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It's superheroes and not their super-villain counterparts that we should really be afraid of. This idea has been explored in a number of superhero movies, including such diverse fare as The Incredibles, Watchmen, and the post-Sokovia adventures of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In each, lawmakers shackle our protagonists in response to the collateral damage caused when they step in to save the day.
But perhaps collateral damage is not what we should be worried about. According to a new study, the "good guys" are actually significantly more violent than the antagonists they're trying to stop. These findings were presented on Monday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Pennsylvania pediatrician Robert Olympia and his colleagues sat through 10 superhero movies released in 2015 and 2016, cataloging each specific act of violence and noting whether it was committed by a protagonist or villain.
As anyone who has sat through a recent summer superhero tentpole can attest, there is a lot of violence to catalogue—on the order of 23 acts per hour for the good guys, with just 18 violent acts per hour for the bad guys. And it is mostly guys—male characters were five times more likely to engage in violence than female characters.
Well, it's edgier that way.
[For the sake of discussion, here's a 3-minute clip on YouTube: Incredibles 2 Fight Scene in Full: Jack-Jack vs. Raccoon (Exclusive). How many violent acts do you count? --Ed.]
(Score: 5, Informative) by RedBear on Friday November 09 2018, @07:52PM
It's not that I'm necessarily disagreeing that heroes tend to use a lot of violence to solve problems, and the stereotypical male will usually resort to a violence-based solution much earlier than a stereotypical heroine... but...
I am very curious exactly what these people wrote down during their research whenever the villain oh so politely (and non-violently) pushed "START" on his doomsday machine to destroy the world, or told the hero about a nuclear bomb planted somewhere in the city, and the only apparent solution to stopping the plan to do violence to millions was using some violence on some bad guys.
Was it only considered "violence" when someone was actually having a physical conflict? That's how the abstract makes it sound. The thing with movie villains is that they will typically have a goal of stealing the property of others (violence), subjugating a group of people (violence), conquering or destabilizing entire countries through manipulation (violence), or killing half or all the population of the world via some kind of doomsday plot device (violence). The hero will typically be using the violence to prevent major tragedies (aka violence).
There are many things that are far more damaging than getting punched in the face, and they all fit under the umbrella of "violence" depending on how you define it. Judging just from the abstract this seems like the "study" was done from a very limited viewpoint to address the problem of small children hurting themselves or others while imitating onscreen "heroes". The conclusion seems to be that for small children watching movies containing "good guys" performing physically violent acts, parents should take responsibility to provide some context to help their children understand not to emulate the behavior in the real world. Because it's natural for children to want to emulate "heroes".
Or in other words, "Parents should parent." I can't say I disagree. I daresay there should be very few here who would disagree with such a conclusion.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ