I'll just say *I hope* it's a game-changer. Whedon has done a fantastic job at making the fantastic look great *and* generate the GDP of a small European nation. He took the old myth about "what works in the comics won't work in the movies" and wiped his ass with it.
But DACrowe posted a nice list of "game changer" superhero movies that were genuine watersheds in their approach to the genre, yet I honestly didn't see a whole lot of change going on in the game at all.
Let's be honest: what did all those great movies lead to? Did studios and directors *really* try to re-create the winning formulas for those films, or did they just go back to their usual bad habits and churn out.....junk? Donner's Superman series led to.....nothing. It would take a whole decade before anyone even *tried* to franchise another major comic book character. Talking, of course, about Burton's Batman, which led to.....a forgotten Flash TV series? Steel? Spawn? Almost a full decade after Bats 89, Marvel tries their first real film character with Blade, and while successful, that success had little to do with comic books (even a ton of *Marvel* fans had never heard of the character) and MUCH more to do with vampires being the "in" thing at the time. So X-Men and Spider-Man were the first *real* Marvel successes, and that led to....Daredevil, Elektra, Ang-Hulk, Punisher, Ghost Rider, Catwoman, and the Fantastic Four. And even the critical acclaim and box office mastery of TDK led only to Watchmen, Green Lantern, and a failed Wonder Woman TV pilot.
I think the main thing is that Avengers has set a new standard *within* Marvel Studios ---- not only in firmly establishing the MCU, but also creating a new template for future films at the studio. But I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that other studios and directors are going to learn anything from this....history has proven time and again that the "game changers" within the CBM genre usually lead only to a boatload of parodies, non-mainstream titles, and a bunch of Marvel and DC junk by guys who just don't "get it" at all.
I'd agree there's been a lot of crap, but these are Hollywood films made to make lots of money. Studio execs and hack writers/directors are bound to make a lot of crap copying the better stuff. But I do see an evolution in the genre.
Superman set out a template of how to do a superhero movie as an A-list picture that while humorous and kid-friendly was not the B-movie camp entertainment many believed (for decades) comics were only good for like the Adam West
Batman TV series.
Superman is why the Tim Burton film was finally made. That movie would have come out in 1983 and would have been a lot like Donner's template if it didn't hit speed bumps (it would have been a campier, more kid-friendly version of
Batman Begins). It's template influenced
Spider-Man, Batman Begins, Iron Man and a bunch of lame imitators I won't name all of (ex.
Daredevil and
Green Lantern).
Batman (1989) showed that superhero movies can appeal to adults and not just be family films. It was dark, relatively serious and visionary enough to reshape Batman in the popular imagination from Adam West to a "dark knight." The series died, because Warners tried to walk it back to Adam West after Burton left the franchise. It's more serious minded approach I think affected later films like
X-Men.
X-Men showed that less famous superheroes can be done seriously in Hollywood, including Marvel's. It gave Marvel the ability to sell a number of other properties (Spider-Man was already getting made, but Daredevil and Hulk were sold because of this, I believe). Sam Raimi's
Spider-Man and
Spider-Man 2, influenced by Donner, reinvented the superhero formula and basically made the genre mainstream. It's why DD got a costume in his movie as opposed to a leather jacket, why FF got their terrible movies, but also why WB rebooted Batman with an origin film that followed a very similar formula to
Spider-Man. Raimi's films allowed Marvel to sell enough property and establish enough of a brand to make their own films. Enter
Iron Man, which also followed Raimi's retooling of Donner's formula. And IM1's success began the MCU we have today. Also, until only a few years ago Raimi set a benchmark with
Spider-Man 2 that truly gifted directors have matched or surpassed like Nolan and Whedon.
The Dark Knight proved that superhero movies can be intellectually and thematically ambitious. It is the first superhero movie to win an Oscar in one of the major categories (Best Supporting Actor), changed the nominating process of the Academy Awards, and deconstructed the concept of superheroes which has led to more ambitious superhero movies like
Watchmen and
Kick-Ass. I'd even say, Whedon was allowed to scratch the surface of ethics in his movie (like Loki chastising all the Avengers as hypocrites to BW) that Marvel Studios may have been against. I expect to see more ambitious films in the genre even after TDKR has left theaters.
And now
The Avengers shows you can embrace the complete fantastical elements of comic books without apology or self-defacing humor and make it work marvelously. Also, there is the obvious crossover angle. I think both will influence future endeavors in the genre. Even if it spawns a few
Green Lanterns or
Catwomans[/] as well.
(Seriously, Hawkman was in development a few years ago, but has long since vanished from radar.)
