Sidekick or Superhero?

I’ll admit it, I’m a nut for superhero movies. I always have been. That’s why the really bad ones upset me so badly (and why I’ve still haven’t finished my top ten worst movies of all-time list because I just can’t bare to watch Batman & Robin again). However, we have been fortunate to be living in a true Renaissance era for superhero blockbusters. Even the bad ones aren’t as bad as they were fifteen or twenty years ago. Like it or not, Tom Jane as Punisher was infinitely better than the peculiar casting of Dolph Lundgren in the role back in 1989. Sure, I thought Fantastic Four was campy but you never witnessed the first Fantastic Four shot in 1994, featuring the CSI savvy Rebecca Staab as Invisible Girl. It was never released but my friend found a copy online. A little bit of the kid in me died after watching that tragedy.

The funny thing is that my son is even a bigger superhero nut than me. Right now, he doesn’t know if he wants to be Incredible Hulk, Captain America, or Mr. Fantastic for Halloween. He said he would be Mr. Fantastic but he can’t stretch very good so he’ll go with Incredible Hulk because he does have the ability to Super Jump (really, he doesn’t but, hey, he’s three and I’m not about to shatter a three year old’s one-day hope of being able to leap buildings). It was also because of my son that I had to watch Sky High eighteen times (ten of which were when he was out of the room! I know, I know...I’m a friggin’ awesome dad!). Anyway, after the tenth viewing of Sky High, which is a cute movie that splits kids into either superheroes or sidekicks, I started to wonder how many of the superhero characters I watched as a kid were actually nothing more than overblown sidekicks. No, that isn’t true...I didn’t worry about all of them. I just worried about the Wonder Twins.

I loved the Wonder Twins as a kid. I can remember sitting there on Saturday mornings just waiting for them to say, "Wonder Twin powers...Activate! In the form of...," and I would almost get goose bumps. But I never really thought of them as superheroes because they never really thwarted evil or did anything all that impressive. Usually they would just put out a fire or perform roadside service to a car wreck. Did that make them superheroes? According to Sky High, you had to have a superpower in order to be a superhero. Any old power just wouldn’t do, it had to be super. Sure, Jayna, the sister, was a shoe in for superhero status because she could change into any animal, even extinct dinosaurs, but Zan, the brother, he could only take the form of water. Usually, he turned into a small bit of water which was easily contained within a pail held by their sidekick, Gleek; the buck-toothed alien monkey. In Sky High, there is a kid who can turn into liquid and he is immediately tossed into the sidekick bin. I worried that Zan might have fallen the same fate if more stringent controls had been put on superhero status back in the seventies and eighties. I even watched a show the other day (because my son made me) where Zan turned into gelatin dessert. I kid you not. As Jayna circled overhead in the form of a gracious eagle, Zan said, "In the form of gelatin dessert!" I’m sorry but that just isn’t very superhero-ish if you ask me. The only thing worse might have been, "In the form of a....tampon!" Sure, a tampon isn't made from water but, hey, neither is gelatin dessert...at least not entirely. Regardless, Zan's saving grace was that he did turn into an entire river of gelatin dessert which was pretty impressive, probably impressive enough for him to keep his superhero status even in today's competitve superhero environment. As for my son, with a one and a half inch high Super Jump, I think he might turn into a pretty decent sidekick one day.