In Defense of Superheroes (And Their Movies)

In Defense of Superheroes (And Their Movies) February 24, 2015

capt_aHollywood is ashamed of its superheroes.

I got that vibe watching Sunday night’s Oscars telecast, anyway. Oh, sure, Captain America and Star Lord handed out a couple of Oscars, but they sure weren’t about to receive any. Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy were both shut out in the technical categories. What won the night’s biggest prize? Why, Birdman. In it, Michael Keaton’s Riggan pushes back on his legacy as a famous movie-bound superhero to return to the real business of acting—to create a piece of art that means something.

We heard a lot about how Oscar rewards meaningful films—movies that touched us and inspired us and made us think. Unlike, we were told, superhero movies. A few genre barbs were scattered throughout the night, but none quite so in-your-face as Jack Black’s opening number soliloquy.

All we get are superheroes.

Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Jediman, Sequelman, Prequelman—

Formulaic scripts!

And after Fifty Shades of Grey, they’ll all have leather whips!

Birdman Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu (a newly minted Oscar winner for Best Director, by the way), hates superhero movies. Really.

“The problem is that sometimes they purport to be profound, based on some Greek mythological kind of thing,” he told Deadline last October. “And they are honestly very right wing. I always see them as killing people because they do not believe in what you believe, or they are not being who you want them to be. I hate that, and don’t respond to those characters. They have been poison, this cultural genocide, because the audience is so overexposed to plot and explosions and s— that doesn’t mean nothing about the experience of being human.”

gNow, I have nothing against Birdman. It was a compelling bit of cinema, as intriguing a movie as I saw in 2014. I’m not going to argue that Guardians of the Galaxy was the think-piece that Iñárritu’s surreal opus was.

But I do want to push back on the notion that superhero movies are just, at best, derivative fluff or, at worst, Iñárritu’s “cultural genocide.” These movies can and do matter. They can be inspirational and thought provoking and deeply moving—all what can and should be—and even more, they actually give audiences permission to enjoy themselves. Crazy, huh?

I’ve spent a lot of time watching, reflecting and writing about superhero movies over the last few years. And while Iñárritu may not respond to the characters found therein, I do. I think millions of people do, too. And when Iñárritu alleges that superheroes just kill people who disagree with them, well, that just suggests to me that he’s not watched a great many superhero movies.

My favorite superhero, Batman, doesn’t kill at all. It’s part of his very core—to save the lives of even those who’ve been actively trying to kill him for, oh, several decades now. You might question Batman’s logic, but his desire to protect and preserve human life is beyond reproach.

Sure, Captain America spangles himself in stars and stripes. And yeah, he’s been known to dispatch an enemy of the state a time or two. And yet, when he faces off against his one-time best friend turned prime baddie in The Winter Soldier, he lays down his shield and, essentially, his life in a last-ditch attempt to save his old pal. (And, it should be said, he actively fights agents within his own government to follow what he believes to be the right and true course of action.)

In Guardians of the Galaxy, A band of people who could not disagree with each other more band together to save a planet full of innocents against a really terrible bad ‘un. They, too, risk their lives to save others, and in so doing bring grand meaning to the otherwise nonsensical phrase, “We are Groot.”

We hear how movies are supposed to touch us and inspire us. The best of superhero movies do both, and do so over and over again. They can even be profound—yes, in part because they’re our culture’s version of myth and folk tale, as Iñárritu alludes to, but also because these superheroes are surprisingly human. We can relate to the lost and broken heroes we see in Guardians of the Galaxy—moreso, frankly, than most of us can to Riggan and his lurking Birdman alter-ego. We can aspire to be like Captain America—trying to find the right way forward, even when “right” isn’t so easy to see.

These movies don’t make gazillions of dollars solely because of their special effects. They are successful because we can see ourselves in these stories—as unrealistic as they may be.

Captain-America-The-Winter-Soldier2In East of Eden, John Steinbeck writes, “No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.” Superhero stories—as unrealistic and as effects-laden as they might be—carry with them a sort of truth, I believe, a resonance that transcends the comic-book trappings. We see ourselves in them, or perhaps a sense of self we wish we could be. That doesn’t sound like cultural genocide to me. I’d argue it’s very much the opposite.

Hollywood—or some neighborhoods therein—is ashamed of its superheroes. But our cinematic do-gooders are rarely appreciated by all. They can be shunned and scorned, mocked and ridiculed. But you know what? They’re always around to save the day anyway. They’ve saved Metropolis and Gotham, New York City and, let’s face it, Hollywood too. That’s what heroes do—whether they’re thanked for the trouble or not.

It’s not the “super” part of the word superhero that makes them who and what they are—their outsized abilities or bottomless bank accounts or accompanying CGI. It’s the “hero.” And personally, I think we can use all the heroes we can get.


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