Superhero Movies Can’t Escape Their Feelings, and They Shouldn’t Try To

This contains some spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

So a little superhero movie called Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 came out this past weekend and hide your surprise, it’s a hit. That’s fairly typical, given that it’s both a sequel to a widely beloved movie and it’s also from Marvel, a company who can do pretty much anything and get praise for it (except turn a flagship hero into a Nazi, but different story).

The most surprising thing about it was that despite it being another cosmic tale, it’s a much smaller and more character focused tale than last time. There’s about maybe three to five central locations through the whole film, the titular characters spent a good amount of time split off from one another, and everyone’s feeling things. That last one didn’t sit too well with a writer over at Slate, who recently published an article about how the movie is too full of feelings for a comic book action flick and spends too much time talking about how its characters feel rather than showing us.

Now, I don’t really agree with either of those points — I can think of maybe only one time where the latter holds, and that’s when Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord laments that he never got to play catch with his dad as a kid like others his age did — but it did spark a discussion among many on Twitter about superhero movies and how they should just avoid emotions. While I haven’t seen any who think that’s a good idea, it has to be said: that is a bad idea. Superheroes are some of the most vibrant, colorful characters in media we’ve got, and they’re human beings with their own lives, goals, etc. Emotions and feelings are just a natural part of life, and trying to suppress them has historically not ended well for anyone involved. Hell, some of the most famous superheroes have their abilities and skills dictated almost essentially by their emotions.

To say that live action or animated superheroes should shirk away from talking about their feelings feels, well…stupid. With Guardians in particular, the only way to really get inside the head of these eight weirdos is by having them talk to each other, since many of their arcs or personal lives are connected with that of another in the cast. Nebula needs to vent to Gamora about their abusive childhood under Thanos, just like Mantis needed to touch Drax specifically and feel his specific emotions. Feelings are inescapable for a team that consists of genetic experiments, child soldiers, and widower war refugees. And unless you want a sci-fi interpretation of Lost where everyone’s just having flashback after flashback, there isn’t really a better way to get that across. (It’s also worth remembering that four of the five OG Guardians did basically the same thing in the first film as they did now, and all of them were just a few minutes apart from one another during the second act of that movie.)

The Lego Batman movie taught kids that it’s okay to be sad and to let the emotions flow, and it’s frankly a lesson that adults could use too. With how male-dominated superhero movies currently are — at least, until three weeks from now — there’s a really low number of them that really get into how their lead characters feel. (Everyone’s examples are different, but what comes to mind for me as far as films that do it quite well and beyond the surface level are Logan, Iron Man 3, and Power Rangers.) While these movies are for everybody, guys do need to see better forms of masculinity on screen, if for no other reason than to know there’s different ways to process emotions.

It looks like that could be what’s happening with Peter losing his fancy new threads in Spider-Man: Homecoming, but Black Panther and Thor Ragnarok also provide a good spot to get into their titular characters’ feelings. Thor literally loses what’s basically another limb to him in the opening moments of his upcoming film, and there has to be a moment where he experiences whatever the Asgardian weapons equivalent to phantom pains are. And T’Challa’s facing pressure from all sides politically now that Civil War has ended, not to mention whatever threats he’ll be facing in his movie next year.

Feelings aren’t the problem in a superhero movie, they’re the solution. You can’t have a fully interesting character if they’re just going to be an unfeeling, stone slab. If you don’t want to see your heroes emote, that’s fine, but it’s incredibly bland and dull way of thinking.