I didn't see a commercial for The Green Lantern during the Super Bowl a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps I wasn't paying close enough attention.
But I saw commercials for Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, Cowboys and Aliens, Pirates of the Caribbean 4: Waterlogged, Transformers 3: The Brain-Dead, and something called Super 8 from J.J. Abrams.
In other words, the prime-time lineup for 2011 Comic-Con (already sold out for its late-July run in San Diego).
I'm sure there are other movies - interesting movies, thought-provoking movies, movies in which nothing explodes and no one has super-powers or comes back from the dead or from another dimension - that will be released this year. But the Comic-Con mentality is the one that is ascendant in the culture.
Which is why, when I visit a multiplex, that's the only kind of movie I ever see advertised. If it doesn't include a super-hero, it is either digitally animated, in 3D or both.
(I'll have more tomorrow on 3D, the latest successful effort by the movie industry to find a bogus gimmick with which to rob you of an extra $5 per movie. I've been railing against it since 2009, longer even than Roger Ebert.)
The Comic-Con mentality runs roughshod these days, despite evidence that Comic-Con's aesthetic is not the one that dominates the culture. Flops such as Kick-Ass and Tron: Legacy were expected to be massive hits, based on the reception they received at Comic-Con. But when actual people were exposed to these exercises in insubstantial style, they tended to ignore them.
Which brings us back to the question: Why are we ceding control of the movies to people who live for Comic-Con? They represent a segment of the audience - but hardly the whole viewing public. Why does that particular tail continue to wag the dog?
The answer is obvious: money. When one of those movies hits, it not only does huge business, it does huge repeat business. And it spawns sequels, franchises, tentpoles.
Which is why we've wound up with a movie culture that's all tentpoles and no tent. As seen at Comic-Con and on the Super Bowl.