Returning to the subject of the conflicts examined in superhero flicks, there has been a fair amount of attention given to the insane levels of collateral damage inflicted by these battles. In The Avengers, for example, there’s a shot where we see a skyscraper begin to collapse and we never see nor hear of it again. That building collapse alone must have killed hundreds; the battle as a whole may have killed millions. Compare this to, say, Spider-Man 2 or even The Dark Knight, where there are definitely casualties, but each one is given agonizing attention and are relevant to the emotional or thematic drive of the film.
I realize this is largely just due to the inevitable scaling-up of the action sequences. A big climax requires big stakes, and establishing big stakes requires one hell of a lot of destruction. Nevertheless, what all of this serves to underline is that the concept of superheroes is inherently fascistic. That is, the idea of a breed of people who have extraordinary abilities thanks to an accident of birth is fascistic. Quite possibly unavoidable, since we already have some people born smarter or better-looking than others, but then parlaying those powers into unrestrained authority over those not fortunate enough to have been born with superpowers doesn’t really help the case for superheroes.
