Nerd Movie Reviews

Some thoughts on origin movies.

So I did Captain America last week, and gave it a good review.  I stand by that, as it was a decent movie with a good story.  Generally enjoyable.  However, I was talking to a friend of mine last night about it and he raised a couple points that got me thinking about the problems with origin movies in general.

Really, it all boils down to the fact that origin stories are really cool, but very few directors seem comfortable letting the origin run the entirety of the movie.  In other words, about halfway through the movie they have introduced the superhero, told where he came from, explained his powers, and gotten his costume organized when suddenly the thought occurs to them “Oh, crap.  What are we doing to do to fill the last half of the movie?”

This is not every movie.  Thor more or less ignored the whole origin question entirely and just jumped into the action.  X Men First Class let the origin story travel through the entirely of the film with great results.  This was probably motivated by the fact that they had a dozen different characters to work with, but the net result was very pleasing.  However, when I think back to Captain America I realize that the part of the film I really enjoyed was the first half.  Once Steve Rogers got his team together and starting fighting as Captain America it kind of started to grind along.

I have been thinking about how to avoid this problem.  Wolverine Origins labored under this (and about 10 tons of other crap).  Even Batman Begins kind of had this going on.  Green Lantern ground it face first into the ground, with a massive villain pulled out of their ass with all the active malice of a natural disaster, like a tornado.  Even Iron Man kind of lagged after the suit was built.  Episodes I-III was nothing but a six hour origin story that only focused on Darth Vader.

So what is the solution?  Upon reflection I realized that the movies that do the origin story well (Spiderman, X Men, Kick Ass, Unbreakable, Hellboy, etc) all have one thing in common: they didn’t make the origin of a single hero the only thrust of the story.  In Spiderman, while we are watching Peter Parker figure out his new powers, we keep cutting back to Norman Osborne transforming into the Green Goblin.  X Men First Class had a dozen different characters developing.  Kick Ass was mostly about Kick Ass, but at the same time you see Hit Girl and Big Daddy doing their thing.  Unbreakable was more about Samuel Jackson’s character than that Bruce Willis, and that made the double origin story really cool.  In each case the really good origin movies presents the origin of their hero, but don’t make it the entirety of the script.  In other words, when they reach that halfway point and the story is in danger of lagging they have other elements to fall back on.

(Xavier Institute image courtesy of the movie t shirt category)

I don’t know if anyone from the movie industry reads this.  In fact, I doubt it sincerely.  However, I think that if by some weird coincidence one of my three readers is somehow involved in film production, or perhaps one day will end up working in film, try to remember what I just said.  I really think it’s worthwhile.

Tags: Movie T-Shirts, Origin Movies