I think I’m coming to a realization about super hero movies, at least in their usual format. I think maybe, they fundamentally don’t work. The problem is, I suspect, that the superiority inherent in the super hero’s super powers tips the power balance in favour of the hero, to such an extent that any conflict drawn out to movie length feels contrived. Superman should, basically, be able to waltz in and just fix whatever shadyness is afoot.
It’d work perfectly in a TV show: setup, execution, resolution. Bam, twenty minutes gone, time to hit the crapper. But in order to fill feature length (and these days they won’t stop at that — Man of Steel clocks in at 142 depressing minutes), they somehow have to level the playing field, so the writers will resort either to super powered bad guys (like Man of Steel) or they’ll inhibit the hero’s super powers (like yesterdays disabled Iron Man suit — to some extent also done in Man of Steel).
And the problem with those tricks is that they mean the super hero is no longer super powered in the context of the conflict of the hour(s). Much of Man of Steel is like watching a judo match. Man of Iron from day past was like watching those films where someone were chasing Matt Damon. Anyway, my point: super hero movies don’t work. I think.
Now of course it should be perfectly possible to make a good super hero movie, you’ll say, with proper character development, inner conflicts, interesting dilemmas and dialogue and yada yada yada, but that’d mean they’d have to make a properly, actually good movie that just happened to be about super heroes, and that… well, I’d like that.
| Title: | Man of Steel |
| Director: | Zack Snyder |
| Re-cast of the year: | Marlon Brando / Fightin’ round the world |
| Score: | 1/6 |
| Drink of the day: | Milk, precious milk. |
