> Primarily, mass-market superhero movies seem to be abetting an audience who do not wish to relinquish their grip on (a) their relatively reassuring childhoods, or (b) the relatively reassuring 20th century.
Or, you know, sometimes we just like a little escape-ism. It's no different than reading a good sci-fi/fantasy book where the hero(es) win in the end. It's fun. Not everything needs to be a deep exploration of our intellectual and emotional destitution, not for everyone.
The particular common themes and tropes used for escape-ism are not irrelevant to understanding the cultural context. Superhero stuff obviously isn't the only kind of fiction that can be used to get a little escape-ism, and fiction isn't even the only way to find a little escape-ism, but superhero movies are a currently especially popular one, and it is not silly to look at the cultural resonances of why that might be.
I don't think superhero films are as popular for their themes as their predictability. The Avengers universe hit on a formulaic, y-o-y predictable movie strategy and Marvel has been taking it to the bank.
By franchise, superhero films are doing fairly poorly. It just happens that Marvel has a war chest of shitty content and can tell publishers with confidence that they have a profitable movie.
Why is it profitable? (Somewhat circularly) because it is successful. They can pour these big budgets into lame tropes that no one really likes, but critically no one really hates so they can get that mass (international) market appeal.
The problem that all of these racism narratives ignore is that while, yes, North America has the largest box office revenue it's still on 30% of the global market. Super heroes are popular because they are boring and appeal to the 12-year-old child in everyone.
Your comments seem at odds with the popularity and the sales figures for Marvel movies. If their content is so "shitty" and their franchises are doing poorly, yet their profits and film attendance are huge, those seem to directly oppose your opinion.
Their films are successful, profitable and they are making more of them. The audience goes to films they find interesting. They vote with their dollars. Big budgets do not guarantee success or profitability.
Popular as boring makes zero sense. Avengers Endgame box office had international sales of $1,939,427,464 vs $858,373,000 for domestic sales. The point being it was extremely successful and profitable worldwide. Facts like box office appear to negate your supposition.
It is unclear who the publishers are that you refer to. Marvel publishes their own comic content. They decide what movies to make from their IP. They hire writers and directors to adapt that IP to movies.
>superhero movies are a currently especially popular one
To be fair, we're just now in an age, technologically speaking, where the stories of superheroes can be brought to life without seeming campy or ridiculous. The surge in popularity is because this is the first time in the history of these types of stories where they can be visualized with a realism that allows us to hope for that type of escapism in the real world.
There are too many people who just hate the grind of every day life so watching a movie that injects something supernatural and even superlatively good into the "real world" is naturally appealing.
I'm not sure this is the case, as the popular superhero movies are precisely the campy and ridiculous ones (centrally, the MCU, the Kidz Bop of movies).
The MCU movies are not considered campy by most standards since they take themselves and their internal universe completely seriously.
Batman of the 1960s was campy. The Flash TV show is campy. The MCU may have some humorous moments but the tone, overall, is serious and thought-provoking. Civil War, Black Panther, Winter Soldier, and Iron have all been mentioned here already but you can go on and on with those films.
Okay, but using such a strict bar for campiness also invalidates the original claim. There are plenty of superhero renditions that don't qualify as campy that predate the recent wave and the technology that supposedly enabled it. (eg Burton's Batmans).
No it doesn't. The Tim Burton movies were also campy and they reveled in it. Also, the point isn't about whether the movies are campy or not but simply that we're at the point where you can show superheroes on screen believably. Even Burton's Batman had to use fake penguins and matte paintings to try and make Gotham seem real and it still looks wooden and lifeless.
I would say that Raimi's Spider-man (though not fully) and Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy pushed us into the age of superhero believability and popularity.
It's the difference between Lou Ferrigno being painted in green makeup lifting up cardboard and foam vs. a fully realized Hulk that matches what was originally in the comic books in ferocity and strength.
Not by those standards but, by believability and realism standards, it definitely is. The difference is that the Flash TV show is one of the shows that knows exactly what it is and when it's campy and it leans into that instead of trying to play it straight.
> superhero movies are a currently especially popular one
Is this really a new thing? As far as I can tell, the trope of the superhero has been wildly popular throughout cultural history. Achilles, Thor, Arthur, and so on.
Cowboy movies (westerns) and plays were the superhero movies of the past couple centuries, until they faded out (from mass popularity) in the 1970s or so.
Cowboys are the antithesis of the superhero. They don't have fame and glory, they don't live well, they're usually struggling to make ends meet, and they're barely able to save themselves or a wagon train, much less the country/world. They definitely have no super powers. They are the hard-working common man, the underdog. Part of their admiration was about a country which had become wealthy and powerful that wanted to re-imagine itself in rough-and-tumble working-class ideal. Even in the 19th century, stories of the West were fodder for most of the "civilized" cities throughout America, more for their salaciousness than anything else. Shoot-outs at the O.K. Corral were sold alongside gangs of thieves robbing trains.
Although, the "hero" cowboy was very much what Moore is going on about - symbols of white supremacy bringing order to the native savages, killing who they wanted, chivalrously treating women as inferior and delicate, ignoring the law when it was convenient, though somehow still revered as symbols of righteousness. They're more akin to Old Testament figures than Captain America.
Well Superman is the story of an immigrant, Captain Marvel is an orphan boy who was living on the street and even after he receives powers has to work a job to survive, Miles Morales is from a middle class family who is unhappy about having powers, etc. I'm not sure why you think the superhero genre is about fame and glory. There are examples of that for sure, but it's not the norm, and definitely not the roots of the genre.
Not everything needs to be a deep exploration of our intellectual and emotional destitution, not for everyone.
I think Moore's criticism and your push-back kind of dovetail into Martin Scorsese's critique[1][2] that comic book movies aren't cinema. It would be fine for comic book movies to be the escapist entertainment they are if they weren't the overwhelming majority of type of movie that is getting made these days.
I wonder if Moore would be as critical if instead of there being 20+ Marvel Character Universe movies in the span of 10 years there had only be say 4 or 5?
[2] The article lightly touches on Scorsese's critique but doesn't go into depth, probably because Moore is critiquing the "matter" and Scorsese is critiquing the "medium", but they intertwine heavily.
> I wonder if Moore would be as critical if instead of there being 20+ Marvel Character Universe movies in the span of 10 years there had only be say 4 or 5?
Would it even be a topic of discussion? Lots of bad movies get made. The question is why is this drek the dominating force in American movies now?
Lots of bad movies get made. The question is why is this drek the dominating force in American movies now?
The movie that kicked off the MCU train was the original Iron Man in 2008. It was actually GOOD and was still somewhat novel; and it made a shit-ton of money. That's why the all the follow ups happened, Disney's corporate lack of imagination and the audience's uninterest in holding them accountable for it, which is where Moore's and Scorsese's critiques of the audiences intersect.
This misses the point of Marvel movies, though. There is an entire universe of characters and stories. Iron Man's success paved the way for putting those stories on the big screen. Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, Dr. Strange, the Infinity Saga, and so on. That's what Keven Feige, and many of the Marvel people have been trying to do. Setup a universe to tell these stories instead of just having one-off superhero movies.
So instead of Spider-Man or Iron Man just being in their own movies, they can fight alongside (or even against) Captain America, Thanos, etc.
So it's not necessarily that there were 20+ MCU movies in the span of 10 years (and from what I understand the majority were at least good and some great), it's that during that time period the MCU movies became a dominant slice of the overall movie pie instead of the entire pie growing bigger. That, overall, seems to be Scorsese's gripe, because Avengers Endgame and DC's Justice League and Joker, etc... suck up so much oxygen Scorsese couldn't find a studio to back The Irishman so now he had go with Netflix. Now I'm starting to diverge a lot from where Scorsese and Moore intersect and it becomes more about Scorsese and a matter of sour grapes.
Yeah, I can understand being concerned about the genre taking up too much of the pie, preventing other kinds of movies from getting funding. But also a little bit of sour grapes.
But the pie has also only stayed the same size (or possibly shrunk) from the perspective of people-chair-hours in big chain theaters. Scorsese himself is an example that a lot of the same filmmaking is still happening, it's just moved to Netflix and other streaming services (and "prestige Cable", which is a branch of streaming services).
It's interesting the forces trying to fight that "real cinema" means people-chair-hours in building labeled a theater, and the obvious fact that the more serious/prestige/independent cinema is increasingly moving directly into people's homes. Netflix versus Cannes, for instance, has just been a fascinating thing to watch, because you've got economic forces versus traditional nostalgia for a cinema that only briefly ever existed as people-chair-hours, and has always been fighting economically for theater time versus whatever "lowest common denominator" fads were current (look at complaints over the decades aimed at Universal's early monster movies, the many decades of cheap musical spectacles, the eras of cheap westerns, etc and so forth).
If you need big events to push people out the comfort of their home theaters and streaming services, of course it is going to be some "lowest common denominator" fad.
(Also, mafia/gangster films were another one of those cheap film fads, and Scorsese and others "elevated it", but that was once considered a genre like we consider superhero films today that maybe didn't qualify as true "cinema". What debate that is old is new again.)
> For anyone who dreams of making movies or who is just starting out, the situation at this moment is brutal and inhospitable to art. And the act of simply writing those words fills me with terrible sadness.
I don't know, it seems like Scorsese's critique is for people who might possibly get some sort of actual budget from a production company to make something, because his statements can't possibly apply to someone genuinely just starting out. Having an outlet such as YouTube where you can gain worldwide distribution for your zero-budge work seems pretty amazing compared to options during the period he compares things to.
> I wonder if Moore would be as critical if instead of there being 20+ Marvel Character Universe movies in the span of 10 years there had only be say 4 or 5?
Almost certainly, he did write the Watchmen after all.
I think his point is that escapism is fine for kids, but we're adults now and we're hindering ourselves by always escaping to a black-and-white good-and-evil fantasy land where there's no need for compromise or understanding as long as you have a big gun and supernatural powers.
Sometimes a hero is someone who unites, explains, or educates. But there's precious little of that in the kind of simplistic, violent, nuance-free "win" that continues to be perpetuated in this material. And that is to the detriment of society's ability to reason.
> I think his point is that escapism is fine for kids, but we're adults now and we're hindering ourselves by always escaping to a black-and-white good-and-evil fantasy land where there's no need for compromise or understanding as long as you have a big gun and supernatural powers.
One of the most popular entries in the Marvel universe was about a moral argument between Captain America and Iron Man regarding the appropriate use of power, and the limits of personal autonomy versus international law.
Yes, it was dressed up in bright colors and had plenty of pew-pew-pew, but it was very much not a black and white story. To this day you can find people who agree with either side.
> But there's precious little of that in the kind of simplistic, violent, nuance-free "win" that continues to be perpetuated in this material.
Stephen Strange's first outing featured him having an emotional breakdown over causing the death of someone who was actively trying to kill him, and saw him save the world through cleverness, not violence.
Are comic book movies the pinnacle of moral debate? Of course not. But they aren't always punch-hard-save-day simple, either.
Some Marvel movies have more meat to them than others. It's important to remember that there are a lot of different writers working on these movies, they are not a monolith. Some of them are good at fitting important, thought-provoking themes into the framework of Disney's aesthetic requirements, and others are not.
Spiderman: Far From Home is a great example. The movie deals with the legacy of technology as Mysterio re-appropriates Tony Stark's drone network to create a virtual reality propaganda monster. What once protected and improved the world now threatens it when it falls into the wrong hands. What does this say about things like mass data collection? Nuclear weapons? Virtual reality? The infrastructure of technology stays in place after its well-intentioned creators are gone. How will we as a species deal with that legacy in the coming decades and centuries?
It also deals with the theme of 21st century propaganda in our "post-truth society". Mysterio doesn't need to have actual super powers, he just needs to make people believe he does. He takes on the role of film-director-as-superhuman, who through visual trickery controls the perception and beliefs of millions.
Yeah it was a 2 hour escape in some aspects and I got to watch Tom Holland kick ass. But the movie also left me thinking about some pretty heavy and challenging stuff.
> One of the most popular entries in the Marvel universe was about a moral argument between Captain America and Iron Man regarding the appropriate use of power, and the limits of personal autonomy versus international law.
An extremely shallow moral argument on those subjects. They weren't really explored much, beyond Captain America saying "I think X" and Iron Man saying "No, I think Y."
(And then of course the argument was resolved not by having these two characters actually argue their points, but by having them punch each other a lot.)
> To this day you can find people who agree with either side.
My sense of this is that you don't so much find people who agree with a particular side as you find people who identify with a character aligned with a particular side. The agreement isn't grounded in a philosophical position, it's grounded in whether you're a fan of Captain America or Iron Man.
Which is exactly the kind of downside to superhero storytelling that Moore is on about. When the only solution available for any problem in a story is to find the right übermensch to throw at it, people are naturally going to start sorting themselves according to which übermensch they think is the idealübermensch.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier made a strong point about the issues of surveillance and trading freedom for security, where even the good guys (SHIELD) didn't realize until too late that they were doing the work of literal nazis. There was lots of boom boom in it, but it wasn't a dumb movie.
Arguably, Iron Man 1 was quite explicit about the issues of war, terrorism, and sales of weapons; it had a quite dark undertone for a MCU movie.
Captain Marvel ends with a fight, but the entire point of the movie is that the people we are taught to fear as an insidious infiltration into our society are, in fact, only trying to make a home for themselves, and lash out only when terrorized by an imperial power. The hero of that story is a soldier who realizes she has been used as a weapon against innocents, and who then sets out to make amends.
Thor is about someone with the powers of a god and the simplistic morality of a child, and his entire first movie is about learning restraint and the importance of peace.
Iron Man is about an arms dealer who realizes, quote, that he has more to offer the world than things that blow up. This isn't the best example, because he's still better known for making things blow up, but he also becomes the world leader in clean energy. Iron Man also creates a rampant AI and learns that even though he's a genius, he can't build a suit of armor around the world, especially without the world's permission.
Black Panther has some reasonably complicated things to say about imperialism and the White Man's Burden. And, I guess, the stupidity of placing the world's most advanced technology and weaponry into the hands of a man who can win a fistfight about it.
Black Panther was like the civil rights movement, with one faction advocating for peace, and the other component advocating violence against their oppressors.
The moral lesson was that the best man had to become the punching-est man, in order to thwart the power of someone who wanted to use his might to conquer.
And, moreover, that an incredibly rich nation's resources should be shared with the world at large, in order to make the world as a whole a better place.
Spider Man Multiverse is a 21th century movie, if movies can be labeled that way.
The fascination with gadgets; the assembled, diverse family; the revere/mocking of speed (this follows a secret American cinema tradition masterful described by Manny Farber).
I agree and I think we've lost the ability to be our own heroes. We're all walking around with massive anxieties and not facing them only makes us more anxious. And don't get me wrong; there's a place for escapism. Everybody needs and deserves a break every now and then. But what I think most people don't realize is that facing those anxieties and fears is far more rewarding and enriching than watching a movie for 90 minutes.
It's ironic that we choose to watch something impossible like a guy who can shoot rays out of his eyes because we think overcoming our own fears is impossible.
> It's ironic that we choose to watch something impossible like a guy who can shoot rays out of his eyes because we think overcoming our own fears is impossible.
But... we don't. I watch him shoot rays out of his eyes because it's fun and relaxing. I'm literally going into surgery tomorrow so they can cut out part the bone behind my eye, by sticking a knife up my nose, so that I don't go blind. I'm anxious above that but I'm doing it because it needs to be done. You know what I'm not going to do tonight? Try to face my own fears. I'm going to watch TV with my wife and relax. Because not every moment of my time needs to be facing my fears. Down time is _good_ for you.
What would happen if you spent some time paying attention to that anxiety? Noticing where you feel it in your body? Is it in your chest and shoulders like it usually is for me? Where in your chest and shoulders? What thoughts do you notice you have around the anxiety? And then I'm curious how you'd feel an hour after that exercise? A few hours?
Yes, down time is good for you. That's why I said "Everybody deserves a break sometimes." But most people don't take a break sometimes. They take a break most of the time.
Our minds and bodies have something to tell us and nothing good comes from not listening. In other words; paying attention to that is a form of down time. A very very useful one.
I truly wish you the best with your surgery, though. Ask the doc to fix it so you can shoot rays out of that eye while he's in there. ;)
There are comments like this defending escapism all over this thread, and I think theyre missing the point. Escapism is fine, just as dark, depressing, morally revelatory films are.
The comment is about the degree to which one type of movie is relatively dominant in mass culture: the corresponding concern would be equally valid if (eg) brooding meditations on the nature of evil grabbed as much of our cultural mindshare as shallow escapism does today.
Its not a commentary on the individual taking a moment to relax, but rather on a shift in tendency across the population
The movies where everything gets better by breaking out in song and dance.
The crime dramas where the nice, hard working lawyer gets someone else to confess on the stand while defending his client.
Even "The Godfather" is escapist in the sense that they really are just about their families in the end and aren't really that bad, except to the other gangsters who are worse. They're protecting us.
Same deal for sports. What difference does it make if green team beats yellow team this week?
I think this is really another case of looking down on comics as being "for kids".
Really, if people are going to take down anything purely for being escapist, musicals should be the first to go :)
Well this is Alan Moore, the author of such comics as From Hell and Watchmen, so I don't think you can fairly accuse him of looking down on comics as being for kids.
And why do you think he should care about musicals more than his own medium of choice?
>Even "The Godfather" is escapist in the sense that they really are just about their families in the end and aren't really that bad, except to the other gangsters who are worse. They're protecting us.
This is a pretty weird and shallow interpretation of the movie.
I don't dismiss stuff for being "for kids", I love manga and cartoons, hell just this weekend I binged "green eggs and ham", still I'm perfectly aware that almost all of this media has a bad execution, shallow themes and well it is for kids, and if I get a discussion with my friends (specifically about superhero movies) is about how blatant the topics and absurd the topics are.
> Same deal for sports. What difference does it make if green team beats yellow team this week?
You know..... you know sports are real life right? Like, there is an actual competition happening, it's not pre-scripted. Sports fans like sports because they like watching talented athletes competing with one another.
This is one of the reasons I love Hayao Miyazaki's movies. The characters are nuanced. Which is both more realistic and far more constructive.
Take Princess Mononoke for example. There's the antagonist, Lady Eboshi, who runs a mining town and is destroying nature. Generally this would be the complete character. That's the villain, easy to hate. Must be vanquished. End of story.
But then you learn she's empowering women and taking care of lepers, the most vulnerable. Her workers and the townspeople adore her.
Now you have mixed feelings. And the answer goes from "destroy" to "cooperate" and seeking a peaceful, win-win solution.
There’s no reason why escapism should only be for kids. There’s plenty of ‘deep’ art in this world, and fantasy escapism isn’t preventing that from existing.
It kinda is if you think about the economics of the box office. Scorsese makes this point in depth with his NYT Op-Ed. Basically studios have become preoccupied with making purely franchise tentpoles and not funding lower budget creative movies.
Now the common response to that studios are just giving the people what they want. But A. people will tend to like what you put in front of them and B. that doesn't mean studios should starve creative, new ideas. It's a sign of the times that someone like Martin Scorsese has trouble getting money, that a film with Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci has to be made with Netflix.
Also, studios seem to forget that these franchises started as risks themselves. Iron Man was a huge risk. Star Wars was massively precarious. If executives hadn't taken the original risk, these franchises wouldn't be the cash cows they are.
Escapism isn't necessarily bad but it's a little noticeable how much escapism is being sold to us at the detriment to real, innovative, intelligent art.
People vote with their attendance and requisite dollars. Terminator Dark Fate and Charlie's Angels have bombed at the box office. Studios are about making money. They always have been and always will be. I would suspect Mr Scorcese would find the same thing in Bollywood as well.
All genres go through cycles in film in terms of popularity. Marvel will have a down cycle at some point. Disney movies lost their way when Disney himself died. It takes leadership, a great script,great acting and creativity, to build successful movies that can grow into franchises. or be even something people enjoy watching more that once on it's own.
> And if you’re going to tell me that it’s simply a matter of supply and demand and giving the people what they want, I’m going to disagree. It’s a chicken-and-egg issue. If people are given only one kind of thing and endlessly sold only one kind of thing, of course they’re going to want more of that one kind of thing.
From the Scorsese Op-Ed. I did explain in my previous comment that "voting with their attendance" is a faulty excuse, because it's a self perpetuating cycle.
Also, if studio execs just blindly gave people more of the same franchises without trying new ideas, we wouldn't have Marvel or Star Wars. Executives need to take creative risk if they want to receive financial gain.
The idea that Marvel is just having a genre moment doesn't really follow. We've never seen a genre that subsumes all genres, that dominates the box office in such a relentless manner. Has there ever been a time where horror movies were playing at every movie theater, where everybody talked about horror movies, where practically every actor under the sun had starred in a horror movie?
Marvel must be doing something right, because their last film made over 2 Billion dollars. Marvel has found a formula that works and allows them to expand their set of characters and put them in movies of their own. They have used a diverse set of directors and actors to work on their films.
And apparently, people like them. Some don't.
Iron Man was the risk. Marvel's approach of a 15 year cycle of building and interlinking was what worked.
For Warner/DC, they tried the same thing for DC characters and could not pull it off.
Nor could Universal with the attempt to force a Monster Cinematic Universe. Their Tom Cruise Mummy movie failed.
Marvel is getting beat up here, because they are so successful. DC gets beat up, because they have not figured out how to tonally present their movies in a way that can build a franchise.
As to the size of the budgets, they are large because of the CGI that makes the characteristics of the superheros seem more real.
The first modern Superman movie's tag line was: You will believe a man can fly".
The Hope and Crosby Road Trip movies, the Abbot and Costello franchises or the Jerry Lewis Dean Martin movies were all franchises as well. Hell, Rin Tin Tin was a franchise.
We've been here before and will be there again. Studios will milk what works for them until it no longer does, and the other studios will copy the genre and try to get in on the money there.
Or they just reboot something that doesn't have a new story to tell, or has a weak cast or uninteresting story line. That is the business.
You weren't forced to go and neither was anyone else.
As for Scorcesse, he is reviled within the Academy community for some of his films.
"There’s plenty of ‘deep’ art in this world, and fantasy escapism isn’t preventing that from existing."
But even you quote 'deep' as if it isn't deep at all. By this rhetoric there isnt any deep art, whatsoever, in existence. And I think that bolsters the point that we need less escapism and that actual real critical thought needs to be applied.
Ironically, the best superhero story going right now, the one that truly explores the possibilities and the depths of the medium, is a cartoon for kids, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.
Reading between the lines of what Moore said I don't see the problem as simply watching superhero movies. It's watching too much TV at all. It's spending too much time on Facebook. It's buying a new [insert product here] that we can't afford because the short-term hit makes us feel better. It's drinking a little more alcohol than we know we should. It's telling our primary car doc that we want that pill because it's too scary and expensive to visit a therapist.
My point is that there are more ways to escape now than there probably has ever been. Most of them in isolation and used moderately are harmless but far too may people don't use them in isolation or in moderation.
Moore seems to be implying they escape in their free time instead of working to improve the world. So they gripe, feel powerless to do anything, and comfort themselves with movies and comics where powerful people like them improve the world.
Moore would prefer that there be "better" art people are enjoying instead of the Marvel and DC superhero movies. But there is no specific barometer of "better" for him, he suggests something created in the 21st century would be "better" rather than an adaptation, but I don't think he really has a workable definition of "better".
This is ludicrous. Historically, all cultures have tales and myths involving heroes and villains, including in religious texts. Is the illiad for 12 year olds? Is Arthur and the Round table (Le Mort de Arthur) or Jason and the Argonauts or the works of Ovid not stories of superheros? All cultures have had stories which have been transmitted orally, via song, via poems, via books and even gasp via comics.
Isn't any entertainment (movies, music, reading, gaming etc.) by itself escapism? i.e. few mins to few hours of escape from the pathetic(most) life.
Alan Moore talks about Super Hero worship, but if you take a country like India; people have been worshipping 'movie heroes' literally, they command huge power, in certain states movie actors get regularly elected as 'Chief Minister' i.e. highest position of state power. I tend to think, it's because here people need more escapism due to obvious reasons.
I tend to agree. Movies in general seem to be escapism[0]. Even incredibly depressing/artful movies like Requiem For A Dream, Joker (since it was brought up on this thread), Irréversible, The Truman Show, Martyrs, Saw, etc. are a form of escapism.
Now, each person may have their own preferences as to what type of escapism they want, but ultimately it's really just spending a few hours at a theatre or in front of a TV.
(We could argue about the intellectual merits of each of the films I've mentioned, but that's irrelevant as to whether they're escapism or not.)
Hot take: The problem isn't "shallow movies" or similar. It's that well-enough-off people are increasingly getting bored.
Fair enough, but do note that's not what most people (or dictionaries) mean by "escapism" -- and your interpretation will puzzle people who use it in a derogatory manner. When discussing fiction such as movies, books or shows, the most commonly accepted meaning is of a thrilling fantasy, usually with a strong component of wish-fulfillment or adventure, that allows one to be distracted of the boring realities of actual life.
Neither Requiem for a Dream nor Irréversible are escapism in that sense. In fact they are terrifying movies, with zero wish-fulfillment, and which often remind you of real life rather than distracting you from it.
As an aside, if what you got from those movies was "at least I don't have it that bad" then you got a completely different message than me...
I was wondering exactly about the same. It seems to me utterly silly to critisize any fictual work - may it be movies, books or games - for its fictual nature or what he calls escapism.
In my view the only thing he is really saying is that these are not promoting his world view and set of values.
I personally find this attitude of telling other people which fictual work they may enjoy absolutley disrespectful.
Taste is a reflection of the culture and time we are living in. All what AlanmMoore does is showing that he aparently can no relate to the fictual preferences of a large part of the movie goers out there.
I think the recent Joker movie was a good counter-example, of a comic book character study that was not comfortable to watch. Most people I know left the theatre with a lot of questions and/or a sense of unease, not with a spring in their step.
On the other hand, perhaps Joker is the exception that proves the rule. It was certainly unlike every other superhero movie thus far.
I think part of the problem is the massive success of the MCU. Before the MCU, superhero movies did not seem so homogeneous. There were plenty of flops, but more interesting experiments as well. Consider the weird artistic and tonal shifts between the 90s Batman movies.
The MCU is such a homogeneous set of films. None of them are actively bad like many of the DC movies, but they all blend together so that nothing sticks out or feels unique either. This is made explicit in how Disney exercised creative control over these movies to keep them from straying too far from the intended formula and feel[1].
The interplay between Catwoman and the Penguin in Batman Returns is a fascinating bit of cinema. You get two different people, crazy in different ways, but equally crazy in magnitude, trying to work together, to get along for a common goal. It's a wonderful bit of underappreciated cinema from Devito and Pfeiffer.
I don't think the recent Joker movie is a good counterpoint. This iteration of the Joker was rather whiny and needy. More than anything, he embodied the kid mentality of "pay attention to me, or I will throw a tantrum!" over the "I don't give a f..., I'll just do what I want" mindset that's normally associated with Joker.
If anything, this Joker felt like a typical incel, a typical angry young man. It's not a superhero movie as there were no superpowers on display.
Reality is not increasingly depressing. Reality is simply itself. It has no tone, no emotions, no motives, no trend. So saying this is not helpful; in fact, it's sort of highlighting part of the problem. The fact that people are more frequently describing "reality" as something that exists as a sphere that can be rejected or escaped or avoided is concerning to me. If "reality" is itself what's depressing, what other choice is there? Reality is all there is.
Don't forget that one of the goals of the flavor of government seen in my country, America, is that of cultivating mass apathy. It's tyranny by way of "nothing I do really matters so why try." Convincing people that this concept of reality is what's going sour, and not the "leadership" evidenced by the 0.001%, must be a massive win for them.
Escaping from your personal stressors for a little while by sinking into a movie or a book is perfectly reasonable. It's when it turns into an -ism and becomes the centerpiece of our cultural milieu that we should be very concerned.
Bingo... one of my favorite quotes, that I try to live up to as best I can:
"Be miserable. Or be motivated. Whatever's next, it's your choice."
and
"Whether you think you can't, or think you can, you're right."
Can't say I'm a miracle worker but I try to remember that believing I can't do something is the start of my feeling miserable, and every time I break through that wall _something_ happens.
Because people enjoy it. Why do we need to fix other people's enjoyment? Would this still be a criticism if we were talking about people reading too much fiction or watching too many plays, or telling too many stories by the campfire? Maybe playing too many board and card games?
I don't know if we need escapism anymore or less than before. Now it is more available than ever before and people are wealthier than ever before. So they have time and opportunity to do more of what they want.
What is being escaped? In these movies, the heroes don't seem to be seeking to make significant changes. To escape anything. Status quo preservation is the game. It's the opposite of escapism; for the audience, it's a comforting blanket of things remain the same. Perhaps that's what they need.
(Yes, they're escpaing doing the housework for three hours while they go to the movies; if we're going to discuss superhero movies, a brutal literal interpretation of everything is not helpful :) )
Well, it's sort of like the Bechdel Test. A single movie can fail it and it means little for its quality (12 Angry Men, for instance) but if the overwhelming number of movies fail it then we know something's up.
If most of what you read is sci-fi or fantasy, it's possible that your entire life revolves around escapism, which isn't good for your mental development. I have found maybe two fantasy novels which can combine the real personal struggles and moral quandaries of regular human beings with fantasy themes and captivating writing.
Superhero movies can be emotionally deep or thought-provoking, but the vast majority of them are designed not to stimulate your mind, but to get you to keep buying buckets of popcorn for $15 and action figures. The one thing we don't need more of is mindless entertainment that coincidentally reinforces our biases and problematic thinking.
Or, you know, sometimes we just like a little escape-ism. It's no different than reading a good sci-fi/fantasy book where the hero(es) win in the end. It's fun. Not everything needs to be a deep exploration of our intellectual and emotional destitution, not for everyone.