Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Fantastic Four

There's also the comic website at http://www.marvelcomics.com/ .

I don't know if it's been discussed by anyone before but isn't it wierd that in the superhero movies that are coming out this summer we have the following character archtypes?

1. Fantastic Four - the four elements of nature - water (Mr. Fantastic), wind (Susan Storm), fire (Human Torch), and earth (The Thing) - fight against the corrupting nature of the fifth element discovered by man - metal (Dr. Doom).

2. Batman Begins - the avenger (Batman) overcoming the difficulties/antagonists which birthed him - fear (Scarecrow) and anger (Ras al'Ghul).

(Okay, the latter is a DC movie, the website for which is at http://www2.warnerbros.com/batmanbegins/index.html but it still has the primitive elements.)

Hmmm..... maybe there's somthing to this.

TTFN

2 comments:

The ZenFo Pro said...

Hmmm...very interesting...

The classic model of the superhero mythos always seems to revolve around the conquering of some confliciting elements of nature, from the battles between Life and Death (the Spectre of Golden Age DC Comics was actually the ghost of a dead guy seeking to preserve life, and, in Marvel lore, Frank Castle "died" when his family was murdered in a mob hit and became the Punisher) to the battles between elemental behavior to the conflicts between human emotion and prejudice.

Hmmm...must not think too deeply.

LoweryC said...

Yeah. Not too deeply.

Otoh, I sat down with a friend one time and discussed the metaphysical meanings and representations in the Bruce Willis flick The Fifth Element