The Research On The American Superhero Films: Myth, Journey And Culture Change

In1978the first official movie about Superheroes, Superman, wasreleased in America which generated huge social impact. Since then,many Superheroes from comic books have been shooting into movies oneafter another, including Batman, Spiderman, Captain America, The Hulk,and so on. Especially in the21st century we see a big increase ofSuperhero movies production, rise of the audience, and even emergenceof movies of Superheroes joining forces. Superhero movies become afilm type, the wide attention and international popularization the filmsreceive has been a cultural phenomenon. Superhero film is a modernAmerican mythology, one of the most suitable carriers for contemporaryAmerican culture.The thesis focuses on the study of total111Superhero moviesincluding18series and single episodes since1978. It analyses the timescharacteristics, feature types and characters construction of Superheromovies based on18movies covering the three most typical movie series,i.e. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and also The Avengers. Bycomparing with other type of superhero movies, it discovers differentAmerican image features and implied meaning of modern myths themovies convey. This paper is divided into5key parts, including Introduction, Threechapters, and Conclusion.The Introduction covers the objective and significance of theresearch, status of existing domestic and abroad studies, adoptedtheoretical approach, new and difficult parts about the study.The first chapter looks back upon the origin of Superhero image andthe development of superhero movies. It analyzes the reasons for itsevolvement from comics to movies. The five development stages ofSuperhero movies are divided into five different periods, i.e. infancy,creation, exploration, golden age and group portrait. Analysis of typicalmovies different features for the five stages is provided. Threerepresentative movie series, Superman, Batman and Spiderman, has beencompared and analyzed. Summarize the development process how thesuperhero movies develop as a genre film.The next chapter analyzes the relations between evolution ofsuperhero images and the American “journey” of historical and culturalchanges: Superhero images and their characteristics are closely associatedwith the hot topics. Superhero movies are closely related to science andtechnology factors of the age. while anti-hero movies are full ofdeconstruction of its times. Finally, Superhero images across ages oftenindicate a new cultural hot spot and bring new cultural ideas.The third chapter focuses on specific elements of Superhero movie images by deconstructing them into a set of visual symbols to identifySuperheroes from Uniform, Cape, Chevron, Mask, and elements aboutspace and time. The set of visuals has been changing over time. Thedualistic narrative mode between Superheroes and Super Villains hasbeen studied. The structure of superhero movies has been analyzed basedon Joseph Campbell s theory of “hero’s journey”.The final part summarizes key conclusions of the thesis. It providesa summary about the development of American superhero film image, thechanges, the patterns, and the meanings. A brief comparison with Chinesemovies has been made in order to give references and experiences forfilm-making in China.