Comic book movies bring complex heroes to our youth

When gazing over the crowd at any comic-book movie, one sees a wide range of characters both on- and off-screen.

While their groups vary in demographics, their mission is the same - they want to see that awesome new movie where one person takes the weight of the world on his or her shoulders and proves there is something good deep inside all of us - except things are a little different these days.

The days of patently good and evil characters are long gone. Many of our modern heroes are awash in a sea of grey intentions and complex goals - yet their audience remains unchanged. Like the current generation of adults, today's teens are growing up with comic books. But do gray heroes create a gray populace?

The business of comic books had been in trouble for a long time. The sales of actual comic books have been sliding for many years and Marvel Comics even declared bankruptcy in the '90s.

For both Marvel Comics and its chief rival DC Comics, movies have been the saving grace, making them millions of dollars. Just this past weekend Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" set box-office records.

With their popularity, comic-book movies are set to supercede their paperback forefathers as the creators of cultural mythos.

In the past, comic books have served as the dyed-in-the-wool representations of right and wrong - Captain America defeated the Nazis, Batman fought the Joker and so on. Each representation of evil was clean-cut and clear.

This was done partially because comics were marketed toward a young market. However, the content of comic books has always reflected the society that produced them.

The world itself was not so cut and dry, but the image presented was that simple. Our enemies were evil, and the U.S. a force of pure good. The true complexities of the characters involved and the collateral damage of war were left hidden and unreported.

The messages given to both adults and children were similar and, in truth, those comic books were not far from the propaganda the U.S. government used to rally the nation to support its cause.

Times changed though. The fall of communism and a more intrepid media led the world to a new era of knowledge. Adults were now steeped in the truth that there is no dichotomous good and evil.

Comic books didn't really change all that much, though. Sure there were some more complex stories, but the market and the message remained the same. There are those who are good and those who are evil.

Here we see a slight break in the portrayal of the world. Our children are still sheltered from the world, but we are not.

The late '90s and early 2000s, Sept. 11 specifically, changed damned near everything.

The complex arguments and discussions that were hidden in the past are now out in the open. TV news is business and our society is more complex and faster.

Children are no longer protected from the complexity of the world. It is now beamed into their homes through the Internet and television. Rising to the occasion, comic books found a new medium and a new hope: movies.

Interestingly, some of the earlier comic-book movies that adhered to the old style of good and evil fail at the box office. Joel Schumacher's "Batman Forever" and "Batman and Robin," with their campy portrayal of violence and lack of complexity, bombed at the box office.

Comic-book movies hit it big in the 2000s with the popular movie versions of The X-Men, Spider-Man and Frank Miller's gritty Sin City.

The old medium is gone. Kids aren't reading comics nearly as much as they have in the past - they now come to their heroes through the big screen portrayals of these characters, who themselves are more complex than ever.

"The Dark Knight" portrays Batman as a vigilante, both loved and hated by the populace he protects. Mobsters and convicted criminals are now victims and the hero has some rather severe psychological problems.

These movies will not create a gray populace - they feed one that already exists.

Today's kids don't need the heroes of years past because the world they live in is faster and harder than ever. They can no longer relate to pristine imagines of valor.

In the end, it will not be the heroes themselves that matter, but young people's critical reasoning and ability to understand complexity.

We don't seem to understand that yet, though, and still cling to old standards.

Maybe we really do need Batman.



Originally published in The Daily Reveille...