If you love Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man (a superhero with a hyphen!), The Flash or Thor, get ready to be angry.
My name is Brad and I don't like superhero movies.
I fact, I don't like superheroes. Never have.
I know. Put down your X-ray vision or whatever Spider-Man (a hyphen!) shoots out of his wrists.
I'll offend you with the next sentence, too: When I was a kid, I presumed only children liked superheroes. I still don't understand why so many adults lose their minds over a movie about a cartoon character.
Is that right? Are all the Marvel and D.C. characters from cartoons? (I had to look up what the companies are. What the universes are.) I genuinely don't know.
The first real superhero movie of my generation was the "Superman" with Christopher Reeve. It was a throwback to a few decades earlier when people the age of my parents went to the local theater and watched superhero movies or cowboy movies while spending a quarter for popcorn. It was charming, although I remember going to that movie in my teens and thinking, "Isn't this kind of a kids' movie?"
I was wrong. Way wrong.
Over the past several decades, the D.C. and Marvel characters have owned the movie world. Every year, there are new superhero movies, featuring characters that I've never heard of. Enough so that I rarely know they're superheroes.
Of course I know Superman and Batman and Spider-Man. I know Wonder Woman (mostly from the TV show starring Lynda Carter). But I'd never heard of these other characters.
I presumed the first Black Panther movie was about Huey P. Newton or Bobby Seale, not a superhero.
I presumed Captain America was about former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach, not a superhero.
Morbius? Doctor Strange? Black Adam? Iron Man?
Those all seem fake.
Apparently, I missed out on a huge cultural trend. I've spent my adulthood scoffing at superhero movies, then seeing them be wildly successful. How did I miss this? As a kid, maybe I was too busy collecting baseball cards or watching "Hogan's Heroes" to read those comic books (at my house, the comic books were mostly "Archie" and "Richie Rich," not superheroes).
But it happens, year after year after year. I hear the excitement for a new superhero movie. "I'm so excited to see the new Fandango Woman and Tricycle Man movie!" people say.
I don't get it. I don't go to superhero movies and don't plan on starting.
However . . . I did find comfort in that Morning Consult poll that showed that more than two-thirds of Americans are superhero fans. Millennials are by far the group most interested in superheroes, whether it's going to movies, buying comic books or dressing up as them. Gen Z is significantly less interested.
So go ahead and enjoy going to the next Asparagus-Man movie or reading the next issue of the comic book about Scrapbooker and the Committee of Pencils. I'll sit it out, along with my Gen Z friends.
Maybe we'll be watching a movie about Hugh Jack-Man, Paul New-Man or Morgan Free-Man – a joke that reveals how old my cultural views are.
But if that were the case, at least I'd understand the superheroes and their random hyphens.
Not like the new "Pink Lady and the Legion of Grasshoppers" movie.
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.
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