My Villain Origin Story
In our current mass media landscape oversaturated with superhero stories, it's become increasingly hard to find ones that stand out from the pack. Gone are the days of Sam Raimi's Spider-man where the storytelling was played straight, with bright colors and energy that seek to evoke the feeling of reading a comic-book. In the 2020's, we have reached peak of the superhero craze, and it seems studios have bottlenecked their output into two different flavors of media:
1. Superhero stories that infuse their characters into a different blockbuster genre (a superhero spy movie, a superhero sci-fi epic, etc.) 2. Superhero stories that ask "what if Superman was BAD?"
"I'm a Virgo" is the third Amazon show I've watched that falls into category 2, and despite not advertising itself a superhero show, it contains the most interesting answer to that question by far.
In the other two Amazon shows I mentioned, "The Boys" and "Invincible", the drama comes from the insurmountable odds of defeating an antagonist who wields godlike powers. There's always the looming threat of this evil Superman figure who is capable of wiping out all the heroes (or anti-heroes) without breaking a sweat. In "I'm a Virgo", this threat is also present, as "The Hero", a sort of Iron Man/Batman archetype played by Walton Goggins, always shows up to intimidate the characters who seek social change. The show starts off slow, introducing us to this familiar-yet-bizarre universe (similar in tone to Donald Glover's Atlanta) and the players that inhabit it. Eventually, however, we reach a turning point that forces our main characters to confront this force of "justice".
The main between this show and those other two is the conclusion. Without spoiling anything, the finale of this series is some of the most thought-provoking, well-explained examinations of what it means to be superhero, and why anyone who tries to take on that mantle will fail. There have been plenty of superhero media that examines the inherit fascism associated with being a superhero, but almost all of them reach the conclusion that "we should kill them" or worse, "I'll just be better". This show does not say either of those things, and I hope more people get to experience Boots Riley's superhero manifesto for themselves.
1. Superhero stories that infuse their characters into a different blockbuster genre (a superhero spy movie, a superhero sci-fi epic, etc.) 2. Superhero stories that ask "what if Superman was BAD?"
"I'm a Virgo" is the third Amazon show I've watched that falls into category 2, and despite not advertising itself a superhero show, it contains the most interesting answer to that question by far.
In the other two Amazon shows I mentioned, "The Boys" and "Invincible", the drama comes from the insurmountable odds of defeating an antagonist who wields godlike powers. There's always the looming threat of this evil Superman figure who is capable of wiping out all the heroes (or anti-heroes) without breaking a sweat. In "I'm a Virgo", this threat is also present, as "The Hero", a sort of Iron Man/Batman archetype played by Walton Goggins, always shows up to intimidate the characters who seek social change. The show starts off slow, introducing us to this familiar-yet-bizarre universe (similar in tone to Donald Glover's Atlanta) and the players that inhabit it. Eventually, however, we reach a turning point that forces our main characters to confront this force of "justice".
The main between this show and those other two is the conclusion. Without spoiling anything, the finale of this series is some of the most thought-provoking, well-explained examinations of what it means to be superhero, and why anyone who tries to take on that mantle will fail. There have been plenty of superhero media that examines the inherit fascism associated with being a superhero, but almost all of them reach the conclusion that "we should kill them" or worse, "I'll just be better". This show does not say either of those things, and I hope more people get to experience Boots Riley's superhero manifesto for themselves.
- heckbrain
- Aug 31, 2023