Hiya!

Last week, I talked about Agent Carter, a new show that’s recently become one of my favorite television programs recently. And Agent Carter is a comic book character. And it seems like she won’t be the last comic book character that will be getting a television show or movie in the near future. DC and Marvel have made their plans for new films known and they’re all scheduled until 2020, I think.

I’m so excited for Captain America: Serpent Society!

And that’s not all! A lot of new shows have been popping up recently that are based on comic book heroes. We have Arrow, Gotham, The Flash, the aforementioned Agent Carter and even The Walking Dead (it’s actually based on a comic!). And that’s not all! In the future, we’re going to be getting a Supergirl television series from DC. Marvel is also upping the ante by partnering with Netflix to give us four new television programs featuring Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Jessica Jones.

Now, I don’t have a lot of knowledge about comic books and the characters. I don’t know the first thing about Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Jessica Jones. And I only know about Daredevil because of the old bad movie starring Ben Affleck! So, why is Marvel producing four new Netflix shows based on unknown heroes. More importantly, are there just too many superhero movies and television shows?

The only guy I know here is Daredevil

I’m of two minds on this topic. It’s good and bad at the same time in my opinion. For one, it’s good because most of the movies and shows are good and they are given the… respect I guess is the closest word I can think of. They aren’t the low-budget films of yesteryear; comic book movies and television shows way back when were really childish and didn’t take it seriously.

I mentioned Daredevil before, which came out a long time ago. I remembered watching it as a kid and even then, I didn’t like the movie. I didn’t like any of the characters. Everything looked so… fake. Most of all, it was just plain terrible when you compare it to another superhero film that was released just before Daredevil: Spider-Man. When you compare this movie to the original Spider-Man film, Daredevil was plain terrible.

Sad that this is the only reason why I know who Daredevil is.

Nowadays, you can see they put a lot of effort into these comic book movies. They definitely don’t scrimp on the special effects and the action scenes are usually fun to watch. The stories are also written very well and they don’t insult the viewers intelligence by dumbing things down. Well, they don’t dumb them down too much, anyway.

Also, as far as I know, the newer stuff stays relatively faithful to the source material and that’s great. It may not seem like a big thing as these are fantastical characters and they could take a lot of liberties when making a big budget film or series that’ll suit the taste of a mainstream audience. But the reason why they became so popular in the first place is because they love the characters and the personalities in the comics! Changing their motivations and personalities would not only alienate comic book fans but that would also remove the magic.

Like I said, however, there are some things I don’t like about how there’s so many movie and television series based on comic books. As most of them have this “shared universe” idea, it can be hard to follow the stories if you’re coming in the middle. It’s great if you were one of the fans who came in from the very start. But for someone who, say, never really got a chance to see the first Iron Man. It can be daunting to look at the entire years (yes, years) worth of stories and jump right in right smack in the middle!

too… much… information…

Also, it does shows Hollywood is lazy as they’re not even bothering trying to come up with new ideas and just getting the licenses for something that’s popular now. That’s totally not the best way to sustain a business! If you just rely on what’s popular, what’ll you do when the popularity subsides? Movie and television producers should concentrate more on creating new products and building new fanbases!

So, out of all of this, what do I think overall about all of these comic book movies and television series being made? Well, it’s a good thing for now. They are pretty good and they are made with a lot of care. Right now, I say bring them on! But I do wonder about the longevity of the idea of this practice.

Oh, and speaking of comic book heroes, I tried out playing some fighting games based on comic book characters. And I’ll tell you about the experience… next time!

What’s your opinion about all of these comic book movies and TV shows? Let me know in the comments section below!