Man of Steel, Superhero Cinema, The Fun Police, and the War on Hope

"Your girl sent you to Glamour Shots too?"

I liked The Dark Knight, and I'm pretty sure that's only because I loved Heath Ledger's Joker.

The Joker was a livewire who brought more life  to The Dark Knight with his batshit rumblings than any other character or plot development. He was the clown prince made "real"in a way that never betrayed the characters roots as a four-color creation. He made The Dark Knight far more entertaining than any other entry in the trilogy.

In fact, The Dark Knight is the only entry in the Dark Knight trilogy that I own. Not that the other entries aren't thoughtful, exquisitely crafted films; it's just that they're a tad...boring. They're so adult, so cerebral, so overpopulated with pontification, so crippled by an attachment to "reality" that it makes the more fantastic elements seem silly and the narrative shortcuts glaringly obvious. Worst of all, they elevate plot so high over character that the driving force behind these narratives--the iconic characters and their specific characterizations--get lost in the shuffle.

Case in point: Man of Steel.

Man of Steel is, despite some crucial chaos in the climax, a perfect example of a similar type of 

experience because it spends about fifty percent of its runtime on long shots and speechifying from Supermans multiple fathers designed to convince the Superman and the audience that he is destined to be Space Jesus. the whole destiny angle robs Supes of a lot of agency and pushes the "Supes-as-an-outsider" angle to the forefront. While this would likely be a prominent conflict to young Kal-el, it is not the most uplifting or aspirational or entertaining conflict for Superman to deal with. It is so internal and hard to visualize that it makes Superman appear more mopey than he is.

Then, as if to reward viewers for sitting through a dour hour, director Zack Snyder and company send Supes out to play Dragonball Z with a bunch of bad guys on the streets of Smallville and Metropolis. Hundreds, thousands, probably millions of innocent lives are lost, and Superman only seems to care about six people: a random family of four, Ma Kent, and of course, Lois Lane. Poke around the net and you'll see that this is a major source of consternation to fans, critics and creators, especially the folks at Badass Digest and Superman Birthright writer and modern comic writing legend Mark Waid. 

"Yes, that's a building coming at you. No, this isn't Transformers."

I can't blame them for being concerned. I'm no purist, but I know that Superman always goes out of his way to save lives and -- SPOILER ALERT -- he does his best to avoid killing.

Most importantly, he smiles. He's not as funny and quick as Spidey or as snarky as Shellhead or as exasperated as the Thing--no, the Marvel heroes don't take themselves that seriously that's just the sourpusses at DC, Flash excluded.

"Dude, you can fly. Lighten up."

But, in Zack Snyder, David Goyer, and Christopher Nolan's Man of Steel, Supes comes off as glum, reckless, and slightly vengeful mostly for the sake of the narrative they want to tell. And that is their right, but I wonder if maybe movies like the Avengers, which isn't that much better in mitigating casualties, can't open film makers eyes to a different way to approach the comic book narrative. One in which character comes first and reality is left behind.

Superhero movies are based on source material that is so inherently fantastic that it requires a suspension of disbelief on par with the suspension of disbelief applied to pro wrestling. Short of abandoning all pretense of super heroics and daring-do, there's no way filmmakers can make superhero flicks that aren't fantastic to the point of silliness, so they may as well embrace the amazing, the spectacular, and the uncanny. 

There's little to no chance of grounding something like this in reality, so why try?

Seriously, despite Nolan's best interests with the Dark Knight series, the fact that Bruce Wayne dressed up like a bat rather than dressing like the Punisher shows that there was no way to avoid a very silly conceit and still have the series be considered a Batman adaptation. Ditto for the story of alien space Jesus who can hurl mountains or the man in roboarmor or the green super-Jekyll or the kid in the spider outfit.

I'll never forget how the first Arkham video game, despite its occasionally brutality and grotesque "grim and gritty"-ness, was such a welcome counterpoint to the Nolanverse. While Nolan's approach to the Batman legend is as welcome as any interpretation, Rocksteady's Arkham games did such an excellent job of melding the fantastic and the "real" that I couldn't help but prefer them over the Dark Knight films, mostly because the developers at Rocksteady were limited only by their imaginations, the limits of the technology, and the DC Comics vanguard. 

Rocksteady acknowledged the fantastical properties of Batman's world and embraced it. They recognized the importance of the characterization of the cast, granted Batman will always be a stick in the mud, but that's his way, and emphasized those outsized qualities when creating solidly entertaining  characters. Rocksteady's vision may not be perfect--a little less misogyny would be nice--but it is a great example to creators of all stripes, particularly filmmakers on the next swath of superhero flicks.

Grounding this in reality is only slightly easier, but not by much.

To the filmmakers who are working on or will work on superhero flicks, I encourage them to embrace the silliness. Embrace the fun. And let the heroes have some fun to. Let them smile, like Christopher Reeve did. Let them snark like Tony or sling jokes as fast as webs like Spidey. Let them banter like the Avengers. Let them be more than soapboxes with dish towels around their necks.  Let their words flow forth like humans not philosophy treatises. Let their burdens be based on the struggle to do the right thing when it seems like their bodies or minds or spirits wont let them. Let them be human, like us, so their moments of sacrifice mean so much more to us.

Superheroes are great as aspirational figures, but if they lose the fun and the humanity then they will lose the audience. These are fantastic myths, plain and simple. They are metaphors for reality. They are not reality. They are stories that allow the storytellers to show humanity how great it can be, even if it uses crazy tropes like mad scientists, giant robots, aliens, and super soldiers to do it.

On that note, there's something else that gets lost in the translation from the four color realm to the silver screen: these are tales of heroism. They should be treated as such. 

I realize spectacle and bombast are par for the course in event movies these days, but at some point all parties involved, from the studios to the filmmakers to the audience have to really take a look at what these flicks are saying. We have to examine how close they hew to the aspirational and, yes, instructive nature of superhero fiction. These stories will last, and hopefully not always as corporate properties ( one can dream), and will exist as narratives that will show future generations how to rise above their limits and be better people. 

That said, can we cool it on the massive loss of life in these movies, or at least deal with it thoughtfully and responsibly. Yes, it may drag the fun down and shift the tone dramatically for more than a few moments, but having heroes stop punching and start protecting, or having them mourn the loss of people they will never know, will show that these heroes are compassionate, a key quality of a hero, and better than their enemies.

Now, this may be a hard road to travel for filmmakers as the very nature of filmmaking requires spectacle, bombast, and resolution, especially the modern blockbuster. But, the destruction in these flicks has to be tempered with the idea that superheroes are metaphors for virtues like selflessness and sacrifice. Those virtues are hard to see when superheroes are causing so much collateral damage that the body counts are as high as lottery pots.

"See, nothing wrong with a smile, as long as you're cool about it"

These heroes and their stories, however they are told, are some of the few weapons we have against cynicism and selfishness. They are some of our last weapons in the war against hope that the world keeps losing day by day. Don't let them fade away.