Let's stop and think for a sec, folks. When was the last time we saw a deconstruction of a superhero film in which the superheroes were actually torn to pieces with anything other than a shrug and a knowing wink to the audience? If you said Deadpool, you're wrong, because it embraces the cliches it spends most of it's time mocking, which was the same deal with Kick-Ass, which actually has the message of "Regular people can't be superheroes...unless they know what they're doing."
Given how oversaturated this genre as a whole is threatening to become, I think it's time we get a superhero property that actually hates superheroes. Ladies and gentleman, that's why we need The Boys. For those of you unaware of The Boys, it's a comic series written by Garth Ennis, who famously hates all but a handful of superheroes, detailing the story of a CIA black-ops unit tasked with keeping unruly at best and monstrous at worst superheroes in line. It's darkly comedic, disturbing, and an incredibly good read if you're willing to go all the way through.
The reason I think we should all be excited for the Boys is because we have yet to get a superhero movie that really portrays superheroes saving the day as the wrong thing. In Man of Steel, Clark chooses to have a brawl with Zod in a highly populated city center, and the sequel chooses to ignore this plotline and focus on Superman being framed for a shooting in an African village or something. In Civil War, we're supposed to see the Sokovia Accords as a potentially good idea, but it completely ignores the fact that a) a dozen people died while the Avengers regularly saved millions of lives, but that's somehow important to government that are willing to bomb villages full of innocents if it means killing terrorists, b) the actual bill would turn the Avengers into a UN-sanctioned military squad, and c) the incident that led to the bill being signed led to a dozen deaths, when hundreds could have died, alongside the only person capable of leading the Avengers.
In superhero movies focused on deconstructing heroism, they ultimately come to the conclusion that the heroes are always doing the right thing. The Boys never comes to that conclusion, and the heroes in the story are portrayed as destructive and idiotic, regularly doing more harm than good. How good would it be to see a superhero knock over a building full of innocents, then actually get called out on it, and be wrong? Hell, that's how the series opens.
The idea of superheroes being totally useless to the greater good is an incredibly fascinating idea that will never really be explored by Marvel or DC (and nor should they), so why not let a third party (in this case, Garth Ennis and Seth Rogen) tell the story I (and you) want to see?
Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments below.
