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The first showdown between a superhero and a bad guy was startlingly small.
Watch: How Black Panther Reinvents Hollywood Visions of Africa
The man tries to stab Superman, but when the knife breaks, the abuser faints from shock.
The Man of Steel dons his Clark Kent duds and hangs around until the cops show up.
Thats the whole fight.
Isnt there something wonderful about that?
was a reality-altering sorcerer who wanted to help a giant dude from another dimension take over ours.
Tell me, did any of those schemes really excite you?
Or did they just feel like placeholders?
Now, by contrast, lets look atBlack Panther.
In Ryan Cooglers stunning new Marvel film, our Big Bad is a mere mortal.
He goes by the name Erik Killmonger, and his plan is utterly novel in the superhero-movie canon.
As he puts it, The worlds gonna start over.
And he doesnt want to destroy the world; he wants to make it more just.
Its a story about a single man who wants to implement political change.
If the climactic fight scenes arent just about stopping a megabombs countdown, theyre far more engaging.
This smaller-scope approach is a strategy thats been adopted by many of thebest superhero movies.
The struggle inLoganis one man trying to save one girl.
Theyre comparatively mild exaggerations of reality.
In our dimension, virtually no one tries to destroy or subjugate all life on Earth.
But plenty of people do smaller-scale bad things out of jealousy, avarice, anger, and misguided idealism.
When we see a filmic plot with that kind of engine and scope, were more easily drawn in.
Those kinds of plots also lend themselves to more interesting fights.
The third act of the average superhero flick is a real snore these days.
