SUPERHERO MOVIE, the 2008 spoof movie with a 17% tomatometer and a 32% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Needless to say this movie was not particularly well received, however I have a different take on why this movie labelled as “bad” is actually a work of genius.
First and foremost, it comes down to a matter of Aesthetics, Taste, and Distinction. Through the lens of a critic, Superhero Movie comes off as “Predictable, flat, full of name-dropping, tragically unhip, and likely to make a decent amount of cash.” Many critic reviews state that this movie is painfully unfunny, has lazy writing and is just Spider-man 2002 with toilet humour. I, however, think they have completely missed the point here. Most of the jokes are meant to be mindless and surface level. If you go into this movie expecting something witty, you’re going to be disappointed. This is not a movie meant to be revered, it’s designed to be a slapstick call out of tropes in the superhero genre at the time, in the dumbest way possible. Perhaps it resonates with an audience today due to the impacts online meme culture has had on our generation. A large portion of the online space has become a place for making a dumb mockey of popular media, take a scroll through any social media and you will come across videos edited with the sounds of reverbed farts, cartoon noises and out of context voice clips from 2016 videos. Now compare that with Superhero Movie and you’ll easily notice the similarities with modern internet humour. What so many people find absolutely repulsive about this movie is why I and many others enjoy this movie so much. It’s completely up to the taste of the individual and what they find enjoyable to watch. Compared to what gets the most attention in the online space today around jokes and comedy. Superhero Movie clearly has (for lack of better words) a more tasteful approach to this corner of humour.
If you’re able to look just past the toilet humour and the plethora of 2000’s jokes. Peel back a layer and you’ll find some more subtle comedy, in the form of overlooked but great parody and references. Only those that have seen past superhero genre movies would be able to pick up these gags. This can relate to the theme of Semiotics. The villain of the movie, The Hourglass is a great example of this. The character is not always a direct parody, but the way he delivers specific lines are very similar to other villains from past superhero films. His overall character is obviously a parody of Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, but lines such as “I wish I could stay longer, Dragonfly. But I just don’t have the time”, could be seen as a reference to something Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze would say in the Batman and Robin movie. “What killed the dinosaurs? The ice age!”
It’s not what he says, it’s how it’s delivered that conveys the message of what the parody is.
Even subtle costume designs reach further than what is surface level, as the case with the main superhero, Dragonfly. At surface level the costume and name is parodying Spider-man, but the awkward way the mouth is left exposed and the eye make-up meant to blend the skin with the mask, to me, is a reference to the 1989 Batman movie. The strange way Michael Keaton’s mouth and chin stick out from the mask has been the subject of jokes and parody that continue to this day. If you hadn’t seen this specific Batman movie, you’d just think that it was a dumb costume design choice for the Dragonfly.
Spoofs and Parody aside, Superhero Movie stands out from its other related spoofs, such as Scary Movie and Epic Movie due to the fact that it could actually do well as a standalone superhero film. The other spoof movies in the “series” rely too heavily on the films it’s parodying, while Superhero Movie could drop the spoofs and become its very own thing. The costume designs for both the hero and villain are unique and well designed and something I could see being rebooted in a James Gunn, The Suicide Squad fashion. A reveiw from 2008 “It's a bit late in the game for Superhero Movie, which was never going to fly, and barely crawls.” Considering the backlog of various Batman movies, X-men and Fantastic 4. Which were mostly successful and Spider-man 3 had only released a year earlier. I beg to differ with this review, even if it was after the peak of superheroes then. Nowadays, this review is just nonsense as the Superhero movie genre today is now bigger than ever. Marvel constantly topping the box office and setting world records, with a diehard fanbase. Superhero Movie was not late, it was early. In fact now more than ever is the time to bring back superhero spoof movies. YouTube channels such as HISHE and Robot Chicken prove that there is still an audience for mash up spoof media. There’s even a new show being developed at Adult Swim called Come and Learn With Pibby which initially parodies children’s entertainment before delving into a gory-horror-action show with all sorts of characters owned by WarnerMedia. Its trailer is currently the most viewed video on the Adult Swim YouTube channel.
Superhero movie isn’t just a spoof, but a homage in its own way. It recognises the bizarre aspect of people in costumes taking on villains with insane powers and heightens that to a comedic level. But it also celebrates what the genre is and how it plays an important role to those who engage in the text. Hell, it’s better than some of the soulless garbage released in recent years such as the 2015 Fantastic 4 or any Spider-man Villain solo movie Sony is pumping out .
While Superhero Movie may not be a great movie, it’s still fun to watch. There was never a time where I felt bored watching and it always managed to get at least a smirk out of me. Some of the jokes definitely wouldn’t go over too well today and the lead actor has kinda fallen off. However at the end of the day I can confidently say, Superhero Movie IS, a Superhero movie.
Comments