Superhero movies are very popular these days. Whenever the fans watch them, they know they're in for a fun ride. Most current superhero movies follow the same pattern - either that of an origin story or a team-up of heroes against a great evil.
While there's nothing wrong with this recipe, some superhero movies and TV shows decided to do something different. Instead of following the established themes of superhero movies, they deconstructed them, offering meta takes on the popular genre. Unsurprisingly, some of the movies and TV shows that turn the superhero genre around also belong among the most intriguing superhero stories of the 21st century.
5 Misfits
The traditional move in superhero shows is to make it seem like being a superhero would be the best thing that could possibly happen to a person. British shows are known for often offering a more realistic spin on idealized topics, and special powers are no exception. In Misfits, a group of young people who are doing community service receive powers after they get struck by lightning. Instead of turning into Barry Allen, they continue to struggle with their lives, the fact that they have no money, no jobs, and what's worse, people are trying to kill them because of their powers.
Misfits contain a lot of dark humor, and they're far from optimistic, so much so that they kill many of their main characters, another thing that's rare in superhero shows where people do tend to die but not so much stay dead. Just like with some of the other shows deconstructing the superhero myth, Misfits show that getting special powers doesn't automatically turn people into shining beacons of virtue.
4 Paper Man (2009)
Before playing Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds appeared as a superhero in another movie that successfully deconstructs the superhero genre. Paper Man is a drama that confirms something many fans suspect even though they don't like it - that superheroes aren't real. The titular Paper Man is just a figment of the imagination of a writer who's going through a life crisis.
Paper Man isn't saving the world, he's just there to help the main character Richard who's struggling and is relying on Paper Man as his imaginary friend. The movie is touching and makes the viewers think about the role superheroes play in people's lives and why they're so important to thousands of fans even though they're not flesh and blood, but characters born in comic books and adapted for movies and television.
3 Kick-Ass (2010)
In most superhero origin stories, the audience sees the main character transform into a superhero and start efficiently fighting crime without stopping to think and realizing how absurd the whole situation is. That's not the case with Kick-Ass by director Matthew Vaughn, based on a comic book series written by Mark Millar. For one, the main hero Dave has no special powers. He's just a comic book fan, a geek. So when he decides to become a real-life superhero, he does more harm than good and puts himself in danger.
In direct contrast to him are Hit Girl and her father who are as close to real superheroes as they come. They also appear as if they stepped right out of pages of comic books, and seem bizarre in the real world like they don't fit in, even though other movies show superheroes integrating into society much more smoothly. Kick-Ass successfully defines the difference between reality and fiction and shows that being a superhero in real life wouldn't work the same way as in comic books.
2 Deadpool (2016)
Deadpool is one of the unique Marvel heroes. Not only does he walk the fine line between being a hero and a villain, but he's also aware that he's a character in comic books, which allows him to comment on the rules of the superhero genre and the absurdity of the things happening around him. Of course, nobody around Deadpool believes him when he says they're all just fictional characters and think that he's making it all up.
Deadpool's first movie openly points out superhero clichés, and as the audience watches Deadpool's rise to power, they quickly realize this isn't a run-of-the-mill superhero or even a villain origin story. Instead, it functions as a romantic comedy with a character who happens to have special powers. At his core, Deadpool is just a guy who loves a woman and would do anything for her. This theme isn't often seen in superhero movies, making Deadpool come across as refreshingly new.
1 The Boys
If Misfits show that special powers don't automatically turn somebody into a hero, the Amazon series The Boys takes it one step further. With a few notable exceptions such as Starlight, most of the so-called most powerful superheroes are corrupt, twisted people who have no qualms about hurting, abusing, or killing others.
The show is often funny, violent, and chilling, sometimes all of these things in a single scene. It rewrites the concept of super-powered people as the good guys and quite logically asks: Why should people use their powers for good if they could use them for their own benefit instead? The answer makes for one of the most entertaining, yet disturbing superhero stories of the last decade, if not of all time. As far as superhero shows are concerned, The Boys are the furthest from the typical optimistic portrayal of superheroes.