Amy Brown (35:23)
Mike D. And this week on Movie Mike's Movie Podcast, I broke down what I believe to be the five most important superhero movies of all time. All throughout history. These are the ones that were most important to the success of the genre. I also gave my spoiler free review of Captain America Brave New World that a lot of people disagreed with, but I had to say it. So here's just a little bit of my top five list. Be sure to go check out the full episode to hear my full review. But right now, here's just a little bit of Movie Mike's movie podcast. And number one is Batman 1989. Why I believe this is the first most important superhero film is it created a new public perception of Batman and it legitimized the genre and took Batman from being a comedic character to a gritty character, even by 1980s standards. And this was a big deal, more so than Superman that came the decade before it. This is the one that I feel without its success would not have led to any other superhero movie being made. Before this, Batman hadn't been a gritty character. And even if you look at 1989 now, it's not as gritty as what we know to be now as a gritty Batman. But at the time it was revolutionary because everybody associated Batman with Adam West's depiction of him, which was great at the time. But that show was a comedy. It made him really zany. It made the fight scenes overly cheesy with the bam zap pow. It made Robin a very just one dimensional character. And for the longest time this movie was trying to be made in this way. Michael, you said, who is somebody who was fighting for this? He had the rights to Batman for a decade, maybe even longer than a decade, and he was fighting for the depiction of the character that he knew was out there he was a fan of Batman from when he was a kid, and he was the person, whenever that TV show debuted, he was like, oh, no, this is wrong. This is bad. This is not the Batman I love. So he bought the rights for such a little amount and kept trying to find producers, kept trying to get a movie like this green lit. And it wasn't until 1989's Batman that his love of Batman, his complete nerdom, actually came to life. And he was able to do it. So he was this driving force trying to bring this darker, more serious version of the character to life. And then you combine that with Tim Burton, and we finally got it. And it changed the public perspective of not only what Batman could be, but what superhero movies could be as a whole. Now, even in 1989, these movies were still being geared towards kids, with the idea being you put out a movie and then you sell a bunch of merchandise, which has always been the model. Star wars was the one who really made that. A thing like, oh, you put out the movie, then you sell a buttload of toys. That was the model. So we weren't there quite yet. But it did show that you can make something for kids because it is a superhero movie. But also that would appeal to the older audience. If you look at this one, at times, it doesn't feel like a kids movie. This movie moved on to Batman returns. And that one, you had a public outcry from parents saying, this is not a kids movie whatsoever. You have penguin biting at people's noses, causing them to be all bloody. And there was a big problem with that. But the reason I believe that this movie was so important is because it was the first movie to really usher in this new era of superhero film and say, a movie like this can be made, and you can change what everybody believes these characters to be. And you're gonna see this theme throughout my list, because whenever you set a standard, everybody starts following that, and then it almost takes somebody else to break that mold yet again to re revolutionize the genre. But this movie did that. It gave us not only the gritty hero, but also the gritty villain. Jack Nicholson set the standard for creating a villain like this. Made everybody who played the joker after him have some really big shoes to fill. So at number one, I have Batman, 1989. At number two, it would come almost 10 years after this in 1998. My next most important superhero film of all time is Blade from 1998. Why this movie is so important, one, I feel it's underappreciated it's underrated. And how revolutionary this movie was and how important it was for Marvel's success. It proved that you could make a superhero movie, a comic book character for adults. Because this movie is R rated, it's bloody, it's violent and it's cool. And at the time Blade wasn't even a popular character in the comic books. Even after this movie came out, he, his comics still struggled and they readapted them to fit the movie character more. So he wasn't even a top tier character, not even a second string character. Even now the character of Blade isn't as popular as all these other Marvel characters. And you look at their model now and this is what later Marvel would bank on. Because there had been attempts to make other character movies before this be successful. You had pretty much made for TV movies with Captain America, Spider man and those just never quite worked out. This was the first successful Marvel movie ever. It was the second one because before this, back in 1986, they made a Howard the Duck movie. I don't know why they decided to go with Howard the Duck first, but that movie was awful, terrible and it was a long time until Marvel had success. So this movie was important not only for Marvel because without its success, it was right there at the brink of bankruptcy. It had been fighting bankruptcy for so long because they just didn't have a successful movie. This was their first big hit, their first big taste of success. And it also inspired and was the stepping stone for a lot of R rated movies to come. If there wasn't Blade, we would have never got Deadpool, we would have never got Logan, we would have never got other comic book movies outside of Marvel like Watchmen and Kick Ass or even Suicide Squad. All of those movie success had to come from proving that you could make an R rated superhero movie even more so that you could do it without a popular character. Now at the time, Wesley Snipes was a very popular actor, so that brought in some fans. Vampires in the 90s were also hot as well. So that helped. And I believe this is what Marvel started to do whenever they sold all the rights to their main characters to Sony and to Fox. And later when they're trying to build things, they decided, okay, well we can't use our most popular characters. Let's build a team of all of our second string and third stringers and see if we can make something out of this. And that proved to be successful. So it's working with what you have. And also ahead of its time because you had A black lead in this movie, in a superhero film. He was the first successful black superhero in mainstream cinema. Paved the way for Black Panther. And I know X Men was already in development that would come out in the year 2000, but if it wasn't for the success of Blade, that wouldn't have set up the X Men. And it made $131 million worldwide on a 45 million dollar budget. And Wesley Snipes said it best. In Deadpool and Wolverine, there will only be one Blade. So hopefully they still bring this character back to Life. At number two from 1998, I have Blade.
