Why the Term “Comic Book Movie” Has to Go Away
By: Max Borg
Tags: Superheroes, Comic Books, Comic Book Movies, Film

A fan of comic books and movies talks about why the term merging the two is misused and borderline insulting.

Credit: Warner Bros.

September 7, 2019: Joker is announced as the winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. It is a momentous occasions, as it’s the first time a superhero (or, in this case, superhero-adjacent) film has won the top prize at a major festival, where such movies are usually given out-of-competition slots (as was the case with Logan at the 2017 Berlinale and X-Men: The Last Stand at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival).

At the customary press conference after the awards ceremony, the jury is asked about the choice of bestowing the Golden Lion upon a “comic book movie”. Jury member Paolo Virzì, a famed Italian writer-director, responds with the following phrase: “It is so much more than a comic book movie.”

He is, of course, absolutely correct, in that Todd Phillips’ film eschews the classic good vs. evil narrative and goes a bit deeper. By the director’s own admission, it’s a blend of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy by way of Gotham City.

And yet, the use of that term is also indicative of a bastardization of that notion. In fairness, Virzì was actually using the Italian term cinecomic, which usually refers exclusively to (American) superhero films and not comic book adaptations as whole (the Italian word for the artform in general is fumetto).

But it’s a word that has taken on a life of its own, much like the English “comic book movie” which should technically mean one thing but has become synonymous with people wearing tights and capes. It does the movies no favors, and even less so for comic books.

Credit: The Walt Disney Company

The first bothersome thing about the term is that it’s pretty much the only one of its kind. No one calls Gone with the Wind and The Godfather “book movies”. No one uses “videogame movies” to categorize the likes of Sonic the Hedgehogand Resident Evil. And no one refers to Mission: Impossible and Star Trek as “TV show movies”. Only comic book adaptations (well, a specific subset) are labeled in such a manner, a choice that comes across as a tad elitist.

This is, of course, nothing new: back in August 2012, Variety asked a member of the Academy if The Dark Knight Rises was in a position to pull a Return of the King at the Oscars, to mark the monumental achievement of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

The interviewee’s answer was this: “At the end of the day, the Academy always looks at the source. [Peter] Jackson’s film came from a piece of literature. This came from a comic book.” The film ended up receiving zero nominations, the only installment in the trilogy to do so.

The Dark Knight Rises — Official Trailer #3 [HD]

At that point, Heath Ledger’s posthumous win for Supporting Actor in 2009 was an outlier, in that comic book adaptations generally received technical nominations and little else. Prior to Ledger, only three other actors had been nominated for such films: Al Pacino for Dick Tracy, Paul Newman for Road to Perdition and William Hurt for A History of Violence. How did they slip past what appears to be a certain snobbery vis-à-vis the source material?

The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, Vol. 1. Credit: IDW Publishing

Well, for one thing, all three films are variations on one of the most long-lived and celebrated American genres, the gangster film. Additionally, two out of three sidestepped the issue by having “based on a graphic novel” in the credits (in fact, A History of Violence even received a nomination for the screenplay). Basically, they were sold as adaptations of material that one would consider respectable, because of the word “novel” being part of it.

Things have changed, to a degree, with Black Panther and Joker scoring major nominations and wins in consecutive years, but the snobbery persists in some quarters. Todd Phillips drew some ire from comic book fans when he described his film in the following terms during an interview with The Wrap, citing his pitch to Joaquin Phoenix: “Look at this as a way to sneak a real movie in the studio system under the guise of a comic book film.”

He does have a point about Hollywood’s modus operandi, but the “real movie” remark is not that far removed from when someone describes their genre film as “not really a horror movie”.

The second bothersome thing about “comic book movie” is that, in the US at least, it’s used solely for superhero films, thus reducing an entire artform to stories about people in colorful outfits fighting other people who wear similar attire.

It’s a major disservice to countless non-superhero adaptations, such as American Splendor, Fritz the Cat, The Death of Stalin, Old Boy, Persepolis and Palme d’Or winner Blue Is the Warmest Color.

Such reductionism also reinforces the elitist notion that comic books are aimed exclusively at younger people and devoid of any value as proper literature.

The anonymous Academy member who preemptively dismissed The Dark Knight Rises as not worthy of attention might want to look up Maus (which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992), or take a gander at some of the reprints published by Fantagraphics Books: The Complete Peanuts boasts introductions by the likes of Jonathan Franzen and Barack Obama, while George Lucas describes the work of Disney cartoonist Carl Barks as “a priceless part of our literary heritage”.

The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 12. Credit: Fantagraphics Books.

With all that in mind, it is arguably time to put the term “comic book movie” to rest, and try something very simple when Wonder Woman 1984, Black Widow, The Suicide Squad and other upcoming superhero films eventually hit our screens: just call them “movies”. They may be good, bad or anything in between, but at the end of the day they’re just movies.