The origin story is one of the most important part of character development. It’s how we as an audience get to know this character, who he was before, and who he’s come to be.
The origin story can be seen in what is referred to as the “Hero’s Journey”. This was formulated, mainly by Joseph Campbell and it involves three major phases. In summary, the hero goes through a series of steps which fundamentally change him and his view of the world.
This path is one mainly followed by movies attempting to tell an origin story. For example, Peter Parker is an ordinary person until he’s bit by a radioactive spider. He is then thrown into a world of challenges where he learns about his powers, new enemies, and himself. By the end, he returns to the “known world” but a very different person to who he was when he left.
Origin stories are very important for many reasons. It’s mainly used in comic book movies to introduce audiences to new characters. The reason it is very effective for CBMs is simple. Comic book movies are adaptations. As such every adaptation will be different from the source material and prior adaptations. Of course this will sometimes lead to certain problems (how many times does Uncle Ben or The Waynes have to die?), but barring such outliers, the origin story is an amazing way to establish a concrete base for all future character decisions.
Why did I write this? Well, I watched Zack Snyder’s Justice League a few days ago and, among a lot of things wrong with Justice League, I found myself wondering why the characters were there. Now for a sizeable part of the film, Batman basically yells in our face that they had to come together to face a nebulous threat, but we don’t know why Aquaman, or Cyborg, or Barry Allen (I’m still convinced Ezra is playing Wally, not Barry but, different article) would join up. Why? because we know very little about these “integral” characters. In fact, of all the main characters, we only “know” Superman and Wonder Woman. Batman also suffers from the lack of an origin because he was introduced in what was supposed to be a Superman sequel and then we never got any explanations for why this Batman is who he is.
This shows one important part of an origin story. It helps not only the audience, but the writers to be familiar with the character. Motivations, past pain, the whole nine. Without that, we end up changes things on a whim because nothing was ever established.
Now, I’m not saying that every member of the Justice League should have gotten their own solo movie telling their origin, but it would have helped the bulk and the story if more of the characters had solid backgrounds before entering this endeavor.
As is inevitable when writing things like this, let’s look at the MCU. The reason Hollywood is obsessed with connected universes. Before the first team up in Avengers (2012), we’d had origins for Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. and through multiple appearances, we knew what kind of person Nick Fury was and the origins of the Avengers Initiative. The only people who didn’t get “origin stories” were Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Phil Coulson, and again, their characters were established through “guest appearances” in other movies: Black Widow in Iron Man 2 (2010), Coulson in every MCU movie to that point except Captain America (2011), and Hawkeye in Thor (2011). Basically, while this was the first time the spotlight was on these characters, they were not strange to us.
Similarly, the MCU has also gone down the road of “how to introduce a character that’s been rebooted more times than an old computer”. When they introduced Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War (2016), they made a decision not to go down the origin story route. What we get instead is a Parker who has been Spidey for a while and his involvement in Civil War doesn’t extend beyond the limited bounds established in the story. His next appearance in the MCU is in his own solo movie where his character is built from where we saw him last. Now, this works because for the most part Kevin Feige is trusting that the audience knows at the very least basic Spidey lore. So what we get isn’t an origin story from the very beginning, instead we jump in partway through and follow his growth. This is very different to what Zack did with Batman because, not only did he introduce a Batman radically different to that which most comic book fans know, he also never gives us any clear and concise backstory for his version of Batman. This means that we as an audience are never sure what to expect from this Batman. He feels foreign.
Origin stories are key for grounding a character in a world. If you don’t want to go the traditional route, you still owe your audience some form of explanation for why your character is the way they are. If not, you run the risk of alienating them from the audience.
