Superhero reboots have become incredibly common these days. And in some cases, they effectively renew interest in a certain hero. In other cases, the public ends with something like the already forgotten 2019 Hellboy restart. Now Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Extended Universe may be walking away from superhero reboots altogether.
MCU and DCEU may be incorporating old franchises
In the past, conventional wisdom was that you could only have one featured version of one superhero at a time. Otherwise, a company would risk confusing the public or excessively saturating the market. That’s why characters like Batman and Wonder Woman never appeared in Smallville, for example.
But now it is a brave new world. DC has multiple versions of its heroes, including more than one Batman hitting the big screen. Additionally, the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” event on The CW brought together countless television and film versions of DC heroes for the first time. Now Michael Keaton could even return as Batman for the first time since 1992.
Marvel has also shown signs of embracing its past. The MCU is about to introduce the multiverse into Phase 4. And that approach could easily lead to efforts to bring Spiderman and X Men movies in the canon. The 2018 animated movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse It has even given the live action side a template that they can work with in the future.
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Superhero reboots limit creativity, risk alienating fans
Both Marvel and DC characters have been adapted many times. And because of that, any reboot finally has to live up to not only the source material but also previous versions. Although this may seem like an opportunity to start again, it rarely turns out to be so. It certainly retains better-known characters like Spider-Man and Batman.
Every time a hero restarts, the new version has to tiptoe around the characters, plots, and aesthetics of the previous performance. However, every Batman finally needs his Joker. Every spiderman needs an MJ. So the audience ends up with several different versions of the same myth, all of which are mixing the same elements.
This approach provides an increasingly limited path forward. Superhero movies are clearly not going anywhere. So Marvel and DC seem to be unifying all past efforts to eliminate the need for additional superhero reboots. As fans of the genre know, one can only see the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne so many times.
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Instead, superhero movies could model the James Bond approach
MCU’s Spider-Man (Tom Holland), for example, has barely managed to avoid retreading what the previous five non-canon films covered. Because of that, Marvel Studios brought the character out of New York. And instead of introducing Uncle Ben, Harry Osborn, and Gwen Stacy, the focus is on Peter Parker’s bond with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.).
So if you don’t resort to superhero reboots what is a franchise to do? Watch the James Bond series. For more than 50 years, that franchise has largely persisted simply by reformulating and moving forward. Instead of pressing reset on everyone’s favorite characters every decade, the MCU and DCEU could bring in new actors when needed and continue to build.
So far, the MCU seems to be going in this direction. After all, Phase 4 will introduce new variations on the Hulk, Hawkeye, Captain America, and Thor, among other all-new heroes. And if both Marvel and DC find a way to link their respective paths on screen, fans could be witnessing a major turning point for superhero storytelling.
