Over the summer a “What if?” film called Brightburn released with the premise of Superman being a villain and as expected it ends in tragedy. I have a weird curiosity when it comes to most horror films. I won’t watch them but I’ll look up the synopsis to know what happened. While perusing on IMDb I came across some reviews about the film and many of the people who liked it did because they were tired of superheroes and Superman being good. Here’s one for example:
“Great movie with a great story. If you’re tired like I am of watching superhero movies already knowing the good guy is always going to win, you’ll love this.”
That got me thinking about if people are really getting tired of good characters, of the good guys always winning?
I feel like stories like Game of Thrones propagate this belief. Yes, the ending of GoT has a sudden twist where good actually prevails, but the majority of the show promotes that only people who do bad things survive in the world. Heroes die because they’re too moral to combat against evil. This is shown as many of the morally good characters are slaughtered. People enjoy this show for the unpredictability. The good is expected to win, but more often than not they don’t. And in this show and many others, the good isn’t that good to begin with.
“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back. Only they didn’t, because they were holding on to something…That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.”
~Samwise Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
