Variety.com: To power franchises, we may need another hero

Variety.com - To power franchises, we may need another hero: "As Variety's Gabriel Snyder and Pamela McClintock reported this week, many venerable movie franchises are 'played out or aging,' triggering 'a furious hunt for a replacement crop' of tentpole-worthy concepts. Yet when it comes to the perilous if potentially lucrative leap from comics page to bigscreen, Tina Turner misspoke in that 'Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome' song: Maybe we do need another hero.

Special effects have evolved to the stage where it's easy to 'believe that a man can fly,' as the 1978 'Superman' promised on its memorable one-sheet. As a consequence, after years of uninspired, campy takes on beloved heroes, studios can 'put something on screen that you never thought you could see with that level of realism,' as DC Comics editor Paul Levitz said in a recent interview.

The irony, however, is that while virtually anything is now possible visually, there's a dearth of recognizable characters capable of attracting a mass audience without provoking snickers among the uninitiated, making their elevation to 'franchises' a super-human task."