Plus, the tights would make me itch

I saw Spider-Man 3 on Sunday. The short review: Good, not great. The slightly longer review: Even with a running time of two hours, twenty minutes, it needed to be twenty minutes longer. Twenty less of the Peter Parker/Mary Jane subplot, twenty minutes more of Venom (not the black suit Spidey, mind you), and twenty minutes more action.


The movie did get get me thinking, though. Assuming it would be possible for someone to develop superpowers, which side would I be on? Most days, I don't have the confidence needed to do something remotely selfless, much less save the world. On the other hand, I don't have near enough of a mean streak to be an antihero, and not enough spite or anger to be a bonafide villian.

Which begs the question: Is there a such thing as a sorta morally ambiguous superhero?

The strange thing is, if I did have superpowers, I would probably use them to do the things I normally do. If I could fly, I wouldn't need to drive anywhere. If I could move things with my mind, I'd do my job from the comfort of a La-Z-Boy while flipping through magazines. Healing powers...well, then I wouldn't have to exercise much care when I'm using that X-acto blade, would I? Super-senses would allow me to hear my boss coming a mile away, I'd be able to get rid of my glasses, and since I live by the river, let's not go into super-smell.

Even though I love stories of superheroes, the big problem I have with the genre is the lack of morality in them. By that, I mean that the main thrust of any story is to stop the bad guy by any means neccessary, killing them if you must. If you let them live, they always come back for revenge. If you kill them, then another guy just takes his place as public enemy number one. Sounds pretty futile to me.

I'm overanalyzing it, I know. How exciting would a superhero story be if in lieu of the big fight scene there was twenty minutes of negotiation? Or, if the climax was replaced by an intervention?

Who cares, really? It's just more fun to see things blow up and guys in tights beating each other up than it is to see how it'd happen in the real world.