Entertainment Geekly: Analyzing the trendy dead-parent trope.
The first time we saw Howard Stark, he was already dead.
That was six years ago, when archival footage of John Slattery was the least-worst thing aboutIron Man 2.
Credit: Universal; Marvel
But Marvel Studios has yet to find the dead horse it cant beat.
At long last, we know how Iron Mans father died!
yelled someone somewhere, ecstatic, alone.
Daddy was always on Tony Starks mind, of course.
I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once.
Eight years later, we lucky moviegoers watched Batmans parents die, again, inBatman v Superman.
(Hi,Walking Deadactors!
Bye,Walking Deadactors!)
Between deaths, Slattery and Hope Davis hang out onscreen with a freakish digital-botox monster clone of Downey.
Downeys 51 and looks good: money, fame, clean living,yoga, whatever.
At 45, Matt Damon looks a bit older, which I only mean as a compliment.
LikeCivil War,Jason Bourneproffers a young-man flashback for its lead character.
Jason Bourne always had parents.
So do you and me and penguins and Jesus and Hitler and Donald Trump.
Nobody had a family, really.
And that was a big shift from the source material.
But Ludlums Bourne was also a Cold Warrior, deep-down loyal to his country.
(By the secondBournebook, hes repatriated to America and working as a university professor in Maine.)
TheBournemovies never really took nationality seriously Alicia Vikander plays CIA the way a danish plays a doughnut.
And these were thebadguys.
Bourne is a grown man, powerful enough to take down the dads who tried to screw him up.
The original trilogy is patricidal; thats what makes it so thrilling.
Jason Bournemisses the point completely.
SoJason Bournereaches into the past to give Bourne his own Thomas Wayne, a murdered father requiring vengeance.
It is the single worst act of franchise seppuku since Darth VadersaidWhooooo!
And killing Iron Mans parents inCivil Waris almost as bad, really.
This this is the important movie, they seem to be saying.
This is the one where his daddies.
One of the saddest things about theendearingly misbegottenAmazing Spider-Manseries was how completely it ran with this idea.
By the middle of the first movie, Andrew Garfields Peter Parker has lost his parentsandhis Uncle Ben.
Lest you missed the point,Amazing Spider-Man 2began with a flashback prologue to the assassination of Spider-Mans parents.
Just like inCivil War!
To lose one father may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two fathers looks like careless writing.
how the two films treat the deaths is notable, too.
InSuperman, Jor-El dies with Krypton, and Jonathan Kent dies of a heart attack.
Do nothing was what Edmund Burke advised good men to do, right?
(There have been literally thousands of Superman stories where Superman doesnt cry about dead parents.)
More troubling, though, is how this ham-handed comic-derived origin storytelling has infected all blockbusters like a virus.
When Shatner played Kirk, parents never really came up.
Kirk was a grown man, and then, in theTrekmovies, an old man.
But maybe men dont grow up the way they used to.
It didnt explain Bond, the way Crime Alley explains Batman.
Its curious, how these dead dads change blockbusters.
AndSpectrewasnt the only movie last year that turned iconic characters into orphans.
In the originalTerminator, Sarah Connor fought Skynet because Skynet wanted to take over the world.
This was clearly not enough forTerminator Genisys, which killed Sarahs parents I guess to make thingspersonal.
The same summer, two of theFantastic Fourwatched their dad die, killed by Doctor Doom.
Want to know when it started getting absurd?
I would point toMen in Black 3.
Will Smith was inMen in Blackjust one year after he starred inIndependence Day.
He was such a movie star in those movies god, he was astar!
but in both movies, hes just a dude, really.
Smith didnt return forIndependence Day: Resurgence.
So his character is a dead dad in the new film the looming inspiration for his stepson Dylan.
Bill Pullman dies in the movie, too.
Seriously, how trendy are dead dads right now?
How real is Hollywoods modern parent apocalypse?
I did, however, seeWarcraft, because everyone makes mistakes, like the people who madeWarcraft.
Thats right:Warcraftis a origin story forWarcraft, right down to the murdered parents.
Can I make one thing very clear?
(Maybe theres some deeper historic symbolism here, too.
But this epidemic feels personal, somehow.
It constitutes a statement by a generation of Hollywood filmmakers: Daddy-issues played out ad infinitum.
Every movie I just mentioned is a sequel, of course.
Or a remake, or a reboot, or whatever Disneys calling their recycling nowadays.
Many of these movies are made by talented filmmakers: Men, always men.
Some of them grew up with the stories they are now retelling.
What kind of stories do you tell, when you know you arent telling an original story?
Doesnt it make sense that these heroes are strugglingwithlegacy?
With the memories of father figures, with their own creator?
Im limited by the technology of my time, says Howard Stark inIron Man 2.
Hes speaking in archival footage from the early 70s.
One day, youll figure this out, says Howard Stark.
And when you do, you will change the world.
Success, Iron Man!
You changed the world!
Your universe is now a movie-and-TV-spanning phenomenon, worth billions, with nowhere to go but up and out!
So: What do you do now?
The characters approach middle age, yet the films trap them in childish concerns.
This is what happens when all our big movies are kids movies.
Grown men act like kids.
They struggle with parental issues; they ultimately have a go at live up to their parents example.
(By comparison, the mournful single-dad helium noirInceptionlooks like freakingAmour.)
Its difficult to question your creators decisions.
Much easier, it turns out, to just kill them.
Why learn history, when youre doomed to make just as much money repeating it?
