Will Hollywood Allow Us Heroes Again?

The new Stephen Sommers-directed G.I. Joe movie headed to theaters this summer kicked the U.S.A. out of the bunker and put “The Real American Hero” under international command. The thinking at the time by Hollywood execs held that the U.S. was hated by the rest of the world and could no longer be seen as heroic.

Superman Returns screenwriters Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris shortened Superman’s call to arms to just “Truth and Justice” because “The American Way” was supposedly not worth fighting for anymore. They then proceeded to transform The Man of Steel into a simpering, self-absorbed drama queen.

Why has Hollywood worked so diligently to remove well-focused, admirable heroes from American movies? The primary reason was George W. Bush’s presence in the White House and the primary focus of his administration — the war against Islamic militants.

To the hard left in Hollywood, 9/11 and subsequent struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq were caused by the U.S. The bad guys had no say in the matter and were merely reacting to circumstances thrust upon them by Uncle Sam. Naturally enough, fighting terrorists anywhere on the planet merely added to America’s crimes.

That astoundingly naive world view grows out of the primary philosophy of anyone on that hard left: “The strong are always bad, and the weak are always good.” Morality and philosophy play no part in this global vision. If A has more than B, A is evil. B could lie, cheat, steal or fly commercial airliners into skyscrapers, and it’s all justified because simple math unveils inequities.

If you impose this philosophy onto movie stories, you can see how difficult it is to create compelling bad guys for movies. If no one in a weakened social or political position can ever do anything wrong, all you have left is wealthy, Western business men to plot society’s downfall — and that’s who perpetrated most of the foul deeds in movies during the Bush years. That leaves a rich cesspool of villainy untapped. But, once you admit that there’s evil in the world that must be fought in your movies, it becomes that much more hypocritical to rail against the war in Iraq at your next yoga class or macrobiotics party. Hollywood painted itself into a corner from where it couldn’t admit to the existence of evil and maintain its political stance.

Unfortunately, when you remove compelling villains from stories, you take the teeth out of our cinematic heroes. Offer a hero no truly dastardly deeds to fend off and no evil foe to battle, and you give an audience less to invest in and enjoy. We’re left with the one perfect hero for the anti-Bush era, Jason Bourne. Think about it. He’s poor. He’s sick. He battles middle-aged white men in Washington. And, his one great desire in life isn’t to defend the innocent or fight for justice — it’s to be left alone to his own brooding self-absorption. Sure, those movies made money — since audiences were starving for anything resembling a true hero.

Then, a strange thing happened as Bush was headed out the door in 2008. Heroes made a massive comeback as Iron Man, The Dark Knight and Gran Torino featured men sacrificing their own comfort and desires to fight genuinely evil men. They didn’t sit around contemplating the inequities of Western culture or exploring their feelings. They risked their safety to fight threats to the innocent — and only Iron Man featured a remnant of the “evil rich guy” villain (Jeff Bridges).

More importantly, these movies were successful — in the case of Dark Knight, immensely successful. And Dark Knight had the audacity to make all that money while including Michael Caine’s seminal, “Some men just want to watch the world burn…” speech (thus far, the most perfect dramatic explanation of why we’re fighting terrorists across the globe).

Hopefully, the success of these films will shake Hollywood out of its navel-gazing, passive-aggressive political statements and force it to present some interesting heroes and heroines again. Audiences crave them. And, since a Democrat is president and it’s safe for Hollywood to support America’s wars again, there’s reason to hope for such a comeback.