Someone did an analysis of what would happen if Superman actually punched you at full strength, and it turns out his fist would never connect with you, because you’d be vaporized by the wave of nuclear explosions erupting from his knuckles as they caused air molecules to fuse in nanoseconds.
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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Showerthoughts
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Watch Bully Maguire
Watch The Boys.
And Invincible
But even in The Boys it’s just the bad guys doing that.
The dark reality is that the good guys need to watch themselves too.
Spoiler for the latest season and the spinoff
They don't mostly because they know the risk.
In Gen V, the main character gets her powers by accidentally killing her parents.
And in the latest season, Huey's dad kills a bunch of patients because of his confusion due to dementia.
I think Zach Snyder tried for this in Batman v Superman but of course he did so with no appreciation of the themes or subtlety. And Martha.
It always bugged me how in Man of Steel, Superman has to deal with the moral quandary of breaking the bad guy’s neck at the cost of vaporizing a family.
Like they spent the previous 20 minutes punching each other through buildings. No way that was the first family they killed.
I mean this is how Civil War and Age of Ultron comes about?
Invincible covers this a lot.
It's a major plot point in avengers as well, tbf, and why they spit up.
I loved the first season of invincible. The thought came after watching a gif of captain America splitting a log with he bare hands. Like there should be PPE for just being around a super hero. He split that log with enough force to send a splinter strait through someone skull.
Like deku in my hero flicks air to create a pressure wave that can propel him into the sky. The insane amount of force at play should have more collateral damage.
Misfits is not really what you're asking for, but is a more light hearted a-typical superhero show about people who were sentenced to community service all accidentally gaining super powers. They mostly use their powers selfishly but not in evil ways. It's pretty well done as far as character growth
This was a great show.
Love this scene
It’s good, but upon re-watching it now from when I first watched it, and thinking a little differently about it - Superman talks about needing to be careful to not hurt people and cause deaths. Then he proceeds to put Darkseid through several buildings that obviously weren’t evacuated, followed by punching him so hard he goes through a couple layers of earth and totally destroys a bunch of infrastructure. He essentially shows his power and ignores everything he just said.
I still love seeing Superman let loose and fuck Darkseid’s shit up though. 😂
I hadn't seen it before so my first thought was "uhhh... Superman?"
I mean were those buildings even evacuated? He probably killed a fair few innocent bystanders there 😂
Superman knows where there's people and where there isn't. Authors can argue there wasn't anyone there.
I wonder what insurance would look like for those people, tho. Like if you live in a city where this sort of thing happens even once every few years, nobody is going to insure the area. Maybe they have some sort of government program like FEMA, but like.. even that would probably be very limited.
So he may not be killing people outright, but he is very likely still absolutely destroying their lives at roughly the scale of a tornado.
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While only a comic its a fantastic telling of a superhero going insane and the others trying to stop him. The Plutonian levels whole cities and kills millions in the first issue lol. It's fucking wild.
Didn't The Incredibles have a backstory like that where supes are basically illegal after they caused too much collateral damage?
Mr. Incredible is sued for stopping a man's suicide and injuring him instead.
In a Disney film.
This is explicitly stated, to the camera, within the first 5 minutes.
Holy shit Disney, you hadn't "Up'd" us yet, chill
It’s also got some somewhat overt Objectivist messaging? Syndrome’s line: “when everyone is super, no one will be.” is fascinating.
Like, you can make an argument that a major message of the film is that some people are born special and more capable than others, and should be alotted special privileges. Syndrome isn’t one of the golden few, and rather than accept that, he attempts to democratize super powers to some extent (although because he’s the bad guy, part of his plan is making money from this).
I love the film, I just get some odd vibes from it at times.
The first Incredibles movie was released two years before Pixar was bought by Disney
And it was Brad Bird working on it, a Simpsons alumni. They always punch higher than usual writers.
Pixar wasn't owned by them, but they were contractually obligated to be making movies for and with Disney
This article is a great rundown of Pixar and Disney, but while the latter did publish Pixar's movies through the nineties and early naughties they had very little creative influence over them - especially compared to what would come post acquisition. Even the four "transitional" films (that had already begun production in 2006) are clearly more Pixar than Disney.
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Watch The Boys for exactly that. You won't get that from Disney.
Maybe season 1 of the boys. It devolves into disgust porn in the later seasons.
I made it to the first episode of season 3. It was just trying way too hard at that point to not be a show anymore but pure shock value
Also the Invincible animated series does it too.
I totally agree with both your comments, but to be fair, they said "movies".
Brightburn. I haven't seen it (yet), but alternate universe where Superman becomes evil. Trailers showed him absolutely wrecking his classmates in anger and frustration.
That movie is pretty fucked, but in a weird way that makes it good? Like it's kinda weird seeing Elizabeth Banks and that one guy from The Office being the parents, but they do a good job.
There's one scene in particular that kinda fucked me up, but you haven't seen it so I won't tell you.
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They cut all such scenes and pasted into The Boys, in a Mark Twain style “Sprinkle these around as you see fit!”.
Perhaps they are going for a tone of heroic escapism, or fantastical drama over gory and downbeat "realism".
If you really just want to see heroes maiming people it's been done. Invincible, The Boys (show and comic). Even back to the 90s there were comics like Stormwatch that centered on the premise of "realistic" consequences of super powers.
The web serial Worm by Wildbow, written like 10-15 years ago maybe, is also a pretty good superhero deconstruction.
Aye, it's all about what theme you're exploring or mood that's being set. We don't have batman exploding into mist when he fights people who can lift planes/cruise ships with their bare hands, because that's not the story being told. When the theme is about the consequences of powers, rather than the escapism and being good (the 'super' part of superman being his morals and convictions), we get the boys and their (gory) explosions.
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