AS Media Studies

Audience Research By Michael Kumar

Secondary Research Task

Reasons why the top 5 films in the Superhero movie genre are successful in attracting

audiences.

1 - The Dark Knight

Top of the Superhero movie Genre

Lifetime Gross of over $1,000,000,000 Worldwide

Distributed by Warner Bros.

Rated PG-13

Featured Actors include : - Christian Bale - Heath Ledger - Aaron Eckhart - Morgan Freeman

History

The Dark knight is known to be one of the most successful movies of all time, so how did it attract such a huge audience? One of the main attractions of the Dark Knight is the history of the character, the “batman”. Batman has been known as a comic book hero, originating from the early 1940s. There have been many hundreds of thousands of comic stories, and 5 hollywood movies produced alongside the Dark Knight. This huge past has already created many fans of the franchise, who know the stories from the comic books, so any movie based on the batman is bound to have a wide audience.

The Idea of Batman

The idea of the Batman is a superhero who is a master of martial arts, a true intellectual, and a man who possesses a lot of high tech to help him fight crime, yet he has no actual supernatural superpowers, unlike most other popular superheroes. This idea may attract an audience, as the batman is a unique superhero, who uses things that any normal person can use to fight crime. The dark past of batman, the many cool gadgets, and the relatively dark personality of both the batman and the villains he faces gives anything in the batman series a great potential to be successful, as any batman story can easily be captivating and action packed.

Distributors of The Dark Knight

The Distributor of the Dark Knight, Warner Bros, are one of the largest film companies in the world. They have produced many successful films in the past that Gross huge profits, exposing their movies to as many people as possible. The Dark Knight was released to 4,366 theaters locally, and was promoted on all forms of media at a grand scale, through internet adverts, TV ad placements and even through new comics! The widespread advertising built up a lot of hype about the film, and had a huge effect on the size of the audience.

The Target Audience of The Dark Knight

So, has the Dark Knight hit the target audience? Taking into account all the factors such as the distributor, the history and appeal of the batman, and the overall look and idea of the story of the Dark Knight, you can clearly see that the movie would attract audiences of all ages, and both genders, although the batman comics have always been aimed towards boys. Since the wide audience found the movie to be very well produced too, the film was spread through word of mouth and online posts, and after release, the audience grew and grew, making the film one of the most successful of all time!

2 - Spiderman

Placed 2nd in the top superhero genre

Lifetime Gross of just over $820,000,000 worldwide

Distributed by Sony

Rated PG-13

Featured Actors include : - Toby Maguire - Willem Dafoe - Kirsten Dunst - James Franco

History of Spiderman Just like the batman comics, Spiderman has a large past of a comic book series that originated from the 1960s. Unlike the Dark Knight, this is the first Spiderman movie, so it doesn't have a huge worldwide film audience, but since the spiderman comics have been around for almost half a century, the audience would already be huge. Along with the comics came a toy series and even a quite successful cartoon series, further increasing the fanbase of the spiderman franchise, guaranteeing a huge audience for this movie Idea Spiderman is a superhero that gives a lot of people hope, as he is a character many people can relate to. He starts off as a normal student, although he isn't very popular, and is quite a geek compared to the other students. He has a crush on a girl, Mary Jane, but she is not even slightly interested In him. On a school trip to a museum of science, he gets bitten by a radioactive spider which changes his life, and he gets spider powers such as web slinging, wall climbing, spider senses etc It's a story of empowerment of a normal person, and many kids would be captured by this story, as they can relate to it. The movie is based of the initial events of Spiderman, so comic book fans would love to see it, and children would love to watch it!

Distributor of Spiderman

Spiderman was distributed by Sony Pictures, one of the leading distributors of media in the world. They did a similar job to other distributors of large movies, promoting the film through mass media, mainly through TV ads, but the internet was a huge advertising zone, and even in the many spiderman video games, they placed small advertisements in the games through information updates online via PSN and Xbox live.

The Target Audience of Spiderman

With large movies like this, with huge histories of tv shows, comics, games and toys, many people have grown up with the franchise, so the target audiences are usually huge, and the movie has to please everyone. Spiderman does that successfully, as the story is amazing, that the elder generations can watch over and over again, and the action scenes, the classic hero vs villain scenes keeps the kids excited and captivated. You can't go wrong with movies like these!

3 - Spiderman 2

3rd most successful superhero movie

Worldwide gross profit of just over $780,000,000

Distributed by Sony

Rated PG-13

Direct Sequel to Spiderman

A Fans Review of Spiderman 2

Spider-Man 2 picks up where the original film left off, this time showing the more difficult hardships of being a superhero. Standing in the way is Dr. Otto Octavius(Doc Ock) a brilliant scientist whose fusion experiment goes awry at a demonstration Peter attends. The story, and characters are fleshed out more this time out, as well as the effects. Kirsten Dunst is more convincing as MJ, she seemed a little flat in the role last time. Here she, like the rest of the cast, do a convincing job. The top performance has to go to Alfred Molina. In the short screen time Otto has before he becomes a diabolical powerhouse supervillain, he is an endearing, likable person. Spider-Man 2 also offers more confidence in it's story telling. The "raindrops" sequence is an evident example. Not afraid to go full nine, this movie is the definitive comic book movie, possessing action, drama, comedy, and message(without being too preachy). Director Sam Raimi and crew really nailed it this time around. Be sure to check out comic artist Alex Ross' paintings spliced in the opening credits, entailing the events of the first film. A great opening to a great film. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0316654/reviews)

Why was Spiderman 2 Successful?

The fan review pretty much sums up why. First of all, since Spiderman 2 is a direct sequel, it's guaranteed to be a success with a huge audience, as the audience from the previous movie want to know what happens after the first movie. The producers can focus on what people said about the last movie too, and improve this movie using the audiences feedback. What you're left with is an improved version of the last movie, with a better production value, and an eager audience.

So why didn't Spiderman 2 receive a bigger gross profit than Spiderman?

An explanation for this can be that Spiderman 2 wasn't as advertised as much Spiderman, leaving the audience unaware of the movies release in cinemas. I think otherwise though. With Sequels, you can only rely on the people that enjoyed the last movie to come and watch the sequel. With the first movie, a small percentage of people who went to see the movie may have not enjoyed it, so they would never decide to see the sequel. This is why man sequels to other movies can be a major flop, as huge profits from the original movie may not mean a guaranteed huge profit on the sequel, as the people may not have even enjoyed the original movie.

So, did Spiderman 2 hit its target audience?

Seeing as the movie is a sequel, it has to have the same target audience as before. To change the target audience when producing a sequel is movie suicide, so the target audience is exactly the same as the original spiderman movie. From what we saw in the fan review, Spiderman 2 not only hits the target audience, but improves the viewing pleasure of the audience by improving the movie itself. Sequels can be risky, but Director Sam Raimi has pulled it off!

4 - Spiderman 3

4th most successful superhero movie

Worldwide Gross of just over $890,000,000

Distributed by Sony

Rated PG-13

3rd Sequel, yet the lowest rated movie in the series, at 6.4 compared to spidermans 7.4 (imdb)

Why is Spiderman 3 4th?

You'd expect the 3rd Sequel of a series to be a lot more successful than the first movie in the series, so why is Spiderman 3 rated the 4th most successful superhero movie of all time? Well, keeping in mind it is a sequel, you have to take into account the sequel effect that I mentioned 2 slides back, where audience members who disliked the previous movie are less likely to view the sequel afterwards. Spiderman 3's ratings are quite low compared to the other movies in the series though, which means the movie wasn't as good as the others. This can be a reason why it is considered to be 4th in the list.

A Fans review of Spiderman 3 : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0413300/reviews

198 out of 326 people found the following review useful: some good things but it never quite comes together, 8 May 2007

Third entry in the hugely popular series has Peter Parker and alter ego Spider-Man fighting what could possibly be the greatest battle of his life. The intrepid

Parker is on top of the world as the citizens of New York City have finally come to appreciate all of his heroic deeds, but more importantly he's found a stable

relationship with Mary Jane Watson. His seemingly perfect existence comes to an abrupt halt when he learns that his uncle's real killer is still at large, and best

friend turned bitter adversary Harry Osborn comes seeking revenge. Peter also bonds with an unusual black symbiote that unleashes a darker side of him and

threatens to destroy everything he holds dear. Some effective moments of intense, exciting action and superior special effects are undermined by

overlength, and juxtaposed against moments of corny, unintentionally funny human drama. The ingredients for a success are there, including a good cast and some interesting subplots, but they can't overcome a leaden script which chooses

to revel in its mawkish material rather than flesh out its characters or tell a coherent story. Watchable, but never quite as engaging or spectacular as it could

be considering the standard set by the first two films. **½

Fans disappointed...

Most of the audience posted reviews like this, all you have to do is read the review title to see their opinions : - Big-Budget Special-Effects Extravaganza, Out Of Focus - Perfect example of trying to fit TOO much into a movie - Spider-Man 3 is adequate, but adequate just isn't enough - A Let Down - BEST effects, yet WORST movie - The worst Spidey yet. I LOVED IT! - I'm so sorry, Spidey The fans clearly are disappointed, so what went wrong?

What went wrong?

The pressure of making a good sequel is always really high, but what has happened here is the director trying to end the series with a bang. He did what he did with the last movie, read the audiences reviews, and has clearly tried to impress them, investing $200,000,000 as a production budget, but the movie ended up full of action scenes, leaving the story a little empty. The more you try to please a target audience, the more you can lose track of the plot of the story, so sometimes it isn't a good thing to please every single person in the target audience.

Did Spiderman 3 hit the target audience?

Just like the previous spiderman movies, it has hit the target audience well again, as the distribution company did their job well, producing TV ads, video games, and even Spiderman 3's own movie website where fans can get more information on the film. The same audiences as before were the target, and since it is a sequel, the audience didn't really need to be attracted, but simply notified of the film. Fans of the comic books series who know the story may have been disappointed by the movies lack of story and plot focus, but fans who haven't read the comics or watched the cartoon wouldn't know better. So, although the target audience wasn't as happy with this movie compared to the others in the series, it has hit it, and made quite a large gross profit.

5 – Iron Man

5th in the Superhero genre

Worldwide Gross of roughly $585,000,000

Distributed by Paramount

Rated PG-13

Released 2008, use of improved CGI

History of Iron Man

Like the Batman and Spiderman Comics, Iron man originates from 1963, from an Idea from a collaboration between comic book legend Stan Lee and scripter Larry Lieber. The comics are more recent than the likes of batman and spiderman, but they have been around for almost 40 years, so there is quite a history, and with a history there are willing fans who would be very excited if a movie version was released, so a target audience appears, fans of the comics.

Idea of Iron Man

Iron man is seen as similar to batman in a way, a superhero with a lot of money and a lot of gadgets, with a strong personality. Iron man also has a huge patriotic and almost political side to the story too, as the lead character is a weapons designer, owner of a leading business in military technology, and fights villains that have communist views. Some readers believe that in the comics, some storylines are written to convey the authors thoughts on the vietnam war, so Iron man is seen as a very stereotypical american, arrogant and very boyish, but very badass. So the American audience will love this side of Iron man.

Distributors of Iron Man

Iron man was distributed by Paramount, a giant of distribution, similar 20th Century Fox or Warner Bros, responsible for such movies as War of the Worlds, Transformers, Cloverfield, and even helped with the Titanic. So the studio is known to distribute many great films that use CGI. Like all other distributors too, they did a great job spreading the movie around, via a great TV ad, internet ads, and even adverts for the Video Game they planned to release at the same time of the movie.

Target Audience of Iron Man

The target audience is again, the fans of the comic books series, and to attract a new audience, the fans of action movies, the heavy use of intense CGI action scenes and badass-ness of the American war hero brings in many viewers seeking an intense action packed film. The movie has hit the target audience very well, bringing in many male viewers due to the strong male character of Iron man.

Upcoming Superhero Movies : Iron Man 3

Iron man 3 is scheduled to be released in 2013, sometime in march. Demographics for the previous Iron man movie and Iron Man comic books make it clear that this movie will be most popular with teenage males between 13 and 24 years old, as males in that age group tend to like a strong male character with an attitude, and superhero comics in general. Psychographically, boys will be able to relate to Iron man's personality, his personal values and moral values. He defends enemies against his company and against his personal friends, and never acts unjust, harming the innocent. In Iron man 2, he makes it public that he is a superhero, so he is seen as a role model by all viewers. In Iron man 3, viewers of the prequels would want to see what happens next, guaranteeing the success of Iron man 3

Upcoming Superhero Movies : The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises is scheduled to be released in late July, and is predicted to be one of the biggest movies of all time. Due to the prequels massive success, this movie is guaranteed to bring in a massive profit and and huge success at the box office. Due too its popularity in the first two films it is expected to be even better. The trailer Is also going to increase its popularity already attracting millions of people.

Group Discussion

What people liked in a superhero film- Most people enjoy the action seen in these films and they say they should have good fighting scenes Most find the storyline captivating, and people can relate to the story and characters involved (eg. Peter Parker aka Spiderman losing his uncle Ben to a criminal) The heroism and morals given from the superheroes, along with the costumes and symbols gives the superhero idealogy an attractive look and cool attitude

Group Discussion

What people dislike in a superhero film - Storylines are often predictable (Guy saves girl from evil villain) Superhero storylines can be cliché and repetitive, as in people can tell that certain superhero storylines are similar even though the superheroes are completely different Some of the things superheroes say, the dialogues involved between the superheroes and the civilians are just cheesy and predictable

Star Appeal

Star appeal is a huge part of bringing in a large audience for a movie in modern times. To guarantee a movies success, the actors and acting must be impressive to really convey the story the director is trying to tell. Already established and Iconic actors such as Morgan Freeman, Bra Pitt, and Robert Downey Jr. will attract large audiences as movies they star in are perceived by everyone as great movies. An example of this success would be in “The Expendables” where most of the top action movie actors all starred in one action packed film full of explosions and violence. The idea of the film and the actors involved attracted millions, and it became an instant hit!