Passive and painful superheroes
We're all familiar with a lot of superheroes, whether it's Iron Man, Captain America or the Hulk, and the other heroes we're going to talk about, many of whom became heroes or chose to be heroes when they became adults.
But today, the hero we are going to talk about can be said to be born a superhero, or he was born with some kind of quality to become a superhero, but the process of becoming a superhero is very painful and long. This man is Wolverine.
"Oedipus" on Wolverine
What is the biggest difference between Wolverine and other superheroes?
The biggest difference is that other superheroes become heroes because of the world's problems, and become heroes to solve the world's problems, while Wolverine becomes a hero because of his own problems, and he still solves his own problems after becoming a hero.
Wolverine (formerly known as James Howlett) was born with an inhuman physique, and when he was young, his biological father killed his adoptive father, and the strange abilities in James Jr.'s body were activated, and he used his "bone claw" to blade his biological father and began to flee. During the escape, James confirms that he is a "werewolf" and his brother is a "saber-toothed tiger". This innate setting of doomed tragedy gave Wolverine the tragic undertone of his life, and he began to live a life of upheaval and displacement.
Another name of Wolverine, "Logan", as we know it, is the surname of his biological father, the gardener who was killed by his own hands.
Wolverine's problem is this fate that is predestined and innately carried on the body, how to face it? The character of Wolverine is easy to think of another character in ancient Greek tragedy: Oedipus.
The character of Oedipus is very representative, and he was prophesied by God at birth that he would have to kill his father and marry his mother, and he would experience all kinds of tragedies. So his father threw him far away, hoping that he would be as far away from him as possible, hoping that he would never come back. But it was such an abandoned baby, when he grew up, he returned to his royal city dramatically and coincidentally, and finally he actually married his mother and killed his father unconsciously.
Oedipus in Despair, oil painting, now in the Swedish National Museum in 1784
Oedipus, after going through all this, learned that this was the cursed part of his fate, and it was very painful, and his whole life was such a tragedy. Thus, Oedipus was later synonymous with a "doomed tragedy of fate.". "My life is up to me" is really OKAY?
There are many people who have the question: if I was born with some kind of destiny, or if I was born with some kind of tragedy that has determined me, then how should I face my fate?
Can my fate be changed? How do I accomplish self-redemption? Is fate a predestined and forever unchangeable thing, or something that can be changed by constant resistance? This is a concern for many people.
In Wolverine, we see the shadow of this tragedy. Wolverine had an unfortunate childhood, and as a werewolf, he himself was not tolerated by the world.
Wolverine has superpowers that many people envy, such as the superpowers of werewolves, such as the superpowers of the "immortal body", and his ability to heal himself. Although these are the superpowers that many people dream of, Wolverine has been thinking about how to escape this innate fate all his life.
Wolverine's life can be said to be ups and downs: the young man was used as a war machine in the war, and then colonel Stryker injected a kind of "steel bone" to turn him into a more powerful warrior. However, he experienced a lot of pain throughout his life: he killed his loved ones more than once, whether by mistake or because he had to. He constantly sought to escape, but he also kept falling into a deeper tragic fate. Wolverine has never been able to escape his tragic fate.
Wolverine, as a werewolf, can be said to be a superhero, a hero that we all worship. But from another point of view, he is a niche, an outlier. Wolverine's X-Men are all mutants, a group that has always faced the pressure of being discriminated against and marginalized in human society, so they are always in the struggle for their legal rights.
This kind of character tension makes Wolverine, as a superhero, be blinded by a tragedy in the process of saving the world and saving mankind: You think, the people you save are those who want to kill you, what kind of tragedy is this?
The hero's twilight lament
So we will see a film like "Wolverine 3: Logan", it is a very advanced movie, the whole film is completely unlike the previous hero blockbuster, there are a lot of fierce conflict battles between heroes and villains, the pursuit of that kind of cool and very good look.
The picture of "Wolverine 3" is very real, the texture is very advanced, a bit like the feeling of "Old Nothing": Wolverine has reached the end of the year, his self-healing ability has declined, his combat effectiveness has also declined, he is beginning to grow old, he is going to die like an ordinary person, he has lived for 200 years, he has experienced enough pain. The whole process of the hero's twilight is not calm and quiet into the countryside.
Despite the hero's twilight, he is still being hunted down, and he is facing his own next generation— the next generation made from his genes — Wolverine's daughter is also being hunted down. That is to say, the world he had protected as a hero in his life still did not let him go, or he had to be put to death in his last years.
We will see wolverine's last fight in the movie, he is beaten by a few little bastards as a twilight old wolf, this sad feeling is really the most powerful force of tragedy, giving the whole series a heavy finale. It seems that "God" is mercilessly telling Wolverine, "This is your destiny, and you have had this fate from birth, and you cannot be liberated until you die." ”
This sadness is also a kind of irony of Wolverine as a superhero: this muddy human world is not worth saving after all.
Wolverine was never tolerated by the world because of his mutant status, and he died silently. But in fact, the ending of this movie leaves us with hope, because Wolverine died very calmly.
He saw his daughter living in a new group of mutants, and they found a way to live in peace. Wolverine still had hope before he died, and he was redeemed in his own life.
Wolverine is perhaps the closest to us ordinary people
The shaping of a character like Wolverine is very different from Batman and Iron Man, he did not choose to become a hero himself, but was forced to embark on the "hero road of self-redemption". In fact, he is closer to us ordinary people.
How many of us ordinary people have such leisure, or have the ability to save the whole world? There are many people who are actually born with the brand of the original family, with a certain degree of their own misfortune, and this life is walking the road of self-redemption.
From this point of view, Wolverine has given us a lot of strength to become stronger because he has been trying to face the shadow of his life. The entire "Wolverine" and "X-Men" series of movies reflects his personal strength, his kindness, his bravery, and his efforts to transcend his own life, which can actually give us ordinary people a lot of inspiration.
After all, the original misfortune of life cannot be redeemed only through a happy and invincible ending, but through the strength of the entire life process. Steel and iron bones, self-healing ability, in a sense, can be seen as a metaphor, which is to make yourself persist in the long life of pain and hardship, not decadent, not to collapse, not to give up, not to evil superpowers. Compared with other superheroes, Wolverine has these two superpowers that can neither erase the past nor control others, nor can they arbitrarily change time and space, or bring earth-shattering explosion effects. But there is no other power in life than these two, and they allow people to maintain their last dignity.
I like Uncle Wolf very much, do you like it?
That's the story of Uncle Wolf we're going to tell today, and in the next issue we're going to talk about Batman, an equally complex, two-faced superhero.