Reason Writers Around Town: Peter Suderman on Superhero Movies in an Age of Human Enhancement in The Washington Times

In today's Washington Times, Associate Editor Peter Suderman takes a look at how superhero films reflect our transhumanist moment:

When "X-Men: First Class," a prequel to the popular series of comic-book adaptations, hits theaters this weekend, moviegoers will find themselves immersed in yet another superhero origin story, the fourth opening this summer, along with "Thor," "Green Lantern," and "Captain America: The First Avenger."

Superhero stories have come to rule in Hollywood since the late '90s, when the first "X-Men" film drew high praise and box office. Since then, big-screen visions of classic comic-book heroes Spider-Man, Batmanand Iron Man and their sequels have all racked up big bucks at the box office. The current wave, expected to dominate this summer's box office, represents the biggest hero glut yet.

Our deepening fascination with the genre occurs as we're witnessing the beginnings of real world superhero emergence - growing numbers of technologically and biologically modified humans who have become stronger, smarter, and more powerful thanks to consumer technology and widely accessible scientific advances.

You might even say we are all part superhero now.

Whole thing, including fresh quotes from transhumanist R.U. Sirius, here. 

Comments

[Tulpa]

Very few of these superhero movies are truly new material though. Nearly all are adaptations of superhero stories that have been floating around for years or decades and in many cases already have a fan base. So the spate of superhero movies may well be a special case of HollywoodBeingOutOfIdeas.

Also, superhero movies are cheaper to make than members of the sci-fi cousin genre, don't present the MPAA ratings issues that the horror cousin genre does, and are mostly visual with coarse enough plots that they can easily be translated and exported to the international market where the real money is made.

[Platypus]

This. All these superheroes begin to seem the same after a while. Can we have some fresh ideas, please?

[Aresen]

How about a screwball comedy starring Barbara Streisand or Carmen Diaz?

*barfs*

[Platypus]

No, thanks, unless it's also a sequel. 'Cos I can't get enough of the DAMNED sequels. MOAR!

[Episiarch]

I hate it when I agree with Tulpa. Hollywood makes superhero movies because they make money, are excellent star vehicles, appeal to wide domestic and international audience, and don't require particularly good writers or directors (Jon Favreau, anyone?).

They're Hollywood remaking comic books instead of older movies. Nothing else.

[Tulpa]

You and I are not really that different in the final analysis, the same hopes, the same fears, the same enemies, the same problems, the same condoms (you are a LifeStyles guy, right?)

[SugarFree]

Episiarch doesn't use condoms. He practices retrograde ejaculation.

[Ska]

I'm glad that link will be part of my browsing history.

[Tulpa]

Thanks for the link, I never would have figured out how to look that up on wikipedia.

[SugarFree]

Seriously, Tulpa? You're seriously complaining because I provided a link to an somewhat obscure contraceptive practice? Have we ever discussed the possibility that you are my mom? Because she's the only person that I ever met that will bitch about anything. Did you give birth to a baby boy in Illinois in 1970?

... after fucking a goat in late 1969?

[Aresen]

My superhuman psychic powers predict that most of these movies will suck.

[SugarFree]

"90% of [superhero movies] are crap, but then 90% of everything is crap."

[Montani Semper Liberi]

Can someone explain to me why a guy who can control missiles and bullets with his mind thinks that humans are a threat to him? And why does he keep coming up with convoluted plots for world domination when he could simply go to one of our nuke silos in the Dakotas and hold the whole world hostage?

[Aresen]

Logic doesn't enter into supervillain actions.

They build devices that could make them more money than fifty Bill Gates, then use it to rob a bank.

[robc]

Mike Myers handled this in the Austin Powers movies.

[SugarFree]

That's basically what Magento does in his first appearance. But those darn meddling kids foiled his plan.

[mr simple]

Magento sounds like a gay, interior designing super hero. NTTAWWT.

[Lord Humungus]

and why the goofy costumes? If I was a superhero, I would be all about the comfort - velvet pants,shoes and shirt. Oh wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

They're suits of unstable molecules. Special costumes that don't get ripped or torn or destroyed easily.

[Episiarch]

Because he's conflicted, dude! DRAMA!

[Drax the Destroyer]

And why does he keep coming up with convoluted plots for world domination when he could simply go to one of our nuke silos in the Dakotas and hold the whole world hostage?

(Puts down Bong)

He tried throwing nukes around in one of the earlier X-men stories I believe. It was one of his first attempts at world domination, so Magneto had yet to see how difficult it was to fight at least a dozen well-trained people with superpowers, some arguably more powerful than his,and one with the ability to crush his brain if he felt like it. After that, every government basically had access to anti-mutant weapons/safeguards etc. Also, Supervillians are notoriously stupid by design. Their closest real-world analogues have usually ended up dead or getting raped behind bars until they are dead.

Also, I can't find the link, but I once read that Magneto is sort of a comic cypher for Israel, having survived the holocaust, is now relatively powerful and is not taking shit from the lowly humans/arabs, but don't quote me on that. I doubt that was the intention of Stan Lee when he took 2 seconds to think of Magneto's name between boozing and whoring Mad Men-style.

(Picks up bong, starts watching internet porn in Mother's basement)

[Ska]

The scariest part of your post is that Mother is a proper noun.

[Drax the Destroyer]

No the scariest part is that I am too much of lazy piece of shit to proofread that garbage.

[Mensan]

The more widely accepted analysis of Magneto is that he is Malcolm X to Professor Xavier's MLK. The X-men books have always been about minorities and civil rights since Stan Lee created them in the '60s. The aspect of Magneto being a holocaust survivor influences his more militant stance against what he sees as oppression of the mutant minority.

[orly?]

"The X-men books have always been about minorities and civil rights since Stan Lee created them in the '60s."

I wonder what the plot of the first X-Men movie in which a Republican Senator rails against a minority class until he "becomes" one of them was supposed to be about?

[cynical]

Minorities and civil rights?

[Paleo]

You should like this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....ure=relmfu

[Fatty Bolger]

Some of those are great. On the subject of super hero movies, here's a good one:

Spider-Man 3 How It Should Have Ended

[Fluffy]

I think the supervillain impulse is atavistic and goes beyond mere sense.

If I woke up tomorrow and had Magneto's power, I would sit down and eat some toast and have some OJ and think of all the constructive things I could do with my new power.

But then I would read Balko's column and before I could stop myself I would be setting up rusty nail tornados in some asshole cop town.

And as soon as you do that ONCE, if only for the emotional catharsis, you're a supervillain forever. You can't negotiate your way down from that. If Magneto comes in from the cold, he ends up on a slab or in a cell. He has to win or die.

[Mensan]

Nah, in comics, particularly the X-men books, characters switch sides all the time.

[Tulpa]

Can someone explain to me why a guy who can control missiles and bullets with his mind thinks that humans are a threat to him?

Magneto is a noble villain. He doesn't think humans are a threat to him personally -- he thinks they're a threat to his fellow mutants, and he can't protect every mutant on earth just by direct use of his powers, so he relies on world domination schemes.

[Pro Libertate]

It's quite simple, actually. These supervillains, like Magneto, are merely entertaining themselves. They don't really want world dominion.

[Tulpa]

They want to use their campaign for world domination to educate people about villainy, and then after they inevitably lose start the Campaign For Villainy using the funding they got during the drive for world domination.

[Pro Libertate]

Oh, and The Evil Overlord List.

[Anonymous Coward]

Magneto (and other villains) have done this from time to time. Of course, the heroes naturally save the day.

If you're ever in the market for an obscure RPG line, search for "Aberrant War." The human race gets into a fight with a bunch of superpowered humans. The Chinese threaten to nuke the planet if they don't pick up and leave.

[HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN]

THE RACE TO ERASE ? Manifest Destiny Erasing Palestine

[Manifest Destiny]

Now, both (www.aljazeera.net/english) in an article entitled Netanyahu: Erasing the Green Line, and (http://rt.com/), Russia Today, Cross Talk with Peter Levelle, Palestate! Are covering the upcoming political maneuverings, going on concerning the upcoming speech to be given by Israeli Prime Minister [BiBi] The gift from God, Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress of the American- Israeli Military Industrial Complex ? the [EMPIRE], the tail wagging the dog, in an effort to shore up the [SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP] for the crisis ahead, as the September vote of the United Nations General Assembly [150] by all accounts aye/yes vote granting statehood to Palestine, approaches with or without the [EMPIRE], a vote that Israel's Alan Elsner of the Israel Project located in Washington, D. C. [District of Clown], has stated means nothing, and will only give the Palestinians only a [5 min.] statehood status, while arguing that a General Vote of the [UN] United Nations, is not the vote that would count but a vote only of the [UN] Security Council would be the only legitimate vote of course one in which the [EMPIRE] could and would Veto, a Palestinian State, setting up an Israeli challenge to the vote in the future, while at the same time rejecting the [UN] having any authority too establish a state when Israel itself was established by a vote of the [UN]. The other move to de-legitimatize, a Palestinian State is simply to Erase it before it is even voted upon, the race to erase the state. This is now being done by the Erasure of the so called Green Line, which leaves only one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and that is the State of Israel without a [UN] vote or sanction, a pre-vote unilateral action that BiBi will have blessed by the [EMPIRE] on the [24th] of May. The idea being that if the former United States of America now the [EMPIRE] could and did create its [EMPIRE] from sea to shining sea, under the mandate of Manifest Destiny, placing the native inhabitants upon reservations, that exist to this day, which is an act of apartheid, and today Israeli makes the same claims of Manifest Destiny. That Israel could and will set up a bureau of Palestinian Affairs much as the United States of America had set up a Bureau of Indian Affairs which grants or denies different privileges to various native American tribes upon its own reservations, and BiBi's will in his speech bring the [EMPIRE] politicians, policy-makers, lobbyist and campaigners, up to date with the true reality of the new Israel.

[Gaza the new Oklahoma]

BiBi, has put the [EMPIRE] into a box, a government can not say one thing and do another, but of course that has never applied to the [EMPIRE] which is the prime of example of a Plutocracy of Hypocrisy, talking out of both sides of its corrupt system at the same time, but what now, can it now just abolish its own system of apartheid, close its bureau of Indian Affairs, over one day sovereign nations, within its territory, and the next day declare itself a now moral nation within the community of nations, don't think so. So, where does this leave the [EMPIRE], up the creek without a paddle, it must and will provide cover for the only true Democracy in the middle east of course, a clone copy of itself, right down to apartheid, bureaus of native affairs and grants rights and privileges, no native's running across the Canadian Boarder and no right of return for Palestinians. Gaza will become the new Israeli version of Oklahoma, the treaty was in effect as long as the water flowed, the grass grew, and the buffalo roamed, well pretty much under the laws of Manifest Destiny they turned off the water, the grass died and the buffalo no more roamed, followed by the land rush to open the Indian Territories up for settlement, with all those natives put on Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, and provided for by the U.S. Army and Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Israeli version is the Gaza Open Air Concentration Camp, they will turn off the water and allow the Palestinians to either die or roam to other lands say Canada, just as long as its out of Israel, the Israeli version of Cowboys and Indians, the Indians and Palestinians both loose.

HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN

[Aresen]

Somehow, this fits right in with a thread about movie superheroes.

[Platypus]

and Super Villains. That reminds me; you can't hire good henchmen these days. They're all slightly retarded.

[Paleo]

Slightly?

[so true]

At least the old batman villains had the good sense to not pay their henchmen, just give them a t-shirt that said "henchman" on it. That seemed to be all it took to keep them happy.

[Lord Humungus]

I've used those exact words many times.

[Almanian]

Welcome back, Hercule, my good friend! You are always welcome here at Reason, where I don't have to pay for the bandwidth! Chew up those bytes, my verbose compadre!

[Lord Humungus]

oddly enough, I've never seen a single one of these modern superhero movies. It's just not a genre that I'm interested in.

Of course I'm not interested in enhancing my body/mind with technology either.

[Fist of Etiquette]

My name: superhero, supervillain or protopunk band?

If I has superpowers, I would be one of the ones who bounced back and forth between villain and hero. Both sides would consider me an unreliable dickhead.

[Ska]

Yojimbo Man?

[kinnath]

Chaotic Neutral then?

[Mensan]

Deadpool? He has the added bonus of being totally batshit insane. I mean, even among people who think a spandex bodysuit is the ideal combat gear, that guy is out there.

[Fluffy]

I think we need to start crossing genres to keep the superhero genre interesting.

Speaking of the Lord Humungus, I'm surprised there has never been a post-apocalyptic superhero film. After all, if there were in fact lots of people running around with superpowers, the world would get the shit kicked out of it pretty damn fast.

I think maybe something like Hancock might work better in a post-apocalyptic setting. Superheroes destroy world, live like hobos in the ruins. Or maybe just to fuck with the transhumanist crowd here at Reason, instead of superhumans you could use transhumans: humans with nanotech enhancements trash world, then get to eat rats over campfires when it all goes to shit.

[SugarFree]

So you're saying it's finally time for the film adaptation of Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth.

[Fluffy]

I had never heard of that comic.

The DC multiverse is weird.

[Tulpa]

I thought that's what I Am Legend was. Only a superhuman could generate all that electricity with no apparent fuel source, magically get an engine to run on gasoline that's been sitting around for five years, and be able to harvest crops grown in plots scattered around NYC, which he seems to pay no attention to most of the time, with herbivorous animals running around all over the place.

[Mensan]

Maybe an adaptation of Ex-Heroes?

[Almanian]

I haven't given a fuck about superhero shit....ever. I was a Sgt. Rock/Unkown Soldier comic guy as a kid. Never got into Teh Superheroez.

That is all.

[l0b0t]

Yeah, the spandex clad goody-two-shoes set was never for me. Until they start shooting an adaptation of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Mickey Rat, or Coochie Cootie color me uninterested.

[l0b0t]

Although, Matt Wagner's Grendel would make a good film story.

[so true]

Maybe, I was weird, but I never really read any comics. I preferred real books.

[Nick]

I've enjoyed almost all of the superhero movies I've ever seen except the 2003 Eric Bana HULK which was utter shit. The rest of them are decent enough reasons to eat popcorn. But I also like Baysplosions, so...

[Tulpa]

Curious to see opinions on this: are Batman and Kick-Ass and the like actually superhero movies? Seeing as how the heroes don't have any superhuman powers.

[l0b0t]

Yes, it's all about the spandex (or for modern film Batman, rubber) costume.

[l0b0t]

Yes, it's all about the spandex (or for modern film Batman, rubber) costume.

[Almanian]

Wait a minute, wait a minute. I forgot - I do care about ONE supervillain:

The Derider?
PWNAGE! Where does he fit in, and when do we get a movie about his exploits, PWNING Reasonoids and debunking libertardian arguments through mega-PWNAGE as he gradually takes control of the world's server squirrels to do his evil bidding to PWNS the world?

That's a "Superxxxx" movie I might see...

[l0b0t]

I wonder if it's the same The Derider that trolls Politico?

http://preview.tinyurl.com/3h99sdv

[l0b0t]

Even corrupt county politicians from television's caricature of the Deep South fail to withstand The Derider's PWNAGE - http://dyn.politico.com/member.....id=5457673

The Derider

avatar for user The Derider

Member Since: Apr. 13, 2010

Party: Liberal

#22
May. 16, 2011 - 4:34 PM EST
Boss Hawg: May. 16, 2011 - 4:12 PM EST

Debt Limit Reached, Nation Fails to Explode in Violent Fireball

Its like you're shouting "AIDS! What AIDS? I've got AIDS and I'm not dead!"

Yeah, not yet.

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[Aresen]

We could have a movie about an evil President who gets the US into a stupid war so he can grandstand and gets the collaboration of a venal Congress so he can destroy the economy.

The kicker is that the "good President" who replaces him is actually a clone of the evil President who carries on doing exactly the same things.

[IceTrey]

The reason we have a glut of comic book movies is because CGI has finally made them possible.