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Friday 21 June 2013

What happened to heroes?


Krypton blows up. If you didn't already know that, you won't care anyway. And this isn't going to be a review of Man of Steel, because Mark Waid has already nailed that - everything that I would say, only phrased better and with more than adequate spoiler warnings.

Still here? Okay, so I share Mark's reaction to the final showdown between Supes and Zod. I wouldn't actually jump up and shout my opinion to a crowded cinema, as I figure they paid £15 to watch the movie, not listen to me. But hey, it's the USA. They do things differently there. (Here in the UK we do our shouting on the inside.)

That final snap (listen, I did say spoilers ahead) is just the last in a whole chain of narrative dominos that start toppling with relentless inevitability from the point that Zod and his rebels turn up in their big spiky ship. Here's how I picture the writers' meeting:

"Zod's got like a dozen guys with him. How's Superman going to beat all of them? Kryptonite?"

"Nah, we're keeping kryptonite for the sequel with Luthor."

"Okay, so how about this? Jor-Ex-Machina figures out a way to suck 'em all back into the Phantom Zone."

"We're calling it a black hole, but OK so far."

"But we still need a big showdown with Zod. So he's gone off to get something, and he isn't on the ship when it gets black holed. All his soldiers have gone. His dream in ruins. He's alone, nothing to lose. Big punch-up."

"How's that going to end? Even if Superman beats him - and this is Farm Boy vs G.I. Joe, remember - what prison can hold him?"

"He's gotta die..?"

"Uh-huh. Gotta die."

[Both think furiously.]

"Got it. In the fight, Superman gets the upper hand. Arm round Zod's neck. But Zod, he's berserk now. 'I'm going to kill all these bitty humans!' So he's lasering his heat ray towards a few little people. 'Don't you do it!' says Kal. 'I will!' snarls Zod. So, tearfully, Superman snaps his neck."

Now, why am I (and Mark Waid) so profoundly pissed off by this outcome? First of all, it's Superman. He's not just a superhero, he's the superhero. Here's what the film-makers want us to think: boy, what an impossible situation. He has to take one life to save a half dozen others. At least they're innocents and Zod is a murdering arsehole, so the moral arithmetic works out fine.

No it doesn't. Captain Kirk was several times faced with that kind of a choice: sacrifice one to save many. And Spock may raise an eyebrow, but Kirk would say no, that's unacceptable - taking one life or taking many, I reject those choices. And he would find another way. Why? Because that's what heroes do.

For all that, it's not the disastrously misjudged morality of this Superman that bothers me most. It's that the writers just went with the laziest solution because coming up with a genuinely heroic conclusion would have called for much more ingenuity. Well, I shouldn't be casting stones at other writers, and Lord knows we've all been face to face with a deadline only to find the Muse hasn't got our back. Maybe they'd got tired by that point in the proceedings - two and a half hours of CGI devastation in 3D can do that. But if you're going to tell a story about a hero - about what it really means to be a hero - either know your play or pass the ball.

In Blade Runner, who saw it coming when Roy Batty lifts Deckard up onto the roof? That's a moment of heroic redemption, surprising but inevitable as all endings should be. Or, for a less familiar tale, watch André De Toth's 1959 western Day of the Outlaw. Robert Ryan is one of those guys out of time - a relic of a hero, now a danger to the settled community he made possible. Then a bunch of outlaws show up and hold the townsfolk hostage, and it's up to him to save the day. Today that part would be played by Bruce Willis with a quirky grin and two meaty fists, and he'd be quickly dispatching those baddies with a series of lethal Home Alone type manoeuvres, but in De Toth's movie it's not so easy. Ryan has no gun, he's one man with a mere mortal's strength. So, in the absence of any easier choices, he has to dig deep and be a hero. The ending of the story? I won't spoil it, but it's surprising and inevitable.

That's a lot harder work for the writer. Maybe some writers welcome the glut of comic book movies because they think it's all about biffing bad guys through skyscrapers. But I'm a comics fan from way back, avidly hanging on the escapades of Spider-Man and the X-Men while my schoolfriends were reading The Beano, and even as a little kid I always knew that being a superhero isn't about the cool powers. It isn't about ethical sums. It's a quality from within that shows the rest of us how to live. Without that, even the Man of Steel is just a muscle-bound jerk in a silly suit.

44 comments:

  1. You are so right. I just got back from Man of Steel, and I'm still depressed. They managed to *depress* me with a Superman movie for God's sake. A character whose whole reason is to inspire and ennoble.

    It's *ok*, Hollywood, for some heroes not to be tortured killers. Especially when that hero wears red thigh-boots and has laser-eyes. It's fine for that guy not to feature in a crushing, joyless story about the inevitability of moral compromise.

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    1. I'm sorry. I started typing and there was rather more in there than I realised...

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    2. That's fine, Chris. We like to get a good discussion going, the longer the better.

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  2. I think there is a niche for the pragmatic protagonist (not hero) who just kills the bad guy wither out of laziness or just because they don't want to deal with them in the future - dark brooding types in black leather who don't mind killing when they need to. for example, Xena, Jack Bauer and Giles from Buffy the vampire Slayer who took it upon himself to kill an innocent to stop an evil god. And also, Zach Snyder did direct 300 - a film where the 'heroes' live for killing.

    I'm thinking that maybe they wanted this kind of theme for its popularity, but their big mistake was imposing it upon an icon like Superman. We all know that he loves humanity so much that he would do anything to protect them. If they wanted a hero who kills and cares little for the safety of humans, they should have created an original character.

    Sometimes making something darker and edgier works (such as with Star Trek DS9) but there are a few things that shouldn't be done like that. I think Zach Snyder found one of them.

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    1. Absolutely, Stuart. I have no problem with Batman snapping the Joker's neck (in Dark Knight Returns, at any rate) but Superman is the nearest thing the DC mythology has to godhead. He needs to be worthy of that.

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    2. Snapping the neck of the villain to save dozens of innocents is something Wolverine might do*. But Wolverine has regeneration as a power. He has to suffer the injury before handing it out. And all he has to solve problems with are claws. And Wolverine is not the moral heart of the X-men.

      Superman should be saving people. Even his enemies. Especially his enemies. Even if save in this case means locking them up in prisons from which they will inevitably escape when the character is needed for the next story.

      * Actually he would stab the villain with his claws, but, follow me for a moment

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    3. Wolverine I see as being like the Punisher. An interesting character, but as you say he's not the moral heart of the X-Men. (That used to be Cyclops. Nowadays, God knows...)

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  3. I hadn't realized that 'Man of Steel' was so bad. I actually don't like Superman as a hero. He's too powerful, and I never understand why he doesn't just nuke every opponent he comes up against. Plausible, engaging Superman stories are non-existent.

    As the ultimate American Superhero, Superman has to reflect the pevailing morality of the US, and that makes this film all the more worrying. A Superman who can find no alternative to killing is a Superman who condones killing. And if Superman condones killing, then a bit of torture or "extraordinary rendition" justified by the same dubious morality is OK. I'd be tempted to use the word zeitgeist if Iknew what it meant.

    So, Superman is the Republican of superheroes. Mid-west farmboy who thinks the end justifies the means, How different to Wheedon's Captain America, a city boy, an ex-weakling who knows how difficult it is to stand up against the bully. The Democrat Cap vs. the Republican Superman, which is more engaging? Give me Cap, every time!

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    1. My own sentiments exactly. I loved the Cap of the movies - and I am not a big fan of Captain America in the comic books, but in the movie he's everything a superhero should be.

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    2. Beautifully put. The movie Cap is pretty close to how he's depicted in the comics in recent years. To my absolute surprise he's become a favourite character of mine - specifically because he embodies some of the ideals that the Man of Steel Superman doesn't.

      I have to disagree with this though: "Plausible, engaging Superman stories are non-existent."

      That's only true if the story is asking "can Superman beat up this bad guy?" To which the answer is always "well, yes."

      But that's far from the only subject for fiction. The best Superman stories don't ask if he *can* beat a villain, they ask *why he isn't the villain*. Because if he wanted to be, who could stop him?

      And when your power is vast, so is your responsibility. How do you choose who to save? Your perspective is different. How do you keep caring for people when you're apart from them? That's another thing Man of Steel ignores. Clark Kent has no life, no friends, nothing beyond Martha to bond him to the world. Ha stranger here. What's it like, being a refugee? There are all sorts of relevant, fascinating stories to tell with him.

      Few of them involve punching. More than tangentially, anyway. Man of Steel loves punching, though. Much more than it does saving people.

      I'd recommend Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale's Kryptonite as a lovely, elegant Superman story.

      Or, for a story that examines Superman gone bad, Mark Waid's own Irredeemable is amazing. He had the grace to invent a new character to explore those issues, though.

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    3. I am a big fan of Irredeemable. Of Superman, not so much. There have been plenty of interesting Superman stories, as you say, Chris, but it's hard to relate to him as a character. I like him well enough (well, before his current, libertarian, ethically flexible incarnation) but likeable ain't everything.

      The notable exception is Deborah Joy Levine's version in The New Adventures. But that show was really about Lois and Clark, and the way that being almost infintely powerful could really mess up your hopes of a lasting relationship. And other thing: Dean Cain's Kal-El would never have killed anyone.

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  4. Perhaps the trauma of killing Zod will turn Clark into the ultimate pacifist we all expect Superman to be. If he takes a vow of non-killing in between films then Lex Luthor can be a credible threat in the next film.

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    1. Maybe that's what Goyer & Nolan intended. If so, my respect for them has nudged a little lower. First because this is the morality Clark should have learned growing up. Is the only lesson he took from Jonathan Kent to be a secretive loner? And second because if the only way they can think to make Luthor a credible threat is that Superman is holding back, that's even lazier than the storytelling in Man of Steel.

      Either way, they won't have me along for the ride.

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  5. No, it will be Luthor as Dick Fuld of Lehman Bros. Luthor will be an oversmart, over ambitious Wall Street type whose financial machinations put the livelihoods of American farmers at risk. Kryptonite will merely be a risk management policy.

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  6. I read Mark Waid's piece yesterday. It was very affecting, especially from someone who we know cares for the character so much. I'm reminded of two quotes. Firstly, the head of the N.R.A last year, saying, in response to the Shootings in Connecticut, "The only - THE ONLY - solution to a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun."


    One of my favourite songwriters, Todd Snider, says (perhaps more ironically): "The screenwriter stood up and he told us that all the loose ends had been covered, he said 'Justice is irrelevant, violent problems call for violent solutions, 'cause in America... we like our bad guys dead'".

    It kinda seems that many Americans don't care for a difference between reality and their movies.

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  7. There should be a film in which an “ends justify the means” Superman fights against a “money justifies the means” Lobo, leaving the audience to decide which of them is actually worse. Even Darkseid has principles; but there must be something to separate the self-righteous from the heroic.

    One of the tragic and compelling themes in ancient Greek myth is how heroes who do not behave in the way that they should will eventually come to grief. Thus Jason, Oedipus, Theseus, Orpheus, and so on discover that for all their muscles and unearthly talents, if they step once from the heroic path then they will, sooner or later, regret it. “Morality” in the modern sense may not be part of it, as virtue in the hero’s conduct, more often than not, is judged in terms of whether he acts in defiance of Fate and the Gods; but still, the point is that, in tragedy at least, the hero is defined by the nature of his actions, not by how hard he punches.

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    1. It would have been so easy to fix, too. Zod, seeing he can't win (though why can't he..?), threatens a bunch of bystanders in order to force Kal-El to embrace his own Randian moral view. It's a final challenge, the ultimate test: "See, you're going to have to kill me." And then, when Superman rejected that whole toxic ethical system, we'd have had a real high point conclusion.

      How would he convince Zod to stop fighting? Well, the guy was honourable. I can think of a half dozen ways. But the film-makers were worried that today's audiences would get angry if they didn't see blood spilled. And the truly horrifying thing is that they're probably right. That's the victory Bin Laden was striving for right there.

      My point in the post was really about lazy writing more than noxious morality, but aesthetics and ethics are not after all so very far apart.

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    2. A commenter on Mark Waid's article proposed this as a different ending:

      'But say he’s… I dunno, talking to Lois afterward... And say he’s upset over what he did. All this power, he’d say, all that strength, and he couldn’t save so many, all he did was take a life. And Lois is trying to reassure him, tell him he had no choice, that there was no other way. And he turns to her and, very seriously, says, “There’s always another way.”'

      How would that have worked for you? Could it have redeemed the movie (even a little?).

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    3. 'Fraid not, Tom. It would just make him a whiner as well as a failed hero.

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    4. "It's a final challenge, the ultimate test: "See, you're going to have to kill me." And then, when Superman rejected that whole toxic ethical system, we'd have had a real high point conclusion."

      The problem is we saw that in The Dark Knight and they don't want to just retread the same ending again. Of course they didn't really have Batman not killing, they just hid it.

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    5. I don't believe they had Man of Steel end the way it did to avoid too close a parallel to The Dark Knight. They just didn't think about it much and they were lazy. They let plot instead of character dictate what happened - and, worse, they probably didn't see anything wrong with it. Hollywood's moral compass seems to have fallen in line with the expediency of post-9/11 foreign policy. Even Fringe, a show I love, had the heroes using biological and chemical warfare in the final season, and none of them showed any qualms at doing so. O tempora!

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  8. They don't make 'em like this anymore.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN9jJuwlbfs

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    1. I was going to say, "Cap without his shield?" but that seems to be the least worst thing about it.

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    2. It's certainly got very little to do with Steve Rogers. Interesting how the depiction of heroes reflects society, and changes over time - all the way back into folktales and myth.

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    3. Yes indeed, and that's why I find the new Snyder interpretation of Superman so depressing. Is this really the hero for our times? He's the kind of guy who'd waterboard a terrorist with the excuse that "it was to save lives". It's just ghastly.

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    4. What's the difference between a superhero and a vigilante? Superior morality. Our True superheroes have to be ethically as well as physically better than us. If they aren't then we into the realm of Rorschach and the Comedian. Watchmen were portrayed deliberately as vigilantes and their historical fall came about because the people wanted something more. Batman is a vigilante because he's driven by revenge. Tony Stark is a superhero because he realizes that he can't ignore his responsibilities. The story has to be about preserving one's morality when it's easier not to, not forgetting it when it's convenient

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  9. I can't say that I really have a problem with Superman killing Zod in the way he did - Zod *had* just killed many thousands of innocent people, and threatened to wipe out all life on Earth, after all, so he certainly got what he deserved - but I had a problem with the way Superman is held up to be such a hero by everyone, despite the fact that it was his fault Zod & Co were there in the first place. Didn't anyone else have a problem with that? Yeah, sure, Mr Kent, it's great you killed the bad guys and saved the day, but if you'd been a bit more careful in the first place, they'd never have shown up anyway. And did your killing the bad guys and saving the day bring back all those thousands of dead innocents who died because of your carelessness?

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    1. The concept is especially pertinant when we consider the horrific impact that a "Super-mistake" has within the recent Injustice: Gods Among Us series.

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    2. I feel sick thinking about "Gods Among Us". They needed a reason for DC heroes to be fighting each other so they did... that. I'm more of a Clark Kent fan than a Superman fan, so this affected me more than "Man of Steel".

      I want to say DC has lost its way, but it just seems so redundant right now.

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  10. I can share your pain... and I'm not even fan of comic book superheroes. Still, a character drifting from how his own concept is a sorry sight.
    (Conan fans have had this issue almost as long as the character has existed).

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    1. Actually, Asen, the comics I read these days don't often feature superheroes, and I was never a big fan of Superman, but the lazy storytelling and dubious ethics get my goat anyhow.

      Conan was a great character as REH described him. Few later authors get him right - though Roy Thomas did a pretty good job most of the time, don't you think?

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  11. Hi,

    is Osprey Interactive Fiction cancelled? It does not appear there anymore?

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    1. Certainly the series that we were supposed to co-publish with Osprey isn't going to happen. We ended up with a contractual perverse incentive that meant that, by setting up POD editions to accompany the planned ebooks, we'd have tied up our rights forever.

      We do have plans to bring those books out in some form, though. There will be POD paperback editions of all six before the end of the year (more news in a month or so) and we're looking into doing digital versions at some point too.

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  12. Yowzers! That's very disappointing - I was looking forward to those books!

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    1. Did you want a print version, though, Jon, or an ebook? The former, I hope, as we'll get the paperbacks out this summer. And for fans of print gamebooks there'll be more good news in the autumn. The digital versions may take a while longer, but I'm sure they'll happen eventually too.

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  13. I've always thought that Superman was an elegant tool for discussing the role of the world's only super-power. When you have the strength and influence to rule the world, but lack the moral authority or consent of the people required to do so, what is your role? How can you take responsibility for the good of all humankind, while still respecting the freedom of every individual, and without falling into the trap of becoming a tyrant?
    I suppose I'm heartbroken by Man of Steel because it presents us with a Kal-El who has succumbed to despair. He believes he cannot find a heroic solution, so he resorts to actions he knows to be wrong. I enjoy stories about Ultraman, or elseworlds visions of a darker Kal-El, in part because I am reassured that this is not OUR world - he'd never do those things in our reality. If Man of Steel is showing us the direction the modern USA is taking, I'm going to start building a shelter under my back garden!

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    1. I share your concerns, John. I don't want to start moaning, "Oh the times, oh the morals!" (especially as Cicero had rather stronger grounds for dismay when he said it) but nowadays we seem to be moving into an era of paranoia, self-interest, intolerance and ethical primitivism. Jonathan Kent's message to his son seems to be, "Keep your powers secret, Clark. Only save people if you can get away with it." Why? What possible risk did he face, all those years of wasting his life in self-pitying hobo mode? That does seem to reflect the psyche of many Americans today - isolationist, scared, privileged - and yet no country on Earth has as much potential as the USA to stand for what is best in humankind. We deserve a better Man of Steel than this.

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  14. Superman can be used as a metaphor for a lot of things, but for me he is Clark Kent, a small town boy, now a reporter in a big city... who has the power to prevent tragedy. To me he is an everyman (as opposed to Batman, who is of the elite), who can stop all the things we see when we turn on the news every night.

    That's what really gets me about this movie. I know this from the comics I had as a kid: the 'S'? That stood for 'Saving lives'.

    Not so much, now.

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    1. Good point, Tom. Clark grows up on a farm (and originally that would have been on a farm during the Depression) while Bruce Wayne had a silver spoon in his mouth. Marvel evoked the dignity of the blue collar hero with Cap especially (though quite a few Marvel heroes are working joes) but Snyder's movie showed no awareness of any of that. Yet I have friends who have watched the whole thing and don't seem to care. They just want to see people punched through buildings. Summer blockbusters have become fairground rides, with no real interest in character or emotion, and I have to conclude that studios are giving the punters what they like. More's the pity.

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  15. But Superman has always killed Zod. In the comics, he kills Zod and is exiled for it. In Superman 2, he renders Zod defenseless and THEN kills him, in cold blood. Why is the killing of Zod this time around so bad?

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    1. My point isn't whether Man of Steel is worse than Superman 2, but whether a true hero is just somebody who can do ethical arithmetic. In its defence, MoS is not nearly so morally repugnant as Expendables 2 - but then, Sylvester Stallone's character (Barney something?) is not supposed to be a hero.

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    2. Seriously, there's a big difference between throwing a villain into a bottomless, fog-filled pit in a cartoon-type movie where the tradition is that the bad guy will return, and snapping his neck at the end of a dark and humorless story. Only a comics nerd would think those were the same!

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  16. I suppose that's true, and the same can be said for Batman in Christian Bale's guise. He's certainly not the same Batman as Adam West's, and Heath Ledger was a very, very different Joker than Cesar Romero. Although, come to think of it, Adam West's Batman does actually kill those re-hydrated pirates (though not intentionally) whereas the much darker Batman Bale is arguably firmer in his moral principle to take no life.

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    1. I don't have too much problem with the veteran Batman of DKR taking lives. We've seen that's how he ends up, and it's a tragedy - the bad guys finally wore away everything that was good in him. It would be a shame if "current" Batman just turns into the Punisher, though. Like in The Dark Knight - did Bats really need Lucius Fox to tell him that monitoring everybody at all times is unacceptable? Heroes ought to be able to work that stuff out for themselves, if they weren't all turning morally rudderless. (The DC movie ones, that is.)

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