Superhero To The Rescue!!

“So, which superhero power would you want?”

Remember that question?  Everyone’s been asked it at some point, and sure, while the sensible reaction is to roll your eyes and get on with life, it’s one of the great alluring fantasies that has always been with us.  Would you like to control the weather through thought alone; turn invisible at will; lift heavy objects with the flick of an eyelid; set things on fire with a sneeze; change into someone else.  Well hell yeah, of course you bloody would.  Let’s not beat about the bush, everyone has always, at some point in their life, even if it was only on one day when you were 14 years old and dreaming of escaping from a school assembly designed to turn all minds into mulch, wanted to have superpowers.  For better or worse.

It’s such an alluring idea, such a brilliant attraction, to think that through simply wishing something to move/combust/change, you could achieve it.  And more than that, it’s such an allure to imagine yourself, special, powerful, unique.  In many ways the fact that superheroes are classically depicted as carrying a great secret and hiding their identities from the world, just makes it that little bit more attractive.  What a buzz it would be, to walk down any ordinary street in any ordinary city and think, you have no idea what I could do…  Let’s face it, it’s as natural a human instinct as breath – the desire to feel special.

But then there’s the question which writers have struggled with for decades.  If you have your superpower, then what the hell do you do with it?  Do you take an easy path, use your abilities for personal advancement and gain?  Or do you turn round and declare, ‘I, Green-Vest-Bug-Man-Of-Slough shall use my epic abilities to fight crime and do good!’  In the old days the question was fairly black and white.  Nice, hearty people would find they had superpowers, wonder what to do with them, suffer a close family loss which would galvanise them into action for the good of others, whom they would defend with modesty, humility and acrobatic prowess, and then spend the rest of their lives struggling with the loneliness of their secret lives and the burden of responsibility bestowed by their superior abilities.  It was a lovely idea – more so because within it was this implicit idea that power does indeed beget responsibility, and abilities beget the need to use them for the benefit of mankind, as noble a social idea as could ever be proposed.  Meanwhile, evil twisted people, who were probably bullied as kids, would discover they too had superpowers and would set out ruthlessly conniving their way to the top of the tower, from which they would sow mayhem and carnage, just for the love of mayhem and carnage.  Or sometimes they’d sow the carnage because it was the only way to advance their deadly superhero battles with their righteous nemesis, while simultaneously demonstrating that at the end of the day, your average villain only wants a bit of attention, and to be loved…

Thankfully, the world is more complicated than this, and so in recent years, the question of ‘superhero’ and ‘supervillain’ has fallen rather by the wayside and instead we merely have ‘ordinary Joe who can throw lightning’ versus ‘misguided Bob who can fry brains’.  Certainly, a lot of cliches still abound – objects which must be found, weapons for/against the evil/good powers of an adversary (how much kryptonite, by the by, is just casually scattered around in Superman’s path?!  Answer: lots) – and of course love interests to be embraced, confused and kidnapped on a fairly regular basis. Arguably some of the best superhero movies of recent years have been the ones which haven’t just embraced these cliches, they’ve invited them out to a salsa class after work and three rounds of heavily spiked cocktails.  Witness the Incredibles, which is one of my all-time favourite movies.  Or perhaps Megamind, where you don’t merely cheer for the blue-headed evil genius who runs the show, you also cheer for his pet fish.  Happily, superpowers no longer seem to be about Good versus Evil, but instead seem to be more about people versus people, complicated people with difficult motives struggling not to make too many disastrous mistakes with the resources available to them.  And that, in its own over-powered spectacular way, is just a lot like life…