Xiroteus

No idea, I just know that I like them. When it comes to tv shows they are either comic based, supernatural, magic, or just random powers that are not comic based. Don't really do much with a regular universe, I need more of a hook. (I do have a couple)

Double_Oh_7

Why didn't you mention his masterpiece, Deal of the Century

johnnysd

I don't think they are ruining movies, but I do think I and many others are just getting fatigued by them. I think it is partly what is driving JW, NOT being a comic book or superhero movie. Plus, Avengers was a crap movie this year. I think Ant Man is going to bomb, and super hero movies will continue to slide, maybe except for GOTG 2.

Hazel Motes

If I was stranded on a desert island with nothing but a solar powered television and had to choose between William Friedkins filmography and every comic book movie ever made, Friedkin wins in a heartbeat.

I more or less agree with him too. Almost all comic books are lousy. I'd take an original idea that could possibly fail, over some ho hum, directed by commitee, please as many people as possible comic book franchise any day of the week!

sven

Comic book movies make up like 75% of my viewing these days. Otherwise I'd rather watch a good TV series most of the time.

Brack

Can't stand this argument. It's nothing new, and bitching about comic book/sci-fi movies hurting the film industry is just stupid. The film industry is about making money first, not art, but if you want to find stuff out there, you can find it. It just doesn't make headlines. Are the movies from the late 60s and early to mid 70s going to magically return? No, because that was a very specific time. And as much as a lot of beloved films came out during that time, they weren't moneymakers. Otherwise we'd see more of that stuff, no?

mcnabb

I agree what you're saying in that the studio's want to make money first, so I really can't blame them. But I will say that the summer blockbuster has really been dumbed down over the past 20 years because of the rise of CGI and Superhero movies.

The modern summer blockbuster started in 1975 with Jaws, and then Star Wars took it to the next level in 1977. That is where movies started to change as more 'fun' movies were becoming the big hits and money makers that appealed to teenagers and kids. But those movies still had a good story and focused on characters.

You look at the 1980's big summer blockbusters: The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future. All 'fun' movies compared to the 1970's gritty movies, but still good quality movies that appealed to adults too.

Batman 89 was when I saw the change as I call that the beginning of the 'dummy' movie. I was in highschool at the time when this came out, and to this day I will never understand the love for this movie. Other then the soundtrack, it is such an overrated movie.

The final nail in the coffin of the summer blockbuster was Jurassic Park in 1993. Now it is a great movie and still holds up well today, but it was the advent of CGI and it changed the summer blockbuster forever. I guess you can pinpoint XMen and Spiderman as the advent of the Comic Book movie, and now you just have a glut of mindless Superhero movies that no one will care about 20 years from now (other then say The Dark Knight Trilogy and a few other superhero movies where they focused on the characters and story over mindless action and CGI.)

Ash Ketchum

Yeah. I'm a fan of Mae West, but even I'm not interested in this.

I agree there's a glut of superhero movies. There really should be only one big-budget superhero movie a year and then numerous low-budget rip-off/cash-in jobs in its wake before the next big superhero movie the following year. Once upon time there were big-budget biblical and Ancient Roman spectacles, usually one every one or even two or three years, and plenty of other good genre films--budgets low and high--to keep us satisfied in between the time, say TEN COMMANDMENTS, THE VIKINGS and BEN-HUR came out, to name three from the '50s. And between BEN-HUR and CLEOPATRA four years later, there were dozens of cheap Italian Hercules-type spectacles. Audiences back then knew the difference and what to expect from each.

I interviewed Hayao Miyazaki once and he said there should only be one major animated feature for children per year. I assumed he meant his productions, which seemed kind of self-serving and a bit against the tide, given all the animated features made in Japan back then (1999) every year.

Timber

How exactly does only having one animated feature for kids help the box office or even help to foster a love of movies in children?

inri222

Just like Francis Ford Coppola, Sidney Lumet, Robert Altman, etc.... William Friedkin has some shitty movies but the good ones will be remembered and studied long after he is gone.

EddieMoney

Agreed with the first part. I don't think all comic book movies are lousy; I have enjoyed quite a few. However, I am officially burned out on them and wouldn't care if I didn't see another for several years.

mcnabb

The question I have for any fans of Superhero movies: What are looking for when you see it? What differentiates a great superhero movie to a bad superhero movie?

Most of the movies I go see have to have an interesting story/premise and good character development, and Superhero movies usually have neither. I watched Man of Steel on HBO last year and thought the movie was just very bland. Sure it had some eyepopping action scenes, but is that enough to please fans? I love the Superman character, but I have no desire to ever watch Man of Steel again. I know some people will say the old Superman Movie from 1978 looks dated (which I disagree but that's another argument), but atleast it has dramatic/funny scenes/movie lines that makes me want to revisit on repeat viewings but the newer type of Superhero movies really don't have that.

EddieMoney

Well-developed characters. The '78 Superman is infinitely more developed than Man of Steel, and as such, is a far, far superior film.

RichC2

I read that more of a coke / soda, kleenex / tissue sort of comment from him but I'm probably wrong, usually am in that regard.

And yeah, it'd just be nice to see $100m+ budgeted movies that were a little less uniform than they are right now.

rocket1312

I think it's easy to write off Friedkin as a doddering old man who's out of touch with today's culture and I think it's reductive to say "superhero's are ruining cinema." I also think it should be pointed out that nowhere in the piece is he quoted as saying that superhero's are ruining cinema. Of course that probably won't stop James Gunn (or whomever) from posting an "epic" dismissal of his non-comments that will get passed around facebook and twitter for the next week. Thanks Telegraph. We haven't had one of these in a couple of weeks.

All that said, whether or not superheroes are "ruining" cinema is completely subjective. People like different things and if you're happy with what the studios are currently putting out, then you'll have no reason to complain. However, what no one can deny is that these giant franchises (superhero or otherwise) have completely changed the business model for the big studios in the last 10 or so years. The big studios are getting to a point where it's not worth it to them to release anything other than a franchise (or potential franchise) film with asperations of $500+ million worldwide boxoffice. They still release a handful of prestige films in the fall so that the Oscar voters have something to watch, but the middle-class of the big studios (the movies with medium sized budgets, original scripts, no real awards aspirations) no longer exists.

Someone like taffer will undoubtedly come in here and rant and rave about how there's x number of hundred movies released every year and only a small number of them are superheroes (although now that he's thrown out all of his comics, maybe his tune has changed), but that's mostly because in some ways it's easier than ever for small indie studios to make a film with a micro-budget. But make no mistake, that's a very different animal than the mid-size budget studios films that no longer exist. If that's the kind of film you like, then it's very easy to make the case that "superheroes are ruining cinema."

Solid Snake

Superheroes today are what Westerns were. In reality these is not many of them compared to say.. Horror or a drama. Action movies outnumber them still. The biggest issue people attribute to the "glut" is that they are easily the most advertised. Anywhere and everywhere. They are the biggest thing we have and it is everywhere. We've our good ones and our bad ones. At some point we had Westerns be the glut. Action films were the glut.. etc etc etc. The genre is still pretty new to actually have the quantity to be an actual in work genre. Meaning that unlike before... the films that keep going and growing in the medium have to worked to be an actual genre as a contemporary over just being sprinkled here and there to make up the volume.

To think that the superhero film is glutting up cinema is very much a weak mindset. Be realistic, yo.

Brack

It's not so much the rise of CGI, but the amount of emphasis of putting out the same kind of blockbuster over and over again, and more than one movie from a studio to make big money. Also, a lot of traditional summer fare isn't released in the summer anymore.

You mention the 80s, but it was a different time and usually with only one true blockbuster. In 1985, Back to the Future was it. '84 had Ghostbusters and Temple of Doom. '86 had Top Gun. Now look at the 90s. In '94 you had The Lion King, Forrest Gump, and a slew of other movies making over $100m. The studios figured out they were missing out on a lot of money by not putting out bigger spectacle movies. It's what makes the most money and that's their goal.

In '95 we had Batman Forever and Apollo 13, but Toy Story made more later in the year and could have a summer movie for everyone. Then later big blockblusters aren't even released in the summer, like Titanic, which was supposed to be a summer movie originally. The Matrix should have been a summer release. I would say ID4 was more of the beginning of big dumb summer movies.

Then after '98 every top summer movie was practically a sequel, adaptation of a comic book, cartoon show, or amusement park ride. Yeah they're not original stuff like the 80s, but that's because the studios only care about what works, and works most of the time for them. There's too much money in these movies now for them to gamble too much, but if they do they make sure to pump out potentially bigger movies later or earlier in the year. Remember when The Fast and the Furious franchise was a summer movie franchise? And now we have a Star Wars movie coming out during the holidays. If any movie series was synonymous with summer, it was Star Wars. So in a nutshell, we mostly won't have the one big movie of the summer, but a lot of movies that the studios believe will make money. That's why we have so many comic book, Transformers, Pirates, etc. The top ten summer movies also gross a lot more than they did in the 80s and even in the 90s.

But hey, there is stuff like last year with The Guardians of the Galaxy, which really was a shocker and the first movie released in August to ever be the top movie of the summer (at least since box office has been tracked so heavily). Yeah, not completely original, but different enough and for a lot of people, fun. That's all most people want now. Could the summer movies tone down their budgets or invest more in the script? Sure, but that might only happen when people stop going to these big spectacle stuff. Is this going to happen soon? Based on last weekend's opening of Jurassic World, ummm, not too soon.

dhmac

The main problems with movies these days isn't superhero movies which are, in many ways, simply a subgenre of action movies. No one genre is the problem because the real problems are visible in many different genres of movies.

I think the main problems are these:

- Too many sequels and remakes

- Overuse of CGI effects and underuse of practical effects

- Overuse of the "Fast Cutting" style of editing

- poorly written dialogue and poorly written characters

- Too much lowbrow comedy

- Locking down content of movies for a PG-13 rating

- Too much shaky-cam

- Overuse of digital color grading (particular the "orange & teal" look)

- Too much focus on "Vertical Integration" which treats a movie as just a corporate product to sell other products (ex: music, toys, t-shirts, fast food tie-ins, and other such merchandise), and when the merchandise becomes a major part of it, the quality of a movie itself is usually compromised (sometimes with scenes added for this as well as product placement ads within the movie, as well as crappy songs written for the movie playing over the end credits)

- Too much focus on appealing to foreign markets instead of just the U.S. market (this leads to more generic movies that can appeal across cultures)


(I'm sure there are other problems with current day movies that I didn't list here, but these are the problems that stand out the most to me.)

Mike86

Well Man of Steel isn't exactly the best example of a great modern day superhero film. Watch the MCU films though and you'll see how the various characters develop and change. I also think they tell good stories for what they are. It all depends on how much you like the comic genre as certain things are going to be cliche after a while (the good guys always win), but the stories are usually told in a way that makes the story interesting and they build on themselves from previous films.

I think saying that superhero films are ruining cinema is kind of silly. The taffer argument I actually think holds up and was one of the few points he made that I agree with. There are plenty of other films from various genres that still get made and realistically superhero films only make up a small amount of what gets released each year.

As far as other films not being released due to franchise films I don't entirely place the blame on superhero films. Studios have looked to cash in on franchises with sequels, remakes, and reboots long before superhero films became a big thing. At the moment superhero films are hot and while they cost more to make they also make a lot more than the typical fare that gets released so really while some may not like it from a business perspective its easy to understand.

fumanstan

I feel like i've gotten both of those in a lot of super hero movies, whether it be the Marvel movies or X-Men.

Hokeyboy

"Marvel movies are ruining cinema! Meanwhile, here's my 8-part HBO documentary about England Dan and John Ford Coley..."

Some people just can't get past that the reality that their tastes change as they age, and popular culture doesn't change to accommodate them. The good news is that there are plenty of other options other than popular movies.

I used to go see dozens of movies a year in theaters. This year so far, I've seen all of *two*. Meanwhile, my DVR is way past overbooked with fantastic television material to catch up on. Life goes on. Nothing is "ruined".

Meanwhile...

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Mabuse

I agree with you 100%. When the BIG SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER was born they were good films and were usually original scripts or adapted from a novel. Unique films with an emphasis on characterization.

I blame international distribution. These tent-pole movies now make as much (or even more) overseas as they do in America. People frequently deride American taste in films, but stop and think for a moment how fucking stupid most of the rest of the world is. China, India, Southeast Asia, South America. Look at the locally produced television content in these countries if you want to see an indication of the tastes of the viewers there.

majorjoe23

I wish. He died. RIP.

PhantomStranger

Hollywood won't admit it but their focus towards international, non-English-speaking audiences has been far more damaging to the state of films than a dozen Marvel films. The huge budgets have also distorted the creative process. You simply can't take creative risks when hundreds of millions have been staked on one project.

Dan

What? No. He just rage-quit, didn't he?

Anyway... I get where Friedkin is coming from. Sure it's easy to make a tiny-budget film these days, but I read somewhere that making anything "in the middle" is becoming harder and harder, because no financiers want to take the risk.

Anyway, I agree 100% with ChadM: