When I started my work on the increasing dominance of superheroes at the cinema, I remember that I was round at my parents’ house and saw that in their Sky TV Guide, there was a whole pullout dedicated just to the caped crusaders they’d be featuring in that month alone. There was one quote in particular from that pullout that stuck with me: “As long as the world is beset by dangers beyond our control, ruled by governments we don’t always trust, the superhero will remain a welcome fantasy, a dashing figure we can trust to do the right thing when no one else will”. There are a few points that I’d like to pick up on regarding this statement. First, a theme I will return to later regarding superhero films in general, it appeals to the masses; what it says has more reach, as it goes out to a vast amount of people (everybody who subscribes to Sky TV) and is designed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, rather than being hidden in some difficult to access social theory book (which are unfortunately not as widely read). The second point is that this populist publication picked up on society’s belief that they are ‘ruled by governments that we don’t trust’. Now there is a certain sect of society (myself included) who rarely, if ever, trust the people that govern us. Yet, very rarely in the past has there been such widespread distrust in the Western powers as occurred when it dawned on even the most reluctant to admit it, that the allied forces’ decision makers that decided to invade Iraq had completely lied to their respective publics regarding alleged WMDs, and led their nation’s armed forces to an invasion under false pretences. Despite people’s feelings toward the conflict itself, the distrust is largely shared. The third point this quote raises, and the most fundamental when considering the role of the superhero, is this notion of doing “the right thing”; what then is “the right thing”? This is the question that all superheroes struggle with. I would argue that the closer this dilemma is to the story of any given superhero film, the more successful it is. For a quick comparison, take the simplicity and subsequent lack of critical or mass approval of Fantastic Four (2005). These people really don’t struggle much with right and wrong. Pretty much the most pressing matter is the awkward nature of dealing with celebrity culture; hardly weighty issues being thrown around there. Compare this to the positive critical reception and more importantly, the mass appeal of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008), which is one of the most complex investigations of what is right and wrong in contemporary society that we have seen in mainstream popular culture.  Now I aren’t saying that these things alone are what makes one of them a successful, lasting icon in cinema history and the other, something that people will remember as ‘that other superhero film starring Chris Evans before he played Captain America’. For an in-depth look at these moral issues in superhero fiction, there is a whole chapter dedicated to ‘Superheroes and moral duty’ in the book Superheroes and Philosophy: truth, Justice and the Socratic Way.

The idea of superhero films being simple fables for what society deems at any specific time to be right and wrong calls upon an investigation of the mythic nature of genre cinema and its massive importance, not only in cinema, but in society as a whole. Genre is something that exists in all narrative forms; it puts order to the way in which a reader/viewer connects the various texts they come into contact with. This creates grand assumptions in people’s minds so that they can easily relate to other texts and form a web of meaning throughout the interlocking narratives that inhabit their lives. Barry Grant has written at great length about the use of genre in film and his book Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology is more than worth the time to read through. He gives this definition: “genre movies are those commercial feature films which, through repetition and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters in familiar situations”. This repetition is helpful for filmmakers as they can use templates so that their audience can easily associate and relate to their text. I.e. We know that in the superhero film he/she – though predominantly he – will have some kind of secret identity, that they will be confronted by an arch nemesis of some sort, that they are expected to defeat this arch nemesis, ‘get the girl’ and restore society to civil normality, etc. Yet where genre cinema becomes so interesting and useful is that filmmakers can utilise variation to then generate significant meaning by deviating slightly from the viewer’s assumptions. I.e. what if he is a she? What if they don’t do what is expected of them? What if they cannot defeat this nemesis (alone at least)? Also tied into variation is the significance of who the heroes/villains are, where they come from, how they became the way they are, etc. It is due to this repetition and variation that Grant accredits genre as an important tool for the creation and evolution of myth: “Genre films with their repetitions and variations of a few basic plots are prime instances of mass-mediated contemporary myth”. This repetition makes things mythic by making them ‘taken for granted’. Grant then goes on to say that “in their mythic capacity, genre films provide a means of cultural dialogue, engaging their audiences in a shared discourse that reaffirms, challenges and tests cultural values and identity”. This is precisely the social function I believe these mammoth blockbuster superhero films fulfil.