In Defense of Darkman or....Superhero Movies Hollywood Could Learn Something From

With this year in superhero films wrapped up, Marvel ready to shove out their new batch and DC getting everyone's mouths watering with Arrow being a breakout success (despite mixed reviews from fanboys) their Flash television pilot, and of course the several rumors and announcements behind the casting of Man of Steel 2: The Steel Strikes Back, I thought I'd pull a few movies with cult success (despite questionable box office numbers) out of the vault and take a brief look at some of the lessons modern comic book cinema could take from them

Darkman: It sort of saddens me that we're quickly approaching (if we're not already in the midst of) a generation that will never know the glory that is Darkman. When you watch Sam Raimi's first jump into the superhero genre, it's actually a big insight into why he got tapped for the Spider-Man series in the first place. Even though, at first glance, it comes across as a teenager's ultraviolent fantasy, it's actually very indicative of what many comics were at the fringes of early comic culture: melodramatic pulp adventure. A psychotic, disfigured scientist returns from "death" to take revenge on the mobsters and crooked officials responsible? If Darkman had originated as a comic book hero, the story itself would have been more of a horror story than anything and Raimi has a far better understanding of the comic book genre than anyone gives him credit for. The movie made absolutely NO apologies for the fact that Peyton Westlake was more or less just a really demented guy who a). wanted his face back and b). wanted to kill a lot of people (basically what would happen if someone set Kanye West on fire).

Moral of the Story: The lesson that Current Hollywood can (and should but won't) take from this movie is that every superhero film doesn't have to be one of virtue because not every superhero is a virtuous one nor should they be. This is where the Punisher and Ghost Rider movies went wrong (well, they went wrong a LOT of places...Nic Cage being a notable one....but virtue was prime among their sins).


The Phantom: Now, here's a movie that holds a very special place in my heart while many others have forgotten about for understandable reasons. The 1989 Batman was something of a game changer for superhero movies. When Jack Nicholson's Joker uttered the line "Where does he get those wonderful toys?"....his reaction was one that turned out to mirror the audience's. I mean, for the time in which it was conceived, watching a hero swing onto rooftops, lob smoke bombs and evade the law in a tricked out car was pretty goddamned exciting. Then, you find yourself watching a period piece about hero you mainly only know from the comics section of your newspaper. So, needless to say, Lee Falk's jungle hero had the odds against him right out of the gate. He was an Indiana Jones-type hero at a time when moviegoers had decided they were pretty much over Indiana Jones.



Having said that, there's a lot to learn from The Phantom. First of all, there's Billy Zane's performance. With a period piece like this, it's importance not to take yourself too seriously. Zane went a different way than what would be expected from a story about a mythical hero who lives in a secret jungle surrounded by tree people who revere him as a living ghost protector. Let's face it...if you go dark and play the Phantom like a guy He dashed to and fro, punching and shooting with a wink, a smile and a "pardon me, ma'am" at every turn. We call this kind of shit "cheesy" and "hamfisted" nowadays, but it's also the sort of thing that makes us smile and induces a feeling of escape which is what we commonly go to the movies for in the first place.

One of the best "quiet as kept" scenes is when Phantom is chasing thugs who've kidnapped Kristy Swanson (By the way, Diana Palmer's awesomeness dwarfs pretty much EVERY incarnation of Lois Lane except maybe Amy Adams in Man of Steel), bumps into a woman by mistake, stops to pick up her purse like a gentleman and goes on to leap from car to car in traffic, steal a cop's horse, riding off in hot pursuit....LIKE A FUCKING BOSS.

Moral of the Story: The thing that should really translate well here for Current Hollywood is that every hero doesn't have to be edgy and dark. Granted, Ghost Rider really should be which is why that failed, but there's no reason modern day swashbucklers can't be fun.

The Rocketeer: For a movie that doesn't really get the credit it's due, maintaining a 63% rating on Rotten Tomatoes isn't exactly anything to sneeze at. Unfortunately, it suffered from the same societal epidemics as The Phantom where a). if a movie didn't open and sellout in every theater worldwide like Dark Knight or The Avengers recently, it's automatically dismissed as a failure (keep in mind that several failures have done very well in the box office in the same way as when you go home with the guy at the bar who seems to mean well only to wake up once you're sober and say "What the fuck was I thinking?"....I'm looking at you, Transformers 2 & 3) and b). was portraying a sort of bare bones "everyman" hero in the era of Batman.

In many ways, this was a movie that Hollywood, in fact, may just have learned something from for better or worse. I mean, honestly, Rocketeer was the epitome of a period-piece hero epic. A douchebag test pilot finds Howard Hughes experimental jet pack, battles "G-men", the mob, and Nazis all for the love of Jennifer Connelly's boobs? That pretty much sums up American propaganda heroes of the 1930's. For all intents and purposes, this was something of a blueprint that would later make the way for asshole superheroes like Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man. One of the big highlights from this movie that deserves consideration (aside from a delightfully fun Timothy Dalton villain) is the dialed back usage of special effects. Don't get me wrong; it's not like they tied Bill Campbell to a big rope the whole time and told him to holler in front of a house fan the whole time, but Peter Travers had it right when he referred to it's movie magic as "the kind that charms us, rather than bullying us, into suspending disbelief."

Moral of the Story: On one hand, when you have movies about gods with magic hammers, giant green beasts, asshole space cops with magic wishing rings and....well, Superman...it's hard for visuals NOT to be a contributing factor to their success. On the other hand, special effects don't have to subtract from the story's personality. Joss Whedon understands this pretty well. So does Rocketeer director Joe Johnston which is probably why Marvel ended up tapping him to direct Captain America, which, in addition to being a pretty damn good origin story, ended up being a terrific send up of old Republic serials.