We’re closing in fast on the end of another frenzied season of movies spun from comic books. And if you’ve gamely squirmed through the portentous gloom and doom of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” and “X-Men: Days of Future Past” — with “Guardians of the Galaxy” just open (more on that irreverent wild card later) — I want to let you in on a dirty little secret:
The comic books are usually better than the movies. Much better.
Sure, the Gollum-like fanboys at my local comics hole feel somehow canonized by these movies, as if Hollywood had sanctified their geek love with a big, wet CGI kiss. But those guys are all about the craving for mainstream approval, not real cultural pleasure.
To be fair, the mind-blowing animation and bombastic action in most of these flicks is impressive. But they lack the spark and sparkle of the very best comic books. The main problem is that they suffer from a heightened case of Dark Knight Syndrome — readily diagnosed in the director Christopher Nolan’s recent Stygian run on Batman. These movies tend toward the funereal and end up buried beneath their sense of self-important apocalypse.
Literally, it’s the end of the world!!! As one Rocket J. Squirrel might ask, “Again?”
When Marvel humanized superhero comics in the 1960s, humor was a crucial staple; a couple of well-placed laughs leavened the drama and menace. Peter Parker was amazing, but he was also your smart-alecky friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. And the Thing, before he (and the rest of the Fantastic Four) once again saved the world/galaxy/universe from the dreaded Dr. Doom/Skrulls/Galactus, always took a moment to collect himself and bellow, “It’s clobberin’ time!”
And in Marvel’s Rocket Raccoon No. 1 (published last month), that irrepressible varmint — and member of the Guardians of the Galaxy — boasts: “And you’re just like every other princess I’ve saved ... never impressed unless they see the tail.”
The one often (and unintentionally) hilarious element in superhero movies are the costumes. Captain America and Batman in their manly-man tight-tights make me giggle. They look a bit stiff, ill at ease, like the unlucky kid picked to play the Christmas tree in the second-grade holiday pageant. Heroes and villains almost always look more convincing, more organic, on the printed page.
The exquisite thing about the page is that comic books are both a reading experience and a lesson in art appreciation. The reader can pause, ponder what she’s just read; the art lover can stop, gaze in wonder at a stunning full-page spread. There’s more Bergman-like introspection in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Silver Surfer roaming the cosmos than in any comics movie.
Most comic book films just don’t leave room for the viewer. They’re a blitz: Each frame is crammed pandemonium — exploding androids, cartwheeling bodies, cascading skyscrapers — all pumped up by quasi-operatic music, Wagner draped in superhero drag. The dazed viewer is left spluttering: “Wow! What was that?!”
There’s also a satisfying feeling of subtle subversiveness in reading comics today, when the top titles sell maybe 100,000 copies a month. Hollywood sure isn’t spending its tens of millions of dollars stalking a mass audience to fret much about subtlety.
Which brings us to the new “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie. It isn’t subtle, either. The PG-rated carnage transcends over-the-topness, the plot is obligingly apocalyptic. And there’s nothing understated about the bloodthirsty, gun-toting critter Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper), who just lives for Cagneyesque top-of-the-world-Ma! mayhem, and a humanoid tree (like one of Tolkien’s Ents, but without the good vocabulary) named Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel). But the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously. Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord (a.k.a. Peter Quill) even throws down the toe-shoe gauntlet and challenges the evil Ronan the Accuser to a dance-off. It’s satirical space opera that brings to mind Harrison Ford’s take on Han Solo in the very first “Star Wars” film.
It’s easy to imagine Mr. Ford’s Solo hanging out at his favorite intergalactic dive with Mr. Pratt’s Quill, who’s more surfer dude than hero dude (“I’m Star-Lord, man”); Zoe Saldana’s green-skinned assassin, Gamora, the deadliest woman in the universe; and David Bautista’s Drax the Destroyer, who looks like he smacked a few thousand homers during baseball’s Steroid Era. All of them maybe grooving to Star-Lord’s mixtape of cheesy 1970s hits like “Hooked on a Feeling” by Blue Swede and “Go All the Way” by the Raspberries.
And when Rocket Raccoon says — on being asked to help save the world/galaxy/universe — “Oh, what the hell, I don’t got that long a life span anyway,” I laughed.
