Help me understand the Super Hero genre

[Bornieo: Fully Loaded]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

I dunno ' bout that. Superman was a huge hit in 1979. Batman a sensation a decade later. Why not till circa 2000 for the genre to explode?

Well, those were huge hits but that's about 1 in the 70's and 1 in the 80's. Other super-hero films were made but flopped. Captain America (1989), Fantastic Four (1990 - Not released), Punisher (Dolph Lungren version), Nick Fury (TV Film), Generation X (TV Movie) . Some did ok like Dick Tracy, Ninja Turtles, The Crow, all in the 90's. Then in the new millennium,there were many more that did big boxoffice - Spider-Man 1-3, Superman Returns, Dark KNight, Batman Begins, X-Men 1-3, Hulk, Iron Man Hellboy, Blade 1-3, Daredevil, Elektra, the Incredibles, etc etc.

What we saw, i think, was a ton of really terrible super-hero films early on that didn't make any money so Hollywood lost interest. Now with the huge boxoffice started by Spiderman and X-men, Hollywood noticed the $$ rolling in so they're following the explosion of the genre.