Superman in Green: an audience study of comic book film adaptations Thor and Green Lantern

Over the past two decades comic book fans have become a digitally-empowered minority, with mainstream filmmakers much more likely to yield to fan pressure when adapting comics than in pre-digital times. Nonetheless, this fidelity-favouring audience is still only a fraction of the eventual attendance of these blockbuster releases. The larger non-fan audience is frequently drawn to ‘comic-book movies’ by generic markers carefully positioned by filmmakers and publicity to evoke past successes; with the continued popularity of comic-book movies suggesting these strategies have been successful. To better understand these two broad groups that attend comic book adaptations, audiences at screenings of recent high-profile films Thor and Green Lantern were surveyed. Adopting a similar methodology to Watching The Lord of the Rings, this research was carried out as a quali-quantitative paper survey of filmgoers at three different screenings of each film. The results offered a nuanced picture of the audience(s) for one of the most popular trends in modern cinema. Ultimately, it was found that while the two broad audiences that attend theses adaptations are not mutually exclusive, they do have differing interests and expectations, which the filmmaker and scholar must consider.