Stoo said:
Mattzilla, you don’t post often but when you do, it is usually a voice of commendable reason.
Thanks Stoo.
I appreciate your ability to generate discussions that I find genuinely interesting. My post count would be even less if not for your magic bag of intriguing discussion topics...
Stoo said:
I, too, “grew up” with superheroes (watching the TV shows & cartoons, buying the comic books) but my interest in the genre diminished when “Raiders” came along in 1981. It was Indiana Jones who inspired me to watch & appreciate ‘30s-‘50s adventure films. By the time I reached my mid-to-late teens, superheroes were out of the picture. (After high school, I went to art college and the few guys who were still into superheroes at that age were the BIGGEST NERDS on campus!
)
I'd say you just barely missed out on where in really started getting interesting then.
I think a benchmark for making the genre more serious came in the form of Frank Miller's 1986 "The Dark Knight Returns" (not to be confused with Chris Nolan's upcoming
The Dark Knight Rises, of course). Someone may need to fact-check me, but I believe this was one of the first superhero stories not aimed at children. In fact, it's outright inappropriate for kids.
Anyway, I was born in '92, so I was growing up when superheroes were really starting to become popular among the general public and not a thing restricted to nerds. I mean, obviously I'm a nerd because I get way more into it than most people. But nowadays that's basically considered "cool", what with events like Comic-Con at absolute heights of popularity even among folks who aren't hardcore comic book fans. And as I pointed out before, as a film genre superheroes have been extremely popular among the general public, especially for the past 10 years.
Basically they've gone a lot more mainstream and certainly a lot more "adult" (for better or for worse) since you gave them up.
Batman logo t-shirts are rather fashionable on college campuses these days.
And besides, you can't really call out superhero fans for being nerds when you're posting on an Indiana Jones fan board.
Stoo said:
Indy isn't really a "larger-than-life hero". HE GETS BEATEN UP like a regular man and wins (largely) by sheer luck!
And don't be silly Stoo, Indiana Jones is just as L.T.L.™ as Batman. Let me put it this way: if someone in real life tried to do the things that
either of these characters do, they'd be dead before the day was out. Every scrap Indy gets into would kill a real person, yet he gets into several of these situations and escapes them through pure luck. At least Batman has a bunch of impossibly high-tech gadgets, which in my opinion are just as unrealistic as a ridiculous streak of luck.
Stoo said:
My imagination is endless...
Stoo said:
One would THINK that Indy fans should have more interest in the ‘adventure genre’ than the ‘superhero genre’.
Hrm... I still don't think you've entirely convinced me of this. The similarities are there. But then again they probably weren't circa 1981, so I can understand your frustration.
But I don't think things like "The Further Adventures" would've happened if there wasn't a common audience somewhere between the two. Remove all the trappings and you still have two heroes who we root for as they beat up the bad guys. I don't think you need anything more to justify an interest in both.
Stoo said:
Note: Before “Crystal Skull” and “Dork Night” were released in 2008, there wasn’t much superhero talk here at The Raven.
It's "Dark Knight" actually.
Well, maybe 'cause too many darn kids like me are joining up. I dunno. The Dark Knight
was a phenomenon that obliterated all superhero movie records that came before it and gave the genre new levels of popularity among the general populace. And it was already popular thanks to things like Raimi's Spider-Man movies.
2008 was the first time in 19 years that an Indiana Jones movie and a Batman movie were released in the same summer. Kind of a big deal and I'm not surprised it prompted discussion, especially since Dark Knight was so well-received and Indy fell flat for a lot of people.
For the record, I never once thought to compare the two. And no, I don't think at all that the "Batman fans" were responsible for a lot of the hate. I saw both twice in theaters and I loved both (well, maybe I was a tad disappointed in Crystal Skull). But anyways...
Stoo said:
P.S. It’s sad that you haven’t seen “Gunga Din”. One of the best adventure films ever made!
It's somewhere on my 16-page Word doc of movies I need to see.
There, page 5, I checked. I'll be getting it from Netflix in no time.
