A Word on Character

I’m resolved to keeping this blog as focused as possible on literary matters, but recent events force me to divert for a moment to address a terrible wrong. Last night my friends and I saw the premier of X-Men Origins. I won’t drag out the myriad details of this film’s failure; I will simply say that it let me down.

The first thing I said to my friends walking out of the Georgetown theatre after the midnight showing of X-Men Origins was “Why Stan Lee? Why’d you do it?” Standing there in the misty rain at 2 AM on a weekday, dressed as superhero at the age of twenty-five, I wasn’t feeling quite at my best. Fourteen friends and acquaintances had gathered together that evening to see a film about our most beloved cultural icons. We so loved these characters that no bounds of common sense, social convention, or good taste could have stopped us from making an appearance that night. We came for many reasons, but mostly, mostly we were drawn by the guileless enthusiasm of my best friend. Hours before the show he had put the final touches on a set of cardboard claws he had proudly worn across town, smoking a cheap cigar to complete the look. Seeing him after the show, his face white with shock and his claws discarded, was like looking at a child who had just learned about the death of a beloved pet at the hands of a careless trucker.

Of course, in the cold light of day we must come to terms with the facts. I know how it happened of course, the same force that has driven the video game world and the music of our times from their lofty beginnings to stinking quagmire of mediocrity in the arts has set its sights on a new target, comics. After the new Star Wars trilogy and the unspeakable abomination that was Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, how long did we think our beloved comic heroes would be safe? The truth is that this was inevitable. The moment it was realized that we, the avid consumers of modern myth, were in fact a profitable demographic, our fate was sealed. Our legends were bound to be strained, diluted, and served en masse to the drunken hoards of movie goers and toy shoppers who scoff at the consequences of their over-indulgence and move from fad to fad after the next quick fix.

The real tragedy is that we asked for this. While we tried to set our expectations low every true fan that set foot into the theatres harbored a secret desire that somehow our legends would win through and that the movie would meet our most desperate ideals. When faced with Hollywood’s inevitable betrayal and cheapening that secret hope died inside us, wounding us so deeply because we kept it close to our hearts where the world couldn’t see it. We set ourselves up for the fall, and fall we have.

The only question that remains is what to do next.

To the writers out there, I implore you. To thine own characters be true. No matter what the material temptation may be, we must remember that the generations that come after us will only have our fiction to truly tell them who we were. Every time we give into stereotype or hammer down our art to make it more acceptable we are reducing not only ourselves, but the essence of our generation. We must do better than this.

To the readers and movie goers, I say there is no other recourse then to heal and move on. We can point fingers all we want, we can rage against this injustice with all the power the internet has, we can even boycott. I tell you though that none of these things will make it better. Until we learn to admit that we are hurt, admit that we are scared, and learn to love again, we will never be whole. Don’t turn your backs on fiction; you’ve been friends for far too long for that. Let solace in the company of friends and time regenerate the damage we’ve suffered, then head out again onto the open roads of fantasy with a clear mind and no memory.

It’s what Wolverine would have wanted.