Often, there is much pap to traverse. Such as today's review of the film Suicide Squad. It sounds like a hot mess, and not something I would be inclined to see. I do like some superhero films, especially Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, but I find many of them to be CGI franchised nightmares these days.
The reviewer Glen Weldon did make one poignant point (beyond disliking the film) in regards to this new trend in the antihero, and I am somewhat paraphrasing parts of it:
As a culture we embrace the antihero because we think it's more sophisticated. We recognize the world is not black & white, and moral ambiguity and ambivalence is more real. We tell ourselves that and we are smug about it. But the real reason we are doing it and we embrace the antihero is because we don't have the guts to embrace the hero. We are too cowardly and too cynical to believe in the hero. We distrust ideals because they are too hopeful and sincere. If we believed in heroes that embodied these ideals, it actually would mean we'd have to risk something, to put ourselves out there, to be hopeful and sincere, and to look hokey and uncool. So this film is made for fanboys who live inside that default reflexive cynicism that risks nothing and is therefore lazy. It doesn't put itself out there to try to separate itself from everything we are seeing.While I am prone to the darkness and gritty reality in many films these days, I have to agree that this is quite the quagmire we got ourselves into. We can no longer believe in goodness, to the point where it is completely uncool to do so. And the few groups with the courage to have convictions, such as Islamic terrorists, some social justice warriors, and a few straggling communists, have distorted the idea of good to the point where it has either been inverted to evil or diffused into some bland meddling compassion.
For the rest of us, there is that niggling question that many of us just can't answer (from Sebastian Junger):
“What would you risk dying for—and for whom—is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask themselves. The vast majority of people in modern society are able to pass their whole lives without ever having to answer that question, which is both an enormous blessing and a significant loss.”Truth can not be good, unless accompanied by Virtue. And it was always the exemplar of the superhero that held this position. So if we are not able to allow ourselves to get lost in entertaining fodder with such affirmative values anymore, how are we to expect our deities and prophets to do any better?
I suppose we need to call the Batman.
The actions of the great heroes show us not only how to act, but why we ought to act that way; they give us clues about the end and goods for which we should be living, and show how certain actions fulfill those ends or goods. — Robert Spitzer