The incredibly illustrious (and tenured!) Stanford scholar Scott Bukatman points out on this Comics Journal messboard thread that the New York Times has gone completely apeshit over superheroes lately.
First there’s this article by Douglas Wolk, arguing that the comic-book version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is superior to the film version in virtually every respect. Having not seen the film yet, it’s tough to comment, but from everything I’ve heard I’d suspect that even at its best the movie is probably the same kind of streamlined (or dumbed-down–your call) version of the Alan Moore original that From Hell was a year or two back. League was actually one of the only two comics from Moore’s America’s Best line that actually succeeded in being compelling and involving as well as clever (the other being Top Ten), so it’s tough to imagine how it can be brought to the screen with all its good qualities intact. (I must say, however, that Moore’s kvetching about the addition of Dorian Grey and Tom Sawyer is extremely unbecoming. What makes them any more or less appropriate or multi-dimensional than, say, using Fu Manchu as the bad guy?)
Then there’s this article by A.O. Scott, complaining (or is it? it’s that kind of high-falutin’ pop-cult critique that’s apparently too smart to actually bother coming down on one side or another of the issue it’s talking about) that the genre of “term paper blockbusters” like Ang Lee’s Hulk or The Matrix Reloaded is sucking the fun out of big movies. (Again, that’s what I think he’s saying–if you write pop culture commentary for the NYT, refusing to enter a value judgement is apparently in the style sheet.) I myself sorta see where he’s coming from–The Hulk, The Matrix Reloaded, and before them Spielberg’s A.I. and Minority Report (or even the two Star Wars prequels, with their emphasis on Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung and Carlos Castaneda and their op-ed tie-ins to real-life cloning and digital-media debates) could all be reasonably argued to have, shall we say, overplayed the intellectual hand that God gave their makers. (I happened to like them all, if you’re interested.) Still, I can’t help but be appalled at Scott’s apparent belief that dopey, dopey movies like the Charlie’s Angels and The Fast and the Furious franchises are in some way preferable to movies that are at least trying to say something interesting, regardless of whether or not they succeed. (This “it’s just harmless fun” viewpoint is one of the cultural bugbears Gary Groth’s attempting to slay in his latest essay, and good luck to him.) Scott’s also wrong to put any sort of “blame” for this “pretentious superhero” genre on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films, whose blend of whimsy, awe, emotion, action, and intellect is virtually unsurpassed and the excellence of which is all but unquestioned. It may have a brainy bent, but blaming it for less successful combinations of CGI and PhD strikes me as being as unfair and silly as “blaming” Star Wars for Independence Day or Seinfeld for Suddenly Susan.