The sheer volume of movies available through theaters, home entertainment and services like Netflix can make it difficult to discern the good from the bad and the ugly in the world of cinema. Every so often, we here at NBNtertainment will be taking a major studio release and picking out an alternative film of a similar genre, theme or style for you to check out as a comparative primer.
Iron Man 3 just grossed $175 million dollars domestically, the second-highest box office pull for a film’s opening weekend in cinematic history.
The record-breaking success of Marvel’s juggernaut franchise got me thinking about why people are so attracted to Tony Stark, Iron Man’s alter ego, particularly as he’s incarnated by actor Robert Downey Jr.
I believe what really grounds RDJ's Iron Man in the top tier of the Marvel canon is the focus on his flaws as a person above his triumphs as a hero. He doesn’t have the robotic, boringly goody-two-shoes altruism of Captain America, or the fish-out-of-water naiveté and man-child innocence of an out-worlder like Thor. He has no natural super powers either, but rather applies his capital and intellect to create personal manifestations of power, not necessarily out of a sense of justice, but more for the purposes of self-preservation and personal gain.
He becomes a hero almost entirely by accident; as an egotistical billionaire who can recognize injustice, he decides, initially reluctantly, to use his resources to the save the world.
The intriguing figure of the accidental hero, or the hero of forced circumstances, prompted me to go back and look at other genre pictures that have depicted superheroes as tangible human beings who stumble upon uncanny prowess, reluctantly using their extraordinary attributes for good.
The oft-derided found-footage genre reached a sort of zenith last year with Josh Trank’s Chronicle, a low-budget film that dissects the lives of three high school loners who develop otherworldly abilities after happening upon a crashed alien vessel in the woods.
Their party consists of Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan), his cousin Matt Garrety (Alex Russell), and their mutual friend, Steve Montgomery (Michael B. Jordan). Detmer is the clear lead. Played with palpable wounds by DeHaan; his Detmer is an introverted, disheveled and wiry boy who, from the story’s outset, carries a small camcorder to document his alcoholic father’s violent abuse and his troubles as a social outcast. Once Detmer and company acquire their powers, the footage's focus shifts from Detmer's adolsecent woes to superpowered flights of fancy, and the second third of the film becomes a giddy “greatest hits” reel of the boys’ exploiting their abilities.
There’s not much of a plot to Chronicle, the narrative is largely episodic. That lack of a through-line lends the proceedings a naturalism and spontaneity; you feel like you’re watching snippets cut from an authentic home video, and subsequently get a strong sense of where these kids are coming from and why they are behaving the way they do. Like most teenagers grappling with the ills of high school and family life, they behave like jackasses.
Whether it's billowing up the skirts of fellow classmates with a telekinetically floating leafblower or terrifying toddlers at a grocery store by animating a teddy bear, the boys constantly alleviate their internal tensions through the infinite vent of their superpowers.
Their gimmicks vary between the comic, the immature and even the transcendental. For example, upon discovering the capacities of flight, they soar into the stratosphere for a game of catch. These episodes make it explicit that these kids are not born heroes; they, like Tony Stark, are people first, and spend a good amount of their time looking for emotional outlets rather than stopping crime or smashing baddies.
The movie only really falters when it develops its “message” and subsequently regresses into conventionality as Detmer, torn apart by his family struggles, begins to violently abuse his powers and enact his adolescent revenge fantasies in real life.
As the film gets darker and more thematically portentous, it ironically loses its edge, and the gimmick of the hand-held camera becomes increasingly absurd; the found footage aesthetic style strains narrative logic. As Detmer plunges further into villainy, we begin to wonder why he’s bothering to document every aspect of his personal collapse.
All this teenage angst and structural chaos culminates in a city-wrecking finale akin to typical superhero fare, as the shattered Detmer battles Garrety and the rest of his friends in metropolitan Seattle. Chronicle’s distinction from the rest of its ilk is that no one has a clearly defined role to play in the end; Detmer isn’t inherently the villain, but rather someone so mentally broken down that he can’t discern right from wrong. Garrety isn’t the hero, he simply wants to pull his friend back out of the abyss. By doing what’s best for Detmer, Garrety technically “saves the day,” but with a dangerous moral ambiguity that forces viewers to question what defines heroic action.
Far too many superhero films mistake spectacle for substance and moral absolutes for thematic weight; blockbusters like Iron Man 3 and smaller, more independent projects like Chronicle stand out from the pack because they put the human traits of their characters front and center, with the full spectrum of complex issues that entails on raw display; the superpowers are just a bonus that up the drama and action. I'd subsequently strongly reccomend Chronicle to anyone looking for an independent superhero experience that deftly combines the exhiliration of adolescent discovery with an aesthetic that, though eventually wearying, lends the film a staid emotional core and unique perspective on its genre.
It’s one thing to digitally render a man in flight, but it's another thing entirely to make an audience care whether he falls.