Original subtitles

It's been one of those days.

The traffic is monstrous.

Town is a nightmare.

You're surrounded by clowns and your boss is a total Nazi.

It's time to escape.

And here come the heroes.

They're fighting for truth...

That wasn't right. Give me that!

..justice...

..or to overcome some longstanding psychological trauma.

They draw power from deep-seated myths and legends...

..and an army of visual effects technicians.

In Secrets Of Cinema, I explore the conventions which underwrite

the movies we love the most and examine the techniques

film-makers use to keep us coming back for more

and, tonight, I'm looking at what right now is probably

the biggest and most hotly debated genre of all.

I'll examine how superheroes set out to save the world...

..but ended up conquering it.

It's hard to think of any other time in cinema history when a single

genre has been as dominant as superhero movies are

at the moment.

Take Avengers: Endgame, the biggest worldwide hit of 2019.

It's the sequel to Avengers: Infinity War,

the biggest worldwide hit of 2018.

Now!

Other recent box office smashes include not only sequels

to more famous superhero franchises...

Crash positions!

..but also films about characters,

until recently, known only

to comics aficionados.

And now even the villains

are getting their own movies.

Indeed, these films have become so successful that some directors

like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola have started to view

them as a kind of alien invasion,

as somehow not cinema at all.

But, actually, superheroes and cinema have been entwined

from the very start.

Take the prototypical superhero Superman.

As the pre-title sequence of Superman The Movie reminds us,

he was created during the Great Depression, a time

when cinema dominated popular culture.

And his creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster,

looked to the movies for inspiration.

..was the responsibility of The Daily Planet,

a great metropolitan newspaper.

Superman's chiselled features were modelled on Johnny Weissmuller,

star of the Tarzan films.

His bespectacled alter-ego Clark Kent drew on Harold Lloyd,

and Superman's classic hands-on-hips posture

was straight out of the swashbuckling films

of Douglas Fairbanks.

But the Fairbanks influence went even deeper.

1920's The Mark Of Zorro features the classic trope of a hero

with a secret identity, which influenced not just Superman

but Batman, whose comics hit newsstands in 1939.

Unlike the colourful Superman,

Batman was a darker figure,

a costumed vigilante with no actual superpowers

who set out to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies.

And his artist, Bob Kane, drew on a more sinister

cinematic tradition, such as the creepy 1930 mystery,

The Bat Whispers...

Look! The window!

..and its silent precursor, The Bat, which even features a version

of the famous Bat Signal.

Meanwhile, Batman's great nemesis, The Joker,

was inspired by Conrad Veidt's shocking visage

in the silent melodrama The Man Who Laughs.

Superheroes quickly moved to the big screen in the 1940s,

but, rather than fully fledged feature films,

these were weekly serials in the Flash Gordon mould

and their quality varied.

Fans of Batman and Captain America had to be content

with some low-budget fisticuffs.

When Superman finally made his live action debut in 1948,

the serial ingeniously blended actors and animation.

The location is here.

Hm. That's about 2,000 miles away.

I can be there in 30 seconds.

It'll take me about that much time to make the necessary adjustments.

In that case, I'd better be leaving.

Oh, that's the window!

The door is over here.

Yes, I know.

Up, up and away!

Fast-forward to the next great wave of comic book superheroes

in the early 1960s,

the ones which went on to spawn today's Marvel Cinematic Universe,

and, again, you can see their own movie roots.

Writer Stan Lee and artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko

seem to have been influenced by a spate of science fiction films

reflecting atomic age anxieties.

Ant Man is a good example,

mixing The Incredible Shrinking Man

with the monstrous ants of Them.

The X-Men, teenagers born with uncanny psychic and physical

powers, are like a more colourful and benign version of the children

in the British film Village Of The Damned,

based on the John Wyndham novel The Midwich Cuckoos.

Leave...

..us...

..alone.

And while the Hulk is often thought of as a Jekyll and Hyde figure,

the original comic book version owes more to 1957's

The Amazing Colossal Man,

where the hero becomes a monster

as a result of accidental exposure during an atomic bomb test.

1966 finally saw the first full length,

full colour superhero feature.

Batmobile to airport.

Red alert. Prepare Batcopter for immediate take-off.

Batman was a spin-off from the popular TV series,

which had reinvented the shadowy crime fighter

as a gaudy, almost comedic character.

It was perfect for the swinging pop art era, which saw artists

like Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol use comic strip imagery.

The camp tone might surprise viewers raised on a high-fibre diet

of Christopher Nolan films,

and it no doubt reinforced the idea

that superheroes were just for kids and kitsch-lovers.

But if you were going to sink big money into a superhero film,

it needed to punch through with the grown-ups.

That's probably why the producers of Superman The Movie

made so much of Godfather writer Mario Puzo's involvement,

and star billing didn't go to newcomer Christopher Reeve,

but rather Marlon Brando as Superman's father

in the highest paid cameo in cinema history.

These...

..are matters of undeniable fact.

I ask you now to pronounce judgment on those accused.

Likewise, a decade on from Superman,

it was Jack Nicholson who got the big bucks and top billing

for his turn as the Joker in Tim Burton's Batman.

I'm giving away free money.

And where is the Batman?

He's at home washing his tights!

Batman put a comic strip hero at the very top of the box office

and it cemented the genre as a staple of modern cinema.

Since 1989, there's been a steady flow of superhero films.

It's Spider-Man!

Most of which have taken advantage of the digital effects boom

of the last three decades.

They include big established properties like Spider-Man

and comic book newcomers like Spawn and the Mask.

Then there are characters created specially for the screen,

like Handcock...

..The Incredibles...

I didn't want you to worry.

You don't want me to worry?!

..and David Dunn in M Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable.

And the phenomenon's far from confined

to the English-speaking world.

Italy has Invisible Boy,

Rendel is a kind of Finnish Batman,

and India has the long-running Krrish franchise,

to name just a few.

So why does it feel like superheroes are having their big moment now?

I think the turning point came in 2008.

That was the year Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight bagged eight

Oscar nominations and two wins while smashing the global box office.

Nolan set a new creative benchmark for a genre that had become somewhat complacent.

But, perhaps even more importantly,

that same year, if you were the kind of film fan

who stuck to the very end of the credits of Iron Man,

you were rewarded with a surprise scene.

Little did we know, but it marked the beginning of what would become

a box office behemoth, the Marvel Cinematic Universe,

a global phenomenon that changed the way audiences watch superhero films.

Who the hell are you?

Nick Fury, director of SHIELD.

Oh.

I'm here to talk to you about the Avenger initiative.

And let's not forget that 2008 was the year

of the global financial crisis.

Remember how the great superhero characters were created

during the Great Depression and then the height of the Cold War?

Well, you don't have to be Nick Fury to spy a pattern here.

Viewers and readers seem to turn to superheroes

at moments of real life crisis.

The genre fulfils a fundamental need in cinema audiences

and, as we'll now see, it does so by tapping into

a rich tradition of mythic storytelling.

Some heroes are born with their powers.

Some are deliberately given them.

Some get them by accident.

Others train themselves to peak physical perfection...

Three, two, one.

..or rely on their own ingenuity and personal wealth.

The story of how a hero gets their powers and why they choose

to fight for truth, justice and whatever seems important

at the time, is known as their origin.

It's a version of the coming-of-age genre and it often has the same

bittersweet quality, because the gift of superpower usually involves

some kind of trauma, or even tragedy.

The opening act of Richard Donner's 1978 Superman focuses

on the destruction of our alien hero's birth planet, Krypton -

an opening which sees lots of veteran actors being squashed

by falling debris.

Yes, this is an abbreviated science fiction version of that most hardy

of 1970s blockbuster genres,

the disaster movie,

which, in turn, draws on the old biblical epics.

All that I have, all that I've learned,

everything I feel, all this and more, I...

..I bequeath you, my son.

Picking up the biblical theme, baby Superman is sent sailing off

across the universe in a spaceship that's a cross

between Moses's basket and the star of Bethlehem,

before being discovered, not in a bed of reeds,

but in the middle of a Kansas cornfield

by a kindly, childless couple who adopt him.

Oh, my.

Superman is a film that delights

in mashing up different movie genres,

but, more than anything else,

the first half of the film is a coming-of-age story.

WOOHOO!

Oh, no...

Which means that Superman needs to experience a proper moment of loss

when he's old enough to understand grief,

and it cements the audience's identification

with this otherwise impossibly powerful and perfect character.

All those things I can do...

All those powers...

..and I couldn't even save him.

Note, by the way, how Donner has shifted from Irwin Allen disaster

movie mode to an almost John Ford-like evocation

of the American landscape.

And he embeds this fantastic story in the classic tradition

of American cinema.

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is driven to fight crime after his parents

are killed by a mugger before his very eyes.

See you around, kid.

Batman's transformation into a masked vengeance-fuelled

vigilante stands in stark contrast to the biblically-inspired saviour

narrative of Superman.

The Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan versions of Batman

in particular make much of the fact that something

not entirely healthy and wholesome is going on.

You can see this in Anton Furst's Oscar-winning art direction

for the 1989 Batman, in which the brooding, claustrophobic

Gotham City is like a manifestation of Bruce Wayne's tortured mind.

Pete, look, you're changing.

I know. I went through exactly the same thing at your age.

No, not exactly.

It's interesting to compare Batman with Spider-Man.

Peter Parker's Uncle Ben, a classic mentor figure,

teaches him the foundational principle of super heroism.

Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.

No sooner has he delivered this lesson,

then Uncle Ben is gunned down by a thief

who Peter has unheroically failed to stop,

thereby motivating him to fight crime from this day on.

But we have a sense that, with his colourful costume

and friendly neighbourhood persona, Peter at least tries to find

a more healthy way to deal with his trauma

than the vengeful Bruce Wayne.

The guy protects us, you know? He protects the people.

You'll see the loss of mentor figures or parents repeated

throughout superhero origins, from Wonder Woman to Black Panther,

Iron Man to Captain America,

which feature almost identical death scenes.

Like all genre tropes, origin stories rooted in popular comic

strip history run the risk of becoming cliched.

So what about films that aren't based on pre-existing characters?

Can they be more inventive?

Well, take Will Smith's hero in Hancock.

He's an amnesiac, making his origin a mystery to be solved,

driving the plot forward.

Note the nice nod to 1930s genre cinema too.

You don't remember anything?

Only thing I had in my pocket was bubble-gum

and two movie tickets.

Boris Karloff, Frankenstein.

But no ID, nothing.

I went to sign out, the, er...

..nurse asked me for my John Hancock.

I actually thought that's who I was.

A similar narrative device is used for Captain Marvel,

a comics character whose origin was entirely rewritten for cinema,

and who has only fragmentary memories of her past.

It lends the film a thriller quality reminiscent of The Bourne Identity,

and let's not forget that Jason Bourne's

artificially enhanced amnesiac super spy

is a kind of superhero himself.

And in Unbreakable,

Bruce Willis doesn't even realise he has superpowers.

Look, I've got to be down on the sidelines during the game.

You can get to your seat, right?

Characters in comics are often attributed special powers.

Invisibility, X-ray vision, things of that sort.

OK.

I don't want to play this game any more.

It's an exaggeration of the truth.

It's down to Samuel L Jackson's mysterious, prophetically named

Elijah Price to convince him.

I love you. I love you.

Wow. Whoa.

The Incredibles doesn't even bother to tell us how its heroes

got their extraordinary powers, concentrating instead

on how they bond as a family and fighting team.

Because, ultimately, from a purely cinematic point of view,

the greatest opportunity lies not in how heroes get their powers,

but in showing what they do with them.

# I'm a rocket ship on my way to Mars

# On a collision course

# I am a satellite

# I'm out of control. #

The moment when the hero discovers their powers or potential

is a key beat or highlight of the genre.

WOOHOO!

Their powers exhilarate them, but can also terrify them.

And for directors, it's a chance to convey the experience

of leaping across New York rooftops...

..or shrinking to the size of an ant.

Note the clever use here of perspective and focus effects

that stop this from looking like it was just staged

with oversized props.

The most time honoured superpower is brute strength,

as wielded by legendary figures like Hercules and Samson.

Their muscle-straining exploits paved the way for the mighty feats

of Superman and the Hulk.

Super strength has proved to be one

of the easiest powers to capture on screen.

All you need is some good polystyrene or rubber props

and the odd crane that you can keep out of shot to do

the real heavy lifting.

But strength alone is of limited interest

and it's often combined with other powers in superhero movies.

WOO!

The next great mythical power is flight.

Perhaps even more than strength,

it speaks to our deepest fantasies and it's a much bigger technical

challenge to capture on screen.

WO-O-O!

The big marketing promise of 1978's Superman was,

"You'll believe a man can fly."

Front-projected backgrounds and carefully choreographed camera zooms

suggested that the static, suspended Christopher Reeve

was actually flying toward the audience.

Now, although this innovative effect looks crude by today's standards,

there's a real physicality about it which, combined with Reeve's

performance, makes it more emotionally convincing

than much modern CGI.

Super speed is perhaps the best example of a superpower more suited

to the moving images of cinema than to the static panels

of the comics page.

You didn't see that coming?

And since the Matrix films popularised the bullet time

technique of stretching and contracting different timeframes

within a single shot, it's now possible to capture these heroes'

own experience of a world where everyone else moves at the pace

of a geriatric tortoise.

# If I could save time in a bottle... #

The result is that a hero like Quicksilver,

very much a C-list character in the X-Men comics,

has enjoyed some of the most visually striking

action sequences in the X-Men films.

And you don't even need big effects for a speedy comic interlude.

Hurry it up, will you?

What, you got a problem?

No, there's no problem.

Better not be.

Not all superheroes are superpowered all the time.

Tony Stark bolts on hi-tech armour to become Iron Man.

But it helps that Stark is a genius inventor

and also has access to a personal fortune

to fund his heroic activities, as does Bruce Wayne.

What are your superpowers again?

I'm rich.

In a clear nod to the Bond movies,

Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight spends less time in his Batcave

and more in his arsenal of hi-tech weaponry.

Morning, Q. Morning, 007.

We never could get the damn ridge to work, but...

..this baby works just fine.

He's even got his own Q figure in the form of Morgan Freeman's

Lucius Fox.

So, what do you think?

Does it come in black?

Batman is highly skilled and trained,

but, with no superhuman abilities,

he can end up just looking like an ordinary guy

in a very silly costume.

Hand me down the shark repellent bat spray!

Tim Burton gave Michael Keaton a suit of rubber-like armour,

which not only helped bulk up the otherwise physically

unprepossessing actor, but also suggested a certain practical

purpose behind the design.

Subsequent films have tended to stick with this approach,

even if it does sometimes give the figure of Batman

a certain stiffness and lack of fluidity.

Christopher Nolan's solution seems to have been to stick Batman

in a bat vehicle whenever he got the chance,

hence the thrillingly kinetic chase sequences

of the Dark Knight trilogy.

Batman has never looked better than when twisting and turning

on the Batpod, cape billowing behind him.

But costumes are a key element of superhero iconography.

The moment when a character first dons their full regalia

often marks the point when they're fully ready to take on the mantle

of heroic responsibility.

How do I look?

Fresh.

Even Bruce Willis's reluctant hero in Unbreakable

adopts a kind of improvised costume for his first mission.

Designer Joanna Johnston subtly lengthens Willis's rain poncho

as the drama intensifies to make it look

more like a classic superhero cape.

Superhero costumes default to two basic colour schemes -

a darker look for moody vigilante types and outcast mutants,

and primary colours for heroes in the more optimistic Superman

and Captain America traditions.

Without him, these things could run wild.

I started with the baby. Started?

No film celebrates the sartorial aspects of super heroism

as much as The Incredibles,

whose presiding genius is Edna Mode,

costume designer extraordinaire.

Significantly, Edna is voiced by director Brad Bird himself,

channelling the great real life multiple Oscar-winning designer

Edith Head.

What on Earth do you think the baby will be doing?!

I'm sure I don't know, darling.

Luck favours the prepared.

Costumes, of course, are inextricably bound up with another

cornerstone of the superhero genre.

The secret identity.

The convention of the secret identity goes back to characters

like Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel,

who posed as foppish idiots so no-one suspected

that they were avenging outlaws.

We must mask our identities, suffer the humiliation of being taken

for fops, fools, nitwits.

Bruce Wayne does the same in Batman Begins,

cultivating the image of a spoilt party-going jerk

as a cover for his secret vigilante activities.

Is she in?

Superman, meanwhile, dons possibly the worst disguise ever

to become mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent.

I'm a reporter.

But, like Bruce Wayne, he's really donning

an entirely different persona.

Peter?

Is that you?

A more urgent reason to maintain a secret identity

is to protect your loved ones and, indeed, to maintain something

approaching a normal life, as much as you can.

But secret identities also extend the tonal and emotional range

of superhero films, and therefore their appeal beyond the core

audience of fantasy and action fans.

See how much of the charm of the Christopher Reeve Superman

films comes from the Clark Kent moments,

with the stumbling, awkward Clark acting as a comic foil to Superman.

Why would anyone want to make a total stranger look like a fool?

In Wonder Woman, there's an entire comedy sequence

built around the heroine

acquiring her civilian guise.

How can a woman possibly fight in this?

Director Patty Jenkins neatly pastiches the makeover scene,

that coming-of-age and rom-com staple.

Why don't I meet you back at the office

and, meanwhile, I'll take this for safekeeping?

Oh, no, I don't think so.

You've got to put the sword down, Diana, please.

It doesn't go with the outfit. At all.

Now, as we've seen before in Secrets of Cinema,

the connection between superhero movies

and romantic comedies is strong,

with films ranging from Popeye to Punch Drunk Love

blurring the boundaries between these apparently disparate genres.

And it's often through romance that a hero's civilian

and costumed lives collide.

At times, the Spider-Man films played like a teenage soap opera.

How did you get out there?

Fire escape.

Your doorman's intimidating.

But the gold standard for superhero romance is Superman The Movie,

in large part due to the screwball chemistry between Christopher Reeve

and Margot Kidder as savvy reporter Lois Lane.

One of the film's finest scenes is when Lois interviews Superman

at her rooftop apartment.

Now, here the audience sees events primarily from Lois's perspective.

The scene opens with her waiting for Superman's arrival.

Note how the classic Hollywood symbol of sex, the cigarette,

is counter-pointed by John Williams lushly romantic score.

You really shouldn't smoke, you know, Miss Lane.

Don't tell me. Lung cancer, right?

Well, not yet, thank goodness.

And the film shifts into full-on romantic mode when Superman

invites Lois to, in his words, "Take a ride with me."

Is the iconic image of Leo and Kate on the prow of the Titanic

anything but a reprise of this scene?

And, at this heightened moment, the film shifts gear again into full-on

musical mode.

Leslie Bricusse of Goldfinger and Dr Doolittle fame

wrote these lyrics to William's music.

LOIS'S THOUGHTS: Can you read my mind?

Do you know what it is that you do me?

I don't know who you are.

Just a friend from another star.

You can never have enough romantic chemistry in a superhero film.

Too often, the love interests of predominantly male superheroes

are reduced to being figures they have to rescue

or the Achilles heels by which they can be attacked.

But time and again, we're shown the difficulty of maintaining both

a heroic and a love or family life.

The very concept of a superhero has sometimes been criticised

for celebrating an almost fascist ideal of strength and physical

perfection, but that's tempered by the idea that superheroes

can't have it all and that we puny mortals may actually have access

to something that these god-like figures don't.

And note how the final films of The Dark Knight and Avengers sagas

feature almost dreamlike moments, when the burden of heroism appears

to be given up for love and a settled life,

something emphasised by the warmer colour palette of the images.

Establishing the hero or heroine's personal life and their origin

often takes up the first half of a superhero film.

But by the middle point, another figure has come into play -

the evil yin to their heroic yang.

It's time to face the enemy.

Much of a superhero's day job involves routine work,

addressing health and safety issues...

It's OK, your baby's fine!

..anti-social behaviour...

SCREAMING

..and more health and safety.

CAT YOWLS

But sooner or later, there's a bigger threat waiting in the wings.

Is that how a warped brain like yours gets its kicks?

By planning the death of innocent people?

No.

By causing the death of innocent people.

Lex Luthor is a classic evil genius with an innovative plan to raise

the value of his property portfolio.

It occurs to me that a 500-megatonne bomb planted at just

the proper point would...

Would destroy most of California.

Millions of innocent people would be killed.

The West Coast as we know it would... Fall into the sea.

Bye-bye, California.

Hello, new West Coast - my West Coast.

Luthor knows he can't match the Man of Steel blow by blow.

Instead, he plays by an entirely different set of rules,

constantly seeking to outwit his vastly more physically powerful foe

and displaying a level of sheer ruthlessness of which Superman is,

by nature, incapable.

You were great in your day, Superman.

But it just stands to reason,

when it came time to cash in your chips,

this old, diseased maniac

would be your banker.

Mind over muscle.

More recently, Luthor has been presented as a young upstart

tech genius - the kind of figure who terrifies Hollywood.

He's portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg, who tellingly previously played

Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network.

Typecasting?

This Luthor also exemplifies a recurring villainous

characteristic - self-regard.

His loathing of Superman is ultimately based on jealousy.

These exceptional beings live among us.

The basis of our myths, gods among men upon our little

blue planet here.

You don't have to use a silver bullet, but if you forge one...

Well, then, we don't have to depend upon the kindness of monsters.

Batman has perhaps the most colourful rogues gallery

of any superhero,

and his villains were a key driver of the appeal of both the 1960s

TV series and feature film.

A quick note on supervillain attire - bad guys tend to favour yellow,

green, and purple.

# All hail the new king in town...

Batman's most celebrated foe is, of course, the Joker.

# Young and old, gather round... #

Unlike Lex Luthor, he's not driven by a lust for power

or material gain, but a sheer delight in unleashing chaos...

..and anarchy.

It's hard to imagine a more different figure to the uptight,

shadowy Batman.

But fundamentally, these two outsiders are like reflections

in a nightmare fun house mirror.

You complete me.

You're garbage who kills for money.

Don't talk like one of them. You're not!

Even if you'd like to be.

To them, you're just a freak... like me.

They need you right now.

You could argue that the Joker is the real star of The Dark Knight.

And with Todd Phillips' 2019 Joker film now believed to be the most

profitable comic book movie ever,

it looks like villains are at least as saleable as heroes.

As his name suggests, Joker is a version of the archetypal trickster,

a character recurring throughout myths and folklore.

The Prince of Mischief in Norse legends is Loki,

who's handily the brother and nemesis of Thor.

Loki can rustle up the usual bit of magical zapping,

but he's at his most dangerous when he tries to get into your head,

as in this scene from Avengers Assemble,

Barton told me everything.

Your ledger is dripping.

It's gushing red - and you think saving a man

no more virtuous than yourself will change anything?

This is the basest sentimentality.

This is a child at prayer - pathetic!

The fact that Loki's incarcerated rather than on the loose

just makes him more menacing.

That's lesson one from the Hannibal Lecter playbook.

But even mass-murdering psychopaths aren't entirely beyond redemption.

Loki! Loki, over here!

Over here.

Loki's multiple killings were somewhat brushed under the carpet

in later Marvel films, after Tom Hiddleston's character

developed an unexpectedly large fan following - pointing once again

to the strange appeal of villains.

Loki, I thought the world of you.

I thought we were going to fight side-by-side forever, but...

..at the end of the day, you're you and I'm me.

Loki became a frenemy - a sometime ally in the face of greater threats,

if not an entirely reliable one.

Now, here, the menacing lighting of Loki's earlier appearances is gone,

and the elevator conversation recalls scenes in any number

of rom-coms.

Thor and Loki's relationship has literally become a bromance.

Hey, let's do "Get Help."

What? "Get Help."

No. Come on, you love it.

I hate it. It's great. Works every time.

It's humiliating. Do you have a better plan? No.

We're doing it.

And what if your enemy actually has a point?

In Ryan Coogler's Black Panther - the most openly political Marvel

film so far - nemesis Killmonger is driven by anger at racial

injustice and poverty.

Y'all sitting up here comfortable.

Must feel good.

There's about two billion people all over the world that looks like us,

but their lives are a lot harder.

Wakanda has the tools to liberate 'em all.

Killmonger has a kindred spirit in the X-Men's great foe.

Put your hands over your heads, now.

Magneto is a villain with a cause - seeking revenge on humankind

for decades of prejudice against mutants.

There is no peace.

Not here, nor anywhere else.

Women and children, whole families destroyed simply because they were

born different from those in power.

What's clear from this is that for every Joker or Luthor

who revels in their own villainy,

there are enemies who simply don't see themselves as the bad guys.

Even if they're actually purple.

Thanos's fanatical quest to destroy half of the

Marvel Cinematic Universe is driven by his desire to achieve

balance and sustainability.

Congratulations. You're a prophet.

I'm a survivor.

Who wants to murder trillions.

With all six Stones, I could simply snap my fingers.

They would all cease to exist.

I call that...

..mercy.

Thanos belongs to a select category of nemesis, the mega-threat -

too powerful for any single hero to deal with.

Which means it's time for an exercise in team-building.

Did you find the spear?

For most superhero fans, it's likely that the high point of 2016's

Batman v Superman wasn't the climactic battle with mega-threat

figure Domesday - which was frankly tedious.

My world.

I've killed things from other worlds before.

Is she with you?

I thought she was with you.

Rather, it was the moment when three iconic heroes were finally

brought together in a live action feature film

nearly 80 years after they were created.

It was the DC Comics version of the moment when Marvel's super team

The Avengers are finally assembled to fend off both Loki

and an alien invasion.

Interestingly, neither moment occurs until a good three quarters

of the way through each film.

Why?

The athletes of Greece are proud.

I'll tell him only the best can expect a place in the most

perilous voyage in history.

Well, heroes have been teaming up ever since Hercules and Theseus

signed up with Jason on the Argo.

And, as we saw in our Secrets of Cinema on heist movies,

bringing together a band of characters with disparate skills

is a key element of that genre.

I have found the finest crew in old Greece.

Now for a ship that is worthy of them.

But in a heist movie, putting the gang together is usually

relatively simple and occurs near the beginning of the film.

By contrast, the superhero genre likes to make it as hard as possible

for the team to get together.

Indeed, the more time they spend at each other's throats

before they do, the better.

And in that respect, superhero team movies are very much like rom-coms,

only with more characters...and more mass destruction.

Take Avengers Assemble, where the plot contrives to have at least

three hero-on-hero fights -

with Iron Man and Thor,

Thor and Hulk,

Black Widow and Hawk-eye beating seven bells out of each other

before they finally get round to teaming up and saving the planet.

In subsequent films, the Avengers are repeatedly assembled

only to be disassembled.

One of the biggest set pieces of the sequel, Age of Ultron,

is a spectacular battle between Hulk and a beefed-up Iron Man.

Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep!

They're not stopping. Neither are we.

And Captain America: Civil War - an Avengers film in all but name -

sees the ultimate hero-on-hero smackdown at a German airport.

In essence, this appeals to a kind of top trumps playing fantasy

of pitting heroes against each other rather than villains,

and seeing who'd come out on top.

When they're not fighting amongst themselves, The Avengers and their

DC equivalents, the Justice League, operate more like professional

sports teams - disparate individuals brought together

for a common purpose.

But that's not the only kind of super team.

Where are all the guards?

Go, go!

Pixar's The Incredibles pastiches many tropes

of the superhero and spy genres.

But above all, it's a film about a family.

The family members' superpowers reflect their personalities -

the solid, heavy-lifting dad, the overstretched mum,

shy daughter, and hyperactive son.

As we've already observed, The Incredibles doesn't worry about

showing us the origin of its characters' powers.

But crucially, it does show the origin of the family,

in a scene where Mr Incredible and Elastigirl meet-cute.

We could share, you know?

I work alone.

Well, I think you need to be more...

..flexible.

Are...you doing anything later?

I have a previous engagement.

We get a grittier take on the superhero family in the X-Men films.

The characters aren't actually related, but they live together

at a boarding school under the supervision of headmaster

and father figure Professor X.

Ah, Logan, I'd like you to meet Aurora Monroe.

Also called Storm.

This is Scott Summers. Hello. Also called Cyclops.

They saved your life.

What unites all these characters and makes them different

from the other super teams is that they're mutants,

born with extraordinary powers and feared and discriminated

against by wider humankind.

They say you can imitate anybody.

Even their voice.

IN NIGHTCRAWLER'S VOICE: Even their voice.

Then why not stay in disguise all the time?

You know?

Look like everyone else.

IN NORMAL VOICE: Because we shouldn't have to.

ON TV: ..as the others traverse the rigid security.

ALARM BLARES

The X-Men films are a precursor of the Marvel and DC cinematic

universes, where multiple heroes enjoy both solo and team series.

But with the X-Men, the team came first, with the most popular

character, Wolverine, then getting his own spin-off film,

which in turn introduced another popular character, Deadpool,

who got his own spin-off.

OK, let's pro-con this superhero thing.

Ow.

Conversely, Marvel introduced several key characters

in their own solo films before bringing them together

via the Avengers title.

I've got an idea...

Over the course of 23 films so far, Marvel have built up a connected

narrative with new releases picking up story elements and characters

from previous films.

Coming out on average twice a year, Marvel's films are nothing less

than a mega-budget version of the first cinema

outings for superheroes -

the weekly serials of the 1940s.

If the movie moguls of that era came back today, they'd be astonished

to find properties they wrote off as cheap kiddie fodder were now

the studio tentpoles dominating the global box office

and outperforming the latter-day likes of Gone with the Wind

or the Ten Commandments.

# Knew the signs wasn't right... #

As we've often seen in this series, it's a classic rule of storytelling

that things have to get worse for the protagonist

before they get better.

The lovers are parted, and one decides to relocate

to a different continent.

The survivors in an upturned liner find that their only

escape route is flooded.

It's the darkest hour - the moment when all is lost.

In a genre where heroes can literally fly,

they have to fall even harder.

And this moment, usually in the last quarter of the film,

often takes a particular shape -

trial by endurance.

Rather than be destroyed outright by their nemesis,

the hero will be abandoned to their fate, and they will need all

their strength, wits and, above all, willpower to survive.

Spider-Man: Homecoming pays tribute to a classic moment in the

original comic when our hero gets buried under a collapsed building.

HE GASPS

Alone, hallucinating - the situation is as much a test of

Spider-Man's courage and determination as of his strength.

There's a similar sequence in The Dark Knight Rises

when the villainous Bane condemns a broken-backed Bruce Wayne

to a prison hellhole.

As will you.

"Hole" being the operative word here, given the unusual

architectural design.

Bruce's plight explicitly echoes the opening scene of the first film

in the Dark Knight trilogy, Batman Begins, which suggests that

this moment, rather than the murder of his parents,

is Bruce Wayne's real primal trauma - one he eventually overcomes

by becoming the very thing he feared as a child.

So, what's the moral here?

Bruce's dad, who's clearly a part-time screenwriting guru,

has the answer.

It's OK. Took quite a fall, didn't we, Master Bruce?

And why did we fall, Bruce?

So we can learn to pick ourselves up.

We see that same mix of entrapment and primal trauma when Superman

is plunged into a flooded subway station, chained to

a piece of kryptonite -

the one substance that can render him utterly helpless.

Kryptonite has symbolic value.

It's a by-product of the destruction of Superman's home planet,

a reminder of his own primal loss and isolation.

And crucially, it poses no threat whatsoever to ordinary humans.

David Dunn is also forced to take the plunge in Unbreakable,

because water is, as he discovers, his own kryptonite,

his secret vulnerability.

Note, by the way, how claustrophobic and intimate these moments are,

and how they prey on our own instinctive human fears

of being buried alive, drowning, or falling.

HE YELLS

Spider-Man and Batman call on their deepest personal reserves

to get themselves to safety.

But look how Superman and David Dunn are only saved

by the intervention of strangers.

Sometimes even the fate of superheroes depends on mere mortals

doing the right thing.

That same idea underlies one of the most powerful moments

of the first Spider-Man movie.

When bystanders pick up the fight against the Green Goblin.

Come on up here, tough guy, I got a little something for ya!

We're going to kick your freaking ass! Leave Spider-Man alone!

You going to pick on a guy trying to save a bunch of kids?!

Oh, yeah! I got something for your ass!

You mess with Spidey? You mess with New York!

You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!

Repeatedly we see the distinction between superhero

and ordinary human breaking down.

The heroes are reduced to our level, or perhaps we're exalted to theirs.

But there's one more test to come.

We've already seen that villains are ruthless, ready to sacrifice

others in pursuit of their goal.

But where the hero ultimately has the upper hand

is in their willingness to sacrifice themselves in pursuit

of their fundamental goal, which is to save people.

No! That's Batman!

No sooner has Batman fixed his broken back, escaped his hellhole

and returned to Gotham then he's volunteering to take a

ready-to-explode neutron bomb beyond harm's way,

regardless of the personal cost.

Can you read me?

Captain Rogers, what is your...?

Steve, is that you? Are you all right? Peggy! Schmidt's dead!

What about the plane?

It's a similar scenario to Captain America: The First Avenger.

Cap has to pilot a plane full of weapons of mass destruction

away from civilisation.

I gotta put her in the water.

Please, don't do this. We have time. We can work it out.

Right now, I'm in the middle of nowhere.

If I wait any longer, a lot of people are going to die.

The sacrificial hero is a repeated trope of Marvel's films.

A powerless Thor offers to lay down his life for his friends.

So take mine...

..and end this.

No!

Ant-Man defeats his enemy at the cost of plunging himself

into the subatomic Quantum Realm.

And even in a movie with multiple heroes, someone needs to be ready

to take a bullet for the team -

or a nuclear missile, in the case of Avengers Assemble.

It's in these moments of sacrifice that superhero films tap most deeply

into age-old narrative traditions.

TEARFULLY: No...

Daddy, where are you?!

And these ancient stories reassure us that every good

and noble death...

..is followed by rebirth.

HULK ROARS

TONY PANTS

HULK ROARS

What the hell?

What just happened?

What just happened is the most comforting and hopeful myth of all.

And the success of the superhero genre proves that

we still need to hear it.

But for how much longer?

I am Asgard's doom.

And so are you.

All will suffer.

All will burn!

Oh, that's intense.

As the great myths of old remind us, nothing hangs around forever.

Even the gods must face their twilight -

or, in the Norse legends, Ragnarok.

You cannot stop Ragnarok.

Why fight it?

Because that's...what heroes do.

Will the huge global success of the superhero genre

be its downfall?

Have we reached peak hero?

It doesn't matter how obscure you are!

You're all getting a movie!

You want a little sneak peek?

The family cartoon feature Teen Titans Go! To The Movies

satirises Hollywood's determination

to squeeze every last buck out of the genre.

ANNOUNCER: Coming next next summer, the story of Batman's greatest ally.

That's me! That must be me!

And best friend in the whole wide world.

HE TITTERS

Finally!

Thank you for making a movie about...

Utility Belt. What?

The Movie.

And as we've noted, such luminaries as Martin Scorsese,

Francis Ford Coppola, and our very own Ken Loach have weighed in

against the genre, variously accusing it of being boring,

despicable, and "not cinema."

Ragnarok can't come too quickly for them.

No!

So, like a classic mentor figure, I'm going to offer superhero movies

three lessons that I think they need to learn for the future.

Just...don't kill me off after I've delivered them.

First, get some better endings.

We've seen that superhero movies have a powerful moral message

at their core.

But all too often, it's lost in the maelstrom of overblown,

smashy-crashy action and effects -

which seems to be de rigeur for almost any superhero movie climax.

Every other Marvel film ends with some kind of collision or mashup

between dimensions and galaxies,

with heroes either jumping through portals between different realms

or trying to shut them down.

The Dark Dimension.

It's a problem inherent in any genre based on spectacle,

the expectation that each set piece will be bigger or more complex

than the last.

And it's one that's dogged even the best-loved superhero

movies for decades.

The climax of Superman leaves villain Lex Luthor

out of the picture altogether and sees the Man of Steel struggle

with some of the film's least-convincing effects.

HE SCREAMS

And that's before perhaps the biggest cop-out conclusion ever,

in which Superman reverses the Earth on its axis to turn back time.

Now, that doesn't just defy the laws of physics,

it defies the even more important laws of good storytelling.

Superman should forever be an object lesson to Hollywood in

how not to end a movie.

Interestingly, in Glass - the final film of his Unbreakable trilogy -

director M Night Shyamalan sets us up for a massive showdown

at the top of a skyscraper.

Only to surprise us with a far more effective and altogether

more low-key scrap in a car park.

It's one of my favourite superhero movie endings.

THE BEAST ROARS

GIRLS SCREAM

Lesson two - let's see a greater range of talent and voices

involved in the genre.

And here, there are definite signs of hope.

Recent blockbusters which combine diverse talent both in front of

and behind the camera - like Captain Marvel,

Black Panther, and Wonder Woman - have proved to be huge hits.

What is a secretary?

Well, I do everything.

I go where he tells me to go, and I do what he tells me to do.

Well, where I'm from, that's called slavery.

So, bring it on, Hollywood.

Let's see what would happen if film-makers who don't all look

the same are given free rein with these characters, and indeed,

with characters of all genders and races.

It's encouraging that two of 2020's big releases -

Marvel's Eternals and DC's Birds of Prey,

are directed by Chinese-Americans Chloe Zhao and Cathy Yan.

Of course, the studios are never going to take too many risks

with their big name, big-earning franchises.

So, here's lesson three.

Many superhero themes, situations, and character types are open

for anyone to play with.

Let's see more of that.

I'm an apex predator.

BUS HORN BLARES

Films like Josh Trank's Chronicle, a lower-budget found footage take

on the extraordinarily-gifted youngsters scenario of

the X-Men films.

Or the recent Brightburn, which asks what would happen if

a Kansas couple adopted a child who crash-landed from an alien planet,

only for him to turn out to be evil?

SHE SCREAMS

It's a sort of We Need To Talk About Kal-El.

Both of these films splice superheroes with horror -

a genre that can work very well on a tight budget,

and they raise interesting questions about the very notion

of superheroism.

The darker side of the superhero genre is a rich scene to mine,

judging by the success of 2019's breakout hit Joker.

Would you please stop bothering my kid?

Sorry.

It takes a character who, as we've seen, was inspired by a classic

of Silent Era-cinema...

..and re-imagines him as a fusion of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver

and The King of Comedy,

which makes it all the more ironic to hear Scorsese,

who once considered producing Joker,

moaning about modern superhero movies.

# Send in the clowns... #

All this is a reminder of the long-standing relationship

between superheroes and cinema as a whole.

And as long as that relationship is kept healthy and enriching,

I don't think the heroes - or the fans -

need to worry about Ragnarok just yet.