Franchise Mythology

I saw Superman last week. 

(Picture from here.)

 

It’s a pretty good film—probably the best Superman film since Christopher Reeve’s first attempt. There are those that have said it even bests that since it doesn’t attempt the birth/Krypton origin story. It’s based, in part, on All-Star Superman and more than a little resembles HBO’s My Adventures with Superman. 

 

Spoilers after this.

 

But—it still has all the Superman beats: Superman is a good guy. He’s just trying to do good deeds. Perry White still runs the Daily Planet. Jimmy Olson is still a junior reporter. Supes loves Lois Lane. Ma and Pa Kent are still the loving parents from Kansas. Print journalism that works. I have some issues with Ma Kent’s accent which sounds more like Deep Ozarks than Kansas to me but that’s a quibble. 

 

In other words, the mythology is retained and some—but not too many—new wrinkles added. 

 

On the surface, this shouldn’t be too unexpected. It has a long tradition back to Parzival and Tristan and Isolde, where the poets take existing material and redisplay it from a new point of view. God knows how many Arthur and the Round Table stories there have been. But, this is a problem over time and especially in our money driven culture. These stories accumulate over time. How many Romeo and Juliets have there been? How many Hamlets? Superman, himself, has undergone many reboots. As have other Marvel and DC comic characters. Each time, the beats remain the same.

 

Sometimes, they mythology is broken. A good example of this is Red Son, which tells the story of a Superman whose rocket had not grounded in Kansas but 12 hours later in a Ukrainian collective under Stalin. That broke the mold. It had many of the same character: Lex, Jimmy, Lois, etc. But there was no Ma and Pa Kent. No Clark Kent. The Daily Planet of Jimmy and Perry is in the US while Superman is half a world away. Lois is married to Lex and never really meets Superman at all. 

 

Red Son was a critical and commercial success but it was a what if? sort of story. An alternate history of an alternate history. Reboots of Superman inevitably seem to return to norm: Superman and Lois, Clark, Jimmy, Perry. Superman loses his powers but regains them. Gets different powers and return to the same set. (As an aside, super breath? That freezes? Come on!) Sometimes he starts as a super baby. Others, he gets his powers as a child, a middle schooler, a teen. But he always ends up the strongest guy on the beach. Let’s be clear, too. It’s not artistic forces that cause this. The forces are financial. Superman makes money. He makes money fulfilling the mythology, not breaking it.

 

One of the interesting things about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is that it broke a bit of the mythology in the very beginning. This began in Iron Man, when Robert Downey Jr. said “I am Iron Man” as an ad lib that so captured the producers they said, let’s go with that. I do like the MCU better than I have (up to now) the DCU in the sense that Marvel made an attempt to have the heroics be an outgrowth of the character of the heroes rather than the characters subsumed into the heroics. DCU went the other way. Also, the MCU is often funny. The DCU (again, up to now.) was not. 

 

That said, in both the DCU and MCU, the mythology drives the story. There are always twelve labors of Hercules, Leda is always raped by Zeus in the form of a swan, Medusa is always slain by Perseus. 

 

Except when there isn’t. 

 

The YouTube channel of Jun Chiu has an interesting take on Medusa. There is Medusa, the Prequel  and Medusa, the Stone Kingdom. Essentially, it’s told in a series of beautiful paintings of a quasi-cartoon style along with music. There is no dialog of any sort but that doesn’t make any difference in the telling. The Prequel has a take on the Perseus story. The Stone Kingdom comes later. These are quite compelling pieces that break the mythology and in the breaking find something quite new.

 

Parzival didn’t break the mythology. Parzival still fails at his quest and then returns and succeeds. But Wolfram von Eschenbach had a bone to pick with society and embedded his response to chivalry in it. The story of Parzival hits the beats but Gawain is included also as an interesting counterpoint. Von Eschenbach didn’t break the mythology but he bent it pretty strongly. 

 

My point is that the best material dealing with these mythologies are those that tackle the mythology itself rather than just a retelling. Some break it (Red Son) and some bend it (Parzival.) The degree of reshaping can create something new. It may, of course, just be tin foil rather than gold. I recently saw a discussion of a new Batman where he is the son of Aztec royalty bent on freeing his people from Spanish rule. And it was advertising all the beats: the Joker, Catwoman, Two-Face. Since it hasn’t been released, I have no real idea on the nature of the take. But the fact that they are advertising the beats doesn’t bode well.

 

Which brings us to the problem of franchise mythologies these days: they are businesses. They can be the product of a singular talent but that talent is in the service of corporations. Artistic endeavors that do not turn the expected profit are rarely continued merely because they are artistically successful. Remember Firefly?

 

Mythologies are stories burned down to essence in refining fire. They are the bones of stories. Putting flesh on those bones makes for actual tales. What we see in these franchise mythologies are stories that are built to emphasize those bones, those highlights, those Cliff notes, with pretty lights, quick banter, and big explosions. The first of the franchise might be good—Reeve’s Superman. But there is money to be made so Superman II, III, and IV were made, each progressively less interesting, with prettier lights, and more stupidity. 

 

This is a problem with the whole franchise mythology. They get progressively worse as sequels pile onto sequels or novels pile onto novels. I think it’s in part because the mythological bones aren’t enough to sustain the franchise on their own. And a lot of the time, those left to continue the project aren’t talented or creative enough to keep it alive. 

 

Sometimes an individual or team’s spirit is enough to keep the franchise going for a while. The MCU was pretty good at keeping it together from Iron Man (2008) to Avengers: Endgame (2019.) Eleven years and twenty-two films. There were a fair number of duds in that list—you can pick your own—but the arc was sound. They have had trouble since. They had a rich mythology within the Marvel comic universe to pull from but that mythology, itself, grew thin over time. Both Marvel and DC tend to get bound up in their own canon to the point that they have to break their structure to keep the cash cow flowing.

 

The Star Wars franchise has a worse problem. Marvel and DC both have experience in tearing down a structure and rebuilding it in a “new” way—it ultimately returns to the original mythology but at least the journey back can be fun. Star Wars has no such mechanism. It just churns on, feeding on itself, until understanding the projects requires deep understanding of its minutia. Game of Thrones, I think, suffered similarly. 

 

Ultimately, franchise mythologies suffer from a basic defect: they have no ending. Parzival had an ending. Star Wars does not. The MCU does not. As long as there is money to be made, that horse is going to be flogged, dead or not.

 

News today: The current USDA is requesting names, birthdates, and social security numbers for those receiving SNAP benefits. What could go wrong? RFK Jr is likely to destroy the US Preventive Services panel just like he destroyed the vaccine panel. And the president is claiming Beyoncé broke the law for doing something that didn’t happen.