Task 14: First Paragraph

“Am I not supposed to have what I want? What I need? What am I supposed to do?” (Peter Parker/Spiderman) Does the superhero genre continuously create repetitive and formulaic films to promote ideologies? With particular references to Spiderman 2 (Raimi, 2004)

Spiderman 2, a film which went on to achieve great commercial and critical success, earning over $780 million worldwide,[1] has still repeated the typical conventions a superhero genre owns. From the early 1930s, with blockbusters such as ‘The Superman,’ (Siegel and Shuster) leading on to the 1966 ‘Batman’ (Martinson) along with their sequels, there has been a continuous narrative order theorised by Todorov; in addition there has been the repetitive use of the character roles, such as the male protagonist, however for the more contemporary films such as ‘Catwoman’ (Motif, 2004) there has been a role reversal where the audience are shown a female playing the protagonist of the film and fighting with the villains. In spite of this, these ‘superhero’ films are constantly producing and directing these films which can also be stated that these large, big budget institutions are persistently including these conventions to promote ideologies, especially as these films are targeted at a younger audience.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_2