Steven Spielberg: “There will be a time when the superhero movie goes the way of the Western."

Actually it does make sense to say comics are more relevant. In much the same way that all fantasy remains relevant. It's a medium that shifts with the trends in our culture. Comics don't sell 5,000,000 units or whatever it used to be quite too much anymore, but that's ok. The current movies and wide love of comics will pass on to future generations.

To assume that people 50 years from now will look at comics and think of them like I think of westerns is silly. There will still be comics. They will be different from what I know. Batman might even return to being corny, who knows? Westerns were based on an entire period of time and way of life that is simply no longer in existence. We don't care about how cowboys fought the Indians and won the west, or whatever. Because nobody was alive that remembers that time and we're awful sad that we killed all the Indians. They should stop calling them westerns and call them what they really are - period pieces.

I feel like 75 years is good enough proof that people still want these stories. That will continue. We're coming up on 30 years of Batman movies. How much more proof do you need? If Batman & Robin hadn't sucked bigtime and literally killed the franchise - there would have never been a break at all. Bad movies temporarily killed superhero movies, not lack of interest. I don't get this idea that suddenly people aren't interested in things anymore. Since when? That's why baseball is still being played 130 years into the sport, and the Super Bowl gets 90 million viewers, and comics still sell, romantic comedies are still a thing. These are all still relevant to our daily lifestyle in a way that hopping on a horse and shooting bad guys never will be again.

Quality plays a huge part. Don't ask me to explain transformers, because other than there must have been a ton of children that just want to see robots, I got no clue. They sucked from the first movie. The first question anyone ever cares about is "how was it?" I don't care what anyone says, a good quality movie (properly marketed I guess and doesn't suffer from some insane outside circumstance) doesn't flop very often. Just because shitty movies don't always flop doesn't make that untrue.

$400 million in investment for a super hero movie, makes $500 million - success? Sure. Add in toys. Toys are the reason they make these. That's why the movie doesn't even have to make it's budget back anymore. Even without the toys, some movies build success. Ant-Man may not make all of it's marketing budget + production costs back but dvd release and sequels will do awesome. It won't need to make $500M at the box office.

I don't believe these movies are "this seminal to a generation of filmgoers" - it's blown way out of proportion. It's simply people going to see good movies. And yes, Marvel has a brand and thats why people go to see their movies. But thats the thing - their brand is "enjoyable movies."

I apologize for rambling and going 90 directions at once. It's go home time and I'm done thinking.

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