Episode 67: Little Man, Big Adventures

"I'm just your average ordinary everyday superhero/trying to save the world/but never really sure/I'm just your average ordinary everyday superhero/nothing more than that/that's all I really am."

                           -Smash Mouth, "Everyday Superhero"

  I love when a story revolves around an average Joe, normal kind of person who gets thrust into extraordinary circumstances, where people depend on them, and they pull it off. I love seeing ordinary guys get to be the hero.

    Stories of powerful heroes who swoop down, kick butt and chew bubblegum are good too, sure, but they don't have the same feel as seeing someone overcome the odds. We all love seeing Superman fly down and put the beatdown on some big bad guy, while people cheer or watch in awe from the sidelines. But what's more interesting to me, gets me more invested, are the hard-fought victories. For example, Daredevil finally defeating Kingpin at the end of Daredevil season 3. Please (pretty please) watch this: https://youtu.be/WUEbhNSPpik.

"God knows I want to. But you don't get to destroy who I am."

  Kingpin tells Daredevil to kill him. Daredevil refuses, even though he really wants to. Killing Kingpin puts an end to so much suffering, finally puts an undeniable stopping point to an evil man's reign of terror.

   But he won't kill him. Daredevil will not kill, not even his despicable nemesis. Because someone like him does not get to destroy him any further than he already has. Kingpin could, and did, take so much away from Daredevil. But one thing he could never take away was his morals. Who he was.

   Daredevil chose to make Kingpin live in a cell, forced him to live with his defeat. To know that the man he tortured lived to take him down.

Kick-Ass

  This movie is one of my favorite movies. Because it revolves around a guy who just decides to be a superhero because his city needs one and it doesn't seem like anyone else is trying. And you know what? He actually pulls it off. His antics in trying to be a superhero make him end up involved in the crosshairs of violent gang people, and he finds himself in the midst of people who actually are superheroes.

   But, despite being a normal guy with no powers and hardly any discernible skills, he pulls off being a hero. He goes into being a superhero with little more than a dedication to doing what's right and fighting evil, and he actually comes out on the other side as a successful superhero.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

  This movie, the latest entry in the MCU as of this writing, came out a few days. I saw it on release day. Critics are giving it pretty middling reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, as of this writing, the critics' score sits at a measly 48%, while the audience score is a much better 84%. Like I talked about in my Fresh Tomatoes episode, I am more keen to paying attention to what the audience says. The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus says this: "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania mostly lacks the spark of fun that elevated earlier adventures, but Jonathan Majors' Kang is a thrilling villain poised to alter the course of the MCU."

    See what their main complaint is? That it "lacks the spark of fun that elevated earlier adventures". They are saying that they don't like the high, multiversal stakes of Quantumania. The first two Ant-Man movies were pretty low-stakes, fun adventures that focused on comedy and no real serious, worldly consequences to the good guys losing. They don't like that Quantumania turns that on its head and makes the titular heroes face a multiversal villain with literal timelines on the line. 

    But I think that's exactly the appeal of the movie. The Rotten Tomatoes critics are missing the point. Ant-Man and the Wasp, a pair of bug-based heroes, aren't actually the kind of heroes you'd expect to stop someone who has the kind of power that can literally wipe whole timelines from existence. They aren't used to dealing with those kinds of stakes. Well they are, but no by themselves. When they've dealt with those kind of stakes, they've had the rest of the Avengers with them. But when they were faced with those stakes on their own devices, they pulled it off. They actually stopped Kang (or at least that variant of him). And that's big. The little guys rose up to the challenge and won.

Anyway, see you next week!