When everyone has a superpower, nobody is interesting at all.

By putting superheroes in every summer blockbuster, Hollywood is presenting us with the NBA Jams version of entertainment: all slam dunks with no focus on the fundamentals.

It is a cautionary tale of what happens when creativity chases the path of least resistance.

It seems like we’ve been here once before – with westerns – when every movie studio bought a ranch and tried to squeeze out every last drop of value. There’s something charming about a nursing home common room absorbed in watching an old western, but I doubt our children will be as charmed to find that same common room showing replays of Avengers: Age of Ultron.

While it may be time for LEGO Batman to ride into the sunset, I don’t see it happening any time soon. And since Hollywood is dead set on putting superheroes in every major movie, I hope they really lean in and start making the sort of superhero movies I want.

For example, Peter Parker’s Day Off, where he teaches his hypochondriac friend to enjoy life and never once uses his superpowers because it will only make him more likely to be caught by his parents (too soon?) or by his oddly obsessed principal.

I’d also love to see a survivalist story of doomsday truthers settling internal power struggles inside the bunker they’ve set up immediately after Superman reveals himself to the world. Because let’s face it, Kal-El sounds kind of Muslim and truthers don’t have the best track record of following leaders with Muslim-sounding names who’ve been raised by a white family in Kansas.

A murder mystery at the X-Men mansion would be amazing – especially with mind readers and shapeshifters like the Professor and Mystique throwing shade at the likes of Colonel Mustard and Professor Plum.

I recognize the silliness of these desires but cast the blame on superhero movies themselves for unrealistically raising expectations. Their action scenes are fast-paced and compelling. I don’t see how teens could ever go back to enjoying the sort of movies I did at their age, where an action scene consisted of watching Paul Newman struggle to eat fifty hard-boiled eggs.

Star Wars has gotten just as bad. Star Wars is the new SNL – it’ll be around forever and the best cast will always be the one you first saw in Middle School. I’d like to shake that galaxy up with a legal thriller where a working-class lawyer named Erin Bobba Fett exposes the toxic manufacturing byproducts of the big lightsaber industry’s radioactive products.

It’s easy to blame this superhero-first mentality on audiences by dismissing them as “the entitled generation” where everyone is special and always wins a trophy, but that is a cop-out of the sorriest kind. I hear that criticism all the time from my generation, who themselves create the leagues where each of their children gets a trophy and then simultaneously complain as if an outsider forced their league commissioner’s hand.

It’s also just as easy to cynically speculate that so many superhero movies are getting greenlit because they’re guaranteed revenue generators that overperform in non-English-speaking markets like India and China. But if I’m going to be cynical, I’m going to go big.

Who really stands to profit from mutant-power obsessed culture? The cell phone companies pumping data signals through hand-held receptors 24/7!

No genetically-altered patient’s first stop is a trial lawyer’s office if they’ve always wanted to be an X-Man. In that context, hearing colors isn’t considered a symptom of radiation, it’s seen as the first sign of a long-expected mutant evolution: a welcome relief to the fear that you might die with no more physical senses than when you first were born.

“Can you hear me now?”

“Yes, but it’s a little muffled. Please speak directly into my elbow!”

My biggest concern about idolizing superheroes is that it’s focusing on the wrong set of skills to celebrate in our culture. While they’re great for taking on our larger, militaristic threats like supervillains and alien invasions, superheroes aren’t that good at handling the threats that attack us every day.

Instead of Batman taking on the bank robbers, I’d love to see him perform a stealth audit of the bank’s internal files. I’ll bet his fancy bat-cave technology could find some shocking disparities in what they do compared to what they say.

I’d rather see boy genius Peter Parker patrol the sticky corners of the world-wide-web than cast his own webs around our relatively safe New York City streets.

Or maybe, one day, the alter ego will reign supreme and slow, methodical, investigative journalism will win the day.

For all the different remakes, cinematic universes and director’s takes – there ought to be a version where the audience bursts into cheers when Superman goes into a booth and Clark Kent steps out. That’s the kind of superhero I could get behind.

 

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