Superhero movies are more popular than ever before, between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Nolan’sBatman trilogy. What more could we possibly ask for? Well how about finally making a good CBM based around a magical character.
Before going any further, I’d like to address the people who are going to scream THOR USES MAGIC! Yes he is, but not so much in the movies. In the movies technology and magic are the same. Where in the comics everything is obviously magic.
The Asgardian architecture and their outfits are all tech based. While weapons like Mjölnir are a combination of the two. Forged in the heart of a dying star explains how the weapon is practically indestructible, but it doesn’t explain the security system spell (lets just call it that) or how it can be used to summon lightning, the simple answer is magic.
Probably the best example of this hybrid style of the Thor movies is the Tesseract. Loki used his spear to channel the power of the cube to brainwash people, he then used is as a power source for his device to summon the Chitauri.
Even if this stuff is debated, what cannot be debated is that Thor was just an okay movie. Sure it made me actually believe that this whole Norse mythology can work in the modern world and it did finally make Thor popular to the bigger crowd (along with the JMS Thor run).
But still there was WAY too much Earth, not enough of the nine realms and the incredibly rushed character development and love story all just severely hurt the film for me.
But now that little rant is out of the way, time to move onto the main topic. Why aren’t there more magic basedsuperheroes getting movies? And when they do, why do they always suck?
When I think of this im immediately reminded of the Ghost Rider movies. While he isn’t a wizard or something. He does deal with demons and hellspawn so that in my book makes him a magic based hero.
While the first movie wasn’t The Dark Knight or something, I thought it could setup a sequel that would drastically improve upon the original. Sadly the sequel is an atrocious POS that needs to be buried in a land fill in New Mexico (E.T. game style).
Then you have the John Constantine movie that was a box office success, but it was just meh to me and didn’t really leave a lasting impact on CBM’s. But is it the movies fault or the comics?
Lets face it, neither of the big two have any super well known magic based super hero. I mean us comic book fans know of these guys. But the general audience will maybe know Doctor Strange or Zatanna, because these two showed up in Spider-Man TAS and Batman/JLU TAS as well as appearing in Smallville.
The movies that really made me believe that magical creatures like trolls, goblins and dragons could exist in our world are the Harry Potter films. They were fantasy movies that were fantastical just enough for you to be amazed at whats going on, but realistic enough so that you could believe these creatures could exist.
We already know Marvel is gearing up for a Doctor Strange movie, but even this is a long shot, considering that Iron Man, Thor: Dark World, Cap Winter Soldier, Ant-Man, GOTG and Avengers 2 have already gotten their set release dates, it seems like were going to have to wait ATLEAST until 2015 before we find out anything more about the Doctor Strange movie.
Also what puzzles me is that movies like this shouldn’t be too expensive to produce. It’s not like they need to computer generate entire or have loads and loads CGI crap going on like Thor.
But still I think that DC and Marvel need to both work on their magic based heroes. DC is already doing a fine job with Hellblazer still going strong, Justice League Dark, Demon Knights and I,Vampire. While Marvel has almost completely abandoned the likes of Doctor Strange except making him a member of the Defenders.
So what do you guys think? Should Marvel and DC start building up their magical super heroes? Considering their push for giant movie universes, I think we will need a third pillar for them each to balance out the realistic Iron Man with the fantastical Thor by finding a perfect middle ground for the two.
Im still waiting for my Zatanna movie.
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Miss M
Aug 20, 2012 -
I feel like one area of magical worlds that could really make a great film, if done the right way, would be He-Man and She-Ra. Though technically not a comic book, the animated series has seen comics made by DC. Technology does play a bit of a role in the Masters of the Universe mythos, but there is no denying that magic is a big part of the story. There is also a huge cast of interesting and unique characters that would make for a cool magic based film.
Very fun article. I hope that we do see more CBM in the future.
Kuno
Aug 28, 2012 -
I’m all for a magical comic book movie. The Harry Potter films have proved that the world can accept films about magic in today’s society. I think one problem is that they try to make comic book characters believable in real life, which is probably why they spent so much time on earth in Thor. Even in the Avengers they had to remind the audience that Thor and Loki were gods. That sort of explained away their powers as not being magical but divine. The more prominent of the X-Men from the movies were more earthly characters like Wolverine, who was surgically implanted with the adamantium and whose healing powers weren’t shown as being magical and not really explained, Magneto whose powers seem telepathy-based like Professor X and even Jean (Phoenix), while Storm was just a supporting character with no backstory whatsoever. But there always seems to be that question as to whether one can see these comic characters operating in day to day life. I remember an interview where Ben Affleck was explaining how believable Matt Murdock/Daredevil was as an everyday person. This might explain this apparent reluctance so far to explore the more magic based comic book characters.