WEEKEND SPECIAL: Post-9/11 Popular Cinema And Superheroes
This One's For The Nerds!
I know I discuss pretty heavy stuff at this site, but my secret love has always been superhero movies. Superhero movies are the one subgenre I know the best, since I grew up an avid comic reader. I’m not so blind as to ignore their faults. But given my familiarity with most of the subject matter, it is like seeing an old friend, even if the context isn’t that encouraging. For one, these movies are based in gorgeously-drawn comic books — why are so many of them visually dull?
I began my time in prison in the “mental health” ward, placed there by accident. Nineteen days, no leaving my cell, no books, no letters, no pen and paper. Because I had just gotten off the street, I was hugely agitated, and I needed a positive headspace. I thought of the movies I loved, movies from all eras, all genre. But I mostly thought of superhero movies, because it was easy. Whatever I couldn’t remember visually, I recalled from reading the books as a young boy. Those thoughts saved my life.
As I have mentioned, I spent a great deal of time thinking of movies to get my head straight. As I got settled, I was able to teach ACE (Adult Continuing Education) classes, and I had enough access to DVD’s that I could teach film. I taught a few sessions, limited to the selection of mainstream, PG-13-rated American films, trying to diversify to fit accessibility and themes. I can’t say I won converts to film by showing “Dr. Strangelove” or “Duel” to older millennial inmates, but maybe the post-film discussions cracked open a door somewhere.
For my last class, I didn’t want to just generically teach “Film” (which required students to be checked in for attendance and… that’s it). I wanted to challenge them a bit more. I knew I didn’t have the resources for that, so I had to consider a curveball. So began “Post-9/11 Popular Cinema”, an academic study into superhero films. For one ten week period, I showed movies that I was certain these guys had seen dozens of times already, and challenged them to think differently about their idle entertainment. To think critically, politically, through the lens of gender and race. To ask why this genre had exploded in popularity during a particularly volatile time in American culture. To ask why.
I can’t say I converted many. Sadly, the demographics were almost entirely white suburban inmates, none of whom had considered life outside their narrow cultural experiences (which is why they arrived in prison). I had the one inmate who, even after hearing me outline the Black Panther’s origins in the 1960’s, persisted in asking whether or not the character was part of an affirmative action push. There was a whole class discussion built around the concept of “camp” (specifically in relation to “Catwoman”) that I suspect sailed over everyone’s heads. I pushed for a greater understanding of the inherent militarism of the genre (hence most of the orchestral scores essentially being “marches”) but I couldn’t get past an unthinking, baked-in reverence for the armed forces. The experience was frustrating in the moment, but I do hope that somehow I was able to plant a seed that will grow later.
We are close to the release of “Venom: The Last Dance”, which I am certain will resurrect the long-dormant monoculture and unite us just in time for a crucial presidential election in the states, so I figured I would pick through the highlights and lowlights of the Marvel and DC movies in the post-9/11 era. So no “Howard The Duck”, and a couple of movies that maaaaaay or may not be from the brand (“The Kitchen”?). Allow this ranking, from worst to best.
“Suicide Squad”
HOT TAKE: Come on now. This is barely a movie.
“Jonah Hex”
HOT TAKE: It still blows my mind that they shot two totally different bad endings for this film and decided that they would just edit them together in the final cut as an acid trip.
“X-Men Origins: Wolverine”
HOT TAKE: Pretty much the answer to the fated 2008-era question, “It’s a Wolverine movie, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“Madame Web”
HOT TAKE: Some executive at Sony smiled at themselves during this production for making a prequel to a movie that, with a few executive firings and regime changes, could possibly exist in ten years.
“Catwoman”
HOT TAKE: Someone mentioned that they changed like two lines in this script to turn Batman into Benjamin Bratt’s Tom Lone, and I can’t really unsee it.
“The Fantastic Four (2015)”
HOT TAKE: There’s a bit after the final action sequence where a military general tells the Fantastic Four, “The world will never know what you did today,” and I was like, “Can ya tell me anyway?”
“Morbius”
HOT TAKE: Is someone ever going to explain how Tyrese had a robot arm in a trailer for this movie but the final edit had the studio just decide, “No, the movie wouldn’t make sense if we put it in there”?
“Green Lantern”
HOT TAKE: Kudos to the movie for immediately doing away with the idea the Green Lantern might have a secret identity just because Ryan Reynolds wears a domino mask.
“Ghost Rider”
HOT TAKE: If you replaced Nicolas Cage with anyone else, this falls to the absolute bottom of this list.
“Justice League”
HOT TAKE: Can’t believe there was a moment when Martha Kent tells Lois Lane that her son Superman called her “thirsty.”
HOT TAKE: Would have loved if they committed to actually making a real musical out of this.
“X-Men: The Last Stand”
HOT TAKE: Deeply sexist, but worth it for accidentally being a completely pro-Magneto movie.
“Elektra”
HOT TAKE: If they ditched the special effects and made this in 1985 with Cynthia Rothrock, it might have been kind of cool.
“Thor: The Dark World”
HOT TAKE: The dimension-hopping finale is actually pretty inspired, even if Marvel is in love with that Ambiguous Desert Planet that pops up every third movie.
“The Marvels”
HOT TAKE: Among many problems, they probably should have done more with the villain outside of scribbling some motivation on a cocktail napkin that no one could clearly read.
“Daredevil”
HOT TAKE: A product of the era where Hollywood thought you could just strap anyone into wires and they could learn some wuxia in a day.
HOT TAKE: Anya Taylor-Joy as Magik is Top 5 Marvel casting.
HOT TAKE: Shame on Dwayne Johnson for creating such a sideshow that overshadowed how Pierce Brosnan’s Dr. Fate was the swaggiest man in the DC universe.
“The Kitchen”
HOT TAKE: I maintain my hardline opinion that the least-convincing element of this movie, and many other movies, was Domnhall Gleeson.
“Wonder Woman 1984”
HOT TAKE: Pedro Pascal was promoting this and he said something to the effect of, “[Gal Gadot and Kristen Wiig] are doing the acting, and I’m doing the SCHMACHTING!” and I have thought about this maybe every day since.
“The Amazing Spider-Man”
HOT TAKE: What’s more amazing: the gymnastics it took for Martin Sheen to not say the famous “great power/great responsibility” line, or that Sony rephrased the saying AGAIN later in “Madame Web”?
“Shazam: Fury Of The Gods”
HOT TAKE: There are like four references to the larger DC movie universe in this movie, but like six super-specific references to Skittles.
“Venom”
HOT TAKE: Why are the first forty minutes of this movie about journalism?
“Fantastic Four”
HOT TAKE: Had a six year old relative watch this with me, and when Victor Von Doom showed up, she said, “He seems nice!” and I knew the casting department had messed that one up.
“Venom: Let There Be Carnage”
HOT TAKE: These are not good movies, but I remain pretty mesmerized by the fact that, for most of these two movies, the symbiote looks like an actual physical creation you can reach out and touch.
“Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer”
HOT TAKE: The representation of Galactus is a real mood killer, but that Human Torch/Silver Surfer race feels plucked from the comics.
HOT TAKE: I would love to know the corporate machinations that lead to Disney severing certain elements of this property so people don’t recognize any Marvel connections. Who cares? I't’s not like y’all are gonna pay the creators of the characters anyway.
“The Losers”
HOT TAKE: One of like eighty comic book movies Idris Elba, Chris Evans and Jeffrey Dean Morgan have made collectively. Jason Patric does seem genuinely aggrieved as the villain, however.
“The Punisher”
HOT TAKE: The bit with Harry Heck is by far the highlight of this movie.
“Constantine”
HOT TAKE: In an entirely overqualified cast (with the exception of Keanu Reeves, who is terrible in this), Gavin Rossdale of Bush was not entirely awful as a… demon? Angel? What was this thing about again?
“The Amazing Spider-Man 2”
HOT TAKE: I hated the idea, at the time, to spin this off twenty five other movies. But then I heard Drew Goddard describe a “Sinister Six” movie as “Wages Of Fear” and I thought, “Oh God, that’s perfect.”
“Teen Titans Go! To The Movies”
HOT TAKE: Kudos to these guys for mapping out the joke about Alfred getting his own spinoff movie almost a year before Alfred got his own spinoff prequel television show.
“Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom”
HOT TAKE: I know we all pretended to ignore this, but you guys do know Martin Short voices some sort of sea monster in this, right?
“X-Men: Apocalypse”
HOT TAKE: The plot of this movie is total dog slop, but at the time, considering everyone was knee-deep in the MCU, this really stood out for it’s emphasis on big, loud colors and wardrobe. And that last scene of everyone in comics-accurate costumes, was a nerd dream (which they immediately abandoned in the next movie).
“Blade: Trinity”
HOT TAKE: Worth seeing for the dripping disdain Parker Posey puts in every line with her uncomfortable-looking vampire teeth prosthetics.
“Ant-Man”
HOT TAKE: Christophe Beck deserves credit for replacing Steven Price at the last minute and creating a rowdy, percussive score for this trilogy.
“Dark Phoenix”
HOT TAKE: A narrative disaster, but the third act, particularly the final train sequence has some of the best X-Men action of the franchise.
“Thor: Love And Thunder”
HOT TAKE: The first movie I saw on the big screen when I got out of prison, so I’ll always love this, particularly Thor’s Jack Burton getup at the start of the movie.
“The Flash”
HOT TAKE: Were they not such a problem behind the scenes, yes, I would have watched a “Flash” movie that was just Ezra Miller and not a vehicle for random deepfake cameos.
“Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings”
HOT TAKE: I don’t remember a thing that happens in the second half of this movie.
“Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania”
HOT TAKE: I appreciate how this movie does address, straight-on, what heroism is. Scott Lang is taking a victory lap for fighting an alien, while his daughter is protesting police brutality and his surrogate mother (Michelle Pfeiffer’s Janet) is a freedom fighter (“Or terrorist!” she corrects) for marginalized people in another realm.
“Deadpool And Wolverine”
HOT TAKE: Someone described this as a feature-length Super Bowl commercial, and I really think that’s as accurate as it gets.
“Thor”
HOT TAKE: Impressively set the stage for a trilogy of “Thor” films that treat Asgard as, basically, two blocks.
“X-Men: First Class”
HOT TAKE: That first half sizzles, and then it becomes all-too-easy to check out once the actual young X-Men show up.
“Man Of Steel”
HOT TAKE: Never a big Kevin Costner fan, so it’s really surprising to me how he wrings so much emotion out of such an underwritten and often misbegotten role.
“Captain Marvel”
HOT TAKE: Personally I liked that they made Carol a bit prickly and haughty, because if you had that power set, you’d be like that too.
“Ant-Man And The Wasp”
HOT TAKE: How did Marvel brass see Michael Pena steal this movie away and then NOT invite him back for part three?
“The Lego Batman Movie”
HOT TAKE: Probably my favorite kids-movie euphemism for Batman being sexually active is when they say he’s having a party here “with lots of lady tennis players.”
“Blue Beetle”
HOT TAKE: Imperfect generic take on superheroes, but people definitely slept on the cool synthwave score.
“Shazam!”
HOT TAKE: Cute enough for one movie, but not enough for two!
“Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance”
HOT TAKE: The first “Ghost Rider” is trying to be a catchy pop song, but this is loud, stupid, un-melodic death mental. I know what I prefer.
“Avengers: Age Of Ultron”
HOT TAKE: Not the best Marvel movie, but the most Marvel movie. Loved how James Spader played a robotic genocidal maniac as a catty and sarcastic pissant.
“Captain America: The First Avenger”
HOT TAKE: Docked heavily because it feels like they gloss over three additional movies in the busy second half.
“Doctor Strange”
HOT TAKE: Not totally in love with reducing Tilda Swinton to a zen-koan-spouting grandmaster, but it’s still Tilda Swinton. Also, Michael Giacchino’s end credits tune RIPS.
“Avengers: Endgame”
HOT TAKE: I felt a deep well of emotion in me when I recently watched reaction videos taken in the theater on opening night of “Endgame”. Of course I wanted to be there while everyone was cheering the return of all the heroes. I may never get to have that feeling, and that saddens me greatly. Also saddening? That the final crowd-pleasing sequence is visually so muddy and phony and a disaster of on-screen composition. Would I have cheered loudly? Yes. Would I also have been annoyed by the cast literally signing their autographs on the end credits? You bet.
“Eternals”
HOT TAKE: Forget that robotic sex scene — in other ways, this is really the only Marvel movie to have small moments of emotional intimacy between characters. The only Marvel movie to address theology, so of course it was subject to a Dikembe Mutombo-style rejection by the general public.
“Spider-Man: No Way Home”
HOT TAKE: Probably the best execution possible of a storyline that sounds like it was conjured up by a room full of crayon-eaters.
“Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice”
HOT TAKE: Big, solemn, punishing, and completely ridiculous. And yes, I know it’s not important, but Batman totally won.
“Black Widow”
HOT TAKE: How do you not fall in love with Florence Pugh and her love of pockets?
“Joker”
HOT TAKE: It’s largely inarticulate societal-rage nonsense. But when Arthur Fleck arrives onstage at the Murray Franklin show, my stomach tightens into knots, and it feels like anything could happen even though I’ve seen it a few times.
“Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness”
HOT TAKE: The fight where they throw music notes at each other is a Top 5 Marvel moment, come on!
“Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3”
HOT TAKE: Weakest of the three, and every moment with Adam Warlock feels entirely wasted. But I saw this on a very very tough day, and the Radiohead-assisted opener drove me to the biggest, fattest tears.
“Spider-Man: Homecoming”
HOT TAKE: I hate those moments when these movies make fun of the source material, but I can never get enough of Michael Keaton mockingly going, “I’m THE SHOCKA, I SHOCK PEOPLE!”
“The Incredible Hulk”
HOT TAKE: The Hulk tears a car in half and uses the pieces as boxing gloves. I mean, come on.
“Iron Man 2”
HOT TAKE: The box office suggests that yes, the fans would watch movies where these actors just get to randomly b.s. in character in scenes that don’t need to go anywhere.
“Captain America: Civil War”
HOT TAKE: It is immensely satisfying to see all these characters in one place, but wouldn’t it be great if there was actually something at stake?
“Hulk”
HOT TAKE: I choose to believe Nick Nolte, bearded and bedraggled, grabbing an electric wire, biting it and becoming a being of electricity was all on-the-day improv.
“Spider-Man: Far From Home”
HOT TAKE: A provocative take on how scumbag con men take advantage of this “post-truth” world, at least until Marvel idiotically jumped fully into the consequence-free world of the multiverse.
“Birds Of Prey (Or: The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn)”
HOT TAKE: Love the fight choreography of this one. HATE Chris Messina’s discount-rack abusive maniac henchman.
“X-Men”
HOT TAKE: The first and last time this franchise ever felt political, and even then, just barely?
“Deadpool”
HOT TAKE: Just the right level of obnoxious.
“Watchmen”
HOT TAKE: Zack Snyder clearly does not get “Watchmen”, but the origin sequence for Dr. Manhattan is the best Snyder has ever been.
HOT TAKE: The most delightfully-mad climax of any DC movie.
“Aquaman”
HOT TAKE: Patrick Wilson trash-talks a crustacean by demanding, “Call me… OCEAN MASTER” and suddenly you’re aware of what “Avatar” was missing.
“Punisher War Zone”
HOT TAKE: The only Marvel movie where people EXPLODE.
“Spider-Man 3”
HOT TAKE: A superhero movie about forgiveness. So of course people talk about it like it was a disaster.
“Iron Man”
HOT TAKE: Downey Jr. just KILLING it.
“Captain America: The Winter Soldier”
HOT TAKE: An enjoyable punch-out of a movie (Batroc!), but kind of a joke that the first time in a Marvel movie someone testifies to Washington, it’s Scarlet Johansson telling politicians, “You need SHIELD, who cares if it’s corrupt and run by Nazi algorhithms, what are you going to do, shoot us down?”
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
HOT TAKE: Namor was there at the battle against Thanos, right?
“Batman Begins”
HOT TAKE: Probably the first time onscreen where the idea of Batman actually made sense to me.
“The Wolverine”
HOT TAKE: They can’t shake the obligatory third-act blow-out, but otherwise this is what you hope for in a Wolverine movie.
“The Dark Knight Rises”
HOT TAKE: Pretty much a “Rocky” sequel in disguise.
“X2: X-Men United”
HOT TAKE: Thought that Cyclops listening to N*Sync in his car was… a bit much?
“Thor: Ragnarok”
HOT TAKE: The most proudly dumb of all superhero movies.
“Deadpool 2”
HOT TAKE: Deserves credit for not repeating the mistake of “X-Men: The Last Stand” where Colossus and Juggernaut were on the same battlefield and NEVER FOUGHT.
“X-Men: Days Of Future Past”
HOT TAKE: The extended “Rogue Cut” establishes this movie as having the most complex ideological debates between characters in the series.
“Guardians Of The Galaxy”
HOT TAKE: I feel like we were cheated out of the right amount of Benicio Del Toro as The Collector.
“Avengers”
HOT TAKE: Maybe one of Harry Dean Stanton’s fifteen best movies. Maybe.
“Blade II”
HOT TAKE: Wesley’s finest hour?
“Spider-Man”
HOT TAKE: How did Michael Papajohn weasel his way both into “Spider-Man” AND “The Amazing Spider-Man”, therefore breaking the multiverse?
“Wonder Woman”
HOT TAKE: I feel like they left money on the table by not making Lucy Davis’ Etta Candy comics-accurate (she gets super strength from eating candy! Come on!)
“Avengers: Infinity War”
HOT TAKE: I do wish I could have also been in the theater as everyone begins to vanish out of existence, just to hear that stunned silence.
“Superman Returns”
HOT TAKE: The sad tale of an isolated alien who doesn’t feel worthy of love. I’ll defend it until the end.
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”
HOT TAKE: Inexplicably, these are the most emotionally-probing films in the MCU saga.
“Logan”
HOT TAKE: Like in almost every X-Men movie, they lose me when they insist on having the kid X-Men show up and do kid X-Men things.
“Iron Man 3”
HOT TAKE: The only superhero movie to actually tackle the military industrial complex, particularly with the fearmongering mock-up of the Mandarin.
HOT TAKE: The first Batman movie actively interested in who Batman and Bruce Wayne really are.
“Zack Snyder’s Justice League”
HOT TAKE: The ultimate superhero movie experience. I felt like they should have given me a t-shiirt afterwards.
“Black Panther”
HOT TAKE: Worth teaching in my class for the terrified white guys who quietly left during the post-film discussion, and the few that stayed, including the one who was asked, “What are the protagonist’s goals in this movie?” and froze as if someone had queried “WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANT??”
“Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse”
“Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse”
HOT TAKE: Finally, comic book movies that look like comic books. How hard was that?
“The Dark Knight”
HOT TAKE: These superhero movies almost always have troubling politics. At least Chris Nolan and Batman truly commit to the bit. The “good people” of Gotham deserve a hero, but they also deserve to be lied to. Don’t trust Christopher Nolan to be your friend, guys.
“Spider-Man 2”
HOT TAKE: Y’all still haven’t topped that train sequence (which, I’d argue, flourishes even more in the “Spider-Man 2.5” extension).
Wow! Seeing all these movies listed out in one place simultaneously made me realize I’ve seen too many and somehow not enough of them.
Glad to see love for underrated The Incredible Hulk. This is the best cinematic version of Hulk. I’ll take sad, world weary shaggy haired Hulk over dumb comedic Hulk I guess. I know I’m in a small, small camp on this one.
I second your Watchmen take but man if Snyder did get it and chose some less on the nose needle drops it could have been some Kubrickian like masterpiece because visually it’s excellent and that fact that it even exists is just wild and could only have happened when it did. I don’t even mind that they left out the giant squid at the end.
Interested in where you would rank The Batman among the Batman catalog.
John Travolta as the main villain in The Punisher is a human bank owner in Tampa, FL. Amazing.
I’ll always really appreciate this one just for the small scale and spaghetti western influence even though that aerial shot of all the exploding cars making out the punisher skull at the end is pure garbage. And Tom Jane is great in this.
I can’t decide if Guardians 3 is the worst of that trilogy but I do know that Rocket and his friends’ flashbacks absolutely broke me and I respect the overall darkness of that one. These are the best movies in the MCU.
Spider-Man No Way Home’s middle aged Spider-Man hit me harder than expected. I was a freshman in college when the first Spider-Man came out and I saw it 4 times in the theater. I just blown away by it and I was also discovering Evil Dead at the time. Just seeing a couple Spidermen around my age bonding over their shared back problems and strained tendons just resonated.