Jonathan Lethem Says Superhero Movies Are “One Of The Least Satisfying Film Genres I’ve Ever Encountered”

As someone who couldn’t particularly care about superhero movies one way or the other, the argument that the genre sucks is getting as tired as the ongoing canard that “cinema is dead.” If you don’t like superheroes in your movies, there are plenty of other things to watch. And there’s a difference between critiquing the genre and wanting to see it improve, and dismissing it outright, and that’s what makes Jonathan Lethem’s complaint particularly wearying.

Chatting on Wired‘s “The Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy” podcast, the author behind “Fortress Of Solitude” and “Motherless Brooklyn” makes it clear he wouldn’t be caught dead at a multiplex watching something from Marvel or DC Films.

“I think one of the least satisfying film genres I’ve ever encountered is the contemporary superhero movie, which just seems to me kind of dead on arrival,” he said. “I can’t even get into the hair-splitting about, ‘Oh, but there are three or four good ones.’ I just don’t see any life there.”

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So, why exactly does Lethem think comic book movies are no good? He takes the position that they are simply unadaptable.

“It seems to me there’s a disconnect at a fundamental formal level between what a comic book does when you encounter it and what a CGI superhero movie does when you encounter it,” he adds.

It’s a bit of a nonsense argument. Both mediums are entirely different, which is exactly what makes the possibilities of comic book stories on the big screen (or on television) have the kind of potential they can’t have on the page (and vice versa). And Lethem more than anybody should know, that adaptations of any work (novels, for example) by their very nature are changed when they move to the cinematic medium. And while some books or comics aren’t well served by the transition, there are countless examples where cinema has improved or found a fresh angle on the source material.

Listen to the full talk with Lethem below, and don’t worry, he won’t be at any screenings of “Dr. Strange.”