Between the glut of Marvel movies we've been getting, and my own masterplan to watch every terrible-to-almost-decent series of Power Rangers, I've been watching a whole lot of superhero stuff lately. Below are 7 things I really wish that superhero stories would stop doing.
Oh, and before I begin, I'd like to point out one thing - this isn't necessarily a negative review for any of the stories I mention below. A lot of them are good or even great... but that doesn't change the fact that there are some things they need to stop doing.
7. Secret Identities For Their Own Sake
Do note, I'm not complaining about secret identities as a concept. I totally get why there is a need, on occasion, to fight from the shadows. I get that.
This entry is about secret identities that seem to exist just because heroes are "supposed" to have secret identities. To give an example of what I mean, I'll tell you when I first started thinking about this one. It's when I watched the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. I found myself asking, "why are the Rangers using secret identities?"
The usual explanation is to avoid the villains knowing who you are for fear of them going after your friends and family. Fine, except that Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd already know who the Rangers are, and target them out of costume regularly. The first fight in the entire franchise is out of costume, in fact. There's no one to hide from and they know it.
Alternately, sometimes it's to avoid the heroes getting in trouble for vigilantism, such as is the case with Batman. Again, fine, except the Rangers aren't vigilantes. They fight monsters that no one else can handle, and there's nothing in the show to suggest that the rest of the world has anything but undying love for the Rangers.
Maybe there was a logical reason why the Rangers needed to hide who they were, but the show definitely never told us, unless you count "because Zordon said so" as a logical reason. It felt like it was only being done because "the rules" for superhero stories say you need to have a secret identity... and yeah, that's probably exactly why they did it. Mighty Morphin' wasn't a good show, what do you expect?
6. Heroes Never Kill
Before you say it, no, I'm not saying that every hero needs to be The Punisher. No one is saying that Batman and Superman need to start just executing random street toughs. ...but seriously, why hasn't Batman just killed the Joker already?
You're never going to rehabilitate the Joker. Even if I believed that it was possible to rehabilitate somebody like Joker, why does he deserve that chance? More pertinently, why is it our responsibility to give him that chance? Why is it the obligation of all the good and innocent people in the world to just keep turning the other cheek and agreeing to let ourselves be victimized over and over until Joker finally decides he's done killing people?
Hell, not only are you never going to rehabilitate Joker, you're never even going to actually keep him locked up, and you definitely should know this now that he's broken out for the gazillionth time. Every time you take Joker back to Arkham, you do so with full knowledge that he WILL - not might, WILL - break out and go kill more people, including... wait, including Jason Todd, the second Robin?! Then you saved the Joker's life when Jason Todd came back from the dead and tried to do your job for you?! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, BATMAN?!
5. Heroes Also Never Cheat
Obviously cheating is bad... in certain circumstances. If you're playing a game, yes, cheating is bad because it goes against the spirit of competition. If you're in school, yes, cheating is bad because cutting corners costs you the opportunity to learn and really only hurts yourself. In those circumstances, yes, cheating is bad.
But when you're a superhero facing off against evil villains... when losing means that you die, your friends and family die, everything you care about and everything you've fought for are wiped out forever... then why on Earth would you ever fight fair? And I do mean "EVER." I'm not just talking about cheating when you have to - if someone wants to kill everyone you love and you give them a fair chance to do so, even if it's because you're sure you'll win anyway, then you're a traitor. A person who isn't willing to cheat, is a person who clearly has nothing worth winning for.
4. All the Villains are Secretly Good
Hello there, Marvel. I see you've been doing this one a lot. Every villain is a well-intentioned extremist who wants to fix the world but is going about it in a bad way, even villains that were never actually like that in the comics. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, just watch Avengers: Infinity War. Notice how Thanos is a contemplative individual, who is dedicated to his cause of trying to curb overpopulation, is willing to make the same sacrifices he demands of everyone else, and who sheds real tears for those who've fallen at his hands? Yeah, in the comics... he's trying to impress a chick, and he cares nothing for what happens along the way or who it happens to.
That's not to say that I don't enjoy this kind of villain every now and then. I really liked Movie Thanos, I did! But it shouldn't be every single villain ever. From a storytelling perspective, it's boring to see the same villain archetypes presented in every single story. It also hinders my enjoyment of a work when I find myself feeling that the bad guy's arguments are making more sense to me than the good guy's are. From a moral perspective, it feels like you're training people - either intentionally or unintentionally - to think that this is what evil looks like, especially when you combine this with...
3. Heroes Save the World (But Don't Fix It)
I mentioned Infinity War already, so I'll keep going from there. I talked about how complex and sympathetic Thanos is in the movie, but the Avengers... well, they're the opposite. They have no counter-argument to anything Thanos says, and no better plan for how to deal with the real, serious problem he's taking on. The closest anyone comes is Gamora, whose entire argument consists of one line and who is instantly silenced afterward. The Avengers themselves have no motivation beyond "we got hurt and now we're pissy."
(And before you say it, yes, I realize that this is exactly what Marvel was going for and I'm sure the next Avengers movie is going to build more on it. Again, I'm not trying to criticize individual movies, but rather to make a point.)
This is something TV Tropes refers to as "Villains Act, Heroes React". It doesn't even just apply to superhero stories, or even just to movies. In Grand Theft Auto 4 Niko Bellic, the murderous criminal, comes across as a veritable saint because all he does is in response to things other, worse people did to him first.
The short version is: it's easy to look wise and heroic when all you ever do is thwart the stuff everyone else tries to do. Everything in the world has flaws. Every grand plan has sacrifices to be made, and every creation has imperfections. Trying to make a real change in the world means losing your purity and risking being seen as the villain. It's much easier, and makes you look so much wiser and braver, to just point out and attack everyone else's flaws. This isn't heroism, it's sophistry.
2. Evil is Mindlessly Destructive
...and hates music and fun, and wants to kill everybody because smiles piss them off. This sort of black-and-white morality is one of the biggest problems with superhero stories.
"But wait!" I hear you screaming. "You just talked about how you hate superhero stories trying to have conflicted and complex villains! You don't know what you want!"
Except the issue above wasn't really about villains being too complex or interesting, it's about superhero stories presenting "trying to fix problems" as being something that evil people do.
Furthermore, this point and the two above it aren't actually mutually exclusive. Quite often they're brought together and it makes all three of them exponentially worse. The villain is doing what they do because they believe it's right, except they're also a ludicrous, black-hat pantomime villain who kills for fun so they're impossible to take seriously, AND the hero has absolutely no counter argument or better plan which makes them look stupid and lazy.
So, again... from a story perspective everyone involved looks like a bunch of morons, and from a moral perspective it feels like you're training people to think this is what evil looks like, and conditioning them to ignore any less overtly destructive forms of evil, like greed.
1. Trying to Justify All the Above
When I reviewed Pokémon Black and White Versions I talked about the villains, and how I always understood that pokéballs were a seriously messed up concept, but that it didn't really irritate me until they brought it up. Well, this is basically the same thing.
Every point that I've complained about here has a reason why it's done that way.
Evil is mindlessly destructive so that we don't get confused about who the bad guys are supposed to be, and because we want to see a struggle with lots at stake.
Heroes save the world but don't fix it because making huge changes to the status quo of your world makes it more difficult to make a serialized story.
Villains have sympathetic motives because it makes them more compelling.
Heroes don't cheat because writers don't want to encourage kids that read comic books to think "if Superman cheated to beat Lex Luthor, then I can cheat to pass my test!"
Heroes don't kill because you don't want to lose your villains.
Heroes have secret identities because... okay, this one never entirely made sense.
The point I'm making here is that, while I'd like to see more stories that are willing to push the boundaries and challenge the status quo, I totally get why they do these things so much. I can accept that this is just how stories are written... until the writers themselves bring it up, only to have all of their arguments be logical fallacies, poorly argued, or both. If you have nothing to say, just don't bring it up.
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