Volume 1, No. 7  January 31 – February 6, 2006
Where Are the Black Superhero Movies?
By Thaddeus Lavalais
For yet another year, movies will be made that are based on characters that originated in comic books. While the genre of the comic book superhero does stand a chance of getting stale if there are too many of these movies flooding the market, Hollywood has so far been able to turn a decent profit off of the men in tights. One of the few bright spots of the 2005 year in movies was Batman Begins, which rebooted the Dark Knight franchise with a thoughtful take on the caped crusader. 2006 sees the return of the original superhero icon, Superman, in a blockbuster directed by Bryan Singer, who has previously reaped success with the first two XMen movies. The mutant superheroes aren’t sitting this year out either, with X-Men: The Last Stand slated to hit theaters this summer. V for Vendetta, a graphic novel written by Alan Moore, gets a big screen treatment from the Wachowski brothers (the Matrix movies). There are even more comicsbased movies scheduled for the following year, with Spider-Man 3 and Ghost Rider, starring Nicholas Cage, set for 2007 premiers. The genre has proved to be so popular that Marvel Entertainment, the company that produces comics like Spider-Man, X-Men and The Incredible Hulk, has gotten into the movie-making business, with plans to produce their own films using any of the thousands of characters that they own the rights to. The movie superhero genre is not a foolproof profit maker. Films like Daredevil, Elektra and The Hulk did less than stellar box office. Still, enough of these movies do well enough to garner a continued interest in these characters by movie makers. The genre is also fortunate enough to attract some of Hollywood’s biggest talent, with Oscar winners like Halle Berry and Nicholas Cage, respected actors like Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson and Ian McKellan, and up-andcomers like Christian Bale, Jessica Alba and Hugh Jackman.
Still, with all this spandex-clad movie activity, one would expect a little more...diversity. Especially since the fact is, by the mid-90’s, the superhero movie genre was on its last legs. The campy, awful Batman movies directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Val Kilmer and George Clooney had pretty much turned off Hollywood to dropping big bucks on comic book properties. Then, a little film called Blade came along, with Wesley Snipes as the vampirehunting hero who was based on a minor character in Marvel’s comic Tomb of Dracula. Blade did decent box office for a moderately budgeted movie, and that set the wheels in motion for superhero movies like Spider-Man and XMen to make big box office and make the comic book hero movie a viable and popular option. Even though a movie starring a Black hero kick-started the superhero franchises again, the only other Black superhero to make it onscreen since then was the X-Men’s Storm, played by Halle Berry, a role which didn’t give the character or the actress much to do in the first two movies. So what’s the problem? Are racial issues involved in us not seeing many other noncaucasian superheroes on the big screen? The problem actually lies in the source material: comics have been for the most part scarce in the number of significant Black superheroes that have been created. Blade was a throwaway character; when he was revamped (no pun intended) for the movies, it was almost like a completely different action hero using someone else’s name. In the 1980’s, Marvel produced a handbook of all of it’s comic book characters. There was a subsequent listing of characters by racial makeup and skin color. At the time there were actually more blue skinned characters than black ones. Go figure. Things have changed for the better, however. Marvel plans to produce a Luke Cage: Hero for Hire movie, directed by John Singleton and possibly starring Tyrese Gibson. Luke Cage, also known as Power-Man, is a super strong, bulletproof hero whose gimmick is that he’ll play the hero...for a fee. He is also the character that a young Nicholas Coppola borrowed his last name from to become Nicholas Cage (maybe there will be a cameo involved).
There’s no solid production or release date, but a movie about The Black Panther has been in some form of development for years now. Marvel Entertainment head Avi Arad has said that getting this character, an African king and superhero, to the silver screen is a top priority.Other than these hero movies, there aren’t any other known black superhero characters that are in the pipeline for big screen portrayals. Will Smith will play a Black superhero in the upcoming Tonight He Comes, but the character was created just for the film. Spike TV will be producing a Blade cable TV series, with former Onyx rapper Sticky Fingaz taking over for Wesley Snipes in the title role. There have also been rumblings that a new movie about Spawn, a character created by Todd McFarlane, may see the light of day. Considering how bad the first Spawn movie was, however, this may not be good news. Still, it would be nice to see a mighty,masked brother or sister in a form-
fitting costume fighting for truth and justice before somebody makes a stinker and the superhero movie genre gets put on ice again.
