Just what the doctor ordered to lift the UK’s spirits with an awful pandemic, the UK’s most well-renowned film critic embarks on a new page on the series Secrets of Cinema, this one being the sledgehammer-influence of the superhero film genre. With millions of Marvel fanatics supporting today’s cape-wearing box-office smashers while critics such as Scorsese generalise the whole ballpark as zero-substance drizzle, can Kermode bring the two extremes together like (insert super-strength scene here) on his newest?
While one may be more familiar with the critic’s wonderfully ruthless disembowelling of cinematic atrocities like Entourage, Kermode brings a more straightforward informative approach in this ongoing series to give a well-rounded view of the roots of his chosen genre and the significant tropes that define them. Here he embarks on a stood-back observation on the industrial meat feast of cinematic superhero flicks, analysing the significance of their hopeful symbolism and the peaking and erosion of tricky technical styles for the illusion of powers like Superman 1978’s flight.
Unlike other film buffs like Scorsese addressing these effects-bursting action bonanzas as brainless fairground films, Kermode takes a bit more of an informed stance to give entertaining points on the genre’s steady evolution, many of which will surprise. From way back from the birth of the identity-secreting of Zorro to the achievement of colour pop-arty bonanzas like the 1966 Batman with a cackling fist-fighting Caesar Romero to today’s CGI Marvel team-ups, the point that superhero flicks are constantly adapting with a spectrum of tropes is made clear. Clear, though, in a typical witty way from the K man’s iconic cool sophisticated lecturing. It’s almost as if Kermode is bound to reveal the underlying S to SuperficialcritiquingisbadhereIam beneath that suspiciously-reminiscent Clark Kent suit-glasses image. But while plentiful films’ defining contributions are covered in passing mentions, he does reveal glimpses of that iconic Lex Luthor within, with counteracting points of the overabundances of overblown finales holding back the genre’s potential.
More knowledge of classic cinematic arthouse projects that viewers would be unaware influenced such recognised icons like the Joker (The Man Who Laughs) and Hulk (The Amazing Colossal Man) are also mentioned to reveal how little the average movie-goer has likely scratched the surface to discovering the obscured influences of these modern spectacles’ souls and encourages further dives in the constantly surprising world of film. Cape-drifting beacons of hope like Superman or Batman may not exist but film at least has a suit-donning critic as a hope for the limitless experimentative future for genres like superhero by looking back decades instead of the last two films and seeing potential in new takes even if the film is rubbish.
Except Batman and Robin. We don’t talk about that one.