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Originally Posted by €uroMeinke
I like your take and I think maybe you identified the thing that irks me most - the Good and Evil morality tale that plays out. I tend to respond more to characters with more moral ambiguity - perhaps I'd like the flawed hero's more, but I think the genre paints them into that good and evil paradigm.
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The good ones have a lot of ambiguity.
Batman has always been my favorite. The appeal of Batman is twofold. 1) He's traditionally portrayed as "just a man". A really really really ridiculously skillful man, but mortal with no mutation, magic, or alien power. 2) He's morally ambiguous, mistrusted by the people he has given his life to protect, pushing the boundaries of just how far the ends justify the means.
The superhero stories that appeal to me do not have clear good vs. evil. They explore the themes and pressures that add up to good and evil, but I don't buy into it if it tries to make a black and white point. I'm much more interested when it explores the nuanced psyche of real people.
Batman Begins I think is a good example. It tackled the subject of fear, making the point (among others) that while fear is a tool often used for evil ends, fear itself is amoral, turned evil only by those that choose to use it for such.
I'm not a huge fan of the genre, I haven't really been exposed to a whole lot of it. But from what I have seen, Batman is by far my favorite. It's always morally ambiguous, Batman possesses a highly damaged psyche. He's always struggling to separate what he wants from what he knows is right. I'm sure there are others as well that I'm just not familiar with, but that's what does it for me.