Why don't superheroes save individual people anymore in superhero movies?

This is totally subjective, but ever since I saw the first Superman movie when I was a kid, I think my favorite part about these kinds of movies were those moments where superheroes endeared themselves to the general public. I don't dislike modern superhero movies, but I feel like their aspirations for an overarching plot have kind of obscured the point of the characters.

For my money, I still think the best moment in a superhero movie was Spider-Man stopping the train in Spider-Man 2. We got a very clear sense of the lengths the hero was willing to go to to save a few people, and a really touching sense of what that meant to those people. "He's just a kid. No older than my son," is the regular people in that universe recognizing that this is just some guy.

To be fair, the two Avengers movies, and a couple Marvel movies beyond that, have the heroes rescuing people, but it's generally a cutaway in the midst of a plot-heavy or climactic fight. It feels more like checking something off of a list than informing us about the character or what people feel about them. Offhand, the only moment in any of the Marvel movies that I can remember that I feel really shows a hero, absent an immediate threat, going out of their way to rescue civilians, is the Air Force One sequence when everyone is falling in Iron Man 3, and that might be my favorite MCU moment. (I'm sure there are others, they're just not coming to me.)

I mean, Civil War had twelve superheroes, and yeah, the airport fight was fun, and the plot worked out, and I enjoyed the movie, but attempting to "save the world" feels so much less intimate than the choice Peter Parker faced between the bus and Mary-Jane in the first Spider-Man. Beyond what a King and a high-ranking politician think of the heroes in Civil War, I have no idea what regular folks think. And twelve superheroes never directly save a civilian onscreen.

In the Snyder movies, there are moments where Superman saves individuals, but it's always this preposterously somber thing. He feels burdened by the fact that he can easily rescue these people.

I dunno, where are those moments where, absent the overarching plot, we get a sense for the relationship between the heroes and the people they're defending? Even a movie as silly as Mask of Zorro had those moments, and it was all the better for it.

Sorry for the rant.

Submitted November 12, 2016 at 12:18PM by streambeck http://ift.tt/2eM8KW2