The TIFF Midnight Madness Blog: SUPER: The Hero You Can Be.

9/8/10

SUPER: The Hero You Can Be.

Not every superhero is Superman.

SUPER's Crimson Bolt is not necessarily the hero the world needs. He's the hero he can be. He's a guy (Rainn Wilson) with a suit, a wrench and a tragic origin story—his beautiful girlfriend (Liv Tyler) left him for a jerk (Kevin Bacon). And that's a kind of injustice, a mundane injustice that heroes like the Avengers and even the Justice League overlook. (The B.P.R.D. probably sympathize, but they're holding back Lovecraftian frog people).

Most superheroes have more in common with the Crimson Bolt than Superman, who always engages with proportionate response and who always knows what's right, which might be his greatest power. Most superheroes, the ones you don't hear much about, are peripheral to galactic wars and identity crises. But they have something and they either want to help someone or right a wrong.

Most superheroes aren't the X-Men, they're more like heir shunned, subterranean cousins, the Morlocks or DC's Legion of Substitute Heroes. People with often terrifying but unappealing powers like Infectious Lass, whose body is home to a many, many infectious diseases.

Powers like that make the X-Men's complaints about not being accepted for who they are seem whiny. But Infectious Lass and heroes like Matter-Eater Lad, the Badger, Detective Chimp, Doop and Dogwelder are happy to put their skills to the service of humanity.

Sometimes a hero is a guy with no superpowers, but some anger and entitlement issues. A guy who's lost too much. A guy who's driven too far like Kick Ass' Big Daddy, Mr. Furious in Mystery Men, or Michael Douglas in Falling Down, (or, really, in many of his movies), but with a suit that's power red. Not every vigilante has the moral compass and massive wealth of Bruce Wayne or the Punisher's cool shirt and facility with firepower.