Alright, I believe that a man can fly. Now what?

Ok, first off, let's stop calling Superhero films "Comic Book Movies".  Granted, the superhero concept was created and popularized in the comic book medium, and so far the majority of these films have been adaptations.  But do we call The Searchers a "Novel Movie"?  Or The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy a "Radio Movie"?  Sure, Prince Of Persia was often referred to as a "Video Game Movie",  but that shows a huge bias on the part of the reviewer.  What if I told you that Citizen Kane was adapted from some scribbles that a hobo left on a napkin?  Be aware of it's origins, yes, but judge a film on it's own merits.

Ok, now that I've had my little rant, let's get down to business;  the state of the Superhero film.  Up until the beginning of the 21st century, superhero movies were hardly taken very seriously.  They appeared often in low-budget serial films of the mid-20th century, and in the intentionally campy Batman tv series from the 60's (Which was itself adapted into a film).  And while Superman (1978) and Batman (1989) turned out to be two of the greatest superhero films ever made, they are also both very self-conscious about their origins. Batman has an extremely cartoonish look to it, and Superman opens with the image of a comic book being rifled through.  Films like Dick Tracy (1990). The Rocketeer (1991) and The Shadow (1994) took this cartoonish quality to an even greater extreme.

It was with the Blade (1998), X-Men (2000), and Spider-Man (2002) franchises that we first encountered superheroes in a more, well, Marvel sense;  the stories are set in the "real world", but a real world that happens to contain vampires and mutants.  Gone are the Lex Luthors and "Big Boy" Caprices;  we have heroes and villains with somewhat more complex motivations.  Sure, it's still all about lasers, explosions, and people in tight leather, but these are stories now taken on their merits, not simply as replications of comic book panels.

The popularity of the genre is such that it's become standard to expect a few big-budget superhero movies in any given year.  Iron Man, a character that most non-nerds had never even heard of, became the watercooler conversation piece of 2008.  That is, until The Dark Knight came out.

Clearly, superhero movies have taken a huge, flying leap forward over the last decade.  But they've also become a bit stagnant.  Over and over again we've been seeing origin stories, as if to mollycoddle an audience that would be completely lost without a thorough explanation as to why a human being would be able to fly without wings.

The genre has become familiar enough to the general populace.  We all know the basic "rules".  It's time to move forward.

And some already have.  There have been deconstructionist elements in the Superhero genre almost as long as the genre has existed, but in the last couple of years several movies have made the deconstruction the focus.  The Incredibles (2004), Sky High (2005), Watchmen (2009) and Kick-Ass (2010) are all examples of superhero films that take the genre apart to see what makes it tick, while also celebrating everything that makes superheroes so much fun.

So, after we've become a bit stale, and broken things down a bit, how do we rebuild?  I think the answer lies with a genre like the Western, which the superhero genre could trace a direct line of descent from.  The Western started out with the Black Hat vs White Hat, Tom Mix type of film, but once audiences became familiar with the conventions, the hats started to merge together into a shade of grey.  Classic films like Red River, the aforementioned The Searchers, High Plains Drifter and Unforgiven are all ostensibly "Westerns", but the execution of these is markedly different from, say, Stagecoach or Rio Bravo.  And if you wanted to go even further with it, you could say that Paint Your Wagon, Dances With Wolves, Billy the Kid vs Dracula and El Topo are all in the same genre as well.

Many are saying that the genre will burn itself out soon, including the director of the upcoming X-Men film.  I disagree.  I think the real fun is just beginning.