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A few weeks ago, a writer named Chris Nashawaty wrote a column for “Entertainment Weekly” entitled “Superheroes: Why I Hate ‘Em!” The title is a little self-explanatory, but his basic thesis was that superheroes have killed summer movies. And, to be fair, the guy has a point.

Once upon a time, the summer movie season was filled with variety, and the big event movies were exciting not just because they were an adaptation but because they were innovative and original — such as “Jurassic Park,” “Terminator 2” and “Independence Day”).

Now, Nashawaty argues, the studios are content to trot out whatever comic book adaptation is currently at the top of their to-do list, a list that gets longer with each successful comic book movie ... which is all of them. And now, all the innovation and creativity that movies can provide are focused entirely on making Iron Man look as cool as humanly possible.

Don’t get me wrong — I liked “Iron Man” as much as the next girl, and I’m not suggesting that all remakes or adaptations are bad. But I do think that there was definitely a time when summer movies had a lot more variety and a lot less dependence on comic books. I remember seeing “Independence Day” with my friends, and sitting in the audience waiting for the lights to go down was maybe the most anticipation and excitement I’ve every felt about a movie.

Now, though, the studios have gotten pretty lazy. Look at this summer’s big event movies: “Iron Man,” “Hellboy 2,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Wanted” and “The Dark Knight,” which are all based on comics or graphic novels. In fact, with the exception of “Wall-E,” the only big summer movies that aren’t based on comics are resurrections of old franchises that may or may not have been better off dead: “Indiana Jones,” “The X-Files” and, depressingly, “The Mummy.”

Where is this summer’s “Jurassic Park”? Where is the movie that bends new technology to an ingenious concept without the assistance of anyone at Marvel or DC? When every single big summer flick is based on a comic book, how are we ever going to see something completely surprising again?

Chris Nashawaty’s column gets a little self-righteous (and hey, I will freely admit that “The Dark Knight” is the movie I’m most excited about this year), but I definitely agree with him on one key point: it’s time to shake things up. And I’m a little annoyed right now because we just missed a great opportunity to do just that.

I had high hopes for “Hancock,” the Will Smith comedy that was billed as the superhero movie that would turn the genre on its head. Every image in the heavy-artillery marketing plan implied that the film would be about a washed-up, heavy-drinking hero who needed to get back to all the reasons he got into the gig to begin with.

It could have been an absolutely perfect catalyst for easing our way out of this dependence on comics as the go-to source of stories. Instead, though, it went for a big “twist,” which, without giving too much away, was not only misleading but pretty stupid. And just like that, the chance to say something differently about comic book heroes is lost again.

Alas. It looks like maybe the only way for us to break this habit is to do it exactly the way comic books did it originally. In 1986, tired of the cookie-cutter superheroes that had become predictable, a comic book writer named Alan Moore created “The Watchmen,” a graphic novel about what it might really be like if there were people among us who really did fight crime in costume. This time, though, the heroes were messy, filled with human faults and emotions and moral gray areas. “The Watchmen” changed the way we thought about comic books, and after its release, comics themselves changed, becoming deeper, more varied and much more genuine.

And next year, Warner Bros. is releasing the inevitable film adaptation of the famous novel. I’m very interested to see if art will imitate other art, and the “Watchmen” movie will change the way we see comic book movies just as the book changed the way we see comics.

At the very least, it should be an interesting experiment.

A Wisconsin native, Melissa Olson has a film degree from the University of Southern California. She now works in Madison for the television program “Discover Wisconsin.” E-mail comments to her by visiting her Web site at

melissaolson.net.