"Kairosity" in Comic Book Films

Why is it that The Dark Knight (2008) was such a popular movie, when it's DC Comics counterpart, Superman Returns (2006), did not do so well?  Why did Roger Ebert say that Iron Man (2008) was the best superhero movie since Spider-Man 2 (2004)—which he said was the best superhero movie since Superman (1978)?  I don't think it's due to Hollywood making better superhero movies, because many people didn't like Spider-Man 3 (2007) as much as Spider-Man 2.

A movie's popularity and success certainly goes beyond special effects.  If success were dependent on special effects—which improve as time goes on—then The Lost World (1997) should have been better than the original Jurassic Park (1993).  The explanation most frequently offered today is that the characters or stories of certain movies are better.  This is true, but there's an element of characters and stories that is essential to their popularity and success that is hard to put into words until you've taken an English class from BYU.

I believe a main contributing factor to these movies' success is their "kairosity" (I just made that word up).  For those who didn't read our little textbook, 'kairos' is the term used when, in a rhetorical situation, the time is right for a particular comment or action to be made.  Think of Jack Sparrow, from the first Pirates of the Caribbean (2003).  He told Will Turner and Barbossa to wait to do whatever they were going to do until the opportune moment.  That is to say, the time when one's action/comment/involvement will have the most favorable impact on the outcome of a situation.  "Strike while the iron is hot."  For movie stories and characters, kairosity is timeliness.

There was an animated movie that came out in 1999 called The Iron Giant.  It's a story about a young boy in Cold War era America who discovers a giant robot that fell out of the sky.  This giant is discovered just as Sputnik first begins orbiting the earth, and so the fear of a 'red' threat looms ominously like the giant itself.  Naturally, the giant attracts attention, especially from the paranoid national government, who wants to destroy the giant before really trying to understand it.

The movie is excellent, with a great moral message, but it didn't do well in the box office at all.  It was poorly marketed and generally overlooked, because the cold war paranoia didn't resonate with the prosperous age of the late 90s.  The movie was set in the 50s, and centered on a war that (in '99) had been over for 20 years.  The story is a great one, the characters are convincing and realistic, but the context of it all wasn't very timely.

Fast forward to 2008, when Iron Man came to the big screen.  This movie had great characters, and a classic prodigal son storyline, but it was also timely.  The hero is created out of an alternative form of energy, which was a current issue in 2008, and still is.  Tony Stark, the hero, is a CEO whose raucous lifestyle mirrors the celebrities we follow today.  The opening scenes of the movie show Stark getting kidnapped by terrorists and held hostage in the mountains of the Middle East.  By bringing up such timely situations and themes, the Iron Man is able to essentially say to his audience, "I speak your language, I know what your world is like," whereas the Iron Giant is not only from another place (outer space), but stuck in another time completely.

Although there are many reasons why some superheroes and their films are more successful than others, we should also remember that a lot more money went into The Dark Knight than Superman Returns, Iron Man didn't have an emo dancing scene like Spider-Man 3, and there's simply no more inspiring person to play Superman than Christopher Reeve.