Superhero Movie Smack Down – Round 1

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Ian Gonzales – The Rocketeer

When I was growing up, my home was full of pulp stories and movie serials. I knew more about The Shadow and Flash Gordon than I did Cavariccis and Members Only jackets.

I suppose that’s why when The Rocketeer opened in the summer of 1991, I dug it more than my peers. They opted to see the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Edward Furlong pre-apocalyptic buddy comedy, Terminator 2, while I saved my allowance so I could go see Billy Campbell fly high a second time.

The Rocketeer is about one man against the ultimate evil – now that’s a superhero! The film is timeless, the characters are iconic and everything looks true to the source material. Sure, the Disney process cleaned up the source material a bit, (Jenny went from being a nude pin-up model Bettie Page analogue to an aspiring Tinseltown actress) but this flick feels like Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Superman. From Cliff Secord’s leather aviator jacket to Jenny Blakes’ pouty red lips to Neville Sinclair’s secret Nazi radio room, The Rocketeer is the perfect distillation of pulp and serial. It’s pure cinema magic!

The Rocketeer is still the bar I hold all superhero movies up against. Nothing’s felt quite so right since seeing that film and after watching it recently, I feel exactly the same way. Talk about timeless.

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Tim Mucci – RoboCop

In this list you’re going to get a bunch of sad-sack heroes who are just having the worst time fitting in. I mean, we all know how hard it would be to have super powers, awesome gadgets and vast wealth, right?

My pick pushes all those cape-wearing sissies aside to make way for a superhero who is part man, part

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machine and ALL cop! RoboCop (1987) has something that these other movies don’t: a main character who is confident in his abilities from the get-go. When he’s Murphy he’s honorable, brave, confident and charming. When he’s RoboCop, he’s unstoppable. He knows exactly what he needs to do – and he does it. The only time he wavers is when his human side asserts itself against his programming.

Don’t look for any gothic navel-gazing here, just over-the-top violence, social satire and a dystopic city on the verge of economic collapse that desperately needs an unwavering hero like Robo.

You’ve also got classic themes of corporate classism and the philosophical subtext of what it really means to be human. RoboCop doesn’t mourn the loss of his family so much as he mourns the loss of his own humanity. He does what he does, at the end, not because of programming, or vengeance but because he’s the only one who can. I’d love to see how the other superheroes on this list measure up to that! Your move, creep!

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Ebenezer Samuel – The Dark Knight

Batman is a mere man (albeit with a super bank account) – and that normalcy is precisely why The Dark Knight (2008) is the most wildly successful superhero movie of all time.

As much as this roundtable hopes to stimulate debate, The Dark Knight renders all arguments moot. The superhero movieverse has long been filled with Robo-men and glowing emerald rings and extra-heavy doses of that supposedly rare metal called Adamantium. But The Dark Knight is built around a man who dares to be super, and that allows director Christopher Nolan to do something near-impossible: he makes us care about the Batman.

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