The Rise of the Superpowerless

Here at the Fourth Corner we've discussed how horror movies are a reflection of our collective fears (see "Saw VI is just a metaphor for Osama Bin Laden"). If the spate of movies coming out in the next few months are also an indicator of our collective mood, then things have looked better.

In the next few months, there are a litany of movies coming out about superheroes that aren't superheroes at all. Instead, the heroes are average joes whose only real power is will power, and that doesn't tend to stop bullets. They're mainly laughable, and, if past movies in the same genre are any indication they'll probably stumble upon an actual bad guy and somehow defeat them because Americans just love happy endings.

There's a charming bit of hope in movies like these, and it's a delightful sign of our times. In the case of Woody Harrelson's "Defendor" the bumbling hero takes on his villain Captain Industry (or tries to). Wrapped up in that is a thinly veiled statement that, when all other 'real' heroes (Congress, Wall Street regulators) are incapable of taking on bad guys (Corporate profits, environmental disasters, etc.) it's up to the average American to defeat them. Put in political parlance, these movies are all about Main Street taking on Wall Street because no one else will. If doing that requires us to use a jar of wasps and lime juice, so be it.

It makes sense that such movies are coming out. With a stagnant Congress, recession, those huge profits on a bailed-out Wall Street, increasing disparities between the country's rich and the country's poor, it's no surprise that the average Joe is getting ready to take up arms to right the wrongs of his nation.

That he gives us a chuckle on the big screen is nice, but politicians should take note that even if Hollywood gives us a happy ending, reality may not. An Average Joe in a cape is much less threatening that a frustrated man who flies a plane into an IRS building.

The most terrifying bit of any superhero movie--superpowers or not--is that a city or country's infrastructure has failed to such a desperate degree that people think they need a superhero in the first place. Let's hope we don't.