Seriously, this kind of stuff is what makes most superhero movies/content so dumb. When they're getting tossed through buildings and causing literally trillions of dollars of damage every fight, while magically not hurting innocents or getting the world pissed at them, it completely removes it from any chance of being even realated to the real world.
Some of the best super hero content is great specifically because they at least attempt to keep things grounded in mortal reality. Unfortunately, the only one I can think of right now that exemplifies it well is the blatantly obvious The Boys.
Hopefully others know of way more/better ones. I know some content creators understand this problem, so there has got to be more than a handful.
I think this is what The Incredibles does very well. It throws you into a world with super heros, makes you think they're cool, then shows you what would actually happen to them when they start "saving" people and smashing up infrastructure. Probably one of the best super hero movies out there.
Yeah except in the modern day they'd have been protected by good Samaritan laws. It makes sense in those circumstances but basically what happened was the heroes getting sued and prosecuted for moving a non-responsive to the side of the road to avoid them getting hit by traffic.
That sounds ridiculous but that's literally an example from China where they don't have those protections. People suing helpful bystanders and arguing that them helping is them taking on responsibility.
Now granted, making 9/11 look like a scheduled demolition (don't crack wise conspiracy nuts) well stretches beyond what those exemptions might be able to cover, BUT, the heroes could get leniency if they can prove that they were trying to take the fight out of the city but the villain was refusing to be taken away from where they could harm civilians.
Man of Steel supes would have a hard time pulling that one off but the actual big blue boyscout would have ZERO trouble getting any legal consequences mitigated this way due to his outstanding record of public service outside of the fights. He probably ASKS the judge to bring the charges to create an opportunity to issue a public apology whenever something like this arises.
Or Hancock lol
The whole plot of the Captain America Civil War movie was built on the impact of collateral damage. For another franchise, The Watchmen movie was full of super hero atrocities and even the destruction of entire cities.
Ehh, I'd say the MCU largely ignored the problem and barely scratched the surface in Civil War. Though The Watchmen did a pretty solid job, given the crazy power levels of some of them.
I mean, Watchmen is a criticism of the superhero genre.
It deliberately goes against established tropes.Hey, can't make an omelet...
I really like Marion G. Harmon’s Wearing the Cape series for this. Hero teams are governmentally regulated, and state or federally mandated, and have to work with local authorities whenever possible, often acting as first responders specifically regarding super villain events. They’re required to plan and mitigate collateral damage. Heroing is literally their job and they have standard and on-call hours, as well as patrols and the like.
Socially heroes and villains are treated kind of like celebrities, and there are sort of unwritten rules about no killing, and no going after civilian identities or people’s families outside of costume as that’s grounds for both villains and heroes to look the other way regarding the aforementioned “No killing” rule.
With the knowledge that villains are hard to impossible to fully stop, emphasis exists on imprisonment and rehabilitation, and over the course of the series some villains and heroes end up changing sides.
There’s one hero in the series who is a federal agent with the ability to replicate clones of himself and is embedded in most hero teams, as well as being secret service, generalized security, and informant as all clones have the knowledge of the rest. Nobody he works with outside of the President of the U.S. even knows how many of him are out there.
On top of this, besides the typical hero teams, there are more “B grade” teams that are not specifically super heroes but act as emergency responders and construction crews for both hero events and fights as well as generalized incidents, and things like heroes without borders that act as global humanitarian aid on a volunteer basis, similar to Doctors Without Borders.
Vigilantes are frowned upon, and can end up liable for crimes as they’re not sanctioned to use their powers to fight.
It’s a very interesting series, and deals with a lot of “real world” consequences of super heroics, including long term injury and death, PTSD and other trauma, and the impact of things like super powered terrorism and extremist groups, as well as anti-super sentiment.
——
Besides that series, I’d also recommend the web serial “Worm” by Wildbow (John McCrae), but that one’s a doozy, both in terms of content (it only goes from bad to worse and things never really get better) and length (it’s absurdly long, maybe equivalent in length to 15-20 full length novels, broken up into fairly long chapters and sections).
IIRC Marvel has handwaved this through an actual government agency who's job is to fix shit quick. Department of Damage Control IIRC, very steeped in realist humor, and I mean actual school of realism not cult of "wahmenz in super hero movies is unrealistic!"
I would say it was commendable, but they ignore it completely when convenient and Civil War barely even scratched the surface of the concept in an actually story-impacting way.
It was a private company (owned partially by Wilson Fisk and Tony Stark) in the comics.
Invincible handles consequences pretty well.
One example: At one point Atom Eve uses her powers to turn an empty lot into a playground. But it turns out
spoiler
the lot was empty because the ground was unstable. So the playground collapses and injures several people.
Yea, Invincible is better than a lot in at least approaching the topic, though I didn't include it because the Global Defence Agency Cecil directs fixes things on a supernatural level. They magically fix up all sorts of things and magically make convincing cover stories, like the house blowing up like a freaking nuke as just a gas leak and the like.
Still nice that they're covering the topic, at least. It's so, SO much worse in the shows that just ignore it. Invincible does a good "meet in the middle": It's not really any big plot point of the show, but they also don't ignore the problems.
To their defense, the MCU kind of made a whole movie addressing exactly that, back when it was still really good
Yea, but I'd argue one movie out of 20+ is only as good as the dumb throwaway lines like, "Hey! We shouldn't fight here!" then proceeds to do nothing to move the fight...
Watch The Boys, it addresses collateral damage.
“Fuck supes”
Yea, The Boys is good shit, at least if the crassitude doesn't throw people off.
George R. R. Martin edited a terrific series called Wild Card that is really well grounded. The premise is an alien virus that gives people random mutations and some of them are horrific (the Jokers) but some get fantastic powers (the Aces).
It's pretty gritty and 'realistic' like they really go deep into how the various powers would realistically affect people and be used.
I really liked it up until
Tap for spoiler
one of the authors decided that ALL of the abilities and powers were all just forms of telekenesis , really sucked all the fun out of it!
This is also addressed in Hancock (2008).
"Sorry I let Dr Evil detonate a nuke in the city centre. Wouldn't want to cause a mess"
I mean, most decent superhero movies I see acknowledge inner city chaos to be bad. As soon as a horrible villain starts throwing fireballs, they’re trying to get civilians out, save people amidst chaos, etc.
There’s maybe another conversation to have on property damage; I think there’s not much story there due to the way insurance works. To us, these chaotic battles happen every summer, but in these worlds they’re rare freak occurrences - just like earthquakes.
Nah, that greatly depends on the universe. For an example of handling it badly, watch ... basically any of the DC universe live-action movies.
They're so bad that Batman regularly mercs people. Y'know, Batman. The guy who canonically takes issue with killing even violent terrorists actively killing others, let alone Security Guard #28201...
Superman gets thrown through buildings, uses laser eyes through buildings, etc, etc, and I shouldn't have to explain how Superman also takes issue with harming at least innocents. They might mention it, but then go on to have the city fight anyways with virtually none of their fighting actions indicating any reluctance...
I do NOT give them points for adding a throwaway line of, "You big meanie! We shouldn't fight in the city!"
The Avengers went into this. The United States government went after them after they saved NYC for the destruction caused while saving NYC, and then eventually arrested all of them. It pissed me off quite a bit, considering the alternative was the enslavement of humanity. Short-sighted, power hungry politicians...
Hancock did pretty well adressing this
Super Crooks does this really well too if you haven't watched it. Its basically the boys in anime form (american anime style) and there are a few moments where colateral damage and even heroes racking up higher body counts than villains gets mentioned.
I hope more than just mentioned, but still sounds like a recommend worth checking out!
Invincible and One Punch Man to some extent.
The infinity saga at some point has this as a topic I believe, too.
Nah, that’s exactly what makes them awesome. I’m not trying to watch the news, I want some cool entertaining stuff, not more of the same life I already live. “Ooooh look the same stuff as the world around you! How interesting!” I’d just not watch a movie if I want that.
This is basically the setup for The Boys (except instead of a car it's a person)
If it weren't for that opening I would not watch the show. Had no idea what it was about, never read the comics. Just saw a video on why Homelander is a great villain and I went to check it out. After that scene it was just "oh wow. There are stakes!"
Can't wait for the new season next week
Also, people should watch GenV if they haven't. It's surprisingly good
Check out the comics, the Super Duper arc is amazing.
And instead of actually trying to perform a public service, the superhero is
spoiler
Looking for drugs
Insurance companies are benevolent enough to cover that, right? Right?
"Act of God", get fucked. Also we raised your monthly fee by 50% because, based on previous events, you're more likely than others to have you car Hulk-smashed.
A few years ago i had to get my upper lip sewed back on after a mountain bike accident and the insurance still has not paid for the surgery because a cosmetic surgeon was the only person at the hospital who could do it
This is the plot of Spiderman Homecoming
funny how the lesson pulled from that is to beat up the poor and disgruntled and not how horrible and evil insurance companies are. The MCU movies are fucked up and kind of anti woke.
I really like My Hero Academia for being grounded like that with superheroes having to register and stuff, doing public good beyond fighting, and having Vigilantes that still want to help out but they aren't scouted, because they couldn't get into a proper hero education program on a great spin-off that I would argue is better than the main manga.
Or when it hits and does absolutely nothing.
He just throws it on top of your coworkers cars, so now you can't even carpool the day after.
Wouldn't they come up with some kind of insurance plan for the supers?
Like "Hey the Hulk just used my car as a pair of boxing gloves. Am I covered?"
The thing I wonder is why people want to live in NYC in the marvel universe
Nerd Alert: A team named Damage Control would clean up the post-fight superhero messes. I think they were sort of adapted to TV in Ms. Marvel but they were more of an FBI-type of agency.
But do they reimburse people for their losses? I actually think a Disney plus series focused on the real world effects and had a more grounded/black comedy approach would be fascinating.
I don't get why they keep showing us the insane universe they built from the same perspective each time. After a decade and a half of superhero POV, I think seeing one thing about an entirely ordinary person would be great
we're never getting another hulk movie
Never seems unlikely
Ninja kick the rabbit
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