NOT-SO-SUPERMAN: Why Superheroes Aren’t Super

By YouveBeenGreeked | Some Random Thoughts. | 15 Apr 2025

Superheroes are a pretty cool concept at face value - individuals who can fly, lift up buildings, run at mach 100, shoot lasers out their eyes, summon lightning, climb sheer walls, regenerate… they solve crimes, beat the bad guys, save the world, get the girl - multiple times a year. Very nice! You can certainly see how they’ve been loved by boys for decades now.

Very honestly, watching Henry Cavill don that sleek dark blue and deep crimson suit and start breaking the sound barrier while Hans Zimmer flexes his conducting muscles at 110% capacity is a pretty cool cinematic pairing.

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Hell, even the ones without powers: Batman’s so rich and so well trained up that he can join these god-like beings in their superhero league, all because he used his mind and body at their maximum capacities - nice one, Bruce.

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So, why do they suck?

For me it’s simple: the villains will always keep coming. Always.

And I don’t just mean the super-powered ones from the planet Flargenballs or whatever that have the capacity to punch the Earth into non-existence. I mean more the smaller-time criminals coming out of broken homes.

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All the powers and invulnerability and far-sightedness in the world, and Superman does not use his values of “Truth, Justice and the American Way” to help the helpless children in the hell-like homes that the very criminals he fights come from. A little more lee-way goes to non-powered heroes like Batman who at least aren’t all-powerful gods, but I believe it still applies to a large enough degree.

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All the flashy costumes, powers and fight scenes in the world should not distract anyone from the fact that these, basically, GODS never solve the issue from the source - they’d much rather punch Zod through thousands of buildings and probably ruin the people who live and work in them’s lives even more. Hell, I’ve got a little respect for films like “Batman V Superman” for at least touching on the subject of superhero accountability, but it’s minimal in the grand scale of the “issue” I’m seeing, and at the end of the it all, the solution for these people is always punching and destroying.

There’s also the issue of being inspired by superheroes… I’ll be blunt, but I think you should never reach a point in parenting where you’re allowing your children to be inspired largely by the impossible. I.e. teaching them that the only way they can become great heroes is by having super-strength or having the ability to fly… These are impossible-to-reach abilities and serve as much inspiration to someone as any other magic voodoo from anywhere else.

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So, where are we today? People venerating “Avengers: Endgame” as the greatest piece of cinema in history… Really? “The Godfather”? “Casablanca”? “The Lord of the Rings”?! Clips of people - grown men - in cinemas screaming, cheering and, sometimes, crying because Captain America beat up purple stone collector alien-man with Thor’s magic hammer, or because that actor who played Spider-Man two decades ago walked through Benedict Cumberbatch’s magic portal… “gonna cry”? why? It’s one thing for children to enjoy these films, but a lot of these people are tax-paying, job-having, beard-growing, poll-voting adults - they could be called up for jury duty one day, and that's a disturbing thought to me

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And these films are venerated for such mediocre reasons: because lots of superheroes were on screen simultaneously, or because the scene with lots of punching had lots of action, or because the soulless CGI made bigger or louder explosions. There’ll be exceptions, sure, but this is generally what seems to be held up in the highest esteem these days.

And I get it, we’re all people who often waste our time, money and energy on various “meaningless” things from time to time, but this one really confuses me personally, and it’s very common nowadays.

What a world… that said, Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a god-damn masterpiece. Go and watch it.

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