Nows and Forevers

I’ve seen two superhero movies in the past eight days in the theatre, first “Guardians of the Galaxy 3” and then this past weekend, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” And I’m likely going to see a third, “The Flash,” later this month.

Sigh.

I’m not the only one to think that it feels all Hollywood does right now is either a sequel or a superhero movie, or a sequel to a superhero movie. “Guardians” and “Across the Spiderverse” are both superhero movies and sequels. The first is a franchise I don’t really enjoy, other than their picks of awesome ’70s and ’80s music for the soundtracks. The second is an animated movie that took me by surprise how much I liked it, and how it diverged from typical superhero tropes. And having a diverse superhero, with a diverse family, I loved it. And still do.

I went to both with one of my kids, who loves all things Marvel. And yeah, we’re going to see “The Flash,” which is DC. I do want to see “The Flash” because I’m intrigued by seeing Michael Keaton as Batman one more time, and any time travel/alternate reality story has me hooked from the get-go. But I’m likely to quit after “The Flash.” Superhero movies have pretty much played out in my opinion.

It wasn’t always this way. I grew up watching the campy “Batman” from the ’60s, in reruns in the ’70s in the New York suburbs. I still remember my first chuckle, where Adam West as Batman tries to toss a bomb and keeps running into obstacles, whether it’s a mother and her ducklings floating or nuns rowing a boat.

“Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb,” West says exasperatingly.

The first superhero movie I remember came out when I was 11, and it was a good one: “Superman” with Christopher Reeve. It was huge in 1978, and it spawned three sequels over the course of the next decade or so. “Superman II” was pretty good, if dated now. I don’t want to remember the last two. Probably nobody does.

Plus, with Superman’s alter ego being Clark Kent and a lot of the action taking place in a busy metropolitan newsroom, how could I resist even if, at age 11, I didn’t know I would grow up to be a mild-mannered reporter? Well, maybe I did back then.

That was it for superhero movies until 1989, when Keaton’s first “Batman” movie came out. I went to see it on a date and I remember being blown away by the look, the storytelling, the vision and by Keaton excelling both as Batman and Bruce Wayne. I watched the next one with Keaton but not the others, and was blissfully unaware of superhero lore again until my daughter became old enough to want to see one of the Marvel movies. I went to see “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight Rises,” the latter because I saw it being filmed and wrote several stories about it in the summer of 2011.

That was “The Avengers” in 2013, and I took her without knowing anything about the movie or the burgeoning Marvel Cinematic Universe. You know what? I kind of liked The Avengers, loved the storytelling and the characters and almost everything. Then my younger daughter fell in love Marvel, and pretty much we’ve seen all of the movies and the TV shows. Well, they have. I’ve been losing interest for a while now and regarded latter movies and TV shows with the same view I had with the prospect of a “Frozen” sequel. I can understand the appeal, but I could do without it.

I’m not adverse to lore or the storytelling, and I’m happy to see that the MCU is a much more diverse place than when I was reading comic books and watching superhero movies. But the sheer size of the movies, and the spectacle, has gotten to be too much I’d rather watch something completely new and less grandiose, and more original.

And I’m saying that as an almost OG fan of one of the biggest franchises ever, Star Trek.

Of the two, “Guardians” and “Across the Spider-Verse,” I felt the passage of time less with “Across the Spider-Verse.” It was better written, better paced, and the visuals were beautiful. I didn’t always think I was watching an animated movie. It was a little long at 2 hours and 16 minutes, and I would have cut a bit. But I understood what they were trying to do, and respected most if not all the choices. “Guardians,” well, that was even longer and I would have cut half the movie. But that’s just me.

On second thought, I’m just going to read a book.