Super(2010)- User Reviews

"Super" is not a movie for everyone. If you cannot appreciate the special effects it takes to make vomit speak in a toilet, this movie is not for you. If you cannot find humor in someone whacking people on the head with a pipe wrench because God - portrayed by none other than Rob Zombie - told him to do so, this movie is not for you. And if you cannot accept that this movie is a parable for our times, then this movie is definitely not for you.

Other people are free to read into the movie what they will, but this is my own interpretation: "Super" is a superb deconstruction of the superhero narrative. The superhero genre came into popular culture in the 1930s when America was going through an economic and cultural crisis. There was a collective longing by the country to be rescued from its troubles, and artistically this became manifest in the comic book superhero (in real life, Huey Long and FDR were the "superheroes" America got). Today, the parallel to the 1930s is the Great Recession and its impact on the mythos of the American dream. The middle class is battered and defeated, and the hopes (and homes) of millions are gone. If you still think the tea party or Obama are going to rescue you, prepare yourself to be sorely disappointed. "Super" thrives on this despair by giving us the superhero all of us need to become (perhaps without the whole 'bonking people on the head with a wrench' bit). Let's face it folks, nobody else is coming to the rescue.

Visually, the movie gives us what we see about us: a decaying and degenerate America. Frank, the main character played by Rainn Wilson, is the everyman American. He sees no future, no prospects, he is in a job that he is lucky to have, and he is blessed with a beautiful wife Sarah played by Liv Tyler. We can interpret Sarah as being a female stand-in for America, just like we see other female representations of America in our country as Rosie the Riveter, Lady Liberty, or Columbia (not Colombia the country, but Columbia the personification for the USA). A movie that parallels the same themes and ideas is the movie "The Wrestler" (2008) which likewise portrays America as bleak, decaying, and without a future, and with a female personification of an America past her prime, the stripper Cassidy, played by Marisa Tomei.

The movie "Super" is a condemnation of the authorities: the police are incapable and even unwilling to stop those who do wrong. The only person the police want to jail, seemingly, is Frank, who is singlehandedly doing the work of the police department. Those who have power in society, Jacques (played by Kevin Bacon), have no empathy for anyone else. Jacques in particular has no empathy about stealing Sarah (America) away from Frank and subjecting her to abuses of different kinds. Please feel free to interpret Jacques as Wall Street, investment banks, hedge funds, or any other runaway institution who you perceive as battering and abusing America.

Spoiler alert:

Where I fault the movie for unforgivable cruelty is in the fate of Libby, played by Ellen Page, who serves as the Crimson Bolt's sidekick, Boltie. Yes, I understand it's fiction, but Frank was given his mission as the Crimson Bolt by God, and he needlessly subjected Libby/Boltie, a very young and immature character, to dangers that ultimately proved lethal. The viewer is free to decide for himself or herself, but I place part of the responsibility for the character's death on Frank/The Crimson Bolt. Worse still, Frank displays rage at Boltie's death, but doesn't seem to display remorse or guilt in the closing of the movie. We see a scene that implies that Frank and Sarah have buried Libby under a flower garden, but otherwise there are no consequences over her death or disappearance. Libby's parents and friends apparently don't mind her absence, and the authorities apparently never ask Frank over her whereabouts. Perhaps, though, this is another subversive element of the film, as Libby's death seems to parallel the deaths of America's military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those who serve, just like Libby, are filled with America's optimism and ideals, and even a hint of Libby's irrational exuberance, but when they die they seem to merely disappear. Television for the most part has stopped showing military funerals and the caskets of fallen soldiers and marines. For most Americans, national holidays like Fourth of July and Memorial Day are not days to honor the sacrifices of those who have fought for the United States; those days seem to have become holidays solely for parties and picnics.

Another serious fault I found is at the end of the movie. The African drug lord character who tries to have his way with Sarah is too reminiscent of established, racist tropes of white female sexual slavery in films going back as far D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" (1915). I find it sad that such elements at the movies persist. If done consciously by writer James Gunn, I find it sad that maybe he thinks that the only way American audiences can perceive wrongdoing in cinema is when it is committed by ethnic minorities, better still when they speak English with foreign accents. Let me state that I do not believe James Gunn to be racist or xenophobic, only that the film is no more and no less prejudice than the average Hollywood film. My condemnation should be read as being upon the whole movie industry and its audience, and not this writer or film specifically.

Despite my problems with elements in its narrative, "Super" is a memorable and worthwhile film. Where other movies are devoid of content and fixated on vapid, meaningless experiences (Sucker Punch, anyone?), Super leaves us with a meaningful reminder: all it takes to be a superhero is the choice to fight evil.