 Enough with the superheroes already. Sheesh.
They're everywhere. We just get over Spidey and Batman, Ironman, The Hulk, and
Hellboy muscle their way onto the big screen. Sure the fifteen year-old geeky
boys are wetting themselves, but speaking for the rest of us, PLEASE STOP!
I don't want to take away anyone's fun, but it's
hard to get other kinds of movies made with Hollywood investing all its money in
nonsense involving klutzy, slow-thinking men who accidentally irradiate
themselves or get bitten by irradiated spiders or run out in front of a gamma
bomb to save klutzy, slow-thinking teenage boys. Then they have to spend the
rest of their lives rescuing the world from evil villains while getting in and
out of Spandex. Come on, no man on the planet is going to wear Spandex. Well,
except Richard Simmons, but his are not the kind of superpowers that usually
make it to the big screen.
Voice Over: Richard Simmons stars as Crazy Weight Loss
Man, the superhero beloved by overweight women in cat sweatshirts, who saves the
world from obesity, one giggle at a time.
I have no problem with suspension of belief, but I
want a bigger payoff for my trouble. For example, let me suspend belief while
watching a movie in which a hot younger man, let's say, Orlando Bloom, for
example, breaks up with his hot younger girlfriend, Katherine Heigl maybe, and
chases after a woman twenty years older, say Annette Bening, who is not rich,
powerful, or a friend of his father's. She's simply hot and he wants her. And in
the end she tells him he's cute but way too old for her. That's the kind of
fantasy I want to see.
I'm also somewhat bugged by the dearth of women
among the current crop of superheroes. This kind of omission makes my own
superpower - an eye twitch that hasn't get been registered on the Richter scale,
but it almost there - kick in. Sure, there's Invisible Woman of the Fantastic
Four. But hell, women generally become invisible when they pass forty, so what
kind of superpower is that? Ask any menopausal woman trying to get a drink at a
bar filled with twenty-somethings whether she'd like to have the power of
invisibility and chances are she'll knee you in the groin (another superpower we
women over 40 have - the inability to tolerate morons).
Now Wonder Woman had some real powers - flight,
super-strength, super-speed, enhanced hearing, enhanced vision, the ability to
make people tell the truth... Hey, wait a minute, those last three are things all
mothers have, so there's nothing really super about them.
And how about a female superhero who doesn't have
big boobs? Would that be too much to ask? A little cellulite would also be
nice.
If screenwriters want to get women into throng
back to theaters, why not a female superhero who can lose 50 pounds faster than
a speeding bullet, age in reverse, get the men in her life to do laundry AND
remember her birthday, run for President without having anyone comment on the
color of her suit or how low her blouse is buttoned, bring a lasting peace to
the Middle East, and clean her toilet without touching it? Those are the kind of
powers I'd like to see in action.
Just to get the ball rolling, here's a scene from
my script, Anti-Gravity Woman.
ANTI-GRAVITY WOMAN (young fifties, wearing jeans,
a t-shirt, and comfortable yet attractive shoes) spots the evil villain, BIG
TOBACCO (thirties, wearing a trench coat and with hair made from tobacco leaves)
from across the street.
He sells cigarettes to two school kids, hacking up
part of lung all the while..
Anti-Gravity Woman puts on her super-reading
glasses (conveniently dangling by a chain from her neck) and glares at Big
Tobacco. No sparks fly, no bombs go off, the skies don't rain locusts. But
suddenly, he clutches his testicles and falls to the ground.
Big Tobacco: My balls are on fire!
Anti-Gravity Woman crosses the street and shoos
the children off to school.
AG Woman: Feel the burn, Big Tobacco!
Big Tobacco: Anti-Gravity Woman? I should have known!
One of these days I'm going to ... say, how do you stay looking so young and
attractive?
Okay, take it and run! The rest of the
wish-we-were-movie-going-but-really-want-something-to-inspire-us audience is
waiting with bated (but not irradiated)
breath.
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