There’s been some discussion online about whether people are growing tired of superhero movies. I haven’t seen enough of them to say I’m tired of the movies, but I am very tired of the whole idea of superheroes.
Many readers and writers I know can come up with a long list of stories and comics that are not about superheroes but would make great movies. I sysmpathize with that position, but that’s not my major objection.
And of course, there are always those who think we need more “serious” movies. I don’t care about that as much. In fact, I’d be delighted to see more highly watchable but frivolous movies.
I mean, I love a good adventure story. And I certainly don’t mind some heroic action.
It’s the super aspect of superheroes that I’m tired of. I like my heroes on the ordinary side.
Now this is not an objection to fantasy or other forms of speculative storytelling. I’m fine with a story world that involves magic or is set in the future with lots of interesting tech.
It’s those characters with outsized powers who apparently deal with crises caused by other characters with outsized powers in a world something like ours that get on my nerves.
That’s a world in which ordinary people like you and me don’t really matter. We’re just there so that the special people can save us.
I cannot watch such movies without thinking about our current world of superwealthy people who think that the rest of us don’t count for much. The tech billionaires are the most obvious, but anyone with a great excess of money shares the attitude that they are the only really important people.
Both superheroes and billionaires feed the myth that they are the only persons who can save us from whatever disasters are out there – and here in real life there are a lot of disasters, even if they aren’t caused by evil superpowered villains.
We have billionaires funding the programs they think are important, and while some of them are funding health programs for the poor or other well-intentioned works, many of them are using their money to influence politicians and even Supreme Court justices.
Their superpower is money, and in the current reality, money is a lot more important than being faster than a speeding bullet. As far as they’re concerned, people with a lot of money should be making the decisions on how all of us live.
The trouble with superhero stories is that they encourage us to look outside of ourselves for help. Take that into real life and you see people expecting solutions from the wealthy tech leaders and others with gobs of money.
What I want to see, in both stories and real life, are ordinary folks working together with each other to run the bad guy out of town and solve the problems we’re facing.
I want stories that acknowledge that we’re all in this together and ones where someone who never thought they could do something amazing does exactly that.
Preferably several people doing something they always thought was beyond them, working with others.
Now I was raised on the story of the lone hero – not exactly a superhero, but someone who was smarter and braver than everyone else. They were generally an outsider and – at least in the old westerns – they didn’t stick around after solving the town’s problems.
I’m tired of those stories, too. I want different stories, ones with more than one hero, ones that recognize that our social selves, our ability to work together and build community, are what make human beings, well, human.
You might say our ability to come together to make something bigger than ourselves is our superpower.