Commentary
Valerie Ettenhofer

The most frequent complaint from casual summer moviegoers is that everything has been done before. At first glance, it seems that every new blockbuster is a knockoff of an earlier film. Yet one genre is bucking the trend.

This summer will deliver three major superhero flicks, each with a new take on an old tale.

The first genuine hit of the season assembled some of the best fictional heroes in history and has over $500 million to show for it. Marvel’s The Avengers satisfyingly juggles action and emotion.

It does hinge on some worn plot points, with the freedom-threatening villain, Loki pitted against characters like old-fashioned mascot, Captain America.

However, it gets a boost by developing minor screen characters and adding quick-witted dialogue to intricate action sequences. Together, this creates one of the most propulsive and fun movies in recent history.

The Amazing-Spider Man is the second hero tent pole of summer, and has spiked water cooler debate merely by existing.

Many who have caught the first trailers claim that the franchise is too new to remake, with Toby Maguire’s last Spiderman film in 2007.

If a new cast and director makes comic fans bristle, then a story line sending Peter Parker back to his roots may set them at ease.

This movie focuses on Peter’s high school girlfriend, his father’s mysterious past, and a villain unfamiliar to previous movie fans.

Executives have even shared that, as in the comics, Peter will use a mechanical web shooter that gives his superhuman character some very human limitations.

Overall, the film appears to be trading in the accepted glossy action formula and embracing its humanity for a more emotional saga than previously seen.

Perhaps the most complex and highly anticipated movie of the year, The Dark Knight Rises promises to bring a fitting end to Christopher Nolan’s masterful trilogy.

Bruce Wayne is now a weary superhero forced out of retirement to take down the criminal, Bane. Joining him are Catwoman and many ambiguous new characters.

The eerie trailer reinforces what was only hinted at when the series was rebooted in 2005; that this story is a whole different breed than any superhero flick moviegoers expect.

These films are a genre-transcendent, darkly allegorical vision of a city plagued with ethical dilemmas and power struggles
not too different from our own.

One could claim that Batman has the least original of any plot this summer.

In essence, it’s a battle between good and evil. Yet in a way unique to itself, it’s guaranteed to make us as viewers define those terms.