By: Dan Buser
Hagan Seley a leader of superhero club says, “For fans of superhero movies, there has been no better time to be alive.” The session the culture of superhero cinema set out to prove why.
The session was run by members of HHS Cinema Club and took a detailed look at superheroes in cinema throughout the years. The session itself was broken into several smaller parts that specifically looked at certain characters through the years. Such characters include Batman, Superman, X-Men, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The session concluded with a trivia competition.
The session followed a basic format of each leader giving background knowledge on their character then presenting a brief clip showing the evolution of the characters over time. Senior Joe Laflam said, “As the technology has progressed the movies have only gotten better.”
The session also discussed why they think people care so much about superhero cinema. A wide variety of opinions were expressed which included theories that people like to see things blow up and that it reminds them of their childhood.
However, a general consensus was reached when Daniel Fornataro, the sessions adult supervisor and long time comic enthusiast, said, “I think with all of the bad things in the world today people just like to see the good guys win.
A longstanding critique of the superhero genre has been that the movies are too predictable. They have even been accused of “killing” the movie industry by director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. He claims that the predictability that the good guys win in the end is ultimately what ruins the movies for him.
The session continued to puzzle the two opposing viewpoints presented by Fornataro and Gonzalez up to the very end of their session. One thing that the session, as a whole, did agree on however, was that superhero cinema is growing more and more prevalent in today’s culture and shows no signs of slowing down.
