Rant: Origin stories are cool, and you won't convince me otherwise

[nebroadwe]

So I've been looking at the early reviews of Marvel's great blockbusting hope Iron Man (consensus thus far: Robert Downey Jr. is great; film loses steam in last act) and I have run into a strong minority sentiment that the movie has an inherent structural flaw. As James O'Ehley complains,

Superhero origin stories are usually a drag. After all, do we really want to see how Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider or how the Fantastic Four gets bombarded with gamma rays whilst adrift in space?

Well, if your audience is me, yes, "we" do. But it's a rhetorical question, and his answer is not mine:

Not really. Audiences just want to get to the good stuff straight away — Fantastic Four’s The Thing clobbering Dr. Doom -- without any dull exposition.

Now, I'm as much against dull exposition as the next fan (and struggle mightily to eliminate it from my writing), but I've always found origin stories to be among the most compelling superhero tales out there -- particularly when it comes to film and TV superheroes. It's in the origin story that we actually get to see some [gasp!] character development, as the protagonist is forced by his or her circumstances to change from a normal high school student or a brilliant scientist (or both) into a superhero and deal in some way with the consequences of that change. The trouble I have with the subsequent clobbering, as represented in many of the cartoons of my youth, is that frequently that's all there is: villain shows up and makes trouble; superhero outwits/outfights him; villain is defeated; world rejoices. Tune in for the next episode, in which the same thing happens. That can be good fun, sure, and allows for a fair amount of inventiveness within the constraints of whatever base premises set the show's formula (e.g. the original Star Trek). And such storytelling is certainly both popular and profitable, as various long-running formula-based shows have proved. I simply dislike having it held up as the Gold Standard of Superheroic Storytelling, to which "audiences" all adhere. I've preferred the linear narratives characteristic of origin stories ever since I was able to identify what kept me tuning in to Star Blazers every afternoon after school:

This story is going somewhere.

The characters -- not just the red-shirts or the special guest stars, but the main characters -- were going to learn things and change, grow up, go missing, turn their coats and maybe even die. I liked that. I liked it a lot. I've gone looking for it in my serial entertainment choices ever since. Which means that I watch a lot of superhero origin stories and then stop watching once they're over and we're onto the formulaic clobbering, no matter how kinetic and exciting it is, because nothing changes but the details.

So, please, Mr. O'Ehley and comrades, don't assume that "audiences" are bored by origin stories. Any given audience may well contain people like me who are both riveted to the exposition (done right) and cheering on the hero during the final action sequence because it's a climax of character development as well as a gripping display of martial prowess.

Comments

[jennawaterford.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- where did this meme come from? The best part of Dare Devil was -- the origin story! I loves me a good origin story well-told.

Silly fanboys trying to ruin everything for the masses...

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

It does play into the fanboy stereotype, doesn't it? ("Dude, dude, so, like, who would win if Iron Man fought the Hulk?") Granted that origin stories can be done badly (implausibly, dully, sketchily, ponderously ... ), I don't see why that means they're pointless and we should get on immediately to the showdown with the villain. Sometimes the showdown with the villain needs the context of the origin story to really resonate. But, oops, there's me going on about characterization again, ripe for dismissal as one of those 'fic-writing fangirls. Gah.

Maybe we need to start an Origin Stories Defense League or something. With appropriate costumes and, well, origin stories (she was a mild-mannered library paraprofessional until the fateful day those Iron Man reviews appeared online ... :-).

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

i LIKE the origin stories and a lot of newcomers to comics have no clue and a lot of them want to know

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Yay for yet another devotee of origin stories!

a lot of newcomers to comics have no clue and a lot of them want to know

Especially for superheroes like Iron Man -- a second-tier figure with whom even the target audience might not be all that familiar.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

My mother impressed herself by remembering his name was Tony Stark. Dad's just looking at her funny

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm almost certain my mom wouldn't know Tony Stark was Iron Man. My dad might, even though Iron Man postdates his comic-reading days ...

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

i think mom remembers from that old ironman cartoon

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I think I saw that maybe twice on the same independent UHF channel that ran the old Spider-Man (you know, the one with the theme song).

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

spiderman, spiderman, does whatever a spider can. Spins a web...

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

AAAAAA! [flees the earworm]