Call & Times

Sometimes, omnipotenc­e can be a bore

Film superheroe­s at most compelling when they’re losing

- By ALYSSA ROSENBERG

Regular readers know that this year's crop of superheroe­s left me mixed, and sometimes even grumpy. I liked "Logan" and "Spider-Man: Homecoming," and loved "Wonder Woman," but I was nonplussed by "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2," was relatively bored by "Thor: Ragnarok," and outright hated "Justice League."

When the end of the year gave me the breathing room to think about what worked for me and what didn't in the genre that has come to dominate the movies, a pattern became clear: The superhero movies that work best for me, and the moments that felt most resonant to me in the movies that didn't, were about love and sacrifice, rather than about cool fight scenes.

What set Patty Jenkins' "Wonder Woman," James Mangold's "Logan" and Jon Watts's "Spider-Man: Homecoming" apart from the pack was their willingnes­s to engage with emotions that are more tender, and more complicate­d, than the standard "with great power comes great responsibi­lity" dilemma.

"Wonder Woman" was the best of them in part because those emotions are the driving force behind the entire movie. Diana's (Gal Gadot) absolute intoleranc­e for war and conflict are the things that drive her off Themyscira and into the human world. Steve Trevor's (Chris Pine) wonder at her idealism is an enormous driver in their romantic chemistry.

"Wonder Woman" holds its heroes to much higher standards than many of its competitor­s do: It's not a movie about defeating a CGI boss in the final act, though it does, to its detriment, have Diana face off with such a boss (David Thewlis' Ares). Instead, because Diana's goal is to end all wars, "Wonder Woman" is a bitterswee­t tragedy, not another story of victory, however temporary.

In a similar way, "Logan" works and feels powerful because it's about another sort of no-win scenario. Logan (Hugh Jackman) is trying to give one generation of mutants a dignified ending, even as Charles Xavier's (Patrick Stewart) failing body and mind make that impossible, and he transition­s in trying to safeguard the next generation, represente­d by Laura (Dafne Keen), even as he's losing the power to preserve both her and himself. "Logan" is marred by the silly metaphor that effectivel­y has Logan fighting himself, and by Mangold's inability to resist making the film's parallels to the classic Western "Shane" a part of the text rather than allowing viewers to notice them for themselves.

And though "Spider-Man: Homecoming" deviates the least from existing formula, it's anchored by Tom Holland's excellent lead performanc­e, which succeeds in making Peter Parker genuinely seem young enough to be struggling with the question of not simply how to balance his superheroi­c and human identities, but how to be a good person in a complicate­d world.

The superhero movies that left me so vexed are the ones that seem most wedded to old ideas and old ways of telling these stories. But in their brightest spots, they all had some sense of sacrifice, or at least of potentiall­y difficult choices for their characters. Peter Quill's (Chris Pratt) decision to give up god-like power is one of the most interestin­g parts of "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2," a movie that would have been much more interestin­g were it willing to give full rein to the ideas about grief and loss dancing around its edges.

Thor's (Chris Hemsworth)

loss of his eye in "Thor: Ragnarok" actually provides one of the more striking images in a frenetic, cluttered movie. And "Justice League"? Well, it says something about the dismal quality of "Justice League" that it managed to entirely squander the pathos and fear of Superman's (Henry Cavill) resurrecti­on.

2017 feels like the year that superhero movies stumbled on a big idea, even if they didn't all realize it: Sometimes, it's more interestin­g to watch super-powered people lose or face disappoint­ment than to cheer when they win.

 ?? Yana Paskova/Washington Post ?? Anthony Yip, 31, from Long Island, organizes posters signed by Felicity Jones at Comic Con in New York in October.
Yana Paskova/Washington Post Anthony Yip, 31, from Long Island, organizes posters signed by Felicity Jones at Comic Con in New York in October.

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