In the dream, I wasn't wearing a garish costume or battling a stereotypical, two-dimensional villain. Instead, it all seemed real -- the setting was my neighborhood, and the powers I had (flying, super strength, mindreading) felt as tangible as walking and eating and breathing in the waking world.
When I awoke, details of the dream were still swimming around in my thoughts, like memories from an actual event, or like the reaction after watching a really enjoyable movie.
That led me to think of the current state of the superhero genre in film and television. The last truly great superhero movies that I saw were the original Iron Man and The Dark Knight, both from the summer of 2008. A bunch of comic book adaptations are scheduled to come to the big screen in the coming months and years -- Thor, X-Men: First Class, Captain America: The First Avenger, Spider-man 3-D, The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Superman: Man of Steel, and many others -- will any of them be any good?
Television is an even bigger question mark. There arguably has not been a good superhero TV series in a long while, maybe since the first season of Heroes, a show that declined in quality surprisingly quickly. Other lackluster heroic programs included Bionic Woman and the current No Ordinary Family. Some more are on the way -- Syfy's Alphas and NBC's The Cape. Will either of them capture audiences' imagination?
If this is truly the golden age of the live-action superhero genre, I hope it hasn't passed its peak. A good heroic tale makes me feel like a kid again, and it is a mythic form that can tell a lot of stories relevant to our time. If only they can live up to our dreams.
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KC Redding-Gonzalez
Donna Snyder
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Comments
Strong line here Nick.
May any hero real, imagined, or tude land do so.
Mission, thnaks!
Trudge, I too liked the Sam Raimi Spider-man films, but the last one was in 2007 and it received some harsh reviews from critics and fans alike. The first two (released in 2002 and 2004) were much better, but that seems like ancient history. I still would like to see Toby reprise the role again, and think it's too soon to reboot the series like they are unfortunately doing, but we shall see.
I believe we have far greater capacity than we normally utilize day to day. We have forgotten much too. We built Stonehenge and now say "Wow, what is that? How was it made?" This is something we explored on our recent radio show with the International Consciousness Research Lab at Princeton. (You can hear the program at www.godspeedinstitute.com). There seems to be a huge 'remembering' going on, and perhaps these movies are part of it.
That said, this is something quite different from escape - I enjoy all the films you mention, but prefer the stories with concepts that lead us to our true selves and abilities (e.g. the Matrix) rather than escape
Keep dreaming :)