Games & Gadgets

Superhero movies are our versions of myths in America. They are the collective fiction on which we all draw.

Superman? He's just Zeus without the lightning.

Sometimes there's an underlying and perhaps unintentional message in these films. That message superheroes project has leaped from decade to decade.

Once they acted as defenders and promoters of the status quo. In the '50s and '60s, the writers of Batman comics were under pressure to downplay insinuations that Batman and Robin had a homosexual relationship. They introduced Batwoman and Bat-girl, surrounding him with a little "bat-family." In the '80s, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns gave us a Batman on the outs with the U.S. government while another popular hero, Superman, defended the status quo as the president's henchman.

One myth preached conformity. One raged against it.

And what did this summer's superhero movies tell us?

Hellboy 2 and The Dark Knight, two successful summer superhero sequels, both deal with heroes who are hated. In Hellboy, the main title character exposes his identity to the world only to find they aren't as accepting of the son of Satan as he'd thought. In The Dark Knight, Batman becomes the object of public scorn when he refuses to give up his identity to stop a rampage by the Joker.

Much has been made of suggestions The Dark Knight is essentially President Bush with a cape in cowl, the creation of a closet Hollywood conservative. The argument looks good on the surface. But Batman is not a police officer or any other person responsible for upholding the law. He's a rogue agent acting on his own, cheerfully ignored by powerless people who have legitimate legal power. It's a wonder he didn't waterboard the Joker; he pretty much kicked the stuffing out of him as police looked the other way.

I think people who subscribe to this theory miss the larger point. Batman wants to give up his role to an unmasked hero. Harvey Dent, Gotham's new crime-fighting district attorney, is the hero the people of Gotham need. He is a legitimate authority, someone who enforces the law by respecting it, though he is tempted to go outside the law to get what he wants. But Batman does not condone Dent's dark side. Batman wears a mask because he has to. Dent must be better.

Hellboy offers a slightly different take on this same idea. He's a member of a covert government agency shielding Americans from knowledge of a paranormal universe. Hellboy exposes the truth. And people hate him for it.

Both are characters who upset the status quo by following their own rules. Both are despised.

Hellboy 2 and The Dark Knight offer a glimpse of redemption in the end. I won't spoil it for you.

There's a third superhero movie I haven't mentioned yet. In Iron Man, government defense contractor Tony Stark becomes an opponent of weapons proliferation when he discovers his products are being sold to terrorists. He builds the Iron Man suit and vows to find and destroy his weapons.

The people love him.

Americans loved him, too. Iron Man had a successful box office run and got great reviews.

In all three examples, the heroes obtain righteousness by forgoing the comfort of conformity.

Maybe Hollywood, America's myth machine, is making a subtle dig at our own sense of safety. Thinking for yourself is a path filled with hardship, but one also filled with rewards.

But I could be reading too much into it.