Super Heroes vs. Real Life
Super heroes. We see them in movies, watch them on TV, and if you're a nerd, read about them in comics books. The Internet is home to countless arguments over which super hero has the best powers, whom could beat up whom, and what would happen if Lois Lane and Superman finally did hook up.
It used to be that the life of a super hero was predictably unrealistic. Most super heroes are more likely to travel through time and fight dinosaurs than run out of toilet paper. In the past decade there have been a number of comic books that took on this dichotomy and tried to depict what life would really be like if you were invincible, but otherwise just a normal guy. This hasn't really filtered down to popular television and movies, with the possible exception of the TV show Heroes and to some extent the Spider-Man movies.
That's why today, we're going to look at some of the rare depictions of the real life of super heroes.
There is nothing more real than the Real World, so we need look no further than Real World: Metropolis:
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At the end of the last X-Men movie, Magneto found himself powerless, but even worse, out of a job. Luckily, Starbucks is always hiring:
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Super heroes, like rock stars, travel the country and get all the chicks. So how do they come to terms with their illegitimate children?
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Some super heroes have indomitable will power, but that doesn't mean they always bring their A-game to the softball match against the Legion of Doom:
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Here's the part where I was going to put clips from The State and Robot Chicken, but Viacom in their faceless, corporate wisdom has pulled those videos from YouTube. Good move Viacom! I bet now instead of seeing free advertising, all our readers are running out to buy your DVDs.
Finally, although none of us have had to dig ourselves out of our own grave (having been drugged and put there by Kraven the Hunter), pretty much everyone has had to outdance a cow. How will Spider-Man handle that situation?
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Many movies have been made about the future and most of them have sucked. Usually they involve people in shiny suits and rocket cars. Or its some lame post-apocalyptic future where everybody wears football shoulder pads and drives dune buggies. However, there have been a few movies that have been so bad that they actually managed to get some things right. These movies all come from the 70's so mind-altering drugs probably had something to do with it.
1. Zardoz: A giant floating head tells a bunch of crazed white guys that the penis is bad and vomits guns and ammo from its mouth. Sean Connery also runs around in a loin cloth the whole movie. If you think of the head as George W. Bush it kind of makes sense. Sean Connery would represent the East Coast liberals I guess.
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2. Barbarella: Jane Fonda does lots of drugs and has sex with everybody she meets. At one point she is even raped by a giant church organ. I suppose this is kind of like Paris Hilton except I don't want to punch Barbarella in the face everytime I see her.
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3. Americathon: In the future everyone will wear sweatsuits, live in their cars and America will go bankrupt and will owe billions to the Native Americans who also own Nike. In an effort to save the country president John Ritter will put on the largest Telethon ever to save the country. The amount of drugs they had to be taking to make this film is truly staggering. However the Seminole tribe just bought the Hard Rock franchise so maybe they were onto something, besides just cocaine.
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So you see they really did understand the future in the 70's they were just too high to be able to tell anybody about it.