Superhero movies do not need to merely be action movies. Just because the protagonist wears a costume does not mean that these films are only meant to throw as many explosions and effects at us as possible. Superhero movies can become a genuine crime thriller (The Dark Knight), or an epic,(Watchmen), or a Lifetime movie about a stalker date rapist (Superman Returns).
Jonah Hex, the 2010 bomb staring Josh Brolin and Megan Fox, is a flat-out terrible movie. Yet, for a film that pretty much failed on every conceivable level (some casting (such as Brolin, Michael Fassbender, and Jeffery Dean Morgan) was okay), within the concept of Jonah Hex and the Hexverse lies the potential for a truly great film.
Note: I have never read a Jonah Hex comic, and my first introduction to the character was through the film.
(Brief background: Jonah Hex is a former Confederate soldier bounty hunter in the late 1800s terribly scarred on half his face. In the comics, he has no special powers, although he is an excellent marksman and tracker. In the movie, however, he can talk to the dead for a short period like that guy in Pushing Daisies.)
While the talking to the dead angle of his character is a cinematic invention, it makes you wonder about a Jonah Hex film done as a respectable supernatural western.
If you look at the history of the genre, the great Westerns never move quickly, an idea that the 80-minute Jonah Hex never bothered to understand. Films like The Searchers (and other John Ford films), The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (and other spaghetti Westerns), The Wild Bunch, or the post-Unforgiven series of modern Westerns, bide their time. The films are as much about the ambiance of the landscape and the scenic vistas as whatever quest the anti-hero protagonist undertakes. After all, when all you have is a horse and a vast terrain in front of you, time basically becomes irrelevant. And, while these films had gun fights and the occasional dynamite-caused poof of black smoke, simply shooting a lantern didn't make shit explode, as in this film.
(A minor complaint but the climax of Jonah Hex takes place on a boat and anyone who knows anything about the Western genre knows that it's the railroad that the true enemy.)
A supernatural angle should be less about fighting ghosts and goblins as though Jonah Hex was Ash from the Evil Dead series, but more about mysticism, spirits, and how the life after death surrounds us at all times.
And there is one person who would be perfect for this sort of film: Nick Cave.
Listeners of the songwriter/singer know how well he uses dark, vivid imagery of death and other morbid subjects. And, equally important, his history with the cinema shows a definite attraction to the Western.
The Proposition, which he scripted, is probably the best Western of the past decade. Along with Warren Ellis, Cave co-wrote the hauntingly beautiful score to 2007's underrated Western The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford.
Other films that Cave has been linked to as a screenwriter include a reboot of The Crow, and a bizarre yet interesting sounding sequel to Gladiator that finds Maximus contending with Roman Gods and reincarnation. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/may/06/nick-cave-rejected-gladiator-script
In the coming years, plenty of big named comic book heroes will be getting a second shot at fame. Reboots include Spider-Man (starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Rhys Ifans), Superman (directed by Zack Snyder), The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and we've already seen The Hulk attempt big screen success twice.
With so many others getting chances, why not give Jonah Hex a second go-around?A film combining the slow, methodological approach of the Western with an intrinsic understanding of the darkness of mortality, could be among the top films to showcase the untapped versatility of the comic book/superhero genre.
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