A Brief History of the Unconventional Superhero

by Rebecca Pahle | Published April 5, 2011

Rainn Wilson as Frank D'Arbo in Super

How many superhero movies been released in the last five years? Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Green Hornet and The Incredible Hulk are only a few, and before that there were three Spider-man movies, three X-Men movies, two movies each for The Fantastic Four and Hellboy, not to mention all the Superman and Batman movies. Coming up is a reboot for Spider-man, an X-Men prequel and two possible X-Men spinoffs, the third Christopher Nolan-directed Batman movie (The Dark Knight Rises), rumored to be followed by another Batman reboot. The Green Lantern. Thor. Captain America. The Avengers.

Yep, Hollywood loves its superhero movies, and most of them have a few things in common. The hero’s sense of responsibility will at some point conflict with his (or her) desire to live a normal life, which leads to an inspiring “With great power comes great responsibility” moment. The superhero is an outsider who (usually) doesn’t reveal his true identity, and yet he protects the little people because deep down he knows they’re (usually) decent. Some superheroes have superpowers, and some don’t. Some are dark and emotionally conflicted, and some aren’t. But is that all the variation audiences can expect in superhero movies? Can’t we have something a little bit… unconventional?

With James Gunn’s Super in theaters now, we get exactly that. Rainn Wilson stars as Frank D’Arbo, a.k.a. The Crimson Bolt, who decides to don a costume and become a superhero after his wife leaves him for a drug dealer. The Crimson Bolt has no powers, a homemade costume and a sidekick who goes by the name “Boltie.” Seems like a refreshing change from the nearly-invulnerable Superman (who will be played by Henry Cavill in Zack Snyder’s Superman: Man of Steel, to be released in 2012).

But Super’s not the first movie to take a less popular approach to the traditional superhero genre. With that in mind, MovieMaker presents A Brief History of the Unconventional Superhero.

The Cult Classic: The Toxic Avenger (1984)
directed by Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman
In this cult classic, a dorky health club janitor named Melvin Junko is bullied by pretty much everyone until one particularly nasty prank ends with Melvin upside down in a barrell full of blubbling green radioactive sludge (the movie takes place in Tromaville, New Jersey, the toxic waste capital of the world). The nuclear waste turns Melvin into a seven-foot-tall deformed-looking monster who is driven to beat bad guys to a pulp. And beat them to a pulp he does. The Toxic Avenger is outrageously over-the-top from the very beginning. In one of the first scenes four of Melvin’s tormenters, who like to go out driving and run people down, review their hit-and-run point system (bonus points are given if the victim is riding a bicycle or Puerto Rican, among other things). The corpulent mayor of Tromaville is involved in selling drugs (Melvin pulls out his intestines). Three punks try to rob a fast food restaurant and kill a blind woman’s seeing eye dog in the process (Melvin kills one by sticking his head in a pizza oven, another by putting his hands in a deep-fat fryer, and the third, well, you don’t want to know). Even the sweet little old lady Melvin kills by dry cleaning her (no, really) was actually the leader of a white slavery ring. The Toxic Avenger was made by Troma Entertainment, whose low-budget splatter horror films gained a loyal fanbase for the studio and helped to popularize horror movies. James Gunn got his start at Troma writing Tromeo and Juliet, and Troma co-founder (and The Toxic Avenger co-director) Lloyd Kaufman has a cameo role in Super as “911 Man.”

The Wacky Comedy: Mystery Men (1999)
directed by Kinka Usher
Not since Mystery Men has there been an unconventional superhero movie so fearlessly willing to include nudity-based comedy, awful puns and fart jokes, fart jokes, fart jokes. Mystery Men is about a team of misfit superheroes, including The Blue Raja (“I am pilfering your tableware because I hurl it. I hurl it with deadly accuracy.”) and The Shoveller (“Lucille, God gave me a gift. I shovel well. I shovel very well.”), who have to save the city from a disco-obsessed supervillain named Casanova Frankenstein after Champion City’s resident superhero (and Pepsi spokesman) Captain Amazing gets himself captured. The movie’s main focus is its jokes (sometimes gross, sometimes random, usually silly), though there are some digs on traditional superhero movies as well. When The Shoveller insists that Captain Amazing can’t be the billionaire Lance Hunt because Hunt wears glasses, group leader Mr. Furious responds that Hunt takes the glasses off to become Captain Amazing. The exasperated Shoveller then cries out “That doesn’t many any sense, he wouldn’t be able to see!”

The Moody Thriller: Unbreakable (2000)
directed by M. Night Shyamalan
There was a time, before Lady in the Water, The Happening and The Last Airbender, when M. Night Shyamalan was a well-respected, up-and-coming director whose film The Sixth Sense introduced the world to a major new talent. Shyamalan’s follow-up to The Sixth Sense was Unbreakable, which grossed only $249 million worldwide compared to The Sixth Sense’s $662 million. Unbreakable’s two main characters are David Dunn (Bruce Willis), a security guard who walks away from a train wreck unscathed, and the physically fragile comic book collector Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), who helps David discover that he’s basically a real-life superhero (he can’t be injured, is unnaturally strong, never gets sick, etc.) who was put on Earth to help people. Unbreakable provides an interesting twist on the superhero genre. The movie features a last-minute revelation that changes the meaning of everything that came before. This is early-era M. Night Shyamalan, after all.