I have yet to experience something quite like Avengers: Endgame. Squeezing into the packed theater, I vividly remember my shock when the audience audibly cheered as Captain America summoned Thor’s hammer.
To my surprise, this shared excitement only grew as the movie continued. As our favorite heroes came on screen for the final battle, the audience, myself included, screamed at the scream and clapped until our hands turned red. This wasn’t simply a movie—it was an event.
Superhero films undoubtedly dominate the film industry. Each month, a new Marvel or DC flick comes out and makes millions of dollars. Regardless of whether the film holds any promise, people flock to the theaters to stay up to date with their favorite franchise.
Everyone approaching or having already entered their 20s has never seen a genre quite so dominating in our lifetimes. It seems like I can’t walk into an AMC without seeing a poster for a new film about an obscure hero I’ve never heard of. Like seriously, who was the Blue Beetle?
But this domination of a movie type has certainly been seen before. While this may feel like an original experience, older generations had their own superhero equivalent: the Western.
Westerns were the major action genre for decades, from both silent film to sound era, with the most popularity from the 1940s to 1960s. While you may not have even seen a Western, they’re so ingrained in pop culture that you’re sure to know the basic premise. A lone outlaw has shootouts, gets into bar fights, and sometimes jumps on a moving train with a plucky sidekick and a brash love interest.
Because they are both so popular, comparisons between superheroes and cowboys have inevitably been drawn. Questions of which genre is more commercially successful, which has had more impact, and whether comparisons can even be easily drawn form in peoples’ minds. The most important of them: Are superhero movies the new Western?
My short answer is no, they are not. My longer answer is that it’s more complicated than that.
Superhero movies are a cultural phenomenon closely related to the Western phenomenon. They are intrinsically related to Westerns, especially through their basic plot formulas—Batman as a rogue vigilante mirrors that of heroes portrayed by Clint Eastwood or John Wayne.
Hundreds of comparisons of tropes can be made between the two genres. Their similar plot structures make comparison not too far of a stretch, but their true differences arise in regard to money.
Westerns were mass-produced because they were relatively cheap to make. Directors could reuse the same sets, actors, and props to generate profit for a captive audience. On the other hand, superhero movies are expensive franchises.
Superhero films are economic powerhouses that dominate the film industry. They cost millions to create and make millions more at the box office. So while there is much merit to the argument of Western and superheroes’ similarities, how and why they are made ultimately makes the two extremely different.
Superheroes’ success is not because of how inexpensive they are rather it’s their expensive escapism of good triumphing over evil with stunning visual effects. And with these costs rising due to bigger and bolder uses of computer-generated imagery, it could become a problem.
The most complex and fascinating point of comparison between the two can be made not concerning the present but with the future in whether the superhero genre will die out. Westerns died out because of the introduction of new genres and changing cultural attitudes toward the American ideal. Modern viewers don’t see Western outlaws as heroes but as villains.
Some believe that this decline the Western faced is already happening to superhero films—the only substantial similarity the two genres hold. Just look at dropping box office numbers and overly complicated multiverses. Others think they’re here to stay because no films can compare to the sheer amount of money they make. Yet the bottom line remains: like the Western, people are getting tired of superhero movies.
Big studios are trying to combat this fatigue by producing even more films, reboots, and television spin-offs, but it’s having the opposite effect. The exhaustion is only getting worse. I used to see all of Marvel’s content as it came out, and I stopped after the release of WandaVision.
Hollywood has become far too reliant on comic book heroes and is now paying the price of unhappy filmmakers and audience members. And this price is affecting everyone—the prevalence of DC and Marvel floods the film market to make it feel like there are no other genres besides superhero.
So while superhero films and Western films are quite different, their differences are leading them down similar paths of demise. And while the film industry survived after the death of the Western, they didn’t rely on them to make money like they do with Iron Man or Superman movies.
The movie industry’s likelihood of survival is thus a very pressing question needing an answer fast. It presumably will need another dominating action genre, but who knows what that genre will be. It will certainly be unlike anything viewers have ever seen, and I hope it can be sustainable, unlike its counterparts. If I had a say, I’d bring back the swashbuckling adventure.
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