Face Front, True Believers!

So I wrote a movie this year.

That’s right. A whole movie, from start to finish. In the interest of full disclosure, it wasn’t my first attempt at such a feat, but this time around, I started from scratch, and finally got all the way to writing that all-important THE END. I’m more than a little surprised to have pulled it off, especially since I did it in just a few months.

Now, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t learn a lot from the experience, but I’d also be lying if I claimed to suddenly be a substantially better screenwriter than I was before. I learned a lot, yes, but that doesn’t mean everything I learned was about writing movies. In fact, the majority of what I learned was only about writing one movie: specifically, the one that I wrote. It didn’t really make me any more qualified to do this blog.

Why bring up the screenplay at all, then? Two reasons.

1) Humblebragging

2) My movie was about superheroes

On the off chance that you haven’t noticed, superheroes are everywhere lately. At the movies, on television, in toy stores… superheroes have become so popular, I hear they even started printing stories about them in these little paper books that sell for just a few dollars. They’re great. And they use pictures instead of words!

Pictured: Me, Apparently

As you may be able to gather from the title of this blog, movies will be the topic that most concerns us here, but the point I’m getting at is that it’s easy to get disoriented in all the super-commotion. After all, even if we do limit ourselves to the big screen, we’ve already had three superhero movies come out this year, * with two more to go. ** With any luck, those last two will actually be the best ones. But still.

 * Captain America 2, the second second Spider-Man, and X-Men 4/2/7! 

 **Guardians of the Galaxy and Disney Animation’s Big Hero 6!  

What’s a non-comic-book-obsessed person to do in the midst of all this chaos? Others may be forced to run in circles or cower in fear, but luckily for you, dear reader, my singular writing credit means that if there’s any genre that I can speak about with authority, it’s the superhero genre. Not to mention, I already have a lot of thoughts on superheroes anyway. Like, a LOT of thoughts. My friends can certainly attest to that. 

My wonderful, extremely patient friends.

"…so that's Mark Waid. But what you REALLY need to understand about Daredevil is…"

This is all just a long-winded way of saying that for the next few months, CineMike Matthews will be taking a leave of absence. This leave of absence is different from the one he’s been taking for the last six months, though, because this time, I’ve brought in a replacement: the extremely capable and not-affiliated-with-me-in-any-way SuperMike Matthews! *

  * First introduced in Weird Wes #424!  

I hope you’ll join me – er, him – for an extended trip through the wonderful world of comic-book adaptations, as Mike Overthinks Movies celebrates its first ever Summer of Superheroes!

To make things easier on next week’s post, we’ll dive right in today with some thoughts on the genre as a whole.

And Now, Some “Super”-ficial Analysis, from SuperMike Matthews

 If you feel so inclined, the remainder of this blugpost can be read in a Batman voice. Also, I’m sorry for that awful, awful pun. – Ed. 

When trying to create a new superhero for any medium, be it in print or on the screen, the first thing you will learn is: It’s hard. Really hard. Or at least, it is nowadays.

I imagine that back in the Silver Age of comics, when everything was still blue-sky, men like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had no problems creating legions upon legions of original characters. After all, most of the cooler names were still unclaimed back then, so on the most superficial level, all you really had to do was think of a superpower, and then come up with a relevant noun or adjective to go with it. Maybe you put a “The” in front, maybe you follow it up with a “Man” or “Woman” or “Boy” or “Girl,” maybe you do both. The point is, bing bang boom, you just made a superhuman.

I don’t begrudge them that at all, for reasons I’ll get to in a moment, but boy, did they ever run that well dry. As I realized while writing my own movie, it’s nearly impossible to create a new and distinct set of superpowers in this day and age – and don’t even get me started on names. For reference, my screenplay features more than 10 distinct superheroes and villains, and with one debatable exception, none of them have even a single power that they don’t share with a pre-existing comic book character. And that isn’t for lack of trying. * Superman alone can do literally everything, depending on what the plot requires of him that month.

 * Well… maybe a little. But honestly, it’s hard.  

And yet, that’s okay, because as time has proven, powers alone can’t make a superhero interesting. The rule that characters should be actual people and not simple collections of traits is hugely important to all forms of storytelling, but that trap is especially easy to fall into within the superpowered community, where the traits in question have the potential to include “fireballs everywhere!” Cool abilities are great, yes, and unique or versatile abilities are even better, but what really sets a character apart – what makes them last – is their personality, and the way they deal with and use the powers they’re given. I’m not just talking Truth, Justice, and the American Way here, either. One of my all-time favorite comic book characters is Marvel’s Deadpool. In a nutshell, he has the same healing factor as Wolverine, meaning he can shrug off any injury in seconds, including extremely fatal ones. BUT * he's also riddled with cancer, and that cancer has its own healing factor, meaning it keeps growing at the same rate that his body destroys it, leaving him in constant pain. THEREFORE, he suffered a bit of a mental break, and has absolutely no regard for human life, be it his own or anyone else’s. 

 * We first learned this nifty storytelling trick from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, all the way back in Mike Overthinks Movies #1! It works on character backstories, too, apparently! 

Did I mention that Deadpool’s not a villain? Because he’s not. He’s completely insane, breaks the fourth wall constantly, and kills indiscriminately, but he's still a guy we can root for… usually... sometimes. The point is, that’s complexity right there. And even though that complexity stems entirely from Deadpool's powers, the fact remains that he is so much more than just his powers, which is something all superheroes should strive for. More importantly, it’s something that all superhero movies should strive to convey, and the line separating success from failure in that arena is pretty much the same line separating the good superhero movies from the bad ones.

 For the record, Deadpool actually appeared in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and even though he was great in his first scene, the rest of the movie went out of its way to get him completely wrong. So take that for what it’s worth. – Ed. 

Now, of course, there are a lot of other examples I could have used there. I chose Deadpool mostly because the dynamics behind certain other heroes – Batman, Spider-Man, etc. – are more obvious, but also because I’ll be talking about them later anyway, and because I firmly believe that everyone should know about Deadpool.

Just doing my part.

Anyway, that's pretty much it for this week. If comics are your thing, or you’d like to make them your thing, or you simply want to understand what all the fuss is about, I encourage you to stay tuned! I’ll be taking a more in-depth look at a number of ongoing film franchises as the summer continues. By the time we’re through, we’ll have (hopefully) painted the full picture of what makes a comic book movie tick – or not tick, as it were. And wouldn’t you know it, we’ll be done just in time to start prepping you for next year’s crop of flicks, which includes the long-awaited Avengers: Age of Ultron, the even longer awaited Ant-Man, and also more X-Men and Spider-Man, probably. So suit up, true believers, and come along for the ride! SuperMike Matthews has got your back.

Excelsior!

 Next Time: We Iron out the details of the series that started it all! By which I mean the tenth one. Or twelfth one. Or thirtieth. You know the one I mean. 

Okay…  so, like, I know him, which is why only I can take pictures of him and stuff, but he’s totally not me. For realsies.