Why are new superhero shows less about story and more about action?

M

Martha A

New member
My theory on this is back in the 70's and 80's, the censors were so strict that fight scenes in superhero shows were either very short, slapstick, or nothing more than throwing ropes on characters.

Nowadays even in kid-oriented superhero shows, characters are punching and kicking each other constantly.

There is now more, "action," than story.

Another good example if compared B:TAS to Justice League or Teen Titans. In B:TAS, the fight scenes were short and consisted of Batman mostly throwing people, yet in the latter two shows, the fight scenes feel like they take up 10 minutes of an episode.

Then there is the two TMNT shows, with the latter being much more about action than humor.

Compare the Marvel superhero shows. There is a clear difference in the 3 X-men cartoons, and even the Spiderman cartoons.

What do you think?
 
I was wondering if you were going to bring up Spider-Man. I greatly perfer recent attempts (read: Spectacular Spider-Man) at creating an actual lived-in universe, then the fantasy world of quick cuts, abrasive music, and sort attention spans (read: Spiderman TAS).
 
Because they're action shows. I don't really see any story being sacrificed for action anyway, in Spectacular Spider-Man the stories were really good and the action scenes were amazing, so it's not like you can only have one or the other.
 
I don't see how Super Friends had a better story then Justice League. A lot of those shows from the 80s and 70s had lame action and a lame story. I think most super hero cartoons from the 90s and 2000s are better then their 70s and 80s counterparts in terms of stories.
 
The Spectacular Spider-Man certainly wasn't lacking in story. The first season had:

- The falling out between Peter and Eddie.
- Gwen's romantic feeling for Peter developing.
- Harry trying to do better in school to please his father. So much so that he turned to drug use.
- Peter working to get employment so that he could support his Aunt May.

Season 2 had:
- Peter trying to make sense of his feelings for Gwen, but ending up with Liz for a while.
- Harry returns and is trying to recover from his addiction to Globulin Green.
- Flash develops feelings for Sha Shan and is slowly growing out of his role as a school bully.


Teen Titans would also have a story arc for each season:
1. The introduction to Slade.
2. Terra's joining and betrayal of the Titans.
3. The Brother Blood story.
4. The arrival of Trigon.
5. Seeking out and helping other heroes.

Now the older comic based cartoons weren't lacking in fun, but perhaps you could specify how they were more storybased than the ones in the 90s and 2000. The only thing I can think of that comes close is the 1980s Solo Spider-Man cartoon having that Doctor Doom 5 parter. Other than that it's pretty much defeating the bad guy and dealing with a problem limited to the episode.
 
Got to be honest, I'm not a fan of Justice League, but it had more story than Batman: the Animated Series did. B:TAS was entirely episodic and relied on stand-alone episodes. The most it ever had was recurring villains, it didn't even try to have an ending. At least Justice League had that invasion thing, and Cadmus. Even if it wasn't much, they at least threw together an ending at the last minute.

Spider-Man TAS and SSM are harder to judge, since they both had the same kind of continuity stuff.

Iron Man: Armored Adventures is really the only superhero show I'd say is entirely plot focused (as in, it was made with an ending goal in mind, compared to the typical 'fight crime' motive of all the other superhero shows out there)
 
Except you can still have an episodic series with good stories. Star Trek The Next Generation was episodic and I think it was one of the best sci fi shows ever. Same deal with Batman the Animated series.

Thing with Star Trek TNG and BTAS is some of the important episodes haver an impact that is brought up in in future episodes, like the Best of Both Worlds having an impact later on in Star Trek and the Two-Face two parter being important with episodes like Second Chance and Judgment Day.

Having a story arc doesn't equal good story telling, a good episodic series will always be better then a bad story arc series.
 
I'm gonna say it one more time:

Shows which tell a singular story in arc form and have a definitive conclusion ≠ a better show.

Shows which tell self-contained stories and have stand alone episodes ≠ inferior storytelling.

Just because you prefer one style of show over another, that does NOT make the shows which don't follow your favorite style wrong or less entertaining. Please stop generalizing.
 
I think you are one of those people who can't take off their "nostalgia glasses".

Really. I mean most cartoons back then recycled the same plot over and over again.
 
Just because a show doesn't have a story arc does not mean it doesn't have a plot or story, it just means it doesn't have a continuing story. A single episode can have a story the same as a long ongoing arc.

Why do you keep making this mistake of thinking of story/plot purely in ongoing terms? Episodic series have plots the same as story arc driven ones, and sometimes they can be better as well. (imo BTAS had better plots, and writing, than Iron Man AA for example)
 
No it isn't. Shows with a single ongoing story aren't automatically more story-driven than shows with stand-alone stories. That too is nothing more than a generalization, and it's neither fair nor accurate. There are plenty of episodic shows which are very story-oriented.
 
The reason why there ins't a lot of story behind today's superhero shows is because most of them are made for children and children aren't going to really understand a deep story and stuff like character development, they would get bored and change the channel to something with a lot of explosions and fighting. I personally have enjoyed most of the major superhero shows of the past few years, they have been enjoyable if not a bit too action oriented, but I understand that they aren't really shooting to please me more so than they are shooting to please a 10 year old who would potentially purchase a toy or shirt from that particular cartoon. It's all good, I love me lot's of fighting and explosions as much as a 10 year old does so I have no complaints about today's action toons, bring them on baby! :D
 
While I do agree with that statement, I'm not going to lie. There's an awful lot of action cartoons that had a story arc that I loved to death: Beast Wars/Machines, Justice League Unlimited, the 2002 He-Man, the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, just to name a few.
 
I'm not putting down story arcs; they're fine when they're well done. (I liked JLU and TMNT 2K3 as well.)

It's just this "ongoing plot and story arc shows >>>>>>>>>>> episodic stand-alone plot shows" rhetoric that I keep reading on this board is rapidly getting annoying.
 
And the superhero shows made 10/20/30 years ago weren't made for children?

There's also a lot more character development and the like in modern shows then there were in cartoons from the 80s.
 
I suppose that was a fault on my part. "Batman captures the Joker for the 560th time" is a story, technically. I'd still say that's not very story-focused, though. It's akin to comparing See Spot Run to Lord of the Rings. They both have stories, but one is more interested in developing it, expanding on it and focusing on it.

I just see dynamic characters as having more story behind them than static ones, same with storylines. If you have Batman capturing the same villains week after week, then they're obviously not very story-focused. Same if you keep milking out your characters and never developing them without any kind of goal in mind.

It's fine if you don't like it, but you really can't say a show designed to last forever is just as focused on the story than one that actually has a whole story planned out from the first episode to the last (as in, they have an ending in mind)
 
I think a big reason why there might be an increased emphasis on action is that TV animation quality has come along leaps and bounds recently; the likes of Avatar and Samurai Jack have a slickness that He-Man or even BTAS could only dream of. Nowadays it's actually possible for an American action cartoon to look good.
 
Yes I can, and I'll tell you why.

When it comes to episodic series the concept of coming up with creative ideas and making them good isn't really that different to when it comes to planned shows. You still need to come up with creative ideas to keep the show fresh, so in order to keep the show running you actually need to make more and more stories as you go through. It's not nearly as simple as "Batman captures the Joker for the 560th time", every time Batman captures the Joker, there's a different plot and setting going on. The premise may be similar, but if you abridge every story of Batman to "Batman captures a villain" then of course every episode will look similar, when in reality is not even close to that.

In fact, one could argue that the concept of planing a whole story from scratch is less story focused, because it has ONE story stretched into several episodes, unlike episodic shows who need to come up with new ideas for every new episode.

And might I add, unless it's something really short like 10 episodes or so, I don't think there's something such as a planned series that's like, planned for every episode. Ciro Nieli planned the entire Super Robot Monkey Team HP Go series on paper from the get-go (the show's early cancellation nonwithstanding), but there are tons of filler episodes. Same with WITCH, and Digimon, and Shaman King, and I could plenty of series that go like that. If these shows have to come up with filler as they progress, then it's not really that much different from episodic shows.

This whole debate is ridiculous, anyway. Nobody can really say which type of show is more story-focused than the other (as I said earlier, the concept of planning a series being less story focused is ARGUABLE), because the process that involves writing each series needs to be just as creative and well-done regardless of the type of show. There's nothing wrong with preferring one or the other, but to state either is inherently better than the other is stupid.

TL;DR: Your opinion is bad and you should feel bad. :zoidberg:
 
Marinite: between something like Batman: The Animated Series, which has a lot of individual stories but all different and most of them very well-written, or something like Inu-Yasha, which has an ongoing story but drags and develops it much more weakly than the individual stories in Batman, which would you say counts more as "story-focused"?
 
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