Killing Campbell

Dec 31, 2014 13:09

( Mindless Ones, Comics Commentary Blog: "Big Boys Don't Cry" )

The thesis? Modern comic-based movies don't subscribe to the Campbellian "Hero's Journey" arc. Rather, the hero never actually grows up. If anything, the hero starts by rejecting the outside world, the outside world imposes on our hero, and our hero reacts, putting things back the way they were. Like a Byronic hero, the character doesn't have a place in the story... but the character doesn't always meet a tragic ending. In these movies, the hero triumphs anyway.

This modern-comix hero works in Guardians of the Galaxy because the team is purposefully set up to be a bunch of angry misfits. Time is spent with them complaining about their problems. The characters actually do have an arc -- they learn to put aside their differences and to work together. In the end, they triumph because they are willing to fight, even for a cause they have little or no stake in, in the first place. It's not their planet, after all. And earlier, these very same people had arrested them! Our heroes step in to deal with a mess they helped create, and then they ride off into the sunset, always apart.

This modern-comix hero fails in the Nolan-verse Batman movies. Nolan-Batman learns nothing from his adventures. He is helplessly manipulated by his environment. He spends years alone, by himself, doing absolutely nothing. And worst of all, other people are frequently shown doing more, and making greater sacrifice, than our hero. The movies are framed in such a way that the audience is to identify with Nolan-Batman: the narrative follows him from genesis, through his travails, and eventually to his end. But Nolan-Batman barely even reacts to his world, and he takes no ownership for what he causes. Joker and Bane wouldn't even have any power if it weren't for his own mistakes. Heck, Bane's plot wouldn't even work, if Batman wasn't so horribly negligent at even the most basic precautions. Our hero's lack of action created this mess, other people step in to fix it, and then our hero goes back to doing nothing.

The DC movies have a dark side to them -- the hero who is demonstrably more powerful than others, and yet who actively refuses to help people. Going by Mindless-One's thesis, Nolan-Batman resonates with modern audiences because they identify with his disillusionment. To quote Watchmen's Rorschach: "[A]ll the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save us!... and I'll look down and whisper 'No.'" It's a adolescent's power fantasy, the child crying that, "Someday, I'll be on top, and then you'll be sorry." In the Marvel movies, sometimes the heroes can be bothered to take time out to help people, even if those people will inevitably reject them.
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