, it was)? Build up to it in a crappy comic! Petulant manchild takes the worst possible lessons from the first two? Set it up in a video game, lift the plot from old comics, and then tell your animation wunderkind that his entire live-action career will now be to “fix it.”
Disney owns the lion’s share of the blame for both franchises malaise, but fan culture enabled it by obsessing over everything, not insisting on tight storytelling (the number of online people who believe that no deleted scene is too awkward to be edited back in is… disconcerting), and whizzing their pants in glee with every easter egg or end-credits stinger. Honorable mention to Peter Jackson with the LOTR extended editions and ROTK’s eleventy-billion endings that (LOL) still somehow omitted the Scouring of the Shire.
Please, can we just have a break?
No thanks, superhero movies must die. They have been a net negative and trained audiences to not accept anything but things they have nostalgia for. Nothing wrong with liking the movies but if you only watch the same shit you are killing cinema.
Stop with the super hero shit. There was a time when everything wasn’t a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot, or new generic super hero IP.
Just stop doing The Heroe’s Journey
No, you need to learn what hero means again.
