I went and saw Man of Steel. It was surprising good. I have no idea how they make the movies so much better than the comic. Anyhow…
The comic movies in the last decade have two patterns emerging that I find interesting: we are not alone in the world, and we love to see the modern world destroyed.
“We are not alone” plays out on every level, from we are not on a lonely rock in the universe (and have a lot more to know/fear than deity) all the way to I am not alone in my freakiness (but it doesn’t get any easier when we find our freaks of a feather).
For the other part, our major cities, and especially New York City and the Golden Gate Bridge, are really getting torn up. I’ve no idea why that is, perhaps we just destroy what we have around us. I wonder if the 9/11 terrorist attacks stuck in this collective cultural consciousness the way that the nuclear bombs in Japan supposedly did in that culture (I say supposedly because I don’t know, and don’t want to reduce either horrible instance; it is just that when something this horrible happens to people, they build narratives around it, and I wonder if the destruction we are capable of in computer graphics and animation are a direct expression of that).
There is something else besides those two, but it is probably just me being a parent. Well, I hope so. See, I cry a lot. In general, but also during movies. Maybe I use it as therapy (scratch that, it is definitely the case!), but I feel a tremendous catharsis in empathizing with the characters as they play out in our modern myths. And because so much of our personal myth is tied to our childhood, I am affected very much by children, even as they grow adult bodies around their delicate minds. I am near such a mind in a tiny, soft body a lot these days. It grows a lot slower than in the movies, but it is just as cathartic, painful and joyous to watch.