世界真的需要“超级英雄”吗?
Super-Dreams of an Alternate World Order
世界真的需要“超级英雄”吗?
EVILDOERS, beware! You cannot hide from the modern-day superhero! And neither can anyone else heading to the movies this summer. “Marvel’s The Avengers” which opened on May 4, reached $300 million in domestic ticket revenue faster than any other movie in history and tied the record for fastest $1 billion worldwide gross. On Tuesday, Sony will unleash the newest version of another venerable Marvel property, “The Amazing Spider-Man,” followed later in the month by “The Dark Knight Rises,” a Warner Brothers release and the third (and possibly the last) of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies. The summer of 2012 is hardly unusual. The current superhero boom dates to the dawn of the century — Bryan Singer’s “X-Men” came out in 2000, Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” in 2002 — and shows no sign of abating. The New York Times’s chief movie critics, A. O. Scott and Manohla Dargis, ponder the meaning of an apparently invincible genre.
坏蛋们，你们要小心了!你们躲不开当今时代的超级英雄。当然，这个夏天去看电影的人们也一样。5月4日上映的Marvel出版公司作品《复仇者联盟》(The Avengers)，已经成为电影史上本土票房最快达到3亿美元的电影，也追平了全球总收入最快达到10亿美元的纪录。7月3日，索尼出品了另一部 Marvel经典作品最新版本——《超凡蜘蛛侠》(The Amazing Spider-Man);6月稍晚时候，华纳兄弟也推出了第三部(也可能是最后一部)由克里斯托弗·诺兰(Christopher Nolan)执导的蝙蝠侠电影《黑暗骑士崛起》(The Dark Knight Rises)。并不是说2012年的夏天有什么特殊。当今的超级英雄电影潮流从本世纪初就已经开始：布莱恩·辛格(Bryan Singer)的《X战警》(X-Men)在2000年就上映了;萨姆·雷米(Sam Raimi)的《蜘蛛侠》(Spider-Man)出现在2002年。目前，这股潮流还丝毫没有减弱的迹象。下面，《纽约时报》的两位首席影评人A.O. 斯科特(A.O. Scott)和曼诺拉·达吉斯(Manohla Dargis)就一起来探讨，这种看似不败的电影类型到底意味着什么。
A O. SCOTT Our superheroes have been around for a very long time — Superman and Batman were born in the ’30s; Spidey and many of his Marvel brethren are children of the ’60s — but they appear to be more powerful than ever. That is partly the result of corporate strategy and canny marketing, but it’s also clear that these serial narratives about regular folks gifted (or cursed) with extraordinary abilities and menaced by diabolical enemies exercise a powerful hold on the popular imagination. Some of the movie world’s most talented actors, directors and writers have succumbed in the past decade to the pulpy, allegorical allure of comic books. Critics have too.
A.O.斯科特 我们这些“超级英雄”由来已久。超人和蝙蝠侠是在20世纪30年代诞生的;蜘蛛侠和很多其他Marvel漫画的英雄则是60年代的产物。但如今他们似乎比以往任何时候都更有影响力。一部分原因是电影公司的整体策略和精明的市场运作，不过还有另外一点非常清楚，这些关于普通人幸运(或不幸)地拥有了超能力，然后与邪恶敌人斗法的故事，牢牢地占据了公众的幻想空间。在过去10年里，电影界里一些最有天赋的演员、导演和编剧都被漫画书里面俗套的寓言故事所吸引，影评人也不例外。
MANOHLA DARGIS On one level the allure of comic book movies is obvious, because, among other attractions, they tap into deeply rooted national myths, including that of American Eden (Superman’s Smallville); the Western hero (who’s separate from the world and also its savior); and American exceptionalism (that this country is different from all others because of its mission to make “the world safe for democracy,” as Woodrow Wilson and, I believe, Iron Man, both put it). Both Depression babies, Superman and Batman, were initially hard-boiled types, and it’s worth remembering that the DC in DC Comics was for Detective Comics. Since then the suits have largely remained the same even as the figures wearing them have changed with their times. Every age has the superhero it wants, needs or deserves.
曼诺拉·达吉斯 在某个层面上，漫画的魅力是显而易见的。它们挖掘的是一些在国民心目中根深蒂固的神话，比如关于美国伊甸园(《超人前传》)，关于西部英雄(那些与世隔绝却又能拯救世界的人们)，还有关于美国优越主义(就是伍德罗·威尔逊[Woodrow Wilson]说过的，而且我相信《钢铁侠》想说的也一样，这个国家与其他国家都不一样，因为她承担着“为民主而捍卫世界”的使命)。超人和蝙蝠侠都诞生于大萧条时期，一开始就是那种坚硬、没有感情的角色类型。有一点值得说说，所谓的“DC漫画”(DC Comics)中的“DC”指的是“侦探漫画”(Detective Comics)。从那时开始，饰演这些角色的人会随着时代而改变，但他们的制服一直保持着原样。每个时代都有它所渴望的、需要的和值得拥有的英雄。
Comic book movies are also fun (except when they’re not) and often easy viewing (except when they make your head hurt). They’re also blunt: A guy in a unitard pummels another guy — pow! — and saves the day, the girl and the studio. I like some comic-book movies very much, dislike others. But as a film lover I am frustrated by how the current system of flooding theaters with the same handful of titles limits my choices. (According to boxofficemojo.com “The Avengers” opened on 4,349 screens in the United States and Canada, close to 1 in 10.) The success of these movies also shores up a false market rationale that’s used to justify blockbusters in general: that is, these movies make money, therefore people like them; people like them, therefore these movies are made.
漫画改编电影通常很有娱乐性(有些也可能没有)，并且常常通俗易懂(也有些会让你头疼)。而且它们往往很直白：一个人穿着紧身衣，暴打另外一个人 ——啪!——然后立马挽救了危机，救回了女孩，也拯救了电影公司。有些漫画电影我很喜欢，有些则不喜欢。不过作为影迷，现状令我很沮丧，电影院里来来去去满是那几个系列，选择范围很有限。(根据boxofficemojo.com所示，《复仇者联盟》开映时占据美国和加拿大的4349块银幕，接近总数的一成。)这些电影的成功也为一种错误的市场逻辑提供了依据，人们以此来为更广义的重磅大片开脱：因为这些电影能赚钱，于是人们也喜欢它;人们喜欢这些电影，于是它们才会被拍出来。
SCOTT And yet these stories do have some appeal, beyond the familiarity of the characters and the relentlessness of the marketing campaigns. As you suggest, they strike mythic, archetypal chords, and cater to a persistent hunger for large-scale, accessible narratives of good and evil.
A.O.斯科特 不过这些电影确实有一些吸引人的地方，不仅是因为耳熟能详的角色和那些狂轰滥炸的市场推广。就像你说的，它们借一些有原型的虚构事物来触动观众，用大场面和简单的正邪对立故事来迎合观众持续的需求。
It’s telling that Hollywood placed a big bet on superheroes at a time when two of its traditional heroic genres — the western and the war movie — were in eclipse, partly because they seemed ideologically out of kilter with the times. The studios turned to fantasy, science fiction and a kind of filmmaking that was at once technologically advanced and charmingly old-fashioned. Along with “Star Wars” and Indiana Jones there was Superman, played, starting in 1978, by the square-jawed, relatively unknown Christopher Reeve.
当初，由于在意识形态上与时代渐渐脱节，好莱坞两种传统的英雄片类型——西部片和战争片——已经日渐式微，好莱坞选在此时将大赌注押在了超级英雄片上，这很能说明问题。各大电影公司转向奇幻片和科幻题材，这样的电影制作既在技术上领先，又具有怀旧的魅力。1978年开始，与“星球大战”(Star Wars)和“印尼安纳·琼斯”(Indiana Jones)系列同时代出现的“超人”系列，由长着一张国字脸、当时名不见经传的克里斯托弗·里夫(Christopher Reeve)主演。
The four “Superman” movies with Reeve vary in quality, but I still have a soft spot for their blend of sincere romanticism, swashbuckling action and unabashed silliness. The Batman series that began in 1989 and continued (or rather rapidly declined) into the ’90s was campier, kinkier and more self-conscious, but both of those franchises were playful in a way that seems to have gone out of fashion lately. The Joker’s mocking question from “The Dark Knight” — why so serious? — echoes through the past 10 years, when, with a few exceptions, there has been very little that is comic in comic book movies. Instead these movies have mostly been angry, anxious and obsessed with the idea of revenge.
由里夫主演的四部“超人”系列电影在质量上参差不齐，但它真挚的浪漫、装腔作势的动作和毫不害羞的傻气，仍然能够触动我。1989年开始的“蝙蝠侠”系列，在90年代继续出现(确切地说是急剧退步)时，变得更造作、怪诞，也更忸怩。但是这两部改编系列都很有玩闹精神，这可能在现今已经有点过时。 “小丑”(Joker)在《黑暗骑士》(The Dark Knight)中那个嬉皮笑脸的问句——“干嘛那么严肃?”(why so serious?)——在过去10年里倒是广为流传，但除了这些少数例外，很多漫画电影当中的漫画成分已经非常少。相反，这些电影大多变得愤怒、不安并且对复仇的想法念念不忘。
Perhaps this is a reflection of the state of the world after Sept. 11, 2001. Certainly the superhero movies of today are, like the gangster pictures of the Depression and the westerns of the ’50s, a screen onto which our society projects its fears and dreams. But I also think that the grimness arises from another source. When hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, it is never a laughing matter.
或许，这反映了2001年9月11日之后的世界。无疑，今天的超级英雄电影也像大萧条时代的黑帮电影和50年代的西部片一样，把我们这个社会的恐惧和幻想都投射到了银幕上。不过我也觉得，这种阴暗还来自于另一个方面：几亿美元的投资，这可不是闹着玩儿的。
DARGIS The current superhero glut may have something to do with the human appetite for tales of good and evil, but there’s no question that the corporate appetite for bigger returns is insatiable. And one thing we do know is that superhero movies sell not just theater tickets but also generate multiple revenue streams (pay-per-view, toys, video games, international distribution). People were excited to see “The Avengers,” but how could they not be? We were bombarded with the movie for years in advance. As a Marvel executive told Forbes, “Every Marvel movie since 2008 was created with the full intention of this super franchise.” And then there’s the 24/7 advertising and Marvel’s corporate “partnerships” with Walmart (which is peddling some 600 “Avengers” products), Acura, Harley-Davidson, Hasbro, Target — I mean, there was no escaping it.
曼诺拉·达吉斯 当前超级英雄电影的过剩可能跟人类喜欢看正邪对立的故事有关，不过电影公司对于高回报的胃口肯定也是贪得无厌的。我们知道的一点是超级英雄电影不光是卖门票，还能带来各种各样的收入来源(付费电视、玩具、电玩、海外发行权等)。《复仇者联盟》让人很兴奋，怎么可能不兴奋呢?我们提前好几年就开始接受这部电影的轰炸。就像Marvel的一位高管对《福布斯》(Forbes)杂志所说的：“从2008年起，每一部Marvel电影都是为了这一部超级系列而制作的。”然后还有每天全天候的广告，还有Marvel与各方公司的“合作伙伴”关系，包括沃尔玛(它正在售卖约600种“复仇者”的产品)、讴歌(Acura)、哈雷(Harley-Davidson)、孩之宝(Hasbro)、塔吉特百货(Target)等等——我是说，你根本逃不掉。
SCOTT There is something paradoxical about the modern ascendance of the superhero: world domination is what these guys were born to fight, and here they are chasing after it in a fairly literal way. Their rise is partly, like the rise of Hollywood itself, a great American success story. Back in the 1930s a bunch of writers, illustrators and entrepreneurs discovered a fertile and profitable intersection between the old pulps and the emerging youth culture. The creators of the first superheroes were outsiders — the children of immigrants or Jewish refugees from Europe — and their creations were marginal to everything respectable in the culture. Elite opinion regarded comic books as juvenile, disreputable, even dangerous, according to Dr. Fredric Wertham’s influential “Seduction of the Innocent,” which inspired Senate hearings in 1954.
A.O.斯科特 超级英雄在当下时代的统治地位其实也有些自相矛盾：这些角色的存在是为了让世界不被任何人占领，但如今他们却又实实在在地想要占领世界。他们的崛起也跟好莱坞的崛起一样，某种程度上是一个美国式的成功故事。当初在20世纪30年代，一群作家、插图画家和创业者发现在老套的通俗读物和新兴的青年文化之间有一个交集，能带来大量的作品和巨大的利润。最初创作超级英雄的人都是边缘族群——新移民的子女或者欧洲的犹太难民——而他们的作品并不受到主流文化的尊重。根据弗雷德里克·魏特汉博士(Dr. Fredric Wertham)《诱惑纯真》(Seduction of the Innocent)一书所说，精英观点认为漫画书是幼稚、有失体面甚至是危险的，这本书影响力颇大，在1954年参议院还专门就此举行了听证会。
But the audience for comics continued to grow through the 1960s — what fans call the silver age of Marvel — and beyond, and the form has shed most of its bad reputation. Comics studies is now a legitimate academic field, and comic books may be weathering the collapse of print better than most of their paper-based kin. The musclebound paladins with their special capabilities still anchor the form. They inspire creative labor and fan loyalty as almost nothing else does. The movies have, as it were, supersized all of this, turning a cabal of fans into a mighty planetary army.
不过一直到20世纪60年代，漫画的读者人数都在持续增长——漫画迷们把那个时代称作Marvel的白银时代——而且，这种艺术形式已经摆脱了大部分的坏名声。漫画研究现在是一个正经的学术领域，漫画书也似乎比其他大多数同道更有能力迈过纸媒没落这一道槛。拥有一身肌肉和超能力的游侠仍然是这种艺术形式的重心。它所能吸引的创作人才和粉丝的忠诚度，几乎没有任何其他东西可以比拟。而它们的电影更将此放大了很多倍，将一小撮的粉丝集团变成了全球性的浩大军团。
And yet ... I have to say that the hegemony of the superheroes leaves an increasingly sour taste in my mouth, and that their commercial ascendance has produced, with a few exceptions, diminishing creative returns. The scrappy underdogs and pulpy tales have turned into something else, and I wonder if some of the fun, and much of the soul, has been lost.
然而话说回来……我不得不说这些超级英雄的主导地位让我觉得越来越不是滋味，他们在商业上的优势也让创造力逐渐退化，只有少数的例外。那些勇于反抗的弱者和通俗的故事正在变味。我在想，它是不是已经不像原来那么有娱乐性了，并且也失去了大部分的灵魂。
DARGIS There was a time when motion pictures were considered disreputable too, bad for the moral and psychological health of not just (vulnerable) children but also (weak) women. Just like movies, comic books have undergone cycles of popularity, denunciation and legitimization that reflect larger shifts in mass and popular culture. Wertham’s anti-comic message was one facet in the high culture versus popular culture debates, one that was also expressed by a series of essays Edmund Wilson wrote, beginning in 1944, for The New Yorker, the first being “Why Do People Read Detective Stories?” He was focusing on a popular genre, which he characterized as a waste of time but also, amusingly, did read himself. “Friends, we represent a minority, but Literature is on our side,” Wilson wrote. “There is no need to bore ourselves with this rubbish.”
曼诺拉·达吉斯 曾有过一段时间，电影也被认为是有失高雅，对(脆弱的)儿童和(柔弱的)妇女的道德和心理健康不利。漫画也像电影一样，经过被批判、被认可和流行起来的过程，这也反映了更广大的流行文化的变化。魏特汉反漫画的论调在高雅文化与流行文化的讨论当中，只是其中一个方面，埃德蒙德·威尔逊(Edmund Wilson)从1944年开始为《纽约客》写的一系列随笔中也表达过相仿的观点。第一篇就是《人们为什么会读侦探故事?》(Why Do People Read Detective Stories?)，他着眼于这种当时很受欢迎的题材，认为读这种书纯属浪费时间，不过有趣的是，他自己也在读。“朋友们，我们代表的是少数人，但文学是站在我们这一边的，”威尔逊写道：“我们没有必要忍受这些垃圾。”
Wilson’s second line, by the way, pretty much sums up my take on “The Avengers,” a movie that I thought was almost unrelievedly dull.
说起来，威尔逊的后半句话多少概括了我对《复仇者联盟》的看法，我觉得这部电影实在是部大闷片。
SCOTT Don’t tell Samuel L. Jackson!
A.O.斯科特 这话可别告诉塞缪尔·L.杰克逊(Samuel L. Jackson)啊!
But the kind of condescending dismissal practiced by Wilson and the cultural panic expressed by Wertham exist nowadays almost entirely as straw men. A critic who voices skepticism about a comic book movie — or any other expensive, large-scale, boy-targeted entertainment — is likely to be called out for snobbery or priggishness, to be accused of clinging to snobbish, irrelevant standards and trying to spoil everyone else’s fun.
不过像威尔逊这种高傲的否定和魏特汉所表达的这种文化恐慌，在今天几乎无足轻重。如果一个批评家对漫画电影——或者任何高成本、大场面并且以男孩为目标受众的娱乐片——表示怀疑，他很可能会被骂成是自大狂或者势利眼，自己抱残守缺，还想剥夺其他人的娱乐。
What the defensive fans fail or refuse to grasp is that they have won the argument. Far from being an underdog genre defended by a scrappy band of cultural renegades, the superhero spectacle represents a staggering concentration of commercial, corporate power. The ideology supporting this power is a familiar kind of disingenuous populism. The studios are just giving the people what they want! Foolproof evidence can be found in the box office returns: a billion dollars! Who can argue with that? Nobody really does. Superhero movies are taken seriously, reviewed respectfully and enjoyed by plenty of Edmund Wilson types.
为这类电影辩护的粉丝们不能或者说不愿意发现的是，他们其实已经赢了。超级英雄电影如今绝不是一小群文化异教徒所捍卫的边缘电影类型，而是代表着商业和企业的高度集权。支撑这种集权的意识形态正是似曾相识的伪平民主义。电影公司只不过是在供应人们想要的东西!10亿美元的票房回报就是无可辩驳的证据!谁能跟这个争辩?也没有人会去争辩。超级英雄电影正在受到认真的对待，得到恭敬的评价，还赢得了与埃德蒙德·威尔逊身份接近的精英的青睐。
DARGIS One problem is that public intellectuals like Wilson no longer have the forums they once did. There are oppositional voices, yes, yet they can be difficult to hear in the contemporary media context, with everyone always selling the exact same thing at the exact same moment. A recent editorial in The Columbia Journalism Review points to a reason: “Six companies dominate TV news, radio, online, movies, and publishing. Another eight or nine control most of the nation’s newspapers.” The media consolidation that traces back to the Reagan years has had enormous deleterious consequences on American movies. We’re at a paradoxical moment when new digital technologies have created more and more stuff, movies included, even as the consolidation of the media gives us fewer real choices.
曼诺拉·达吉斯 有一个问题是像威尔逊这样的公共知识分子已经不再有以前那种讨论空间了。是的，反对声音还是有，但在目前这样的媒体语境下，它们很难被听见，因为大家都在同一时间卖一模一样的东西。《哥伦比亚新闻评论》(Columbia Journalism Review)最近的一篇社论点出了一个原因：“六家公司统治了这个国家的电视新闻、广播、网络、电影和出版业。另外八九家公司则控制了大部分的报纸。” 可以追溯到里根时代的媒体合并现象，给美国电影带来了巨大的危害。我们正处在一个非常矛盾的时刻，新的数码技术正在创造越来越多的东西，也包括电影，但是不断合并的媒体却让我们真正拥有的选择越来越少。
And when everyone is selling the same thing — one week Spider-Man, the next Batman — who, as you put it, can argue with that, especially when everyone is making so much money? One complicating factor is the corporate appropriation of fan culture. In a March article on how Lionsgate promoted “The Hunger Games,” our colleague Brooks Barnes reported that the studio had assigned a publicist to cultivate fan blogs. It also sponsored a sweepstakes to bring five fans to the set, but it didn’t invite reporters, because it didn’t want fans to think, as Mr. Barnes wrote, that they were being fed something through professional filters. “People used to be O.K. with studios telling them what to like,” Danielle DePalma, the company’s senior vice president for digital marketing, said. “Not anymore. Now it’s ‘You don’t tell us, we tell you.’ ” I don’t know if she said this with a straight face, but it made me laugh.
当所有人都在卖同样的东西时——这个星期是“蜘蛛侠”，下个星期是“蝙蝠侠”——而且大家都赚那么多钱，就像你说的，谁还能跟它争辩?还有让这件事更加复杂的一个元素，是电影公司对于影迷的导向作用。三月份的时候，我们的同事布鲁克斯·巴恩斯(Brooks Barnes)在一篇文章中报道了狮门影业(Lionsgate)是怎样宣传《饥饿游戏》(The Hunger Games)的，里面说到电影公司还委派了一位公关人员来维护影迷博客。它还赞助了一个抽奖，带五个幸运影迷去片场探班，但是它没有邀请记者，据巴恩斯所写，它是不想让影迷觉得自己是被专业人士牵着走。“在过去人们愿意让电影公司来告诉他们应该喜欢哪些电影，”该公司的网络营销资深副总裁丹妮埃尔·德帕尔玛(Danielle DePalma)曾说，“现在不能这样了。现在影迷会说，‘不是你来告诉我们，而是我们来告诉你’。”我不知道她说这话的时候表情是不是严肃的，反正我是笑了。
SCOTT But comic book fans need to feel perpetually beleaguered and disenfranchised, marginalized by phantom elites who want to confiscate their hard-won pleasures. And this resentment — which I have a feeling I’m provoking more of here — finds its way into the stories themselves, expressed either as glowering self-pity or bullying machismo. There are exceptions: Mark Ruffalo’s soulful Hulk (though not Eric Bana’s or Edward Norton’s); most of the X-Men. But even that crew of mutant misfits turned protectors of humanity exists in a circumscribed imaginative space. As Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out in a New York Times Op-Ed article last summer about “X-Men: First Class,” that film noticeably refrained from connecting its chronicle of prejudice and outsider-dom in postwar America to the contemporaneous drama of the civil rights movement.
A.O.斯科特 不过漫画迷却要一直觉得自己被围攻，权利被剥夺，觉得自己被那些幻想出来的精英边缘化了，扼杀他们辛苦得来的快乐。而这种怨恨——我感觉我在这儿也能激起更多——也融入到了故事本身，通常表现为一种愤怒的自怜或者强势的男子气。有一些是例外：比如马克·鲁法洛(Mark Ruffalo)演的那个很有灵魂的绿巨人(但埃里克·巴纳[Eric Bana]和爱德华·诺顿[Edward Norton]演的就没有了)，比如大多数的X战警。但即使是这一群由社会边缘人突变成异种来保护人类的人物，也只是活在一个很局限的想象空间里。就像塔那西斯·科茨(Ta-Nehisi Coates)在《纽约时报》一篇关于《X战警：第一战》(X-Men: First Class)的专栏里写到的，可以察觉得到，那部电影在描写战后美国的偏见和边缘社会时，刻意没有将它和同时代的民权运动事件联系起来。
To do so would have been too risky. And much as they may fetishize courage and individualism, these movies are above all devoted to the protection of a status quo only tangentially (or tendentiously) related to truth, justice and the American Way. The DC and Marvel superheroes, champions of democracy in the ’40s and ’50s and pop rebels in the ’60s and ’70s, have become, in the 21st century, avatars of reaction.
如果它要那样做的话，就太冒险了。姑且不论这些电影多么鼓吹勇气和个人主义，它们首先还是要维护现状，于是对于真相、真理和美式思维的触及只能是点到即止(或者甚至带有偏向性)。DC和Marvel的超级英雄在40和50年代是民主的捍卫者，在60和70年代是流行文化的叛逆者，在21世纪，他们就变成了反击者的象征。
DARGIS They’re certainly avatars of reaction in how they justify and perpetuate the industry’s entrenched sexism. You just have to scan the spandex bulges in “The Avengers” to see that superhero movies remain a big boys’ club, with few women and girls allowed. Yes, there are female superheroes on screen, like Jean Grey from the “X-Men” series, but they tend not to drive the stories, while female superheroes with their own movies never dominate the box office. Most women in superhero movies exist to smile indulgently at the super-hunk, to be rescued and to flaunt their assets, like Scarlett Johansson’s character in “The Avengers,” whose biggest superpower, to judge by the on- and off-screen attention lavished on it, was her super-rump.
曼诺拉·达吉斯 他们当然是反击的象征，看看他们怎样维护这个行业根深蒂固的性别歧视就知道。你只要看看《复仇者联盟》里那些紧身衣里面的肌肉就会明白，超级英雄电影仍然是大男孩的天下，只有很少的女人和女孩可以加入。是的，银幕上也是有女性超级英雄的，比如“X战警”系列里的琴·格蕾(Jean Grey)，不过她们通常不会是故事的主线，而以女性超级英雄为主角的电影也通常不会在票房上占主导地位。超级英雄电影里女性的存在大多数是为了对着超级大块头笑一笑，被拯救，还有炫耀一下她们的身材，就像《复仇者联盟》里斯嘉丽·约翰森(Scarlett Johansson)的角色。从戏里戏外她所得到的关注来看，她最大的超能力就是她的“超级屁股”。
Historically the comic book industry survived partly because its superheroes changed. In the early 1960s Stan Lee helped come up with a new kind of long-underwear character, Spider-Man, an imperfect super-teenager whose failings helped bring young-adult readers and turn Marvel into a powerhouse. In 1986 Frank Miller created “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns,” which ushered in a new, grittier bat-freak that influenced Mr. Nolan’s resurrection of the Batman movies. Yet, like the movie industry, the comic industry remains staggeringly male dominated. As Laura Hudson wrote in December on the online site ComicsAlliance, both DC and Marvel “illustrate two different but interrelated problems: the lack of women playing major roles in the comics, and the lack of women playing major roles in creating them.”
在历史上，漫画产业之所以能生存下来，一部分原因是它的超级英雄一直在变。20世纪60年代初期，斯坦·李(Stan Lee)参与创造了全新的紧身衣人物蜘蛛侠，这个并非完人的超级少年身上的缺点吸引了年轻的成年读者，也使Marvel漫画变成了大公司。1986年，弗兰克·米勒(Frank Miller)创造了《蝙蝠侠：黑暗骑士归来》(Batman: The Dark Knight Returns)，塑造了一个更刚强的新蝙蝠怪人，也启发了克里斯托弗·诺兰去复兴蝙蝠侠系列电影。然而，就像电影业一样，漫画业也是出奇地被男性所占据着。就像去年12月劳拉·哈德森(Laura Hudson)在网站“漫画同盟”(ComicsAlliance)上所写到的，DC和Marvel两家公司“都表现出了两个不一样但相互关联的问题：在漫画中缺少女性的重要角色，而在漫画的创作团队中也鲜有担当重要角色的女性。”
The movie industry has also adapted to survive, yet it persists in recycling maddeningly troglodytic representations of women that its embrace of superheroes has only perpetuated and maybe exacerbated. For all the technological innovations, the groovy new Bat cycles and codpieces, superhero movies just recycle variations on gender stereotypes that were in circulation back in the late 1930s, when Superman and Batman first hit. The world has moved on — there’s an African-American man in the Oval Office, a woman is the secretary of state — but the movie superhero remains stuck in a pre-feminist, pre-civil rights logic that dictates that a bunch of white dudes, as in “The Avengers,” will save the world for the grateful multiracial, multicultural multitudes. What a bunch of super-nonsense.
电影业为了生存一直在做改变，不过它却坚持反复地物化女性，从而一直保持着对超级英雄的崇拜，甚至越演越烈。尽管有那么多的技术革新，蝙蝠侠的摩托车和超人内裤也在创新，但超级英雄电影在反映性别成见却始终换汤不换药，这一点从1930年代超人和蝙蝠侠最初流行时到现在并无改变。世界早已经不一样了 ——白宫椭圆形办公室有了一位非裔美国人，现任国务卿是一位女性——但电影里的超级英雄却始终走不出女性主义运动和民权运动以前的逻辑，就像《复仇者联盟》里讲的一样，总是一群白种男人拯救了世界，各个种族、各种文化的人民大众都在感谢他们。这是多么超级荒谬的瞎话。
