Recently my wife and daughter have been gorging themselves on Superhero movies. Marvel or DC, it really doesn’t seem to matter. We own most of these films, but even if we didn’t they are readily available via cable tv.
Now, I don’t actually sit down and watch these movies myself (usually), but it is impossible to not catch snippets as I go about whatever I am doing at the time, and it has become increasingly obvious to me that I just don’t buy into the tropes used in this genre.
The world is not a black and white place. A person isn’t either good or evil, it’s never that simple in the real world. And yet, without this dichotomy the whole world of Superheroes and Supervillains collapses…with the exception of Deadpool, perhaps.
Most of these characters seem to have a gigantic stick shoved up their ass (that’s right Superman and Captain America, I’m talking about you), or are completely incapable of seeing the world as it really is. “With great power comes great responsibility” is a fantastic mantra on the surface, but is fundamentally flawed in its execution. People just don’t work that way.
Let’s pretend that these powers were real, and that you had one: You are driving to work one day and another driver rudely cuts you off and flips the bird toward you after you honk your horn. Do you quietly sit back and let the miscreant get way with such behavior? Of course you don’t. You would EMP his car, frying all the electronics and killing the engine. Or, you would use your telekinesis to toss his car off the road and into a vacant lot. Or, you would jump out of your vehicle and proceed to pummel his car into scrap-metal. Or,…well you get the idea. Continue reading “The problem with Superheroes…”
