It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a(nother) superhero film!
Top photo: Marvel Studios
Following a blockbuster opening weekend for Captain America: Brave New World, Ƶ Boulder’s Benjamin Robertson reflects on the appeal of superhero franchises and why they dominate studio release schedules
Captain America continues to conquer obstacles and crush villains―not bad for a man approaching age 85.
The comic book hero made his debut in print in December 1940, then on TV in 1966 and hit the silver screen in 2011―gaining massive momentum along with way. This past Presidents Day weekend, the fourth installment of the superhero series, “Captain America: Brave New World,” hit the top spot at the box office in the United States, and .
Benjamin Robertson, a Ƶ Boulder assistant professor of English, notes that superhero franchises are comforting in their repetitiveness.
It’s the fourth-best Presidents Day launch on record, behind three other superhero movies: Black Panther, Deadpool and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
What’s going on here? What’s giving Captain America his muscle? And why do folks keep going back to these same stories, characters and worlds over and over?
Benjamin Robertson, a University of Colorado Boulderassistant professor of English who specializes in popular culture, film and digital media, says there are two answers: “One, the genre is comforting in its repetitiveness. This is the least interesting answer, however,” he says.
The second answer appears a little more sinister. Robertson says viewers return to these stories because creators make “story worlds that solicit consumers’ attention and that must always grow and that turn increasingly inward.”
He says the first Iron Man film is about America intervening in the Middle East following Sept. 11, but later MƵ (Marvel Cinematic Universe,the franchise behind many superhero movies) films seem less and less about real or historical matters and more about the MƵ itself.
“As a colleague once put it, every MƵ film is simply the trailer for the next MƵ film, the result of a strategy that seeks to create a fandom that can’t escape from the tangled narrative that the franchise tells,” he explains.
In short, Robertson says if consumers want to know the full narrative—the full world that these films and series describe—they have to go to the theater. “As this world becomes about itself rather than about external history or real-world events, a certain ‘lock in’ manifests, making it harder and harder to not see these films if one wants to understand the world they create.”
‘Flatter American identities’
Actor Anthony Mackie plays the titular Captain America in Captain America: Brave New World. (Photo: Marvel Studios)
Another trick is that MƵ films tend to “flatter American identities” by celebrating militarism, focusing on charismatic heroes who try to do the right thing unconstrained by historical necessity and suggesting that everything will work out in the end, Robertson says.
“I can see the more comforting aspects of these films having appeal to many consumers. Don’t fear climate change, fear Thanos [a supervillain] and other embodiments of badness,” he says.
As to the question of whether franchises are just growing their worlds and the characters in them, or retelling the same story because it makes money, Robertson says each MƵ film is a piece of intellectual property, but an individual film is far less valuable than a world.
“A film might spawn a sequel or sequels, but without developing the world, the sequels will likely be of lesser quality and, eventually, no longer be profitable or not profitable enough to warrant further investment,” Robertson says. “But if producers develop the world into a complex environment that contains numerous characters with distinct and yet intersecting story arcs, well, then you have the foundation for potentially unlimited storytelling and profit in the future.”
He adds that in that context, Captain America has obvious value as an individual character, but he has far more value as part of a world that can develop around him and allow for new actors to play him as he evolves with the world.
So, as the world grows as an intellectual property and in narrative development, "so does the potential for profit, although we may now be seeing the limits of this dynamic as some MƵ films have not been doing as well at the box office over the past five years, although there are likely several factors that contribute to this decline.”
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