Sometimes Heroes are Overrated

There are plenty of subjects when it comes to pop culture that would cause a heated debate among fans, and calling heroes overrated would be one of them. The fact is that a lot of heroes are overrated, but fans don’t want to hear this unless they’ve become a little more enlightened over the years. Let’s face it, when we’re younger and are into anything that has to do with superheroes, we tend to like the heroes since they’re the people that save the day and are there to keep civilians safe, right? Criticizing heroes isn’t something that people like to do since the heroes are supposed to be the ones that can be relied on to represent humanity at its best. But the kind of hero-worship that such an idea can create tends to backfire after a while since it leaves people thinking that heroes can do no wrong and aren’t held to the same standard. The truth, unfortunately, is that the most successful heroes that exist in the comics today aren’t those that are typically thought of as heroes.

The idea of the antihero and even the villain have been rising over the years as people have delved deeper into characters that aren’t quite as heroic, but in a lot of ways have their own style of justice, even if they don’t exemplify what a hero used to be. The truth is that even the heroes have had to change over the years since the truth is that the villains don’t often fight fairly, thanks to their nature or because it’s simply practical when fighting someone that expects everyone to fight in a manner that makes them easy to defeat. While villains have evolved, a lot of heroes haven’t over the years, as the idea of remaining dignified and upright in the way that they dispense justice has hampered a lot of heroes over the years. The no-kill policy that many of them possess is noble and all that, but it keeps the villains coming back time and again since, as it’s already been mentioned, fairness isn’t an ideal to which villains tend to cling. 

Heroes are overrated in the comics and movies for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that they tend to cause as much damage as they’re trying to prevent. To save one person, they’re often willing to endanger the lives of many others. Several arguments go into why it’s still important to try to save the one over the many and I’d agree with a lot of points that people would bring to bear. But at the same time, no. Heroes are often those that thrust themselves into danger to protect the well-being of those that can’t save themselves. From a moral standpoint, this is the right thing to do, but from a practical standpoint things become far different when one widens the scope and remembers that for every person a hero saves in the comics and/or the movies, they’re likely forgetting, ignoring, or actually causing harm in one way or another to other people. Does this mean that heroes are ineffective and should stop? No, not at all. 

What it means is that raising these individuals up as role models and stating that they exemplify what it means to be a hero is kind of ridiculous. Personally, characters such as the Hulk, Wolverine, the Punisher, Moon Knight, and many others that take a looser approach to the heroism trade have always been my favorites. They’re still there to help, but quite often their attitude has kept them on the sidelines until they decide to act, either out of impulse or after a carefully calculated decision that will keep them from being the typical hero that saves the day. Some of those that are labeled as heroes or anti-heroes have been absolute savages, and people have chided them for this over the years while giving a pass to the likes of Captain America and many others for the things they’ve done. Look at it this way, Black Widow was raised to be an assassin and kill people at the whims of her handlers, and yet she’s been hailed as a hero and an Avenger for so long that people might have forgotten her origins. 

There’s no desire to ruin the reputations of those that have been inspirational to so many, but placing them on a pedestal is a juvenile way to look at things, especially since each character ever created has done their share of damage while trying to save others. The antihero has been a far easier type of character to follow over the years since such characters don’t make any attempt to claim that they’re anything than what they are, an instrument of justice that might save people, but are often there to ensure that the villains don’t get their way.