Killing Campbell

[normanrafferty]

( Mindless Ones, Comics Commentary Blog: "Big Boys Don't Cry" )

The thesis? Modern comic-based movies don't subscribe to the Campbellian "Hero's Journey" arc. Rather, the hero never actually grows up. If anything, the hero starts by rejecting the outside world, the outside world imposes on our hero, and our hero reacts, putting things back the way

Comments

[ff00ff]

You call this problem childish, I call it capitalist. The Nolan Batman is, in your reading, fulfilling the privilege of the rich, one we are all deeply jealous of, by just staying above it all for years at a time, hoping all the commoners will sort out their problems without the lord needing to bother himself to intervene. These new crop of DC hero movies show the hero not acting because they don't owe anyone anything, not even a marginal tax increase of 3%!

[normanrafferty]

It's both childish and capitalist!

[normanrafferty]

Hoo boy. I remember Byrne's take, that Lex Luthor simply wouldn't believe that Superman had a secret identity like Clark Kent, because why would an alien so powerful ever spent even one minute pretending to be something that he's not. At the time, I thought it was silly, but your post made me think that Byrne was really commenting on Luthor, how a man who lusts for power couldn't conceive of anything else but power.