5. A Scathing Treatise On/Completely Unironic Celebration Of The American Dream
As seen in: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2 Naturally, as Hollywood loves nothing better than staring at its own navel and applauding itself (see the Oscar wins for The Artist and Birdman for instance), the temptation to make everything about America and how the American Dream has turned sour for those around the bottom of the chain is a constant companion for the filmmaker who has pretensions of saying something more profound than 'Aren't superpowers really cool?' his his/her retelling of a superhero narrative. It has, however, surely peaked. Batman did it pretty well, but theres just so little to say further than Oh isnt it awful how some people have money and some people dont what a terrible shame. How incisive. I know a central conceit that's based around a single individual pulling themselves up by the bootstraps kind of tends toward some interaction with the American Dream trope, but theyre not saying anything that Death Of A Salesman didnt say back in 1949. Captain America did it with a bit more nuance by having the Cap be not just a fearless thunder-hunk with few obvious weaknesses, but a man out of time, struggling to deal with Americas changing status in a world in which you cant just blame everything on the Nazis. However, not every franchise is blessed enough to have a hero who literally represents America itself, so a bit more legwork has to be done in making things clear.