Heroes - It's the way of the future

I've been thinking about how the superhero genre has made such a comeback in recent years, maybe even too much of one.

Although some might say Superman (1978) pushed the superhero movie genre onto its feet I think it's safe to say that if that wasn't enough, Tim Burton's Batman (1989) shoved the genre into the air placing it in a completely different direction.

The superhero genre took a while to grow in the 90's (the only notable movie I can think of right now being The Crow following suit with the 'dark and moody' tone of Batman '89).

Batman's rep was then destroyed a little when Joel Schumacher took over the franchise in 1995 and gave us Batman Forever, followed by Batman & Robin two years later. The superhero genre went quiet and no-one spoke of it until the new millennium.

A century of superhero blockbusters and super-rubbish flops has brought us to the present. This year alone we have Green Hornet, Green Lantern, Thor, Captain America, X-Men First Class and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. With the change in technology quite a few of these will probably be exploiting the use of 3D (having things fly towards us, people punching the camera and all that).

Next year we also have The Avengers, Batman: Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-man, Nick Fury, Superman: Man of Steel, The Wolverine, Venom, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Trek 2, Ghostbusters 3 and Mad Max: Fury Road. Yes, I know the latter three aren't exactly superhero movies, but they are worthy of mentioning due to their cult statuses.

Then we even have Justice League: Mortal, The Flash, Deadpool, Ant-Man, Darkchylde, Iron Man 3, Kick-Ass 2: Balls to the Wall, Green Lantern 2, some Fantastic Four threequel, maybe another Batman movie thrown in somewhere, Wonderwoman, Silver Surfer and probably many more lined up in the future.

With expectations running high and sooo much choice, I can only imagine they are going to over-do it with all these superhero movies in such a tiny space of time. Some of them are bound to aim for the skies, only to flop back down to the ground.

Who knows, maybe one day when they've made a film about every possible superhero (or villain!) they might even end up with a movie where they are pitted against each other (DC Vs Marvel anyone?)