Beef with Superheroes

By Jonathan Lam on 07/22/17

Tagged: brain-dump

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With the general rise in the popularity of Marvel and DC superhero movie alike, I've become more skeptical of them (both the movies and the abilities of the heroes). Here's some of my thoughts against them:

• How many of their stories are recycled? Screen Junkies' Honest Trailer on Dr. Strange illustrates a prime example of plot recycling within the MCU: guess who else is a narcissistic billionaire who gets injured and becomes a superhero in the process of spiritual and physical healing? (Hint hint: He wears a suit of IRON!) And within the DCU, Batman is not much unalike.
• How many times do the good guys have to be good to be the good guys? I actually think of one Tinker Bell movie when I ask myself this question— in the movie, she manages to "ruin Spring" and then becomes a fairyland hero when when manages to "fix" it all again in a short amount of time. I know good and evil are relative and interdependent terms, but (IMO) heroes are often given too much credit. I do appreciate moments when reality is checked to some degree, such as in Avengers: Civil War, when governments attempt to curb the superheros' powers because of their ability to save and kill thousands of innocents alike, or in The LEGO Batman Movie when Batman is thrown into the phantom zone and he is told (by a magical flying brick) that he is "not a traditional bad guy, but not a good guy either." Superheroes do need to be put in check. It's too easy for their good acts to cover up their flaws.
• Eeewwwwww! Monsters (and sometimes heroes) these days have gotten uglier and uglier. It's not a problem when there's a story behind the ugly (Deadpool, for example), but Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy series goes too far. Different skin colors, strange humanoid figures, more arms and tentacles and legs and other assorted body parts used to distinguish aliens from the protagonists is something that came from the first Star Wars trilogy and should have stayed in the original Star Wars trilogy (as well as their turquoise Arial title-text). It's as if science fiction is stuck in the late-20th century. It's all too old for me.
• Anticlimatism. Every movie must have some sort of disaster, some conflict that usually ends in Armageddon. And every next hero is ever more powerful to counter the ever more powerful challenges that face them. Somehow, Iron Man saving the world from an alien invasion over NYC, among other assailed parts of the world, is significantly less significant than Dr. Strange saving NYC, among other assailed parts of the world, from an alien invasion. Somehow the right heroes arrive at just the right time to fight off worse evils at heavier consequences and losses. And somehow, as evidenced by Marvel's Avengers series, all of these heroes are evenly matched and almost invincible against each other. I don't get it. I want some reality, physics, something reminiscent of this world! (Hint hint: I smell cheap PROFIT!)

From my perspective as a non-comic-fanatic-but-casual-superhero-movie-watcher, I believe that superhero movies are stretching it. Sorry to those superhero fans and sorry if my knowledge is limited to mostly a few recent Marvel superhero movies, but I'm out. There's too much to follow and too little context given.