Superheroes film mainly takes
place in a natural/realistic setting; for instance, one would find that the metropolis settings seems to pervade the superhero genre. Spiderman and
Captain America took place in New York City, in a realistic setting.
The setting of Batman was located in Gotham City, a fictional city, but
the locations used in the movies are that of real cities, for example,
Los Angeles, Chicago. In fact, Christopher Nolan, the director of the Batman trilogy, revealed that his Gotham city was largely based on Chicago.
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| Gotham City (left) was loosely based on Chicago (right). |
Settings based on real places are also usually presented in a different way to the audience for the superhero genre due to the need to highlight the "otherwordly" element of superheroes films. Spiderman takes place in New York City, one of the most recognisable cities on Earth. In the film, viewers are introduced to a different perspective of New York City when Spiderman swings amongst the towering skyscrapers, liberating the audience from the boundaries that would have been imposed onto normal civilians.
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| Spiderman swinging through New York City |
In retrospect, the settings of superheros films usually enjoys a very close association with the character - the protagonist of the film. The actions of the hero are bounded and limited by the perimeters of the metropolis setting. For example, in both the Spiderman and Batman trilogies, the protagonists of both narratives are guardians of their cities and are often seen to make personal sacrifices for the greater good of saving the city of their residence. In fact, one can say both Spiderman and Batman are largely dependent on the metropolis settings as without the city, they would not have the platform to display their abilities. Hence, this suggests that for the superheroes genre, there seems to exists a very strong mutualistic relationship between settings and characters as compared to other genres of narratives.
Likewise, this is also the case for the Powerpuff girls and
the Incredibles, which were based loosely on real cities like New York
City. However, for
these two films, there is also the presence of unrealistic features. In
the Powerpuff Girls, there is an active volcano in the middle of the
Townsville which would eventually be the base for the antagonist’s home. In the
Incredibles, much of the technology used in the story was far too advanced for the 1970s - the time period in which the narrative of The Incredibles took place. Thus, another feature of superheroes' settings is that even though it is largely based on realistic places, these settings are also closely aligned with elements of fantasy.
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| Townsville (Powerpuff Girls) |
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| Metroville (The Incredibles) |
In addition, the genre of superheroes does not restrict nor limits itself to any particular time period. In fact, superheroes can exist in the past, present or the future. For instance,
Batman, Spiderman and the Powerpuff Girls are all occurring in the
modern times. However, Captain America and the Incredibles occur
in the past. Captain America was set during World War II. In New York City, a scrawny and sickly Steve Rogers has an
undying passion to defend the nation. While at the same time in Europe,
Adolf Hitler’s head of weaponry Johann Schmidt (also the leader of the
terrorist organization HYDRA), was harnessing energy from the Tesseract
to invent weapons to dictate the world. The movie started with a present
day scene, where the shield of Captain America was uncovered from the
Arctic, and ended in present-day, at Times Square of New York City .
Although the beginning and the end of the movie depicts the modern
world, the movie is predominantly set in the past. Likewise, The Incredibles was set in the 1970s as evident from the clothing of the policemen and civilians featured in the film.
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| Captain America was set in the World War II era. |
In conclusion, the settings of superheroes films can be summarised as being realistic but with slight elements of fantasy pervading the genre; it is also not restricted to any particular time period.
