The New Mythologies - Part 4: Gods and Dollar Signs

So here we are. This. Is. It. We've gone from Greek Gods, to The Golden Age of Superheroes, to the Nineties Anti-Hero Age. And now we've come to the current era. The era that I feel is a defining point in our culture, for better or worse. This is the Age of the Cinematic Universes.

Simply put, the superheroes we idolize today come in a mush bigger package than they used to. Gone are the days of rushing down to the nearest corner store to pick up the latest comics. Sure, the comics themselves are still around, but our heroes predominantly grace the big screen now. Officially starting off in 2008 with the release of Iron Man, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU for short, has recently become the highest grossing film franchise in history, eclipsing such powerhouses as James Bond, Harry Potter, and Star Wars. These films, which have collectively grossed over $17 Billion, are forces to be reckoned with. Entire studio schedules have been altered to accommodate their tent-pole franchises around the next Marvel movie.

As stated in the previous articles, this wasn't always the case. Comic book movies had receptions that were all over the spectrum, with some seen as great popcorn flicks, and others as absolute drivel. It wasn't really until Spider-Man 2 and X2: X-Men United in the early 2000's, and Batman Begins and The Dark Knight at the tale end of the decade that people really started to consider these movies as legitimately great cinema. Iron Man posed a different issue. It was based off of a C-list comic character that hadn't been relevant in years and starred Robert Downey Jr., an actor who matches the same description. And yet, when it was released, people went wild. It was a run away success and a box office smash, both revitalizing the character of Iron Man, and Downey Jr. himself. But the real talk of the town, was the after credits sequence. A eye-patched Samuel L. Jackson comes out from the shadows and speaks to Tony Start about what it was to be a hero, and how he just entered a larger world. And then, he uttered the words that caused a million Google searches worldwide: "I'm here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative."

Accurate.

What the heck was the Avengers Initiative. That was the question on everyone's lips for the next few weeks. For comic fans, even then it wasn't entirely clear. They couldn't possibly be talking about THE Avengers. I mean, that was a legendary superhero team that brought together heroes like Captain American, Ant-Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, Iron Man, etc. It was too far fetched to ever happen. Right? Well, as history would show, it wasn't. Marvel did something that no other movie studio had successfully done before or sense. They planned for years, through five individual superhero movies, and wove an interconnected universe that had all these characters shared, all culminating in one of the highest grossing (ed note: And most nerdgasm-tastic) movies of all time, The Avengers.

Now obviously there had been other interconnected movies before. The Universal Monster movies of the 1930's and 40's all took place in the same universe. Godzilla had multiple universes and even had King Kong kameo in a movie. And the aforementioned James Bond, while not having an overarching story, had many of the same characters show up numerous times, and had Bond fight a number of villains across his movies. But none of them took the long game quite like the MCU. They took their time crafting the story across the movies, and went in directions that no one thought would work. Don't think Thor can work in a "grounded" universe? Here he is shooting thunder out of his magic hammer. Don't think a superhero team up movie would work? Let me show you Iron Man reflecting a laser beam off of Captain America's shield. Never heard of Guardian's of the Galaxy? Here's a talking raccoon. You'll love it. At this point, now 10 years on, it truly is thought that Marvel can do no wrong. Everything they touch is cinematic gold. And the rest of the comics world want in.

This is where DC steps in. Now, they had TREMENDOUS success with The Dark Knight Trilogy, becoming the only comic book movie series to have one of it's actors win an Oscar for their role. So when Marvel began to ramp up their MCU, DC parent company Warner Bros decided they wanted a piece of the action. They began to craft ideas for their own cinematic universe, the DCU (ed note: Creative). This series was set to officially begin with The Green Lantern. But when that movie turned out to be hot trash, they decided to reboot Superman and start it there. Man of Steel premiered in 2013, one year after The Avengers, and five years after the beginning of the MCU. It was... okay. No really. It wasn't a bad movie, but it didn't do too much to establish a universe. It simply hinted at certain things in the background. It wasn't until it's sequel, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, that it started to lay the groundwork for the greater DCU- annnnnnd Superman's dead. 

The neo-classical facepalm is really the most insulting version.

As you may have already guessed, DC/Warner managed to f@$k their universe up BIG time. All rules of both comics and cinema will tell you, don't kill characters for an emotional impact that no-one actually cares about emotionally. We had JUST gotten this new Superman, and literally in his next movie, after about 43 lines of dialogue (ed note: No seriously. He had 43 lines. Look it up), he was dead and being cradled in Lois Lane's arms while Batman and Wonder Woman look on. Oh yeah. FRICKIN WONDER WOMAN IS IN THE MOVIE! So not only did this movie have the task of following up on Superman's story, introducing a new Batman into the universe and giving him his own story, observing the machinations of THE WORST Lex Luther to ever grace film, killing said Superman by way of Doomsday, a villain who ALSO needed an origin story, AND setting up the Justice League film, it also somehow thought it had time to introduce Wonder Woman into the mix. Oh, you know, THE THIRD MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER IN THE DCU!!!! Seriously, this movie is an absolute mess and legitimately makes me angry talking about it. It was followed up by Suicide Skwad, which sucked, Wonder Woman, which was good, and Justice League, which is so laughably bad that i really can't discuss a quarter of it's problems without writing a book.

All of this only highlighted the main problem that plagues our comic characters today. No one wants to take the time that Marvel did. They took YEARS to establish. Others want to do all the establishing in one or two movies. While it can be done, its not going to give you the emotional attachment that you develop after spending several movies with the same characters, watching them evolve and grow. You may be asking though, what does this have to do with Mythology? And I'd tell you; everything. These are how we tell our myths and legends nowadays. Tell me that school kids aren't talking about how much they think Thor is awesome, or Spider-Man is the greatest. How many of these kids look up to these heroes, just as our forefathers did to gods and kings? And furthermore, the same issues that have always been tackled, are still being done in these movies. Acceptance, heroism, courage, doing what's right. All of these things are still exemplified by our heroes, and more often than not, are the main themes of their respective movies. Now more than ever, are the core messages of our time accessible to our children in easy to wrap packages.

This is the culmination of all that has come before. I truly believe that society has changed because of the advent of these comic movies. Don't believe me? Look at the top ten movies in each of the past five years. I will bet you anything that at least four of them are either comic movies, or movies about fantasy, which I am also counting as part of the new myths. Because of course they are. I don't even have time to speak of Harry Potter or Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, but these too fall in the same category as the comic book movies. They are part of our societies myths to impart good values unto our future generations. Now, obviously I may be overstating the importance of these types of movies. I mean, I am a fan after all. But can you honestly tell me that the morals and ideas behind Captain America aren't something to look up to? Can you say the same for Hercules? Or Zeus? Or Thor? Or Horus? Or any number of our legendary stories we have come up with over our 10,000 years of history. We, as a people, mythologize. It's what we do. 

Even our heroes of old have become larger than life because of us. Whereas our war heroes in the past fought off 10 men, it has now turned to 50. Our leaders actions have become heroic, such as Theodore Roosevelt sparing a bear cub, or Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation. It's no longer about telling the absolute truth, it's about making a story of it. In the next 100 years, our actions will be spoken of as legend. Obviously not everyone, but the actions of those who influence us, the legends of our day. This is why we are always telling stories. We are always waiting for the next hero to swoop in and save us, the next demi-god to beat down evil, the next legend to teach us how to be good people. We are forever myth-makers. That is what we are. We are the Human Mythology, and our story is still being written.