The First Issue

For a little over a decade, the movie industry has been telling movie goers the origin stories of most of America's beloved super-heroes. Simon Brew of Den of Geek explains of Origin Fatigue and how it will kill off a franchise that's largely remained untapped. Comic books are not new; there's literally decades worth of material to cover and not just Marvel and DC. Brew, goes through all aspects of the origin story and though he's particularly "fatigued" from it, he's not completely against it when it comes to the new Batman films or any story where an origin is necessary.
I am not particularly against it either. I think it's only natural and still fun to have these movies, but in the case of the reboot it should be noted that we don't need to see how these people got their powers a second time. Do something different with it. As I said before there's a plethora of stories that Hollywood can use. How about Zack Snyder of the Watchmen and 300 directing Kingdom Come? Surely his style will do justice to the graphic novel. Let's see a movie studio tackling a massive story like Identity Crisis or Civil War that takes three or four movies to tell. Clearly Marvel is heading in the right direction with the Avengers movie and for the past few years they've maintained focus with the current string of films we've seen recently.

Another thing I want to see is more stories on the creators of these tales. That's something we don't see too often, but when done right we can get movies like American Splendor. A story that many would enjoy, that's sadly been scrapped*, is that of Kavelier and Clay by Michel Chabon: Two twenty year olds- Sam Clay,  New York native and his cousin Josef Kavelier, a refugee of Nazi Germany- get together and create a franchise that rivals Superman. You'd be right to think of the premise as juvenile, but when take into the period and characters you get a brilliant story. The two face many tragedies throughout their entire life and struggle with identity and family and both often lived a lifestyle that would make their creation-The Escapist- jealous. It's an American classic and it would surely get at least one Oscar nod.

A big reason we don't see these films is obviously money. Not a lack of, but a need to make more of it. The odd thing is, from what I see, is any super hero movie is going to spawn a toy line. There will be new gadgets and new villains for kids to crowd toy stores for. In I am Legend a billboard for Batman vs Superman was spotted in a barren Times Square. Don't tease us. We know you have the rights, so make use of them, because we already know who Superman, Spiderman and the rest of the primary super heroes are, now let us know them intimately and give us a franchise reboot we can truly appreciate.