(Jul 1, 2026 06:09 AM)Magical Realist Wrote: Quote:Like any James Gunn related film it is half-comedy or tongue-in-cheek (whatever you want to call it). It's not political.
That's what I thought. There's a trend now in depicting superheroes as more human and unscrupulous figures. A sort of self-conscious deconstruction of the whole genre. [...]
Aside from the unkempt, hipster wannabe look and slaying villains, his "Supergirl" is still pretty tame, though, as is apparently Superman. The Kryptonians are two supes that no one can really divorce from their idealized do-gooder template without causing an apocalyptic uproar. Though an extended television adaptation of
Kingdom Come might rattle their image a little bit.
Whereas "unscrupulous" and deconstruction is
The Boys in a maximum nutshell, though more so the original
Garth Ennis comic book series than the TV adaptation. The former was utterly cynical about superheroes, whereas the latter depicts some of them as half-competent while still portraying them as thoroughly despicable in terms of morals.
In between, of course, was
Watchmen -- which historically was just the first mature rendering of supes rather than being anti-supes. The TV shows from
The Punisher to
Jessica Jones to
Titans to
Daredevil to
Legend were vastly better in character development than the big-budget movies of only two hours plus. We have yet to see what the revivals of
Daredevil (etc) are like, though, after they were originally cancelled on Netflix. Broadcast TV
Agents of Shield and
Gotham as mentions, too, though
Gotham really went crazy off the rails at times.
Jul 1, 2026 06:58 AM
