Superhero movie without any heroes.

Rating: 2/10 (11 August 2018)

It has evolved to the point where these movies are like candy bars, and every year they put the same crap candy bar in a new wrapper. Candy tastes good but it has no nutrional value and is bad bad for us. These movies are soulless. There is no humanity in them. If you look at the best action movies - the Bourne trilogy and any Jason Stratham film - we are invested in the humanity of the leads. The fight scenes are thrilling because we care about the characters outcomes. The fight scenes in all of these comic book movies, even in Black Panther, are indistinguishable. There's so much 3D and special effects it looks plastic. Justice League is the worst of the lot. 3D characters interact with green screen characters. There are explosions and fire, superhero's and villains thrown into walls. Walls collapsing. Buildings collapsing. Light streaks. Lens flares. Sparks falling from ceilings. Yet, as a viewer, these are great times to go make a sandwich. I find myself wishing that all of these characters would die off in a fiery explosion.
Another key point is that these films reek of fear. The fear is that none of these characters can carry a film by themselves - you have groups of these gayly dressed men and the occasional woman all fighting a villain that really no one cares about. John Wayne hated High Noon because the protagonist was a coward. He was a coward who couldn't stand up and fight by himself without the help of the villagers to support him in his own weakness. Wayne and many other famous directors thought that a film hero, especially a western hero, is obligated to overcome his own weaknesses and fight alone against the forces of injustice and evil. The reason for this is that men must face their own problems and injustices in their own lives alone. If you are underpaid and you feel it necessary to confront your own boss for a higher wage you don't bring your wife, your buddies, or your dad into the office to make the case for you. You do it alone.

I watched The Apartment, the great Billy Wilder film last night. Jack Lemmon is a superhero in that film and he doesn't throw a single punch. He fights for true love and magnomity. He fights the corporate machine. He Fights peer pressure. In the end however his fight is with himself. He has to come clean with who he is, and he does it mostly by deciding who he is not. He's not a playboy or a ladies man though there is tremoundous cultural pressure to be so. He is not a corporate climber though that ethic was instilled into him. He falls in love with a girl who loves someone else. That someone else is a man of power who he fears but doesn't respect. In his fight he loses his job, his true love and his apartment. Yet he gains his self respect. He becomes a "true man" not what culture has decided a man is. Of course being a true code hero, he does get the girl in the end. He does this by transforming her as well. She sees the hero in him which opens her eyes to her own shortcomings and bad decisions. That is what a hero does.
There is nothing transformative about these comic book films. Maybe there was in the begging of all this. There are not any character arcs or growth. I propose that you are not even entertained by these films.
So to me these superhero movies all lack one thing.
A hero.