Superhero Media: Super

"From the twisted mind of James Gunn"; man, do you remember when James Gunn was a Troma alum known for shock horror and penis monsters? I mean in terms of his film work, instead of being known for an infamous Twitter dogpile attack orchestrated by internet Nazis as a dry-run before they targeted the head of Lucasfilm, just in case you forgot that's why Gunn was taken off Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 for a few months. Anyway, calling Super a deconstruction of the Superhero genre would be reasonably fair, but also misses quite a lot. I imagine that there are almost as many takes on Super as there are those who have really written about it, as it is the kind of film which allows interpretation of the themes and message, if there is really one there. Is Super and indictment of violence, white male rage and/or cinema culture? Perhaps. Is it a reaction to the proliferation of overly sanitised and homogenised superhero cinema in Hollywood? Probably not, but I could see someone making that argument. Or is Super a commentary on drugs, mental health and the failings of policing? Well, that's more in my lane, isn't it?

Frank Darbo is a put-upon everyman who has caught precisely one break in his life, meeting and falling in love with is wife, Sarah. Despite being unattractive, put upon and having a rubbish job, Frank isn't actually all that angry, as far as this kind of film goes, certainly not to the absurd levels of Joker or Taxi Driver, when Sarah falls into the sway of a local drug kingpin, his initial response is despair, not rage. Frank's drift towards being the Crimson Bolt is framed as being divinely inspired, quite literally, as a godlike being speaks to him and tells him that some are chosen. As I progress further in my career as a Psychotherapist, I'm finding more and more that depictions of mental health issues in media are getting to me. Frank clearly needs help and has never gotten it, same with Libby, aka Bolty, and whilst there are plenty of people with delusions who live happy lives, both Frank and Libby are led to shockingly extreme behaviour by their untreated issues. I have to admit, I almost stopped the film after watching Elliot Page having to act mounting and sexually assaulting Frank.

Thankfully, Super comes back around in the conclusion. After the expected, and somewhat cathartic, orgy of violence in the third act, where Frank rescues Sarah and has his hero moment, the tone changes and something really interesting happens. In a voiceover and montage, we see that Sarah leaves Frank, finds someone new and raises a happy family. Rather than be angry, Frank is accepting, seeing that Sarah is the chosen one, not him, and he learns to accept the good in his life for what it is. I'm not going to lie, if not for that last segment, my review of Super would be pretty harsh, as the film it pretty easy to read in the same alt-Right vein as Joker or the like. "If your wife leaves you for another man, shag a teenager and buy a lot of guns" is equivocally NOT the message of Super, in fact, it makes a strong point against violence. It's still a little "Liberal" for my radical tastes, but the idea of not doing harm because it harms people as the central ideology for a superhero certainly has potential. I don't know, my friend who loaned me his copy of Super certainly didn't get the same reads as I did from it, so maybe there's not all that much to it and all I'm seeing is my own reflection.