What are we looking for in a hero?

ALERT:The article below in a way is not a review of Ironman 3 or any movies that will be explicitly mentioned. It's a compilation of thoughts and point of views which have no relation what so ever with any institutions or media.

Reading the pre-note I wrote above, I'm quite sure many of you already have the presumptions regarding what I'm going to discuss in the several boring, lousy, paragraphs below. Yes, people. The latest movie that got people's talking about anywhere, Ironman 3. 

I saw the movie just now, with no experience watching the previous movies, which were the 1st and 2nd Ironman. So I had no idea how Starks invented his iron suit and every little thing he had done in the past. But it didn't take long for me to see the hero in Starks, the hero that's typically made and carefully crafted by the Hollywood nowadays.

As you may have realized - or not, which is why I'm writing this - the Hollywood film industry has picked up a new trend in the last few years, and has shifted the paradigm and images of an ideal hero that's portrayed in the movies it produces, especially superheroes movies like Ironman or the rest. If you can still remember the very first superman movie ever made, we were presented with a hero with no flaw. The ideal hero with high morality, with no ego, the one that we knew would be willing to sacrifice himself at any costs to save humanity and the earth. He's no evil. It's just not a superhero quality to put himself before the others. We loved the perfect hero. We adored it. People would queue for hours to watch the sequels of Superman so that they could take a glimpse of the hero they longed for in the society that era. 

Not until very recently that the viewers, the audience, the people, whatever you call it, are actually kind of bored with the 'perfect' hero. They find perfectness unreal, something they can't relate to. That's when the movie industry, started to create a hero with flaws, with more humane sides that didn't exist prior to the millennium. Take Spiderman for an example. In the first installment, we saw Peter Parker with all the good sides. Now remember the 3rd spiderman, the one with the black spiderman making an appearance. Peter Parker was seen falling down into the pit, where he couldn't handle the power and the responsibilities he had on his shoulder. We saw the vulnerable side of Parker, of Spiderman, that we didn't get or got very little to see before. Then came 'The Amazing Spiderman'. Where Parker's image is re-built, and re-made, into a bad boy. He's still a hero, a superhero, but he's also very human, just like normal people. He did many mistakes, he had an ego, he was not completely selfless, but he could save the world regardless. 

Same thing goes for Ironman. Difference is, from the very start, Marvel created the hero from a mad genius who is utterly selfish and a womanizer. Remind you of someone? At some aspects, Ironman is sort of the batman in a way more high-tech way, though Batman has a Bat-mobile, which is still uber cool. Anyway, the point I'm trying to state is, how different we see a hero now and then. We used to love this flawless hero, and America used to portray that everywhere; from comic books (like Captain America) to movies like Superman. But now, we're given heroes who are full of faults, who are, without their masks and suits and armors and power, are very much vulnerable and weak at heart, and often times couldn't handle themselves. More and more are they portrayed and represented as strong on the outside, but very much a hot mess on the inside. 

James Bond: strong, brave, but in the latest movie,  Skyfall, it's told that he ran away from his duty, as he felt like he had lost his identity, he didn't know who he was anymore. He was tired from being used as a mere instrument. He had to face his past, he had to dig and open up old wounds. He's more emotional, more sentimental. Yet, we love him still. (oh please, with that kind of body, who wouldn't? :P)

Tony Starks: Rich, very successful, very powerful, very smart and can be said a genius. He created Ironman. He decided to be Ironman, it's not like he didn't have a choice. He had. But he chose to be the man behind the iron suit. In Ironman 3, Starks had to deal with some sort of PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder) or panic attack, as his past heroic actions came back and haunted him. it started to slowly eat him from the inside. He, too, couldn't handle himself and the power he possess in his hands.

So now i'm questioning myself, what are we looking for in a hero? Clearly, we no longer think the 'perfect' hero as cool and amazing. We think that heroes should still do wrongs, should still have a personal identity as a regular human being, and we want them to deal with problems we deal with in everyday situations. And that's what the Hollywood caught on, and they transpired those into movies. Is it true? I don't know. I don't do a legitimate research or anything. But it's very much possible, right? That people love to see a more vulnerable side of the heroes in every movie they watch. They want to know, want a re-assurance, that no matter how bad we are, we can still be a hero. It's okay to have some flaws, it's okay to experience an identity crisis, we are not alone. 

This trend might change. It constantly changes. But for the next decade, I don't see it changing, unless a new, revolutionary leader emerges during the next 10 years and make drastic changes in how people view the world. 

Let's prove it in the next 10 years, hopefully this blog is still up and running. :)

ps: totally unrelated to the gibberish I said above, I found Ironman 3 very much entertaining. We got to see not 1, not 2, but 10 iron mans (or less, or more. I didn't exactly count).