Let’s Play Superhero Movie Bingo

Odds are, you either saw ‘Green Lantern’ when it opened last weekend, or you heard the toxic word of mouth about the movie and decided to skip it altogether. Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re planning to go see it at the theater this weekend anyway. Or perhaps you’re going to see ‘Thor’ or ‘X-Men: First Class’ again. Or you’ll go see ‘Captain America’ when it opens in a couple weeks. Whichever of the multitude of comic book superheroes flooding theater screens this summer suits your fancy, be sure to bring along this handy Superhero Movie Bingo Card that NPR drew up to help guide you through all the genre clichés.

Pretty much all the basic conventions are covered here, from the training montage to the daddy issues to the Christ allegory, to the issue of far too many villains being thrown into the pot. This describes just about every comic book movie you’ll see this year. The only question is in which order the tropes will be arranged.

In related news, the ever-hilarious Topless Robot blog has published what will no doubt be the best ‘Green Lantern’ review you’ll ever read. When even Roger Ebert re-Tweets something like this from a comic book and action figure nerd blog, you know it stands out. (Warning: Copious profanity.)

[Bingo card from: NPR Monkey See blog. Thanks to Mrs. Z for the tip.]

3 comments

  1. Alex

    Ouch. Even “The Dark Knight”, probably the greatest superhero movie of all time, checks off just a few too many of these.

    At least it dodges the Slo-mo fight scene. May I also recommend an optional cliche on that one: “Fight scene cut so fast that you can’t see what the frak is going on.” That seems more applicable to modern superhero (and action) flicks.

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