Millions of movie fans holding out for a hero

With more than 30 superhero movies in production, Declan Burke looks at the rise of the genre. Where once the cowboy saved us in the Western, now we turn to Batman or The Avengers to take on the bad guys. They are figures of hope - and a welcome distraction.

You could blame it all on Bonnie Tyler. All the way back in 1984, Bonnie was holding out for a hero who wasn’t just fast, strong and fresh from the fight, but a street-wise Hercules, no less, who was larger than life.

By then Richard Donner’s Superman had appeared in 1978 as the first big-budget superhero movie, in the process immortalising Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent, but it was in the 1980s — Hollywood responding, no doubt, to Bonnie’s husky rallying call — that the mania for superhero flicks really took hold. Superman II (1980), Flash Gordon (1980), The Toxic Avenger (1985), Robocop (1987) and Batman (1989) all appeared in that decade, to be followed by Batman Returns (1992), The Shadow (1994), Batman Forever (1995), The Phantom (1996) and Mystery Men (1999).