Why We Love Comic Book MoviesSure, the special effects are great, but there's something more drawing us to these fantastic stories.by Frank Smith |
posted 6/29/2004
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Spider-Man 2
Sometimes their struggles are even deeper. Take, for instance, the scene in one of the movie posters for Spider-Man 2 (shown here). Spider-Man, unmasked and with his back to us, stands high on a windswept ledge, overlooking the city as the dawn breaks. Its title, "Choice," shows us—through Peter Parker's eyes—the possibilities that lie before him. He can wield his great powers against evil, though this may well cost him his own life. He can use those powers to his own gain, for who could stand against him? Or he can simply walk away from the fight, and lead the long, happy, normal life for which he longs.
Does this picture seem familiar? Those choices? If not, then check out Luke 4:5-13.
Spider-Man struggles with the responsibility that accompanied powers for which he never asked. The X-Men, hounded for being different, nevertheless attempt to defend the same humanity that hunts them down. Batman watched his parents gunned down in an alley and now wages a fierce battle on two fronts: to protect the innocent from criminals, and to avoid slipping into the black holes of revenge and despair. Do these protagonists remind you of anyone? Can you identify with them?
These characters may have super strength. They may be able to turn invisible, or even invulnerable. But their inner battles (and their struggles in spite of them) to right wrongs and take up the challenge of evil, are our own—albeit writ large, colorful and on a grand scale.
It's this aspect of the comic book that brings me to the second, more compelling reason behind its popularity. A line from The Matrix (ironically, a movie that was made into a comic book!) puts it into focus. Morpheus asks Neo, "Haven't you had a feeling … that there's something wrong with the world? You've felt it your entire life. You don't know what it is, but it's there, everywhere- (something) pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth?"
We all nod with Neo, because we've felt it our entire lives as well. We know, deep within our souls, that we are more than a haphazard collection of molecules. We know that Someone far greater than ourselves exists, and that mankind cannot be the measure of all things. Despite the best efforts of postmodern culture, the flesh and the Devil himself, we know that good and evil are not relative, interchangeable concepts born of a selfish instinct for survival. We know there's a daily, invisible battle going on around us, pitting humanity against inhumanity. And we sense, deep inside, that we must ultimately choose the side on which we will serve.
To borrow a wonderful illustration from John White's The Fight, people resonate with these truths, like the string in a piano that vibrates when a note is struck close by. Whether they're described in a tale by the fireside, written in a comic book or projected onto the wide screen, these deeper truths fire our imaginations. They wake us up, if only temporarily and vicariously, to something much greater than ourselves. And once awakened? We shed our "lives of quiet desperation" like Clark Kent's blue suit and glasses, and our hearts take to the sky. And we come out afterward longing to do it again.
Is this resonance wrong? Not in and of itself. White says, "There is no harm in vibrating. The cord was made to vibrate, and vibrate powerfully." And as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien have noted, this resonance bears witness to the spiritual reality that exists "behind the scenes." We long to draw our swords for Aslan because it's in our nature to do so. We were made for the heroic, the fight for truth, the battle against evil. And so when we see Superman fly, part of us naturally longs to spring into action and leap into the cosmic battle beside him.
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