Far be it from me to be one of the many that get down on superheroes for every little thing, but the truth is that some of them do tend to create quite a mess when they’re fighting the villains and they don’t tend to look around at the devastation they’re causing when they do. In all fairness, the villains aren’t paying attention either and usually do want to cause the damage that’s already taking place since to them, the collateral damage is a weakness they might be able to exploit as they could think that the heroes are going to attempt to divert them to an area where they might be on even footing and can really let loose. So the truly despicable villains will seek to cause as much harm as possible to unbalance the hero and get their mind on something else other than the battle. But in recent movies, it has to be said that the destruction that’s taken place still falls on the shoulders of the heroes quite a bit since there are plenty of examples when the heroes mucked things up to such a degree that they laid waste to entire cities. The alternative wasn’t great really since it meant allowing the villains to take over and do as much damage as they wanted without reserve, but the heroes can’t really escape the responsibility for a lot of the stuff they do.
A great example comes in Man of Steel when Superman and Zod go toe to toe, or when Clark first meets Zod and begins by plowing him through a cornfield and then one structure after another until they smash through a store and set explosions to popping through an entire town. By the time the military starts adding in their damage, Clark and the Kryptonians have already decimated a big portion of the town, when it’s possible that with all the farmland around he might have found a way to lure them into an area where people might not get hurt. The argument that comes from this is pretty sound since in the heat of the moment we all do things that don’t make as much sense, and Clark could have been doing the same since he was angered by the threat to his mother’s life. But as much as his parents trained him to hone his senses, it might have been wise to teach him to take his more destructive tendencies elsewhere when he felt the need since the kid went through puberty after all, and it’s easy to think that he might have found his emotions running out of control a time or two.
The Hulk is another hero that creates mass damage on a regular basis since his strength is too great to contain as well. He and Iron Man managed to level a portion of a city in Africa during Avengers: Age of Ultron, which only intensified the public’s attitude concerning their ability to act without restraint. Plus, in the same movie, Tony ended up creating a being that would go on to destroy the majority of a city, all because he had to be the smartest person in the room and create another AI. Let’s be honest here, for all their usefulness and the ability to keep the world safe from even worse threats, superheroes don’t tend to look around as much as they should when fighting, since they tend to cause about as much damage as they’re trying to prevent sometimes. Even Wonder Woman in the Snyder Cut ended up blowing out the side of a building when she could have easily disarmed the terrorist she targeted without blasting him to pieces. We idolize superheroes, and often for good reason, but a lot of people tend to forgive their ability to destroy entire city blocks or more by stating that they had no choice but to engage the enemy in a highly-populated area. The sad part is that this is the case sometimes and it’s difficult to say it’s okay sometimes but not others, since there are those moments when a hero has to do their duty and can’t worry about what’s going to happen to the neighborhood in the process. But then there are moments such as in Hancock when the destruction of public and private property isn’t really warranted.
Again, no one is saying that heroes should be shown in a movie working on the construction crews to repair everything. Or should they? In some ways it would be great if the heroes did step up to fix some of the damages they helped to create, but it’s likely we’re never going to see this since a lot of people might deem it to be too boring and beneath a superhero. Of course, that attitude might continue to make the heroes look less noble to those that enjoy the stories but find it odd how heroes are somehow above helping those they unintentionally harm.
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