Why There So Many Superhero Origin Stories
Thoughts On: Origin Stories
A question of why there are so many superhero films that tell us how it all began.
Why is it that 9 of Marvel's 19 MCU films are origins films? Here they are:
We can augment this list a little. You can argue that The Avengers is an origin movie not for one superhero, but a collection. What's more Ant-Man and The Wasp is, arguably, an origins story for The Wasp - and so is Age of Ultron an origin story for Vision. And if we move beyond the official MCU, there is Raimi's Spider-Man, the Sony re-make, The Amazing Spider-Man, and then there's Into the Spider-Verse, which has seven origins stories wrapped up in one. We can then potentially push some of the X-Men movies into the picture, which gives us the first X-Men, which essentially shows the origins of the X-Men team as most know it, then there's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and then X-Men: First Class, then Deadpool, and then Logan, which you could argue is something of an origin story for the second wolverine. If we really wanted to push things, we can throw into the mix 2003's Hulk, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, its re-make, Big Hero 6, Blade, The Punisher, Elektra, Ghost Rider and Venom. We will not be so pedantic as to count movies such as Infinity War or Spider-Man 2 as origin stories for antagonists like Thanos and Doc Ock. If you want to include minor character origins and antagonist origin stories, very few Marvel films couldn't be counted as, at the very least, part-origin stories. Almost all Marvel movies introduce major new characters in their narrative. One of the only films that doesn't would be, arguably, Thor: The Dark World. However, add up all of the films that feature or are entirely about the origins of a key character and you have 30 origin stories:
Fascinatingly, during the last 19 years, there would have only been 4 separate years (2002, 2006, 2010, 2013) in which you wouldn't have been able to go to the cinema and see an origins story based on a Marvel comic. Alas, during the 15 years in which origins films were release, an average of two were released a year. This all presents us with one question: Why?
What is the obsession that we have with origins stories? We have just counted a few from the last 20 years based on Marvel comics. We could add many more if we count the DC origins films and then the likes of Kick Ass, Chronicle, RoboCop, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Transformer movies and Unbreakable. If we move beyond the sub-genre, we will be lost entirely, so let us stick with the superhero film and the fact that a ludicrous amount of them are about how it all began.
The first thing that has to be said is that there is not just one reason for this phenomena. We are going to consider a few major examples with some focus on what I believe is the most interesting. The largest group of reasons we will touch on first is all wrapped around the fact that superhero films are conventionally part of a collection of stories. So, our first way of understanding why there are so many origins stories comes from the fact that comic books are not novels. Comic books are a series of stories that can stretch on for years across hundreds of books. When so much story is being told, the start of it all becomes a rather unavoidable subject. Indeed, it is often the place that comic stories start. And, what's more, a question on all comic book readers' minds is so often how did it all start? The answer to this will reveal the depth of a character, provide a reason for their being and adventures and will also provide rich grounds for world building. Here we then have many reasons: not only can we reference the nature of comic books, but we can also consider the demands of its audience, the essence of characterisation and a new foundation of world building. And to add to this: isn't the beginning a great place to start?
Transitioning over to cinematic origin stories, we can easily identify one huge, multi-faceted reason: money. We have so many Marvel origin stories because something is always being set up in the MCU: the next huge movie that will make over a billion dollars. Not adjusted for inflation, only 37 movies have made over 1 billion dollars in the world-wide box office. A quarter of them, 10, are superhero movies. All but one are part of a major franchise (like Disney), a saga or trilogy, or are a sequel: Titanic. And at least 11 of the these films can be classed as origins films - everything from Minions to Aquaman to The Phantom Menace. The Marvel business model focuses on core money makers - the big Avenger movies - that are supported and made so viable by satellite films that make them possible: the origin stories. It is this model that make Marvel one of the most successful companies in the the contemporary film industry. The origin story is a huge part of the current market - which is all about the franchise and cinematic universe; origin stories are a way of starting and continuing this kind of cinematic storytelling. Marvel movies have made this irrefutable.
Looking beyond capitol, we can easily emphasise the importance of the origin story as a structural narrative device of a somewhat new kind of storytelling being developed by the MCU. As implied, the origin film sets up bigger films - indeed, it makes them possible. How would the impending Engame be possible without at least 13 (sequels such as Ant-Man and the Wasp or Iron Man 3 are not imperative) of the MCU narratives given to us? It's just not possible. The origin film is then a simple necessity.
And so we have a broad range of reasons as to why the origin film exists: for narrative purposes, for money, for more story, for different kind of stories/films, because comic books require them, because we want to see them, etc, etc. However, all of these reasons can be boiled down to one key fact: superhero stories are anthological. This means that superhero stories are vast narratives fractured into a plethora of smaller stories. It is because of this that superhero movies can make so much money, need to set up so many characters, can tell different kinds of stories than the average, stand-alone narrative, etc. However, what if I said that there is another incredibly important reason as to why the origin film exists? What if I said that the origin film is a perfect expression of contemporary Hollywood filmmaking, is maybe the perfect Hollywood movie?
I am not going to make this argument by talking about Hollywood as a film industry per se. I will make this argument through a discussion of the conventions of the American film and drama. Let us go back to the latter-half of the silent era.
American cinema was established as largely melodramatic. By this, I mean to suggest that many of the narratives that emerged from this era had a dramatic foundation in contrivance. Their narrative conventions emerged from a composition of unrealities finely tuned to evoke meaning of some kind. An example can be found in the Douglas Fairbanks', The Black Pirate. This is a classical adventure film about, you may guess, pirates, treasure, swashbuckling, romance and happy endings. The events that make up this narrative are highly fictitious and are presented without much regard for 'realism' (as defined by its modern, post-WWII conception). Though this is a highly contrived film, it serves its function of entertaining and telling a tale about an emergence from death and darkness, a separation of father and son, the confrontation of darkness and a heroic union of male and female--the stuff of legend; the stuff of fairy tales; the stuff of melodrama. The Hollywood melodrama thrives through the classical period with a vast array of films that audiences accept as dramaturgically contrived and composed - as melodramatic. Think now of the great romances and horrors, the thrillers, comedies, musicals and non-genre narratives focused on the everyday (those films that, to my disdain, we call dramas). All of those classical films - Singin' In The Rain, Vertigo, It's A Wonderful Life, Frankenstein, Dracula, Casablanca, Gone With The Wind, City Lights - these are all melodramas. Alas, something subtly changes through the 50s ad 60s. A new kind of realistic film emerges. Think for classics such as 12 Angry Men, The Graduate, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Midnight Cowboy. These movies are a touch more realistic than the former films. They focus, aesthetically and performatively, on making narrative more plausible. The Hollywood film does not become a realist film as European cinema understands the term - it almost never does. The Hollywood film and its unique attention to plausibility is what defines it at the most fundamental level.
As implied, the definition of realism in the cinema has shifted over the decades. However, if we trace back to the silent era again, we will find that there is a distinguished touch of realism embedded in the films of Chaplin, Griffith, Epstein, Gance, Keaton, Sjöström, Eisenstein, Fuillade, Vertov, Pabst, Murnau and more. Many of these filmmakers made rather melodramatic films, but, verisimilitude and plausibility remain key attachments. In fact, one will find that American films, though they are often fundamentally melodramatic, use narrative, characterlogical and aesthetic techniques to ground the film in something estimating recognisable reality. This technique of giving melodrama greater realism generates what I have termed typhlodrama: a kind of drama that strives for realism, but is rather blind to the rules of reality. The typhlodramatic, semi-realistic American film is distinguished from the kind of realist film developed in Europe. Often, European filmmakers map contrivance over realism where American films map realism over contrivance. This phenomena becomes ever more pronounced as the two forms of cinema developed into the 50s. It is now then that we can understand the functioning of a New Wave film, shot on the streets, but then shaken up by the pen of an auteur; forged as realistic, cut with contrivance. Compare this to the New Hollywood film. Genre narratives are blurred and re-established. They remain melodramatic at heart, but become grittier, more real. Think of Scorsese's Taxi Driver; fundamentally a thriller about a rogue cowboy who saves a prostitute, one made gritty and hyper-plausible.
Whilst Hollywood develops its typhlodrama, focusing ever more on creating a sense of realism, on making fantastical narratives more plausible, there emerges a new kind of melodrama in the late 70s and 80s thanks to new technology: the melodramatic adventure à la Star Wars, RoboCop, Conan The Barbarian, Back To The Future, E.T and Batman. These huge blockbusters are reminiscent, dramatically speaking, of great classical melodramas in Singin' In The Rain, Casablanca, Frankenstein and more. Alas, key conventions of the Hollywood film remain pertinent; plausibility and psychological realism. Characters must appear real and human and they must act as sensibly as possible considering their given situation. These are markers of typhlodrama; the more autonomous a character appears in melodramatic constraints, the more pure the typhlodrama. The new sweeping melodramas of the 70s and 80s coalesce with the New Hollywood social realism through the 90s via classics such as Pulp Fiction, Jurassic Park, The Matrix, Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs, The Truman Show and Saving Private Ryan. And then out into the 2000s we emerge, and so we see the rise of the superhero film - which now rages like a storm over the box office in the latter half of the 2010s.
If the American film has always mediated between melodrama and typhlodrama, has constantly told stories that are fundamentally contrived, but fluctuate in the amount of realism used to control and curtail melodrama, then the superhero origin film is the epitome of American cinema - dramatically speaking. The origins film is, fundamentally, extremely melodramatic. These are stories about mutant spiders, science experiments gone wrong, tech development gone insane, aliens, dimensions, magic and a vast array of otherworldly, highly unreal phenomena. Alas, the origin story is always about a character bridging the gap from a real world to another world, and in their process of becoming a superhero, aligning these two worlds. Tony Stark develops impossible technology, but in becoming Iron Man, protects the real world. Peter Parker is a high-schooler that gains powers when he is bitten by a mutant spider, but uses these to protect his city. Carol Danvers is a pilot who encounters aliens, but re-discovers her earthly beginnings and protect the planet. I have simplified these narratives to a short sentence, but it is self-evident that reality and unreality are two distinct setting that are blurred in Marvel movies. The origin narrative emphasises the divide and merging-point between the two. Furthermore, these are films about the reactions of 'real' people to unreal events; they are about human truth in the melodramatic ether of possibility and speculation.
Let us conclude without delving into copious analysis and discussion. Why are there so many superhero origin stories? The phenomenon has much to do with the anthological nature of superhero narratives. However, I would argue that just as important is the origin's ability to satisfy the demands of Hollywood convention. These films find their success by being incredibly American; by contriving a great fantasy and convincing us that it could be real. As suggested, far more could be said about this topic, so I hand things over to you. What do you think of all we've discussed today?
Previous post:
Macbeth - Cinematic Presentness: Why Theatrical Adaptations Don't Work
Next post:
Kevin Hart: Irresponsible - Return To Form
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
A question of why there are so many superhero films that tell us how it all began.
Why is it that 9 of Marvel's 19 MCU films are origins films? Here they are:
Iron Man
The Incredible Hulk
Thor
Captain America: The First Avenger
Guardian's of the Galaxy
Ant-Man
Doctor Strange
Black Panther
Captain Marvel
We can augment this list a little. You can argue that The Avengers is an origin movie not for one superhero, but a collection. What's more Ant-Man and The Wasp is, arguably, an origins story for The Wasp - and so is Age of Ultron an origin story for Vision. And if we move beyond the official MCU, there is Raimi's Spider-Man, the Sony re-make, The Amazing Spider-Man, and then there's Into the Spider-Verse, which has seven origins stories wrapped up in one. We can then potentially push some of the X-Men movies into the picture, which gives us the first X-Men, which essentially shows the origins of the X-Men team as most know it, then there's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and then X-Men: First Class, then Deadpool, and then Logan, which you could argue is something of an origin story for the second wolverine. If we really wanted to push things, we can throw into the mix 2003's Hulk, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, its re-make, Big Hero 6, Blade, The Punisher, Elektra, Ghost Rider and Venom. We will not be so pedantic as to count movies such as Infinity War or Spider-Man 2 as origin stories for antagonists like Thanos and Doc Ock. If you want to include minor character origins and antagonist origin stories, very few Marvel films couldn't be counted as, at the very least, part-origin stories. Almost all Marvel movies introduce major new characters in their narrative. One of the only films that doesn't would be, arguably, Thor: The Dark World. However, add up all of the films that feature or are entirely about the origins of a key character and you have 30 origin stories:
Blade
X-Men
Spider-Man
Hulk
Daredevil
Fantastic Four
The Punisher
Elektra
Ghost Rider
Iron Man
The Incredible Hulk
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Thor
X-Men: First Class
Captain America: The First Avenger
The Avengers
The Amazing Spider-Man
Guardian's of the Galaxy
Big Hero 6
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Ant-Man
Fantastic Four
Deadpool
Doctor Strange
Logan
Black Panther
Ant-Man and the Wasp
Venom
Into The Spider-Verse
Captain Marvel
Fascinatingly, during the last 19 years, there would have only been 4 separate years (2002, 2006, 2010, 2013) in which you wouldn't have been able to go to the cinema and see an origins story based on a Marvel comic. Alas, during the 15 years in which origins films were release, an average of two were released a year. This all presents us with one question: Why?
What is the obsession that we have with origins stories? We have just counted a few from the last 20 years based on Marvel comics. We could add many more if we count the DC origins films and then the likes of Kick Ass, Chronicle, RoboCop, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Transformer movies and Unbreakable. If we move beyond the sub-genre, we will be lost entirely, so let us stick with the superhero film and the fact that a ludicrous amount of them are about how it all began.
The first thing that has to be said is that there is not just one reason for this phenomena. We are going to consider a few major examples with some focus on what I believe is the most interesting. The largest group of reasons we will touch on first is all wrapped around the fact that superhero films are conventionally part of a collection of stories. So, our first way of understanding why there are so many origins stories comes from the fact that comic books are not novels. Comic books are a series of stories that can stretch on for years across hundreds of books. When so much story is being told, the start of it all becomes a rather unavoidable subject. Indeed, it is often the place that comic stories start. And, what's more, a question on all comic book readers' minds is so often how did it all start? The answer to this will reveal the depth of a character, provide a reason for their being and adventures and will also provide rich grounds for world building. Here we then have many reasons: not only can we reference the nature of comic books, but we can also consider the demands of its audience, the essence of characterisation and a new foundation of world building. And to add to this: isn't the beginning a great place to start?
Transitioning over to cinematic origin stories, we can easily identify one huge, multi-faceted reason: money. We have so many Marvel origin stories because something is always being set up in the MCU: the next huge movie that will make over a billion dollars. Not adjusted for inflation, only 37 movies have made over 1 billion dollars in the world-wide box office. A quarter of them, 10, are superhero movies. All but one are part of a major franchise (like Disney), a saga or trilogy, or are a sequel: Titanic. And at least 11 of the these films can be classed as origins films - everything from Minions to Aquaman to The Phantom Menace. The Marvel business model focuses on core money makers - the big Avenger movies - that are supported and made so viable by satellite films that make them possible: the origin stories. It is this model that make Marvel one of the most successful companies in the the contemporary film industry. The origin story is a huge part of the current market - which is all about the franchise and cinematic universe; origin stories are a way of starting and continuing this kind of cinematic storytelling. Marvel movies have made this irrefutable.
Looking beyond capitol, we can easily emphasise the importance of the origin story as a structural narrative device of a somewhat new kind of storytelling being developed by the MCU. As implied, the origin film sets up bigger films - indeed, it makes them possible. How would the impending Engame be possible without at least 13 (sequels such as Ant-Man and the Wasp or Iron Man 3 are not imperative) of the MCU narratives given to us? It's just not possible. The origin film is then a simple necessity.
And so we have a broad range of reasons as to why the origin film exists: for narrative purposes, for money, for more story, for different kind of stories/films, because comic books require them, because we want to see them, etc, etc. However, all of these reasons can be boiled down to one key fact: superhero stories are anthological. This means that superhero stories are vast narratives fractured into a plethora of smaller stories. It is because of this that superhero movies can make so much money, need to set up so many characters, can tell different kinds of stories than the average, stand-alone narrative, etc. However, what if I said that there is another incredibly important reason as to why the origin film exists? What if I said that the origin film is a perfect expression of contemporary Hollywood filmmaking, is maybe the perfect Hollywood movie?
I am not going to make this argument by talking about Hollywood as a film industry per se. I will make this argument through a discussion of the conventions of the American film and drama. Let us go back to the latter-half of the silent era.
American cinema was established as largely melodramatic. By this, I mean to suggest that many of the narratives that emerged from this era had a dramatic foundation in contrivance. Their narrative conventions emerged from a composition of unrealities finely tuned to evoke meaning of some kind. An example can be found in the Douglas Fairbanks', The Black Pirate. This is a classical adventure film about, you may guess, pirates, treasure, swashbuckling, romance and happy endings. The events that make up this narrative are highly fictitious and are presented without much regard for 'realism' (as defined by its modern, post-WWII conception). Though this is a highly contrived film, it serves its function of entertaining and telling a tale about an emergence from death and darkness, a separation of father and son, the confrontation of darkness and a heroic union of male and female--the stuff of legend; the stuff of fairy tales; the stuff of melodrama. The Hollywood melodrama thrives through the classical period with a vast array of films that audiences accept as dramaturgically contrived and composed - as melodramatic. Think now of the great romances and horrors, the thrillers, comedies, musicals and non-genre narratives focused on the everyday (those films that, to my disdain, we call dramas). All of those classical films - Singin' In The Rain, Vertigo, It's A Wonderful Life, Frankenstein, Dracula, Casablanca, Gone With The Wind, City Lights - these are all melodramas. Alas, something subtly changes through the 50s ad 60s. A new kind of realistic film emerges. Think for classics such as 12 Angry Men, The Graduate, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Midnight Cowboy. These movies are a touch more realistic than the former films. They focus, aesthetically and performatively, on making narrative more plausible. The Hollywood film does not become a realist film as European cinema understands the term - it almost never does. The Hollywood film and its unique attention to plausibility is what defines it at the most fundamental level.
As implied, the definition of realism in the cinema has shifted over the decades. However, if we trace back to the silent era again, we will find that there is a distinguished touch of realism embedded in the films of Chaplin, Griffith, Epstein, Gance, Keaton, Sjöström, Eisenstein, Fuillade, Vertov, Pabst, Murnau and more. Many of these filmmakers made rather melodramatic films, but, verisimilitude and plausibility remain key attachments. In fact, one will find that American films, though they are often fundamentally melodramatic, use narrative, characterlogical and aesthetic techniques to ground the film in something estimating recognisable reality. This technique of giving melodrama greater realism generates what I have termed typhlodrama: a kind of drama that strives for realism, but is rather blind to the rules of reality. The typhlodramatic, semi-realistic American film is distinguished from the kind of realist film developed in Europe. Often, European filmmakers map contrivance over realism where American films map realism over contrivance. This phenomena becomes ever more pronounced as the two forms of cinema developed into the 50s. It is now then that we can understand the functioning of a New Wave film, shot on the streets, but then shaken up by the pen of an auteur; forged as realistic, cut with contrivance. Compare this to the New Hollywood film. Genre narratives are blurred and re-established. They remain melodramatic at heart, but become grittier, more real. Think of Scorsese's Taxi Driver; fundamentally a thriller about a rogue cowboy who saves a prostitute, one made gritty and hyper-plausible.
Whilst Hollywood develops its typhlodrama, focusing ever more on creating a sense of realism, on making fantastical narratives more plausible, there emerges a new kind of melodrama in the late 70s and 80s thanks to new technology: the melodramatic adventure à la Star Wars, RoboCop, Conan The Barbarian, Back To The Future, E.T and Batman. These huge blockbusters are reminiscent, dramatically speaking, of great classical melodramas in Singin' In The Rain, Casablanca, Frankenstein and more. Alas, key conventions of the Hollywood film remain pertinent; plausibility and psychological realism. Characters must appear real and human and they must act as sensibly as possible considering their given situation. These are markers of typhlodrama; the more autonomous a character appears in melodramatic constraints, the more pure the typhlodrama. The new sweeping melodramas of the 70s and 80s coalesce with the New Hollywood social realism through the 90s via classics such as Pulp Fiction, Jurassic Park, The Matrix, Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs, The Truman Show and Saving Private Ryan. And then out into the 2000s we emerge, and so we see the rise of the superhero film - which now rages like a storm over the box office in the latter half of the 2010s.
If the American film has always mediated between melodrama and typhlodrama, has constantly told stories that are fundamentally contrived, but fluctuate in the amount of realism used to control and curtail melodrama, then the superhero origin film is the epitome of American cinema - dramatically speaking. The origins film is, fundamentally, extremely melodramatic. These are stories about mutant spiders, science experiments gone wrong, tech development gone insane, aliens, dimensions, magic and a vast array of otherworldly, highly unreal phenomena. Alas, the origin story is always about a character bridging the gap from a real world to another world, and in their process of becoming a superhero, aligning these two worlds. Tony Stark develops impossible technology, but in becoming Iron Man, protects the real world. Peter Parker is a high-schooler that gains powers when he is bitten by a mutant spider, but uses these to protect his city. Carol Danvers is a pilot who encounters aliens, but re-discovers her earthly beginnings and protect the planet. I have simplified these narratives to a short sentence, but it is self-evident that reality and unreality are two distinct setting that are blurred in Marvel movies. The origin narrative emphasises the divide and merging-point between the two. Furthermore, these are films about the reactions of 'real' people to unreal events; they are about human truth in the melodramatic ether of possibility and speculation.
Let us conclude without delving into copious analysis and discussion. Why are there so many superhero origin stories? The phenomenon has much to do with the anthological nature of superhero narratives. However, I would argue that just as important is the origin's ability to satisfy the demands of Hollywood convention. These films find their success by being incredibly American; by contriving a great fantasy and convincing us that it could be real. As suggested, far more could be said about this topic, so I hand things over to you. What do you think of all we've discussed today?
Previous post:
Macbeth - Cinematic Presentness: Why Theatrical Adaptations Don't Work
Next post:
Kevin Hart: Irresponsible - Return To Form
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
