Henry O'Brien
Before Vera Drew’s 2022 directorial debut The People’s Joker can begin, there is a black screen with a wall of white text that makes something very clear for both the audience and film studio Warner Bros. Discovery for the upcoming superhero parody:
This film is a parody and is, at present time, completely unauthorized by DC Comics, Warner Bros. Discovery, or anyone else claiming ownership of the characters and subjects that it parodies and references.
The statement goes on to describe how Drew believed in good faith that her personal story is protected by Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, which allows for “fair use” in the cases of relevant criticism, social commentary, or education.
Of course, the main reason this statement precedes the film is because of the potential legal ramifications that would befall The People’s Joker, which uses some of DC’s and Warner’s most iconic and licensed properties. As the movie plays, it’s immediately apparent that this statement is not only for legal purposes but to symbolize a form of cinematic rebellion in an age where superhero IP continues to dominate the box office.
Indeed, The New Yorker’s Richard Brody called the film “freestanding and freewheeling” work. He additionally declared it “is the best superhero movie I’ve ever seen—because, unlike studio-produced films in the genre, it responds to the filmmaker’s deep personal concerns. There’s a noble history of directors transforming commercial assignments into personal statements, though it usually doesn’t extend to superheroes.”
The People’s Joker feels a level up not just for superhero films or arthouse films but for the minuscule subgenre of the superhero parody. Plenty of other genres, particularly horror, have a parody subgenre. And while the superhero genre is technically no different, there simply has not been a culture of parody movies involving those in capes and cowls.
There is a brief history of superhero parodies, especially from the 2000s. However, the utter dearth of films or shows that poke fun at the genre is few and far between over the past decade and change. The People’s Joker draws upon the best example of superhero parody movies, where directors and writers use the subgenre to tell stories and themes that are specific to them and them alone. Simultaneously, Drew takes it a step further by using The People’s Joker as an act of revolt against some of the comedy and stories that were used by some of the same people who used the superhero parody genre to level up to take over at Marvel or DC.
There are a few reasons that could be behind why there haven’t been many superhero parodies. First, parody films generally have become less financially successful, with the 2016 Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping failing to recoup its $20 million budget. Amber Rawlings of Little White Lies pointed out fewer parody films have been part of a larger trend, saying, “the constant cannibalization of contemporary film and television happening online in the form of memes, it seems there’s simply no longer a place for the parody genre.”
Another pivotal factor for the current state of superhero parody comes from, of course, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Many of the early 2010s Marvel films came from writers and directors who not only had comedy backgrounds but also were involved in creating some of the prominent works of the parody subgenre.
Drew’s film is a true watermark of this subgenre in terms of being an act of liberation and personal defiance. Here is some of the history behind superhero parody films in the decades leading up to Drew creating one of the finest works of the year. While they may not have directly inspired Drew, the groundwork was paved to create this subgenre in this media environment.
The Specials
We would have to look no further than James Gunn, who not only wrote and directed all three of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and is now in charge of the DC Universe along with Peter Safran in a cinematic universe reboot. One of Gunn’s earliest feature length scripts that he wrote was the 2000 film called The Specials, which was directed by future Chernobyl and The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin.
The film is a mockumentary that features an ensemble cast of Thomas Haden Church, Rob Lowe, Judy Greer and the Gunn brothers themselves as a superhero team on their days off. Within the film, the so-called Specials are the sixth or seventh most popular team in the world. During the 82-minute runtime, we see the heroes, with names like The Weevil (Lowe) and The Strobe (Church), go to events like a gala dinner thrown by the toymaker, making their action figure line. This story world is a clear predecessor to the Amazon show The Boys, where superheroes are folks saving the day and economic and commodified personas that can have political influence.
Gunn uses the script to imbue his own personal tastes and themes into a world about less-than-superheroes. Whether it be through Guardians of the Galaxy or The Suicide Squad, Gunn has always been interested in the notions of “superhero-as-loser” and a found family in a similar vein as Paul Thomas Anderson. Both the Guardians and the Squad feature criminal deadbeats with odd powers and are generally rejected by society.
The same goes for The Specials, where their newest member, Nightbird (Jordan Ladd), explicitly states at the beginning how they were not a cool group. She doesn’t care as she prefers the rock band Winger over Bon Jovi. Like in Gunn’s Guardians trilogy, The Specials are a dysfunctional family of sorts, except with the Strobe finding out the Weevil slept with his wife and co-member Ms. Indestructible (Paget Brewster). The movie takes on a meandering pace as most of the heroes don’t know what to do after the Strobe disbands the group following the revelation and looks to become a plastics salesman.
By the end, though, the group predictably comes back together. Gunn flips the calculus, if only slightly, by having The Weevil, the most popular member of the group, leave The Specials and join a better superhero team. This takes on a meta-level as Lowe was the biggest star of the movie, and Gunn and Mazin levy his star power as a negative, something opposable to the proud, lovable losers known as The Specials. The film oozes with Gunn’s ideas as there is a clear throughline between this and when Starlord first played “Come and Get Your Love.”
Superhero Movie
Mazin would go on to write and direct a separate superhero parody film uninspiringly called Superhero Movie. This film lampoons many of the pre-MCU movies of the 2000s, including the original X-Men trilogy, Fantastic 4 and particularly Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy. The story revolves around unpopular high school student Rick Riker (Drake Bell) gaining the superpowers of a dragonfly, becoming known as the Dragonfly, who takes the Green Goblin knock-off Hourglass (Christopher McDonald).
Superhero Movie mostly makes corny jokes and feels wildly stale, never examining why movies like Raimi’s Spider-Man films took on such a massive level of popularity. Notably, the film isn’t very interested in the superhero genre to begin with, as it serves more as a nod and homage to the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker works like Airplane! and the The Naked Gun movies. Free of coincidence, David Zucker a producer on the film and comedy legend Leslie Nielsen plays the Uncle Ben figure. In a storytelling twist that doesn’t land at all, Nielsen’s character is the one who survives while the Aunt May figure (Marion Ross) dies horribly. And in a wildly unfunny moment, Uncle Ben tries to fornicate with Aunt May’s corpse.
To date, this is Mazin’s last directed feature film. Aside from being outdated from a comedy perspective, Superhero Movie just wants to make crumby jokes and try to cash in on the parody film genre as a whole. It offers little of the heart, humor, and personal touch that have defined Gunn’s oeuvre from that of an indie director to that of a comic book movie czar.
Super
Before James Gunn signed on to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he had just made his directorial follow-up to his horror comedy debut, a story of found family and instead strikes at the heart of who he sees as superheroes: losers. Wilson is perfectly cast in the role as simply a more depressed version of Dwight Schrute while desperately trying to maintain some delusion in his life that he is fulfilled and is a good person. His actions prove otherwise as anytime he beats up a “criminal,” he brutalizes them, giving them bludgeons and wounds that make him more like a dangerous vigilante that should be arrested instead of a hero that society deserves and needs like Batman intends to be in The Dark Knight trilogy. Additionally, Frank’s inspiration comes from visions of a Christian, abortion-fearing superhero called the Holy Avenger (played by Nathan Fillion and based on the real Christian comic book series “Bibleman”), tying the idea of being a superhero back to patriarchal structures that maintain some form of a status quo.
The movie seems to come to this conclusion after Frank saves Sarah. Months after trying to rekindle their love, Sarah leaves Frank again, realizing no amount of heroism from Frank will help her overcome her addiction. With Frank out of her life, she actually turns her life around and finds a lover who feels emotionally available. This ending montage sequence feels like Gunn’s indictment of what heroism actually means. He doesn’t find it through any form of wish casting, a message that feels non-existent or ingenuine in any of the superhero films of the 2010s and 2020s.
Super may have tonal inconsistencies, as displayed in Elliott Page’s character Libby, who becomes a superhero alongside Frank but is revealed to have much more physically and sexually violent tendencies that could be interpreted as a criticism of geek culture, but comes up feeling underwritten and all over the place. Still, the film offers plenty of black humor and playful critiques of the superhero genre and eventually gives Gunn the opportunity to work on his own themes in the MCU.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
Gunn wasn’t the only director to take this path. Back in 2012, The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the reason Gunn was hired for Guardians of the Galaxy was because he shared the ability to mix comedy elements with action and horror like Joss Whedon, the man behind the first two Avengers films. Two years before Whedon made two of the most successful superhero films ever, he created an online three-part miniseries called Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a product of the lack of work during the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike.
The musical dramedy series, released straight to the internet, followed the titular video blog of aspiring supervillain Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris). In many ways, it feels like a precursor to any of the straight-to-streaming superhero miniseries or TV shows like The Penguin, Ms. Marvel or Loki. However, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is much darker and more subversive in the superhero genre while still having enough of a lampooning sensibility to be considered a parody.
In a form of connectivity between Gunn and Whedon, the Sing-Along Blog features Fillion as another hero. This time, though, Fillion’s character, Captain Hammer, tries to seem like the ultimate virtue warrior by helping the unnamed city’s homelessness issue, but he is weak under the slightest bit of pressure and mostly tries to tackle homelessness as a form of PR.
Compare that to the always-down Dr. Horrible, who wants to become a supervillain with the intent to change the status quo. He says as much because he sees the world is in horrible shape and he wants to see some real, impactful change. Although his motives seem contradictory and counter-intuitive, Dr. Horrible’s beliefs come from a recurring theme in Whedon’s works. Many of his protagonists have an anti-authoritarian streak where they have to take on a large corporation or a secret government entity, like Rossum Corporation in Dollhouse or The Initiative in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even in The Avengers, Nick Fury has to stand in opposition to shadowy government figures so the superhero team can save the world. It is another example of how a director like Whedon imbued his own themes and messages into superhero parodies.
Whedon also offers an alternative to men in tights trying to save the world through the love interest Penny (Felicia Day), who influences Captain Hammer to tackle homelessness. In a scathing criticism of heroes and villains, Penny’s inadvertent death at the hands of Dr. Horrible helps him become a legit supervillain but leaves him depressed and alone in a hard-cut ending where Harris’ character sits in front of his video blog one last time with no heart left.
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This final statement from Joss Whedon becomes the dark stepchild of this subgenre that gave an edge that helped The People’s Joker stand out and feel like such a revelation. Indeed, many of these films formed the groundwork for Drew’s directorial debut The People’s Joker. How Vera Drew elevates the subgenre is by creating an earnest defiance to the system of comic book movie adaptions today by basically positing that why, if these stories are supposed to be the stories of this generation, can’t they be available to everyone instead of two powerful film studios and comic book companies.
