I’m pretty done with movies about comic-book superheroes. I love a crazy popcorn flick full of explosions and poorly considered dialogue as much as the next guy, More, probably. Still, there are only so many movies about ubermenschen in tights you can watch before it becomes abundantly clear that the type of heroes we line up to see is evidence of some kind of cultural abcess, festering below the surface and threatening to kill us with fever and rot.

Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of things you could say about the sicknesses of a society that worships at the altar of Dirty Harry Callahan, too. The major difference is that Dirty Harry is a man. He must accept the consequences of his decisions, good and bad. Miscalculations can cost him – his faith, his peace, his life. His body is a soft bag of meat that can be penetrated and mangled by any number of hazards. He must be very smart, or very tough, or very determined, and even if he is all of these things his plans could fail.

The alphas in lycra we worship now are, in comparison, a juvenile embarrassment. At no point do we as an audience have to countenance the possibility of failure. Our heroes are beyond the reach of mortal weaponry, by and large. If they can be harmed, they regenerate so quickly that the harm is meaningless.

The real question worth asking is the question of moral agency. Dirty Harry is an asshole. John McClain is an asshole. Just about every character Bronson ever played is a serious asshole. Their concerns are narrow, and they are generally in pursuit of a goal that will not improve the general equation as much as balance their own personal accounts. Perhaps thugs have had their way with someone they love, and these thugs must be brought back into the reach of justice. Perhaps a good name must be cleared. Perhaps the department needs to learn to value the hunches of an experienced cop over civil rights and procedure.

So the assholes set to work, in a very American way. They ignore the rules and focus on results. They accept the necessity of egg breaking in any decent omelette preparation. They harden their hearts to any collateral damage that might flow from their single-minded pursuit of one empty and meaningless head on the hydra of injustice. It is essential to our origin story that nothing great can be achieved without monomania and obsession. The American DNA still contains a strong component of Calvinism, with its direct correlation between pious industry and the favor of the almighty. To a good Calvinist, there are only a few slots available in Heaven, and the die is cast before the foundation of the world. The only way to be determine if we’re on the right track is to throw ourselves into our labors and anxiously monitor our status for evidence of God’s largesse. If he rewards us with wealth and status, we can assume that we’re on the right track, and that heaven remains within reach.

Sometimes the 70s antihero is having a crisis of faith. sometimes he is beyond the reach of belief entirely. Even in these cases, however, the Calvinist light shines through. Somehow our hero/antihero knows that he must do the right thing. It is imperative, even if it doesn’t matter. However nihilistic he may seem to us, he knows there is a cosmic scorecard, and he fears that scorecard more than he loves freedom and oblivion.

A superhero, on the other hand, is beyond most of these questions almost at the moment of his birth. From the moment a supe realizes he has powers beyond those of his peers. This is perfect Calvinism. Our hero’s virtue is so apparent that he is given something even rarer than a ticket to the Ark. His goodness is rewarded instantly, while he still has a fleshly body to glory in.
He has no real excuse to question Providence – Providence has sidled up and introduced itself.

First, I didn’t read the comic book. I wasn’t allowed to read comics at all as a child, and when I decided to flout those rules, it was never for war comics. I preferred wisecracking ducks who slept with models. I can’t tell you if the movie was accurate, and I’m not inclined to care. I’m more than willing to take the experience on its own filmic terms.

In the movie, our hero is a 98-pound weakling from Brooklyn, but heavens if he’s not a plucky so-and-so. He wants to join the Army and fight the Nazis, but the Army throws him back again and again. His pluck is noted by a german scientist, who scoops him up and turns him into exactly the soldier the Army wants – ripped, confident and completely void of personality. He struggles with a bad assignment for a few months, and then he wins the war.

Now, it’s interesting in a late-night History Channel kind of way that the Nazi enemy uses the occult power he finds in an artifact from the Norse Gods to will his way to power. It’s interesting because there are dozens of documentaries about the Reich’s fascination with recovering and using items of magical repute, and so the table is set for a confrontation between America’s faith in technology versus the old world’s faith in magic. It’s interesting, but nothing really comes of it. There is only one acceptable outcome in a movie like this. It all goes like you’d expect.

Then, if you wait through about 10 minutes of pretty credits, you get a little taste of the Avengers movie that this film exists to promote. And guess what? It’s a veritable infestation of superheroes. I think I’m gonna have to pass.