Marvel Should Learn from Adventure Movies

I used to be a huge Marvel fan – but really though. My cat’s name is Loki, my mom bought me these awful Avengers-themed plastic cups one Christmas at my request, I passionately shipped Captain America and Black Widow (the USSR/US tension just adds to the romance, I promise)...

Needless to say, I really, really loved Marvel.

And now I can’t even watch the movies because I just get depressed about knowing how badly their quality declined. There’s been a hole in me ever since. I still watch and enjoy other movies, but none quite scratch the same itch of mindless entertainment.

Until I watched Uncharted, and, more recently, Fountain of Youth.

Now, thanks to those two adventure flicks, I think I finally know what Marvel executives are missing.

The Fountain of Youth2021

I’d never thought of it before, but adventure movies like Fountain of Youth and superhero movies have a lot in common in that they’re incredibly formulaic. Just think of each genre’s reliance on character archetypes. In Avengers, for example, you have Hulk, the nerd; Thor, the himbo; Iron Man, the techie; Cap, the patriot; and so on and so forth. In Fountain of Youth, on the other hand, you have Luke, the rogue; Charlotte, the repressed; Esme, the femme fatale; Owen, the evil billionaire; and so on and so forth.

The plots, too, are fundamentally predictable. In a superhero movie, disaster strikes, the main characters face ups and downs, and finally they save the day. In an adventure movie, a mystery presents itself, the main characters face ups and downs, and finally they solve the puzzle.

Both require a lot of suspension of disbelief, either for the superpowers involved or the infinite money the characters have access to in order to unravel a centuries old, global conspiracy. And in both cases, we’re happy to suspend that disbelief, because it’s playing into our childhood fantasies that we can make everything okay or that there’s hidden meaning to life that only we can truly understand.

And yet, only adventure movies leave me feeling satisfied these days.

Why?

I think it comes down to the fact, as always, that Marvel is playing things too safe because they don’t want to risk their IP. The characters can’t be morally ambiguous, because what if they alienate audiences? That’s just killing your cash cow. So characters have to fit squarely into one of two roles: “good guy” or “bad guy”. The archetypes don’t matter anymore. They’re flavour, not substance. And so, the stories start to morph into one big blob of bland sameness: good guys vs bad guys.

Adventure movies, however, are rarely thinking about sequels, and so their characters have more freedom. They’re allowed to do terrible things – in Fountain of Youth, for example, I was cringing at the mistreatment of priceless artifacts even though I know it’s fiction. But what does it matter? I’ve watched the movie, and the characters will probably never exist outside of it. As long as I’m satisfied by the end, there’s no reason for the studio to worry.

And I was satisfied by the end, because I got a full story-arc instead of a “stay for the end-credits to get a hint at the ultimate payoff 3 movies from now”.

Spoiler alert: there’s never going to be a payoff, because they’ll keep squeezing that character until there’s no juice left.

The studios behind superhero movies are too attached to their moneymakers – they treat them like precious collector goods, never willing to take them out of the box and actually play with them for fear it might damage their value.

But if nobody’s playing, what’s the point?

Adventure movies show us how to take the same archetypes over and over again, twisting them into new combinations that aren’t that different from each other and yet which feel entirely new and exciting each time. Uncharted made the dreamy ingenue the main character with a devilish rogue as his guide. In Fountain of Youth, the ingenue is mixed with the secret genius trope and becomes the protegé of the evil billionaire. Even when it’s the same, it’s different enough to feel fresh.

And that’s what Marvel needs to learn.

Think about one of their most successful recent movies: Logan. It’s great because it actually lets a character do something new for once. A scruffy guy is forced to be a father figure – then what? It’s a small hook, but it’s enough. It introduces an element of interest, even if we know where things are going to end. Compare that to Thunderbolts*, aka literally The New Avengers. Not only is it a clumsy attempt to rehash the story, the characters are so poorly defined that I never quite figured out why they or their situation were supposed to be interesting.

It’s not an issue of the characters being unknown – it’s a question of them being undefined, because definition might make them unpalatable.

No matter how old we are, our childish side never goes away. There will always be a market for movies that make us feel powerful, like we can figure everything out and save the day. But the thing is, you can’t turn that desire into a formula. As soon as you do, the magic starts to die. Will Marvel ever decide to take risks with its characters? Probably, but I doubt it will be often or soon.

What we need is for someone to create new superheroes, ones allowed to live rather than just hold up a franchise. We need to see them play because really, isn’t that what we all want? To be allowed to play freely and dream the way we did when we were young?

I dream of a day where superheroes are judged by the dreams they inspire, not the cash they bring in… But until that day happens, at least I have adventure movies there to satisfy my inner child.