Which is better? Mainstream or Alternative? That is the question and one I am going attempt to answer as best I can. I am comparing two superhero movies, The Dark Knight for my Mainstream example and Super for my Alternative example. Now if you like Mainstream more then you would more likely watch The Dark Knight but why would you rather watch that? Because you may be impressed by the spectacular and hugely expensive CGI and SFX, you may want to see big explosions and wicked-looking vehicles such as Batman's motorbike and vehicles being launched into the air.

 

Otherwise, you may think The Dark Knight is just overblown, overcomplicated and not as worth the price it cost to make as most people think it is, you may feel like you're just following a crowd and you want to break away and look at something different. This is where Alternative comes in and compared to The Dark Knight, Super is a whole lot simpler and though it is never going to be the most popular Superhero movie ever made, it still encompasses the same basic ideas as the Mainstream Superhero movies to a certain degree even with no SFX or CGI and a relatively simple storyline. There is a difference between the two films mainly in

 

Plus, who doesn't love a superhero movie with an overall tone that is as dark as the titular protagonist's name suggests? The tone in The Dark Knight is indeed very dark and serious, just listening to the gruff, deep tone of Christian Bale's voice as Batman is enough for the audience to understand just why he and the film as a whole are so serious in answer to The Joker's recurrent catchphrase. The register is understandably very tense and serious and rather sinister in places in The Dark Knight. The tone and register in Super is meant to be more suited to Dark Comedy Drama as it is more about giving people their comeuppance when they do something wrong and reacting to a depressing moment in one's life like the main protagonist's wife leaving him.

 

Super is mainly about a man who just wants to do right and see to it that other people do likewise. The tagline is "Shut up Crime" portrayed in a speech bubble next to Rainn Wilson's mouth which shows that he is determined to put an end to crime as much as he can even if it is for the most petty of offences. The Dark Knight by comparison is 2 and a half hours of hughly complex narratives. A whole lot of scenarios play out over the course of the film as a means of moving the plot along and keeping the audience interested or trying to. Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhart both start off as protagonists, they both have eyes for Maggie Gyllenhaal, all are targeted by The Joker, Eckhart and Gyllenhaal are captured by The Joker, The Joker's arrested, Bale interrogates him, Gyllenhaal dies, Eckhart becomes Two-Face, the Secondary antagonist, etc. All very complicated but if it works for a Mainstream Audience then it has to be as complicated as possible to keep the audience guessing until the end, it has unpredictable, especially to those who aren't as familiar to superhero movies as others are. So what of Super? Rainn Wilson's life is a drag apart from marrying Liv Tyler, Tyler leaves him for Kevin Bacon, Wilson slips into depression, has an epiphany and decides to become a Superhero and enlists Ellen Page as his sidekick. Not as complicated but quite possible more predictable and lacking a lot compared to Mainstream, all Wilson ever does is attack people with a wrench which shows he does have a nasty side and especially so when people he is close to are killed or in distress, Batman would never resort to murder or bodily harm regardless of what he has to go through with regards to people in distress.

 

On the whole, I think Mainstream is probably that bit better, not so much because of it being more spectacular and more expensive due to all the CGI and SFX but mainly because the longer and more complicated it is, the more the creators can put into the storyline to make it all the more unpredictable. You cannot really do those things with Alternative unless you try that is but it does not always help to put a lot into an otherwise relatively simple storyline even if it is otherwise going to be predictable but to be perfecty honest, I have no preference towards either Mainstream or Alternative because I think they both have their merits and their own ways of keeping the audience interested.