Ever since legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg reiterated his feelings on comic book movies last month, a number of individuals have weighed in with their opinions on his stance that the genre will “go the way of the Western”. Zack Snyder, Kevin Feige, Chris Evans, and Sebastian Stan were among those who commented on Spielberg’s thoughts, but fans have really been the ones that have been reacting in a big way. However, the director has recently stepped up to further clarify his comments that caused “a big meltdown”.
While speaking to USA Today about his upcoming Cold War drama ‘Bridge of Spies’, Spielberg once again addressed his statement about superhero movies made in 2013. The creative force behind ‘E.T.’, ‘Jurassic Park’, and the ‘Indiana Jones’ series (just to name a few of his seminal works) put his sentiments in the most basic terms:
“To clarify, I didn’t ever predict the implosion of the film industry at all. I simply predicted that a number of blockbusters in one summer—those big sort of tent-pole superhero movies—there was going to come a time where two or three or four of them in a row didn’t work. That’s really all I said. I didn’t say the film industry was ever going to end because of them.”
Well, there may not have been two or three in a row that haven’t worked out yet, but ‘Fantastic Four’ and ‘Green Lantern’ were definitely pretty terrible. Anyway, Spielberg continued by saying that there’s an audience for everything out there from the big blockbusters to the smaller indies no matter how far they fall out of favor with the public over time:
“Now, these little movies are squeezing in and finding a birth next to these huge Queen Mary-type movies and they’re able to find an audience, (or) enough of an audience to encourage the distributor and the film companies to finance more of them. These are not just films like ‘Bridge of Spies’, but it’s independent movies as well.”
While there is a possibility that his predictions about the comic book movie genre may come true, we’ll just have to wait and see. Until then, we certainly have plenty of opportunities in the near future to see if Spielberg will ultimately be right as Marvel and DC continue to churn out film after film in their respective cinematic universes.
What do you think about Steven Spielberg’s assessments of the comic book movie genre? Do you agree with his prediction that they’ll fall out of favor with the general public eventually? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
