Superhero Genre Part 1: The final two best?

Before I begin, I want to take a little time to state my condolences to the family and friends of those victims of the Colorado massacre in the movie theatre. My prayers go out to all of them. This heinous act was beyond deplorable, and completely unnecessary. It’s still unknown why this happened, but hopefully justice will be served. 

As many of you who follow us here on this board know, a popular genre of films we love to review, critique, and in some cases criticize, are the hero/superhero archetype films. And within the last decade or so, there’s been a resurgence of sorts, with this genre. 

Fallen Heros: The blurred grey line between them and the Anti-hero

Well, now that we have a good discussion in regards to the hero/anti-hero archetype, I’m curious to see if we can take this topic a bit further, and slightly darker, so to speak. Since we can agree on anti-hero types as complex characters, how would be describe a character that possessed true heroic ideals, but due to some sort of tragedy (which could be anything) slowly and inevitably become the full antagonist he/she once strived so hard to fight against. In short I present the Fallen hero.

Anti-heroes, the Good? the Bad? or something in between?

We all know in the majority of all storytelling, there are protagonists (whom are typically the archetypal heroes and focal characters of the story), and the antagonists (whom are usually the ‘villains’ or main opposition to the protagonists). Both are prevalent and are usually included in most story genres, including movies. At time however, those typical archetypal roles, can be blurred and not as clear as to whom the ‘hero’ or ‘villain’ is. This is epically true with more complex storylines and the likeness of the characters within genres of storytelling, movies, being no exception. Some do not carry the typical morals of the atypical hero. Some are deeply flawed in personality or by interaction. Some do not always take the moral high road, yet might pick certain heroic traits here and there (though not all of them). As you’re probably aware by now, this it what we refer to as Anti-heroes.