The Holdovers Director Criticizes Superhero Movies

Superhero movies are really vexing for Alexander Payne.

By Aaron Perine

The Holdovers director has a very simple problem with superhero movies. Namely, they make it hard to get smaller projects financed. Alexander Payne spoked to The Guardian about his well-received Christmas comedy. While things are looking good for that movie, the director had some sharp words for the entire superhero genre. Payne told them, "If someone doesn't fly in your film, they won't give you the money to make it anyway." This echoes concerns from others inside the comic book movie realm and beyond. There's no question that despite a rocky 2023 for supeheroes, the immediate future seems poised to deliver more installments featuring Superman, Batman, The Avengers, Captain America and more. Check out what the filmmaker had to say about the current state of the movies down below.

"Well, join me in thinking it through," Payne began. "As far as comedy goes, where is something like Groundhog Day today? Where is Trading Places? Where, for that matter, is Terms of Endearment? The solidly built, intelligent comedy-drama? Where is the well-made adult drama with visual scope? Where is Out of Africa or The English Patient?"

"Nebraska, in particular, was very hard to get financed, because I wanted it in black and white. Even at $14m, which is chump change for these [studio] people, it was very hard to get made," he explained. "The Descendants was easier, because I had George Clooney on board – 'Look at this big, shiny thing.' And Downsizing was a different beast, a bigger girth, and I could say: 'Hey look, it's Matt Damon.' I mean, that was Downsizing – it sure looked good on paper."

Is There Superhero Fatigue?

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This ongoing situation at the box office is one that critics of the superhero genre have been warning about for a while now. However, their complaints really picked up steam in 2023 due to a number of converging factors. (Namely, household costs increasing, streaming's looming influence, plain old corporate greed, and bad marketing!) However, one of the genre's biggest champions did admit that there were "too many superhero movies." James Gunn, now the head of DC Films, talked about the idea of superhero fatigue with THR. You can count him among the believers.

"The entertainment industry has a history of people getting used to the spigot of one thing or another, whether it's DVD sales or superhero movies," Gunn recalled. "I think that there have been just way too many superhero movies lately that don't have that center to them."

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However, in a conversation with Michael Rosenbaum, he charted a way out. "Yeah, I do think there's too many, but I think it's much less a problem of 'too many,'" Gun detailed. "Yes, we are not going to overextend ourselves at DC. We're going to be very careful with what we put out and making sure everything is as good as it can possibly be. But I think that what's happened is that people have gotten really lazy with their superhero stories. They have gotten to the place where, 'Oh, it's a superhero, let's make a movie about it. And, 'Oh, let's make a sequel because the first one did pretty well.' And they aren't thinking about, why is this story special? What makes this story stand apart from other stories? What is the story at the heart of it all? Why is this character important? What makes this story different that it fulfills a need for people in theaters to go see, or on television? 

"I think people have gotten a little lazy, and there's a lot of biff-pow-bam stuff happening in movies, and I'm watching third acts of superhero films where I don't think there's a rhyme or reason to what's happening, I don't care about the characters," he added. "And they've gotten too generic. There's this sort of middle-of-the-road type of genre tone that so many superhero movies have, as opposed to having very different genres. I like very serious superhero movies, I like very comedic superhero movies, I like ones that are really just a murder mystery but with superheroes. I like to see these different types of stories as opposed to seeing the same story told over and over again."

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What Happens In The Holdovers?

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The Holdovers is a Christmas story of three lonely, shipwrecked people at a New England boarding school over a very snowy holiday break in 1970. The comedy stars Paul Giamatti (Billions) as Paul Hunham, an odiferous, optically-challenged adjunct professor of ancient history who is universally disliked by students and faculty; Da'Vine Joy Randolph (Only Murders in the Building) as Mary Lamb, the head cook of the school whose only child Curtis was killed in Vietnam, and newcomer Dominic Sessa, in his film debut, as Angus Tully, a student at the school — a smart, damaged, troublemaker but a good kid underneath who's just trying to make his way. Left to their own devices in the empty school, there are adventures, a little calamity and, finally, a semblance of family.

Do you agree with the director? Let us know down in the comments!

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