Detail Diatribe: Superheroes in Empty Worlds

Let's talk about how some superhero adaptations really struggle to capture the abject omnipresent chaos of their source material! Today, Red tries and fails to beat the "hating the MCU" allegations!

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
1:53 - On The Origins of Superheroes
9:19 - Why do superheroes superhero?
13:30 - Blue's Man of Steel Tangent
17:34 - Civil War
24:03 - Problem Children
29:02 - Nolan's Batman Trilogy
35:25 - Early MCU: Good at this!
40:12 - Later MCU: Bad at this!
51:38 - The Evolution of Captain America
1:06:34 - MCU Trust Fund Spider-Man Bad Actually
1:18:17 - Phase 4: More Heroes, Less Problems
1:20:58 - Comics!
1:21:21 - Superman's Day Off
1:24:29 - Everyone's Favorite Boy Hostage
1:26:04 - Challenges and Success Stories
1:28:36 - Blade
1:31:18 - Spider-Man 2
1:34:09 - Daredevil (Netflix)
1:38:08 - The Batman
1:41:17 - And Many More…
1:48:57 - In Conclusion

Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

[rayn]

1:22:56 Superman holding up the sky is also another example of him helping people; not just because he’s keeping the sky from crushing the Earth, but because Atlas wanted to be free of his burden specifically so he could go to his daughter’s wedding. When he comes back at the end of the issue, he thanks Superman for giving him the chance to walk his daughter down the aisle and see how shocked Zeus was at someone being willing to take the weight from Atlas’ shoulders. It’s honestly such a good comic, I love it.

[Envy_Dragon]

I think the main issue with modern superhero adaptations is that _classic_ superheroes were folk heroes, stories told to inspire people so we could imagine a world where good people stopped bad things from happening. Whereas modern superheroes are **celebrities, ** and even Hollywood can't quite figure out how to pretend that celebrities have to exist.

[oximoron]

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comics running during the Civil War film had a whole little sidebar where Spiderman tries to convince Squirrel Girl to join and she literally responds "I'm kinda busy fighting DINOSAUR ULTRON IN ANTARCTICA, can I assume your problem will probably resolve itself with little consequences?" and honestly I would take a whole series of Squirrel Girl Ignores the MCU

[coletrain]

The wild thing about MCU Spider-Man is that Daredevil and Kingpin exist like a mile away from him, but Disney doesn't want to acknowledge anything from the Netflix shows.

[rayn]

One superhero moment that always stood out to me was from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, where we see Peter save a kid from bullies. He doesn’t just chase the bullies off and call it good, he fixes up the kid’s science project, hypes up how cool said project is, and then walks the kid home. 10/10 that is a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

[maxkalbach]

One "busy superhero world" that came to my mind during the later part of the video was the prologue for The Incredibles. On the drive to his wedding, Bob breaks up an armed chase, saves a cat from a tree, combats a supervillain, stops a runaway train, apprehends a thief and bumps into two other superheroes on the way. And the entire time he was insisting that he wouldn't be late to the wedding, which he almost was.
It's only like the first ten minutes of the movie, but it gives an amazing picture of what a world thriving with superheroes looks like.

[pyark]

Just realized that this is another reason why guardians of the galaxy is so good, you always see them at the end or middle of a new job when a movie starts, making the viewer feel as if they are constantly on a quest.

[ChryosSkathe]

CW Arrowverse actually had a fun throwaway line about why Constantine couldn't help the Arrow group with stuff in his wheelhouse: "He's literally in Hell, " which is completely in character for Constantine and an actual good reason.

[Spacebattler]

Hey Red, there's an episode of Batman the Animated Series called "Trial" hat actually addresses the problem. A DA goes on the news saying that Batman is responsible for his Rogues Gallery. In response, the villains kidnap her and Batman and put them on trial where the DA cross examines all of the villains who blame Batman for their misdeeds. She eventually comes to the conclusion that the villains would have existed even without Batman. That even if they may have been lacking the supervillain gimmicks they would still be ruining the lives of Gotham citizens. In short, they created Batman.

[gregtroyan]

My Dad was an extra in the original Avengers movie and was in that deleted Captain America scene. We never ended up seeing the scene and thought it was just lost to history. When I saw you post a clip of that scene in the podcast it made me realize that it ended up out there as a bonus feature on the Blu-Ray, so I went and found the clip, and my Dad was right front-and-center at the 1:49 mark. My Dad happened to call me and I told him, "You'll never guess what I'm watching right now."

It made both of us very excited and happy, so thank you. You helped make my Dad and I very happy today. I've appreciated your content for years as a lover of history and storytelling, but you added a very personal touch to my Dad completely inadvertently, and I thought I would let you know. It's wild how something as simple as a podcast just chatting about superhero movies in a loose and fun manner can help make a father and son smile, but your podcast ended up doing that. It was real touching and sweet. Thanks for that.

[CelynBrum]

Regarding the corruption of Gotham Cops: I read a fanfic where Nightwing was in another city helping other heroes, and after stopping the villains and chatting to the heroes, he handed over the weapon the villains had been using and said something like "yeah I picked this up on instinct but actually I guess your cops can probably be trusted not to sell it or steal it, so I don't have to take it home! :)" and I like. Readjusted my view of Bats taking "trophies" completely.

[applesmcfoolishness]

I need a Detail Diatribe that's just "This is why Earth's Mightiest Heroes is the best" and it's just Red gushing about this show for two hours

[Daedelean]

This discussion made me think of something...

So, I'm an English Lit graduate, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how stories age.

I have a concept I call "Generic recursion". The theory, briefly put, is that stories first get popular because they capture the zeitgeist, they say something about the world that resonates with the audience and hooks people in. Then, as the years go by and the story ages, it builds up more internal history and lore, and gradually it becomes less and less about the zeitgeist and more about building on its own internal continuity. Until finally it doesn't say anything about the outside world but only comments on itself.

Superman first appears in the Great Depression and deals with Great Depression-type stories, and then WW2-type stories. Big current events that weighed heavily on entire societies. But by now Superman-stories are about... well, about being Superman-stories, and what it means to be a Superman story. About being a world filled with superpowered beings and what that means for the superpowered beings in that world.

Along the way, any connection to real life has been lost. And it grows less welcoming to new audiences, as it doubles down on appealing to the audiences who are steeped in the genre's history and demand expansive continuity geekery to make it all feel worthwhile. It has gone from something popular that commented on the zeitgeist to something insular that only looks inwards.

[avichaid]

So, can we summarize the later MCU as "Tony desperately tries to quit being Iron Man until he dies"?

[michaeltodd]

One of my favorite parts of Across the Spider-verse was that the various Spider-people are always, *constantly* saving people. From disasters, from petty crims, from villains, they are constantly helping people because every world *needs* a Spiderman.

[kidfloat]

Part of what makes One Punch Man such a brilliant superhero satire is that it explicitly confronts the issue of “why do superheroes need to exist?” Not in the sense that there aren’t reasons for heroes to exist in-universe, but Saitama’s core conflict is the ennui that results from handling every confrontation without the slightest effort, thus robbing him of the emotional impact of crimefighting. The story purposefully takes the subtextual problem of “emptiness” you’re speaking about and makes it part of the text.

[geofff.]

Heroes can create their own villains, but I think people forget that more often than not villains actually create their own heroes.

[sashasscribbles]

Its weird that muggings seem beneith Iron Man's skillset meanwhile saving a cat from a tree is totally something Superman would do

[floataway]

I feel like the thing the MCU is missing are sidekicks. They are the ones who take care of things while the boss is away, or the small time stuff that doesn't warrant your Batman coming out to punch someone. I loved the OG run of Teen Titans, because that entire series was basically just "Robin and his friends try their best to solve things without involving the Justice League", and they were great! The characters got to have evolving storylines without being overshadowed, the world felt alive, and by extension, it zoomed the microscope in even further on how alive the world of the Justice League was, because there was all this happening even beyond the heavy hitters going out and doing stuff all the time.

[tigamaki]

The crazy thing about Far From Home is it HAD a scene of Peter dealing with street level crime and protecting his neighbourhood. And it even contained a joke about him telling the police they'd have to pick up the slack while he's gone. It ended up deleted but it's in "Peter's To Do List" on the blu-ray.

It's a shame because while it isn't him rescuing civvies it still has him flipping about doing fun web tricks, messing with people and quipping, and even bantering with the local cops in a way that implies he has rapport with them (aka does this a lot)