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The Super Hero is thought to be someone born or created (through accident or otherwise) with an other-worldly power that allows them to do any number of extraordinary of things. They are typically known to be 'good' or 'evil' but lately in the genre, the characters have been presented successfully with more shades of gray (the Dark Knight Trilogy) that adds more depth to the character never before seen. Although the genre had some difficult years of translating to the silver screen or television (*cough* Batman and Robin), it has now become a steady part in our entertainment.
In the movies genre, Super Heroes have always been a huge part of the culture. From a young age, I remember watching the Tim Burton Batman movies and later falling in love with the super campy Joel Schumacher Batman Forever and on. During the 2000/2010s, many movies were hit-or-miss like the Spiderman series, the X-Men series, Electra/Daredevil, the iterations of Hulk, the Green Hornet/Lantern and many countless others. Sometimes the quality was lacking and some of those movies served as poor adaptations of the original works. With the massive success of Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, higher character focused comic book movies began to emerge. Also around this time, Marvel also created their own studio (and became a part of Disney), so all of their movies would have similar visions and would have more control than selling it off to another company.
Movies like Iron Man, Thor, The Dark Knight and the Avengers really helped make the Super Hero genre even bigger than it had ever been. The Dark Knight was hailed as a critic and commercial success and even won two Oscar's (having 8 nominations) and had many people thinking that it was high time for the genre to be considered for Best Picture. These movies now have a huge presence at places like Comic-Con so I feel like the continued success means that they are here to stay. The Marvel machine will have a slew of movies upcoming (which you can check here) so there will be something for comic book fans and movie fans forthcoming. DC Comics is also throwing their hat into the ring with a new Superman vs Batman movie announced that will probably lead to a Justice League movie, so there's something for fanboys on both sides of the aisle (quality of the movies notwithstanding).
In the realm of television there have been many shows, past and present that always keep the genre relevant. I remember obsessively watching Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman every week. The funny thing is that I got into watching Desperate Housewives from recognizing Teri Hatcher from this show. I would also watch everything on Cartoon Network from Justice League to the Batman and Superman Animated series (if you can't tell, I'm a DC fangirl). It probably contributed to my obsession with the amazing strong square chins that the male characters had (and the resultant disappointment that not every guy looks like them.haha).Other shows like Smallville brought fresh life to the genre where others thought it had gone stale in the 90s.
Other honorable mentions would be the Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys shows. Although not exactly super heroes in the traditional comic book sense, they were both incredibly popular and infused more ideas into popular culture as a whole. The emergence of Agents of Shield has shown the tv/movie-crossover can work and Marvel feels that the they can further break into the industry with a host of Netflix TV shows in the works. Although sometimes, it feels a bit much, when the show or movie is of a good quality, I find myself enjoying and getting sucked into the Super Hero hype.
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