3. Seeing The World Without You In It - It's A Wonderful Life
Power: Changing to see what the world would look like if you hadn't lived.
Why it would suck: Granted, this power comes from a movie that was made long before CGI, so it may not be fair to pick on it. I am now going to pick on it. For the purposes of the film, this power is the whole point and teaches George a valuable lesson about appreciating what he has and valuing his life and blah, blah, Capra, blah. Practically speaking though, as far as angles are concerned, it's about the most useless power there is. Angles are supposed to be able to grant miracles. Heal the sick. Raise the dead. Help untalented, but well-meaning sports teams win big games. If an angel were to come down and change the past for you so you could live better, that would be something. But an angel coming down just to show you what life would be like without you is the very definition of useless. What if things are better without you? Does the angel know for certain that things would be worse and so what if things are worse? Even if things are worse for the people in your life, what if you never being born somehow resulted in Hitler getting killed before the holocaust? What then? Would you still want to live knowing that your life indirectly causes millions of deaths? Even if you choose to not live, what does that mean? How does a person who never lived get to the afterlife? What was the plan if George wanted to not be born? Was that a vision that the angel, Clarence, provided or did the timeline actually change? From my view, this power only works if you believe that every life born is a positive force in the universe. But that can't possibly be true in every case, so what your left with is a really depressing, really lame power that's hardly worth earning wings over. Now, having wings, that's a cool power.