Over the past half decade or so superhero films have been coming at us faster than a speeding bullet. There have been new films, sequels, prequels, origin stories, those darker "reboots of the franchise" [a terrible, loveless term] and with Spiderman there is now a reimaginging origin story of the reboot.
It appears that the bottom of the super-barrel is becoming more translucent. Recently the superhero genre has began throwing up more left of centre characters onto celluloid. Thor, Captain America and the one whose power appeared to be the ability to hold up a minor's lamp have all came to the fore. And now the inevitability has finally happened. Captain Planet is being made into a film. Captain Planet. The worst superhero ever.
A superhero cartoon with all the appearance of having been commissioned by the UN, the premise was Captain Planet, with the help of children known as Planeteers, fought those who preferred profit margins and corner-cutting over well managed environmentalism. Captain Planet came with a very unsubtle (and in trying to make it cool) uncool agenda of encouraging "the kids" to be environmentally friendly.
Perhaps it was that I first encountered Captain Planet as a Gaelic re-dubbing of the show and perhaps it was that I was not the target audience but I think it was more to do with the simple fact Captain Planet was inherently rubbish.
Every superhero has a weakness and his was notably troubling to me. His weakness wasn't some sort of magical space rock, getting his hair cut, magnets or even a thing for gin. Nope, Captain Planet was struck useless with pollution. That's right - the very thing that he is trying to tackle. How pointless is that? I would think that the a typical scene from the upcoming film will be something like this:
[children]: We are in over our heads here. Best summon Captain Planet. Ok - let's touch our rings [steady now]
Swoosh! Captain Planet (played by Mel Gibson from Lethal Weapon 1) bursts through the earth and flies about. Eventually he lands beside the Planeteers.
[children]: Hi Captain Planet! Please help us.
[Mel Gibson]: What seems to be the problem?
[children]: It's over there, Captain Planet. Just in those containers.
[Mel Gibson]: Something over there? In the?.. dear sweet mother of... they've (cough) Jeezus... mixed clear with... green bottles in the recycling bank. What monsters would do... I am not feeling too good, Planeteers...
[children] What? Where are you going, Captain Planet?
[Mel Gibson]: I need to go, have a wash, try to get the image out of my head, you know?
Later, the Planeteers are hiding beside a rusting truck next to a river in the Rain Forest. It is night and the children talk in whispers.
[Children]: We have to stop these Global Incorporate goons from dumping the toxic waste into this river. The river leads through the rare frog habitat and right to the village. If this fragile ecosystem is disturbed at all it will lead to the end of any hope to cure Mother Earth. Let's call Captain Planet.
[The children use their telepathic link to contact Captain Planet]: Captain Planet - we have uncovered the evil plan of Global Incorporate, they are pouring toxic waste into the...
[Mel Gibson]: Toxic waste? Ok kids, let me stop you there. I am taking a Duvet Day.
Would you go see that? Of course you wouldn't. But that's what they will make. And if they don't, it will be a farce of the original.
The film Kick-Ass showed the flip-side to the genre. Ordinary people taking on the roles of the superheroes with no discernible extraordinary power. I have riffed before in this blog that life is imitating fiction in this light: Americans taking it upon themselves to be superheroes/vigilantes around their own small, white picket fence communities.
Well, as life imitates fiction so Britain does with the USA as last night the television programme Superheroes of Suburbia (Channel 4) revealed. The phenominon of ordinary folk taking to the streets in capes was told through following 3 of those who had taken up the venture.
We saw man who wears a costume crossed between Batman, police riot gear and an Ancient Greek warrior. The Dark Spartan (his secret identity name, name on passport: William) patrols the mean streets to help drunk citizens get home by night and by day is a husband and father of two, late 20 something year old who works in finance. His wife sits between shaking her head in "what can you do?" disbelief at his nocturnal hobby and taking a number of drugs for the stress she has developed at his nocturnal hobby.
To ease his wife's worries, The Dark Spartan interviews for a side-kick. A man dressed in an all-in-one spandex body suit and calling himself "The Void" comes round to their house. He displays his skills with a walking cane - twirling it (slowly) and occasionally thrusting it out in the back garden. The wife asks if the cane was legal. The Void replies, "Yes. I need it because I have IBS" (only by day, I would assume).
Kieran, 17, also wants to be a superhero. Noir ("because it means black") was just starting out. He wants to start out quite ambitiously for someone who has panic attacks in public spaces, continually takes off his mask thereby revealing his identity and says that his martial arts training (he is getting lessons from his friend, Barry - in my opinion a far more likely candidate to be a superhero) is not going too well: "I find co-ordination difficult". Noir is out to catch and punch a mugger he read about in the local paper. The mugger broke the arm of a 16 year old girl and has not been brought to justice. Things are about to change.
Noir gets down to the detective work. Wandering the streets dressed all in black, save for a red eye-mask (that's not Noir, what kind of two-bit thinking is that? Batman doesn't have a Cat-mobile) asking at the local butchers and hairdressers if they know anything about the mugging. They don't. They can't even help him trace the girl.
I can't help thinking if he went to the local press offices they might have been able to help - but he doesn't go. [Why am I even getting myself involved here? He is a grown boy walking about with what looks like a cereal box torn into a tiny eye mask on his face. Should he actually track down the mugger it will either go one of two ways - he'll get mugged or Noir will go beserk and smash the mugger's head into a pulp with a telephone. Both outcomes are pretty bad, really.]
When he does eventually get in touch with the girl, (almost certainly with the help of a TV crew following him) it is all a little sad. She has been too traumatised to leave the house since and doesn't want to talk, even to a superhero. Noir retires to his lair (bedroom) and resolves to write her a letter saying things will get better and keep hope in the goodness of people. Noir has the hand writing of a serial killer and would be best to invest in a Noir-typewriter. He delivers his letter with a box of Malteasers - leaving them at her door.
This, to me, seems an all round superior heroic act.
Of course, not all home-spun superheroes are failures. There lurks Ken, The Shadow. An ex-army man, Ken roams the streets looking to stop anti-social behaviour. With a full ninja outfit, fully stocked out armoury in his shed (replete with ninja stars, actual proper gun rifles, swords and even a Bond-esque breathing straw shaped like water bamboo for underwater surprise attacks) Ken stalks out his victims... er I mean wrongdoers... with military precision. He uses a GI Joe action figure as himself, chalk drawn streets on the back garden paving slabs and matchbox cars to explain how he will stop a group of boy racers. When he finally decides to confront the youths after following their movements for 5 weeks, he sits in a bush for a while, waiting - admitting to urinating on himself, not wanting to break cover - but they fail to show. So he demonstrates what he would have done (it is terrifying to be fair and in no way, surely, legal) and goes home.
All these would-be superheroes have a commonality. They all should seek mental health help. The Dark Spartan's wife says that she feels he is not happy with who he is. Noir has a few diagnosed mental health issues already. Ken in his White Transit Van of Patient Death is psychotic.
The thing is - none of them need to to do all this nonsense to be better than a legitimate movie superhero. If they only recycled their plastic cartons regularly and put up a solar panel or two then they would be way more effective than a certain Caiptean Planaid. And maybe that was the point of that cartoon all along.
