Chris Evans – aka Captain America – disagrees with Steven Spielberg’s notion that superhero movies will fade like the Western did.
When superhero movies like Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier became Hollywood’s mega-blockbusters, an odd thing happened: Critics immediately started predicting when the fad would end. Even Steven Spielberg offered his two cents, suggesting superhero films would peak and fade away like the beloved Westerns of the John Wayne era. But now one of these superheroes – Chris “Captain America” Evans – is stepping up to say the genre isn’t fading away. While it’s possible the term “superhero” won’t be used forever, modern filming technologies mean these types of stories will stick around for a long time.
“I certainly think that given the fact that technology has finally advanced, they’re always going to be looking for other films to match their technological accomplishments,” Evans said at the press day for his directorial debut, Before We Go. “Any film that can incorporate these larger-than-life characters and fantastical locations and plots, the technology wants to prove they can do it so whether it’s superhero film or fantasy in general, that’s going to surge for a while.”
In other words, Evans isn’t defining superhero films using comic book source material, but how technology presents action scenes. Considering the last Captain America film was basically a spy movie that happened to feature a superhero, that’s not an unfair assessment. And it almost certainly influences how non-superhero films are made – like the Mission: Impossible sequel where Tom Cruise dangles from a moving airplane like he’s Captain America.
“In terms of superhero in general, existing properties that we know and love, it’s going to be a matter of the tone they strike,” Evans continues. “You could look at Jason Bourne as a superhero. You could take any superhero movie and if you ground it enough, if you make it real enough-that’s what I think [Captain America: The Winter Soldier directors Joe and Anthony Russo] do really well. Certain superhero movies feel like ‘superhero movies’. Russo movies almost feel like human stories with a little bit of superhero sprinkled in. So you might get exhausted of the larger-than-life powers I suppose, but as long as the filmmakers keep on reinventing the flavor and the approach and the tone, audiences are going to still go.”
So in Evans’ mind, it’s not a question of whether superhero films will disappear – it’s whether their traits will become so common that we won’t notice the distinction anymore. Which is certainly good news for those of us hoping they’ll stick around. What do you think of Evans’ assessment? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Source: Collider, via Gamesradar
