For 10 years now, certainly since Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man in 2002, comics adaptations have led the charge at the box office. The Dark Knight Returns (2007) earned more than a billion dollars world-wide; other top-grossing films include installments from the X-Men series, the Iron Man films and The Incredibles, Pixar’s brilliant take on a superhero family such as Marvel’s Fantastic Four.
This summer, the films include the already-released Thor, the Shakespearean saga of Thor, the God of Thunder (Chris Hemsworth), exiled to earth by his even-godlier father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins), directed by the great Kenneth Branagh. There’s the X-Men prequel helmed by Matthew Vaughn, X-Men: First Class, out in June. New superstar Ryan Reynolds plays Hal Jordan, a cosmic cop who is the Green Lantern in the film of the same title out in June. The one I’m most excited about is the World War Two-era Captain America: The First Avenger, which comes out in July and leads us into next year’s Avenger film with Iron Man, the Hulk and other familiar characters joining to fight menaces no single hero can withstand.
I know my geekiness is showing, but these films keep getting made and continue to appeal to audiences for a number of reasons. As CGI technology advances, of course, it becomes more and more possible to depict the impossible (although I fear Green Lantern may be little more than this). The stories feature clear-cut heroes against real evil, and the themes—besides good versus evil, include heroism, courage, self-sacrifice and lots of other spiritual qualities represented in superhero films. As I argued in my book Holy Superheroes, we keep consuming these stories because they are filling a vital spiritual need in our lives.
As I also suggested in Holy Superheroes, they also often retell our sacred stories in ways that are more dramatic—and more dramatically cohesive—than our sacred texts. As in the life of Jesus, Captain America, the Green Lantern and the various members of the X-Men willingly take on a heroic quest to serve others, to risk—and maybe even give—their lives to save others, to push back the cosmic darkness and to stand for something good and true and noble.
As in the life of Jesus, Thor must learn what it means to walk in the world of gods and the world of men. While Jesus most certainly did not solve problems with His fists—or a big honking hammer—Christian belief in the Incarnation suggests we have to pay attention to the ways in which Jesus was fully God—and fully human. It’s a paradox that a fictional character such as Thor can help us investigate, and that might prompt further insight for us.
The long-running X-Men comic and the more recent films also force us to grapple with one of the biggest spiritual questions: How do we relate to those who are different? How do we tame our own impulses toward prejudice and hatred toward those we don’t understand?
Superhero comics always have explored real questions in the guise of brightly costumed characters, and once again we have the chance to be entertained—and maybe enlightened—by another year of the superhero.
