The Effectiveness of Violence in Superheroes

The Effectiveness of Violence in Superheroes

            As an 18-year-old living in 2017, it becomes very clear that I was raised on superheroes: these fantastic characters fill every nook and cranny of pop culture and are currently dominating the big screen. Despite their recent climb to the limelight, these stories have been around for as early as the 1930s and thus we have nearly 8 decades worth of material to sift through when analyzing their characters evolution. It becomes interesting therefore to plot the progression of superhero violence in media. Subsequently, audiences must come to a decision on whether or not violence is being used effectively as a tool to tell stories. Finally, by looking into the evolution of both the violence and it’s effectiveness, we can anticipate the future for this media and predict where we will find ourselves years into the future. In short, violence as portrayed in comic book films has changed over the years and is being used progressively more effectively to tell stories.

Between 2014 and 2020, 38 superhero films were slated to be released: by 2017, 11 of those films had already been made, and nearly 15 additional stories were slotted to be released to fill those cinematic universes. That, in official industry terms, is a lot of movies. Though the majority of superhero films came about at the turn of the century, they go as far back as 1978’s Superman and comics go even further debuting in 1938 with Superman’s self titled story. There is a history to comics and a progression of violence to be charted and this is best exemplified in Captain America. His first comic was released in late 1940 and since then he’s had thousands of stories in comic books and other media. In all those years, Cap has taken on many different personas: as Richard Stevens, author of Captain America, Masculinity and Violence: the Evolution of a National Icon, says “to speak with a voice relevant to each era of American history, he has undergone several transformations” (Richards 2). This can’t come as much of a surprise: superheroes were created to sell comics and so to continue to sell the most comics your character has to evolve to reflect what the audience believes and values. Let us look at Captain America’s lineage and the several “phases” he’s gone through, as described by Stevens, to really show his evolution. Debuting during WWII, Captain America was a soldier by day (alias Steve Rogers) and a masked vigilante at night, dealing out justice and vengeance to those who opposed him. Cap’s primary enemy throughout his first run of stories is the Red Skull, a Nazi assassin hell-bent on destroying his American foe – admittedly without success. Rogers is shown to be far less concerned with fair justice as well, pushing a Nazi enemy into a machine, electrocuting and murdering him, in his first comic, then saying “nothing left of him but charred ashes… a fate well deserved” (Richards 25). The violence depicted in these early stories was graphic and extreme and it showed Cap truly relishing their demise. His comics encouraged young men to join the war force and even younger readers to join “Sentinels of Liberty”, a fan club that “encouraged readers to actively engage in Cap’s struggles”, sending in donations to support the war efforts (Richards 26). In fact, during WWII, the two biggest demographics for comics were children and soldiers overseas and “at the height of the war, 44 percent of men in training camps read comics regularly” (Richards 35). This version of our beloved character lasted until about 1950 for a very simple reason: after the war, people no longer cared or resonated with this star-spangled super soldier fighting off foreign foes. America’s fight was relatable and inspiring at the time, but once the war ended people stopped relating to it. Flash forward to the 1960s and we had a version of Captain America that was unfrozen from the block of ice he was trapped in after the war. He is the voice of an older, more conservative generation in the midst of an ever changing and politically charged environment. He acts as a leader to the other Avengers and moral compass to the others. This triggered nostalgia in readers, reminding them of a time when their government and country was united and strong. The most drastic change came in his views on violence: the Captain America who, in the past, “committed homicide in 85% of his comics”, now became sensible and pacifistic leader and fought mainly for justice (Richards 88). The story I told you earlier, of Cap throwing the Nazi into the machinery, was rewritten as the enemy foolishly running into the machine as Cap screams out “stop you fool!” (Richards 88). It was a change made to reflect America’s views on violence. In fact, Cap became more and more pacifistic as he grew and evolved, adhering to his moral mantra that he does not kill (similar to that of a certain bat vigilante we’ll talk about later) (Richards 212). As well, they began to add character to our hero: he dealt with having to readjust to this new post WWII world and the shifts in attitude it had made between the 40s and 60s. He had to reconcile his guilt over the death of his partner Bucky Barnes, whilst also moving on with his life. This is actually the Captain America being portrayed in the Marvel films today: the old soul trapped in a hero’s body, learning and adapting to a new world while simultaneously having it depend on him. Flash forward one last time to the 2000s: it’s the era of the internet and the era of terrorism. How did Cap respond to it? Well, the storyline that had been written up until the attacks of 9/11 was quickly ended and the rebooted Captain America was only a shell of what he once was, where “only a gritty, jaded soldier remained” (Richards 214). Joe Quesada, Marvel editor in chief, in a statement following the attacks, said simply that Marvel’s “comics are about good triumph-ing over evil” and that anything being presented in their comics would be a reflection of that (Richards 213). Captain America does not go around punching every Muslim he sees like his 1940s counterpart would, but instead tries to help as much as he possibly can, digging out survivors at the World Trade Center and defending Muslim children being bullied in the streets (Richards 214). Cap takes a stance against the ways Americans have evolved to react against terrorism, like torture and war crimes, and ultimately “explores what it means to be an American in the post 9/11 world” while still trying to hold on to his pacifism (Richards 220). In short, it becomes clear that Captain America has undergone an evolution that has shaped the way he implements violence in saving the world and that violence has taken different forms and different levels of importance over the course of his story.

            Violence in superhero stories is inescapable in today’s day and age, but directors and screenwriters are being faced with a crucial decision every time they sit down to make a new film: how to use violence effectively to tell the story. Zach Snyder was highly criticized for his 2013 film Man of Steel, wherein Superman destroys most of Metropolis in the final battle: saving the city from the aliens but leaving very few civilians around to enjoy it. The battle is grand and destroys just about everything it touches, all while toting a hero who essentially cannot be beaten. We as an audience don’t fear for this character and all the civilians that die are just unimportant, faceless pawns who have no impact on our emotions. Snyder is not making us care about Superman’s fight, or the fates of these people. The Avengers films, directed by Joss Whedon and combining all the superheroes in an ensemble piece, place our characters in grave danger while simultaneously slotting in stand alone films for every character in the following years. On a meta level, we know Black Panther won’t die in the Avengers since he has a film coming out in 2018. We suspend our disbelief throughout the film, but there isn’t any real consequence or tension when something bad happens to our characters when we know they’ll be reprising their roles later on. In nearly ten films, not a single one of the eight Avengers have died, so how am I supposed to believe that when you knock one down, they won’t get right back up again? Beyond that, if you kill off entire cities then I can’t truly take your film seriously: I know that it’s fiction and I’m taken out of the film. Violence and danger are most effectively used when we can believe that there are consequences to what’s happening on screen, but time and time again we’ve been shown that terrible accidents can occur without the slightest impact on the story. This is ineffective violence: violence for the sake of itself. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is the best example of effective violence in a superhero film. Specifically, in the final scene of The Dark Knight, two ferries filled with people are rigged to explode and set out on the water: if Batman cannot disarm these explosives on time, the thousand or so people will die. The story could very well kill off these people and continue with a changed, darker and truly tormented Batman, unlike an alien coming in and destroying the entire world. The tension is genuine and horrifying in the best sense, and leaves audience members griping to the edge of their seat because though the stakes are low, they actually matter to the story. It’s real and the effect of every action in this film matters for Batman. 2016’s Batman vs Superman and Captain America: Civil War, interestingly, both deal with the issue of the destruction these characters bring to their respective cities and how accountable they should be. In Civil War the final battle is divided between Captain America’s team and Ironman’s team: Captain believes they should be allowed to exercise their best judgement in protecting their world, while Iron Man believes they should report to some other government authority. Batman and Superman are fighting throughout their film over the same argument. There is, however, one distinct difference between the two films: the conversations these characters have matters for the resolution of Captain America and Ironman. Batman and Superman spend the film talking about how awful the events of Man of Steel were and ends with the same exact thing: Gotham and Metropolis get trashed as they battle Zodd and millions of faceless civilians get crushed by falling buildings and lasers and guns. There seems to be more care being put in having the violence mean something to the story in one case and in the other it’s bangs and pows and crashes and booms because the audience is paying for a stupid action film with explosions and useless ineffective violence. Certain studios have begun to care about using violence effectively for story telling, but others have used it as the selling point for people to buy tickets to the film. By the box office success and failures of these films, it becomes clear that people care more about the story than the special effects.  

I hope it’s become clear to anyone reading this that violence has truly evolved throughout the years, which begs the question: how will these stories continue to change into the future? Hero, a short film released in early 2017 directed by and starring 25-year-old director Dom Fera, is our best indication of the upcoming change that superhero stories will take. The story follows the titular superhero in his fight against super-villain Volcano, an enemy hell bent on killing Hero for no clear reason. As a young child, he was diagnosed with sicknesses that covered every inch of his body and he underwent a risky, experimental surgery to try and cure him: midway through the surgery, a bolt of lighting strikes the hospital, heals him and has the uncanny side effect of giving him superpowers. Much like Superman, Hero can fly, has super strength and is nearly invincible and yet is tormented by his fear of Volcano since, though “lots of guys have tried to kill [him] […] [Volcano] can actually do it”, having successfully burnt him and left him with terrible scars. We won’t sit here and discuss the science behind the accident, but his weak and humbling beginnings are very important to his story. Throughout the film, Hero constantly tells us just how frightened he truly is and how it “isn’t fair” that he’s expected to go fight this over-powered monster when he never asked for this power to begin with. We see him grapple with the responsibilities that have been forced upon him, and the genuine panic and fear that any one of us would feel if put in his place. The violence is not the front-runner of this superhero story: Hero’s character is. Except for the short fight scene at the beginning, this story follows Hero sitting in his childhood home, talking to his dad, friend and girlfriend. In the questions and answers video that Fera published the week following the films release, he was asked whether or not the small budget was the primary reason there was so little action in the film. “That wasn’t what the movie was about” he says; “from the beginning, it wasn’t about the fight, it was the aftermath”. The importance of the film is that Hero is scared and hasn’t the slightest clue how to deal with his fear. He beat death when he underwent the surgery, and he doesn’t want to die now. “I took everything people love about superheroes” Fera says, “and I got rid of it”: this is the clearest indication to where superhero stories are going. Superhero films are dominating mainstream media and in the next decade or so, the baton will be handed to young directors like Fera to tell these stories in new and inventive ways and this is the way they’ll play out. Intimate, human stories will be told through superheroes, with violence and fighting being a backdrop to change the pace and get us from one scene to the next. We will go into films to care about these characters and the fight is just the result of all the conflicts characters have been discussing and dealing with throughout the story. Marvel is already beginning to make that shift towards restrained violence to accentuate the story being told. Avengers: Civil War, released in 2016, is filled with the members on both Iron Man and Captain America’s teams arguing and debating their role in the violence in their cities and whether of not they should be policed and the ensuing fight is entirely based off that argument. Marvel is beginning to spend time following characters out of combat and showing us what motivates their actions and that is something that we will see becoming central to superhero films over the next few years.

Violence in superhero media has evolved, arguably to be more effective in stories and better create tension and conflict. The character’s personalities are constantly shaped by society’s values and thus their views on violence change alongside it. There was once a time where writing off superhero stories as childish was the norm, but that isn’t the reality we live in now. These stories have value and influence an entire generation and one can only begin to imagine the effects of having these spandex clad idealistic heroes be the role model to millions: I believe the best is yet to come.